A dozen most common Mistakes of new web sites

You may be justifiably proud of the new web site you have built up over months of hard work and painstaking research. It may look very pretty! It may also be your first one - you are to be congratulated for having got this far.

However the majority of new web sites (both home built and in a large number of cases professionally designed) start their lives with a number of flaws which will seriously hamper their performance. Here we take a look at some of the most common ones, and what you can do about them.

First just go to the web page, right-click on "view source" in the screen area, and look at that text editor that opens to display a mass of HTML code. Don't be afraid of the code - the code is your friend!

1. Keywords: Few web sites make proper use of their META data. Here is the line where the Meta keywords live: <meta name='keywords' content='business, training, performance'&gt; The line contains one important mistake. These words tell the search engines what you consider the most important keywords for your site - or to put it another way - what they should index your page for. There are many that say META is no longer important as it was, however it IS still worth getting right. The problem here is that your site will NEVER rank well for single words like the ones used, and so the meta has been wasted. Instead of single words choose phrases of two to five words, which you think people might use if they were searching for a service like yours - but didn't know yet. So for the example above, something like <meta name='keywords' content='cornwall business training, business performance monitoring, business training south west' /> Is far more likely to yield search results that the earlier offering.

2. Description: The Next important META is the description tag. The main function of this is that search engines quite often use it as the main body text in their listings. So make it sell your page. Note I said page - every page should have different meta, as every page can be indexed separately in Google. So your description tag should say something like: <meta name="Description" content='This gardning company has designed some of Kew's most attractive ornamental gardens'> Now if this phrases ends up getting listed in Google, people might have a reason to visit your web page.

3. Title: One more important thing in the

part of the page is the <title> tag. You should have one, and it should have your most important keywords in it. This is an important tag in page optimisation, again telling the search engines what your page is about. Ideally the <title> tag should contain words closely related to the <h1> (heading) tag, to give the search engines a clear idea what the page is about. How many home pages are still being optimised for the word "home", using the title "Home" or similar? Yuck!

4. Accessibility concerns. In this day and age there are still many of us that use tables in web page design. "What?" I hear you say. Just look down the source code again, and if you see regular tags like this: <table> <tr> <td> </td> </tr> </table> You are probably looking at a tables based site (the <tr> define a table row, while the >td > defines a table cell). The problem with this is that tables are now frowned upon, partly because they make pages slower to load, and partly because they hinder accessibility - the ease that handicapped (especially poorly sighted) people have in reading a web page, typically using screen readers. If the page is full of <div> tags then it is probably structured using the more modern "css" design principles. As this is a technical subject we can't go into it in any more depth here, but at least you know the difference now, right?

5. More accessibility: The other most obvious accessibility concern is this - do your images have an <Alt> tag? "Alt" stands for alternative text that describes the image to someone who can't see it. Accessibility is both a concern for reasons of basic consideration and morality, but also because of your legal obligation to make "reasonable Provision" for the handicapped. There has been a class action in the US about a non-accessible web site - not to say that it will get that extreme here, but keep it in mind anyway. Finally would you not like to profit from the "grey pound". Society's fastest growing group is increasingly Internet savvy, and you'll need to be accessible to attract this important marketing demographic.

6. Fonts. So many web sites use impenetrable fonts on fancy backgrounds - a real no-no. A clear font of a reasonable size on a white or nearly white background is the way to go. Look at Google. This is a concern both for accessibility and also for conveying a clear message to your users. Text should always contrast clearly with it's background. Well known fonts like Ariel and Verdana are the best. Ideally fonts should be resizable so that visitors can set the size that suits them. In Internet explorer there is a font size option on the "view" menu. If the font size does not change when you select a different size, then the page is not accessible. For the technical fonts should be sized in "ems" or "%", but not in pixels (px). Needless to say most still use pixels!

5. The heading <h1> tag. This is the main heading of the page. If you don't have one you are missing the opportunity to tell the search engines what the most important thing on your page is. If you just search the source code for "h1" you will soon find out if you have one or not. There should only be one <h1> tag on a page, and further headings should be <h2>, then <h3>, etc. This is called "Semantic page structure" for those that are interested.

6. Text: Right lets get away from the code for a while, and take a look at the text itself. How much is there? In many cases very little. Search engines need text like ships need water. If you don't give them text, they can't index anything. 200-300 words per page minimum please.

7. Menu Links: We may have optimised much of the page for your keywords, but menu links are another important place. Rather than having a menu link that contains the text "Home", use your most important keywords in the text. This is another way of telling the search engines what your page is about. This applies equally well to any links coming in to your site from outside. The structure to use for links to your "Spanners" sales page is this: <a href="http://www.mysite.com/page-about-spanners.html">Shiny Steel Spanners</a>

8. Overall optimisation: We have looked at each part of the page in isolation, just a bit about the whole page. Each page should be built around a group of keywords that are related. Those similar terms should crop up in the meat keywords, description, page title, h1 tag, menu links, and should be regularly interspersed throughout the text - but it should still be readable.

9. A Good headline. Headings are not only about keywords - they are also of course about people. Your headline is your first (and initially only) tool for keeping the new visitor from navigating away from your page. What are you going to say? Well the headline must be clear, bold, and must contain a compelling benefit-loaded reason why the visitor should stay. Lets say they search for "best route to Preston" and you have a page all about it, but your heading is "We sell maps". Where are the benefits in that heading? A benefit affects the reader personally, so perhaps "Our easy to use maps will half your journey time to Preston" would persuade them to stay a little longer?

10. Call to action. If the visitor does not take an action from visiting your web page, all the time and effort you have spent to attract them in the first place has been wasted. The action might be a purchase, a contact, or other. Consider persuading visitors to sign-up for something so you can market to them in the future, and make it something of real value, otherwise why should they sign up? This is a huge subject in itself, but look at each of your pages, and think - have I given my visitor a clear call to action in the event that they are interested in what we are telling them?

11. Information. So you've optimised your page a little and the visitor traffic is growing - or is it? Who knows? Your web host probably provides a statistics package that you rarely visit, most aren't very informative anyway. One of the best stats packages is Google Analytics, and the good news is its free. It tells you everything you need to know about developing and optimising your site. I would recommend searching for "Google Analytics" and following the sign-up process. There is a little code to put on your web page, its quite clearly explained - good luck. Also look for Google "Webmaster Tools" / "Sitemaps", and join that for free too.

12. Directories. The more other sites and directories that point to you the better. And the best is The Open Directory. Go to dmoz.org and submit your site. There is no better place to start.


OK all of the above should keep anyone with a new site busy for a while. If you're interested in finding out more or participating in our training course on web marketing, entitled "Learn how to Profit from the Internet", either go to our main web site: Channel Computing - Web Development and marketing in Cornwall, or the training page: Internet marketing course for Cornish Businesses.

Good luck with all that - should keep you busy!
Regards, Pete