Small Business Design Resources

Optimizing Your Website Content

Your website might be well implemented, have a nice easy flow, attractive color scheme and easy navigation, and your product might be the best gadget ever invented or the best service in the business. But if people can’t find you, they can’t buy from you. It’s that simple.

Search Engine Optimization refers to creating a site that is keyword rich. Keywords are the words that people type into their favorite search engine to find what they are looking for. For example, if your website sells shoes, you will want keywords such as shoes, pumps, high heels, loafers, patent leather, boots etc. More creative keywords or keyphrases might include descriptive phrases such as blue suede shoes, sexy 4 inch heels, pumps that are to die for, and so on. Most people post articles on their website to increase keyword density.

Search Engine Ranking
Think about how you use the internet search engines. Research data shows that the vast majority of people only click on one of the first three website listings in the search engine results. Your objective is to be one of the top three returns in Google, Yahoo, or the other search engines for your primary products. Why? Because these are customers who are already looking for your product, and pre-disposed towards buying it. Think about that. It’s not like putting your advertisement on a billboard along the highway and hoping the right people will see it. Search Engine Optimization is guaranteed by its very nature to reach your intended customer base through your website.

But how does Google decide which listing to put at the top of the page? Search engines use “spiders” or “bots” (short for robots) to constantly search the internet (referred to as crawling ). The spiders read the content on your website, and even follow links on your site to links on other websites. As they go, they build an indexed database from what they find. For sites that have similar content or similar keywords, the search engines will build a ranking scheme. There is no set formula for understanding this because search engine companies keep their special algorithms secret.

Understanding exactly how spiders work, or exactly how the indexed database is built is complicated, and reaching the top 3 returns in a search engine list is a fine art. But there are some guidelines that can make it easier.

• Make sure each page on your website has a featured keyword or keyphrase

• Use the keyword strategically in every paragraph of your content

• Include links on your website to other sites with similar or related products

• Include links to pages on your own site with similar keywords

• Keep content fresh by posting new material regularly. Stale content loses rank.

If you find SEO too daunting, you can always sponsor a result by paying the search engine company to return a link to your website for specific keywords. Sponsored results are usually listed on the right hand side of a search engine return page.

Watch Movies of Visitors Browsing Your Website

Have you ever imagined that you can actually see what your visitors are doing on your website? No, no, I’m not talking about going through charts and pages of visitor statistics on Google Analytics or other similar analytics program. I came across ClickTale, which is a program that let you watch movies of your visitors’ actual browsing session. This is way better than just looking at charts and trying to analyze them. By viewing where your visitors’ mouse is actually going, what they type and what results they get from a click, you can evaluate the following:

• what on your website gets neglected
• what errors do users get
• what simply confuses your visitor and makes them leave
• why do they abandon your shopping cart

There’s so much more to this program so you just have to see for yourself.

Ins and Outs of Website Policies

In this post Jor Law, Esq. from www.homeierlaw.com examines the legal requirements when designing a website.

Exciting news…your brand-new website design looks great and it’s ready to go live. You’ve even got that fancy copyright statement on the bottom like all the other websites do. But wait. Many other sites have disclaimers, terms of use, and/or privacy policies. Do you need to have them? Should you have them? Why or why not?

Generally speaking, there is no legal requirement in California to have any disclaimers or site policies on a website. That shouldn’t be confused with other laws which may require protection of confidential collection collected. For example, if a doctor must keep certain client information he or she collects confidential, the fact that such information is collected through a website without a privacy policy does not mean that the doctor no longer has the obligation to keep that information confidential.’

Nevertheless, there are good reasons for having website policies. Terms of use policies can contain important disclaimers and other provisions that help govern the use of your website. What a terms of use policy contains could vary drastically depending on what information is on your website and what website functions are offered. For example, if your website has social networking elements or content contributed by users, you may want to include a disclaimer providing that each person is responsible for the content that they contribute and that you do not review, endorse, or necessarily approve of their content. You may want to reserve the right to remove content that is offensive. If you are providing your own content, you may want to let your users know that, while they have a license to view your content, they may not reproduce it, distribute it, or otherwise use the content in any other way without your prior written consent. Generally speaking, from a legal point of view, a well-drafted terms of use policy serves to benefit you as it generally sets forth conditions of use, various disclaimers, and other language protecting you as the website operator or owner.

A privacy policy, on the other hand, tends to exist for the benefit of the visitors to the website. Without a formal privacy policy, you would be held accountable to the privacy laws anyway. A formal privacy policy typically sets forth items such as how you will collect information, what information you will collect, and how you will or will not use the information you collect. If your privacy policy sets forth certain standards outlining how you will handle information collected on your website, then the expectation is that you will be held to those standards. Obviously, the standards set forth in a privacy policy must be as stringent as those required by law. What that means is that if you have privacy policies that are more stringent than would otherwise be required by law, you have held yourself accountable to that higher level of conduct. Despite this, many websites have privacy policies because the perception is that visitors to a website feel more comfortable divulging their information if there is there is a clear privacy policy.

It is highly advisable that you consult an experienced corporate technology attorney if you seek advice regarding what sort of policies may be appropriate for your website. For those on a budget, an online search will turn up a plethora of terms of use and privacy policies. However, be careful when copying another website’s policies. Aside from possible copyright infringement, the policy that you copy may be tailored to a specific jurisdiction or the unique requirements of that website.

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Jor Law, Esq. is a business and corporate attorney and a founding shareholder of Homeier & Law, P.C. He can be reached at (818) 450-1550 x552 or through www.homeierlaw.com Copyright © 2009. All Rights Reserved. May not be duplicated, reprinted, or distributed in any form without permission by the author.

Who Needs a Website These Days?

Your business is small, you’re just starting out and you don’t have any employees. You may be asking yourself if you really need a website. After all, not all businesses are destined for internet selling. The fact is, today, more and more businesses both large and small realize that having an internet presence, even if you don’t directly sell through the internet, is vital to doing business in today’s market place. Ever since the early 80s when the internet first took hold, the importance of the medium has been steadily growing. Today if your business doesn’t have a website it’s not taken seriously, it’s the first place most people turn when they are looking for information about a company be it their address and phone number, their price list, opening hours or inventory.

Staying Ahead of the Competition.

In an article dated July 9, 2007, AdvanceMe Inc, a leading provider of funding for small and mid-sized businesses, reported on the findings of the Capital Access Network Small Business Barometer:

http://www.capitalaccessnetwork.com/documents/SurveyResultQ22007.pdf .

AdvanceMe distilled the results and made the following statement about small business owners:

“The results reveal an understanding of the importance of promoting their business presence on the Web with 68 percent utilizing first generation search engine optimization tools to help drive traffic, and another 58 percent using some form of online advertising.”

http://www.advanceme.com/press/2007/press_release070907.aspx

Having an internet presence sets you up as a first class provider and lets your customers have access to your store to answer simple questions even when your brick and mortar store is not open for business.

What are these small business owners doing with their websites?

If you have a business that is not built around internet selling, like many of the business owners in the survey, you may be wondering what these small business owners are doing on their websites. Here are some of the things they are accomplishing:

• Setting themselves apart from the competition

• Providing information about hours of operation and inventory to their customers

• Providing email access via their “contact us” page so customers can ask them questions

• Providing an opportunity for partners and affiliates to sell their products

• Advertising promotions, sales and new products or services

• Reaching customers who do not live in their local area

• Letting customers see pictures of their products

• Blogging – providing information on a weekly basis – staying in touch with customers

Reach More People, Offer a Better Service

People turn to the internet more and more frequently. A decade or two ago, people looking for a local business would turn to the yellow pages of their local telephone directory. Today, more and more people turn first to the internet and do a search on businesses in their town. Let’s say you have a dry cleaning service which really cannot be done over the internet. You may think having a website is a waste of time. But if your competition has a website, and their name comes up in the search engine, they are likely to get more business than you from travelers, new residents, and people who simply want to change dry cleaners.

If you have a website you can not only reach your dry cleaning customers, you could develop an email service to let people know when their dry cleaning is in, let them know about special offers. You could use the website to advertise extra services such as alterations, tailoring or shoe repair.

No matter what your business, with a little imagination, you will be able to think up several ways that you can improve or enhance your service with an internet presence even if all your customers are local. You could even use the website to increase income by using advertising for similar products on your site.

Developing and Managing Web Site Content

If the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, the way to a site visitor’s and search engine’s heart is through palatable visual and textual food – web site content. However, the two most important factors that ultimately determine the success or failure of a web site is the manner in which web content is developed and managed. This is a continuous process, and site owners attribute much of their success to their strong emphasis on these two factors.

Content development is a process where some important steps should be taken initially, to develop good, quality, relevant content. These steps include visualization, research, preliminary drafts and editing of information meant for web site publication. These steps involve the development of such features as interactive text, animated or static graphics, pictures, video recordings and other advertising gimmickry.

When web site content has been developed, this most crucial stage begins. Content management is a process which, if well conceived, can contribute significantly to the success of a site. It includes such crucial elements as content sourcing, creation, updating, and publishing. It is also a collaborative process, in that it involves people qualified in various disciplines relevant to web content. For example, good web content may involve content writers, editors, managers, administrators, publishers, etc. Content writing must be creative, informative and search engine optimized (SEO). In this manner, such qualities will not only attract and sustain visitor interest, but also deliver an appreciable search engine ranking. For efficiency, several content managers use software called content management systems (CMS), which may also include a document management system. These can ensure that site visitors can easily interact with the content.

The key to successful web site content is inclusion of special keywords, key phrases and tags. However, many site owners and content writers are mistaken in their belief that by flooding content with keywords, they will attract more visitor traffic and enhance their search engine ranking. This must be avoided, as results have proved to the contrary. Content must be original, grammatically correct and specifically focused to a visitor’s needs. It must be confined to the particular business product or service that the web site is all about, e.g. if the web site is providing information on ‘home renovation’, content must be limited solely to this subject.

For a site to achieve its objectives, it is critically important to update and recycle web site content on a continuous cycle. However, it is also very important to plan everything well in advance. If your content has a solid platform (and a team of dedicated and experienced content developers and managers), it will have every reason and tool necessary to succeed.

Written By: Fresh Content

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Visit http://fresh-web-content.com for unique, fresh, quality web content.

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