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25 Ways to Improve Your Website
Vinny O’Hare
Vinnyohare.com
Action Guide to Improve Your Website
Actually 28 ways, there are some bonus ideas
spent 23 years in outdoor advertising industry
has a good feel for the internet and ad copy, what works, what doesn’t
in 2001 he started making content filled websites, around the time of Florida update
in 2009 he started managing affiliate programs
he is a cohost of AffiliateABC’s podcast on geekcast.fm
What we will discuss
Presentation is set up to show 25 topics and break down by three items for each topic
Has first glance, second glance, third glance
must look at your current rankings – need to see what you are ranking for and what you are trying to rank for
make sure you have the box in wordpress checked to allow search engines to crawl your website
you must find your competition and see what they are ranking for
get into google webmaster tools
you have to know what keywords you are focusing on when you are writing for your website – compete.com has a free trial to let you know what your compettion is ranking for – get a google alert for your keywords and see who is ranking
SEOtools and SEOquake are great free tools to use with good information
Raven Tools is a great paid tool
Color – design with color blind in mind, grey on grey like the apple.com site is a pet peeve for him
Most financial sites are green, merchandisers like target and macy’s are red – they have done research
Get a second opinion with someone else to look at your site and give feedback
He asks if he is talking to fast or too Brooklyn?
Don’t use the same title tag on every single webpage of your site
He looks at over 100 sites a day and at least 20 do this
Have a call to action, mystery in your description tag
Meta keyword tag – most people try to put 37 in there, once you put more than 2 it singles the search engines that you are a spammer. Do not use more than 2 in his opinion. He is finding directory sites using the meta keywords in building their sites. You may get a free backlink from using it.
Do you have a search box? He normally puts in two, one at the top and one at the bottom – many large retailers have them above the fold – 90% of ecommerce – you can hook it up to your Google Analytics account and then make more webpages based on those search terms
Logo – Do you have one? Many do not, they do not bother. You need one and it should link back to your homepage. Have your alt tags optimized for google image search
Get constructive critism on your logo
lesruba.com does all of him
About Us page – customers don’t buy from a website, they buy from you. Is it personal? Explain why ou are the one to buy from. How are you going to solove the customers problem, socialtriggers.com is good example by Derek Halpern
Blog – is it wordpress, paid theme? Are the permalinks set correctly? He just uses post name. They are good for interaction with customers. You want to have all the social media sharing buttons, it is free.
Contact Us page – is the information correct. Make sure it is up to date with your latest information. Have different ways to contact you and let them know how long it will take you to get back to them. Use a contact form to avoid spam. Every time a reader asks you question is should go on your FAQ page.
Privacy Policy – google requires one to work in their network. It should be easily found in your footer with a no follow. You can find an example at serprank.com
Trust – Would you buy something from your website? Be honest. Ask your family members. It is ongoing to improve it.
Email newsletter – it is his heart and soul. People use the excuse of not having time to write one. One of his sites took a hit from Google, he has a mailing list of 7,000. He started sending out emails for each of his new posts, his traffic went up from subscribers. Google added his site back in. Use content from your website for your newsletter. Give them a free report for signing up. Aweber allows you to broadcast your new blog posts to your subscribers as a newsletter. He does not need to do a seperate newsletter. He drives people from Twitter to Facebook and then to sign up for his newsletter. Always be building a newsletter list.
Navigation – is it easy to find things? You want to control where the reader goes on your website. Have maybe 5 links on your navigation. Has a page with the seven reasons to sign up for his newsletter. Make sure you navigation is spider-able.
Backlinks – when another site links to you. You should always have a plan to get more, you can never have enough. Find out who is linking to your competitors, and then contact them for a link or a guest post. Type in link:competitorswebsite.com in Blekko.com. Firefox has an extension called Quirk Search Status. Quirk.biz/searchstatus
Images – Customers like them. Are they optimized for fast loading? Have them at the right size. Alt text should be optimized. Do not have too many on each page, it will take too long to load. Picnik.com for easy optimizing. They also have a Chrome and firefox extension. Will also let you know how their pictures are optimized on competitors.
Videos – do you want to self host or put them on YouTube? Can put them on an Amazon S3 account for pennies a year. You don’t want to embed a YouTube video because they can so easily go off your website. Videos build trust. Users expect to see them now. Put a video on your About Us page. Have a small videos featuring a solution to a problem. Have your video transcribed at speechpad.com – Never have them on auto play – really messes up his listening to Sammy Hager.
Landing Pages – in your navigation you should have at least one landing page where you want your visitors to go. You want to tell them exactly where to go and what to do. Send people directly to your shopping care or to the merchants site in the least amount of steps possible.
Internal Linking – every new page links to at least three other pages on his site. That way if anyone is scrapping your site you will know. Google alerts lets him know. Natural flowing only link to where it is needed or contribute to an existing page. Link to the right pages to help customers. There are plugins in WordPress for this.
On Page Content – keyword density – keep it in mind as you are writing. Too many sites have a 70-80% keyword density. He doesn’t think there is a magic point, but he uses 3%. Content Composer lets hims know as he is writing. Keyword is bolded on the page once, usually in his headline. If you are bad at writing, then outsource it. He uses Iwriter.com or Elance.com
Site Speed – Google considers it in their algorithm. You must improve it. With picture optimizing, video loading. It is in your google webmaster tools. Cheap webhosting is not worth it. His traffic went up 40-50% when he moved to better hosting. Gtmetrix.com is a great resource to let you know what is slowing down your website.
Blogs in Your Niche – Find similar niches and leave a good comment. Nothing spammy! He has a weekly schedule for each of his sites. It can be good for traffic. Other people who leave links, go there and get a backlink. Send them an email and see if they accept guest posts. Use google alerts for keyword phrases and get an email with results.
Forums – not as popular as they used to. Participate and be helpful. Become the master of your own domain name. Have a good signature with your social media urls. Find a good forum and become the expert there. Dedicate some time each week to check in. If someone asks a question then google the answer for them, rewrite it to answer.
YouTube – have an account. Build subscribers and friends it equals recurring visitors. Make helpful videos – “how to” videos are huge. Link in your description to your website product page with the http:// to make the link clickable. Leave comments on high ranking videos in your niche to gain subscribers.
Twitter – is your keyword in your bio? He uses Tweetadder to automatically add people based on keywords. Want to be interactive. Don’t just blast out messages and dropping links. Build followers in your niche and be a problem solver. If you have a local website follow the local news or radio station accounts. Get their followers to follow you! Be funny and informative. People don’t follow boring people. He uses Hootsuite to send out automated messages. Motivational quotes are ways to rank in search engines and gain new followers.
Facebook – 70+ million people are on there. Set up a fan page and put your url in the about section. Google can search facebook fan pages. It is a no follow link. Have a facebook contest and follow all the rules. Build fans and returning customers. Use a Facebook approved contest.
Google+ – get a business page for each of your businesses. Whenever you write a new blog post or webpage then drop the whole url into a message box. Your site will be indexed in 4 minutes. Don’t attach the link at the bottom. Works 99% of the time for him. Find the most popular person in your niche and see who they are following and follow them. Share good information and you will build a loyal following. Follow Chris Brogan and Trey Ratcliff. Findpeopleonplus.com – Great way to find others to follow.
http://www.vinnyohare.com/help – all information from the presentation here
twitter.com/vinnyohare
facebook.com/vinnyohare
Please share
I really like open site explorer to find competitor back links but Blekko isn’t bad either, just not order by value. I also like Tools.pingdom.com for a speed test. Thanks for the quick recap.