Pick a search engine, choose some key words that a customer might type in
and then see if you turn up in the first few pages of results. Note the other
sites that are turning up. These are your competition. Choose another keyword
phrase and try again. Are you there? Is your competition? If your competition
is beating you for exposure then you the first step in promoting your own website
is to work out how:
Analyzing your competition –
- Keyword density – How often do they mention the key phrases
in their content? The number of key phrases compared to other content is called
keyword density. A higher keyword density than you will give their pages more
weight in the search engines. The underlying question is “are the key
phrases ones that my customers are searching on? Because if not, spending
time improving keyword density would be wasted time.
- Reciprocal links – How
many other sites have they got linking to them? Reciprocal links, the number
of links to and from your site to external sites,
are used as a measure of value by search engines. To get rough measure of the
number reciprocal links that a site has, go to www.google.com and type in the
web address of the site in between quotation marks (eg. “www.competitorsite.com”).
- Graphical verses HTML content – How much HTML text is there on the
page? This is the text that search engines use as food. Graphics and graphical
text
cannot be read so the more space they use up, the less space for HTML text.
You can tell if it is HTML text by clicking before the word with your left
mouse button and then dragging over the word. If you can highlight the
word letter by letter, then it is HTML, if not then it is a graphic image.
- Flash – Is
the site all singing all dancing? Loads of moving things on the screen?
Then it is probably Flash. Just like images, Flash cannot be read
by search engines so provide no value to promotion. Although a site entirely
designed in Flash may be nice for customers, a balanced use of Flash and
HTML text can serve both requirements.
Once you have worked out the techniques used in your competitor’s website
promotion you will need to evaluate your own for both promotional value and
for user functionality. You are aiming for a website that not only draws traffic
to it but which gets paying customers.
Evaluating your own site –
- Good, informative content – Good content will educate and help
a potential customer making it more likely that he or she will stay on your
site. A good rule of thumb is “if you get a question asked on the phone,
put the answer on the website”.
- Keyword density – Whilst observing
the above point, try to work the key phrases in to the content. It is important
to maintain the continuity for the
visitor.
- Clear aim to site – An obvious aim allows potential customers
to know whether this site has what they are looking for. A confusing site
may result
in a potential customer leaving.
- Functional Navigation - The navigation and
information within the site need to be user friendly. Regular users of
the internet have become used to certain
conventions being used for the placing and look of buttons and links.
Straying away from this norm causes confusion and increases the time it takes
a customer
to find what they are looking for. The end result will usually be a visitor
leaving with a sense of dissatisfaction.
- Professional appearance – A
professional look to a website instills a feeling of confidence and trust
in a company.
- HTML content – A site can
be highly professional and appealing whilst
still having HTML content.
- No frames – Make sure that your site does
not use frames. Frame websites are difficult for search engines to list,
resulting in partial display of the
website that customers cannot use.
- Fully Working site – Avoid broken links, missing pages, stretched
images and anything else that serves to irritate a visitor. Any feeling of
professionalism can be shattered by non working website components.
More on web site
promotion
