Optimise Everything

Optimising everything means building a good website, from colours to code, and maximising every opportunity for your website and your business. Optimise Everything

Everything?
Yep, as much as you can.
Things like:
Your Website’s Code
Your Website’s Googlability
Your Website’s Content
Your Website’s Presence
Your Website’s Processes
Your Website Knowledge

Best of Both Worlds
In just about anything you do, equal amounts of energy should be towards making your website:
Better for your visitors.
Better for Google.
In that order.

Download Times – The smaller the files, the quicker the Googlebot can download and index each page before moving on to the next one.
Credibility – A “lighter” and well-designed page tells Google that you’re serious about delivering your content more efficiently.

Your Website’s Code Turn this…

Your Website’s Code Into this…

Your Website’s Code Making this… Look like this…

Your Website’s Code Or even this… Into this…

Clean HTML.
JS and CSS include files.
Flash is fine – in moderation, no content in it though and not in main navigation.
“ Lighter” files.

Your Googlability
Are your site’s pages in Google’s index?
All of them?
Do your pages have proper metas?
Are you showing in the right Google results?
Do you have a robots.txt or a sitemap.xml?
Got Analytics?
Got Maps?
Are you unknowingly breaking any rules?

Your Googlability
Is your site even indexed?
Yes? Rock on. Make sure Googs has the right number of pages.

Your Googlability
Is your site even indexed?
No? Well that’s poo. What’s the story?
Faulty “disallow” in a robots.txt?
Crappy JavaScript menus that the Googlebot can’t read?
No inbound links? (a few quality links are roughly eleventy billion times better than submitting to a search engine – they even tell you this)

Your Googlability
If you don’t have one, get a Google Account.
No really. If you haven’t got one, go get one now, we’ll wait here…

Your Googlability
Go into Webmaster Tools - Add your site.

Your Googlability
Diagnostics – HTML Suggestions
Duplicates, long, short or missing metas are all easy to fix and are all important.

Your Googlability
Crawlability
Robots.txt - Check the one you’ve got or build your own.

Your Googlability
Site Settings
Geotargetting is probably most important here. Particularly if you’ve got a .com hosted in the US.

Your Googlability
Sitemap.xml
They tell you that you don’t need one for smaller sites, but it doesn’t hurt to have anyway. Don’t have one? Google “XML Sitemap” and you’ll get sites that’ll do it for free in seconds.

Your Googlability
If you haven’t yet, get some Google Analytics.
Just like WMTs, it’s free and easy. Do it now and you’ll see why later.

Your Googlability
Same goes for Google Maps.
And this is too easy as well. Be ready for the phone to ring or wait months for a postcard.

Site is indexed
WMTs/Crawlability - Robots.txt/Sitemap.xml
WMTs/Geotargeting
WMTs/HTML Suggestions
Google Analytics
Google Maps
No broken rules
Your Googlability

Your Site’s Content
What’s your site about?
What keywords should you target?
How many should you use?
How should you use them?
Does your content already include them?
If not, can your content support them?

What does Google think your site is about?
In Google WMTs, “Keywords” tells us much more reliable info than even “Top search queries” which can be poo in it’s reliability.

Your homepage should tell all, particularly the <title>.

Keywords
Start by Googling “keyword tool” and you can safely use any of the top 5 results.
Google Keyword Tool
Google Again
Wordtracker
More Google
Keyword Discovery
IMPORTANT: None of these are completely accurate, they are only estimations.

Google
Keyword Tool
External
(Why “external?”
No idea.)

WordTracker

Google
Search-based
Keyword
Tool
(Why’s it different from
the “external” tool?
Not really sure on this
one either. Meant to be
search-based)

Trellian’s
Keyword
Discovery

Keyword Tools
Most get their data from existing sites in their database, not actual searches.
Most are US-centric and offer little in the way of International data (sure they say they do…)
Most run off of the Overture database, which is Yahoo!
Use them for ideas, not as hard evidence. They are great as comparative tools but not much more.

Keywords
Pick about 3 that are different enough to each other though are still relevant to your business (aquarium supplies, fish tanks, tropical fish).
Target one page of your website for each keyword (be thinking about which page when you choose your keywords too).
Use them on the page:
Meta Title – Short and Sweet.
Meta Description – Different from page copy. This is your “sales pitch” and will really only
be seen in search engine results pages.
Page Content – Use of the actual keyword is important, but the contextual copy is the most
important (if you’re writing about cars and use “tropical fish” then it’s not as relevant as an
entire paragraph about fish and fish stuff).
Link Text – In the menu, in the page copy on other pages and even in the footer if you do it
properly.
Don’t be SPAMMY and stupid with things. Write copy for people AND Google, in that order.

Keyword
Usage
Typical example of on-site keyword usage.

Use Keyword Tools to get ideas.
Make sure they are relevant to your site.
Pick 3 keywords or so.
Use them on your site.
If regionally-targeted (“fish tanks perth”) then make that as part of your keyword usage as well (without being spammy).

Where is your site mentioned (text or link)?
What is the context of this mention?
How many times?
Are YOU out there mentioning your website?
Where should you mention your website?

Inbound Links

Your Brand
Googled

Business Directories
TrueLocal
Clickfind
Hotfrog
Startlocal
Yellow Pages Online
DMOZ
Many are free and also use information directly from TrueLocal, Yellow Pages Online or DMOZ. Be wary of directories that ask for a reciprocal link and avoid India (for their link-farming and spamming – not for other stuff).

Forums/Social Bookmarking Sites
Find relevant communities to travel in.
Pay particular attention to any posted rules.
Be active in said community.
Be active for a suitable period of time before blatantly promoting your site.
Keep being active in said community.
Be a valued member, not a wanker.
When possible, use your keywords as backlinks to your site (Profiles and Signatures).
Do all this without being spammy, of course (see “wanker” reference above).

Blogs/Personal Sites
Best kind of word-of-mouth.
Keep contextual relevance – link should be in page copy, not on a page with 75 others that all say “click here”.
Typically avoid reciprocal links.
Link from your own personal site/blog or have friends do it (link from theirs, not have them do it from yours – that’s just weird).
Don’t pay for links.

Business Sites
Next best kind of word-of-mouth.
Reciprocal links are fine, as long as they’re relevant.
Build small business community and foster goodwill.
Don’t pay for links.

Got links? Find out.
Get listed on some business directories.
Join some communities – Forums and Social Media. Be active and not wanky.
Link your business from your personal site/blog – encourage your mother-in-law to do so as well (she might).
Link up with other sites that aren’t direct competition – try to give your visitors value, others will do the same.

What’s your website’s main purpose?
Is that clear on your site?
Are you website’s goals clear to you?
Is completion of these goals trackable?

Main Purpose
Don’t be afraid to state it.
Don’t be afraid to state it all over the place – where relevant.
Clarity of purpose – don’t make people think too much.

Common Goals for a Website:
Contact Form
Newsletter/Membership Signup
Information/Branding
e-Commerce Purchase
Download

Homepage:

Takes us to our goal:
With an address, email address, phone number and Google Map.

A random page:
Even though it’s a huge page all about “Hatching Brine Shrimp” we still encourage them to contact, driving them towards the goal.

Site’s main purpose is clear and upfront on most pages.
Visitors are encouraged to flow along with main goals.
Goals are quantifiable and trackable.

How many visitors are you getting?
How did they get there?
Are they doing what you want on your site?
If not, what are they doing on your site?

Back to Google Analytics
Set up your website goals as a “Goals” within Google Analytics.

Google Analytics Dashboard
Analytics Dashboard can be overwhelming. How DO you measure “Bounce Rate”?

Custom Reports
Create a custom report with whatever you want to see in it.

Sample Report
Visits, Avg Time on Site, Pages/Visit, Bounce Rate, Goal Conversion Rate.

Custom Delivered
Get a PDF, CSV, etc dropped into your inbox weekly or monthly. Lazy = Brilliant.

Fly on the wall…
Set up Google Alerts to “listen out” for your brand name, or keywords that you’re interested in. Once again, your inbox can get visited by the fabled “Laziness Fairy”.

Tracking website visitors.
Quantifying website success.
Making it make sense.
Making it easy to stay on top of.

Did we get “everything”?
Yep, as much as we can for now.
We did our best to optimise:
Code
Googlability
Content
Presence
Processes
Knowledge

Optimisation – A Word optimise - get the most out of; use best; Admittedly, with a such a diverse and ever-changing medium that has certain “rules” that are ambiguous at best, “optimisation” in terms of a website really is a misnomer. The simple truth is we do the best we have with what we can. Experiment. Analyse. Adjust. Whether it’s your signature on a small-business forum or making it just that much easier to complete the sale once on your website… Optimise Everything.

Optimise Everything

by Jex Analytics on Nov 08, 2009

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

Statistics

Optimise Everything — Presentation Transcript