Custom Website Design - Web Links Directory - Software Development

After Google, YouTube is now apparently the most-used search engine in the world. YouTube now allegedly sees more searches than either Yahoo or MSN. I think that’s amazing. And I also think it is an amazing opportunity for those of us who want to increase traffic to our websites.

But does YouTube really represent a realistic option for increasing traffic to your site? Last year I set out to test this very theory because, frankly, I was a little cynical. My own suspicions were that most of these searches were from teenage kids looking for clips of their favourite bands or stupid stunts and I doubted that YouTube could be effectively harnessed for the sake of marketers.

So I created a small number of short (2-5 minute) videos on a topic related to one of my websites and published them to see what happened.
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1. URL canonicalization and 301 re-dirs. One of the first things I look for on any domain I am giving a health check on is the URL canonicalization. In My Opinion it does not matter if you pick proper URL canonicalization pointing to the www’s or non-www’s, but you need to pick one and stick to it. I personally always choose the www’s because more people (from my experience) tend to link to you with the full URL. So you need to get into your .htaccess file and make a few edits. Any variation of the homepage URL needs to be done this way too - for example you need to have the /index.php also re-direct to the main URL (however you have it set up) Bottom line here, you need to make sure all variations of your URL point to the same way you set it up.

Any extension of your URL like:
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Analyzing your web traffic statistics can be an invaluable tool for a number of different reasons. But before you can make full use of this tool, you need to understand how to interpret the data.

Most web hosting companies will provide you with basic web traffic information that you then have to interpret and make pertinent use of. However, the data you receive from your host company can be overwhelming if you don’t understand how to apply it to your particular business and website. Let’s start by examining the most basic data-the average visitors to your site on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

These figures are the most accurate measure of your website’s activity. It would appear on the surface that the more traffic you see recorded, the better you can assume your website is doing, but this is an inaccurate perception. You must also look at the behavior of your visitors once they come to your website to accurately gauge the effectiveness of your site.
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The biggest challenge every single website owner has (including me) is getting traffic to his/her web site. And bar none the best traffic you can obtain is Organic Search Engine traffic.

So what is Organic Search Engine traffic?

Simply put, when someone is searching for a product or service they type their query into the search engine (google, yahoo, MSN etc.) and then the results of that search are displayed. And you want your web site to come up in that search query.

You probably already know that the majority of people will not go past the first page of the search engine results and even less people will go past the top 30 results. Therefore, your challenge is getting your website listed on the first page of the search engines for the keywords relating to your site.

Now there are a ton of people that will tell you there is some mystical voodoo secret mojo to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). And if you’re not familiar with the term SEO. Simply put SEO is where you build your web site in such a way that the search engines like it and the result is getting better rankings on the search engines.
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Eventually every small-business owner realizes that they will need a website for their business, but figuring out where to start can be a challenge. Just understanding the technical lingo and all the options can be confusing, but with the right preparation you can have an impressive and easy to maintain website for your small business in no time.

Check The Competition

The first place to start on your website project is to look at some competitor websites in your industry. You will want to know what your potential customers will comparing you to. You will also want to find out what the standard is for your industry in terms of the number of pages, the type of information and the general look and feel. If for example, your competitors have large sites and many interactive features then you will want your site be comparable, but if your competitors have small simple sites, then you know that you won’t need lots of bells and whistles.
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How is your online shopping cart setup? Does it make the transition from interest to closing the sale slippery so the prospect just slides along and automatically hits the Pay button? Or are there catches along the way which frustrate the client so they end up abandoning the shopping cart?

It is obvious that ‘greasing the tube’ so the client effortlessly glides through the ordering and payment procedure can make a huge difference to your profits. If you just reduced shopping cart abandonment by 10-20%, what would that do for your business?

When thinking about your shopping cart setup, it’s always helpful to compare your online shopping process with your own personal offline shopping experience. When you select items in a shop and make your way to the Pay Desk, what things irritate you or would irritate you? Have you ever selected a number of items and then had to look around for the Pay Desk. If it is hidden in some corner and you go round for 10 minutes trying to find it you know how you feel by the time you get there.
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