#6: Company Website Pages Take Forever to Load

If your website does not load in an expected amount of time, users will leave. It may sound like an unreasonable ultimatum, but it’s true: 47 percent of customers on e-commerce websites expect their site to load in two seconds or less, and 40 percent will abandon a site that takes more than three seconds to load.

Do yourself a favor – check out Google’s Page Speed tools to make sure your website is as quick as it needs to be. If it’s not, consider either upgrading your hosting or cutting content that takes to long to load from your website’s pages. A variety of things like interactive ads, uncompressed images, and JavaScript can negatively impact page load times.

#7: Unnecessary Content

It’s incredible how some people have a knack for talking your ear off without saying anything remotely useful. That’s not a good talent to have, especially online where users are bombarded with information.

From a Web design perspective, that means that if your website is loaded with unnecessary information, or the sitemap is filled with too many bells and whistles, people are likely to get frustrated and ditch out for a competitor. Be succinct and keep it simple. Lengthy text should be shortened, making use of headings and subheadings to break up the text and help users scan through page content.

#8: Neglecting Mobile Users

It’s somewhat baffling how many webmasters still don’t see the importance of mobile. After all, mobile searches now outrank desktop searches, and smartphones are quickly supplanting computers as the browsing device of choice. If you haven’t taken active measures to support mobile – for instance, through the implementation of responsive web design – you need to pull yourself out of the past immediately. Mobile-optimized content is vital for good usability on the mobile devices that your visitors use to visit your website. Mobile website visitors should be able to easily scan and read important content, as well as complete basic tasks like finding your contact information.

#9: Missing Your Target

As a web marketer, you understand how important it is to know your target audience. You’ve probably spent hours creating customer profiles and figuring out how to attract consumer attention. This is just as significant in web design. The way your website looks and “feels” will naturally attract a certain type of visitor. Some websites are highly professional; some are trendy and hip, while others are fun and bubbly. Sometimes, a website tries to speak to too many audiences. If you try to please too many types of customers, you can end up with a confusing website that appeals to none of them. Identify and profile your target audience, and cater to their needs.

#10: Poor Navigation

Navigation issues will kill your website’s popularity fast. We live in an age where everything is delivered to us in an instant, and anything longer will make visitors abandon your site. Making your navigation menu difficult to find or use are common web design mistakes. Have you ever been to a website and you can’t find the menu or a search bar? It’s quite frustrating. Make sure the navigational aspects of your website are easily understood and even easier to notice.

Conclusion

If you want to avoid frustrated users that abandon your website, you need the following features:

• Support for mobile users
• A clean, crisp interface
• No excess information; provide users only what you know they’ll want to see
• Fast load times
• A clear and consistent brand message throughout
• Professional, high-quality content that is free of mistakes (e.g. broken links, spelling errors)

To get started fixing up your website, you can check out our top 5 tips for creating a powerful homepage for your website. In addition, if you would like your website reviewed by one of our experts for free, please visit CueCamp and request your free marketing analysis video. You will receive a 5-10 minute video that analyzes the usability and marketing effectiveness of your website, delivered within 48 hours.

Written by: Michel Ann Sharritt
Posted by: CueCamp

The post Part 2: Are You Making the Biggest Web Design Mistakes on Your Company Website? appeared first on CueCamp.

CueCamp has put a list together of the top five items a powerful homepage design should have in order to retain users.

#1 Include Sharp Imagery

The images that you use on your homepage should be crisp, clear, and showcase your company in a way that embodies your brand’s vision. The images should inspire your website visitors to learn more about your company. One should remember that a website is a highly visual experience. People react to graphics and visuals differently than they do to words.

TIP: It’s also important to avoid using obvious stock photos. While sometimes useful, generic images are a dead give away that your company didn’t spend time on design.

#2 Choosing Fonts

You might not realize it, but the font you choose for your homepage has a psychological effect on your visitors and greatly influences how they feel towards your brand. Understanding your product or service is key to figuring out what font to choose for your website. Always choose a font that is simple, easy to read, and reflects the personality of your business culture.

TIP: Avoid using too many different fonts on your homepage; you want the homepage to have a feel of cohesion and uniformity.

#3 Use of Color

In the same way that your fonts have a psychological effect on your users, your color scheme affects how users interpret and engage with your website. Not only can a poor choice of color send users away, it affects how you communicate your brand to the public. Incorporating too many colors will confuse your branding, while the wrong colors will make the wrong impression.

TIP: Always choose colors for your website that are welcoming and true to your brand. It is always best to start with the colors that are used within your company logo. It helps to keep branding consistent throughout the website.

#4 Keep it Simple

Whenever our team designs a homepage we always look at the design like we are the user coming to the website for the first time. What impression do you want to give? What items need to be front and center?

The mistake that many designers make is adding tons of widgets, calls-to-action, links and other clutter that can distract or overwhelm the user. Ultimately the user is going to get confused and leave the website.

Here are a few design tips for keeping your homepage simple:

• Use easy-to-read text
• Provide plenty of white space
• Clearly label the different sections of your website (don’t make users hunt for info)
• Do not clutter up your homepage with ads, links, calls-to-action, or pop-up chat boxes

#5 Establish Your Identity

You want your website to make a statement about what your company is all about. This is probably the #1 most important part of your homepage design. Too many times, your homepage is designed with too many goals in mind. Creating a unique design, including an interesting logo and memorable look for your homepage, is important in retaining users and encouraging them to return to your site in the future.

Your homepage should:

• Introduce your company to your website’s visitors
• Provide them with clear paths to other pages on your site
• Give them a strong sense of your company’s brand and identity

Your homepage design is undoubtedly an important part of both your website and your company’s success. From immediately appealing to your visitors, to providing them with a user-friendly navigation experience, your homepage is the portal through which they can discover your company and ultimately, your brand.

We hope that this article helped to inspire your company to re-examine your company homepage. In the meantime, if you would like your website reviewed, please visit CueCamp and request your free marketing analysis video. You will receive a 5-10 minute video that analyzes the usability and marketing effectiveness of your website, delivered within 48 hours.

#cuecamptips

Written by: Michel Sharritt
Posted by: CueCamp

The post How to Create a Powerful Homepage for Your Website appeared first on CueCamp.

Moreover, “highly prototypical” sites – those with layouts commonly associated with sites of it’s category – with simple visual design were rated as the most beautiful across the board.

In other words, the study found the simpler the design, the better.

But why?

In this article, we’ll examine why things like cognitive fluency and visual information processing theory can play a critical role in simplifying your web design & how a simpler design could lead to more conversions.

We’ll also look at a few case studies of sites that simplified their design, and how it improved their conversion rate, as well as give a few pointers to simplify your own design.

What is a Prototypical Website?

If I said “furniture” what image pops up in your mind?  If you’re like 95% of people, you think of a chair. If I ask what color represents “boy” you think “blue”, girl = pink, car = sedan, bird = robin, etc.

Prototypicality is the basic mental image your brain creates to categorize everything you interact with. From furniture to websites, your brain has created a template for how things should look and feel.

Online, prototypicality breaks down into smaller categories. You have a different, but specific mental image for social networks, e-commerce sites, and blogs – and if any of those particular websites are missing something from your mental image,  you reject the site on conscious and subconscious levels.

If I said “Online clothing store for trendy 20-somethings” you might envision something like this:

image credit

This follows the “online clothing store” prototype so closely, that it shares many attributes with the wireframe for an online clothing store that sells hip-hop clothing.

image credit

Neither  lacks originality, and it’s unlikely they “stole” from each other. Instead they’re playing into what your basic expectations are of what an e-commerce site should be.

What do you Mean By Cognitive Fluency?

The basic idea behind cognitive fluency is that the brain prefers to think about things that are easy to think about.

That’s why you prefer visiting sites where you instinctively know where everything is at, and you know what actions you’re supposed to take.

“Fluency guides our thinking in situations where we have no idea that it is at work, and it affects us in any situation where we weigh information.” – Uxmatters.com

Cognitive fluency is an stems from another area of behavior known as The Mere Exposure Effect, which basically states that the more times you’re exposed to a stimulus, the more you prefer it.

image source

Again, the rules are the same online.

It’s “familiar” for blogs to have opt-ins on the right sidebar, or e-commerce sites to feature a large hi-resolution image with an attention grabbing headline & the company logo on the top left hand side of the screen.

If your visitors are conditioned to certain characteristics being the standard for a particular category of site, deviating from that could subconsciously put you in the “less beautiful” category.

Here are a handful of e-commerce sites. See if you notice any similarities.

Warning: Whatever you do, for the love of GOD, don’t take what I’m saying as “do what everyone else is doing.”  If you’re not careful, you could really hurt yourself that way.

It’s important to know what design choices are prototypical for a site in your category, but it’s more important to find evidence that supports those design choices resulting in some sort of lift.

A lot of designers make bad choices. Without doing the research, you could make them too.  For example, many e-commerce sites use automatic image sliders to display products, but study after study shows that automatic sliders tank conversions.

What Happens When You Meet Basic Expectations? – A Case Study

In the three images above, everything you’d expect from an ecommerce site is exactly where it’s supposed to be. Even if you’ve never been to the site, there’s inherent “credibility” to the design.

With a high level of fluency, a site will feel familiar enough that visitors don’t need spend mental effort scrutinizing and can instead focus on why they’re on your site in the first place.

When the experience is dis-fluent however, you feel it immediately. Take online tie retailer, Skinnyties.com, who didn’t really look like an e-commerce site until their redesign in October 2012.

Before:

After:

A few key changes that lead to huge results:

• Follows prototypical e-commerce layout themes
• Much more “open” with whitespace.
• Images feature a single product with high-resolution pictures & contrasting colors.

Check out the full case study on this particular redesign, as it shows what is truly possible when updating a site to “fit in” with current prototypical standards.

These are the results of the redesign are staggering for only 2.5 weeks after the launch:

The redesign itself, while pretty, isn’t doing anything groundbreaking. It plays exactly into the expectations of what a modern online clothing retailer should be. It’s “open”, responsive, and has a consistent design language across all of the product pages.

But when contrasted with the old site, it’s very clear that the lack of these common elements were preventing buyers from making purchases on the site.

What Visual Information Processing Has To Do With Site Complexity

In this joint study by Harvard, University of Michigan, and University of Colorado, researchers found strong mathematical correlations for “aesthetically pleasing” between different demographics – For example, participants with PhD’s did not like high colorful websites – but there were no guidelines that emerged for universal appeal.

The only thing that was universal was that the more visually complex a website was, the lower it’s visual appeal.

(Sidebar: if you wish to take the test, you can do it here)

Why Simple is Scientifically Easier To Process

The reason less “visually complex” websites are considered more beautiful is partly because low complexity websites don’t require the eyes and brain to physically work as hard to decode, store and process the information.

Watch this quick video about how the eye sends information to the brain for that to make more sense.

Basically, your retina converts visual information from the real world into electrical impulses. Those impulses are then routed through the appropriate photoreceptor cells to transmit the color and light information to the brain.

The more color and light variations on the page (visual complexity) the more work the eye has to do to send information to the brain.

“…the eye receives visual information and codes information into electric neural activity which is fed back to the brain where it is “stored” and “coded”. This information can be used by other parts of the brain relating to mental activities such as memory, perception and attention.” – Simplypsychology.org

Every Element Communicates Subtle Information

image source

This is why it’s important when designing a website to remember every element –typeography, logo, and color selection – communicates subtle information about the brand.

When these elements don’t do their job, the webmaster often compensates by adding unnecessary copy and/or images, thus adding to the visual complexity of the website, and detracting from the overall aesthetic.

Optimizing a page for visual information processing – specifically simplifying information’s journey from eye to brain – is about communicating as much as you can in as few elements as possible.

While that’s an article all on it’s own, consider MailChimp’s logo redesign as food for thought.

When they decided make the brand grow up, they didn’t add the usual “we’ve been doing email since 2001, 3 million people trust us, here’s why we’re awesome, blah blah blah”

Instead, they tightened up the writing, simplified the website – the top headline simply reads “Send Better Email” – and added an even simpler explainer animation of the core product.

Even though this was part of a bigger growth strategy, the results are still impressive, over a million new users have been added since June, when the new logo was first debuted.

 ”Working Memory” & The Holy Grail of Conversion

What all this simplicity is leading to is what happens once visual information finds it’s way to the brain.

According to the famous research of psychologist George A Miller of Princeton, the average adult brain is able to store between 5-9 “chunks” of information within in the short term, working memory.

Working memory is the part of your brain that temporarily stores and processes information in the course of a few seconds. It’s what allows you to focus attention, resist distractions, and most importantly, guides your decision making.

image source

Everything we’ve been talking about up to this point is to reduce the amount of “noise” that makes it’s way into the working memory.

On a “low complexity, highly prototypical website”, the 5-9 “chunks”  the working memory tries to process are things like guarantees, product descriptions, prices or offers. When the working memory can stay focused on fixing the problem, it will try and solve the problem as quickly as possible.

Deviation Causes Disengagement

When you deviate from a person’s  expectations – the price was higher than expected, the color scheme and symmetry were off, the site didn’t load fast enough, the photos weren’t high enough resolution – the working memory processes those disfluent “chunks” instead of what matters.

That’s because the working memory calls the long term memory to use what it already knows to perform the task. When the long term memory can’t aid in processing the information, flow is broken & the working memory disengages and moves on.

That’s why it’s vital you understand your visitor’s level of exposure – not just for sites in your category, but to websites in general -If you want to “hack” their working memory with design.

The blogs they read, the sites they shop on, their browser, age, gender & physical location, all hint at how  will impact their level of familiarity on first impression.

Conclusion

If the visitor can’t rely on their previous experience, they’re not thinking about how innovative your site is. They’re just left wondering why things aren’t where it’s “supposed to be.” Not the best frame of mind if you want them to buy stuff.

Bonus: 7 Things To Do When Planning A Simpler Site.

1. Research your audience and the sites they visit the most. Look for case studies on design changes from said sites & how those resulted in improvement is key areas.
2. Create a mashup of all those “working” components for your own site.
3. Obey the rules of cognitive fluency when you lay out your design. Put things where your visitors have grown accustomed to finding them.
4. Rely on your own colors, logo, and typeface to communicate clearly and subtly. Don’t add copy and/or images unless it communicates something your visitor actually cares about.
5. Keep it as simple as possible – one large image vs a bunch of little ones, one column, instead of three – utilize as much white space as possible.
6. Double check to make sure your site fits the public expectation in pricing, aesthetics, speed, etc.
7. Remember that “prototypical” doesn’t mean that every aspect of your site should fit that mold.

Don’t think of your site as some unique snowflake piece of art. Instead make it a composite of all the best stuff.

Your visitors will love you for it.

Written by: Tommy Walker, ConversionXL
Posted by: CueCamp

The post Why “Simple” Websites Are Scientifically Better appeared first on CueCamp.

For newer SEOs, the process can be overwhelming.

To simplify this process, I created this SEO blueprint. It’s meant as a framework for newer SEOs to build their own work on top of. This basic blueprint has helped, in one form or another, 100s of pages and dozens of sites to gain higher rankings.

Think of it as an intermediate SEO instruction manual, for beginners.

Level: Beginner to Intermediate

Timeframe: 2 to 10 Weeks

What you need to know: The blueprint assumes you have basic SEO knowledge: you’re not scared of title tags, can implement a rel=canonical, and you’ve built a link or two. (If this is your first time to the rodeo, we suggest reading the Beginners Guide to SEO and browsing our Learn SEO section.)

Keyword Research

1. Working Smarter, Not Harder

Keyword research can be simple or hard, but it should always be fun. For the sake of the Blueprint, let’s do keyword research the easy way.

The biggest mistakes people make with keyword research are:

1. Choosing keywords that are too broad
2. Keywords with too much competition
3. Keywords without enough traffic
4. Keywords that don’t convert
5. Trying to rank for one keyword at a time

The biggest mistake people make is trying to rank for a single keyword at a time. This is the hard way. It’s much easier, and much more profitable, to rank for 100s or even 1,000s of long tail keywords with the same piece of content.

Instead of ranking for a single keyword, let’s aim our project around a keyword theme.

2. Dream Your Keyword Theme

Using keyword themes solves a whole lot of problems. Instead of ranking for one Holy Grail keyword, a better goal is to rank for SEO with lots of keywords focused around a single idea. Done right, the results are amazing.

I assume you know enough about your business to understand what type of visitor you’re seeking and whether you’re looking for traffic, conversions, or both. Regardless, one simple rule holds true: the more specific you define your theme, the easier it is to rank.

This is basic stuff, but it bears repeating. If your topic is the football, you’ll find it hard to rank for  “Super Bowl,” but slightly easier to rank for “Super Bowl 2014” – and easier yet to rank for “Best Super Bowl Recipes of 2014.”

Don’t focus on specific words yet – all you need to know is your broad topic. The next step is to find the rightkeyword qualifiers.

3. Get Specific with Qualifiers

Qualifiers are words that add specificity to keywords and define intent. They take many different forms.

• Time/Date: 2001, December, Morning
• Price/Quality: Cheap, Best, Most Popular
• Intent: Buy, Shop, Find
• Location: Houston, Outdoors, Online

The idea is to find as many qualifiers as possible that fit your audience. Here’s where keyword tools enter the picture. You can use any keyword tool you like, but favorites include Wordstream, Keyword Spy, SpyFu, andBing Keyword Tool and Übersuggest.

For speed and real-world insight, Übersuggest is an all-time SEO favorite. Run a simple query and export over 100 suggested keyword based on Google’s own Autocomplete feature – based on actual Google searches.

Did I mention it’s free?

4. Finding Diamonds in the Google Rough

At this point you have a few dozen, or a few hundred keywords to pull into Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

Using “Exact” search types and “Local Monthly” search volume, we’re looking for 10-15 closely related keyword phrases with decent search volume, but not too much competition.

5. Get Strategic with the Competition

Now that we have a basic keyword set, you need to find out if you can actually rank for SEO for your phrases. You have two basic methods of ranking the competition:

1. Automated tools like the Keyword Difficulty Tool
2. Eyeballing the SERPs

If you have an SEOmoz PRO membership (or even a free trial) the Keyword Difficulty Tool calculates – on a 100 point scale – a difficulty score for each individual keyword phrase you enter.

Keyword phrases in the 60-70+ range are typically competitive, while keywords in the 30-40 range might be considered low to moderately difficult.

To get a better idea of your own strengths, take the most competitive keyword you currently rank #1 or #2 for, and run it through the tool.

Even without automated tools, the best way to size up the competition is to eyeball the SERPs. Run a search query (non-personalized) for your keywords and ask yourself the following questions:

• Are the first few results optimized for the keyword?
• Is the keyword in the title tag? In the URL? On the page?
• What’s the Page and/or Domain Authority of the URL?
• Are the first few results authorities on the keyword subject?
• What’s the inbound anchor text?
• Can you deliver a higher quality resource for this keyword?

You don’t actually have to rank #1 for any of your chosen words to earn traffic, but you should be comfortable cracking the top five.

With keyword themes, the magic often happens from keywords you never even thought about.

How can you improve your chances of ranking for more long tail keywords? Let’s talk about content, architecture, on-page optimization and link building.

Content

6. Creating Value

Want to know the truth? I hate the word content. It implies words on a page, a commodity to be produced, separated from the value it creates.

Content without value is spam.

In the Google Algorithm Update example above, we could have simply written 100 articles about Google’s Algorithm and hoped to rank. Instead, the conversation started by asking how we could create a valuable resource for webmasters.

For your keyword theme, ask first how you can create value.

Value is harder to produce than mere words, but value is rewarded 100x more. Value is future proof & algorithm proof. Value builds links by itself. Value creates loyal fans.

Value takes different forms. It’s a mix of:

1. Utility
2. Emotional response
3. Point of view (positive or negative)
4. Perceived value, including fame of the author

Your content doesn’t have to include all 4 of these characteristics, but it should excel in one or more to be successful.

A study of the New York Times found key characteristics of content to be influential in making the Most Emailed list.

Source: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1528077

7. Driving Your Content Vehicle

Here’s a preview: the Blueprint requires you create at least one type of link bait, so now is a good time to think about the structure of your content.

What’s the best way to deliver value given your theme? Perhaps it’s an

• Infographic
• Video series
• A new tool
• An interview series
• Slide deck
• How-to guide
• Q&A
• Webinar or simple blog post

Perhaps, it’s all of these combined.

The more ways you find to deliver your content and the more channels you take advantage of, the better off you’ll be.

Not all of your content has to go viral, but you want to create at least one “tent-pole” piece that’s better than anything else out there and you’re proud to hang your hat on.

If you need inspiration, check out Distilled’s guide to Viral Linkbait or QuickSprout’s Templates for Content Creation.

8. Title – Most Important Work Goes Here

Spend two hours, minimum, writing your title.

Sound ridiculous? If you’re an experienced title writer like Rand Fishkin, you can break this rule. For the rest of us, it’s difficult to underplay the value delivered by a finely crafted title.

Write 50 titles or more before choosing one.

Study the successful titles on Inbound.org, Mashable, Wired, or your favorite publication.

Whatever you do, read this fantastic post by Dan Shure and the headline resources at CopyBlogger.

9. Length vs. Depth – Why it Matters

How long should your content be? A better question is: How deep should it be? Word count by itself is a terrible metric to strive for, but depth of content helps you to rank in several ways.

1. Adds uniqueness threshold to avoid duplicate content
2. Deeper topic exploration makes your content “about” more
3. Quality, longer content is correlated with more links and higher rankings

I. Uniqueness

At a minimum, your content needs to meet a minimum uniqueness threshold in order for it to rank. Google reps have gone on record to say a couple sentences is sometimes sufficient, but in reality a couple hundred words is much safer.

II. Long Tail Opportunities

Here’s where the real magic happens. The deeper your content and the more in-depth you can explore a particular topic, the more your content becomes “about.”

The more your content is “about”, the more search queries it can answer well.

The more search queries you can answer well, the more traffic you can earn.

Google’s crawlers continuously read your content to determine how relevant it is to search queries. They evaluate paragraphs, subject headings, photographs and more to try to understand your page. Longer, in-depth content usually send more relevancy signals than a couple short sentences.

III. Depth, Length, and Links

Numerous correlation studies have shown a positive relationship between rankings and number of words in a document.

This could be attributed longer, quality content earning more links. John Doherty examined the relationship between the length of blog posts on SEOmoz and the number of links each post earned, and found a strong relationship.

10. Content Qualities You Can Bank On

If you don’t focus on word count, how do you add quality “depth” to your content?

SEOs have written volumes about how Google might define quality including metrics such as reading level, grammar, spelling, and even Author Rank. Most is speculation, but it’s clear Google does use guidelines to separate good content from bad.

My favorite source for clues comes from the set of questions Google published shortly after the first Panda update. Here are a few of my favorites.

11. LDA, nTopic, and Words on the Page

Google is a machine. It can’t yet understand your page like a human can, but it’s getting close.

Search engines use sophisticated algorithms to model your sentences, paragraphs, blocks, and content sections. Not only do they want to understand your keywords, but also your topic, intent, and expertise as well.

How do you know if your content fits Google’s model of expectations?

For example, if your topic is “Super Bowl Recipes,” Google might expect to see content about grilling, appetizers, and guacamole. Content that addresses these topics will likely rank higher than pages that talk about what color socks you’re wearing today.

Words matter.

SEOs have discovered that using certain words around a topic associated with concepts like LDA and nTopicare correlated with higher rankings.

Virante offers an interesting stand alone keyword suggestion tool called nTopic. The tools analyzes your keywords and suggests related keywords to improve your relevancy scores.

12. Better than LDA – Poor Man’s Topic Modeling

Since we don’t have access to Google’s computers for topic modeling, there’s a far simpler way to structure your content that I find far superior to worrying about individual words:

Use the keyword themes you created at the beginning of this blueprint.

You’ve already done the research using Google’s keyword tool to find closely related keyword groups. Incorporating these topics into your content may help increase your relevancy to your given topic.

Example: Using the Google Algorithm project cited above, we found during keyword research that certain keywords related to our theme show up repeatedly, time and time again. If we conducted this research today, we would find phrases like “Penguin SEO” and “Panda Updates” frequently in our results.

Google suggests these terms via the keyword tool because they consider them closely related. So any content that explored “Google Algorithm Change” might likely include a discussion of these ideas.

Note: This isn’t real LDA, simply a way of adding relevant topics to your content that Google might associate with your subject matter.

13. Design Is 50% of the Battle

If you have any money in your budget, spend it on design. A small investment with a designer typically pays outsized dividends down the road. Good design can:

• Lower bounce rate
• Increase page views
• Increase time on site
• Earn more links
• Establish trust

… All of which can help earn higher rankings.

“Design doesn’t just matter, it’s 50% of the battle.”
-Rand Fishkin

Dribbble.com is one of our favorite source of design inspiration.

Architecture

Here’s the special secret of the SEO Blueprint: you’re not making a single page to rank; you’re making several.

14. Content Hubs

Very few successful websites consist of a single page. Google determines context and relevancy not only by what’s on your page, but also by the pages around it and linking to it.

The truth is, it’s far easier to rank when you create Content Hubs exploring several topics in depth focused around a central theme.

Using our “Super Bowl Recipes” example, we might create a complete section of pages, each exploring a different recipe in depth.

15. Linking the Hub Together

Because your pages now explore different aspects of the same broad topic, it makes sense to link them together.

• Your page about guacamole relates to your page about nachos.
• Your page about link building relates to your page about infographics.
• Your page about Winston Churchill relates to major figures of World War II.

It also helps them to rank by distributing PageRank, anchor text, and other relevancy signals.

16. Find Your Center

Content Hubs work best with a “hub” or center. Think of the center as the master document that acts as an overview or gateway to all of your individual content pages.

The hub is the authority page. Often, the hub is a link bait page or a category level page. It’s typically the page with the most inbound links and often as a landing page for other sections of your site.

For great example of Hub Pages, check out:

• CopyBloggers Magnetic Headlines
• SEOmoz’s Learn SEO
• Amazon’s author pages (this one about Stephen King)

On-Page Optimization

17. Master the Basics

You could write an entire book about on-page optimization. If you’re new to SEO, one of the best ways to learn is by using SEOmoz’s On-page Report Card (free, registration required) The tool grades 36 separate on-page SEO elements, gives you a report and suggestions on how to fix each element. Working your way through these issues is an excellent way to learn (and often used by agencies and companies as a way to teach SEO principals)

Beyond the basics, let’s address a few slightly more advanced tactics to take advantage of your unique keyword themes and hub pages, in addition to areas where beginners often make mistakes.

18. Linking Internally for the Reasonable Surfer

Not all links are created equal (One of the greatest SEO blog posts ever written!) So, when you interlink your internal pages within your content hub together, keep in mind a few important points.

1. Links from inside unique content pass more value than navigation links.
2. Links higher up the page pass more value than links further down.
3. Links in HTML text pass more weight than image links.

When interlinking your content, it’s best to keep links prominent and “editorial” – naturally link to your most important content pages higher up in the HTML text.

19. Diversify Your Anchor Text – Naturally

If Google’s Penguin update taught us anything, it’s that over-thinking anchor text is bound to get us in trouble.

When you link naturally and editorially to other places on the web, you naturally diversify your anchor text. The same should hold true when you link internally.

Don’t choose your anchor text to fit your keywords; choose your anchor text to fit the content around it.

Practically speaking, this means linking internally with a mix of partial match keyword and related phrases. Don’t be scared to link occasionally without good keywords in the anchor – the link can still pass relevancy signals. When it comes to linking, it’s safer to under-do it than over-do it.

Source: Google’s SEO Starter Guide

20. Title Tags – Two Quick Tips

We assume you know how to write a compelling title tag. Even today, keyword usage in the title tag is one of the most highly correlated on-page ranking factors that we know.

That said, Google is getting strict about over-optimizing title tags, and appears to be further cracking down on titles “written for SEO.” Keep this in mind when crafting your title tags

I. Avoid Boilerplates

It used to be common to tack on your business phrase or main keywords to the end of every title tag, like so:

• Plumbing Supplies – Chicago Plumbing and Fixtures
• Pipes & Fittings – Chicago Plumbing and Fixtures
• Toilet Seat Covers – Chicago Plumbing and Fixtures

While we don’t have much solid data, many SEOs are now asserting that “boilerplate” titles tacked on to the end of every tag are no longer a good idea. Brand names and unique descriptive information is okay, but making every title as unique as possible is the rule of the day.

II. Avoid Unnecessary Repetition

Google also appears (at least to many SEOs) to be cracking down on what’s considered the lower threshold of “keyword stuffing.”

In years past it was a common rule of thumb never to repeat your keyword more than twice in the title. Today, to be on the safe side, you might be best to consider not repeating your keywords more than once.

21. Over-Optimization: Titles, URLs, and Links

Writing for humans not only gets you more clicks (which can lead to higher rankings), but hardly ever gets you in trouble with search engines.

As SEOs we’re often tempted to get a “perfect score” which means exactly matching our title tags, URLs, inbound anchor text, and more. unfortunately, this isn’t natural in the real world, and Google recognizes this.

Diversify. Don’t over-optimize.

22. Structured Data

Short and simple: Make structured data part of every webpage. While structured data hasn’t yet proven to be a large ranking factor, it’s future-facing value can be seen today in rich snippet SERPs and social media sharing. In some verticals, it’s an absolute necessity.

There’s no rule of thumb about what structured data to include, but the essentials are:

• Facebook Open Graph tags
• Twitter Cards
• Authorship
• Publisher
• Business information
• Reviews
• Events

To be honest, if you’re not creating pages with structured data, you’re probably behind the times.

For an excellent guide about Micro Data and Schema.org, check out this fantastic resource from SEOGadget.

Building Links

23. The 90/10 Rule of Link Building

This blueprint contains 25 steps to rank your content, but only the last three address link building. Why so few? Because 90% of your effort should go into creating great content, and 10% into link building.

If you have a hard time building links, it may be because you have these numbers reversed.

Creating great content first solves a ton of problems down the line:

1. Good content makes link building easier
2. Attracts higher quality links in less time
3. Builds links on its own even when sleeping or on vacation

If you’re new to marketing or relatively unknown, you may need to spend more than 10% of your time building relationships, but don’t let that distract you from crafting the type of content that folks find so valuable they link to you without you even asking.

24. All Link Building is Relationships – Good & Bad

This blueprint doesn’t go into link building specifics, as there are 100’s of ways to build quality links to every good project. That said, a few of my must have link building resources:

1. Jon Cooper’s Complete List of Link Building Strategies
2. StumbleUpon Paid Discovery
3. Citation Labs
4. Promoted Tweets
5. Ontolo
6. eReleases – Press releases not for links, but for exposer
7. BuzzStream
8. Paddy Moogan’s excellent Link Building Book

These resources give you the basic tools and tactics for a successful link building campaign, but keep in mind that all good link building is relationship building.

Successful link builders understand this and foster each relationship and connection. Even a simple outreach letter can be elevated to an advanced form of relationship building with a little effort, as this Whiteboard Friday by Rand so graciously illustrates.

25. Tier Your Link Building… Forever

The truth is, for professionals, link building never ends. Each content and link building campaign layers on top of previous content and the web as a whole like layers of fine Greek baklava.

For example, this post could be considered linkbait for SEOmoz, but it also links generously to several other content pieces within the Moz family and externally as well; spreading both the link love and the relationship building as far as possible at the same time.

SEOmoz links generously to other sites: the link building experience is not just about search engines, but the people experience, as well. We link to great resources and build links for the best user experience possible. When done right, the search engines reward exactly this type of experience with higher rankings.

For an excellent explanation as to why you should link out to external sites when warranted, read AJ Kohns excellent work, Time to Long Click.

One of my favorite posts on SEOmoz was 10 Ugly SEO Tools that Actually Rock. Not only was the first link on the page directed to our own SEO tools, but we linked and praised our competitors as well.

Linkbait at its finest.

Written by: Cyrus Shepard, SEOMoz
Posted by: CueCamp

The post How to Rank for SEO: 25 Step Master Blueprint appeared first on CueCamp.

1. Analyze your content
2. Update your sitemap
3. Review your URLs
4. Analyze your internal link structure
5. Ensure consistent design features
6. Check for usability problems

1. Analyze Your Content

Your site has been growing since it first went live. Do you really know what is on your site as of today? Did you create a content inventory system when first developing the site? If you did not it is time to do an inventory of your content.

When developing a content inventory, utilize either a spreadsheet or database to categorize and describe the information on every page of your website. Some things to include in the inventory are:

• Central topic or area on website; i.e. ‘Staff’ page is under ‘About’ area
• Page title and URL
• Short description of the page
• When the page was created, and revision dates if any
• Who wrote the page and who is responsible for maintaining the page and their contact information
• If there is a page expiration date
• Other pages linked to this page
• Images on the page
• Page status – keep, delete, revise, in revision process, etc.

Once you have this inventory, you will not only have a great tool for maintaining your website, but one that can assist with the future development of your website.

Finally, remember to assign someone (or team) to keep this inventory up-to-date.

2. Update Your Sitemap

Does your website have a functional sitemap? Is it easily accessible to your website users?

Having a functional sitemap will benefit your organization in several ways. Visitors go to sitemaps if they are having any issues finding the information on your website. Helping users find what they came for will enhance their opinion of their visit. If they cannot find information or are challenged in finding information, what will they tell others about the website or your organization?

Sitemaps do not need to be overly stylized; a basic HTML sitemap will work. Search engines also utilize sitemaps as a part of how they rank you.

Have Sitemap → Have improved usability & visitor experience Have Sitemap → Have SEO improvement / higher search rankings

3. Review Your URLs

Do you have a http:// and a http://www. version of your site? Or, did you move a page ( i.e. www.website.com/about/ to www.wesite.com/aboutus/)? If this is the case, then you need a 301 redirect. This will ensure your web pages retain their optimized rankings after the move among search engines like Google.

When creating your URL’s are you paying attention to how they read? Are they SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly? Making URLs with keywords in the URL will help raise your rank in search engines.

Both your visitor and search engines prefer a URL that is clean and concise. A friendly URL is like: www.website.com/about.html, while an unfriendly URL might read like: www.website.com/cgi-bin/gen.pl?id=4view=about.

4. Analyze Your Internal Link Structure

Your website internal link structure is important for a number of reasons. SEO is a theme throughout this post, and internal links are another part to your SEO. For example, if you click on a link titled “Doing a Year-End Business Review”, the page that you are directed to should be optimized for the keyword phrase “Year-End Business Review”.

5. Ensure Consistent Design Features

Are there areas of your site that are still displaying old template designs? Are your graphics up to date and consistent across your website?. While doing your audit keep in mind your overall design, including your page layouts and company graphics. Making some quick changes not only will improve the appearance of your website, but enhance your brand image and level of trust among customers.

6. Check For Usability Problems

How difficult is it to read and understand content and navigate your site? Do users get lost, or can they find what they are looking for easily?

Usability is essential for good websites. When people visit a website, they typically  are on a mission. Once on your website, users want to fulfill their goals: whether it is for entertainment value, searching for information, or for socializing with others. If your website’s visitors experience difficulty, it does not take much for them to become discouraged and go elsewhere.

Usability is a whole article of its own. However, if you do a full website review you will be well on your way to improving your website’s usability. If usability for your website is of interest, you can request a Free Usability Report from CueCamp. This report grades your website on 20 different areas of usability, and is free with no obligation.

If you so choose, you can take your audit a step further by conducting online surveys, doing reviews of materials like your PDFs, white papers, and other material your visitors might download.  You may also review comments that were posted on your blog, or on social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook.  Also, don’t forget to review  customer emails and phone calls that were handled by your customer service department.

A website review should be done on a regular basis, but if you perform it at least once a year you will be well ahead of your competition. More importantly, you will be enhancing your visitors’ time spent on your website.  This will increase the website’s marketing effectiveness, which is why you created it in the first place. If you would like some assistance in doing your website audit feel free to contact CueCamp.

Written and Posted by: CueCamp

The post Improving Users’ Visits with a Website Audit appeared first on CueCamp.

Navigation Designs

Danielson (2003) found that the users’ perceived disorientation in navigating a Web site is related to the amount of changes in the navigation schema that the user experiences while seeking information. Danielson manipulated the level of persistent and consistent categories in the navigation and defined this manipulation as navigational volatility. He measured navigational volatility by counting the number of links that changed location from the source page to the destination page.

Danielson found that the navigational volatility was related positively to participants’ ratings of disorientation and negatively to ratings of ease of use. In other words, participants reported feeling more disoriented when the links changed from one page to the next and rated the site low in ease of use. He concluded that it is best to keep navigation links the same from page to page to help reduce the risk of users feeling disoriented and to assist them in finding information.

Information Architecture Structure

Miller and Remington (2004) looked at how information architecture and category label ambiguity impacted user performance. They manipulated the depth and width of the information architecture by having users interact with either a three-tiered or a two-tiered structure. They also manipulated the categorization by using clear labels or ambiguous labels.

They found that users performed better on sites with a deep rather than wide architecture when the site had clear labels. Participants also found items with the ambiguous labels faster in two tiered (wider architecture). This is because participants have more chances to get lose in the three tiered (narrower) architecture. The research reinforces that having a great organization scheme does not help users if the link labels are unclear.

Organizational Scheme and Labeling

Resnick and Sanchez (2004) looked how organizational schemes and labeling affected a user’s ability to find information. They created six fictitious health food store Web sites. They organized the sites by a product-centered or user-centered schema. Product-centered sites organized items by product categories whereas the user-centered design organized items according to the user’s goal. Labeling schema contained three schemas, high, medium, or low quality labels. Quality was defined based on ratings as to how well each heading represented the items in that group.

Labeling

Results showed that quality of labels had a significant effect on the amount of time required to complete the task and on the userâ€s overall performance. Users in the high quality label group committed fewer errors, and found more products than users in the medium and low quality label groups.

The results show that sites with poorly designed labels caused user to waste their attention trying to figure out what different labels meant. Labels classified as high quality were gathered from typical users. Low quality labels were gathered through benchmarking existing labels. Labels that did not meet the user’s schema result in longer search times. It is important to know what information users are expecting to find and to provide them with clear links so they don’t waste time searching for information.

Content Organization Scheme

Product based organization received higher satisfaction ratings and users committed fewer errors when compared to the task based organization. Users performed better and were more satisfied with the product-based content organization, especially in the lower quality labeling condition.

Information Organization and Older Users

Kurniawan and Zaphiris (2003) looked at information organization for older users. They were interested in looking at health information sites and ways to create better information architectures. They wanted to group and label information to make it easier for seniors to understand.

First they asked the seniors to do a card sort of all the items in one of the main categories from the site. A cluster analysis of the data resulted in the four main categories each containing 4 subgroups.

In the second experiment participants took lists of the group items and provided labels for each group. In the final experiment, the researchers showed participants the suggest label and group items and asked them to rank the label names based on their fit to the group.

Results showed that the new user-provided labels were much less formal than the original site and were easier to understand. The participants also grouped the items much differently than the original structure. The original structure had 4 branches, each main branch had two sub-categories and each sub-category contained two items. The user based structure was a lot less structured with varying numbers of items and sub-categories in each main branch.

Users also grouped items together based on their function or service provided, instead of factors such as geographic location.

Conclusion

These studies suggest several important considerations for designing the information architecture of a Web site. First, good link labels help user performance while bad or ambiguous labels hurt their performance. Second, additional levels of organization can be helpful for users (as long as they are appropriately labeled). No matter which content organization schema you chose, it is better to keep navigation links persistent and consistent throughout the site. Matching user’s mental models to your design will result in a more useful site.

Written By: Usability.Gov
Posted By: CueCamp

The post Content Organization on Websites appeared first on CueCamp.

Work with a reliable web design company that can help you meet current and future needs.

People are often in a rush to get something, anything, up on the Internet. Because the average business owner is inexperienced at web design and related terminology, website companies that are anxious to offer a cheap, yet profitable (to them) service, bring up a website on the Internet that may or may not help the client generate additional revenue: the goal of commercial websites.

Also, some business owners mistakenly believe they can save money by creating a website on their own by using free software found on the Internet. Wrong. You’ll spend money to compensate for the mistakes the free software makes. You have to understand: It’s free for a reason — it doesn’t cover many areas of web design.

So, it’s important to consult a web design company. However, conduct a background check before you sign a contract. Check out their previous work; ask for testimonials; ask for phone numbers of previous customers and listen carefully to what they say.

To ensure you’re working with an experienced person or company, ask for a sitemap and wireframe (explained below) with your proposal. Anyone who can’t provide this information lacks usability expertise.

Sitemaps are diagrams that group a website’s pages into the hierarchy that will eventually become the structure and navigation of the website. A sitemap is a visual or textually organized model of website content that allows users to navigate through the site to find information. Think of a traditional map that helps you find places, but a site map goes the extra step by linking each listed item directly to its website counterpart.

Well-designed and organized sitemaps allow for scalability (growth) by intelligently designing the information flow. In other words, the website should always be designed with future growth in mind, which can be accomplished through a well-ordered hierarchy, as represented in the sitemap. A good web-design company pays very close attention to detail so that information is logically organized, which the site’s end-users see as clearly defined and labeled navigation on a website.

Also be sure the web design company include wireframes, these indicate to prospective clients a webpage’s visual design; they lay out how content will be organized on the page for the end-users. A wireframe, a visualization tool, presents proposed website functions, structure and content. It distinguishes the site’s graphic elements from functional ones; wireframes make it easy to visualize how users will interact with the site.

A typical wireframe includes: key page elements and their locations, such as headers, footers, navigation, content objects and branding elements; grouping of elements, such as sidebars, navigation bars and content areas; labeling, page title, navigation links and headings to content objects; and placeholders, content text and images.

A reliable web design company continually considers the needs of all website stakeholders (all potential groups that will use the site) and verifies that they can fulfill their needs easily by using the site. For example, a school’s website might have different information for students, teachers, parents, investors, etc., and each of those groups should be able to locate information that fulfills their goals in an easy, efficient manner.

Another web design tool, an advanced free usability test, checks ease of use and functionality. A reliable web-design company will allow you to test your site and conduct remote tests, too. After the test, it will provide advice on how to decide what changes to make.

Delivering a sophisticated, aesthetically pleasing website helps create both a resource that meets the content provider’s objectives the presents to end users a work of art that draws them back again and again to find out “what is new” because of its visual appeal.

The investment in comprehensive design upfront maximizes the positive impact of the site while minimizing ongoing website updating costs. The initial investment serves as a rock-solid core for future growth, where additional information and features can be added down the road without having to redesign the entire website.

In other words, investing in a website design that meets the criteria presented in this paper reduces the OVERALL LIFE CYCLE COSTS OF THE WEBSITE.

INCLUDE SOCIAL MEDIA AND OTHER RESOURCES & TOOLS TO INCREASE WEBSITE EFFECTIVENESS

Many companies forget to integrate social media into their websites. Social media allows open communication and provides a way to exponentially increase communication channels. Also, blogs open up communication and establish you as an expert in your field. This allows potential customers to get to know you and your business, and build trust within your business. Many free platforms allow the business owner to have a fully functional blog.

For sign companies, many different website features can educate people about signs. A Flash show could depict examples of past work. Also, visual examples could border of the page that explains about signs. Adding a video that educates people about signs could dramatically increase traffic.

Most sign companies and small businesses use their online presence to stake their small claim on the seemingly unlimited Internet. The Internet grows by leaps and bounds daily. Several options can help businesses claim their share of business from Internet marketing; some must be purchased, and others can be accomplished at no charge.

Paid options include targeted advertising and ad placement, through services such as Google. For example, if a small business (say for example, an online hardware store) wants to sell products, it can pay Google to place targeted ads on relevant websites (for example, a webpage on home improvement). Google can help match the small business’s products to the webpage where they’re displayed. This requires well-written content, with appropriate keywords that describe those products or services, and the design of “landing pages,” or the page your website visitors arrive at after having clicked on a link.

For example, if an ad is for hammers, clicks should be directed to a page specifically selling hammers rather than to the website’s homepage. Landing pages make it easier for end-users to find what they’re looking for (which means high relevancy — they require fewer clicks to find what they want), and can be tracked and streamlined with services such as Google Analytics.

On the other hand, many free options can drive traffic to your website. Two free tools, Website Grader and Website Validator, offer suggestions on improving your SEO score and tips on fixing errors on your website. Suggestions include creating a few keywords for your website, which can be embedded in meta tags, and should be unique for each page on the website. These keywords tell search engines what the page is about.

In more technical jargon, a meta tag is a special HTML tag that stores information about a webpage, but isn’t displayed in a web browser. For example, meta tags provide information, such as what program created the page, a description of the page and keywords relevant to the page.

Also, keywords that appear frequently in headings and text on the webpage indicate to search engines page relevance to your readers. Sign-company owners should consider what search queries their clients would enter when looking for them, and make sure those words appear frequently on the website, in headings and verbiage, as well as in meta-tag descriptors (which are hidden from view but embedded in the code of webpages for search engines). For example, a custom electric-sign company would insert such meta-tag descriptors as”channel letters,””LEDs,” “custom,” and “neon.”

A content-management system (CMS) enables companies to edit their content internally, perhaps even without the need for a webmaster. For a small business owner, this might simplify changing the content on their website without having to pay someone to make minor updates.

However, additional systems can add extra complexity. You should carefully choose a CMS system that meets your current and future needs without overwhelming the person that ends up using it. Otherwise, that person will end up either not using it or using it marginally, which is a waste of time and money. In many cases, it’s better to send minor updates to the web developer or website manager, and offload the complexity to somebody that better understands it.

Many companies like to collect a big check to develop a website, but are less eager to help out after it has launched. I advise clients to carefully choose a web-development company for the long-term – and also one that will make quick changes when needed.

FUNCTIONALITY

Particular browsers and users can turn off functionality, such as Flash or JavaScript, to disable the features and content associated with that technology. Some people are annoyed by the “glitz” and disable these technologies to ease their browsing experience. Embedding important content, such as the website’s main navigation system (menu/buttons), in a technology such as Flash can cause these users to miss this content. If end users turn off Flash, and your website uses it to create the menu and buttons, they couldn’t navigate the website.

Good designs should account for all users’ needs, so the most important content is delivered according to standards that are supported (and tested) across various platforms and browsers, including those where particular features, such as Flash, are disabled.

On the daily level, the more frequently you update content, the better. Search engines like to see content updated roughly once a week to maintain frequent crawls. Of course, update frequency can vary, based on the nature of the website’s goals: A news site should change content frequently, while other sites, such as an individual’s personal home page that contains family photos, might not need to update as frequently, because SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is less of a priority.

Also, a page should load instantly. People expect pages to come up within a couple of seconds of loading a website. Of course, this depends on the speed of their Internet connection. However web pages can be programmed to conserve bandwidth and reduce the size of transferred data, such as images. A good web-design company takes special care when compressing images to retain quality, and use dynamic styles that can be drawn by the browser to reduce the number and size of images that need to be transferred.

A simple add-on to a website is a hit counter. Hit counters can be set up to count ‘unique’ visitors, so the same person visiting the site only counts once (based on IP address). This information shows the effectiveness of marketing campaigns to draw new site visitors.

Furthermore, analytics tools measure how long people stay on your site and what pages they visit, and tally visits by geographic location. This can help put the pieces of the puzzle together to see exactly how effectively a campaign or advertisement brings in people, tracking where they go on the site, and for how long.

Michel Ann Sharritt is VP of CueCamp (Naperville, IL), which offers such services as usability-research testing, web design, social-media integration, software usability and analytics analysis. They host monthly webinars that educate the average business owner on websites. For more information, call (630) 962-7043 or visit www.cuecamp.com.

Written by: Michel Ann Sharritt
Posted by: CueCamp

The post What to Know: Hiring a Web Design Company appeared first on CueCamp.