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Does Your Web Site Need a Workout?
By Kalena Jordan (c) 2008
Here's an analogy for you. Yesterday, I was working my butt off
in the gym on the cardio machines, panting wildly with sweat
dripping off me and my face as red as a beet. Not the most
attractive sight, but I figure, you're at the gym to work out
right? I might as well "go hard" or "go home", as they say.
As I looked around me, I could see all these people simply going
through the motions. There they were, minus perspiration in
their shiny new lycra and expensive gym shoes, casually walking
on the treadmill or lazily turning the wheels on a bike while
reading a book or glued to the TV screens in front of them. Only
a few seemed to be there for the actual purpose of working out.
The rest seemed to be there to check out the talent or to simply
keep up the appearance of fitness, while doing the bare
minimum.
Huh? I don't get it. Why have these gym bimbos paid so much
money for a gym membership and all the related gear if they
aren't going to take full advantage of their investment?
Then it struck me - these gymbos were just like those companies
who spend thousands of dollars on a shiny new website with all
the bells and whistles like graphic design, blogs, shopping
carts, web analytics, the lot and then fail to take advantage of
it. I see it so often, regardless of company size. Web sites
that could easily be bringing in loads of traffic and revenue
simply wasting away because nobody can be bothered tracking
visitor activity, analyzing trends or checking for search engine
compatibility and usability.
These companies are simply keeping up appearances, investing
heavily in Internet technology because their competitors are
doing the same. But no thought has gone into the search engine
compatibility of the site, how usable it is for visitors or
whether it meets accessibility guidelines. They don't look at
their site statistics, they don't check for broken links and
they sure as heck don't investigate why their sites aren't
converting traffic into customers. What a waste!
Is your web site working hard enough for you? Run it through the
following 20 point fitness assessment to find out:
* Is your site fully search engine compatible? Are all your
pages being indexed by the major search engines?
* Do you track your visitor statistics on a regular basis? Do
you use the information provided by your visitor statistics
to improve your site?
* Is your web site accessible to visually-impaired visitors?
Does it meet the international standards set down by the Web
Accessibility Initiative [http://www.w3.org/WAI/] (WAI)?
* Do you know which sites and search engines provide you with
the most traffic? Do you use this information to increase
your traffic further?
* Do you track the source of all reported errors in your site
statistics and fix them promptly?
* Do you know which keywords your site was found for in the
search engines? Have you conducted keyword research to
determine what search terms your target markets are looking
for so you can optimize for them?
* Does your web site HTML code validate to W3 standards
(http://validator.w3.org/)? Do you check for validation
regularly?
* Does your site contain zero broken links? Do you check for
and fix broken links (http://validator.w3.org/checklink)
regularly?
* Has your site been fully search engine optimized to integrate
your target search terms into your Page Titles, META Tags and
visible page text?
* Have you created and submitted an XML sitemap to Google
Sitemaps (https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login)?
* Have you created and submitted a sitemap to Yahoo Site
Explorer (http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/)?
* Have you checked to see if your site meets Google's
Webmaster Guidelines (http://www.google.com/support/
webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769)?
* Do you measure your visitor sign-ups and conversions on a
regular basis? Do you tweak your landing page copy to
increase the conversion rates?
* Is your site navigation intuitive and are your visitors
following the navigation paths you intended?
* Do you encourage feedback from your site visitors and provide
an obvious way for them to provide such feedback?
* Are there at least 250 words of text on your home page to
satisfy search engines?
* Does your site contain a visible, text-based site map to aid
user navigation?
* Do you have an ongoing link building campaign running to
secure more incoming links to your site and improve your
site's link popularity score?
* Does your site have a high percentage of repeat visitors? Are
the majority of your visitors staying on your site for more
than a minute?
* Do your search engine referrals and site traffic figures
grow each month?
Unless you can answer yes to all the questions in the above
checklist, your web site is not working hard enough for you and
needs a workout. Get to it!
================================================================
Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine
optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and
respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as
running a daily Search Engine Advice Column
(http://www.ask-kalena.com/), Kalena manages
Search Engine College (http://www.searchenginecollege.com/) - an
online training institution offering instructor-led short courses
and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization
and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.
================================================================
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