About
90% of Internet Traffic comes through search engines. So how angry
would you be if you just spend ten thousand dollars on a website
only to find out that your web designer had given absolutely no
consideration at all to making your website search engine friendly?
Well,
if it happens you won't be alone. Lots of beautiful sites suffer
the fate of Internet seclusion. There are far more webpages than
there are people. How is anyone ever going to find you?
Here are
the top 10 mistakes that web designers make when designing a web
site:
1.
Splash page or Flash Intro Page
This is a page (sometimes animated) that's supposed to motivate your
customers when they first come to your website. It is all graphics.
It is a new trend that everyone is asking for and it's hurting
Internet merchants everywhere. Don't do it! Your front page is
the most important page to a search engine. Search engine spiders
can't "see graphics" or Flash presentations like
humans can. A graphic-intensive or Flash Presentation front page
stands very little chance of ever being found in a search engine.
Remember that when you first get into business
on the Internet, it will be some time before people know how to find you.
Most of your visitors will be purchased through some sort of paid
advertisement or some other pay-per-visitor or pay-per-click scenario. Do you
know that many people who surf the Internet disable the Flash
plug-in in their browsers? What do you think they'll
do when they get to a blank page? They'll run to your competition. Make your
front-page a search engine magnet. Make it rich in content and valuable
to your visitors.
2.
Graphic links and Graphic Text
This is very similar to mistake number one. Search Engines index
your pages based on the "text" on your page, not the
graphics. Sure, your site might look prettier, but it has no chance
of being indexed in search engines. Secondly, graphical links
are one of the worst mistakes you can make. Search engines are
more frequently taking "link text" into consideration
when ranking web sites.
3.
Not doing competitive analysis on keywords, or not optimizing
keywords into your pages
If your site was about credit card processing, the chances of
someone typing "credit card processing" and finding
your web page in the results are almost nil no matter how much
effort you put into optimizing your web site. There are millions
of sites on the Internet about "credit card processing"
and the only way you are going to be found is if you're in the
top ten. You'd be far better off doing an effective keyword optimization
campaign and finding much less competive keywords to optimize
into your web pages. Keywords like "accept credit cards in
michigan" or "taking credit cards online" are much
less competitive and you stand a much better chance of being in
the top ten.
4.
Not having enough content
Content is King, so they say. But it's important not to bombard
your visitors with content. You can give a customer too much information
-- so much that you can confuse them. It's far better to design
your site in such a way that walks the customer through a logical
ordering process, but also gives them links to useful information
when they need it. The more organized and useful your information
the better, and the more relevant you will be to search engines.
Search engines like to reward the most relevant sites the highest
listings. Also the more content you have (useful, relevant pages),
the more likely any one of them will come up in search engines
when people are looking for your product or service.
5.
Not designing a winning Sales Letter
Nobody ever buys a product because of what it looks like. They
buy products because of how they make them "feel". You
must sell a customer based on his emotions. Pictures simply cannot
do this alone. You must tell your customer all the benefits
of your product and how they will solve his or her problems or
how they will improve his or her life. They want to know what
your product feels like, what kinds of problems it will solve,
what they will get when they own your product. Don't expect your
customer to know everything about your product when they come
to your web site. Tell them everything they need to know right
up front and put your most compelling information closest to the
top.
6.
Not having a catchy or relevant headline
A customer will spend only about fifteen seconds on your page
deciding whether they want to continue further. If your headline
does not grab their attention they will simply go somewhere else.
This can break your bank account if you are spending money to
get visitors to your web site. This is why most online businesses
fail. Also the headline sets the mood for the rest of your website.
The customer will remember this headline while he continues through
the rest of your site and into the buying process. Spend some
time reading newspapers or browsing through those tabloid magazines
at the grocery store. Those companies spend millions of dollars
researching catchy headlines. Look through those newspapers and
magazines until an article catches your eye and try to figure
out what caught your attention in that article. Nine times out of
ten it will be a headline.
7.
Slow-loading Web Pages
So you're on a cable modem and your web page comes up fast for
you. But will it come up fast for your customers too? If your
front page takes thirty seconds to load for you on your cable
modem, it will probably take minutes for someone on a dial-up.
Images on your web pages should be kept to a minimum and they
should be optimized to load very fast. Thirty seconds is too long
for most people to wait on the Internet. They will go somewhere
else. Make your pages small and lean. If your content gets too
long, break it up into smaller pages. The faster your pages load
the more sales you will get. This is a fact. If your pages are
small but your pages are still coming up slow, look for a new
web host.
8.
No Keywords in the URL
It's very important to have your keywords in the URLs of your
webpages. Go look for any keyword in Google and many times you
will find that the top results have the keyword in the URL. I
just searched for "credit card acceptance" and found
that www.creditcard-acceptance.com was the second one in the list.
You don't have to have the keyword in your domain like that site
(although it would help) but you should put it in the file names
of your web pages whenever possible. Make sure you repeat the
keywords in the body text of your web page as well and have some
close to the top of the page. (Example: http://www.ccinfo.com/credit-card-acceptance.htm.)
9.
Your site doesn't collect contact information
Your web designer might be a wiz with PhotoShop, but most of they
time they are not Internet marketers. Make sure your web designer
is also an Internet Marketer. People are not always ready to
buy your product when they visit your web site. Often they are
just browsing. If they don't buy now they will forget about you
and will probably never come back. You are not in the business
of getting customers no matter what sounds like common sense to you.
If you learn anything from this article, learn this. It's what
seperates bad marketing from good marketing. You are
in the business to collect contact information. You may have paid
to get someone to your site the first time but once you have
their e-mail address you can contact them about your products
for as long as you wish for free! Consider contests and promotions.
Give your visitors the opportunity to try your product for free for
a limited time. Send them free samples in the mail. Call and talk to them
on the telephone.
Consider sending them free e-books related to
your product in exchange for their e-mail address. Now that you have their contact
information you just have to contact them and find out what will motivate them to take
action. If you offer a good product that your customer needs and you have a well-prepared
sales message, they will become your customer. But if they don't need your product at the moment
you will be able to keep them in the loop so you will get them sooner or later!
10.
Not using proper or descriptive Meta tags behind your web pages
Meta tags are tags that exist in the code of your web pages. Visitors
to your site do not see them but search engine robots and spiders do. It is
true that many search engines no longer take Meta "KEYWORD" tags into consideration in their ranking
algorithms (because they are heavily abused by search engine spammers)
but that shouldn't stop you. Some search engines still take them into account. Even
more imporantly than for ranking consideration, your Meta "DESCRIPTION" tag is often used
in the search engine links themselves. This is what a visitor
will see when they're deciding which site to choose from on a
page where you are side-by-side with your competitors. Also some robots harvest the Meta descriptions
from your pages and use them to add links to you from their site. This is free advertising!
Create a descriptive Meta tag for every page of your site. Use
the keywords that are found on your site pages. Make the description
compelling so people will choose it from among the many descriptions
of your competitors. In the long run you will get more visitors
and buyers by using Meta tags than by not using them.
RareHost.com
Web Design is a team of Web Designers that understands Search
Engine Optimization and the psychology of Selling Online. Consider
consulting with RareHost.com
before you create or redesign your next web project.
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