31 Days to a Successful Website - Part 3

We’re continuing with our top tips for a successful website. With the first twenty tips dealing with the visual, asthetic and technical side of things, tips 21 – 31 will focus on optimising your website for the search engines.  After all, what’s the point in using the previous twenty tips to perfect your site if no one sees it? For the previous tips (or a reminder of) please follow these links - Part 1 (asthetics) or Part 2 (technical).

Given the recent barrage of Google algorithm updates, which have played havoc with rankings, this last set of tips have never been more relevant. So make sure to check back every day to see our latest snippet of advice. We’ll begin our SEO segment with:

Tip 21.    Run a technical SEO report

Running a technical SEO report will flag up any technical errors on your site that may have a negative impact upon the site’s SEO. This will include any missing title tags, alt tags, H tags or canonical (duplicate) content.

Tip 22.    Add some video
While we’ve all gotten used to shopping online, a website cannot replace the brick-and-mortar experience of physically handling merchandise and examining it before making a purchase.  But adding some video content can allow the visitor to get that little bit closer to the experience.
We’re not talking about feature length films for each of the products, just short product demonstrations. These can be added to the product page for the customer to see the product in action or in its actual size. Short showreels can then be compiled to showcase your products on YouTube.

Tip 23.    Share it
Internet users love shareable content. Include sharing buttons on all products which allow your users to share the product with their online friends. These buttons could also be entitled ‘recommend this to a friend’. That way if a user knows a friend is looking to purchase a pink candle with a strawberry scent and your website is selling a pink candle with a strawberry scent, they may want to share it with them.

Tip 24.    Get Social
Get your company on social networks such as Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook. This will expand your brand reach. Social monitoring tools such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck will also allow you to monitor what people are talking about online. So if someone online has said they are looking for a pink candle with a strawberry scent, you can reply with a link straight to the product page! Monitoring the social stratosphere will also give you an overview of where your customers are and which social network should be given the most attention. Social media is also a great opportunity to share discount codes and give away product through competitions. 

Tip 25.    Be email smart and lead with data
With all the data you have collected since Tip 16, you may wish to run an email campaign. But it is data that will ensure its success and hopefully improve click throughs to your site. What time of day do sales on the website most frequently occur? This information can be collected from Google Analytics and can be used to your advantage. If it is when people come home from work, you can make sure your email message hits them at this time increasing the chances of a conversion. Once you have sent the emails, you can use the Google Analytics URL builder to tag click throughs and track which email campaigns delivered results. 

Expert advice on email marketing can help you avoid the dangers of sending unwelcome messages. For advise on how to construct a database of interested contacts, and how to build this list into a valuable business asset that is handled with professionalism please follow the link. http://www.thewebbureau.com/what_we_do/email_marketing.aspx 

Tip 26.    Rename page links 
The ability to change a page link can massively help with your site’s SEO, especially when keywords can be used. For example www.yourcompany.com/this-bit-is-the-page-link .

Tip 27.    Take the opportunity to listen
If your product could be better you’d want to know, right? Make sure customers have the ability to rate the individual products and leave feedback about what they liked or didn’t like about the product or service you supplied. Where before you would have spent money organising focus groups or surveys, you can now get the same information from just visiting your own website! Why not even give customers an incentive to fill out a feedback form, such as 10% off their next purchase?

Tip 28 .    Don’t go overboard with keywords
Product descriptions should be written with the intent to sell the product, not for it to be found in a search engine. Keywords should be selected carefully through keyword research and integrated naturally into useful product descriptions, page titles and content. Keyword density should not be more than 3%.

So, if your article or piece of content (the text you are analyzing) is 500 words in length and you have used your keyword 15 times, the keyword density for that keyword is…

Keyword density = (Nkr / Tkn) x 100
= (15 / 500) x 100
= 0.03 x 100
=3

Keyword density = 3% !!!

That’s pretty straight-forward, huh?

When calculating keyword density, be sure to ignore html tags and other embedded tags which will not actually appear in the text of the page once it is published.

Tip 29.    Know your limits
Expectations need to be managed. If no one else in your sector is getting near a 10% conversion rate, there is no point in you expecting a 15% conversion rate.

When you track conversions, your conversion data will appear in your reports to help you make informed campaign management decisions. Reports containing your conversion data are only accessible by you through Google Analytics.

Tip 30.    Use your analytics
Set aside half a day every couple of weeks to analyse your Google Analytics. You need to know who your customers are, what they’re buying and where they’re coming from. This can change frequently and it is important it can be monitored so as not to miss out on any emerging trends in the market or within your customer base.

Tip 31.    Seek professional advice where necessary
Whilst the above tips have been written for your assistance, the completion of some may require a web/analytics professional. The success of your website will be the success of an on going partnership between you and your web/digital company. Professional developers will be able to implement all of the above correctly meaning you get the most success for your site.

And there you have it....a successfully optimised ecommerce website!

The Web Bureau is a team of dedicated digital media specialists who work hard to transform initial design concepts into websites that offer the user a fluent and engaging online experience.

We can provide support for all our clients right from the initial design process right through to the marketing off the complete website. Our SEO experts can advise on improving traffic to your website, old or new.

We can be contacted on:
 
Tel: 028 9073 1190, Email: info@thewebbureau.com, Facebook (www.facebook.com/thewebbureau) and Twitter (@thewebbureau)