Spike

If you are thinking of re-developing your site get in touch with Warren Mauger warren@spikeproductions.co.uk

1. Have a clear proposition
When a visitor comes to your site they should almost immediately know what its about no matter which page they arrive on. You can achieve this by using appropriate tag lines, page titles, or through the headings on the individual pages. If it isn’t clear the visitor may leave as quickly as they arrived. Make sure there are clear ways to get in touch with you on every page. You don’t want to create interest only for potential customers to leave because they couldn’t easily get in touch.

2. Make the content easy to read
You are not trying to hit the visitor with as much text as possible, they should be able to scan the pages easily. Make use of bullet points, headers and sub headers and also lists to get information across. Many people now look at sites whilst doing something else so the easier it is to get the information the better.

3. Do not use cheap web software
There are number of cheap software programs out there but avoid them, whilst they may provide nice design templates they will not build your website in the best code and architecture making the site harder to be found easily by search engines.
 
4. Don’t hide
You have a website so you need to be found, there are more than 100 million websites in the world so how can you get to the top of the search engines. Make sure your web copy includes keywords and also use anchor text to link to other areas of your website. Anchor text is basically text you can click on. Avoid saying click here and make the key words clickable.

5. Avoid clever introductions
Don’t force people to watch a short clip before they get to your main website or have an audio track start when they arrive, if want them to keep coming back don’t keep playing the same clip every time they arrive on your site – it will only annoy them.

6. Make your content unique
Times are changing and Google is changing the way it ranks website. If you have something special to offer visitors you have a better chance of being ranked higher. Content needs to be fresh content and give people a reason to seek you out. Thought leaders who regularly produce articles, white papers, and presentations and then made available online will see their site ranked higher.

7. Start a blog
A great way to keep your content fresh and get across useful information is to regularly write a blog. The good news is you don’t need to be a geek to do this! Each new blog is a new web page so every time you write one you are giving Google more reason to find you. Generally blogs shouldn’t be too long about one page is more than enough unless there is a very good reason for it to be longer.

8. Make your content easy to share
Provide your audience with the chance to share the information they find on your site. Add links so your articles, blogs, reports etc can be shared on Twitter, Facebook, Linked in and other well used networking sites.

9. Get inbound links
Every site that links to yours is a vote of confidence for what you are doing. Google sees this and gives more weight to high quality links from sites relevant to yours. Whilst Search engine optimisation is important it can only get so far. If you don’t have lots of high quality websites linking people to your site your site will remain low down in the rankings. 

10. Don’t underestimate the importance of your site
It’s easy to put looking after your website in the too hard to think about file. This would be wrong. Your website is potentially the strongest part of your advertising mix. You could have the best marketing campaign in the world but if you website is weak the investment in advertising would have been wasted as many potential customers will be lost when they arrive at your site. 

If you are thinking of re-developing your site get in touch with Warren Mauger warren@spikeproductions.co.uk