Testing your site is one of the
last steps in the production of your web site.
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Probably the
best and most effective way of testing your site is to
get people to come and have a look before you promote
and advertise.
Ask for constructive criticism and make notes of what
they say. You can use your friends, work associates,
or go to a few forums and ask for a review. Also use a
couple of different browsers to check how everything
loads and always check your links. It is a good idea
to check your site from other computers every now and
then, just to see how it all comes together. |
CHANGE,
TEST & LISTEN
I helped a young member of my
team create a web site and made sure I left him alone, so it
would not simply be a clone of my talents. He worked on it for
about three weeks and then sent me a link for his new site. I
am always amazed when I get to share with others, as they
always have a very different slant and produce work that
include things that I never thought of. I guess that's why the
old saying "two heads are better than one" is so
true, especially when it comes to web page design.
It only took a few minor
adjustments to his writing style and a little bit on his
layout and he had a really nice site ready for publishing. By
the way, I learnt a great tip for writing. Find a style you
like then copy the information out by hand. After a while you
will find that style starts to flow from your fingers.
Finally, you will use one of
the free sites like we did in this workshop, to test your
site, before uploading to your final host. You can continue to
use topcities as your host, if you like. This also gives you a
place to try new things before you go "live" and
gives you a good backup of your work. Remember a web site is
never finished. It is always a work in progress.
PRE
ADVERTISING & PROMOTING
Just because
you have loaded your pages you will not usually get many
visitors until you advertise and announce you are open, so
check everything first.
Once you start
making more complex pages you may want to check them more
thoroughly and use some validating software for this. On the
left hand side go to Validating and read about how to test
your pages.
One last
suggestion is that you go to your site and try printing any
pages you think people may want to print. This may be your
products page or any information people may require off line.
There is nothing worse than having a great looking page online
and printing it out only to find that because you put white
text on a background it will not print.
Also just check
what you have named your pages. When you open your page, what
is the text in the top left hand corner? At the top of this
page it is called "Workshop - Test". If you were
able to bookmark this page that is what the book mark would
read. You can change this in the page properties of the
composer.
Now that your site is
up and running you can promote
and advertise it.
Writing SEO
Copy - 8 Steps to Success
By Glenn
Murray
We
all know that the lion's share of web traffïc comes through
the search engines. We also know that keywords and links to
your site are the two things that affect your ranking in the
search engines. Your keywords tell the search engines what you
do, and the inbound links tell them how important you are.
This combination is what determines your relevance. And
relevance is what the search engines are after.
There's a lot of information around about how to
incorporate keyword phrases into your HTML meta tags. But
that's only half the battle. You need to think of these tags
as street-signs. That's how the search engines view them. They
look at your tags and then at your copy. If the keywords you
use in your tags aren't used in your copy, your site won't be
indexed for those keywords.
But the search engines don't stop there. They also consider
how often the keyword phrase is used on the page.
To put it simply, if you don't pepper your site with your
primary keywords, you won't appear in the search results when
a potential customer searches for those keywords.
But how do you write keyword-rich copy without compromising
readability?
Readability is all-important to visitors. And after all,
it's the visitors that buy your product or service, not search
engines.
By following these 8 simple guidelines, you'll be able to
overhaul the copy on your website ensuring it's agreeable to
both search engines and visitors.
1)
Categorize Your Pages
Before writing, think about the structure of your site. If
you haven't built your site yet, try to create your pages
around key offerings or benefits. For example, divide your
Second Hand Computers site into separate pages for Macs, and
PCs, and then segment again into Notebooks, Desktops, etc.
This way, you'll be able to incorporate very specific keyword
phrases into your copy, thereby capturing a very targeted
market. If you're working on an existing site, print out each
page and label it with its key point, offering, or benefit.
2)
Find Out What Keywords Your Customers Are Searching For
At
MSIncome we use Overture's
Search Term Suggestion Tool to find the most appropriate
Keyword Ranking Phrase to market our client's websites. Type in
the key points, offerings, and benefits you identified for
each page, and spend some time analyzing what words customers
use when they're searching for these things. These are the
words you'll want to use to describe your product or service.
3)
Use Phrases, Not Single Words
Although this advice isn't specific to the web copy, it's
so important that it's worth repeating here. Why? Well
firstly, there's too much competition for single keywords. If
you're in computer salës, don't choose "computers"
as your primary keyword. Go to Google and search for
"computers" and you'll see why... Secondly, research
shows that customers are becoming more search-savvy - they're
searching for more and more specific strings. They're learning
that by being more specific, they find what they're looking
for much faster. Ask yourself what's unique about your
business? Perhaps you sell cheap second hand computers? Then
why not use "cheap second hand computers" as
your primary keyword phrase. This way, you'll not only stand a
chance in the rankings, you'll also display in much more
targeted searches. In other words, a higher percentage of your
site's visitors will be people after cheap second hand
computers. (WordTracker's results will help you choose the
most appropriate phrases.)
4)
Pick the Important Keyword Phrases
Don't include every keyword phrase on every page. Focus on
one or two keyword phrases on each page. For your Macs page,
focus on "cheap second hand macs". For the
PCs page, focus on "cheap second hand pcs",
etc.
5)
Be Specific
Don't just say "our computers". Wherever
you would normally say "our computers", ask yourself
if you can get away with saying "our cheap second hand
Macs" or "our cheap second hand PCs".
If this doesn't affect \ your readability too badly, it's
worth doing. It's a fine balance though. Remember, your site
reflects the quality of your service. If your site is hard to
read, people will infer a lot about your service...
6)
Use Keyword Phrases In Links
Although you shouldn't focus on every keyword phrase on
every page, it's a good idea to link your pages together with
text links. This way, when the search engines look at your
site, they'll see that the pages are related. Once again, the
more text links the better, especially if the link text is a
keyword phrase. So on your "Cheap Second Hand Macs"
page, include a text link at the bottom to "Cheap
Second Hand PCs". If you can manage it without
affecting readability, also include one within the copy of the
page. For example, "As well as providing cheap second
hand Macs, we sell high quality cheap second hand PCs".
TIP: If you don't want your links to be underlined and blue,
include the following in your CSS file:
<style type="text/css">
<!--
a {text-decoration: none;}
-->
</style>
Then format the HTML of each link as follows:
As well as providing cheap second hand Macs, we sell high
quality
<a href="pcs.htm"
style="text-decoration:none"><font color="#000000">
cheap second hand pcs</font></a>.
7)
Use Keyword Phrases In Headings
Just as customers rely on headings to scan your site, so do
search engines. This means headings play a big part in how the
search engines will categorize your site. Try to include your
primary keyword phrases in your headings. In fact, think about
inserting extra headings just for this purpose. Generally this
will also help the readability of the site because it will
help customers scan read.
8)
Test Keyword Phrase Density
Once you've made a first pass at the copy, run it through a
density checker to get some metrics. Visit GoRank.com
and type in the domain and keyword phrase you want to analyze.
It'll give you a percentage for all the important parts of
your page, including copy, title, meta keywords, meta
description, etc. The higher the density the better. Generally
speaking, a density measurement of at least 3-5% is what
you're looking for. Any less, and you'll probably need to take
another pass.
Follow these guidelines, and you'll be well on your way to
effective SEO copy.
Just remember, don't overdo it. It's not easy to find the
balance between copy written for search engines and copy
written for customers. In many cases, this balance will be too
difficult to achieve without professional help. Don't worry,
though. If you've already performed your keyword analysis, a
professional website copywriter should be able to work your
primary keyword phrases into your copy at no extra charge.
About
The Author of this Article
Glenn Murray heads copywriting studio Divine
Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com.
Visit www.divinewrite.com
for further details.
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