8 simple ways to improve your website

The following is a brief explanation of how to optimise web content for search engines such as google, msn etc…

1. Call-to-Action
   Never have a link saying ‘Click here!’.
   Always have a links that say: ‘More info on blah blah’.
   Make sure that the link always loosely describes the target page.
2. Consistent and simple email signatures
   Make your site’s layout and theme consistent with a short CSS based signature which is consistent with all your employees.
3. Customer-based passages
   Instead of, ‘With our product, you can do this!’
   Try, ‘At Microplop.com, we always aim to provide you with the highest possible service possible’
   This maybe seen as management talk, but it will increase the period of time a user stays on your site.
4. State a privacy and copyright statement
   Goto http://creativecommons.org/ and create a license that will tell your customers about copyright issues and their rights to copy your content.
   Have a link in all outgoing emails saying – ‘We value your privacy’, which links to your site’s privacy agreement. This has been known to increase email subscription rate of up to 250%, as the customer feels safer with you having their details.
5. Use superlatives carefully
   Superlatives in your content are dangerous. Words such as ‘best, cheapest, most visited…’ are strong words, and are rarely proven on websites.
   Where a superlative is used, cite it’s reference and proof from a 3rd party of it being true.
6. Custom 404 error pages
   You will be able to setup custom 404 (page not found) error pages on your server. These are most effective if the same site layout is kept, with a site-map and webmaster email address in full display so the user can interact better with your site, and stay on it longer.
   
7. Update regularly and predictably
   This is the hardest one to manage. If you add quality content at the same time roughly every week or every day(on Fridays, 9pm), your natural rankings will hugely benefit.
   If there is a huge gap in postings, your site’s natural rankings will fall.
8. Publish pictures of the team, and address of business
   Having a sense of physical address of the business and ‘a face to a name’ greatly helps the customer trust you with their money.

Grinds my gears: Meaningless, boring lectures

This will be a short post, as I am currently in a Software engineering lecture, bored to death. I am able to contact the outside world through my pda, and Wi-Fi. Next I have COTS, which is even more pointless – an hour ‘practical’ of a lecture treating us as year sevens. Were doing… powerpoint this lecture. Oh what fun!

Maybe next week ill record my COTS lecture and post it up on here to prove how boring they are.