Improve your site right now
March 19th, 2008
Yesterday I read an article from fadtastic on 25 Ways To Improve Your Site In 5 Minutes, which I found extremely interesting. I just wanted to add to their great list, with a few more things I think are over looked more often than they should, which are also very easy fixes.
So in addition to everything mentioned in their list, here is what I have for you:
- Add a “home” link to your main navigation
- Idiot proof your site, by letting users know exactly what will happen when they click on something. You should be using “title” attributes for all your links as further indication, which also help with SEO.
- Links work best when underlined, and believe it or not but are best recognized as “blue”
- Now, you don’t have to always stick to this to a “T”, but try to be as clear as possible as to what is a link, and what is not.
- Have at least one “call-to-action” clearly visible before the fold
- Let the user know what you want them to do on your site. If you are looking to show off your work, then make a nice link, or button to “get started viewing our work!” or something along those lines.
- Bold your keywords
- Add some extra weight to your keywords, while at the same time making it easier for the user to figure out what they are looking at, and if it is something they are interested in, or were looking for. Users scan pages, they do not read top down arbitrarily any and all information until they find what they need, so show them what they want!
- Setup a posting schedule and comment on other related blogs
- Make it one you can live with, and stick to it. I try to post at least once per week, if not twice or more, but lately I have been really busy and have been slacking…sorry
- Secondly, try and get out there and find some friends! If you read a post you like, comment on it. Most blogs ask for your URL in the comments section, this is free advertising, take advantage of it (but don’t abuse it).
This is just a short list I threw together that I thought were quick fixes you could do for your site. You don’t have to do them all at once, you could set aside 5 minutes a day, and try to fix one thing at a time. Obliviously if you are using a blogging software, plugins are availabl, which often times take less than 5 minutes to install (be careful, some take 5 minutes to install, and a month to fix!).
- Posted at 8:52 am in resources
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The main issue with commenting on other sites is that if you are not one of the first to do so, you tend to get lost in the shuffle.
Also, most are nofollow links (for good reason) - so you get no SEO link juice.
A final note - fadtastic talks about making title tags “relevant” but really the idea is to make them relevant, unique, and keyword rich - not an easy feat. Considering they’re the #1 SEO element though, it’s worth the time even if it’s longer than 5 minutes.
Good post.
Hey Eric, first off I see that you are from Lowell, MA. Nice to have a local, or at least local to NE stop in.
Great point about the posting on other blogs as far as improving SEO. I guess it is more of a networking thing, than SEO as you so well pointed out.
Lastly, about title tags. This is usually an easy fix for static sites, a little more tricky on dynamic sites, although with most blogging platforms, this is a breeze with plugins, or just some simple php to get some information about the current page, either the post name, category, or both.
Thanks!
Thanks for adding to the list.
Excellent point, and often overlooked. I’m guilty of removing the underline on many of my sites.