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Navigation, Navigation, Navigation
Written by: Greg GaskillArticle Overview: No matter how successful your marketing program might be, it is important to keep your visitors on your site once they arrive. If they find it difficult to navigate and leave out of frustration, you have just sabotaged all of your marketing efforts.
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Free Download - Community Pages and Good Landing Pages By Greg Gaskill |
Navigation, Navigation, Navigation
Enticing your target audience to visit your website through
creative marketing plans and search engine optimization is only the first step
in attracting new visitors and converting them into customers or clients. Once
your potential clientele has arrived at your website, it is equally important
to get them to stay. An appealing layout and design is one important factor in
creating a website that is enjoyable to browse and that will encourage users to
navigate deeper into your site. It is also important to offer opportunities for
interaction and interesting information that appeals to your target audience.
However, a website that contains all of these essential elements but is
difficult to navigate will prove ineffective in encouraging your potential
consumers to become loyal customers. Website visitors enjoy useful information
and interesting links; however, there is nothing more frustrating to your
potential patrons than for them to find a website of interest, only to be
utterly confused – and eventually disengaged – by an overly complicated, messy
navigational stream of endless pages and links.
There are several reasons why a clumsy conglomeration of overwhelming
navigational twists and turns is a bad idea for your website, not the least of
which is the fact that this will confuse search engine crawlers and negatively
affect your search engine ranking. Multitudes of sub-categories and pages
within your site are sure to baffle search engine crawlers, which will undoubtedly
hinder their ability to effectively rank your site and will prove injurious to
your overall ranking. This, of course, will lead to fewer visitors, which is
obviously counterproductive.
To avoid this common trap, establish a clear goal for your website prior to
populating its pages. Whether the goal is to sell products, generate leads,
market your services or increase subscriptions, every website needs a clear
goal on which to focus navigation and content. Once the goal of your website
has been established, only include pertinent information that is of interest to
your target audience and will encourage them towards this goal. Overwhelming
them with unnecessary information will only obstruct the path you want them to
follow that leads from entering your site to purchasing your product or signing
up for your mailing list.
Navigation is key to keeping your website visitors on this path. Navigation
should be as simple and straightforward as possible and should guide your
visitors directly towards your website’s ultimate goal, with each stop along
the way encouraging them to move forward on this path. Navigational systems
that branch off in many directions and lead your visitors away from this path
will thwart their progress towards your goal and can render your best laid
plans and extensive marketing efforts ineffectual.
Ensure proper search engine ranking, guide your visitors directly to your end
goal and create a website that is user-friendly by implementing a clear,
concise plan to drive your website traffic directly from the start line to the
checkered flag. Clean, straightforward navigation is an essential component to
reaching this goal and should be considered early on as you develop your
website and select content. Deep links that draw your audience into your site
and enticing information that is of interest to your potential consumers are
important; simply keep in mind that sometimes less is more and avoid
overwhelming and confusing them with unnecessary pages or links.
Website Navigation: Heart of Web Design
The Key to Better Websites
Text vs. Images on your Website
SEO Success - Website Navigation
5 Pitfalls to Avoid with Your Website
Article Tags: bad idea, conglomeration, creating a website, creative marketing, endif, endless pages, fareast, gte, loyal customers, marketing plans, mso, orphan, paper source, search engine optimization, style definitions, target audience, these essential elements, times new roman, twists and turns, website visitors
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About the Author: Greg Gaskill RSS for Greg's articles - Visit Greg's website  Click here to visit Greg's website   How Often Should You Write in Your Blog Your Website Should Be Profitable Not A Drain Why SEO is a Natural Component to any Marketing Plan Should your Small Business go Viral Using Twitter to Launch Products or Web Sites |
Related Forum Posts
What makes you keep coming back for more?
- I am researching on personal preferences that keeps the visitors coming back to a web site. What would be great is if people would list out their preferences of what keeps them interested to keep visiting a website in order or importance.
For me it is:-
1. Content – Value, Depth and Recency of Information provided
2. User Friendliness – Easy Navigation, Simple graphic design etc.
3. Service – download time, contactability etc.
Re: How can I promote my site?
- To promote website online you need to hire professional SEO expert because you have to perform the below activities for your website promotion:-
Start On page optimization which includes the following task:-
1. Meta tag optimization
2. Header Tag Optimization
3. Alt tag Optimization
4. Content Optimization
5. Anchor Text Optimization
6. URL Optimization
7. Navigation Optimization
After On page optimization, Start off Page Optimization which includes the following task:-
1. Link building
2. Directory submission
3. Classified Ads submission
4. Article submission
5. Press Release submission
6. Social Bookmarking
7. Business Listing
8. Local Listing
9. Blog Optimization
10. PPT Creation & Optimization
Re: Exotic Tea Shop Website for Review
- Hi David,
- Background is nice and fitting, but I don't like the header. The title completely blends in with the background?
- About Us shouldn't be second from the left on the navigation bar. People read from left to right. The commercial intent is to buy, the online store should probably be second.
- Online Tea Store... too many choices without supplementary information. No description of product choice. oz and pricing should be stylized separately from the name of the product.
- Online Tea Store.... Visuals is definitely very important in raising commercial intent. Someone who comes to the site through SEO is searching for exotic teas and not particulars. Meaning they're browsing. Text is not enough for a browsing shopper.
- World of Tea... the information can be organized a bit better. Again, visuals. Some of this info belongs to online tea store. I'm not too sure on the name.
- Tea & Treasure... not sure on this name either... mainly because you have "World of Tea" next to it. Navigation should be transparent in conveying information to the users. Why not call it "Find Us" or "Visit Us"?
- Email newseletter.... "occasional updates" containing what exactly?
Again, my humble opinion. Hope you find it useful!
Re: Quick Ways To Utilize SEO Effectively
- There are many different types of content: blog content, website content, newsletter content, audio & video content, the list can be endless. I'll just list 10 types of website content here:
* Index/Introduction
* Product Descriptions
* Testimonials
* Reviews
* Resources
* How-to Information
* Downloads
* Contact Information
* Navigation/Site Map
About/Company Info
Anchor text as the others have said is the hyperlinked words on a web page - the words you click on when you click a link.
Anchor text is important because it tells the search engines what the page is about. Used wisely, it boosts your rankings in search engines, especially in Google.If you use "click here" as the words people are going to click on, you're telling people the page is about the subject "click here", which is not the phrase you want to rank highly for, the text you need to use is a keyword that you have chosen for your website, blog or article.
Take care,
Carol
Re: Quick Ways To Utilize SEO Effectively
- [quote="Carol Aston":fybrn2qt]There are many different types of content: blog content, website content, newsletter content, audio & video content, the list can be endless. I'll just list 10 types of website content here:
* Index/Introduction
* Product Descriptions
* Testimonials
* Reviews
* Resources
* How-to Information
* Downloads
* Contact Information
* Navigation/Site Map
About/Company Info
Anchor text as the others have said is the hyperlinked words on a web page - the words you click on when you click a link.
Anchor text is important because it tells the search engines what the page is about. Used wisely, it boosts your rankings in search engines, especially in Google.If you use "click here" as the words people are going to click on, you're telling people the page is about the subject "click here", which is not the phrase you want to rank highly for, the text you need to use is a keyword that you have chosen for your website, blog or article.
Take care,
Carol[/quote:fybrn2qt]
This is a great topic and useful to anyone who runs a business on the internet. Carol as always your advice is excellent. As far as I know, it is important to use your main keywords as anchor text which lead back to your website or blog, because that is ultimately where you want your readers to go.
MichelleJ
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