Website Optimization

By Author: John Tang
Total Articles: 512
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Website Optimization and Internet Marketing are synonymous terms. The major supporting cast or specialty is Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

However SEO is often misunderstood. It is not at all unusual to speak with prospective clients that think SEO is all about meta tags, title tags and even tricks. However so-called White Hat SEO or ethical SEO or much more accurately, EFFECTIVE SEO, involves no tricks and the lexicon of meta tags and title tags does little justice to the true scope of what is involved in SEO.

So, then, what is Website Optimization and what is SEO? Website Optimization is the optimization or maximization of the CONVERSIONS as measured by the analytics of the website. Conversion equals the action defined by the owner of the website as a SUCCESSFUL SITE VISIT. Obviously, a shopping cart or ecommerce website defines a successful visit as the completion of a purchase process. Other websites can define conversion as the completion of a lead form, request for information, newsletter sign-up, phone call or other direct contact that can be measured. Whatever the definition of a successful ...
... visit, this is the essence of conversion. So Website Optimization is Conversion Optimization.

There are essentially two elements that affect Conversion Optimization:
Traffic
Compelling and Consistent Call to Action

Traffic is maximized through the successful planning and implementation of all of the elements of Internet Marketing, chiefly:
1. SEO
2. PPC or Sponsored Search Advertising
3. Affiliate Marketing

For the purposes of this writing, we will concentrate on SEO. See our online content for PPC and Affiliate Marketing. Suffice it to say that all 3 optimize traffic.

SEO is still the chief traffic generator. Far beyond meta tags and title tags, effective and ethical SEO involves the following sub-specialties:

Onsite Optimization - this involves all of the geeky internals of the site that include the meta tags, title tags, internal structure, site maps, etc.
Extensive Keyword Research - few understand this important component. Keywords need to be understood to develop the universe of meaningful keywords. Meaningful keywords are those keywords that offer real opportunity in terms of popularity (volume of searches), competitiveness (number of competing web pages), derivatives and other variations of keywords used to find your competitors.
Competitive Research - the analysis of those sites currently achieving high search engine rankings for the same keywords identified to effectively create a game plan to implement effective strategies to win on the search engines.
CONTENT - it is absolutely essential for long term success to create GREAT CONTENT. More than meta tags or title tags, the consistent, steady stream of fresh, unique content on the website and published on the web through online publishers is the difference maker for successful SEO. Content is what generates exclusive inbound links pointing directly into your site; the Google spiders see this and rates these inbound links (backlinks) as high or higher than anything else.
Indexing - the indexing of your pages (all of them) with the search engines and over 3,000 indexing sites.
Social Bookmarking - The Google Spiders have increased the significance of social bookmarking in ranking web pages. Social Bookmarking is the online indexing of the bookmarks or the favorites that people submit and store online. The technology allows members to access their bookmarks from any online source and to receive updates, feeds as it relates to their specific areas of interest. The spiders use this to measure website popularity because real human beings are inputting the bookmarking settings. Bookmarks and people are very significant for Google. By including direct access to these Social Bookmarking sites on the very pages of our clients' sites, visitors can bookmark the site and submit their bookmarks to sites such as Digg, de.lic.io.us, etc.

Compelling Call to Action

Once you have successfully been found via SEO et al, the job of website is only 50% complete. The visitor still hasn't done what you want them to do yet. Often so called Internet Marketing Companies or SEO Companies consider their job complete if and when they increase traffic to your website.

However, we feel that we don't believe that we will retain long term clients without redefining SEO and Internet Marketing to include CONVERSION. Conversion is the ultimate measure of a website's success.

So, how can we get a visitor to become a customer, how do we get them to do exactly what you want them to do before they move on with their day? Suffice it say that successful conversion involves many potential strategies to:

Grab Attention - you have a few seconds
Relevancy - the visitor must see what they expected to see when they clicked on your link
KEEP IT SIMPLE - make it obvious how the visitor benefits
GREAT CONTENT - give those who need to know more a clear path to do so
Consistency - make all pages a click away to the conversion page
Accessibility - contact forms, newsletter sign-ups, dedicated phone numbers
Quality Ecommerce - great imagery, one-page checkout, guarantees, warranties, customer testimonials, obvious secure purchasing, easy-to-find contact information are just a few of the key elements to a quality ecommerce user experience.

Website Optimization and Internet Marketing are synonymous. Website Optimization is all about conversion so Internet Marketing and SEO must be all about conversion too.