This is a hard one for me. I’m a detail-oriented person. I don’t like to leave anything out in case I miss something important. If I’m telling a story, I like to embellish it with details. Getting to the point is often a long drive round the houses. But sometimes, keeping it simple is a must. On your website, for example.

When a visitor arrives on your homepage, he/she needs to know what it’s about almost immediately. They don’t have time to drive round the houses trying to find what they are looking for and they don’t need or want to be confused by irrelevant stuff. They also don’t want to leave with eye strain due to glaring colours or zigzagging down your page.

How do you make it easy for them to navigate your site and keep them there longer? By keeping it (stylishly) simple.

This doesn’t mean you can’t go into detail at all; there will always be some visitors that want to know more. But make it so they can get the gist from a five second glance and if they want more information, provide them with a means to get them there.

Here’s some  tips on keeping your website stylishly simple. (more…)

• Often your free website has a web address with an extension like wordpress.com or weebly.com. This not only makes your web address extra long and difficult to remember, it doesn’t sound very professional.
• Often, without a yourcompanyname.com domain name, you’re more than likely also using a Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo email address. Does this really create a professional, I’m-in-it-for-the-long-term image for your business?
• Often with free website hosting, you’re probably advertising other businesses on your website. And you have absolutely no control on what’s being advertised even if they are competitor sites. Does that really make good business sense?
• If your free website is content managed (you add content and make your own changes), are you able to back up your database file to your desktop computer or to your email? In some cases, the answer is no.
• If you’ve uploaded images and other media files to your free website, can you access them through a file manager or via FTP? In most cases, the answer is probably no.

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WordPress, originally developed as a blogging platform, is an easy-to-use, FREE content managed system that is available to anyone with a domain name and web host (and even those without).

WordPress is the ideal solution if you just want to add a blog to your company’s existing website (or for personal blogging), but WordPress is not just a blog.

It can also be used as a standalone website with “static” web pages that you can quickly add and change at any time as long as you have an internet connection.

Working off a database, the default WordPress installation comes packaged with a number of features and is constantly being developed to improve user experience (both that of the owner and visitors) as well as to maintain a high level of security for your website. (more…)

One of the best ways to keep your website fresh and interesting for your loyal visitors is to add new content. Not only will it encourage them to keep coming back on a regular basis but it will help your website stay at (or close to) the top of Google search results pages (provided you are using the right keywords in your content).

The type of website you have – static or content managed – and how much time you have available, will determine whether you can add or change content on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. I recommend changing your content at least monthly, but if your time or budget is limited, choose things that are quick and easy to change or add.

Below are 10 quick and easy ways to update your web content you might want to try. (more…)

When I create websites for my clients I usually index them with the major search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo. I also add the web address to AboutUs.org which is a wiki providing information on websites. But it is more than just a “whois” look-up.

It provides a title, page description, tags and a snapshot of the home page. Now, with the added features of the “Online Visibility Audit” I can check the online visibility of my clients’ websites with regard to their keywords as soon as they are published to ensure we have done everything possible to improve page ranking.

Want to know how your website’s home page appears to both search engines and visitors?

Do an online visibility audit at www.aboutus.org

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In my last article I mentioned the cool FREE tools Google has on offer to help small business owners become more visible on the internet.

Amongst the free tools is Google Analytics which, as you probably know if you own a website, is great for analyzing statistics on visitors and the keywords they used to get there.

But did you know that you can now find out what the World is searching?

Underneath the Analytics report for your keywords your visitors used, there is a link to “Google Insights” where you can find out how many searches for those same keywords have been made around the world during a given period. But more than that, “Google Insights” is another free tool, which in Google’s words, you can use to “compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties.”

How is this useful? you’re probably wondering.

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Have you tried these Free Google Tools?

Everyone knows just how powerful a search engine Google is. You can find pretty much anything you’re looking for these days. Whether you’re curious about who your favourite singer or actor is currently dating (or breaking up with), you want to know why you have some ailment or other, or you’re desperately looking for a local business to fix your plumbing, heating or air conditioning in a hurry, 99 times out of 100, Google will find tons of websites with answers to your problems. Which one you visit will depend on a variety of things… attention grabbing heading, interesting description, and of course relevancy.

How does it find these websites?

In brief, Google “spiders” crawl the internet looking for key phrases on web pages, starting with the homepage, and depending on the relevance of those key phrases, as well as a number of other factors, it will rank your website accordingly. How often Google’s spiders crawl through your website depends on several criteria, not least how well your site has been “search engine optimized”.

If your site has good internal SEO, that is fantastic. But did you know there are a number of Free Google Tools that will not only let Google know you exist, but may also improve search engine optimization and visitor conversions?

Here are five free Google tools that you can use on your own website:

1. Submit your content to Google
2. Map your business with Google Maps
3. Analyze your website traffic with Google Analytics
4. Create better conversions with Website Optimizer
5. Add events to Google Calendar

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