1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like “welcome” or “click here to enter”. In fact, they are just that — pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the “back” button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don’t know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don’t confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they’re not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it — volume or muting controls would work fine.

Broken down, however, Search Engine Optimization (aka SEO) is really not that difficult to understand.

The search engines, like Google, try their best to “index” web pages for terms they believe are relevant to the content found on the page. They do this because it’s in their best interest… the better their results, the more likely users will continue to use their search engine.

As each “search engine results page” includes about ten “organic listings” (i.e. those you don’t have to pay for) your goal is to have your page indexed on “Page One” for a set of terms you believe relevant to your content and business.

To do this, you simply give the search engines what they want.

So, what do search engines want?

Search engines want a number of things but here are some of the “core ingredients” that are common to Google, Yahoo and Bing:

1. Quality content (and design).

The better your content is, the more likely the search engines are to help you promote your content through better search engine placement.

But how do the search engines determine the quality of your content? Since they do this through an automated process, they had to come up with metric that would allow them to make an educated guess.

They measure the time each visitor stays on a page and also watch where the visitor goes when they leave. If they stay on your site for several minutes and then visit another page on your site, that’s good. If they leave your page in 5 seconds and never return, that’s bad.

2. Ability to easily determine what phrases to index your pages for.

As your pages will be found when someone conducts an internet search, the search engines need to index your pages for terms (called keyword phrases) they believe are most relevant to your on-page content.

You can help them by ensuring that each page of your site is optimized around 1-3 keyword phrases. After choosing which keyword phrases to target, make sure to add them to your “meta page title” and “meta page description” at minimum.

Also, it’s important that these keyword phrases appear somewhere on your actual page… the content that can be read by your human visitors.

This helps the search engines to index your pages more easily and you will be rewarded for your work.

3. Getting as many “votes” as possible for each page of your site.

In internet terms, each link to your site is seen as a “vote” that your page is relevant to the piece of text that is linked.

So, if you want a particular page of your site found for the keyword phrase, “best los angeles plumber,” you’d be wise to get as many websites as possible to link to your page using this phrase in their “anchor text.”

Anchor text is merely the words that create the clickable link. If the phrase, “best los angeles plumber,” is linked to your web page, you just earned a “vote” for that page.

The more links you can get with that term, the more likely your page will be to rank well for it.

While there are hundreds of techniques to improve the SEO of a website, these principles are truly the foundation. If your pages contain great content/design, are optimized for a handful of relevant keyword phrases and are linked to from other web properties, you’re on your way to improved search engine placement.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today by many e-commerce sites. For the past few years and the next ten years or so, search engines would be the most widely used internet tool to find the sites that they need to go to or the product or information they need.

Most people that use search engines use only the ten top search results in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is a barometer of a sites success in search engine optimization. You will get a higher ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for your site, the more business you rake in.

But, it is essential to grab a hold of that spot or make your ranking even better. As I aforementioned, each day is a new day for all e-commerce sites to make them selves rank higher using search engine optimization. It is imperative to make your site better and better everyday.

So just what is search engine optimization and do you have to use it? The answer to why you have to use it is an easy one. You need search engine optimization to be number one, or maybe at least make your site income generating.

With search engine optimization you can get the benefit of generating a high traffic volume. Let’s just say you get only a turn out of successful sales with 10 to 20 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good turn out of sales already. If you get only twenty to ten hits a day, you only get one or two if not any at all.

So once again, what is search engine optimization? Search engine optimization is utilizing tools and methods in making your site top ranking in the results of search engines. Getting yourself in the first page and better yet in the top half of the page will ensure that your site will generate public awareness of your site’s existence and subsequently generate more traffic, traffic that could lead to potential income and business.

Search engine optimization requires a lot of work to be fully realized. There are many aspects you have to change in your site or add as well to get search engine optimization. These will include getting lots of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regards to your sites niche or theme.

You may also need to rewrite your sites contents so that you could get the right keyword phrases in your site without making it too commercial but light and informative. There are certain rules and guidelines to be followed with making your site’s content applicable and conducive to search engine optimization.

You will also need to collaborate with many other sites so that you could get link exchanges and page transfers. The more inbound and outbound traffics generated by sites among others are one of the components search engines uses to rank sites.

Try to search the internet for many useful help. Tips, guidelines and methods for search engine optimization are plenty to be found. Read many articles that can help you optimize your site in search engine results. The more knowledge and information you gather the better. This will all help you in getting those high rankings. This may require a little time and effort in your part but the benefits will be astounding.

If you can part with some money, there are many sites in the internet that can help you in search engine optimization. There are many sites that help in tracking keyword phrases that can help your site. There are also some content writers that have lots of experience in making good keyword laden content for your sites that have good quality.

Act now and see the benefits garner with search engine optimization. All of these will result to better traffic and more business for your site and company.

Instead of putting all of your eggs in one basket, it’s best to drive website traffic through several sources. This way, you can cast a wider net, resulting in more traffic, and track the efficacy of each source.

Before you begin, you should understand the core concepts of Search Engine Optimization (aka Search Engine Marketing). In order to increase your website traffic and attract qualified prospects, you need to understand three things:

1. Everything related to SEO starts with an understanding of what a “keyword phrase” is.

Anytime someone conducts a search on Google, or another search engine, they enter some text to start their search. In SEO terms, the entered text is called a “keyword” or “keyword phrase.”

If you know what keyword phrases your prospects are entering when looking for the type of information, products or services you offer, you will know what phrases to optimize your web pages for.

2. Websites are not indexed or ranked by the search engines… each web page is indexed and ranked independent of any other.

This is commonly misunderstood but so vital to understand! Just because you have one web page that ranks really well in the search engines, that doesn’t mean that your others will also rank well.

Each page of your website must be uniquely optimized for a handful of keyword phrases… keyword phrases that are searched upon and those likely to attract your targeted audience.

If you pay close attention to the optimization of each page, you should see a dramatic improvement in terms of search engine placement.

3. Like it or not, you’re competing against others!

Some have a harder time with this concept than others but the truth remains the truth… in order to get your web page listed on page one of Google, you have to kick one of the currently listed web page’s off!

This is valuable information because it will help you understand what you must do to achieve the ranking you’re after.
Thorough analysis of the web pages currently listed for a particular keyword phrase will tell you how hard it will be to overtake one of them. You need to pay close attention to a number of elements including:

How well is their page optimized for the keyword phrase?

How old is their domain (the older the better)?

How many links can be found that point to the page (the more the better)?

While there are other elements involved, these three are of primary concern. If you find you can outdo your competitor’s web page in at least two of the three areas mentioned, you can probably kick them off the page and take their place.

After ensuring you are optimizing for a keyword phrase (or phrases) that are likely to bring you the kind of traffic you want, you’ll often find it is the quantity of backlinks that make the real difference.

Of course, the quality of the backlinks is important too but if you are going to concentrate on one objective, it should be the building of links. Ensure your text links use the keyword phrases you are optimizing for and you’ll find you quickly climb the ranks of the search engines.

If you are in direct competition with another business that has a Website, they have a clear advantage – especially if they are adequately marketing their Website.

2. Improve Your Customer Service.

A Website makes it possible to provide instantly viewable information and even downloadable content. You can provide frequently asked questions for your site visitors to look up their question and instantly read the answer. Not only does this satisfy your customers, but it can provide a reference for your customer support staff. A Website is a great place to gain feedback from your customers and prospective clients. You can use surveys and forms that allow your site visitors to respond to questions you ask, enabling you to get valuable marketing information from your customers. Depending on your company’s products or services, you may also be able to provide downloadable technical manuals, user guides, or instructions. This provides value to your customers and can even eliminate the need for many people to call your customer service line.

3. People Will Look for You Online.

Sooner or later, someone’s going to type your name or business into a search engine. What do you want them to find? Nothing, or worse yet, your competition. These are people who want to find you. They are looking for what you are selling, and if you don’t have a Website then you’re letting them down – they expect to find you online. For many people, you might as well not exist if you can’t be found with a search engine. Not having a Website is like not bothering to get listed in the phone book. Can you run your business without a phone? In this “Information Age” we live in being online is vital.

4. Websites are Great Advertising.

Whatever you’re advertising – services, products or just yourself – a Website is a great way to do it. Every other kind of advertising going costs a premium, especially if you want to target a specific kind of person, and there’s no guarantee that they’re paying attention. Websites are like brochures that are free to reproduce, interactive, and quickly distributed to people who are already looking for them. No advertising medium even comes close to the ease-of-use and effectiveness of a Website.

5. You’re Open 24/7.

A Website will allow your business or organization to be open 24/7 (24 hours a day, seven days a week).. Many people surf the Web in the evening when most businesses are closed. But if you have a Website they can find, you are just as good as open. Is your competition open 24 hours a day, seven days a week? The world is your oyster – especially with a Website, which allows your communication with audiences worldwide (as long as you both understand the same language). Geographical locations or time zones are no longer a problem with the 24/7 availability of a Website.

6. 30 Million People.

That’s a lot of people. In fact, it is the number of Filipinos that regularly use the Internet. Worldwide Internet usage is 2 billion. On the Web, it doesn’t matter whether someone is next door to you or on the other side of the world, they can see your Website just the same as anyone else can, and it doesn’t cost you or them any extra. Phone and mailings both cost enormous amounts long-distance, but your Website lets you send information anywhere without any extra effort or expense. You can make friends and contacts in places you’ve never been and will never go – suddenly, working globally is no more effort than working locally.

7. Passive Income Opportunities.

With a Website, you can create an online store which allows customers to place orders and pay for their selections all via the internet. This all happens without your involvement once the Website is designed and online, which classifies it as passive income. Your Website can act exactly like a catalog, and contain photographs and descriptions of products- or it can be more advanced and make use of some of the emerging technologies- including audio and video to fully demonstrate your products and services.

8. Deliver Significant Information and Improve Communication.

More than ever before, people are turning away from traditional means of finding information and looking online. Yellow pages, directories, and printed materials are being used less. Brochures and flyers only allow for a few lines of communication. A carefully crafted Website can guide your clients, suppliers or employees through page after page of information. Another advantage is that you can add audio and video to these pages – something that paper communication tools cannot offer.

9. Share Basic Business Information

People use the Internet often trying to find quick answers to basic questions. What are your opening hours? Do you offer payment plans? What is your phone number or email address? These are the days of “Inquiry Marketing”; so get a Website if you do not already have one, and make sure that people can actually find it in the search engines and directories.

10. Affordable and Expandable Marketing.

When you compare the price of a Website to the expense of creating and distributing more traditional forms of marketing materials, like newspapers, direct mail campaigns and magazine ads- the cost of setting up and maintaining a Website is nominal. One of the best features of a Website is that you can quickly and easily change information as it changes within your business. Unlike printed materials that need to be revised and then reprinted at cost; a Website allows you to change or add products and services as often as you wish in just a few steps. There is potential for free advertising when other Websites and blogs link to you. Also, when a Website is designed well, when people type in related search terms into a search engine, your Website will come up in the listings for free and allow a prospective customer to find your Website.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today by many e-commerce sites. For the past few years and the next ten years or so, search engines would be the most widely used internet tool to find the sites that they need to go to or the product or information they need.

Most people that use search engines use only the ten top search results in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is a barometer of a sites success in search engine optimization. You will get a higher ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for your site, the more business you rake in.

But, it is essential to grab a hold of that spot or make your ranking even better. As I aforementioned, each day is a new day for all e-commerce sites to make them selves rank higher using search engine optimization. It is imperative to make your site better and better everyday.

So just what is search engine optimization and do you have to use it? The answer to why you have to use it is an easy one. You need search engine optimization to be number one, or maybe at least make your site income generating.

With search engine optimization you can get the benefit of generating a high traffic volume. Let’s just say you get only a turn out of successful sales with 10 to 20 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good turn out of sales already. If you get only twenty to ten hits a day, you only get one or two if not any at all.

So once again, what is search engine optimization? Search engine optimization is utilizing tools and methods in making your site top ranking in the results of search engines. Getting yourself in the first page and better yet in the top half of the page will ensure that your site will generate public awareness of your site’s existence and subsequently generate more traffic, traffic that could lead to potential income and business.

Search engine optimization requires a lot of work to be fully realized. There are many aspects you have to change in your site or add as well to get search engine optimization. These will include getting lots of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regards to your sites niche or theme.

You may also need to rewrite your sites contents so that you could get the right keyword phrases in your site without making it too commercial but light and informative. There are certain rules and guidelines to be followed with making your site’s content applicable and conducive to search engine optimization.

You will also need to collaborate with many other sites so that you could get link exchanges and page transfers. The more inbound and outbound traffics generated by sites among others are one of the components search engines uses to rank sites.

Try to search the internet for many useful help. Tips, guidelines and methods for search engine optimization are plenty to be found. Read many articles that can help you optimize your site in search engine results. The more knowledge and information you gather the better. This will all help you in getting those high rankings. This may require a little time and effort in your part but the benefits will be astounding.

If you can part with some money, there are many sites in the internet that can help you in search engine optimization. There are many sites that help in tracking keyword phrases that can help your site. There are also some content writers that have lots of experience in making good keyword laden content for your sites that have good quality.

Act now and see the benefits garner with search engine optimization. All of these will result to better traffic and more business for your site and company.

Contact Us today if you have SEO Questions. 

If you are in direct competition with another business that has a Website, they have a clear advantage – especially if they are adequately marketing their Website.

2. Improve Your Customer Service.

A Website makes it possible to provide instantly viewable information and even downloadable content. You can provide frequently asked questions for your site visitors to look up their question and instantly read the answer. Not only does this satisfy your customers, but it can provide a reference for your customer support staff. A Website is a great place to gain feedback from your customers and prospective clients. You can use surveys and forms that allow your site visitors to respond to questions you ask, enabling you to get valuable marketing information from your customers. Depending on your company’s products or services, you may also be able to provide downloadable technical manuals, user guides, or instructions. This provides value to your customers and can even eliminate the need for many people to call your customer service line.

3. People Will Look for You Online.

Sooner or later, someone’s going to type your name or business into a search engine. What do you want them to find? Nothing, or worse yet, your competition. These are people who want to find you. They are looking for what you are selling, and if you don’t have a Website then you’re letting them down – they expect to find you online. For many people, you might as well not exist if you can’t be found with a search engine. Not having a Website is like not bothering to get listed in the phone book. Can you run your business without a phone? In this “Information Age” we live in being online is vital.

4. Websites are Great Advertising.

Whatever you’re advertising – services, products or just yourself – a Website is a great way to do it. Every other kind of advertising going costs a premium, especially if you want to target a specific kind of person, and there’s no guarantee that they’re paying attention. Websites are like brochures that are free to reproduce, interactive, and quickly distributed to people who are already looking for them. No advertising medium even comes close to the ease-of-use and effectiveness of a Website.

5. You’re Open 24/7.

A Website will allow your business or organization to be open 24/7 (24 hours a day, seven days a week).. Many people surf the Web in the evening when most businesses are closed. But if you have a Website they can find, you are just as good as open. Is your competition open 24 hours a day, seven days a week? The world is your oyster – especially with a Website, which allows your communication with audiences worldwide (as long as you both understand the same language). Geographical locations or time zones are no longer a problem with the 24/7 availability of a Website.

6. 30 Million People.

That’s a lot of people. In fact, it is the number of Filipinos that regularly use the Internet. Worldwide Internet usage is 2 billion. On the Web, it doesn’t matter whether someone is next door to you or on the other side of the world, they can see your Website just the same as anyone else can, and it doesn’t cost you or them any extra. Phone and mailings both cost enormous amounts long-distance, but your Website lets you send information anywhere without any extra effort or expense. You can make friends and contacts in places you’ve never been and will never go – suddenly, working globally is no more effort than working locally.

7. Passive Income Opportunities.

With a Website, you can create an online store which allows customers to place orders and pay for their selections all via the internet. This all happens without your involvement once the Website is designed and online, which classifies it as passive income. Your Website can act exactly like a catalog, and contain photographs and descriptions of products- or it can be more advanced and make use of some of the emerging technologies- including audio and video to fully demonstrate your products and services.

8. Deliver Significant Information and Improve Communication.

More than ever before, people are turning away from traditional means of finding information and looking online. Yellow pages, directories, and printed materials are being used less. Brochures and flyers only allow for a few lines of communication. A carefully crafted Website can guide your clients, suppliers or employees through page after page of information. Another advantage is that you can add audio and video to these pages – something that paper communication tools cannot offer.

9. Share Basic Business Information

People use the Internet often trying to find quick answers to basic questions. What are your opening hours? Do you offer payment plans? What is your phone number or email address? These are the days of “Inquiry Marketing”; so get a Website if you do not already have one, and make sure that people can actually find it in the search engines and directories.

10. Affordable and Expandable Marketing.

When you compare the price of a Website to the expense of creating and distributing more traditional forms of marketing materials, like newspapers, direct mail campaigns and magazine ads- the cost of setting up and maintaining a Website is nominal. One of the best features of a Website is that you can quickly and easily change information as it changes within your business. Unlike printed materials that need to be revised and then reprinted at cost; a Website allows you to change or add products and services as often as you wish in just a few steps. There is potential for free advertising when other Websites and blogs link to you. Also, when a Website is designed well, when people type in related search terms into a search engine, your Website will come up in the listings for free and allow a prospective customer to find your Website.

Instead of putting all of your eggs in one basket, it’s best to drive website traffic through several sources. This way, you can cast a wider net, resulting in more traffic, and track the efficacy of each source.

Before you begin, you should understand the core concepts of Search Engine Optimization (aka Search Engine Marketing). In order to increase your website traffic and attract qualified prospects, you need to understand three things:

1. Everything related to SEO starts with an understanding of what a “keyword phrase” is.

Anytime someone conducts a search on Google, or another search engine, they enter some text to start their search. In SEO terms, the entered text is called a “keyword” or “keyword phrase.”

If you know what keyword phrases your prospects are entering when looking for the type of information, products or services you offer, you will know what phrases to optimize your web pages for.

2. Websites are not indexed or ranked by the search engines… each web page is indexed and ranked independent of any other.

This is commonly misunderstood but so vital to understand! Just because you have one web page that ranks really well in the search engines, that doesn’t mean that your others will also rank well.

Each page of your website must be uniquely optimized for a handful of keyword phrases… keyword phrases that are searched upon and those likely to attract your targeted audience.

If you pay close attention to the optimization of each page, you should see a dramatic improvement in terms of search engine placement.

3. Like it or not, you’re competing against others!

Some have a harder time with this concept than others but the truth remains the truth… in order to get your web page listed on page one of Google, you have to kick one of the currently listed web page’s off!

This is valuable information because it will help you understand what you must do to achieve the ranking you’re after.
Thorough analysis of the web pages currently listed for a particular keyword phrase will tell you how hard it will be to overtake one of them. You need to pay close attention to a number of elements including:

How well is their page optimized for the keyword phrase?

How old is their domain (the older the better)?

How many links can be found that point to the page (the more the better)?

While there are other elements involved, these three are of primary concern. If you find you can outdo your competitor’s web page in at least two of the three areas mentioned, you can probably kick them off the page and take their place.

After ensuring you are optimizing for a keyword phrase (or phrases) that are likely to bring you the kind of traffic you want, you’ll often find it is the quantity of backlinks that make the real difference.

Of course, the quality of the backlinks is important too but if you are going to concentrate on one objective, it should be the building of links. Ensure your text links use the keyword phrases you are optimizing for and you’ll find you quickly climb the ranks of the search engines.

Broken down, however, Search Engine Optimization (aka SEO) is really not that difficult to understand.

The search engines, like Google, try their best to “index” web pages for terms they believe are relevant to the content found on the page. They do this because it’s in their best interest… the better their results, the more likely users will continue to use their search engine.

As each “search engine results page” includes about ten “organic listings” (i.e. those you don’t have to pay for) your goal is to have your page indexed on “Page One” for a set of terms you believe relevant to your content and business.

To do this, you simply give the search engines what they want.

So, what do search engines want?

Search engines want a number of things but here are some of the “core ingredients” that are common to Google, Yahoo and Bing:

1. Quality content (and design).

The better your content is, the more likely the search engines are to help you promote your content through better search engine placement.

But how do the search engines determine the quality of your content? Since they do this through an automated process, they had to come up with metric that would allow them to make an educated guess.

They measure the time each visitor stays on a page and also watch where the visitor goes when they leave. If they stay on your site for several minutes and then visit another page on your site, that’s good. If they leave your page in 5 seconds and never return, that’s bad.

2. Ability to easily determine what phrases to index your pages for.

As your pages will be found when someone conducts an internet search, the search engines need to index your pages for terms (called keyword phrases) they believe are most relevant to your on-page content.

You can help them by ensuring that each page of your site is optimized around 1-3 keyword phrases. After choosing which keyword phrases to target, make sure to add them to your “meta page title” and “meta page description” at minimum.

Also, it’s important that these keyword phrases appear somewhere on your actual page… the content that can be read by your human visitors.

This helps the search engines to index your pages more easily and you will be rewarded for your work.

3. Getting as many “votes” as possible for each page of your site.

In internet terms, each link to your site is seen as a “vote” that your page is relevant to the piece of text that is linked.

So, if you want a particular page of your site found for the keyword phrase, “best los angeles plumber,” you’d be wise to get as many websites as possible to link to your page using this phrase in their “anchor text.”

Anchor text is merely the words that create the clickable link. If the phrase, “best los angeles plumber,” is linked to your web page, you just earned a “vote” for that page.

The more links you can get with that term, the more likely your page will be to rank well for it.

While there are hundreds of techniques to improve the SEO of a website, these principles are truly the foundation. If your pages contain great content/design, are optimized for a handful of relevant keyword phrases and are linked to from other web properties, you’re on your way to improved search engine placement.

And most small business owners do a pretty good job of establishing that Web presence. However, there are also some very common missteps that a lot of SMB sites make. Here are four of the most common mistakes I see on small business Web sites and how owners can avoid them to improve their business.

Bad Design = No Credibility

Building a professional looking Web site is one of the most powerful ways to gain instant credibility with visitors. When someone lands on your site, they’re going to take one glance and immediately use it to determine whether or not they can trust your business. If your site looks too templated, too ugly, or like you just threw it together in an hour with things not in their proper place, they probably won’t find you trustworthy enough to do business with. And they’ll leave for a competitor.

Luckily, you don’t have to be an expert Web designer to create a credible looking Web site. There are plenty of low cost or even free WordPress themes like Thesis that site owners can use to help give themselves the basics in professional looking Web design. If you don’t trust yourself to design your site, put up flyers at the local colleges asking for some cheap help. A college or even high school student in need of some real world examples to add to their resume or portfolio will likely jump at the chance to help build a local site. The goal of your Web site is to naturally attract the people who will be looking for you. You want to make sure your site is giving off the right message and will pass that 5-second test.

Your Conversion Funnel is Too Long

If you’re an e-commerce site looking to increase conversions, try removing some of the unnecessary steps cluttering up your conversion funnel. Count how many screens there are between when a customer puts a product in their shopping cart to that final confirmed checkout. Is it more than three? If so, you may want to check your analytics to see how many visitors are abandoning from the shopping cart. Typically, each additional hoop that you make a customer jump through to buy something, the less likely it is you’re going to make that sale and the more likely it is someone will leave your site prematurely.

A lot of the small business Web sites I’ve come across try to get as much information about customers as they can before they let them go. They want all sorts of demographic information so that they can sign them up for a newsletter or better market to them in the future. While I understand your need for this information, take the hit and remove some of it. Let them make their purchase and then create follow up emails or other marketing to help you collect additional info. Putting too many steps between click “buy” and not actually letting a visitor buy something is a big usability error for a lot of SMB sites.

There’s No Method Behind The Madness

Before you create your Web site, lay out a strategy behind it. What is the purpose of the site? To educate? To sell? To build a community? To simply form a presence? Whatever your goal is, that’s going to have a large say in how it’s developed, how things are arranged on page and the type of Web site that you create. Unfortunately, many small business owners (and large business owners, for that matter), don’t take this into consideration before building out the Web site. They get so wrapped up in just getting something out that there that they end up creating a site that isn’t usable or useful to searchers.

Your first step in creating your Web site is to outline the goals for that online presence. From there you’ll be able to identify your calls to action and key content themes so that you can build around them. You want to know how the site will be used so that you can incorporate your navigation in a way that will be intuitive for users. You want to create content that will reinforce what you’re trying to accomplish, it should be informative, and it should put people on a path to do whatever it is you want them to do. If you don’t create a Web strategy before building the site, you’re going to lose your focus and value for users.

There’s No Reason To Re-Visit

The fatal flaw of virtually all small business Web sites is that they offer no reason for someone to ever revisit the site. You got the email? The phone number? Good, because that’s all this site has to offer.

In order for your site to be interesting to users, there has to be some degree of dynamic or changing content. If everything is static and stays the same, why would someone come back? And as the search engines start looking at user interaction to determine rankings, these factors become more important. Find ways to incorporate dynamic content onto your Web site. Whether it’s a site coupon that updates monthly, changing video content, a blog, some type of widget providing news, etc., create something that will get people engaging on your site and make them keep visiting. By providing this type of content, you also give them incentive to become “members” of your site and to register — thereby getting you that valuable demographic information you lightened up on to increase conversions. Slick, eh?

Those are some of the biggest problems I see with small business Web sites? Any common flaws that particularly get you?