Posted on January 21st, 2010 By admin
Tags: Search Engine Optimisation, SEO Tips
Posted in SEO | No Comments »
Don’t waste time! Garb the oppurtunity now!
Suppose the above-given statements are given as the heading of a website. How would you feel if you come across such a web page? If I were in your place, my thoughts would be “well, if they can’t get their heading right, probably they are not right in their head too.” This is the same reaction that you’ll get if caught with a spelling or grammar error in your website. Much as you think that a small spelling error is not going to make a big difference, the truth is it does! And the cost you’d be paying is loss of more visitors and thereby potential customers.
From the point of SEO error-free content is more accessible and readable for the human visitors and crawlable and indexable for the search engines. As the websites are browsed very fast by the users it is all the more important to create a page that has good content. Moreover it adds to the credibility of the website. Most of the users would span a website for about 3–5 seconds before deciding on whether to read further or not. You need to impress the readers in this minute span of time. So if they find a spelling error in such a brief glimpse, you can’t really blame them for clicking the back button.
A web page that has spelling errors indicates many things about its creators:
- They don’t really care about the content they have provided.
- They are too lazy to edit their own work.
- They lack education to provide content that is error free.
Unfortunately, ensuring that the content provided is free of errors in spelling, grammar, syntax and usage is the very thing that most web masters fail to do. Which in turn can bring about a loss of billions. In fact, a recent survey conducted by Royal Mail indicated that more than 70% of the customers would hesitate to do business with people who have poor communication skills. And communication skills not only mean good verbal skills but also written skills.
A good way to tackle this problem is to install spell checking softwares that would check the spellings used and indicate if they are spelt wrongly. However, many web masters think that after creating the content, all they need to do is just to run a spell check. In reality that is not at all true. Because spell check is just the first step in editing content. It just recognises a word that is spelt wrong to create a non-existing word. So when there are issues of words like their vs. there and you’re vs. your, spell check fails to identify that the word has been misspelt as another word. Needless to say, the ultimate result is a spelling mistake. Similarly when words are spelt in one place as that commonly used in another place. The common occurrence of this is the UK vs. US spelling clash. Most writers forget to check whether the spellings used are the ones used in the country they are writing for.
Here are a few reasons you need to go through your content even after running a spell check:
- They identify only non-existing words.
- They don’t identify a word that is spelled to mean another word. For example, their vs. there.
- They don’t identify many errors in grammar and syntax.
- They don’t pick up the wrong choice of words. For example, using “a catastrophe” where “an accident” would’ve been sufficient.
- They don’t see whether something could be said in a better or euphemistic way.
Even though catchy images, colours and animations catch the readers’ attention very easily, what makes that attention sustain is good, error free content. It makes the website look professional, not just from the users’ point of view but also from that of the search engines’. If you check the top five or six websites in Google’s search result pages you can see that these websites have few or no errors in the content. Provide simple and at the same time error-free text. After all, “you never get a second chance to make the first impression”.
Posted on January 21st, 2010 By admin
Tags: Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation
Posted in Internet Marketing | No Comments »
Internet marketing is proving more and more beneficial nowadays with more companies moving to online business to cater to a global audience than a retail service for a small local community. For effectiveness online marketing requires more of commitment and dedication than expense. This is more so because it is an ongoing process. Much as you wish you cannot just create a website for your business and forget about the marketing thenceforth.
The minimum requirement for your internet marketing is of course your company website. That’s the base from which you start off. And make sure your site is one that can lure users. How do you do that? For the starters, your website should have interesting content to share. It could be through text, images, video or audio. The point is that the visitors to your site must stay back and explore more. Once you get that done, half your battle is over.
So how do you do that? Let’s check out. First and foremost, study your target audience. Get their average age, income and occupation. Mostly, these are the three factors that can influence a person’s computer literacy and consequently, his/her online behaviour. Also, people’s online shopping pattern and preferences differ a lot from each other. You need to take that also into consideration while promoting online your product or service.
Once you finalise and study your target audience, the next step is to design a website that can attract them, retain them and bring them back. Always remember that customers want relevant and fresh information more than anything else. They need to know what the products that you have to offer them are and how these products are different from others. If they get all their questions answered they’ll definitely want to stay with you or they’ll leave your site to find another one. Remember, if there is something that never lacks in the market it is competition.
So let’ see a few techniques that can help you in making your internet marketing effective.
- Make your website easy to spell and easy to remember. Get a good domain name for this.
- Make your website look professional. Don’t try to fool the visitors with colourful images and animations. They are not going to make them stay.
- Keep the website simple and easy to navigate. Complex navigations and paths will only turn the users off and make them leave the site. Make sure the purchase page can be easily viewed by them.
- Provide good and informative content. This means the information that you provide should be relevant as well as helpful. Avoid all kinds of typos.
- Provide an easy way to contact you. And be responsive when they contact you. Reply to mails as soon as possible.
- Do an effective and excellent search engine optimisation for your website. Because, though your site is for users they will see it when it is loved by search engines.
- Collect back links and reciprocal links from good websites and increase your website popularity. However, remember that quality matters here more than quantity.
- Good images and videos can do wonders for your business. Along with corresponding quality text, provide pictures and videos of your product. Even yours and your employees’. No better way to bring a human touch to the website.
- Increase your site popularity by submitting articles and press releases about your business and website in different directories.
- Start a business blog where you can share your thoughts with the public. It’s a fast and effective way to get customer response.
- Trade organisations can have a wide influence. Submit your website in such organisations and make your presence known in the market.
- Add your website URL to the stationary that you spread around like business cards and brochures.
- Provide offers and contests. Users always find time for interesting contests.
To bring your company in the perspective of those who are looking for your products you need to provide much more than the shortcuts given above. Hard efforts and time are the catchwords here. Provide quality products coupled with quality service and watch your business becoming popular as time goes. Slow and steady, after all, never fails to win.
