Website Components and Enhancements
If you're ready to jump into the game and get a website, find
out a little more about some of the terms you keep hearing so
much about. Or, if you're not happy with your website's
performance, goIDX can definately help . . .
Still not sure you really need a website? Don't know what are
you missing out on? This humorous and
fascinating look
at how the world wide web has united the world into one
community (offered by Social Anthropologist Dr. Micheal Wesch)
is a must-see, and will change your perspective on computers and
the web in general. Sites like YouTube and My Space have been phenomenal in creating this sense of community:
giving us the ability to share with the whole world everything from a funny commercial you saw last night on TV
to every personal thing about yourself you care to reveal. The web offers a global connection
to the commonality of the human experience. No longer alone, in front of our computers, we are
now a part of the whole world.
Getting the word out to the world wide community about your site is all important.
One way to do this is backlinks. When your site is linked on someone else's site, it's called a
link back or
backlink, and the web is full of tools to help.
This article
offers lots of great advice and you can get really far with an involved, do-it-yourself attitude. The more you know, the
more interesting participating gets!
The term "Web 2.0"
is misapplied a lot. 2.0 implies a level of functionality beyond a 1.0 level, not just a new
'look' to websites.
Whether you think Web 2.0 is right for you is irrelevant, Web 2.0 is right for your
prospective and current clients. The focus on
websites, especially real
estate websites, is no longer you (the real estate agent, broker,
or business owner), but the user and consumer. You have to give
users what they need.
The term "herion content
" (scroll down to number 8. on the link) was coined to
refer to the kind of information you need to keep users
'addicted' to your website . Users want to participate and
to contribute, and if you are not offering current information and
the opportunity for
interaction, your website will not move up in the rankings, and prospective
clients will move on to the next site. Figuring out if your
website is most effectively giving your target audience what
they are looking for is what we're here to do.
Content development for your website is critical to your long-term success. The better your content, the more likely users will stay longer on, and
return often to, your website. That is why it is so important to optimize your content strategy for your users' needs. You want to
generate
interest and demonstrate your expertise. With the added benefit of
regular posting to your blog, you could become a 'news source' in
your field, and when clients are ready to buy, they will call
you because they already trust you and feel they know you through your
website. The days of creating a website and putting it up only
to forget it are gone. Content should be upgraded
and fresh! Share your knowledge to gain a wider
audience. goIDX offers writing help if you are not so inclined,
but one of the best ways to boost content is through blogging:
Are You Blogging? No? What are your reasons?
Think it takes too much time?
Not sure what to blog about? Don't think you're a writer?
Blogging is the best FREE tool to move your site up in search
results. We can show you what you're missing out on by not blogging. It's so much easier than you think.
We're excited about blogging and want you to find your voice!
This
humorous blog post by well-respected real estate blogger, Theresa Boardman, shows how easy blogging can be, that you can
write about anything, and how letting your personality come through can be fun for you and your readers.
goIDX can easily and quickly add a blog to your website, so your
site can start benefitting right away.
Yes?
How often are you posting?
How confident are you with
writing effective headlines? Are you
using images to your best advantage? Are you
getting feedback?
Blogging brings
all kinds of traffic to your site, and
comments and commenting bring
even more traffic, which
boosts your web presence. Get involved and
start
reading and participating in
the leading blogs in your industry. Spread the word about your
blog and get reciprocal attention!
The term search engine is universally applied to three different kinds of search engines: crawler-based, human-powered, and a hybrid.
Crawler-Based Search Engines, like Google, create their listings automatically. They "crawl" or "spider" the web with machines. This is
a continual process, and when your site changes, the search engine crawlers will find the changes, and this will reflect in search results.
Human-Powered Directories depends on humans for their listings. You can submit a short description to the directory for your site,
or their editors will write one for the sites they review. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions submitted.
Changing your web pages will not affect the description you submitted, and therefore the search results stay the same.
Hybrid Search Engines like MSN Search, present both types of results. When giving you results for your search, they offer
human-powered listings from LookSmart and crawler-based results by Inktomi.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of organizing
the content on a webpage, and over the whole website, to
maximize the relevance of specific keywords in order to achieve a higher
volume of targeted traffic through search engine results. SEO
considers how search engines work and what people search for, so
optimizing a website involves editing both its content and the
HTML code. Sometimes a website's structure must also be altered to
increase its flow and effectiveness. SEO is your way of making
sure you are doing everything you can to have your website be
the result that appears when users search for the types of
things you offer. Still, there is another factor . . .
PageRank (a term trademarked by Google) is how high up on the search results list your website appears
along with all your competition. One of the factors in determining your
PageRank is the number of incoming links to you site and who the
sites who link to you are. Google does not count incoming
links equally, rather, they developed an algorithm to weigh some as more important than others.
It's a little like voting for Prom King in high school, but
Google decided who the cool kids are already on a scale from 0
to 10, and then counts votes based on their importance.
Sites considered more important or cool by Google count more in
your favor when they have a link to you. There are others
factors affecting PageRank that Google does not reveal.
"Black Hat" SEO or "Spamdexing" are derogatory
terms for SEO methods that use link farms and keyword stuffing, practices that degrade both the relevance of search results
and the user-experience of search engines. Search engines
penalize sites that employ these techniques and remove them from
their index.
So, in considering the type of audience you want to find your site, incorporate what you offer in
ways that are search-engine friendly, such as . . .
Title Tags are a super important behind-the-scenes element of your website. Just because you have what you think is a great looking site,
doesn't mean the code is working to promote you with the search engines. Every web page has a programming tag called a "title tag".
Title tags tell the search engines what is on each page. Even though Title Tags are part of the programming code, you should write tags for
each of your web page that are descriptive and accurate because they will represent your site content in the search engine results.
Think about the key terms you'd like your page to be found for,
and incorporate those terms into your Title Tag in a short,
descriptive fashion.
When a user types a phrase to search for on Google, the Title Tag is what
gets displayed in the search results after the web site name/link:
Also, the Title Tag is displayed by your internet browser (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox) in the top line/border of the screen.
This serves as a reference so the visitor knows where he is on your website. For this reason,
Title Tags need to clearly define each page of your site. (Note: Title
Tags over 95 characters are cropped by the search engines.)
Major search engines use the Title Tag to determine the topic of your page, and thus to determine the ranking of your page in their
search results. This can make it very tempting to load the Title
Tag with keywords, but don't! The Title Tag must be able to stand on its
own and clearly communicate the contents of each web page to the reader. You must give the reader context. A title like "Home" or
"About Us" when displayed in search results or bookmarks tells the reader nothing about the source or
the contents of the page.
When a visitor bookmarks your website or adds your site to their favorites menu, the
Title Tag for that page becomes the title of the bookmark.
Think about your own bookmarks. How many times have you had to edit the titles so that you would know what your bookmark referred to?
Meta Description Tags and Meta Keyword Tags are more ways to make the search engines work effectively for you. While Google ignores the Meta
Description Tag and automatically generates its own descriptions, other search engines will use the
first portion of the meta description tag, then you'll see an ellipsis ( . . . ), and then they
use a portion taken from the text of the page
itself. The first sentence or two of text from your web page makes an excellent
Meta Description Tag.
Meta Keyword Tags are used by crawler-based search engines Inktomi and Teoma, but are now ignored by AllTheWeb, AltaVista, and Google.
The Home Page introduces your website and is almost always your best representative in search engine optimization.
Home Page Title Tags should clearly indicate what is available on the page, and, they should include the name of the organization.
Not doing so can significantly lower your website's credibility.
Your Home Page is a snapshot of what you
offer and should make the viewer
want to know more.
In programming code, ALT Attributes are a part of the
Image Source Tag. Images are inserted using a location reference tag, called an image
tag, which gives the location of the image, and a description of the image in the event that the image is not rendered. This
'alternate' text is displayed to
describe the image, and is called the "ALT attribute". As shown below, when the browser is unable to show
an image,
this alternate text takes its place, so, instead of a picture of a white rabbit, your viewer would see the words,
"white rabbit". This features also aids the blind and should
describe the image, and, its function when applicable. As an
example, the ALT attribute for the image below is "Small White
Box with Grey Outline Containing a Red Letter X to Indicate Missing Photo and Containing the words White Rabbit". The
function is described in the tag as "to indicate missing photo".
Most search engines, including Google, look at your ALT tags when indexing your web pages. For image-heavy sites, ALT text is one of the
few elements available for the search engines to index. If your page has no text at all, it could still get a high search engine placement
by using ALT text well.
There are two site maps for your website. One you make,
and one the search engine creates by 'reading' your site
content. Think of your site map as your website's organizational chart, ranking the most important to least important pages and sections. When you are on a large site, finding the site map link, and getting where you need to go from there, is often faster than hunting page by page. The search engines use your header tags (more programming code) in a ranking system h1, h2, h3 and so forth, the same way you would use I., A., 1., a., in outlining. These tags should correspond to the various sections on a page and their relative importance.
If you don't have a Site Map, it's really important to spend the
time going over your site content and organizing it into a clean
Site Map. Once you do this, you can submit it to Google and
other Search Engines. If you already have a Site Map and
you want to boost your website traffic, considering going over
it to fine tune your emphasis. You can
submit your sitemap to
Google (you'll need a Google account—it's free—and
to log in to Webmaster tools), or we can do it for you.
Home page, home page, home page. What matters most for
your site is capturing the interest of users who land
on your home page. Keeping them there is what Traffic Analytics is all about. There is a wealth of information available
to analyze every facet of your website to understand what works and what isn't working. Great, useful, fresh content and a map of what you
have to offer are a good start, but you can take it much farther.
The first step to appreciating results is to understand there
are many kinds of traffic. How do you read the numbers and know
which statistics are important? First you have to know
what kind of traffic you are tracking. Here are . . .
Definitions to help you Understand Website Traffic:
Visits: When someone lands on your site and views
one or
more pages, this is a "Visit". Visitors to your site
can be robots or humans. When humans interact with their
browser, this interaction is tagged with data called "cookies".
Robots cannot interact and therefore, no cookies! They are tracked through their IP address.
If is
done by assigning a cookie to your IP address. Once you are
identified by your unique cookie/IP, repeat Visits are not
counted. The standard for the length of the Visit varies
with trackers and the amount of time between Visits varies as
well to determine a second Visit by the same person a second
time. (Visits are also called "Sessions".)
Unique Visit: A Unique Visit counts the number of
Unique Visitors in any given time frame. When people
clear their cookies, use a different browser, or visit your site
from another computer, these all count as Unique Visits, even
though it may be the same person.
Hits: Each separate element on a webpage (like photos) counts as a
Hit
because, technically, a Hit is when a file is sent to a browser
by a web server,
so when viewed, each of your page's elements counts as a Hit. Also, "Hits" can mean visits to your site by robots not humans.
Obviously this can be very misleading if you want to count how many
people come to your site.
Page Views:
When someone views a page in your site, for
example your Home Page, then Contact Us Page, and then back to
your Home Page, this would count as 3 Page Views although the
Home Page was visited twice, that's why they have . . .
Unique Page Views: Counts the pages viewed only once per
page.
Bounce Rates and
Singletons: The Bounce Rate is the percentage of visits where the visitor enters and exits the same page without visiting any other pages
on your site. In other words, you didn't capture their attention past getting them to your Home Page.
Singletons is the number of single page visits. This is used to
indicate "Click Fraud" (a type of internet crime that occurs in
pay-per-click online advertising where the criminal attempts
to generate false clicks by using a person, automated script, or
computer program, just so they can charge more with the false
count.)
Using Website Traffic Analysis Services:
Many different vendors provide website analytics software and services. There are two main
methods of collecting website traffic data. The first method, logfile analysis, reads the logfiles
where the web server records its transactions.
The second, page tagging, uses JavaScript (a programming
language used for the interactive part of your website) on each
page to notify a third-party server when a page is rendered by a
web browser. Both collect traffic data that can be processed to
produce reports to help you understand how much attention the
various pages of your site is getting.
As in all research projects, good novels, and beautiful faces,
great structure matters. If it's not stream of consciousness, it
matters where you're going. Your structure and your menu should
be as clear to understand as
a snapshot of who your website is. Presenting yourself
accurately as well as favorably is key. What would separate
pages of your website convey if they stood alone to represent
you? How well does your mission statement present your
VALUE PROPOSITION? Take a good, long look at your site map. If you need
help with this, that's what we're here for.
With expertise in excellent software to render graphs and
charts, goIDX can add this level of sophistication and service
to your site, impressing your prospective and existing clients
with easy-to-interpret versions of the raw data so vital to their interests and so helpful in
their making informed decisions. One of our clients'
highly regarded website rose to prominence on his weekly
reporting of condo data and statistics in his farm area, and his
effective use of graphs and charts. Becoming widely seen as an
expert in your field requires all the expert tools you can find
to make you look good. goIDX offers a wide variety of options
and can program something customized to meet your needs. If you
can dream it up, we'll find a way to make it come to life.
Getting a user to your site with your value proposition
is Step 1.
Once a user lands on your site, beyond their easily
understanding what you are about, what are you asking them to
do? Call to Action Prompts are Step 2. Consider whether
your site is set up to facilitate the desired end result of a
visitor landing on your site . . . Are you too close to see?
Bearing in mind your ultimate goals, we can analyze your site
for its current effectiveness and potential for improvement.
Where do you begin? We would advise you to start with your
site map. goIDX is happy to review your current website,
or sit with you to create a wish list for a new site.
Beyond an and impressive and updated look, the 'design' we're
most concerned with is what your website is designed to provide
the user. We will mock-up samples for you to approve and then
begin programming to bring these creative ideas and elements to
life. It's simpler and less expensive than you might
imagine.
The sites that truly impress feature quality graphics and high
resolution photos. Nothing says amateur more than a bad photo.
An immediate improvement in appeal for your site that will
create a better first impression and keep visitors there longer
is better images. Professional quality images are
available on the web at a very low cost.
What to wear on a first date? That's what your masthead is—that critical first impression. Mastheads can be as
large as the whole home page, take
up the top one-third of the page, or as small as possible
(or at the bottom) to leave room for what lies beneath. It's a matter of personal choice in how
you want to present yourself. If corporate identity is
important, mastheads often contain the company name and logo.
Mastheads can also be non-existent, like
at apple.com, where they're so well known, they just go straight
to the menu, which should tell you how important the menu is!
Menus are becoming more specific and less generic, "About Us" is
being replace with "About [Your Company Name]". The more
specific you are the greater the overall effect on your search
engine results.
Every square pixel of your home page space is valuable 'real
estate' to market yourself!
This humorous look at a serious topic clearly illustrates
the DON'Ts of website design and features. Sometimes too much
of a good thing is bad. Vincent Flanders, on his
Web Pages That Suck site, offers a
scathing assessment of the use of Flash.
Just because you can afford to have Flash on your site, does not mean that you should use it. Knowing when to use it and what for is always better.
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info@goidx.com
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