A stunning website will attract your target audience. These five tricks will keep them glued to your page. 

1.) Add a search box – When a prospect is looking for something specific, he or she will want to cut to the chase. By adding a search box, the client can easily find exactly what he or she came for. No frustration, no headaches and no loss of sale. It may take a little time to set up your own search box, but it’ll only take a handful of minutes to add a Google search box.

2.) Test Your Speed – Want to know the fastest way to lose a customer? Give them a website that takes forever to load. When a site doesn’t  pop up immediately, prospects are most likely to exit quickly and move on to the next search result. Test your speed by visiting your page on a slow speed internet connection. If the decade ends before the site is complete, consider designing the page with fewer images and possibly no flash at all. Too many high-res images or too much flash might be weighing your site down.

3.) Update Your Content Regularly – A website should evolve with the company. Search engines appreciate updated content because they view the information as staying relevant and fresh. Prospects feel the same way. Reviewing your website regularly will keep you aware of the information you’re presenting to the world, as well as any components on your pages that need to be updated.

4.) Eliminate ‘Click Here’ – Out of context, the phrase ‘click here’ will mean nothing to website visitors. Most prospects will scan or skip content to find what they’re looking for. Label the link clearly so that customers will easily know what they’re clicking. Added bonus: keywords included in the link label will gain SEO strength.

5.) Add an About Page – It doesn’t have to be the length of a novel, but a short page that tells your story will put a person behind the URL. Be sure to include contact information so that prospects will be able to contact you with questions or inqueries.

Here are just a few of the checklist items provided by seomoz.org.

• Write down your goal - Why are you doing this? Why do you want people to find your site? Is simply viewing your site not enough?
• Brainstorm and write down search queries - What words might people type into the search engines to look for your company?
• Research your chosen keywords – Sign up for Google Adwords and learn how to use the provided “keyword tool” and “ad text ideas” generator.
• Create a list of your competition – Who is ranking? What are they doing effectively and ineffectively? Investigate the Search Engine Results Pages for your chosen keywords and get to know your competition.

What tips would you add to this list?

View the full checklist

Follow these 7 tips to boost your efforts in a hurry. And when you find a little more time, mosey on back here for some more search engine optimization tricks.

1. Content is a huge influencing factor of your ranking score. Focus on creating strong, useful content and make sure to update the content often.
2. Links are the next important layer of a fully baked site. Build strong networks of backlinks and also link to thought leaders in your niche.
3. Use keywords and phrases (without spamming or stuffing the page) in titles, descriptions, text links and the domain name.
4. Optimize videos and images with strategic file names, ALT attributes, and and titles. It’ll help the content to show up blended search results and will also help the overall impact of your SEO efforts.
5. The bottom line in SEO is Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation.

1. Too Much Flash, Not Enough Substance - Sure Flash may look cool, but a website overflowing with Flash is impractical. For one, flash requires a lot of bandwidth. Two, Flash is not mobile friendly. A big mistake considering Smart Phones are only increasing in popularity. And last but not least, Search Engines invest absolutely no value. Without a plentiful bounty of substance, a website’s SEO goes right out the window.

2. Not optimizing your optimization – In terms of SEO, optimizing your home page is just the beginning.  Each and every page should be strategically composed, from utilization of keywords to meta tags, optimized titles and strong content. The more you optimize, the better your chances of being spotlighted by search engines. But on a cautionary note, don’t over-optimize your webpage either. Cramming in as many keywords as possible and focusing more on the strategy than the actual content will prove counter effective.

3.  Not understanding the need for speed – In today’s fast paced world, slow websites are no longer acceptable. Prospects are interested in quick and easy service, meaning very little patience for a sluggish page. If you’re suffering from a practically comatose URL, check out this slow website checklist to determine possible culprits.

4. Being a Browser Snob – While a majority of users may use Internet Explorer, many others will surf via Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome. If your website doesn’t work for the prospect’s browser of choice, consider the lead lost.

5. Missing What It’s About- With a plethora of competitors and options vying for the same business, consumers have a lot from which to choose. Oftentimes, they’ll try to grasp the personality or the vibe of a business, opting to go with the organization that most closely reflects their ideals. Without an about page to really establish what the website is all about, an organization will remain faceless.

More Common Website Mistakes

If you’re looking into giving your domain a face lift, here are 5 key elements that will please prospects and search engines alike.

1. An attractive design – Visiting a cluttered or visually unappealing site can be immediately offputting. Whether the page looks extremely outdated or has so many unorganized elements that it’s an eye sore, a bad first impression can drive a heck of a lot of traffic away. When outlining a plan for a new design, less is more. A clean, sparkling page with aesthetic zest goes a long way.
2. Powerful Content – A good deal of thought and care should go into creating fresh content. Language should be concise, informative and easy to understand. Websites coded in high level lingo, acronyms or technical speak will only appeal to a small group of visitors. The rest will click the back button with a heavy sigh of frustration. On the other hand, websites flooded with sales pitches or shallow content will be about as effective as an empty pool. Important questions to ask while writing include: Who is my audience? What can I talk about that my competitors cannot? How can I establish my business as a thought leader?
3. Friendly User Interface – All site visitors should be able to quickly and easily navigate to every corner of a domain. Companies should additionally include updated company contact information. A phone number, address, email, and contact form are essential in assuring that interested prospects are able to inquire about services or ask questions.
4. A Sitemap – The sitemap should be located at the root of the website where search engines can easily access it and utilize it almost as an index. Website owners should submit their sitemap to search engines.
5. SEO – Website optimization includes many elements (and will most likely call for a whole different blog on key SEO elements for a successful website redesign) that can substantially boost the power of its site. Important features include strong titles and headings, strategic keywords, optimized title tags and RSS Feeds. Websites should never, ever cheat or utilize “black hat marketing” techniques. Search engines are way too smart to be tricked and will heavily punish websites dabbling in dishonest strategies.

What important elements do you consider when redesigning your website?

Read more website redesign key elements.

So much so that sources like Top Rank Online Marketing are reporting SEO as the number 1 digital marketing tactic for their reader base in 2011.

SEOmoz, a leader in SEO strategies and campaigns, recently posted an article on big search engine optimization trends and predictions for 2011. Here are just a few to help you start fresh.

According to Kristi Hines’ five link building predictions, “link building efforts will probably start to target brand/business names more than keyword anchor text.” What does this mean for your business? You’ll want to include your business or brand name in your most important anchor links.

Bharati Ahuja from WebPro Technologies is predicting increased value in external links that establish your company as an expert or add value to websites associated with your brand. Companies will benefit greatly from answering questions at Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn and other communities. Guest posts will also be a fabulous avenue to explore.

Good news for smaller companies! Bharati, along with others who blogged their 2011 SEO predictions, foresees search engines focusing more on local sites and blogs. Companies can take advantage of this shift by optimizing their websites for local search.

Finally, Jolie O’Dell from Mashable says we can “expect to be asked to make more and more app-like sites.” As an increasing volume of consumers turn to smartphones and iPads as their web browsing tool, companies will need to adjust.  Organizations who work at creating a mobile-friendly version (accomodating a smaller screen or developing apps, for example) will find themselves ahead.

These are just a few of the thoughts and inklings coming from the SEO expert community. What are some of your predictions?

Read the full SEOmoz article here.

To help you assess whether your own website’s content is paying off or in need of improvement, here are several important website metric components, as outlined by the Colorado SEO Blog:

- Unique web pages indexed in Google Search Engine.
- Number of web pages viewed on your website daily.
- Keywords that delivered your search engine traffic.
- Referrers or sites that generated the inbound traffic.
- 404 errors for pages that can’t render in web browsers.
- Types of browsers people are using to find you such as Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer.
- Number of Incoming Links coming into your home page and internal web pages (They recommend the tool Majesticseo.com for Competitive Link Intelligence identification).
- In addition, pay attention to how many unique domains are linking to you from unique C-block servers.
-Word count or quantity of words per page, number of header tags, alt-tags, and images per web page.
- Text to Code Ratio.
- Most popular web page on your site with the most highly traveled site hits.
-  Countries that generate traffic to you. Obviously you want traffic where you conduct sales and business operations.
- How many times to website visitors return to your website, and exactly how long is the average visit or stay?
- What is the bounce rate where people come to your site and leave immediately?
- How frequently is your site spidered, crawled, or visited by search engine spiders such as Google or the Microsoft/Bing spider?
- What is your exact Alexa rank?
- How do you compare with other Colorado SEO sites that have actively engaged in hiring Expert SEO Advice?
- Does your business website have diversified bookmarks in sites such as Delicious.com?

What are some metrics that your company utilizes to measure SEO success?

Keywords are a critical component of SEO because they are the words that define you. In order to assure that your company is visible to prospects and customers, it’s important to utilize all of the possible words and phrases that consumers  might use for Google searches. Unsure of what keywords might work best for you? Here are a few tools to get you started:

• Google Adwords Keyword Tool – Simply type in the subject you’re researching and Google’s keyword tool will suggest keywords and the monthly and annual search volumes for those terms. If you’re running a Pay Per Click campaign, this tool can also provide you with the cost per click.
• Overture (Yahoo!) Keyword Tool – Yahoo’s keyword tool will also help you to predict the amount of traffic certain keywords will bring and lists monthly regional search volumes for the most popular search engines based on Overture search counts for different geographic markets. It also provides links to price estimate tools for Google Adwords.
• Google Rankings Tool – If you’re curious about the strategy of your competitors, use the Google Rankings Tool to check how they rank with certain keywords. You can also use this tool to check your own SEO efforts.

One thing to keep in mind is that the Google algorithm is always changing. While metadata and pagerank might be important one day, both will be irrelevant the next. The one thing that Google will always value is helpful and well written content. Choose your keywords wisely, work on solid inbound and outbound links, and focus on quality content.

Any questions?

Social bookmarks: Every great piece of content that you write should be shared. Sites such as digg, delicious, stumbleupon and even Twitter can help your articles to receive a lot of attention and maybe even go viral. These bookmarks provide link juice, traffic to your site and major credit to search engine.

Links: Search engines view links as referrals. If someone’s linking to you, that means they value your site and find your content to be worthwhile. Therefore, the more people that recommend you, the more comfortable search engines feel recommending you also. On a similar note, by adding helpful links to your own content, you’re showing search engines that you care about providing useful information to your readers and that your site is worth visiting. And by linking to others, they might be flattered and feel inclined to link back to you, which is a huge SEO boost.

Tags and Categories: Behind every good piece of content is solid metadata and rich keywords. In addition to utilizing keywords in your anchor links, adding keywords as tags and categories will really punctuate the words you’ve selected to define you. To hone in on what keywords will benefit you the most, check out Google’s keyword tool.

Questions?

1. Google Local Business Listings – This is really where local businesses have a chance to shine. Since many large companies are able to invest in impressive SEO efforts, Google has provided the opportunity for local businesses to be seen first by creating free Google Local Business Listings. Many times when users conduct a search query, local business listings are displayed first. This also keeps the company’s information fresh and up-to-date so that if a person searches for a restaurant or store, for example, he or she will not only see the company on the results page, but receive the correct address and information as well.
2. Blogging – Blogs are a powerful component of SEO. Whereas your website will mostly stay static, blogs will provide daily or weekly content, which will capture the attention of search engines. Engines value fresh and new content, so the more you can produce on your blog, the better. Additionally, blogs allow your customers the opportunity to connect with you and ask questions or provide feedback. This is your opportunity to show off the personality behind your business and build stronger customer relationships. Not to mention, blogs provide you the opportunity to show off your expertise and establish yourself as a thought leader. Blogs will be relevant to businesses for years to come.
3. Social Bookmarking for Traffic – Whether you use Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit or any of the numerous social sites out there, these tools will help drive traffic to your site and blog. Not only will each bookmark help search engines to quickly locate your website and index new information, it will increase the chances of your content going viral as well.
4. Twitter – Twitter is a free tool that has many networking benefits. Not only can you communicate with customers, but prospects might find you when looking out for a specific item or keyword, and you can provide links to your site, thereby driving traffic to your pages.
5. Get links through directories – Inbound links are vital to your SEO strategy. The more inbound links (links from other websites to your page) you have, the more important search engines will think you are. Research respected directories that are relevant to your business and be sure to add your blog or website to each reputable page. Not only will you have a new source for traffic, you will also have new inbound links as well. DMOZ is a famous and well-respected directory that every company should be listed on.

Any questions?