Dos and Don’ts of Website Revisions - Part II

Posted by Joanna G. on 29 December 2011 | 6 Comments

Are you paying a fee for business web hosting, but aren’t placing well in search engines or capturing new customers? Despite your best efforts, you may have overlooked the importance of web design in search engine optimization. Here are 5 more great tips on easy ways to improve your website’s traffic and appearance. Extra tips can be found in part one of this article. 

1. Blogs

DO Update often. Constant updates will get search engine robots visiting your site more frequently, and will help improve your search engine rankings.

DO NOT Blog about topics unrelated to your business. Focus on keywords that are associated with your business and try to include them in the post titles.

DO Organize your blog posts with category tags. Most blogging content management systems offer the option to categorize your posts with different keywords relating to the content. Choose 4-5 category keywords relating to your business and stick with them. Displaying a navigation list of category keywords helps your visitors find the information they are looking for quickly, and will help search engines learn what you’re all about.

2. Hierarchy

DO: Analyze the hierarchy of your website. Paragraphs should have one style, links should have 1 style, header tags should have 1 style. Search engines look at the content between the <h1> tags, so only use these tags for page titles.

DO NOT: Compromise the hierarchy of your page to emphasize featured content. Consider other ways of pointing out important paragraphs besides using jarring bright colors, unusual fonts, or giant font sizes.

3. Personal Information

DO: Obfuscate your business email and phone number to prevent spam! www.obfuscatr.com is a great service that transforms your personal information into a garbled string of code that humans can read but spam robots can’t.

DO NOT: Display your e-mail address with any unnecessary characters. (ex: yourname {at} mail {dot} com). It makes copying and pasting your e-mail address difficult for your customers.

DO NOT: Post your address on your website if you do not cater to walk in customers.

4. Errors

DO: Double check for broken links, images and typos. A beautifully designed website and lyrical product descriptions are instantly damaged with oversights like these. Even the smallest typo in a file name, or just one missing end tag can lead to a major problem. If your website is in need of maintenance, customers will think your business is too. So double check, or ask someone with a fresh perspective to do it for you. Interactive Palette offers a monthly maintenance service, contact us for more information

DO NOT: Use direct external links to display images or PDFs on your page. Save all materials on your own server, and always ask for permission to use images obtained from 3rd parties.

DO: Archive all press releases and blog posts. Keeping old pages on the server helps eliminate broken links. .

5. Footer

DO: Add a footer if you don’t already have one. A footer can be a great way to put company contact info, a site map, or call to actions on every page.

DO NOT: Keyword stuff” in small type in your footer. Search engines will pick this up as spam and it will hurt your rankings.

DO NOT: Hide essential information in the footer. Important pages should always be visible in the main navigation, and can be displayed as callouts at the top of the homepage.