 Dear
Readers,
If your site seems invisible to the search engines, check out Dan Thies's article
and give your site the ten-minute tune-up. He'll have your site as visible as
the sun in ten minutes flat.
We recently received the suggestion that weperform a peer review on our PeerReviewProsite.
Our reviewer brought up some usability issues, and we're going back to the drawing
board, having decided that any peer review site had best exhibit the highest standards
of usability and style.
 |
| Free Scripts Galore! If
you’re looking for a quick and easy way to spice up your Web site, look
no further than DevScripts. Over 1,000 scripts are available through DevScripts
– ASP, ColdFusion, JavaScript, Perl, and more.
Click Here |
|
That said, be looking for the relaunch early next month. (By the way, my birthday
is in December - the ninth - and yes I DO accept small denominations) In the mean
time, we'll continue to publish sites for review here in the newsletter, and continue
to publish the best peer reviews.
RuthiesMusic received some excellent advice, the best of which you can find
published here in WebPro, just below Dan's article.
We're going to give our reviewers a break today, but look in our next issue
for another site to review.
Hope you enjoy this issue,
Garrett
 10-Minute
Homepage Tune-Up
By Dan Thies
Is your site's home page search engine friendly? Think so, eh? The vast majority
of websites, even those belonging to Fortune 500 companies, are far from optimized.
I use a simple four-step process to find the most common errors. Using this to
do a quick tune-up on your homepage takes about 10 minutes, and it will pay off
for years to come.
Step One:
Identify Your Keywords The first step, and often an overlooked one, is deciding
which keywords and phrases you're targeting with your home page. What you want
to identify are the 4-7 top keywords or phrases that you will use on your homepage.
Step Two:
Keyword Placement Review Once you know which keywords you're targeting, pick the
most important 1 or 2 keywords or phrases, and make sure they're loaded into the
right places on the page.
TITLE tag:
keyword phrase | more keywords if possible The optimal title tag starts with a
keyword or keyword phrase, followed by a vertical bar (should be above the Enter
key), then as many more keywords as you can work in. Limit your page titles to
5-8 words if you can. Make sure your page title still makes sense to someone who
reads it, because search engines will display the title in your site's listing.
META Description & Keywords
Your top keyword or phrase should appear as early as possible in these tags -
"Welcome to..." is not the right way to do it! Your Description still
has to make sense, since many search engines will display it in your site's listing.
 |
Software
Downloads |
|
|
|
|
H1 or H2 Heading
The first text on your page should include your top 1 or 2 keywords or phrases
wrapped inside of an H1 tag. In addition, I like to work my other keywords into
H2 headings (2-3 of them) farther down the page.
First Paragraph and Body Text
The first paragraph of text should include your top 1 or 2 keywords, as early
as possible, preferable within the first few words. Additional keywords can be
worked into the rest of the text, under the H2 heading where they appear.
Hyperlinks
For best results, all of your top keywords should appear in hyperlinks on your
home page, leading to internal pages on your site. If you use images for your
navigation links, use the ALT property of those images to contain the appropriate
keywords for that link.
Closing Text & Site Map
If it makes sense to have your top 1-2 keywords appear again at the bottom of
the page, use them again here, but don't make nonsense out of your homepage over
it. If you have a site map, put a text link to it at the bottom of your page.
| |
FREE
Trial! Email
promotions. - Create, manage and send your own powerful, personalized marketing
message to your customers. |
Page Size:
Your home page should be as small as possible. More than 5K, less than 10K, if
you can do it - this is important to dial-up users as well as search engines.
Move any Javascript or CSS you're using into external files, and do what you can
to move your important keyword content toward the top of the file. Using layers
instead of tables for layout makes the latter task a lot easier.
Step Three: Check Your Links
It should go without saying, but you should check every link on your homepage
to make sure it's working and active.
Step Four: Validate Your HTML
Finally, run your homepage through an HTML validator. Invalid HTML can make it
impossible for the search engines to read your page correctly. Here's a link to
an online validator you can use for free: www.htmlhelp.com
There you have it - ten minutes to a higher ranking homepage!
I wish you success...
About the Author:
Dan Thies is the author of "Search Engine Optimization Fast Start,"
a concise, step-by-step guide to search engine positioning for the beginner to
intermediate level webmaster - available now here.
 |
Top
Peer Reviews of Ruthies Music |
 |
|
Did you miss the issue that featured Ruthie's music? You
can read ithere. Ruthie's
site is good, but these reviewers found ways to make it GREAT.
Build confidence in your customer. On the product page,
I would include a "satisfaction guaranteed" statement or blurb. Instead
of just a testimonials page, place a customer testimony on the products pages
with a link to the testimonies page. How about a Company Info page and real world
contact info. Who are you? Do you have a brick and mortar store? How long have
you been in business? I want to know I'm dealing with a reputable company.
Roxanne McHenry
Read
the Whole Review
The blue color scheme, while laid-back
and unobtrusive, lacks an accent color to balance the blues. This results in a
rather cold, sterile feel to the site. A splash of orange, brown or beige would
help to lift the mood of the design and introduce an element of warmth.
Another great way to improve the menu's usability and appearance
would be to use a different color or arrow shape for the "non-product"
options, such as Home and Search, to distinguish these options from the product
list.
Matt Doyle
Read
the Whole Review
Ruthie said it: “Check out these
holiday deals.” I tried to check them out by clicking on the elf or the
associated text and nothing happened… as soon as I did it, I said to myself,
“Oh… these holiday deals. The ones right here.” It sounds silly
until you’ve watched someone look ashamed for doing such a thing, but the
act of clicking where you don’t need to makes people feel uncomfortable.
It’s like tripping on a crack in the sidewalk and looking around to see
if anyone was watching.
Chris McFarlane
Read
the Whole Review
First, in order to ensure that you start
with the most accurate information, you should verify that you are counting unique
visitors, rather than the total number of hits. In reality, you might have 200
unique visitors per day, with each of them averaging 6 to 7 hits on your site.
A good log analysis tool like Sawmill or Webtrends should be able to give you
this information, or you can also go with a simpler service like Counted.com,
which is the best 3rd-party service I've found so far and offers some nice, compatible,
information-gathering features. Your most useful information will come from your
web logs, though.
Next, assuming a low 200 number of visitors, this indicates that
visitors are probably having trouble navigating, or are just not finding what
they're looking for. In this case, your best bet would be to start analyzing the
paths taken by visitors through your site. Where are the entry pages and the exit
pages? What keywords are people searching for when they find your web site? These
are questions whose answers will provide some insight into what areas need to
be worked on.
Jonathan Hilgeman,
Read
the Whole Review
First the real world contact information
is too well hidden if it is indeed part of the web site, phone numbers and physical
mailing addresses should be easy to find, this helps to build user confidence
in the company. Even the customer service page lacks and easily accessible email
address, clients would need to read through the FAQ and maybe upon clicking a
specific point one could get an email address but this becomes to much work for
the clients and most probably will not bother, they do not NEED to do business
with this company, it's not the IRS.
Chris Harriman
Read
the Whole Review
Your page layout is a little search
engine unfriendly. Your product details on the category pages are in a table nested
5 levels deep, that's an awful lot of code for a robot to fish through before
it finds those all important product titles.
Amanda O'Donnell
Read
the Whole Review
If I was designing this site, I would
want to know 3 things - 1)what is the biggest seller, 2)what item is the most
profitable, and 3)what item has the most associated accessories. Knowing this
may help in developing a hierarchy of what items to spotlight, versus those items
that don't need much attention. I am sure that you would love to sell 100 of each
item every month, but reality has it that certain items move better than others.
Michael Holguin
Read
the Whole Review
|
|
|
For information about advertising within an iEntry
email newsletter or via a targeted direct emailing contact Susan Coppersmith at
susan@ientry.com.
|
