Netpaths Guide to SEO & Web Design » Web Development

Essential Pages Your Website Must Have To Be Ranked Well in Search Engines

CVOS — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 22:04:57 +0000

I’ve been spending a lot of time looking over websites not ranking in Google I see a mistake fairly often that is easily corrected.

Search Engines won’t rank you as well if you are missing the following pages.

Important Pages You Must Have

A contact us page
A privacy policy page
An About Us Page

It’s true. So if you don’t have those pages on your site then you are letting your competitors take your rankings.

The reason that this is so important for search engine optimization is because Google only wants to rank quality websites that have real businesses backing them. If a search engine spider is trying to identify a thin affiliate site or autogenerated website, it looks for signals indicating authenticity and quality. If you are trying to hide your identity or conceal company details this does not send a signal that your website should be presented to potential searchers.

Other SEO signals you can use to show search engines that you are a quality business and should have a high ranking are leaving WHOIS data unprotected and use real company information. It is common for scammers to hide the WHOIS domain name registration contact details so people cannot complain to them. Make your site trustworthy and present as much company information as you can by being open, honest and forthcoming with company details and product information.

Providing a detailed customer service page, comprehensive instructions on how to get product information or return products are new social signals that Google and the other search engines are using to rank websites.

SEO is evolving, and to compete you need to open up.

Thanks for reading our web design and SEO blog. Get the full post online Essential Pages Your Website Must Have To Be Ranked Well in Search Engines and tell us your thoughts. Netpaths Guide to SEO & Web Design - Simple Search Engine Optimization Steps

#1 Highest Converting Website Button

CVOS — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 03:25:21 +0000

We are always looking for ways to improve website conversions and increase sales, and love testing different design elements to optimize our landing pages.

Perry Belcher graciously shares his highest converting shopping cart button and explains the psychology behind its design.

This button is specially designed to be used on direct response style sales landing pages, and may not be suitable for a retail e-commerce shopping cart.

The anatomy of the best converting web button is using orange with blue text, and include a text link as well as some people are conditioned to click on blue text links.

Using a red marching ants border draws the visitors eye to the button and focuses their attention on your number one call to action.

Below is another example of a great add to cart button that produces high conversions. The strong yellow color captures the visitors attention and dark text with the clear call to action has increased lift on some of our promotions 10%.

These are some high converting buttons we have used successfully, what have you had success with when leading customers into your shopping carts?

Thanks for reading our web design and SEO blog. Get the full post online #1 Highest Converting Website Button and tell us your thoughts. Netpaths Guide to SEO & Web Design - Simple Search Engine Optimization Steps

Pandora Founder Talks About Life in a Web Startup Business

CVOS — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 16:06:32 +0000

Video interview with Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora. Tim has built an extremely successful online startup and he discusses the story of how he came to start this revolutionary music company.

He is inspirational and bases most of his success on his never say die attitude.

Tim tells the story of flying back from New York City after pitching 10 different venture capitalists and returning with no money. He took a 2 flight trip via Southwest Airlines, which was the cheapest available. Waking up the next morning was dread and hopelessness, but through perseverance, determination and work he managed to acquire funding and continued to grow the company.

Have you been inspired by startup founders?

Thanks for reading our web design and SEO blog. Get the full post online Pandora Founder Talks About Life in a Web Startup Business and tell us your thoughts. Netpaths Guide to SEO & Web Design - Simple Search Engine Optimization Steps

Why Digg Lost Its #1 Spot to Reddit

CVOS — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 02:32:34 +0000

Digg.com lost its reign as the most important social media site to game use, so now reddit.com will need to need to upgrade their system to keep up with the new SEO’s users.

After an eternity (in internet years) as the top dog in driving traffic, how did Digg lose their footing?

The problems began with the version 4 redesign in the spring of 2010 when they were terrified of being marginalized by twitter. This led them to try to become twitter, which was a huge mistake as their rabid fan base was loyal to Digg specially because they WERE NOT twitter.

They tried to become a social media site focused on sharing between friends, and killing the Upcoming News tab. They tried to justify this using questionable statistics, hyperbole and long winded blog posts, but the end result was not good. Traffic is down 37% in the past 3 months and this crushing blow has caused them to loose their lead over the main competitor Reddit.com.

A quote from Founder Kevin Rose

“Out of 200+ Million pageviews in July, only 0.4% was from upcoming (yes, that’s less than 1/2 of a percent). I definitely see the fun behind wanting to see stories just before they jump…”

The problem with this is the role of that page for so many die hard users some of whom make their livelihood/spend extraordinary amounts of time getting stories promoted to the homepage. The Digg team was asking questions wishing for answers, but they forgot the people they served and are paying for it with lost traffic.

Unfortunately team Digg misinterpreted the results and did not see the correct patterns in site usage and user engagement.

After the new Digg redesign, they called it a success:

“Usage looks extremely good (ie. more people registering (43,000+ new users yesterday), digging, consuming, clicking, following, etc.)”

It’s easy to postulate, but they cannot ignore a bad situation or change statistics to fit their desired results. This activity was from the short-term spike in awareness and buzz from the relaunch, but it was not sustainable.

Digg was like Yahoo in the late 1990′s when they were terrified of being swallowed by Microsoft, so they transformed themselves from a tech company into a media company. In the end, they met the exact fate they tried to avoid, and lost their core search business to MSN.

Digg appears to be in the same position, trying to differentiate themselves from other social media sites and stop hemorrhaging users to twitter, but they appear to be doing a “Yahoo”.

They need to ask tough questions, examine the data, and check the patterns to determine whether the numbers you end up using actually help people, or constitute self delusion.

They have a great website, millions of users and a strong brand, I am rooting for the Digg team to come out swinging with version 5 and retake their past position.

Thanks for reading our web design and SEO blog. Get the full post online Why Digg Lost Its #1 Spot to Reddit and tell us your thoughts. Netpaths Guide to SEO & Web Design - Simple Search Engine Optimization Steps

Landing Page Optimization – What You Need to Know

CVOS — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 06:47:52 +0000

What if I told you that by using these proven techniques, you could increase conversions up to 300% while lowering traffic costs by 50%?

If this interests you then keep reading.

Online marketers spend too much time trying to figure out how to drive traffic through organic search and PPC advertising, but too little time evaluating what site visitors do on the landing page.

We want web site visitors to act in some way when they come to our site: filling out a form, contacting the sales department, clicking through to another page in the sales funnel, or downloading a white paper.

The big problem is that most landing pages fail to accomplish this adequately and do not persuade the visitor to take action. Fixing your landing page can ensure that you are getting the most out of your website traffic and the single most effective way to maximize the effectiveness of your online efforts and skyrocket profitability is to have a high performance landing page.

The goal is to decrease your cost per lead and increase your conversion rate; start with a best practices scrub of your landing page and reevaluate your landing page as if you were viewing it for the first time. Remove visual clutter, such as unnecessary, gratuitous graphics that distract people from looking at your call to action and remove marketing fluff.

Watch your scent trail and examine upstream disconnects. If you promise one thing in your pay-per-click ad, but don’t mention it on the landing page, you have lost a valuable visitor.

Don’t ask for too much information, and consider not asking for any at all; A site that offers a free download without requesting information from the user can have a conversion rate that’s 50 times greater than a standard email squeeze page. Ask for user information later in the lead generation process, after you’ve already given them something as people are happy to share their information once you’ve given them something for nothing.

Tools to Analyze Your Landing Pages

• Examine Most visited content and the popularity of a Web page determines whether it is getting the proper exposure. If a key page is not getting enough traffic, it may be necessary to move it to a more prominent location on your website, or to create more links to it.
• Path analysis shows the sequences of pages that visitors use to traverse your site and most common flows of traffic. It may be possible to change the position of key conversion pages or links within your site to benefit from rapid surfers.

• Top entry pages is the point of first contact with your site and the more traffic that is hitting a landing page, the more attention that page deserves in terms of conversion tuning.

• Funnel analysis – users must often pass through a defined series of pages in order to convert and you can see the efficiency of each step in this linear process. High abandonment percentages may signal that a particular step is problematic and ready for a refresh.

• Onsite Search can be a great source of information about what is not working if searches produce no matching results, indicating cannot find relevant content. Examine empty search results to identify the type of information that is not effectively being found on your site. For popular searches, consider them for inclusion in the site’s permanent navigation structure.

• Budget Usability testing – Take three test subjects through your mission-critical conversion task. All you need for an informal approach is a quiet room, a mock-up of your proposed design (it can be hand-drawn on paper), and a clear task statement.Ask the person to talk out loud about their thought process as they work through the steps.

• Customer Service Reps work with your website visitors’ problems all day long and can lead to valuable information about how to fix the underlying website problems.

• Eye-tracking is extremely useful in detecting problems in the earlier stages of the visitor’s decision process and can visually map out awareness and interest. If most test subjects do not look at the desired part of the page, they are not even aware that the conversion action is possible. These will quickly uncover problems regarding page layout, visual presentation of information and images, and content emphasis.

• Forums and Blogs are communities of interest that provide honest and unfiltered response to your website.Gain valuable insight into the concerns and problems of your target audience and gauge the loyalty or frustration of people, their immediate needs, and attitudes toward your industry, company, or product.

Read more about landing page optimization at mthink online marketing. Photo from single entry point

Thanks for reading our web design and SEO blog. Get the full post online Landing Page Optimization – What You Need to Know and tell us your thoughts. Netpaths Guide to SEO & Web Design - Simple Search Engine Optimization Steps

Interview With Legendary SEO Ted Ulle

CVOS — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 07:15:51 +0000

I was fortunate to track down Ted Ulle at the Pubcon SEO conference and ask him some questions about search engines, website usability and internet architecture.

Ted was gracious enough to answer questions about the future of search engine optimization and best practices for web design and internet architecture.

Tedster stresses best practices that do not change, and is not a fan of chasing the Google algorithm. He also reveals that he would focus resources on IA before SEO.

He also emphatically states that the 3 click rule does not exist. If you give users a strong information scent with valuable content, they will stay with you for 10 or 15 clicks from the homepage.

One strategy for creating a solid information architecture is to write down major portions of site navigation on 3×5 cards and ask which stack of cards they think a specific piece of content would be found under.

Listen to one of the original founders of Webmaster World forum talk about the state of SEO.

*Sorry about the audio quality and impromptu feel of this video. It was our first try and a learning experience for all.

You can read more about Ted, read his blog, see his company or follow @tedulle

Thanks for reading our web design and SEO blog. Get the full post online Interview With Legendary SEO Ted Ulle and tell us your thoughts. Netpaths Guide to SEO & Web Design - Simple Search Engine Optimization Steps

How To Overcome Duplicate Content Problems and Boost Your SEO

CVOS — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 02:59:36 +0000

Duplicate content is a huge problem online, and this is not helped by content mills such as ehow.com that mass produce text written by people who may not be experts in their field.

There is no greater frustration for an SEO than fighting duplicate content issues the client may not know about.

There are multiple kinds of duplicate content that you may inadvertently have on your website. Find out how to remedy this problem and fix your search engine optimization problems.

Article Syndication Republishing articles of online authors is not recommended, and you should have the original content on your website. If you do syndicate content, make sure you get a backlink from the article. You don’t want your original article to be construed by search engines as an attempt to pass off the content as your own, while the other website gets the ranking boost. Always insist websites link to your original document when republishing any content.
Content Scraping Blogs may scrape your feed and republish multiple posts without your knowledge. There is often nothing that we can do to stop this, but there is a way to make this work to your benefit. By including multiple links in each blog post, the scrapers will be copying links back to your website. Make sure all blog post links have the full root URL, so any copied content will link back to you.
Website Mirroring Make sure you do not have accidental canonical versions of your website, such as www, www1, ., login etc. If an entire website is an exact duplicate of another you will have problems. use the rel=canonical tag and use permanent 301 redirects to remove any duplicate versions. Translating your website is into different languages is an acceptable practice and can help with localized search engine optimization.
Quoting Quoting portions of other articles or content is ok, as long as at least 50% of the content is original. It is ok to copy several paragraphs, and using any content beyond this requires an attribution link to the source webpage.
E-Commerce Product Pages Shopping carts can create repetitive content for various content types in a shopping catalog. For example a chair vendor may have a large listing of the same office chairs with the exact same title and description. This may be fixed by removing the repetitive descriptions and replacing them with a single product description in the header followed by a listing of the available products. A better solution is to rewrite the description of each product.
Multiple Versions Many content management systems and blog publishing systems create multiple versions of content that are available for search engines to index. WordPress creates duplicates in the posts, pages, archives, tags, and categories sections. All but one copy of the should be blocked from search engines using your site’s robots.txt file.

These are common duplicate content problems that cause endless frustration for SEO’s. Do you have any more problems you have faced?

Thanks for reading our web design and SEO blog. Get the full post online How To Overcome Duplicate Content Problems and Boost Your SEO and tell us your thoughts. Netpaths Guide to SEO & Web Design - Simple Search Engine Optimization Steps

What Do The Top 300,000 Websites Look Like and How Can You Beat Them

CVOS — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 20:31:39 +0000

The map above is an infographic of the largest online web properties.

Notable websites are Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Youtube and others.

What is most impressive is the way that these sites got so large. None of them had any large scale advertising program, and most did no advertising at all. These sites all grew to become industry leaders through viral marketing and word of mouth.

How can you replicate this success? Build an online business that people have to use.

If we take Facebook as an example, they were not the first social networking site, and when they launched MySpace was the dominant force in this category. No one thought that anyone could catch Myspace, but the crafty programmers at FB thought they could provide a better service by allowing users to be verified, offer privacy, security and a safe place to share information. They overcame huge adversity by focusing on university students and offered them an exclusive place to connect and network. Facebook expanded from the university scene while keeping their users trust and by adding features that added immense value.

Facebook was the online pioneer of allowing 3rd party apps, and this created a new online genre of social games. The average FB user spends 20 minutes per day online, and much of this time is spent playing online games. Facebook created a platform that is borderline addictive and nearly impossible to ignore. Some of my friends only communicate through facebook, so by default I must use it to contact them.

I’m not saying that you could or even should try to create the next Facebook, but they are an excellent example of creating a world class website on a small budget.

Here are some statistics about the icon chart

The area of each website icon is proportional to the sum of the reach of all sites using that icon. All canonical versions of the domain name (www, www1, .net etc) used the same icon, only one of them was counted. The smallest icons—those corresponding to sites with approximately 0.0001% reach—are scaled to 16×16 pixels. The largest icon (Google) is 11,936 x 11,936 pixels, and the whole diagram is 37,440 x 37,440.

See an interactive version of the world’s largest websites at nmap.

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Valuable Domain Name Company.com Reborn As Business Social Network

CVOS — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:05:40 +0000

Back when I began my internet aspirations in 1998 I saw the heavy wheeling and dealing at during the height of the dot-com era. When I hung my shingle on the roadside of the information superhighway, toys.com was 100x bigger than Toys R Us and Yahoo was a 130B company.

Domain names rapidly changed hands and seemingly had no limit on their valuation.

I remember coming across Company.com and seeing the unique under construction page:

This domain is owned by Mike O’Connor. As you can see, there’s not much going on at the moment. The short version is that I got this domain Back In The Old Days, and have been so busy that I’ve never gotten around to doing anything with it. I may yet get up the gumption, but obviously haven’t yet! via archive.org

The original owner, Mike O’Connor the self titles Curmudgeon Emeritus dryly writes about his good fortune being an internet pioneer and having the good fortune to create an ISP startup at the beginning of the WWW.

Without going into a huge long rant, my belief is that these “generic” dot-com domain names were (and are) pretty valuable. They’re sort of the Internet version of real estate and I represent the Internet equivalent of a farmer who finds himself next to a rapidly growing city that’s going through rapid boom and bust cycles. So my stupid names (which people thought I was nuts to get) are worth a lot of money (and used to be worth even more).

How much? It’s still hard to say. The market for domain names has matured a lot since the early ’90′s when I got these domains. There was a period in 1999 and 2000 when prices went crazy. My take is that it will take another 3 to 5 years for things to really settle down. Please don’t write me to debate this point. Consider it the ravings of a lunatic if you like. The point is that I’m reluctant to sell right now because I don’t think the market is valuing these names very well at the moment. archived quote.

Times have changed, and an entrepreneur has purchased Company.com and created a business social network site, something the original owner prophesied. I am sure it was a healthy 7 figure sale, which is a stunning creation of wealth for creating absolutely nothing. It seems they have funding, as they are hiring

You can view the Company.com directory which provides free business listings and a clean layout. This web directory is not as good as Business.com and BOTW.org, both of which offer fully followed links, but it has an unbeatable price: free.

I personally believe .com (and some .net & .org) are like real estate and will have lasting values as investments. Quality brand and dictionary domain names will continue to hold value for the indefinite future. Google loves dictionary based domain names and assigns them nearly unlimited authority, making search engine ranking trivially easy. Buy a single word keyword domain, get guaranteed Google love.

Buy well and you can join the relatively elite crowd of premium domain name holders, and possibly retire early and be a Curmudgeon Emeritus like Mr. O’Conner.

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100 Job Sites To Help You Find Employment In Your Niche Industry

CVOS — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 01:11:40 +0000

There are many career websites available, and tens of thousands of job listings but most people have difficulty finding a the small jobs for niche specializations. The unfortunate truth is that even in this recession, the good jobs are not on the monster.com’s and craigslist’s of the internet, but are buried in local resources and niche web properties.

We have compiled a list of the 100 top niche job websites that will let you spend more time on effective job boards and increase the chances of landing your dream job. We hope that this jobs resource helps you find meaningful employment.

accounting
• accountingjobstoday.com
• careerbank.com
• jobsinthemoney.com

administrative
• bizjournals.com
• net-temps.com

advertising
• marketingjobs.com
• talentzoo.com

art
• artjob.org
• artsusa.org

attorney
• lawjobs.com

automotive
• autojobs.com
• automotivejobsonline.com
• needtechs.com

bank
• bankjobs.com
• careerbank.com
• jobsinthemoney.com

callcenter
• callcenterjobs.com

clerical
• net-temps.com

college
• aftercollege.com
• collegegrad.com
• collegerecruiter.com
• universityjobs.com

communications
• prsa.org

computer
• computerjobs.com
• computerwork.com
• dice.com

construction
• construction.com
• constructionjobs.com
• mepjobs.com
• topbuildingjobs.com

contract
• computerwork.com
• net-temps.com

creative
• coroflot.com
• krop.com

customer service
• callcentercareers.com

dental
• healthecareers.com
• mydentaljobs.com

design
• coroflot.com
• krop.com
• youthedesigner.com

distribution
• jobsinlogistics.com
• see also logistics

driver
• bubbajunk.com
• classadrivers.com
• jobsintrucks.com

education
• higheredjobs.com
• nationjob.com

electrical
• electricalengineer.com
• engineer.net
• mepjobs.com

engineering
• asce.org
• engcen.com
• engineer.net
• mechanicalengineer.com

entry-level
• aftercollege.com
• experience.com
• collegegrad.com
• collegerecruiter.com

environmental
• ecoemploy.com
• environmentaljobs.com
• ecojobs.com

executive
• 6figurejobs.com
• bizjournals.com
• execsearches.com
• theladders.com
• 100kcrossing.com
• hundredk.com
• 100kjobfinder.com
• execunet.com

fashion
• apparelsearch.com
• fashion.net
• stylecareers.com

federal
• federalgovernmentjobs.us
• federaljobsearch.com
• usajobs.gov

finance
• brokerhunter.com
• careerbank.com
• jobsinthemoney.com
• efinancialcareers.com

fitness
• fitnessjobs.com
• exercisecareers.com
• exercisejobs.com

food
• careersinfood.com
• foodanddrinkjobs.com
• foodservice.com

general
• Dice.com
• monster.com
• JobServe.com
• OnTargetJobs.com – owns multiple niche job websites

government
• usajobs.gov
• governmentjobs.com
• govtjobs.com

healthcare
• allhealthcarejobs.com
• healthecareers.com
• healthjobsusa.com
• medhunters.com
• medicalworkers.com

home
• wahm.com
• worldwideworkathome.com
• workathomecareers.com

hospitality & hotel
• hcareers.com

hr
• jobs.shrm.org
• workforcehrjobs.com

insurance
• greatinsurancejobs.com
• insurancejobs.com
• ultimateinsurancejobs.com

international & overseas
• internationaljobs.org
• intljobs.org

internship
• internjobs.com
• aftercollege.com
• campuscareercenter.com
• collegerecruiter.com

it/computer
• computerwork.com
• dice.com

jobs for teens
• myfirstpaycheck.com

laboratory
• allhealthcarejobs.com
• healthjobsusa.com

law enforcement
• lawenforcementjobs.com

law
• findlaw.com
• lawjobs.com

logistics
• jobsinlogistics.com

manufacturing
• jobsinmanufacturing.com
• manufacturingjobs.com

marketing
• marketingjobs.com
• talentzoo.com

media
• journalismjobs.com

medical
• allhealthcarejobs.com
• medhunters.com
• medhunting.com

non profit
• idealist.org
• nonprofitjobs.org
• nonprofit-jobs.org owned by
• opportunitynocs.org
• philanthropy.com

nursing
• nurse.com
• nursingjobs.com
• nursingjobs.org

oil and gas
• oilandgasjobsonline.com
• EnergyJobSites.com

pharmaceutical
• biospace.com
• medzilla.com
• pharmadiversityjobboard.com

pharmacy
• careerpharm.com
• healthecareers.com
• rxcareercenter.com

police
• policeone.com

public relations
• jobs.prsa.org
• talentzoo.com

qa
• qajobs.com

radio
• massmediajobs.com

real estate
• selectleaders.com

restaurant
• foodservice.com
• hcareers.com

retail
• allretailjobs.com

safety
• ehscareers.com
• environmentaljobs.com

sales
• marketingjobs.com
• salescareersonline.com
• salesgravy.com

science
• nature.com magazine / journal
• sciencejobs.org
• scjobs.sciencemag.org

seasonal
• backdoorjobs.com
• coolworks.com
• jobmonkey.com

security
• clearancejobs.com

senior and retirement
• retirementjobs.com
• wiseworker.com

social work
• socialservice.com
• socialworkjobbank.com

software
• dice.com
• prgjobs.com

sports
• workinsports.com

summer work
• summerjobs.com

supply
• jobsinlogistics.com

teaching
• schoolspring.com
• teacherjobs.com

technical
• computerwork.com
• dice.com

technician
• computerwork.com
• dice.com

technology
• dice.com

temporary
• net-temps.com training
• astd.org

transportation
• jobsinlogistics.com

volunteer
• backdoorjobs.com
• idealist.org
• volunteermatch.org

Do you have a custom job site or niche career listing? If so please share them in the comments.

Thanks for reading our web design and SEO blog. Get the full post online 100 Job Sites To Help You Find Employment In Your Niche Industry and tell us your thoughts. Netpaths Guide to SEO & Web Design - Simple Search Engine Optimization Steps