Posts filed under ‘Webmaster Tools’
5 Ways to Lose Visitors
We all have a mental list of things that bother us about websites; things that send us scrambling to another site. The web is huge, competition is fierce and the best thing a webmaster 
can do is to adhere to the KISS principle. (KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID). Users of the Intuit-Homestead SiteBuilder program to design sites need an awareness of what does and doesn’t work on the web. (more…)
Lots of Website Visitors – Few Results
This is something we hear often. I get all these visitors to my site, but they don’t buy or they don’t fill out a form or they don’t do whatever it is that I am hoping they will do when they visit my site. These webmasters have well-optimized sites, all the t’s are crossed and I’s are dotted, they show up well in searches, but still the number of visitors far outweighs the resulting purchases or form filing or whatever action is hoped for.
Granted there can be mechanical or design flaws that might be preventing a visitor from becoming a customer/client, but that would be very obvious when some sales turned to no sales.
So how can it be that so many visit and only a few give us the results we had hoped for? Converting visitors to clients…
Google shaking up search results
Besides the school-yard spitting match going on between Google and Bing (For more on the spitting match just do a search for Google and Bing click fraud – everyone has jumped on that posting bandwagon.), the latest news concerning Google is that they are about to shake up search results in an effort to reduce the incidence of spammy sites coming up prominently in those search results.
Beware! If your Homestead – Intuit site or article or post is essentially duplicate content, either something ‘borrowed’ from another site, or an article you’ve written and submitted on multiple sites you could well wake up to find it non-existent in searches. Sites that are predominantly links with little original or useful content are also apparently on the hit list – FINALLY
I’ve longed for the day when sites that offer visitors little in the way of original content and consist of nothing but links and clickable ads that will bring the site owner in $$$ and webmasters who copy and use other’s work, would end up in the nether-world of the www. Perhaps that day is coming.
Google’s Matt Cutts quoted on his blog, “The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site’s content.”
It’s time to take a good, hard look at your Site Builder website to be sure it is going to stand up to the new search standards.
- Does the site have informative content? A bunch of links and ads are not informative content.
- Is it original content? Have you duplicated that content elsewhere? On a blog or in articles posted to different sites? Or perhaps it is content taken from another site?
- Does the site employ black hat techniques?
- Has the content been written for the human reader or the search engines? Sites written for search engines tend to lean toward keyword stuffing
Keep an eye on your site placement over the next several weeks. There are no absolutes and nothing to say that the new algorithm won’t make mistakes and drop a good site. How to request reconsideration of your site.
10 Ways to Promote Your Intuit – Homestead Website Locally
In this day and age a web site is a must-have for businesses large or small. For the business that operates within a specific locale a web site is an invaluable tool. The Yellow Pages used to be the ‘go to’ place for people to find a business or service; expensive advertising with limited exposure. Thanks to the internet and easy-to-use web site building programs like SiteBuilder from Intuit – Homestead, business owners can now promote their business with full details, contact info, maps to the location, photos and even coupons. Perhaps best of all, you aren’t stuck with the same content for a year as is the case with a phone directory ad.
So how do you promote your niche market website when your business serves a specific area? Simply having one doesn’t mean you will be found unless your base audience already knows the name of your business or you’ve managed to place high in search placements for your key words. But, don’t overlook the fact that new people move in regularly and there are probably visitors to the area who could possibly be interested in your business or service. To expand the reach of your website, go outside the web. How to increase awareness of your website …
Be sure you get listed in that Directory
Is your site being listed in directories or ending up in the trash? Directories all have specific criteria you must follow in order to get your site listed. Don’t be one of those who fall through the cracks because you failed to read and follow directions …
Just Released – 2010 edition of SEO Building Blocks
SEO Building Blocks is a comprehensive guide to help Intuit – Homestead users learn search engine optimization and how to apply SEO to their SiteBuilder web sites. The building blocks of SEO presented in easy to understand terms…
