Your website has just a few seconds to impress.
If you are one of those people who want a website on page 1 and also believe that once its created and looks good you can then sit back and wait for the business to roll in – then we are sorry to have to tell you that we have got bad news for you.
You have got work to do!
No need to be down hearted though as we will give you a good few pointers.
Firstly, so that you gain understanding of the raison d’etre we explain a few things.
The rules for how to get business from the internet have been defined by Google. It is the major search engine on the internet. This means that most people start to search using Google. Thus you will be indexed in accordance with Google’s algorithms. Google’s goal is to be the most used search engine and how will they achieve that? By providing the user with the information they are searching for and vitally, more information than they are searching for – more and the best quality, all amounting to a great user experience. Why, what is the payoff for Google? It is to be the preferred search engine by 99.9% of users.
We are sure you have heard about key phrases and meta tags. But times have changed and although they still matter greatly, there are equal and more important aspects to your website optimisation.
What is website optimisation?
It is the structure, design, metas, functionality and content of the website. Elsewhere on our website we discuss these elements. However, here we talk about content. We have already talked about blogs on our website, and the need for unique and fresh content.
Another important aspect that relates to content that is the quality of the content and aspects of it. We will start here with your landing page i.e. where the user lands when clicking on your website link. This can be your home page, but is often a specially created page on your website.
The landing page is as important as the first impression you give at a job interview – you get just a few seconds to impress or disappoint. Once done, it is very hard to change the interviewer’s perception and opinion. This can have advantages (if you are having a good day) in that if you look great and present yourself well, interviewers tend to overlook any other dis-confirming evidence that indicates you may not be right for the job!
On the other hand, if your appearance is not too promising as you walk through the door and your attitude could have been better, interviewers will rarely be persuaded to change their view of you even though your performance is great and your responses correct.
It is the same with your website – you have just a few seconds to impress, engender trust and a call to action responded to. You HAVE to get it right first time.
How can you ensure the right impression first time?
As a successful SEO company, we will be discussing this over the weeks, but to get you started here are some hints:
- Place the most important information about your service or product above the fold. In other words – don’t make the user have to scroll to find this information.
- Provide one choice per page, rather than too many. It is a fact that when faced with too many choices we end up not making a choice. We bet you can identify with poring through holiday brochures only to feel bamboozled with the choices and then closing the lot until another day. What a disaster if a user clicked off your website through muddled information overload – are they likely to remember to go back to your site another day?
Keep reading our articles and blogs for more information.