The navigation of a website is one of the most important parts of the design. Without a well-designed navigation, website visitors have difficulty getting where they need to go. This can lead to lost opportunities and revenue.
So what type of website navigation should you use? Many websites still use drop-down navigation. However, there are a number of problems with this style, which is why we generally avoid it.
One problem with drop-down navigation is that it can cause difficulty for website visitors with limited dexterity. This includes older people, or people with disabilities. The dexterity required to successfully navigate using drop-down navigation can frustrate some people. It’s also frequently difficult to use drop-down navigation on a laptop with a touch pad, which applies to a lot of today’s mobile workers.
Another downside of drop-down navigation is that they don’t always render well on mobile devices. Drop-downs can sometimes render a website unusable on an iPhone or Blackberry and can also make life difficult on iPads.
Drop-down menus can also encourage “navigation creep” in which the website owners keep adding more and more menu options simply because they can. Never mind that it leads to a cumbersome, unusable structure that makes it difficult to navigate the site at all.
Additionally, drop-down navigation menus do not give website visitors a clear indication of where they are in the site. This can lead to frustration and annoyance.
We prefer section sidebar navigation. In this style, a new sidebar appears as a sub-menu after a main nav item is clicked. This means that there are no mobile rendering issues, and it’s very easy to navigate even with limited dexterity.
Some people argue that every part of your website should be accessible within three clicks and use this as justification for drop-down navigation. However, this has been proven to be a myth. Modern website users are comfortable clicking as much as they need to in order to reach their destination and a logical navigation is much more important than squeezing everything into three clicks.
Drop-down navigation should generally be avoided (with the exception of mega drop-downs) in favor of section sidebar navigation. This will lead to a more comfortable user experience and a more profitable website.
While a long standing concerted effort toward SEO can pay off big down the road, don’t forget that sometimes there are quick tasks that can turn the needle.
Over the years, I have heard many times from individuals desiring success in SEO, the request could never gain approval as the resourced time was too great of a budget allocation or that an SEO vendor wasn’t in the budget.
This is true to some extent as a full SEO campaign involves the strategic revision to information architecture, attention to SEO design factors, creation of quality content, a blueprint for a link-building initiative just to name a few items. These tasks can take a lot of time and the thought of this can leave many companies throwing SEO on the back burner.
For those of who you fit into this group, read on for eight simple quick SEO revisions that will allow you to potentially create positive affect with your organic search traffic.
For seasoned SEOs this is rather elementary information but should serve as a reminder of what should be a daily check for a site as they require so little time to assess and can be implemented rather quickly. In fact, you could tackle one of these items every day over your morning coffee and in a little more than a week create the opportunity for additional site traffic.
1. Review Your Robots.txt File; Assess Your Meta Robots Tagging
If you have a robots.txt file on your site, check by visiting /robots.txt. You may be surprised to find out you are withholding pages, folders, images, etc. from search engines that can drive traffic to your site.
Additionally, run a site scan with a tool such as Screaming Frog to assess if there are any pages on your site you are excluding via a meta robots tag. Both of these are a very quick fix if you do find issues.
Unknowingly tagged pages or robots.txt entries are usually the culprit of a developer who forgot to remove the designations when a new page rolled live or a previous site administrator who deemed the quality content unimportant for the masses.
2. Review Your Site Organic CTR by Page; Revise the Worst Page’s Title Element and Meta Description
This is both a conversion optimization and SEO tip. The new world of SEO is heavily focused on the message you send, whether it be search engines or users.
Google provides click-through rate data on landing pages and keywords in your Google Analytics account. You don’t think they are providing this data out of the kindness of their heart do you? They are interested in sites that feature enticing and relative search result displays for web users.
While you may have many landing pages with atrocious bounce rates, identifying the worst one or a few will allow you to revise them in a short span of time to reflect listing users want to click. Simply visit your Google Analytics account and traverse to the Traffic Sources-Search Engine Optimization-Landing Pages section. You can also perform this test through the Keyword dimension of this analytical area as well.
Ultimately, You are improving your site in the eyes of the search engine and you may retain some visitors at the same time.
3. Assess Canonicalization of Your Domain
It only takes a moment to rid yourself of one of the most common forms of duplicate content and link value dilution.
Do your site pages exist at www.example.com and example.com? If so then you need to create a permanent 301 redirect directing all non-www. site pages to the www. version pages of your site.
Search engines don’t want to see two versions of your content. It’s helpful to combine the inbound link equity of these versions into one page as many people don’t always target links to your www version of site pages.
4. Review Your Most Frequently Linked Pages on Your Site
Through the use of a tool such as Open Site Explorer you can gain information in the server status of your most linked content. You may find out a site page that went viral last year and gained a ton of links has since been deleted from the server and displays a 404 code. Additionally, you may also see that a heavily linked page has since been temporarily redirected and is in need of a permanent redirection.
Finding a few of these can result in a few quick redirects to help boost the link value on the domain.
5. Review Your Site for Duplicate Title Elements
Do a quick check of duplicate title elements in Google Webmaster Tools. This can indicate duplicate pages, keyword cannibalization, and bad title element structure.
Checking this Google property feature can quickly show you these issues and give insight into whether you need to spend the next 15 minutes writing unique title elements, creating redirects, or thinking about which of the multiple pages should include a certain keyword term.
6. Find Your Most Authoritative Links; Request an Anchor Text Change
I see it all the time, sites which have links from very authoritative sites anchored on the text Click Here, Buy, Learn More. It drives me nuts!
All your anchor text doesn’t need to be keyword-rich, but it helps to identify your strongest links and reach out to these sites and request a text modification to a non-branded are partially branded variation. You can assess your anchor text by linking site authority with tools such asOpen Site Explorer and Majestic SEO.
7. Review Your Link Targets in Your Site Navigation and Any Other Sitewide Links
By reviewing the links in your main, footer, breadcrumb and any other supporting navigation you can quickly assess if you have duplicate content issues with pesky default pages (e.g., /index.html). These pages should be redirected to the absolute page and the links should also be revised to target the absolute page. These revisions clean up many, many internal linking deficiencies across your site.
8. Verify Your Google and Bing Local Listing
As web users become more localized in their searching behavior it becomes imperative that your off-site listings are owned by you. It doesn’t take long to claim your listing and show search engines that you have control over your external profiles.
Another reason this is a must: this is also believed to be a local algorithm ranking factor. Look to establish verification with other web profiles on sites such as Yelp down the road.
No More Excuses
Creating an SEO friendly site is no longer too expensive or too time consuming. Taking 15 minutes out of your day here and there can do a lot to the search marketing success of your site.
BY JASON FALLS | February 7, 2012
Move over Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Anothersocial media site is stepping up as a valuable marketing tool for businesses.
Pinterest, an online bulletin board for your favorite images, launched in 2010 and is already experiencing wild growth. The site registered more than 7 million unique visitors in December, up from 1.6 million in September. And it’s driving more traffic to company websites and blogs than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined, according to arecent report from Cambridge, Mass.-based content-sharing site Shareaholic.
Why should small businesses care? To answer that, you first have to understand how consumers are using the site. Pinterest allows you to organize images — maybe pretty sunrises or wines you’ve tasted — into boards for specific categories. When you “pin” something new, your followers will see it. They can like, comment or re-pin it to their boards. Like Facebook content, your Pinterest pins can go viral.
Brides-to-be can pin pictures of different wedding dresses to review, and people shopping for a new car can pin images of their options. When I joined Pinterest I started a board to show the Major League Baseball stadiums I’ve visited. The possibilities are unlimited.
Here’s a look at why some business owners — particularly retailers — might want to seriously consider starting a business profile on Pinterest now.
Perhaps the most powerful business application is the ability to post images of your company’sproducts on your Pinterest board and link them back to your website. It works as a sort of virtual store catalog.
But remember that this is social media. If you simply display images of your products without contributing other content or sharing other users’ pins, you’ll likely find that people don’t pay much attention. After all, no one likes a self-absorbed blowhard.
Related: Emerging Social Media Sites to Attract Users
But savvy social media users know not to get too promotional. For example, Whole Foods Market pins pictures of delicious-looking food, food art and images of recycled or reused products to inspire customers to be environmentally responsible. Daniel Gordon, who runs Samuel Gordon Jewelers in Oklahoma City, pins pictures of his rings and watches, but he also has a board for images that make him laugh and other types of products he loves.
Driving Sales
Pinterest already is driving buyers to some websites. In the last six months, the retail deal siteideeli.com has seen a 446 percent increase in web traffic from Pinterest and sales resulting from those visits have increased five-fold.
“We continue the Pinterest conversation with [the] members by following their pins, and we love to give feedback outside of the shopping category — whether that means commenting on a great recipe or [giving] a heart next to our favorite pet pics,” says ideeli.com social media manager Sarah Conley. “We also see Pinterest as a growing resource to better understand our members and the larger retail landscape.”
Is Pinterest Right for Your Business?
The site does have some drawbacks for businesses. If your product or service isn’t particularly visual, your images may not tie directly back to your brand. Pinterest also doesn’t offer business-oriented features, and its search function prioritizes pin and board subjects ahead of “people,” the category that brands would fall into.
The best way to determine if Pinterest could attract buyers is simply to give it a shot. Set up anaccount and start pinning things that are relevant to your business but not too promotional.
Related: How to Use Social Media for Research and Development
If you run a lawn-care center, for instance, pin pictures of landscaping you find online or snap in your community. If you’re a brick-and-mortar store, pin shots of the interesting sites and people around your neighborhood and photos you take at community events. You also can search through Pinterest’s categories and add some inspirational, funny or beautiful images you find.
Then, follow interesting boards and individuals who post images that inspire you. Once you’ve done some pinning of other people’s content for a week or so and attracted a few followers, create a new board of your products. Add descriptions and perhaps the price to the images. Make sure they link back to your website and start tracking pinterest.com as a referral source in your website analytics.
Next, try creating an image of a special deal or coupon just for your Pinterest followers. Upload it to a new board for Deals. Perhaps offer a prize to the person who gets the most likes or comments on a re-pin of the coupon, and then see who shares it the most. Don’t fret about creating multiple boards. People who follow you will see them all.
In a month or two, see if you’re getting referral traffic or sales. Depending on the results, you may need to tweak your boards with new images and words.
One thing is clear whether you’re on Pinterest for personal or business reasons: the best images — be they funny, beautiful or thought provoking — attract the most attention and followers.
Google’s search results aren’t what they used to be. Need proof? Just look at its results page. No longer solely comprised of traditional, organic site matches, Google now lists local maps, images, videos and social cues as well — and it’s affecting more than just what you see.
If you rely heavily on search engines for pageviews and sales, as many businesses do, Google search results will drastically affect how your customers find you. If your business needs to be seen and clicked, take into account the following six search engine tips.
1. Local SEO Is Taking Over
There’s a good probability that a large chunk of the Google searches you perform will display Google Places listings – and consumers are taking notice. SEO software firm SEOmoz did some eye-tracking case studies on Google’s SERP (search engine results page). The results show that users heavily gravitate toward any of Places’ listings, whether they’re mixed into organic lists, concentrated in a group of seven or even listed in the middle of the results page. The heat map above shows the activity around a Google search for “pizza.”
If your business relies on local listings, concentrate on scoring a seat at Google Places. You can do this by using:
- Citations: Ensure that your correct business information is listed in as many (reputable) sources as possible around the Internet. As always, consistency is king. If you write “Blvd.” instead of Boulevard on your Google Places page, make sure your other listings reflect the same.
- Google Places page optimization: Just like your website, make sure your Places page is properly optimized. Include categories that match exactly, and point your Places page back to a city-specific landing page if applicable.
- Reviews: Google will only display reviews from Google, but getting reviews from aggregators like Yelp, Superpages or Trip Advisor will help increase your presence.
2. You Can’t Have Search Without Social
The separation of search and social has officially ended. Social cues such as Twitter shares, Facebook likes and social bookmarking heavily influence search rankings. Essentially, search results are personalized for each person. With any SEO campaign you put into motion, include a social aspect to it to facilitate information sharing.
3. Think of People, not Robots, When Optimizing Keywords
People search in Google because they have a question. Anticipate those questions — whether about the best style of yoga pants or where to get the lowest mortgage rate. Your keywords and the content on your pages should reflect the answers to those questions. Keyword research is tedious, but it’s arguably the most important aspect of SEO. Transition away from thinking of keywords like data, and put more of an emphasis on the person who will be typing in that keyword.
4. Content Links Are King — Good Writers Are Sorcerers
Google is not stupid — it can spot paid and spam links. For the most effective long-term SEO strategy, move the focus back to great content, both on your website and across other sites. Guest blogging is great, for instance, but to get a leg up on your competition, target blogs that aren’t direct matches to your industry.
For example, a client of my company sells golf carts, so we wrote a blog post about the most tricked-out golf carts for tailgates, and the link we got back was one their competitors didn’t already have.
5. Check your Backend: Schema.org, Microformats and Rich Snippets
The Big Three (Google, Yahoo and Bing) have worked together to develop Schema.org, a set of website standards that will tell search engines what your site is about, making it easier for those engines to read the site’s data and index accordingly.
By using rich snippets, for example, you’re able to tell Google what information to feature in SERPs: product reviews and prices, upcoming events, recipe cooking times, etc. The added data will increase your click-through rate because users are able to preview more about the link before they commit to the click.
6. It Doesn’t Mean Anything Without Data
Whether you’re a one-man SEO show for your company or working in an agency with several clients, your site needs to see results. While ranking reports of keywords is still a great indicator of progress, personalized searches make it difficult to get the most accurate readings. Plus, when Google defaulted to private searches for users signed into their Google accounts, the company made it harder to track how people arrive at your site.
Start relying more on simple key performance indicators (KPIs) to show results, for instance, the number of landing pages you have, the bounce rate of those pages, and the number of keywords driving traffic to each of those landing pages. Google Analytics displays all of this data.
What are some other things you see that are affecting searches, and what are you doing to improve your rankings in these areas?
It’s always frustrating to see opportunity slip through your fingers.
It astounds me to see large sites, with good authority and traffic, waste the often ignored opportunity internal pagerank and interlinking provides.
SEO and traditional organic rankings are predominantly about inbound links, content, structure, and oh ya, inbound links. Did I say inbound links?
What’s surprising however is when big sites ignore authority, anchor text, and easy ranking opportunities that exist from within their own domain. If your site has any domain level authority, one of the easiest and fastest ways to expand your reach into 2nd tier authoritative rankings is through internal pagerank redistribution.
I’m convinced that most sites, mainly the larger brand sites, rank despite their SEO efforts not because of them. Their own momentum and native partner/consumer awareness factors often drive their PR valuation.
What’s missing for many is a thorough, consistent, interlinking strategy among their top level pages – the authority trigger pages that can be used and audited to redistribute for rank. Content might be focused, but SEO opportunities are abound – make sure you’re not ignoring them.
While we’re on the topic, a top down site audit for SEO purposes should be a standard OP for your business. Align your SEO practices and have clearly defined, measurable goals.
Lastly, make sure you treat search engine optimization as a process. These aren’t projects. Their is no definitive ‘end point’ to a project, though there are tactical project complete stages. It’s an ongoing, continual process.
Treat your SEO just like you do a strategic business plan. You’ll be glad you did.
Exploring the Options: The Best Online Marketing Strategy for You
Even the most savvy business person in the physical world can feel overwhelmed when venturing into the massive galaxy that is the Internet. While the potential is seemingly endless, with so many options, it can be hard to know where to begin! We’re here to help.
Choices, Choices, Choices…
Choosing an online marketing strategy is nearly as difficult as choosing which sweet to get at a pastry shop—they all look good! However, if you look more closely, some options are more suited to your needs than others. Here are a few of the most popular choices:
Facebook: As the largest social networking site on Earth, one cannot ignore Facebook. Whether you’re a business, an organization, or an individual, Facebook provides a free online location to market yourself or your product.
Pros: Facebook is a great place to make connections and share information. Facebook also has its own advertising system that focuses on targeting the audience you choose.
Cons: Unless you keep your content fresh, interesting, and consistent, readership may drift. It can be difficult to keep the attention on you—people are more likely to interact with each other than with you.
Twitter: Twitter is fantastic for delivering quick, concise, information to your readers. With its 140 character limit to each “Tweet” (message), every letter counts and messages strive to be as “to the point” as possible: A quality potential customers usually appreciate.
Pros: Often more “casual” than other Social Media marketing outlets, Twitter is a great place to develop more “personal” relationships with readers. Twitter is also great for addressing any easily-answered consumer questions.
Cons: The character limit can be, well, limiting.
Blogging: One of my personal favorites. You’re reading a “blog” right now!
Pros: Probably the best way to get information across.
Cons: With so many Blogs on the Internet, it can be hard to get noticed.
MySpace: One of the forerunners in the “social networking” game. These days, MySpace is mainly used by musicians, comedians, and other artistic types.
Pros: MySpace gives users the ability to “pimp” their pages, letting them get as creative as they like with how their page will look.
Cons: Outside of a certain crowd, hardly anyone uses MySpace anymore.
YouTube: All the benefits of having your own television “channel” with none of the cost.
Pros: If done right, YouTube can be a great creative outlet to connect with subscribers and advertise yourself or your product.
Cons: With so many videos on YouTube, again, it can be hard to get noticed. Also, if you use your channel purely for advertisement without any real content, people will quickly move on. No one likes to watch commercials with no show.
E-mail Newsletters: If you’ve seen the “Be the First to Know” boxes to the right of each of our pages, you can already guess that we’re a fan of this method.
Pros: Having an e-mail newsletter is a magnificent way to get announcements to your readers on a timely basis. Plus, having your readers subscribe to your newsletter lets you in on who your readers are. One of the most basic elements of having a good business is knowing your customers.
Cons: If done poorly, an e-mail newsletter system can be obnoxious or even illegal! Never, ever, send out e-mail newsletters to people without their consent; and, even with their consent, don’t abuse your newfound powers.
Other: As this is just a measly blog entry, I cannot possibly go into every option there is on the Internet…but they’re out there. I’ve mentioned the basics, but there are also plenty of specialized sites such as LinkedIn, DeviantArt, Zerply, Tumblr, and many more.
By Amy-Mae Elliott
Building any kind of team is a challenge, but pulling together the people who are going to represent your company in the social media arena is a particularly tricky task.
What is the ultimate purpose of your social media team? Do you hire experts from outside the company or utilize existing employees? What do you look for in a social media executive?
We talked to professionals who have gone through the process — from big global businesses to small companies — to try and find some answers to these questions.
Have a read of their advice and let us know any useful experiences you’ve had in the comments below.
1. Set Clear Goals
Before you consider the question of who, you need to have already established the answer to why?
“Firstly, before you set up a team, you have to be clear who you want to talk to and engage with and what your internal goals are,” says Jakub Hrabovsky, head of web relations for Vodafone UK. “Is your main aim to entertain and engage, or are you considering using social media as a sales channel? You should be clear on what you want to measure. Engagement levels, buzz and sentiment or an increase in the number of sales — or perhaps both?”
Hrabovsky also points out that your social media team members will also need to be able to help customers — they may be the point of call that connected consumers head to. “If you’re a consumer-facing organization, you should include a customer care element to complement your social engagement team as well.”
2. Create a Social Media Policy First
Every company with a presence in the social space should have a social media policy, even if it’s just a few lines advising employees how you’d prefer they reference your brand online.
Creating a social media policy before you get a team in place will help you in deciding who to employ to implement it.
“Be sure you have a social media policy in place, so that your team is clear on how the company wishes to be portrayed in the space. A social media policy should be available to all staff too,” advises Dave Delaney, marketing specialist, online communications and promotions at Griffin Technology.
“You should first consider how you want your brand represented. Your social media team is going to be speaking for your brand, so it’s important that they are able to communicate in a way that shows the personality of your company,” says Kristen Studard, social media coordinator at Threadless.
“At Threadless we’re a very friendly laid-back company and we’re very excited about our products, which is why we use so many exclamation points in our tweets and status updates.”
If you are going down the friendly, excited, exclamation points route with your social media policy, then be sure to hire people who will find it easy to express themselves that way; if you’re aiming for a more staid, professional approach, then don’t pick someone who can’t pen a line without adding a smiley at the end.
3. Should You Recruit Internally or Externally?
The biggest question facing anyone working to create an in-house social media team is whether you should pull people from other areas of the organization — after all, they know the brand — or turn to outside “experts” who have a great grasp of the social space.
In an ideal world, says Vodafone’s Hrabovsky, you might be able to utilize existing internal experts.
“Ideally your social media team should include people who have had social media experience and it’s very likely these are already in your organization. The advantage is that internal hires know the company’s products and services, which is crucial for responding with the speed and accuracy the social media/online environment requires.”
Studard agrees. “The people you want on your social media team are the same people you’d want talking about your brand at a party — naturally social people who love your brand. Find the social media-savvy people who already work for you and are passionate about your brand and you’re onto something.”
Dell has likewise had success with recruiting from within the ranks. Kerry Bridge, head of digital media communications for Dell’s EMEA & global public sector, shares her experiences:
“We have found many Dell employees who were already participating in social media in their personal lives also had the desire and ability to listen and engage on behalf of Dell, too. Social media enthusiasts exist within every organization and common traits make them easily identifiable.
“Firstly, these people will be ‘early adopters’ of social media. They will be actively using multiple social media tools and will already have mastered the appropriate way to behave and build relationships within several networks. They will also tend to be natural conversationalists and passionate about a personal area of interest, actively engaging in conversations and networks around that, possibly even writing a personal blog.”
Even our own community manager at Mashable
, Vadim Lavrusik, advocates hiring evangelists.
“Hire people that practice what they preach,” Lavrusik says. “This can be grabbing people internally who understand the company and would do well to represent it, but also from outside the company who would be great advocates of the company, product or platform. Hiring people who love the company that they represent will usually make them more knowledgeable of the company’s inner workings, making them strong candidates to represent it in the social space.”
4. Essential Skills to Look For
Passion for the brand and knowledge of the social space aren’t the only qualities that you need to look out for; there are other skills that a social media exec should boast.
“A social media team should have at least one person that knows their numbers and stats. Stats are crucial in not only measuring performance or ROI, but also in understanding your community and what they respond to, what works for them,” says Lavrusik. “Ideally, everyone on the team is comfortable enough to handle data and stats that are presented to them and be able to interpret what they mean.”
Bridge suggests considering the main functions of the job, when considering who might fill that role.
“Social and communication skills need to be accompanied with business skills, which will differ depending on what business objectives you are looking to achieve. Common skills to look for would be customer advocacy, writing skills, editorial planning and reporting,” says Bridge.
“For example if you are looking for someone to engage with customers on blogs and Twitter, then the customer listening and engaging skills would be paramount, however if you were looking for a blog manager, then editorial and writing skill should be prioritized,” says Bridge.
You also want people who pay great attention to detail and have the ability to manage several things at once.Patrick Parker, social media coordinator at Courant.com says, “Social media team members need to have multi-tasking down to a science.”
“Hire people who have OCD — I joke but am serious about this one at the same time,” says Lavrusik.
“You want people who are obsessed with detail but at the same time can be highly efficient and productive,” says Lavrusik. “That’s a tough balance. You want someone who pays attention to the detail of their content, strategy, message and projects, but also someone who can do it quickly. There’s nothing worse than having someone who writes sloppily and is updating a social profile with grammatical and punctuation errors. Platforms like Twitter aren’t just micro-blogging, [they're] micro-publishing.”
5. Stay Committed
Finally, remember creating your policy and building up your team are just the beginning. You need to be thinking long term.
“The most important thing is commitment,” says Hrabovsky. “Social media and online engagement isn’t something you can turn on and off at your discretion. Once you start listening and talking to your target audiences, they will expect you to be there for them every day, and to be successful you have to do just that. Don’t build a faceless presence — select the right people for the job, because they will be the voices and faces of your company online.”
And don’t forget that even the most suitable candidate needs ongoing development and possibly even further training, something that Dell is committed to.
“At Dell we send interested employees back to school: Social Media
and Communities University,” says Bridge. “After they are given an overview of our principles and policies, employees decide which tools will enable them to have better connections and conversations with our customers. Social media gives Dell more opportunities to listen, connect and engage than ever before.”
These are just five topics you should consider when building an in-house social media team. Add your own thoughts in the comments below.
Offshore Qualification Trip sail sailing.
“Robots.txt” is a regular text file that through its name, has special meaning to the majority of “honorable” robots on the web. By defining a few rules in this text file, you can instruct robots to not crawl and index certain files, directories within your site, or at all. For example, you may not want Google to crawl the /images directory of your site, as it’s both meaningless to you and a waste of your site’s bandwidth. “Robots.txt” lets you tell Google just that.
Creating your “robots.txt” file
So lets get moving. Continue reading