Making it User Friendly
3 steps to making your website user friendly

The one assumption you need to make to follow along with me in this article is "People Buy People." It can be a hard concept for many people to understand and agree with. However, millions of spent dollars have proven this premise to me, so I consider it more of a law than a theory.

If you understand the rule that people buy people, then your website MUST have a pleasant atmosphere that allows the visitor to connect with you, your company and your products.By now, you've heard me talk about our Celebrity Branding philosophies, and the fact that you need your picture on your website goes without saying. But, there are some smaller, often overlooked, areas that shouldn't be forgotten.

Here are three simple tip to make your website user-friendly:

1. Navigation

The navigation on your site is probably its most important element. If visitors find your site confusing or cannot successfully navigate through it, they will leave. Make your navigation bar as simple as possible. One of the worst mistakes is using an expanding navigation bar that makes the visitor scroll over it in order for the menu to reveal their options. Most often, this type of navigation bar has too many choices; your visitor doesn't know where to go, so they get flustered and leave.

Navigation on your site is an art, and you should direct your visitors through a logical path to where YOU want them to go (not to where they think they want to go). One way to do this is through call to action buttons or CTAs. We use these buttons on all of our sites; a visitor will go to a main page, and then we can direct them to the parts of that site that we want them to be aware of. We use this method instead of an expanding menu, because we find that it is more logical for visitors. With this method, you can direct visitors to where you want them to go, allowing you to control the buying process.

Quick Tip: most "expanding menus" are created in Macromedia Flash. Search engines cannot read Flash, and therefore they will not pick up these links on your website. If the search engines do not pick up the links on the navigation bar and these links are nowhere else on your site, they cannot accurately crawl or index your site. This is search engine suicide, because without even knowing it, you are stopping search engines from understanding what your site has to offer and from driving traffic to you.

A good rule of thumb is that a visitor should be able to get to every page on your site with two clicks from your home page. Now, this is not realistic for very complex sites. If your website is complex, you can have a sitemap to help visitors navigate. Some sort of search function may also be a good idea for your site.

2. Page Load Speed

It's hard to believe that some people are still stuck using dial up. Even if you have entered the world of high-speed Internet, no matter what you do, some websites will load slowly. (If you're frustrated using high-speed Internet, imagine the frustration of those on good 'ol dial up!)

Page load speed is VERY important. I know that when I am surfing the Internet and I stumble upon a site that loads slowly, I get annoyed, frustrated, and don't browse the site for very long. If your website is loading slowly, you are probably losing out on valuable customers, no matter what business you are in.

In today's web world, we are seeing more and more images, audio files and videos. These things are useful, but you have to be careful that they do not affect the inner workings of your site (in this case, the time it takes for a web page to load). You want to be careful about the size of the images on your website. Both large-sized images and using too many images can cause your website to take too long to load, resulting in visitors leaving. Another tip is to convert videos into a jpeg (image) that only loads and plays the video when a visitor clicks on it. Yes, you may be adding more images to your website, but these are usually small image files; in the hierarchy of the web, a video will slow down your website much more than a small image.

Another factor that can influence the load time of your website is the amount of excess code you have on your site (that is a topic for another day - but ask your webmaster, and they will know what I am talking about).

3. Information

The number one thing that visitors look for is information. They are coming to your site to be educated about your products and/or services and, most of all, how THEY can benefit. With this in mind, it is critical for the information on your website to be accurate, complete and up-to-date. Visitors will leave your site in a split second if the information you are providing is old news.

What's that best way to provide up-to-date information on your website? The best way we suggest is through blogs and articles. By having a section on your website for blogs and articles, you can provide new, relevant and educational information to your visitors. Adding them is not only simple, but it is fast too!

So there are my three simple tips for the month on how to make your website user-friendly. Although this covered just the beginning of what your website should contain, don't worry, I won't leave you stranded-- I'll reveal even more tips in next month's article!
 

SEO Intervention: Stop Driving
Yourself Crazy and Start Getting Results!
By Scott Jason (c) 2008

 Do you drive yourself crazy trying to keep up with the latest SEO trends? If so, Stop! Please. You have enough to worry about already. Quit running yourself ragged or spending a fortune trying to keep up with the latest and greatest SEO tricks and tips. The truth is search engine optimization has not changed nearly as much as experts (trying to sell you something) might want you to think.
To be perfectly honest getting to the top of Google, Yahoo, MSN or any other search engine is largely dependent on the quality of your Web pages. There's no magic formula you must follow to the letter but there are a number of simple things you can better understand and do to help get you to the top of ANY search engine. It's a lot easier than most people think. First and most importantly, remember that search engines only care about your Web pages, NOT the whole site. If you end up with enough high ranking PAGES from a single site on Google, you can become a what it considers to be an "authority site" which can automatically double your top ten rankings.

Here's what I mean...
If you do a search on http://www.Google.com and search for "SEO partner" (without the quotes) you will see that number one looks like a normal return while number two is indented. You have just witnessed an authority site's usurping of an extra top spot. There is a good chance that the indented one was actually number six or even fifteen. But since it is from an authority site it got to cut the line and push everybody else's listings down one.
Secondly, the biggest and most important search engines use something called a natural text algorithm. This means they can tell when you are writing text that is intended more for search engine spiders than for actual people, and they will ding you for it. So to keep quality high, simply write your page text as if you were describing your goods or services to a good friend. Let the words flow and don't get hung up on things like keyword density and ideal placement. We've got a great technique for that coming up next.

Keyword density is an outdated concept for the most part. As long as you don't spam the text by having your keyword blatantly repeated or inserted in areas that don't make sense, you will be OK. If having a guideline helps, plan to use each keyword about five or six times on each page and no more than twice in a single paragraph.
Keyword proximity is another concept that is a bit outdated but still somewhat valid. What that means is you should be aware of where your keywords go but you do not need to follow a strict formula of placing them in exact locations. Just be strategic. Put them where they make the most sense in context. Don't force them to into one location just because it is the first sentence of the third paragraph or whatever. It helps the reader and the search engine if you can mention your main keyword toward the beginning of the page text and toward the end, but this is not a hard and fast rule. It's just a suggestion.

As for the number of keywords you optimize a single page for, do what makes sense for the page length. If the page is really long and you have room for several keywords to be featured with good natural ext, go for it. As a rule of thumb I try to limit each page to about three keywords but that's just because it helps me stay better organized and does not confuse the readers by splitting their focus too much. The other reason is because I really want it featured prominently in the page title.

Speaking of the title, this is one of the few META tags we care about and it's a pretty big deal. Use the title as your chance to show off your keywords. After all, this is what your visitors searched for. Don't feel that a page title needs to be clever and captivating like a book title. In fact this is probably the easiest part. Just take your keywords, in order of importance, and separate them with a comma or pipe (the vertical key over the enter key.) That's it! Just remember most search engines will only count the first 64 letters.
So if you did a page on search engine optimization tips with the following keywords: "SEO, Search Engine Optimization, SEO Tips" your title could be just that. Or you can use my favorite and it would look like this "SEO | Search Engine Optimization | SEO Tips."
And by the way, when Google sees "SEO Tips" it is counting the word SEO and Tips as individual words so the title text "SEO, SEO Tips" has the word SEO repeated. Just two instances of one keyword so close is not really SPAM but it's good to be aware of.

I mentioned that the Title tag is one of the few META tags we care about. Another is the Description tag. No magic here. Just be sure to write it naturally and include a couple of your keywords if they fít in well. And you can make this as long as you like but most search engines don't use more than the first 250 characters. Most importantly, think of the Description as your big chance to get people interested enough to visit your page. This is sales copy first.
Once someone lands on your page they will be looking for a little guidance. Give it to them with Headings (H1, H2, etc.) Think of a heading as an on page title using a similar keyword strategy, just not as cut and dry. Here it is a good idea to have not only your keyword but also some descriptive supporting text. Something like "SEO Tips That Really Work" is a good example. We have our SEO Tips keyword and reinforce it with a statement that the information they are about to read actually works.

 Too simple? Yes. It really is.
While headings are your first visual cue to the reader, links are the ones that really draw them in. Make sure your on page links stand out and contain relevant anchor text (clickable keywords.)
If you really want to get the most out of your online real estate, consider dedicating one page to each major keyword and linking to it from the anchor text on another page. For example, the words SEO Tips would be great anchor text to a page titled "SEO Tips | Search Engine Optimization Strategies."

The final piece of this SEO puzzle is linking. Quality inbound links will account for most of your success on Google and several other top search engines. You need to get the highest quality links possible and build optimal reciprocal linking partnerships. This is HUGE!
You can do it all manually or use an inexpensive SEO software tool like the one found at SE0elite.com. I've done it both ways and find that good software saves me about 10 to 15 hours each week, per site. But either way, manually or with a tool, focus your efforts on linking as much as possible. While onsite optimization is a one tíme (or at least limited) thing, linking should be part of your weekly routine.
Good luck!

10 Free and Easy Ways
to Improve Your Alexa Ranking

Alexa, which is owned by Amazon.com, gives away a free toolbar that you can download and install in your browser. Alexa is then able to keep track of the sites you visit and compute the traffic ranking of those websites, with a rank of "1" being the assigned to the most visited site

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