The Devil is in the Detail!

For those wanting to get a better idea of how a website works, and more importantly how their current website is performing, we have constructed this web page.

This page follows on from the website Fundamentals page by providing links to pages that expand on the topics covered there. It also provides some tools that you can use to analyse the performance of your website, and collect data on your competitor’s sites.

Useful Tools

Use these tools to measure your website’s current performance. You don’t have to be an HTML guru to measure how quickly your site is loading, or what data is in the Meta tags. It is a starting point to determine whether your website is near the mark, or missing it completely. Sometimes it only takes a few minutes work to make a huge difference to a site’s ranking.

If you are about to embark on constructing your own website, knowing what your competitors are targeting as keywords or phrases is invaluable, as it may change your content and sales copy dramatically, especially if it appears there is a lot of competition by other websites for those keywords. You may decide on a more specific phrase that will allow your site to dominate the search engine results. An example would be say including your city location. If a potential customer is looking for “Blue Widgets”, many people want to know where the nearest outlet is. By making sure your location is on each of your web pages, someone making an enquiry for “blue widgets Auckland” will put your website ahead of other sites that don’t mention “Auckland”, or are out of Auckland.

Most of the tools we suggest are free, but some cost money. If they cost money, we use the tools ourselves because they are so good, save us time, and we haven't found anything better that is free.

Tools

• WebSite Auditor, compares your website against the top 10 ranking sites for your keyword(s). Brilliant!
• Rank Tracker, checks where your website is currently ranked on selected search engines.
• SEO SpyGlass, checks a selected top competitor's back links that you need to get.
• LinkAssistant, keeps a check of the back links to your site ensuring they are still active.
• Website download speed check identifies page elements that are slowing the download speed.
• Image optimisation tool lets you optimise page images so they don't compromise download speed too much but still look acceptable on the screen.
• Keyword selection tool, used for the most important first step when building a website.
• Google Analytics, the industry standard for visitor data.
• Google Webmaster Tools, the tools to monitor your site's health.
• HTML- Kit, checks for errors in your website script.
• Copyscape.com. Use this site to check you haven't duplicated another site's content.
• ISP speed checker, useful if you suspect your ISP has turned down the flow of your broadband.

Click this link to our Useful Tools page.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

Under the SEO - search engine optimization page, use this to make sure you have at least covered the basics.

Topics covered are

• Keywords, the key to ranking highly
• Title, create a killer Title
• Description, what is the web page description
• Headings, who uses them for what
• Frames can be hindering your ranking
• YouTube, how can YouTube videos help your ranking
• Links, why are they so important
• Keywords in hyperlinks
• Bells and whistles, and how having them isn’t as clever as you thought
• Alt text, what is it
• URL selection importance
• Sitemaps and how to use them
• Errors in HTML code confuses spiders

Click this link to our SEO page.

Marketing Effectiveness

Probably the hardest area to get right. The passive parts of marketing effectiveness such as page design should be relatively easy, but getting your sales copy absolutely spot on is worth getting professional help for.

Topics covered are;

• Establishing trust and credibility with
• Testimonials from customers
• Awards you or your Company have received
• A privacy statement
• Clear terms of trade
• Website design importance featuring
• Fast download speed
• Industry accepted layouts
• Professional appearance
• Clear sales pathways on pages
• Compelling sales copy key elements
• The all important headline
• The hook to draw the visitor further into the page
• Headings and how visitors use them
• Bonuses, the more the better
• Cast iron guarantees
• A clear call to action
• The PS, the most read part of a page

Click this link to our Marketing Effectiveness page.

Internet Definitions

If you are having difficulty understanding some of the jargon surrounding the Internet, go to our Definitions page. There we discuss the meaning of everything from blogs to XHTML.