Web Site Optimization Service
Get Real!

The typical web site optimization service all too often neglects the human element. The fact is, humans, not search engines, generate the traffic that goes through your web site. It's a hot topic among webmasters, but it is also a misunderstood one.

Before you rush out and pay for optimization, let me invite you on a
free Web Site Optimization Service Guided Tour.

It will only cost you the time to read it. You are free to use my recommendations as you see fit. There are no hidden costs or obligations involved. My only purpose is to help you understand what web site optimization means.

After this guided tour, you should be able to incorporate the appropriate optimization measures in your site planning. You will avoid disappointing results later.

What's a Web Site For Anyway?

Is your web site ultimately meant for "spiders" or for humans?

Most people think of web site optimization as ensuring that search engine "spiders" find your site using keywords. So they concentrate on that. Keywords.

However, your customers are humans, not search engines. Optimize with your potential customers foremost in mind. Don't leave them out of the equation! It's your job to understand the humans you plan to do business with.

Not all firms, pretending to offer a web site optimization service, can actually deliver on this important aspect of optimization. Unfortunately, many concentrate on selling you schemes that have been devised to "trick" the search engines into selecting your site as a likely candidate to offer, ultimately misleading a human searching for information.

You may get good results for a while. But, search engines soon discover the ruse, and discard your site. Then you have to start all over gain.

Is that the way to build and run a sound business?

If your site is going to have any success at all, it will have to optimize for both!

• your Human visitors (i.e. potential "customers"),
• and Search Engine (SE) visitors (i.e. "spiders").

Web Site Optimization Service
The Big Picture

A quick look at how things work.

Like it or not, search engines (SE) stand between web surfers and your web site. The SEs need you to attract advertisers. You need the SEs to attract visitors, and potential clients. You cannot disappoint your visitors because, then, you have lost a potential client, and the SE has lost faith in your web site's ability to satisfy his client!

Here is what a true web site optimization service should take into account:

• Web surfers are your potential customers.
• Web surfers use keywords, and rely on search engines to find a Web site that will provide them with the information or answers they are looking for.
• Your site must come up within the first page of suggestions the SE displays in answer to a keyword driven query. Statistically, most people will start another search, using a different keyword, if they do not immediately see a promising entry in the topmost part of the list. When your site shows up in the topmost part of the list, it means increased web site traffic for you.
• If they choose to visit your Web site, the first few seconds are crucial. Don't force them to admire your "flashy" home page. Give them what they want to read, in nutshell, right in the first sentence or two. Convince them to read on.
• Your visitor will eventually reward you with a sale if he/she finds your information helpful. They return because they were satisfied with what they found on your site. That's even more web site traffic. Your chances to make a sale increase even more.
• Your satisfied visitors return to use the same SE because they had significant results on their last visit. Traffic increases on the SE. Advertisers reward the SE because there is increasingly significant traffic there. The SE's income comes from advertisers.
• The SE can measure your site's popularity. If you do your job right (satisfy your visitors), they reward you with a higher position in the list of results.
• And on it goes …

Human Concerns of a
Web Site Optimization Service

Avoid alienating your human visitors!

If web surfers do not like what they see in the first few seconds … Poof! They are gone, likely never to return. You should consider yourself very lucky, and thankful, when they single you out of the tens of millions of other active sites on the Web. You were the "needle in the hay stack". Don't spoil your chance! Give them what they came looking for!

Be your own web site optimization service provider!

• Avoid low value content. Most people are looking for information and answers, not a list of goods and services. Help them decide what action to take. They will reward you for being helpful, don't worry.
• Avoid "pushy" sales pitches.
• Avoid "flashy" technology. Most people are looking for substance behind the good looks. Avoid putting obstacles between them and your highly researched and useful information … unless, of course, you have nothing of value to offer!

A web site optimization service will often neglect to tell you to give people what they want. Reward the Web surfers for taking the time to visit your site. They in turn will eventually reward you with a sale.

• Give generously, not to impress, but in a spirit of genuine helpfulness,
• Provide high quality, useful, theme related content,
• Focus a page content on a single keyword, or keyword expression,
• Maintain a uniform and coherent Web site theme,
• Limit the size (weight) of each page for snappy downloads,
• Ensure ease of navigation within your site,
• Adopt a "look and feel" that is compatible with the main theme,
• Behave as a professional.

Search Engine Concerns of a
Web Site Optimization Service

Avoid alienating search engine (SE) visitors.

The primary purpose of a SE is to offer quality, relevant web sites to a given search keyword or expression. Highly satisfactory results get web surfers to return to the SE for their next searches. The more web surfers return, the more advertisers are attracted to the SE by the traffic it generates.

Don’t fall for the two most common web site optimization service tricks:

• Avoid a high ratio of keywords to content. Repeating a popular keyword dozens of times on a page almost devoid of content, is not a desirable characteristic to a SE.
• Avoid a high ratio of outbound links to content. Avoid becoming, or linking to, "link farms". The latter are increasingly being recognized as a form of spamming by SEs, and you are eventually penalized for it (your site slips out of the top positions in the results pages … or never makes it there … or back!).

Play the game honestly. Abide by the search engine rules of etiquette and fair play. The success of your web business depends a lot on the SE's favorable evaluation of your site's value to web surfers.

However, you do not really have to know how the SEs rate you.

All you have to know, as a web business owner, is that your site will eventually rate high if the web surfers that find your site, through a given SE, think highly of their find.

The SE is constantly trying to "evaluate" your web site. They use sophisticated algorithms to:

• analyze your web site content,
• measure "human satisfaction" by monitoring their behavior, both while on your site and after they leave it (i.e. if they are in and out of your site in three seconds flat … what do you think that tells the SE?).

No web site optimization service can go this far, nor can they keep up with the SEs constantly changing strategies and tactics.

When everyone involved delivers what is expected of them, everyone gets what they expected, and everyone is happy.

Bottom Line? Keep It Real!

Keep your Web site content real, honest and helpful, and everybody gets his reward. Your business success depends entirely on you. You should know the human side of your business better than anyone. So, cater to your visitors in the most meaningful manner you can muster!

Of course, on the technical side of things, there is much more to a web site optimization service than what you have read above.

I let my web hosting firm take care of all the complex optimization technicalities. It is included in their comprehensive set of services, and they do a very efficient and effective job.

This leaves me free to take care of business.

I let the optimization "wizards" argue amongst themselves and sweat it out. My Web site rises above the fold without them. I have real content to offer, not just keywords!

Stay tuned!

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