Top 10 Tips for Websites

1. Content
Content must be fresh, unique and enhance the users experience. Make sure your content provides value to your readers. Help them(and your website) by providing clear, well thought out content. There really is no substitute for good content. Content is central to your website so make content your top priority.

2. Freshness
Google and other search engines love websites that are regularly updated with new content. This shows them your website is a live and it’s moving with new articles and topics. A new page or new post to an old website can really help revive it.

3. No Blackhat Tricks
Search engines are well aware black hat trickery to gain better search engine rankings. Search engines use intelligent algorithms to scan your whole website for such tricks and if they find them you can guarantee your website will be penalised, sometimes to the point where it no longer appears in the search engines at all! It’s so much easier to follow the rules and provide a website that enhances the users experience than it does to live by the sword.

4. Linking

Backlinks are the quality lifeline of the internet where search engine rankings are concerned. My advice is to steer clear of link exchanges or link farms. By gaining good trusted backlinks from websites in your relevant web-neighbourhood the search engines will reward you with equally good rankings. Some rules to follow are;
Diversity – Diversify your links anchor text so it doesn’t look like you’re spamming the net trying to rank for a keyword.
Relevancy – Make sure all pages you try to get a link on are relevant to your own website, search engines check this all the time.
Natural – Your linking must look natural, if you gain 30+ links everyday you’re going to get your website penalised and even de-indexed. I try to aim for 15 good quality links a week.
Outbound – Outbound links are also really important. Link should only link to trusted sites that are relevant to your website.

5. Structure

Internal linking and the structure of your website is very important to both search engines and the visitors to your website. Visitors have to be able to understand the page, engaging the reader into the content will help conversion rates and also help the visitor too since it’s what he/she is presumably looking for. Search engines scan your website and need to be able to follow your links through to all of your content. If it can’t do this then your website may be penalised.

6. Accessibility

Accessibility runs hand in hand with internal linking but is more involved with the users experience. Try to create good ALT tags for images and think about what languages visitors to the website will speak. There are many tools for converting content. Also look on every page and try to think of questions visitors will ask as they navigate around the website. Follow routes around the website and you’ll get the feel for the best way to implement on site navigation.

7. URLS

Good URLS tend to be easily read, no longer than 5 words and have some relation to the keywords your website is targeting. Using hyphens to separate words in a URL is an ongoing debate between web designers and SEO(Search Engine Optimization) specialists. Whatever route you take, try to make sure your URLS describe the website and the page you’re on and are easily remembered.

8. Style
The style of a website is also an important factor when it comes to engaging the reader and keeping them interested. However, while we want to stir interest within the reader we don’t want a website to look to busy otherwise it takes visitors attention away from the content, which is something we really do not want to do. A really interesting website can sell a product,

9. Quality Code

Good code is important especially when it comes to troubleshooting. Good code is clean code which means faster loading pages for users. It can takes years of experience to write good clean code, there are a number of ways to go about writing a piece of code so try to learn from websites such as W3 Schools.

10. Images

Take care when placing images on your website, even a 5 star hotel can look amateurish with bad images. Images can really sell a product if used correctly. Good images can influence a visitor’s perception of your products and website. Use them effectively.

 

thanks for the info. valerie