What’s In Your Website?

I have been thinking a lot lately about my websites. I have three active festival and event sites. I want to know if they are as effective as I want (need) them to be. In talking with a web designer friend, I realized that they all needed to be re-evaluated! I asked him to explain what the key ingredients where for a successful website. He started to answer me in another language, techno speak! I told him to slow down and talk to me in a language I could understand, English! He did and we covered a wide range of topics. Here is a summary of our conversation. In future blogs I will try to explain his ideas more fully and hopefully in “plain” English!
1. Site Construction – It is important, when building your site to remember that it has to attract two types visitors – human and search engines. Each is looking for different things. Your site must appeal to both if it is going to be successful. The foundation of any successful site is well written code. Search engines can and will penalize a site with poorly written code.
2. SEO or “Search Engine Optimization” – Simply put, search engines put out feelers (spiders) to find sites. Once your site is found it is categorized based on your keywords and then listed in order of importance. Your choice of keywords helps in determining the sites importance.
3. Meta Tags and Keywords – These are words inserted in your website. They bring attention to your site and its pages.Consider this information the “business card” of your site to the spiders and potential visitors.
4. Meta Description – This is the description that appears in your search engine listing and it is the first content the spider will see!
5. Use of Keywords in Text – In order to emphasize keywords, they must be used often in the text of the web page
6. Highlighting Text – Once keywords are chosen and inserted, they must be shown as being important. This is accomplished by highlighting (bold, italicized, underlined) each keyword.
7. Web Pages – Each important page (home, about us, products, etc.) should be optimized for different keywords!
8. Updating – Sites should be frequently updated and the information must be new, correct and consistent.
9. Simplicity – Simplicity is best, especially your home page, in web design, page layout and contents.
10. Website Layout – Sites should be easy to maneuver. Complicated site discourage visitors from surfing through your site’s pages. Well designed and planned websites with user friendly, consistent layouts are a must.
11. Contact Information – Make sure that visitors to your site have a way of contacting you. Since the contact is being made via the internet, e-mail contact is a must.
12. Linking – Encouraging other websites to link with yours is important. However, the linked sites should have relevancy to your business or site. Linking for the sake of linking is not a good move.
13. Traffic – Finally, the goal of every site should be increased traffic (visitors to your site). How you design and manage your site will determine its popularity and thus traffic.
14. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – is a form of Internet Marketing that will help your website increase its visibility. Marketing tactics can include Search Engine Optimization (SEO), paid placement and paid inclusion.