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.
There are F words in business. We have seen many... Read More
The birth of the Internet and the mass availability of... Read More
Did you know that 80% of all sales are made... Read More
Business-to-business service providers have a wide range of tactics they... Read More
Is shopping online becoming popular and safe enough for you... Read More
Drop Shippers, the manufacturers or distributors who are willing to... Read More
Businesses, which are still sitting on sidelines and not doing... Read More
Let me share with you a secret that most marketing... Read More
Shopping Cart Installation And SetupShopping cart technology has evolved to... Read More
A year ago, I had big plans to re-vamp my... Read More
If you want to sell on the internet, your need... Read More
PayPal is secure in its domination over the electronic payment... Read More
Greetings!Friends and relitives ask us all the time " How... Read More
When most people think of a retirement gift, they think... Read More
A beginner's guide to setting up a successful online store... Read More
Ecommerce use to be about spending thousands of dollars on... Read More
For some people, shopping online is as normal as driving... Read More
For anyone who has completed research regarding e-commerce, there are... Read More
The development and expansion of the Internet has made business... Read More
When it comes to e-commerce, the time-tested cliché is, "Content... Read More
E-gold is a digital currency, used extensively on the Internet... Read More
As you may have noted, there are thousands or even... Read More
Nowadays, shopping online is a very common thing. Making your... Read More
The Internet is the fastest growing source of mail order... Read More
Many people online today still believe that buying tobacco products... Read More
The 21st century has introduced the world to a new... Read More
My previous article I wrote called "One Point Two Billion"... Read More
Open Source applications can bring unique value to business owners.... Read More
SSL ("Secured Socket Layer") is a protocol used to... Read More
Far too many people get ripped off when setting up... Read More
The principle of "permanent establishment" is very important for avoidance... Read More
Participation in B2B Exchanges is increasingly becoming one of the... Read More
Three years ago I was doing some work for a... Read More
Did you know that 80% of all sales are made... Read More
What is an E-marketplace anyway?E-marketplace is a business to business... Read More
Online shopping is convenient, but many companies whose web sites... Read More
Participation in B2B Exchanges is increasingly becoming one of the... Read More
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose... Read More
Businesses, which are still sitting on sidelines and not doing... Read More
My previous article I wrote called "One Point Two Billion"... Read More
--Online Commerce--E-Commerce website is all about selling products and services... Read More
Internet has opened a new era of business opportunities. Each... Read More
Many people are saying that the internet is dead. So... Read More
Many surfers already know about Froogle, Google's shopping portal that... Read More
When most people think of a retirement gift, they think... Read More
by Jamila White, "The E-Commerce Diva"In the rush to keep... Read More
Can you encounter the number of times where a Credit... Read More
As you may have noted, there are thousands or even... Read More
There are lots of ways to advertise for free but... Read More
The Internet began as a male dominated medium, but those... Read More
Online customer service is still one of the most frequently... Read More
The concept of this is for you to offer a... Read More
You want to succeed at eCommerce? Welcome to a very... Read More
The chief criteria for judging an ecommerce shopping cart are... Read More
If you have been wrestling with the idea of applying... Read More
If you're a writer, researcher, subject matter expert, enthusiastic hobbyist,... Read More
What would you do if you were sent an email... Read More
E-commerce offers customers the chance to eliminate many stages in... Read More
Shopping online has become more and more popular in America... Read More
Back in 1998 (through 2000 or so), I worked for... Read More
One sure-fire way to loosing out big time on your... Read More
E-commerce offers customers the chance to eliminate many stages in... Read More
Have you ever gone to the store and thought you... Read More
Online shopping can be a little frightening to people who... Read More
Did you know that one of the best ways to... Read More
If you have little or no capital but you want... Read More
E-commerce |