Newsletters:

	Web optimisation checklist
	Making Money From Niche Markets
	Obtain Merchant Status In Australia
	Increase Site Traffic
	Fix Those Damn Title Tags
	Keywords
	Is Your Site Designed to FAIL?
	Optimising Internal Links
	Ordering Your KeyPhrases
	Your Unique Selling Position.
	Sell More with Better Images.
	How to Deep Etch Images

Home | About | Contact us | Links

Most Websites are designed to FAIL! Is Yours?
By Kerry Plowright
CEO, Australian Windows Publishing Pty Ltd.

Frankly I don’t know why so many people start an online business with such a bold intent to fail. That’s right. So many ezimerchant websites I look at have paid zero attention to optimization and yet call up after several months wondering why they are getting no sales. This is despite ezimerchant making it really simple for you to conduct the essential basics of website optimization.

With so many sites stuffing up, there is no point in talking advanced techniques if such a simple thing as a title tag is too hard. So lets get back to basics. You want traffic and sales. Unless you profess to be some SEO guru, read carefully.

The primary engines we are firstly concerned about are Google, Yahoo and Altavista. If we optimize for these we will pick up others such as Inktomi etc. Lets not get bogged down here because this is an ever changing landscape and set of rules.

Google is currently number one in delivering search result pages (SERPs). Naturally we give this special attention. Yahoo have also weighed in with its own engine very similar to Googles. What works for Google, mostly works for Yahoo.

Google has been tweaking and fine tuning its search engine algorithms almost daily. However, one thing remains constant: there are things in SEO that you need to do and others that you absolutely need to avoid.

Here are my current absolutes of rigorous SEO techniques. As fast and furious as Google “dances” have been lately, these keep you out of trouble while helping you to continue to enjoy priority rankings in the results pages. Most of you will not be guilty or aware of some of the following techniques. On the other hand you might have some misguided advisors steer you down a path that will get you banned from the primary search engines. Death in cyberspace! So be careful and watch what your tech people or advisors are doing.

Keywords.
If you do not know your keywords or phrases and have not conducted a competitive analysis, go back to square one. Email me and I will give you a quick analysis for free. (kerry@myshophosting.com)

Title tags
Your title tag should include you keyword or phrase. Some of you are great. (Mostly the ones making money.) The rest of you are disastrous. This is essential. A title tag has two functions: it helps your users know what the page is all about before they click on your link in the SERP’s and it also helps the search engines better index your page.

Never write invisible text
Some folk are still trying to get away with invisible text! If you attempt this you will be banned.

Continually add new content
Sites that continually add new content and new pages everyday mostly get the best rankings. What’s more, when search engine spiders visit your site and find newly added or updated content, they will come and visit you more often! The more often they come, usually the higher and better your rankings. Search Engines are looking for fresh content. If you are able to add new content, make sure to include a tag into your ezimerchant template that requests a revisit by the spiders/bots every 7 or 14 days. Email me on this if you want.

You can also add specials pages and unique offers and news to your home page. What is also a great bonus to ezimerchant users is that the greater the number of pages in a given website, the higher the PR (Page Rank or importance). This, combined with the number of links pointing to your site, calculates your total PR value. This is performed once a month during every major Google dance.


Never link to bad neighbourhoods
Its not possible to control who links to you, and no search engine I am aware of will penalize your site if someone links to you. But you do have control of the sites You link to. If you link to a site which some would call ‘a bad neighbourhood’, you might get penalized by some engines for linking to them. Examples of this would be sites that have been penalized in the past for prohibited techniques such as invisible text, invisible links, gateway (or doorway pages) or sites that are really nothing more than a bunch of affiliates heavily cross linked. (Porn sites and web rings are a great example)


Don’t abuse meta tags
Most search engines today don’t even care to look at meta tags anymore, since they were spammed and abused so badly in the past. However, yahoo are paying additional interest to these tags. The only other search engine today that seems to place some importance on meta tags is Inktomi. To keep it simple, when you write your meta tags, write your main keywords that are on that particular page. If the page is about red rubber balls, then that is all that should be written in the meta tags. Do not cram them with words that have nothing to do with the actual text written on that page.


Never use Doorway or Gateway pages
Don’t even think of using doorway or gateway pages, these are frowned upon by most search engines. If you use any kind of software or program that requires the IP address of a search engine robot, you may well have your site penalized or banned. Gateway pages serve different pages to search engines than they do to real human visitors. The search engines are very aware of this. Make sure that your SEO people do not use these techniques.

Focus on content and build the best site you can
AS we know content works great with search engines. Likewise it works well with real people. Make sure your site is usable, not confusing, not bogged down with imagery and skip the Flash animated graphic for the moment. Give the monkey the banana. They are at your site because they searched for a specific term and want a result. Give it to them. Don’t stuff them around! High rankings won’t compensate for a site that has little usability. Does your site take too long to download? Did you know that even today, about 80% of people are connected to the Internet using slow dialup modem phone lines? This is especially true in rural areas and in many parts of Europe.

If your menu and navigation isn’t clear or if your homepage fails to give the slightest clue as to what your website has to offer, they will leave faster than you can say ‘hasta la vista baby’!

Write compelling sales copy and body text
At the same time as drafting good sales copy you need to be aware of what search engines look for. You will have to include your important keywords a few times at strategic locations in your pages while at the same time writing text that flows well rich in keywords and phrases. Your home page for instance should contain at least 350 words containing two to three times your keywords for that page. Also make sure the first visible text visited by the robot as it crawls your page is a H1 header with your primary phrase or keyword. In addition include these words and phrases in the first paragraph on the page.

Links baby, links.
You need links. Search engines place a lot of value on the number of links to your site. With Google and others ultimately neutralizing the value of reciprocal links this is a tough challenge. Moreover, they are implementing procedures that kill off the ‘web rings’ of past, meaning only non reciprocated and associated links will be valued. Tough indeed. The good news is that it’s a tough challenge for everyone and is a level playing field. I will be paying a lot more attention to this to develop an effective and productive program for ezimerchant users. If you interested in increasing your link popularity email me.

Statistics.
Driving a website without a comprehensive statistics package is like driving a car with your eyes closed. This is an absolute must.

Keep up to date with Search Engine Optimisation.
If you are running a website with the intent of capturing webtraffic to generate income, you MUST keep up-to-date with SEO news. This changes by the day and by the hour.

Here, we have laid down some basics. With this done we can really start to concentrate on the how we can beat our competitors to achieve a page one ranking. Work with me and lets build an ezimerchant website that generates the success you desire.

Want to fast track your results? Email me at kerry@myshophosting.com and feel free to talk to me.

Want results faster?
With hosting services starting at $14.95mth, www.myshophosting.com provides its customers with FREE SEO analysis and comprehensive site management statistics packages to help build your business.