Business Opportunities Weblog

August 18, 2008 by Rich Whittle | 1 Comment

Fortune Small Business:

Q: Our current Web site, fusedsolutions.com, does an okay job of portraying the appropriate information to those that get there, but unfortunately not many get there.

Can you please give us a few tips on how to get our site to the top of search lists and build substantial traffic?

A: The first problem is in the title tag for your homepage. Unless Internet users are actually searching specifically for Fused Solutions, they’re not going to care that it is the title of the page; they could even be confused by it.

The top of the page should be dedicated to terms that people will search for, so that they know right away that they’ve landed at the right place. Consider using terms that define what you offer, such as “service software,” “service outsourcing” or “customer service representatives.”

Elsewhere on your homepage, the language on the page has a Gunning fog index of 17. The Gunning fog index is determined by a mathematical formula that takes into account word complexity and sentence length. English that caters to a wide audience should stay under 12.

“You are using words that your customer would never use,” Rich Schefren of Strategic Profits says. “The reader has to stop and think about what he just read. That’s not going to keep people on the page.”

Business owners too often fall into the trap of treating a Web site like a brochure. But the user experience is different online: You have to get across who you are and what you do very quickly, as the average Web surfer spends just seconds on a page.

In addition to keeping phrases short and the terminology simple, you’ll need to focus on common keywords that will bring traffic your way. Small changes can have outsize results: “There are less than 3,000 searches a month for ‘help desk technology,’ but over 90,000 searches a month for ‘help desk software,’” Schefren says. “If I am doing a search for help-desk software, I want to land on a page where there is no doubt in my mind that focus is on help-desk software. Here, people won’t be too sure and will click the back button.

One way to keep visitors on your site is to address them directly.

“All the information and tabs are about the company. Everything is ‘we, we, we.’ Stop talking about yourselves and instead insert content that is geared towards the consumer,” Schefren says. “Make the links and tabs talk to the visitor, such as ‘How to increase your customer satisfaction rates’ and ‘How to eliminate customer support headaches.’ The site should not be about the company so much as what benefits the company can offer the client.”

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Photo by CraigPJ.

In Advice, Customers, Internet | 1 Comment