Website Basics: Recipe for Success

Posted on March 24th, 2011 in Web Pro Help Articles by lori

The most frequently asked question I get is, “How can I do this myself?”  Let’s first establish that building your own website is like installing your own fence instead of paying a contractor.  It’s not going to look professionally done.  It won’t be very hardy and you should expect it to break down more quickly than it would if you had invested in a pro.  That said, you CAN do it.  And, like building your own fence, you will be required to learn how to use the tools.  You can’t just go toss some lumber and some nails on the ground and walk away.  You have to actually build a framework.  What is the main thing you want your website visitors to do? Buy a widget? Buy your service?  That is your Call to Action.  Make sure visitors know exactly what you want them to do when they arrive at your site.  Create a clear Call To Action and put it in the body of your page.  

Picture of a basic web page

Website Basics

Other pages might include About Us, Testimonials, Other products for sale, etc. So, go sketch out a plan for your site, keeping in mind your Call To Action!

Fresh! Refreshing Your Web Browser

Posted on March 20th, 2011 in Web Pro Help Articles by lori

Every once in awhile I get a frantic call from someone who can’t see their web changes because they are looking at a stored version of a website.   One solution is to install a “no cache” meta tag in the header of the site.  It looks like this:

meta http-equiv=”Expires” content=”0″ /
meta http-equiv=”PRAGMA” content=”NO-CACHE” /

Certainly you should encourage your clients to do some basic browser maintenance. I found this helpful step-by-step resource for helping non-technical people manage their PC housekeeping, written by the I.T. department at the University of Indiana. 

“Each time you access a file through your web browser, the browser caches (stores) it. In this way, the files (including any images on the page) do not have to be retrieved anew from the remote web site each time you click the Back or Forward buttons. You should periodically clear the cache to allow your browser to function more efficiently. http://kb.iu.edu/data/ahic.html“

Words Are Worth a Thousand Pictures!

Posted on March 16th, 2011 in Good Housekeeping,SEO by lori

Be sure your designer creates your website with text in mind, organized in managable, easily distinguised boxes or paragraphs with lots of keyword-rich headline h1 tags. You need to have lots and lots of real, searchable keyword-rich text on your site, especially on the homepage. Your homepage should contain samples of every bit of content you care to place on every page of your website. Not just -links, but nice descriptive paragraphs. Keyword-rich text text text all around. Google spiders should visit your site and eat up tons and tons of text and index you with loads of valid, solid information. Text that is written for the web isn’t as lovley or poetic as it is for print, but it’s essential that it be very straightforward, direct and descriptive.