Free Website Content - New Year's Resolutions for Your Website
As all of us view the new year, we determine
various ways to improve ourselves. Whether its eliminating
bad habits, or improving quality of life, January 1st is
seen as a new beginning and starting point. Your website
too, can use a new look. Consider taking the website to
task with these down and dirty quick improvement tips for
the new year.
New Year's Resolutions for Your Website
Revamp your website. The Internet is evolving at a rapid
pace, and websites need constant maintenance and occasional
overhauls. As the search engines improve their algorithms,
website copy and designs will need to be updated. Here are
some starting points:
Remove Bad Outgoing Links
It is important that you are not linking to bad neighbors.
Broken links give an unprofessional image and wastes a site
visitor. Be sure that all outgoing site links are still
valid, and even more importantly, go where you had initially
intended. Many popular websites are sold by companies with
questionable content. Remove any changed links so that you
are not associated with content that is not relevant to
your products, service or content.
Unique Titles
Confirm each webpage on your website contains a unique
title tag. Not only do unique titles allow you to optimize
different sections of your site for different keywords and
phrases, but also helps search engines direct traffic to
specific pages on your site when specialized keywords are
used.
Optimize Graphics
Optimize website graphics to decrease the website's
load time. A typical web surfer will only remain on a page
for a few seconds. If you do not grab their attention, you
will lose them. Shaving size off of a websites graphic elements
will mean that their eyes are on your website during those
critical seconds.
Update Copyright Notice
A copyright notice should reflect the year the last
updates were made to the website. A current copyright notice
tells visitors that the content is fresh, not stale and
outdated.
Clean up HTML
HTML is a markup language and with constant maintenance
it is easy to have a page with an unclosed tag. While some
web browsers make allowances for poorly formed HTML, not
all do. Therefore, it is important that you take a look
at the HTML behind the web page and make sure that it is
properly formed.
Update Meta Tags
Update and optimize meta tags to avoid excessive use
of keywords. While a once popular search engine optimization
technique, stuffed meta tags generally result in search
engine penalties. Update meta tags to be accurate and concise
without redundancy and recurring words.
Automate
If your site does not currently use templates or server-side
includes, it is time to bite the bullet. Spending time now,
by employing server side includes or templates will mean
easier maintenance and updates later. When you change one
item, it will update on all pages of your site.
Links
Increase the quality and quantity of inbound links.
Links coming into your site should be from websites that
contain related or relevant content. Links from related
.edu and .org domains are considered of a higher value than
generic links. Any outbound links, should be directed to
credible websites that contain related content. The relationship
and relevance of links is becoming increasingly more important
in most of the search engine ranking algorithms.
Wrapped Content
Links that are embedded in a paragraph rather than a
free standing, generally are viewed more favorably by search
engines. Consider wrapping links in content summaries.
Size Matters
A website must contain enough relevant content to stand
on its own. Obviously the more the better. However, its
not just about quantity it is also about quality. While
size matters, relevance is equally important. A website
should be able to stand on its own, once affiliate links,
and pay per click advertising is removed the site should
still have value.
Aged Domains
They say with age comes wisdom. Apparently the Search Engine
Gods feel the same about domains. The older the domain the
better it will typically perform. Give new domains time
to age.
A New Years resolution is just a fancy way
of saying that you are committed to doing something. Resolve
to improve your website this year.
About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com
software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and
podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for NotePage
http://www.notepage.net
a wireless text messaging software company.
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the issue or a link to any online posting would be greatly
appreciated send an email to sharon@notepage.net
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