Tony’s Website Design Blog

We often blog about SEO here and about how to get traffic to your website. That's often a big hurdle to jump over. But what about if there is traffic but no sales?

You might start to wonder what's going on when you look at your website statistics and wonder why you see traffic but the phone isn't ringing or you're not getting any sales on your website. There is a wide variety of things that could be going on. I'll try to cover some of them here.

Website Design

Content is definitely king, right? People are generally searching for something when they are on the web. They start at Google and want to find a result. Quality content that answers their questions will rise to the top of the search results organically (a topic for another post maybe). Well, that's Google's goal anyway. When a search engine spider makes it to your site and crawls content, it's not looking at the design. It doesn't read text embedded in images or doesn't even rate the design of the site at all. It just reads text. So what if, when people get there after Google tells them it's a great result, they find that the page is ugly or looks too hard to read? They bounce right off the site usually or the bounce rate could be very high.

It's not only the graphics part of a website that is design. Layout of text is hugely important. The text on a page must be scannable. People are looking for something, so help them find the answer.

The use of heading text, bold text, bullet points and even paragraph length all goes into making a page's text scannable or not. They might not want to read your first few points but might find that your third or fourth point on a page is what they're looking for. Make sure it's easy to find.

And, yes, if the website design is ugly or out of date, then that could very well affect the bounce rate as well. Time for a new design?

How Much Do You Give Away?

This one's interesting and a very simple point. If you say too much on your website, then why would someone have to pick up the phone to call you. This is especially important if you're selling services.

If you have good sales people or you're good at talking to people, then you don't want your website to tell the whole story. Hold some of it back so that there's a reason for them to pick up their phone and call. Phone use is on a decline, I've heard. People are texting more now. Getting on the phone is almost seen as inconvenient now in our society and that makes getting them to call you an even tougher task but you have to do it.

We can show you how - just give us a call (see?).

Other Factors

Traffic Might Dip - Why?

Ok, I can't help but talk about SEO and improving rankings for a minute here but I have a point...

Strange things can happen on the web. That's for sure. Sometimes you'll get a dip in traffic and you have no idea why it happened. That's just life. It could be many things.

We've had a few clients that have watched their stats like a hawk. Nothing would change on the website for a day or two and then they would get a few less calls in a morning and they would instantly blame it on the website and give us a call to find out why. It was difficult to give them a satisfactory reason why anything happened because that's not how it always works.

What you have to realize when watching your stats is that "stuff happens." One time, that client called and I had to remind them that there was a huge power outage on the East Coast of the United States, which is where a good amount of their customers were. With no power, there's no Internet. Things going on in the world will affect Internet usage. Is there a big event on TV? Was there a natural disaster? Is a certain part of the country getting hit with snow or floods?

Also, what is your competition doing? Maybe they have been ramping up their Internet marketing efforts or got a news story on Google News about their new product or something.

Traffic Might Increase - Why?

Maybe your traffic goes up for seemingly no reason. If that happens and there are still no more calls or sales, then why? Maybe it's not the right traffic. That's a typical reason.

I've seen lots of site get traffic for Google Images. You don't want that traffic. That's just people stealing images off of your website. I even saw an Internet marketing article a day or two ago saying that you can increase traffic by using Google Images. What? Why in the world would you want that traffic unless you're selling images on your website?

More typically, the wrong keywords are being targetted on a page. People are finding a page on your website with a certain keyword but it's for the wrong thing or doesn't relate to what you do. Maybe something was posted on accident or it's just one of those situations where there's a disconnect. That can be fixed but you first have to diagnose this problem correctly.

Maybe one of your competitors fell off the map. Maybe they closed down or Google penalized them for some reason. These kinds of reasons could also cause your traffic to increase. That's good but if you're not seeing any more results, then that's a problem - sort of. Iit's a good problem to have. You can at least work on a fix and convert that traffic. That's where Webstix can come in and help.

A Myriad of Reasons

To get even more technical about what can go wrong with traffic, bounces and SEO, here's a good article:

Agency SEO Pain Relief (searchenginewatch.com)

We’ve all been here several times, scratched our heads, and sometimes even banged it against a wall, resulting in more than a few headaches trying to find out why tried-and-true SEO methods aren’t working. Despite this self-inflicted mental abuse, most of these dips aren’t the fault of the SEO. These are in fact caused by several different factors which the most frequently seen are listed below.

Conclusion

The first part to finding out where there's traffic but no sales is to do some research and investigation. If there clearly is a trend, then this should be done. If, one morning, for some reason, calls are down, then just be patient until there's a trend forming. The thing about search engine optimization and websites (along with business in general) is that the work you do today might not take effect for a few weeks - although some of it could have affects in the next few days. It's not like in school where you hand in an assignment and instantly get a grade on it. Business and life and SEO don't work like that. To say that "A" causes" B" is often is misstep and includes too much assumption. It's too emotional instead of based in true facts (logical). If you do make changes based on emotion, then you're basing your movements on the wrong information in most cases and you could not end up where you want.

The world of web analytics and statistics can be pretty confusing. I mean, the great thing about the web is that almost everything can be tracked but you end up with a lot of data. Sorting through it to find out the reasons can be tricky but worth it.

Since changes you do today take effect in a few weeks, it's better to find things out earlier than later. Your competition is probably figuring things out today, which means they'll be ahead of you in a few weeks. What are you doing?

-Tony

Greetings!

I found an article online today about some on-site SEO features that your website might be lacking. He gets a little technical in it but it's worth reading so that you understand some of the finer points about SEO (search engine optimization) and all the goes into it. Since the SEO world keeps evolving, your current web developer might not be up on all the latest techniques but hopefully they have the basics covered for you.

The article goes over these seven things:

1. Analytics (Google or Otherwise)
2. Semantic URLs
3. XML Sitemaps
4. Controlling Indexation
5. 301 Redirects
6. Canonicalization (I love this word... my spell checker thinks it should be "cannibalization")
7. Site Speed

Like I said, a bit technical but if you are going to hire someone to work on your website, it's good if you are at least familiar with some of these things or are aware that they exist.

7 SEO Friendly Site Features that Developers Often Miss (searchenginewatch.com)

Web developers are great: without them, we wouldn't have, well… the web! But unfortunately, a lot of developers can have a bit of a blind-spot when it comes to SEO.

This article reminded me a lot about the eBook that I wrote just a short time ago, which is a free download here on our website:

"Back to Basics: Increasing Web Traffic"

In it, I also list seven ways to get more traffic to your website by just fixing a few, simple things - much like the first article I mentioned... I wonder if he saw it and copied me, hmm.

-Tony

Have you heard the radio ads yet? Yes, it seems Google is offering free websites for Wisconsin businesses through their partner, Intuit. We'll even tell you the website - here it is:

www.wisconsingetonline.com

So... Free?

Yeah, they're saying it's free - for a year. I looked it up and here's what happens after a year (from the wisconsingetonline.com website):

Free seems too good to be true. What’s the catch? What happens after the 365 days when the free offer expires?

It's all absolutely free including the web hosting for one year. If after 365 days, you want to keep your website hosted with Intuit, you can pay $4.99 per month for the web hosting, and $2.00 per month for your domain. These charges will be automatically billed to you, on a monthly basis, after the first year. You may cancel at any time, and do not have to sign a contract for any period of time. Pricing based on current Intuit Websites prices. Prices are subject to change and determined by Intuit.

Your website is no longer free after a year and you will pay $59.88 a year for the website and $24.00 a year for the domain - a total of $83.88 a year.

Some interesting tidbits from the Terms of Service from Intuit are:

• If you do not purchase the Services by the end of the Trial Period, your Content will no longer be available to you. To be very clear, after using the Services during the trial period, if you decide not to purchase the full version of the Services, you will not be able to access or retrieve any of the data you added/created during the trial.
• Intuit may terminate a free account at any time.
• You are responsible for your content.
• Intuit does not give professional advice.
• You will be listed as the registrant and administrative contact in connection with your domain name; however, Intuit or its affiliates, may temporarily list itself as the registrant and administrative contact in the event that it changes to a different Independent Third Party Domain Name Vendors ("TPDNVs") until the TPDNV’s change is completed.
• Some accounts may have email services provided by an independent Third Party Email Services Vendor ("TPESV"). We are not responsible for the actions or inaction of the then current TPESV or the unavailability or malfunction of their network or services.

Ok, that's pretty fair I guess. Here are some of my concerns regarding these free websites:

First, it's a free website. You get what you pay for, right? Experienced business owners know that. If you do not have a website yet and cannot afford to do it right, then go ahead and at least get this service and get an online presence. Remember that it's just a free website. It's no magic pill to get you tons of business. Chances are, your competition is already doing more than just having a free website and they're doing Internet marketing as well. Doing just the minimum will not get you ahead of them in rankings. Don't expect really anything great to happen and then you won't be disappointed.

Also, this does seem to include a Google Places listing. That is good to have but you don't need this service in order to get a Places listing - you can do that yourself for free anyway.

Second, you have to come up with your own content. You should only use original content - don't copy it from another website. If you're not a writer, good luck. If you're not a writer that knows how to optimize copy for keywords, good luck again.

Third, they will not do any consulting or advise you. Hey, it's free - consulting costs money. Makes perfect sense.

Fourth, make sure you get ownership of the domain name. If you don't, it's like investing in something that you don't get to keep.

Fifth, make sure you understand how their email accounts work. From what I've read here, I don't get it.

Free Website Offer - Do It!

If a free Wisconsin website is what you're looking for, then by all means take advantage of this offer. It's a steal! You will be paying a modest $84 a year after that, which isn't bad either.

This kind of service is not in competition with us at Webstix. Businesses that want free websites are not our customers. Our clients know that to get good results and grow their business, it'll take more than free. They know that getting good advice and consulting from a partner like Webstix is worth ten times what we charge them since it's better to rank higher now and get customers now than wait a year and find out they went the wrong way.

-Tony

Get Your Website Ranked Higher

I've always said that to be good at SEO, you have to think like Google. That's not easy to do. They have many smart people constantly working on making their search better. There's basically a change to their search results algorithm every day - sometimes twice a day. They ran over 20k experiments and tests in one year to make search better. Check out this video:

So what's a person to do? How can you manipulate Google's search algorithm so that your website shows up at the top?

Basically, don't think like that. Don't think about manipulation. Google will keep working so that they give people using Google for searching the best results. Your job is to create a page that Goole wants to give as the best result. It's that simple. That's how you think like Google. Give Google what Google wants - great content.

Content is still king. The time and money you put into great content on your website will pay dividends for years and years to come. You can't say that about a 30 second ad on the radio or TV (or even newspapers or magazines). Those ads are there and then gone. The smart business owner heavily invests in their website. Hire good copywriters and spend time and do research for your website content. Make it the best possible content out there.

-Tony