Death to the Old SEO Methods

There is a prevailing theme often heard in Internet Marketing that Search Engine Optimization, better known as SEO, is DEAD.  Any number of reasons can be attributed to this idea, and there are many more articles where the author creatively wishes SEO to Rest in Peace. However, this article will take a slightly different approach.

SEO is still alive and stronger than ever. This is especially true with SMBs (small to medium businesses) with cost conscious marketing budgets because even a small budget can go a very long way. However, with the rise of Web 2.0 in the last decade, Internet Marketing methods have had to evolve as well.

People hate Interruption Marketing

Remember the days of Pop-Ups? Turns out people did not like constantly having a million windows pop-up on their screen, especially when they were for products that they had no interest in purchasing (you know what I mean). With the evolution of more precise algorithms on search engines like Google and Bing the need arose for more effective specialization in Internet Marketing, and this specialization gave birth to Search Engine Optimization. This effectively brought the death of Interruption Marketing, and now what you see matches to what you want.

 Google Panda

If you ask me from the SEO point-of-view, “What was the biggest highlight of 2011 by Google,” I would have to say it was the Panda update. The major aim of this update was to improve the quality standards of SERP (search engine results page). The purpose was to improve the rankings of quality searches would out rank and thin out low quality content. This would then put a significant emphasize back on to the content of every site, and how users share you content. The Panda update once again set creative, unique and informative content as its foundation to quality standards for SERPs.

Social Media on SERPs

Google’s social media presence, Google+, is the web’s fastest growing social network with over 90 million users. This has been most notable on the +1 of Google’s Adwords campaigns. Now friends are able to +1 all ads that appear on the Google Display Network. The bottom line, Google cares what others in your network are saying (they even starting indexing comments on Facebook), and the initial data is showing the Google+ is having a positive impact on SERP results. Therefore it is crucial to have as part of your social media and SEO strategies.

These are only some of the impacts to SEO with the evolution of Internet Marketing. If you think SEO is dead, maybe you want to consider your best practices in your strategies. SEO is no longer just link building with good content, but great content partnered with link engineers. The Internet is constantly changing, and as such your SEO strategies must be able to adapt to the new landscape.

 If you share our opinion, please share your thoughts with “SEO is Alive!”

Internet marketing is a broad term that branches off into various methods based on what aspect, design, advertising, sales or content, it focuses on.

More for Less

In terms of the customer reach it can achieve, internet marketing is cost-efficient. For instance, the most straightforward strategy, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) involves advertising by placing banners on third party websites or paying for placement in search engine results or contextual advertising. Though paid for, it works out to be a fraction of conventional advertisements.

Search Engines Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is arguably the most popular of internet marketing methods that requires studying Search Engine Result Page (SERP), how search engines work and how and what users search for. This information is then used to boost the website’s visibility. It differs from Search Engine Marketing (SEM) significantly as the focus is on enhancing visibility on “natural” search results.

Email Marketing

Sending emails as a marketing strategy is second to search engine marketing as the most effective method. Especially if customers opt in to the service, then businesses that send out emails find that the results are quite beneficial. It’s possible to track and gain high return on investment as most customers that receive and check personalised emails sent to them with product information or new promotions are likely to respond.

Social Media Marketing

Another method to make websites more visible is through Social Media Optimisation (SMO). A company’s reputation facilitates popularity, especially online and SMO is the online equivalent of good word-of-mouth. SMO is promotion through social media sites like Twitter and Facebook and is user driven. Increased interaction with customers also provides better insight into customer opinions and improves communication.

Generating Content

Content generation operates, to an extent, on the principles of Inbound Marketing, where the website is “found” by the users. Content on websites can be information on the product, interesting articles and news related to the product that draws customers. It fosters interactivity, especially if it’s a blog, thus making links more important, particularly in the case of Google’s algorithms.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing works on the basis of commissions for websites that refer customers to the business. It tends to overlap a few other marketing strategies as websites that affiliate in turn use the same methods of SEO and social media optimization.

There are quite a few factors that go into deciding what online marketing strategy is suitable or workable for a business, the most important of which is the business model of your business. What works for other website may not work for yours, so looking at similar websites and experimenting to study the results of different strategies would be a smart start to implementing online marketing for your website.

Why not take a break between the turkey and Christmas pud to put a few of these into action over the festive period…

Update Your Sitemaps

Websites change so regularly that it’s very easy for sitemaps to become out of date extremely quickly. Bing has said that if sitemaps have more than 1% of errors/low value pages then they start to mistrust them and its likely Google have a similar approach. Get your XML sitemaps up to speed, remove any 404s that have crept in and you’ll start 2012 in much better shape.

Start to Schmooze

Life’s all about relationships right? If you can make friends with people they’ll be happy to do you a favour. With this in mind, make it your goal to make a few new friends in 2012, whether that be contacting someone via email, giving them plenty of attention on Twitter or commenting prolifically on their blog. It will take a bit of time, but if you can do this with a few influential people in your industry then in summer 2012 you could be in a great position to start pulling in some favours…

Give Your Videos a Boost

If your website uses videos then you should be doing everything you can do get the maximum value from the spent on them. Videos can give you real edge in the search results, whether it’s getting traffic through specific video searches or better click through from natural searches where your video stands out from the crowd.

The best way to do this is to get a video sitemap set up. To do this, create a file in the format Google requests which includes all the videos on your site and their key details (title, file location etc). Add this to your server, reference it in your robots.txt file and add it to Google Webmaster Tools so Google knows where it is. Then all the time and effort you put into creating great videos should be returned in traffic to the site.

Get Free Links!

What’s easier than getting links that people have already given you? One of the easiest link building tactics is chasing up people that are linking to 404 pages on your site. Go to Google Webmaster Tools, click on Crawl Errors and you will get a list of pages which are linking to incorrect URLs on your site. Identify the external ones and contact those webmasters to see if they will correct the link to point to a relevant page. Alternatively, you could 301 redirect the page in question to the one you prefer on your site. This would be a quicker approach, though removes the potential for interaction with a new contact.

Write a Great Blog Post

It’s easy to fall into a regime of churning out blog posts that every other blog in your niche has covered and just fade into the background. Whilst it’s nigh on impossible to create a groundbreaking post every time, it’s good to take a step back and produce something of real value every so often. Do some research, share some incredible knowledge, or just create something amazing that will make you stand out from the crowd. It will take a little more time, but the attention and linkability you provide will be worth it…

None of these activities have to take a lot of time, they just need putting in the diary so they definitely get done. Find 30 minutes here and there over the Christmas period and you’ll set yourself up nicely for a great 2012.

Word of Mouth

One of the simplest, yet highly effective, ways to build brand recognition is simple word of mouth. Just by talking to someone at a social event like a local sports game or a church gathering can really reap benefits. Don’t beat this person over the head with your business but, if he asks about your career, you can tell him what you do. While he may not need your particular service someone else that he knows might.

Sponsor

Being a sponsor, for a local baseball team or other organization, is a great way to build brand loyalty. Not only do you get a good feeling for helping others, but people see you and your product as being an important part of the area. This, in turn, is great public relations and can really help you sell your product.

Bulletin Boards

The power of a bulletin board is not to be overlooked. This simple technique is an excellent, and cheap, way of targeting a specific audience. For example, if your website sells books, you could put up fliers in libraries. If produce, in a supermarket. This is an excellent way of building recognition and will, hopefully, lead to an increase in sales.

Contests

A great way of drumming up business, and bringing in new customers, is having a contest that revolves around your product. Whether it’s offering your product as a prize, or just having the contest obviously sponsored by your product sales, it’s a good way to build brand recognition and increased sales.

Print Ads

Newspapers, while in trouble, still offer excellent exposure for those willing to shell out for ad space. Newspaper ads are cheap and can reach a pretty wide audience. This is perfect for building brand recognition in a local area.

Customer Appreciation

Another great way to build brand recognition is to treat your current customers well. Perhaps offer them discounts, or let them know of special offers, or let them enroll in a “members-only” contest. Treating your customers well will result in a loyal reader base. Not only that but, if you treat them well enough, they’ll tell their friends and family’s about you which can really boost your sales.

Conclusion

While there are many effective ways of raising brand awareness, not to mention loyalty, online there are just as many offline. These techniques can, actually, inspire more brand loyalty due to the human factor. In a local area you aren’t just a picture on a screen, you’re an actual known human being. This, in turn, makes people more comfortable with you and that much more likely to buy.

The SEO world is unlike any other out there. There is a very little amount of schools out there that offer up “SEO degrees” (I am pretty sure they are called Internet marketing degrees) – and even though there is a minimal amount of choices when it comes to getting your degree in Internet marketing, would even want to get one if you could? What do they even teach? And most SEO’s know that a degree in Internet marketing has a great chance of meaning absolutely nothing when it comes to ones knowledge about the world of SEO and how the search engines of the past and present world work. I would imagine Internet marketing schools would be good for one thing: learning the jargon. Besides, how can you develop a course that is based around an ever changing company called Google?

Side Note: All that being said, I am a strong believer in the need of a restructuring our education system in order for our economy to get better. I believe that part of that would be offering HTML, CSS, and other programming language courses as well as basic Internet marketing courses. Imagine how many 17 year old kids would be able to immediately start making money on their own from the likes of their bedroom programming or offering SEO services – but that’s another topic.

Skills to Pay the Bills

Consider making an online resume. A good practice is to use your name as the domain name. If you have some coding experience, then you make it quite impressive. They are also very easy to submit to online job applications. All you have to do is send the the link.

What is a desirable education?

There are many types of degrees that pan out when entering the Internet marketing/SEO job world. One of the reasons is that because SEO and Internet marketing has a rare combination of technical and marketing characteristics to it. You need to know your computer stuff, but it truly is marketing at its finest. Common degrees include computer science, computer engineering, general marketing, general business degrees, psychology, statistics, and other analytical and marketing degrees.

That being said, you might be working for an affiliate company that runs websites based on Greek mythology (high doubtful but just a general analogy). In this case someone with a Greek mythology degree might be highly desirable. Since a lot of SEO is curating great content for people to naturally link to, specialized degrees for specialized niches make a lot of sense. However a technical background would probably be a must if this were the case because the business model is almost always most cost effective and efficient to outsource these content resource needs.

What is the desirable skill set?

The desirable skill set for somebody working in the SEO field, like almost all other fields, begins with experience. In fact there are many SEO companies out there that don’t even ask what your education is when you walk into the Interview room with them. They want to know what you have done, what you can do, and who and what companies you have worked for

One of things that really interests me about the SEO world is where everybody gets there start from. How everyone comes together. Working at a large firm is like a melting pot of extremely unique stories and experiences that have to do with the Internet marketing world. Here are a list of some skills that would count as very valuable for someone that is looking to get hired into the SEO world.

• Link building experience. Being able to build links is all about what you have done in the past. Many individual link builders have very unique ways and resources for building diverse link profiles. Fortunately, if you are lacking in this department – you can always use somebody else’s resources. And there are many general link building 101 guides to follow as well.
• PPC advertising. If a company wants more web visibility TOMORROW, then the likes of Google AdWords and Facebook PPC ads will definitely be needed. The two giant Ads programs allow you to target very desirable markets. The only problem is figuring out those markets. That’s where your experience will come in handy to a large (or small) firm.
• Search engine marketing. Social media is a huge factor in the role of web visibility these days. Massive amounts of traffic can come from social media avenues like Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus. If you are not an expert, job markets want know that you at least have some experience in the field
• Content Creation. We are becoming an economy of constant divulgence. It is important that you can create, or be part of a team that creates, compelling content.
• Analytics and Implementation. Much talent in the SEO world lies in foreseeing market trends, and implementing keyword analysis and market patterns into full out on-site and off-site SEO

These are the most important characteristics for getting hired on in the SEO department of a company. Other additional skills usually include, but are by no means limited to things like:

• HTML and CSS
• PHP, JavaScript, and other Scripting languages
• Microsoft Office and Google Docs
• Extensive Internet Tools use like Firebug, Dropbox, WAMP (XAMPP or MAMP as well)
• familiarity of Internal collaboration systems
• typing skills i.e. words per minute
• WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal experience

After that it’s all about your communication skills and how well you are able to market yourself! It’s a competitive world out there!

What is Link Bait?

Content is golden. That is the premise behind link bait. Link bait is content that is found on your site that others link to. You’re not asking them to link to it; they are doing so because they find the content relevant and they want to link to it. What is a hot topic today? Let’s say you take that hot topic and write a blog about it. People begin to seek more info on this hot topic and come across your blog post. The content is relevant to them and quite beneficial so they post a link on their site to your blog post. It’s adding value to their site and sending more traffic your way. It’s a win-win for all parties involved.

The goal behind link bait is to create content that is meant to go viral. They want it, you’re created it; now let’s share it. The goal is to create content so rich that people will want to share it over and over and over.

How to Start a Link Bait Campaign

Starting a link bait campaign is not difficult. Everything starts with inspiration; an idea. You’re going to create your best content when you write about something that inspires you or that you know about.

Find out about the area that interests you. Is there a hot topic in that area that needs more information? Is there a demand for facts on a specific area? This is where you can really elevate your exposure by not only writing about what you know but about what others want to know about as well.

Link Bait Campaigns Step by Step

Putting together a link bait campaign is easy to do. Follow these simple steps:

1. Do the research. Find where there is a need for information that you can write on. Find the holes in the market and fill that gap with outstanding content.
2. Once you’ve found the need; now you need to create content to fulfill that need. Begin by outlining the topic you want to cover. Create a first draft and review it. You may need to go through two or three drafts to perfect the content.
3. Create the final draft and get it ready for publication and distribution.
4. Place the content on your blog or website and distribute via outlets like popular directories like Ezine articles.
5. Review your content at select intervals to see how your content is fairing. Utilize sites like SEO Moz’s linkscape to see how many links back to your content you got. Check social bookmarking results. How many people have bookmarked and shared your site?

There is a great chart at http://www.voltierdigital.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Linkbait_lifecycle_final21.png that shows you the link bait process from start to finish.

Types of Link Bait

There are various forms of link bait that you can utilize. These include:

• News Link Bait – the news is hot. People want to know what’s going on right now not tomorrow. Creating content related around what is happening now in the news is a great way to get your name out there. Staying on top of this market can easily establish you as an expert. However, this is also an area that is literally changing minute by minute so it can be quite time consuming to stay on top of.
• Debate Link Bait – debates always spark interest. There are always two sides to every story so gaining exposure is relatively easy to do. Even if someone doesn’t agree with your side there is still a level of respect and you can often still get a link to your work. The down side to this is that there are two sides to every story so you need to present a strong case or you can literally get ripped to shreds.
• Attack Link Bait – this is just as it states. You’re basically attacking something (another blog, an article, a hot topic, a belief, etc.). The upside is that there is always interest in controversy. So you are sure to get relevant links back to your content. The downside is that you are also sure to make enemies and that often is not a good thing.
• Resource Link Bait – this is a great way to make your presence known. When your content is a resource for others then you are giving them a highly valuable tool and the chances that your content will be linked back to is high. However, staying on top of these resources can be time-consuming.
• Humor Link Bait – providing humorous content is a great way to get people interested in your light hearted content that will surely tickle their funny bones. However, it can be hard to be taken seriously with the big boys in the game.
• Ego Link Bait – We all love the sound of our own voice. The same is true for the content we write. We love plugging our expertise and knowledge. However, an over-inflated ego can come back on you and sometimes have the adverse effect as people begin to avoid your content.

Writing great content doesn’t insure that it will become great link bait. There is no specific golden rule that will guarantee that you get awesome link bait results. What we can tell you is that you simply need to just practice, practice; practice. Find what approach works for you. With practice and dedication you’ll find a system that works and thus increase your chances of your content becoming great link bait.

Jeff is an internet marketing consultant and a part time blogger. He writes mostly about blogging, internet marketing, Pay Per Click Strategies and Search Engine Optimization techniques and best practices.

This could be good for users, however, this often gives SEO’s a really hard time, because:

• Many SEO’s have clients who target multiple countries,
• Some SEO’s travel on a regular basis and check rankings from overseas,
• Some SEO’s use proxies to collect SEO data, which means their results get tailored to the location of the proxy server.

This is when the “gl” parameter in Google comes handy. How does it work? You do a search on Google. Once you hit “Search”, you’ll see the query URL in your browser with different parameters in it:

So, what you do is you add gl=country code to the query. For example, if you’d like your search results to be relevant to the US (to make it appear as if you are browsing from the United States), you simply add gl=US – that’s it. Same goes for other countries. For example, you can add gl=AU for Australia, gl=DE for Germany, gl=CA for Canada, etc. Here is a full list of the country codes Google is using.

Does it really work? Let us consider the following examples. I type in “international SEO”, hit “Search” and this is what I see:

Now, I add gl=CA (Canada) to the query URL and hit “Search” again. Wow, looks like I got some strikingly different results (I marked all the results that were either not there or were displayed at a different position):

Plugins

In case you don’t want to enter that parameter by hand each time you check rankings for a particular keyword, there are some browser plugins that you can use to do the job. For example, there is a plugin called OpenSearch that has been developed by Ready2Search and works for Google Chrome, IE and Firefox. Once you install it to your browser (or to your Google toolbar) and the gl parameter will get automatically added to the query when you use the respective SE or click the little blue magnifying glass icon (in the toolbar).

The drawback of this plugin is that you have to create a new sub-plugin, so to say, for EACH new location, since the clicking on the magnifying glass icon custom-tailors your results only to ONE specific location. But, if you target one or two countries at most, it comes handy.

SEO software

If you resort to SEO software to track keywords on a regular basis, you may also look for the gl parameter settings in the SEO tool you are using. This would suit SEO’s targeting different countries with one website or having multiple regional versions of one domain.

For example, in Rank Tracker (the keyword tracker and keyword research tool that we developed at Link-Assistant.Com), you can add one or SEVERAL gl parameters to your query at the point of choosing Google’s regional varieties (or simply Google.com) to check rankings in. The results for searches that “have been made from different countries” will get displayed side by side.

Another advantage is that the SEO tool shows the exact URL that ranks at a certain position, which is good to know, because sometimes various URLs can be ranking differently in different countries. This way you can optimize one page for one country, and another page for another country, instead of trying to kill two birds with one stone by optimizing one landing page for several locations.

To use or not to use?

All that said, I’d like to mention that, even though the gl parameter helps one beat geolocation, it can hardly nullify the effect completely. There are a lot of other geo-related nuances that may have an impact on your search results, for example, your browser’s language, etc.

And, whether you enter the gl parameter manually or use a tool to do it would probably depend on the bulk of rank-checking work you need to do and the number of countries you are targeting.

Most search engines show 10 results per page.  Most people that are searching online tend to click on the top 3-5 results. You need to be above the fold to be clicked on for their search.  If you rank at the top of the search engine results page (SERP) then business is good.  If you are on the second or third page you might get about 2% of the search traffic that the top sites would receive.

Most people tend to think that Affordable Search Engine Optimization is complicated.  It is not so much complicated as there is a lot to know.  There are simple SEO Basics that we all should learn and understand in order to have our site optimized.  Don’t pay for something you as an online marketer really should know.

There are 10 main steps to follow in order to achieve Affordable Search Engine Optimization.  If you understand these main topics then you will understand how all of the pieces of the puzzle fit together.

10 Affordable Search Engine Optimization Tips

1- Keyword Research – what keywords are people searching for?  It is extremely important that you learn the statistics of your keyword or phrase that you want to use.  These words will be the foundation of your site.   To choose the right keywords I recommend Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

2- Market Research – look at your search engine optimization competition (SEOC) to determine what types of websites are ranking for the words you want to rank for and feel are important to the success of your website.

3- Site Structure – create pages to fit important keyword groups within your site.  SEO Basics for site structure are:

• The most important categories or pages are linked throughout your site.
• Link every page on your site to at least one other page on your site.
• CONSISTENT ANCHOR TEXT.
• Internal linking

4- On Page Optimization – If you don’t have the words on the page it is difficult to rank for them.  Organize each page from the Title, Pictures, Anchor Text and the Footer section of the posts; this will help the search engines know what your post is about so they will find you for the search results.  Plus when a visitor sees your page they will know what your article is about by the title, and then will see the keypoints of the post through the heading tags.

Ensure your content is original and you are writing for a human not a robot.  Far to often people are so crazy about getting the keyword density right or using a keyword that has good numbers that the article in the end does not make sense.

5- Link Building – link building is important because search engines look at links as votes.  The more votes means the more people like you, the more the search engines will like you.  Link building is the single hardest and most time consuming part of SEO.

SEO Basics to Link Building

• Link your most relevant page
• Anchor text; remember your anchor text is what links to other pages. You don’t need to link the entire title of the page just link the keyword you are ranking for that is contained within the title.
• Check out Yahoo Site Explorer to explore further your SEO.
• Reach out to other relevant high quality sites for a link exchange

Link Building Strategies

• Directory submissions
• Join trade organizations, forums
• Get links from industry hub sites
• Leave comments on sites in your niche

6- Brand Building – brand related searches are the most targeted, best converting, and most valuable.  If you build a strong brand people will have good things to say about you.  These positive interactions help reinforce your brand image, improve lead quality and conversion rates.

7- Viral Marketing – the beauty of viral marketing is creating one popular compelling idea that can lead to thousands of free quality links.

8- Measure Results – you need to see if your hard work is paying off.  What is working or not working for you.   On a weekly basis check Google Analytics to study your traffic and what your site is ranking for.  Check out your Google Webmaster account to ensure your site is being properly crawled by the spiders.  If you are running ads start to do split testing and see which ads will work better for the visitors that you are attracting.

9- Keep Up To Date – You always need to have fresh new content on your site.  Content is King and Quality is Queen.  People want to learn more when they go online, they want to be engaged.  You can use trending keywords to gain new traffic that you might not have had in the past.   Check out Alexa, Google Trends or Yahoo Buzz to find what’s hot online.

10- Don’t Stop – You need to keep the momentum going to keep the traffic coming to you.  All of these SEO tips only work if they are always done with each article or webpage you create.

You might be doing a bit of CRO yourself, however there’s every chance you are missing the most important step of all…

Ask the average fairly net-savvy individual what they’d do to improve conversion…they’ll probably give you a response which includes the phrases “A/B testing”, “testing page elements”, “improving usability” and “writing copy that converts better”.

I won’t disagree, these are all very important parts of the conversion rate optimisation process however they all have a common theme – all focus on optimising the visitor experience once they’ve landed on your website.What about making sure the right kinds of visitors arrive at your website? Optimising the source of the traffic rather than just the traffic itself.

The keywords you target can make or break you

Many approach keyword research from the wrong angle. They fire up their keyword research tool of choice, look for the keywords with the greatest search volumes, check the competition levels using any of their favoured metrics and then make their selections accordingly. This approach doesn’t actually account for your customers.

Successful keyword research boils down to fundamentally understanding your product or service AND having a detailed knowledge of your target customer. A keywords that brings in traffic is worthless if you don’t offer a relevant product or service.

I talked about this the other day; why Ballpark shouldn’t be targeting the keyword ‘CRM Software’ – Ballpark isn’t (and shouldn’t ever be) Highrise or Salesforce.com.

Psychology and keyword research

The kinds of visitors you get stem from the kinds of keywords you target. That might sound mega obvious but it is so often forgotten.

At a basic level, this might mean not targeting ‘free’ type keywords if your service is premium (this can sometimes actually be an acceptable strategy if you have a free trial for example.)

Often it is much more subtle and complex than this – the difference between ‘CRM Software’ and ‘Proposal Management Software’ to use the Ballpark example again.

It can mean having a true appreciation of the profile of the customer and trying to get inside their way of thinking. Prospective customers who uses certain search terms i.e. the individual who searches for ‘cheap SEO’ has a very different mindset and is looking for a very different service from someone who is searching for ‘SEO Consulting’.

This brings me onto how your frame your business – the image you give off and how potential customers perceive you. I’m sure you agree this is important. Rarely, however, is this taken into account at the keyword research stage.

Keywords are words and phrases that your business will become associated with. It sets you up for the kinds of customers you’re going to get coming through your virtual doors.

You might have seen this piece by Wayne Mullins – it talks an experiment which proved the ‘frame’ (and controlling people’s perception of your brand) can be the difference between earning $32 an hour and earning $115,000 an hour. Derek Halpern talked here of how people’s perceptions can mean you can charge 71% more for whatever it is you are selling. [Key]Words really are powerful

Why this is more important now than it ever has been…

You can’t afford to disappoint searchers these days. SEO is to a certain degree search experience optimisation.

You need to make sure that every touch point online for your brand is a positive experience; from the keywords you’re visible for, to the page titles and meta descriptions that entice users in. Offering a showstopper in the SERPs? You’d better be a stallion once they get back to your place.

If you’re not, not only will conversions suffer but your bounce rate is likely to be high which, now that Google is working user metrics into their algorithm, could be harming our rankings.

Even if you do make the sale, there’s every chance you’ll be attracting the wrong kinds of customer which might mean frustration for you, your staff and eventually disappointment for the client. Never a good place to be.

In this article I will give some advises for those people who try to build web site themselves and don’t have experience in programming. Is it possible to build a user-friendly site attractive for people? Yes, it is. If you adhere usability rules. Usability means ease of use and learnability of the web site. It is one of the main requirements to the site.

So, the first thing you should do is to define: who is your visitor? Site made “for everyone” will hardly be of any use, that is why you should know your visitor’s “face”. You should choose the design, font size, images and background that will satisfy and will be convenient for the visitors – it is the first step of usability measures. Understand who your visitor is.

The second usability rule – “30 seconds rule”. Statistics tells that for the first time user stays on the site for the 30 seconds, and during these 30 seconds he decides whether to stay there or not. Build a site where user can receive main information he came for without additional page scrolling and surfing through various site sections. Remove the ads that are not yours and that occludes all page and also place everything important in the part of the page that visitor sees first when he comes to it. Respect his time.

Next rule – “User is always right”. Make an easy-to-use design for a certain category of audience. Don’t hide registration button if the site needs it, use clear and visible navigation menu and write words without slang. Talk one language with your visitors.

The fourth rule is: “User must understand what is going on when he presses the buttons”. It is very important especially for e-commerce sites. For example user presses “Order” or “Complete” button and… nothing is going on. He is confused – what has happened? That is why it is highly important to comment all user’s actions, like “Your order has been sent for processing. Our manager will connect with you within…”, or “The message wasn’t sent because you didn’t fill …” – indicate what is wrong with the message. And it is very important to place all comments on one page – where user filled the form.

Next rule: “Ask your user only necessary information”. A big number of unnecessary questions in the order form irritates people and most of them would prefer to cancel order and go to another site with simpler and shorter web form. So if you downloaded a ready form and embedded in your site, it is advisable for you to use a web form generator (phpforms or any other) and build your own customizable form that will contain only the questions that your web resource needs.

One more usability secret is “Hyperlinks adjustment”. It is better to open the link to another site in new window because in this case when user closes that window, he won’t leave your site too.

Also your should be attentive to questions and remarks of users. Read the letters which your visitors write to support managers, this way you will see what difficulties users face while surfing on your resource and know their expectations concerning your service.