How To Start An Internet Business ? Site Layout

The fourth step of how to start an Internet business involves the layout of your site. When organizing it, two audiences must be considered. Obviously, visitors to the site are the first audience. You must also keep in mind the second audience, search engine robots. Both audiences are extremely important and, fortunately, both want the same thing.

Lean, Mean Layout

Your site needs to be clean and quick if you want to be successful. Slow, cluttered sites inevitably fail because visitors and spiders get distracted and leave before taking the action you want. Let's take a closer look.

Visitors

The layout of your site should allow visitors to quickly find information and solutions. To achieve this, every page should be no more than two clicks from the home page. Have you ever been on a site where you have to hunt to find a particular page? Poor layouts are aggravating and hurt conversion rates.

Make things as easy as possible by interlinking between the site pages. Every page should have links to primary pages and as many other pages as possible. If you look at good site, links to primary pages are listed across the top and bottom of each page. Links to specific services or products are always listed on each page. It may sound like overkill, but make it as easy as possible for your clients to move around.

Spiders

Search engines use programs called "spiders" to surf the net and index sites. When a spider finds a page, it reads the code from top to bottom and left to right. If the code is clean, the spider will index the page and follow the links to the other pages of the site.

If the code isn't clean, spiders stop indexing pages. If pages aren't indexed, they do not appear in search engine results. What stops spiders? Following are the most common problems:

1. Bottlenecks ? Make sure each page of your site links to every primary page at a minimum. You do not want a spider to get stuck on a page and miss others.

2. Dynamic Pages ? Your pages need to be static or carefully designed. If dynamic, spiders often will not index them because they aren't sure of the content.

3. Frames ? Don't use this antiquated design technique.

4. Poor URLs ? A huge mistake is to put database parameters in the URL. The URL should contain only the domain name and keywords for the page. A good URL reads: http://www.marketingtitan.com/internet_marketing_services. A poor URL with parameters would read: http://www.marketingtitan.com/id#us57486&095783

5. Images ? Don't overuse images and don't put text in images. Images slow down your site, so make them small and optimized. Robots do not read text inside of images, thus text needs to go outside of the images or ALT tags need to be used.

Evaluating The Layout

Once the site is designed, TEST IT! Surf the pages and see if you are able to flow through the site. Add internal links wherever possible. Finally, test the load times of your site on a 56k dial-up modem. If the site loads in under 20 seconds, you are headed in the correct direction.

Your site layout is important. Make sure it caters to the needs of the visitors, whether human or spider.

Halstatt Pires is with http://www.marketingtitan.com - an Internet marketing and advertising company comprised of a search engine optimization specialist providing meta tag optimization services and Internet marketing consultant providing internet marketing solutions through integrated design and programming services.

---

Accepting Credit Cards For Your Online Business

Did you know that one of the best ways to... Read More

How To Accept Credit Cards Online

Anyone with an online business, whether for auctions, services, or... Read More

The Census and the E-Commerce Wave

Understanding business and product sales can sometimes put me in... Read More

Merchant Accounts: What They Can Do For You

Congratulations! You created an impulse in a customer to buy... Read More

How to Get Free Internet Merchant Accounts

This article will show small businesses how to get free... Read More

How To Start An Internet Business ? Content, Content, Content

When it comes to e-commerce, the time-tested cliché is, "Content... Read More

Shopping Cart Features to Consider

Often the simplest Web stores have the most success. But... Read More

How To Prevent Your 3rd Party Merchant Account From Suspension

What would you do if you were sent an email... Read More

How to Generate Cash from Your Web Site

The Internet has changed the way people do business today.... Read More

Grow Your Business Using B2B Emarketplace ? Part II

Selecting the right emarketplaceAlthough, IT spending has been staying flat... Read More

Intranet Portals ? Personalisation and Customisation

The key difference between an (old-fashioned) Intranet and a PortalWhat... Read More

Precautions Necessary for an Online Brokerage Business

Maybe no business requiring little or no capital pays as... Read More

Coupons & Rebates

Yes, it's true, coupons are not just for newspapers anymore.... Read More

Your Site is all Direct Marketing

This may not be a popular view, but I think... Read More

Online Business- What Makes It a Success!

Only a few manage to sell everything under the sun... Read More

Your Affiliate Web Site Is Built ? Now What?

When I first got my web site built, I thought... Read More

Starting An E-Commerce Business

The development and expansion of the Internet has made business... Read More

Leveraging Open Source Technology

Open Source applications can bring unique value to business owners.... Read More

10 Tips To Build, Manage And Profit From An E-Commerce Website

Just because you've built your e-commerce website doesn't mean the... Read More

Is Your Business Afraid of the Internet?

My Business is Afraid of the InternetBill Gates, CEO of... Read More

Choosing on Order Fulfillment Service

When your eCommerce business grows to the point where you... Read More

Electronic Commerce Tax Jurisdiction and Principles of Permanent Establishment

The principle of "permanent establishment" is very important for avoidance... Read More

7 Key Steps To Reduce Refunds and Chargebacks

One sure-fire way to loosing out big time on your... Read More

E-marketplaces from Sellers Perspective

What is an E-marketplace anyway?E-marketplace is a business to business... Read More

Accept Credit Cards Online Without A Merchant Account

It is often assumed if you want to accept credit... Read More

Why Ecommerce is Not Ready for My Daughter or Me

As the mother of a teenage clothing fanatic I'm often... Read More

Rules for Achieving Online Success

The Internet brought a great deal of benefits to our... Read More

Effective Management Of Your Customer Services

With a third party merchant account you will have a... Read More

How to Write a Landing Page

Is there a difference between writing a landing page and... Read More

Do You Need A Merchant Account?

Deciding when to get your own merchant account for internet... Read More

Maximize Your Froogling for Increased Website Profits

Are you familiar with Froogle? If you are an online... Read More

Evaluating Vendors of Ecommerce Fulfillment Services

Once your website has secured an order, you have to... Read More

The ClickBank E-Commerce Solution

ClickBank.com can offer you multiple solutions for your e-commerce business.... Read More