Hello and welcome to How Clean is Your Site?, the show where we figure out just how much mess you’ve got laying around and cluttering up the interface. The problem goes like this: You’ve been looking at your conversion rates, your bounce rate, your number of views, or what have you, and realize you’ve got a problem: People aren’t coming, or if they are, they’re not sticking around. You’ve got a low PageRank, low visibility, high bounce rate, and this just needs to change.
Here’s how it works: You look at this list, skim for things that apply to you, check them off, and when you’re through you should either have a better-optimized website, or else you should probably go through again and be a little more honest with yourself. So what’s your problem?
I don’t have any visitors.
Well that’s quite a doozy to fix on our first try, but with a little hard work we can scrape off the excess, leaving a clean, highly visible website.
Is your website visible?
Basically, can people actually find you if they’re looking? Are you listed in search engines? Do you have links leading to your pages from other, larger websites? Can people find you if they’re not looking? Do you have advertisements on other, relevant websites?
Submit your site to all sorts of directories, feeds, what have you. Ensure you have good content first and don’t spam. Join a few online communities such as forums and be sure to include a link back to your website in your profile, signature, or whatever else is applicable.
Now, what’s another problem?
My bounce rate is high.
Well this is a pretty complicated fix that takes much research and insight. You see, when your bounce rate is high, it can mean a few things: first, it could mean you have boring content. Second, it could mean people simply can’t find your other pages, even if they’re looking. Third, it could mean they’re not sticking with your site long enough to read your content on the basis of how it appears.
Design is a major issue to be overcome. If you don’t have the skills, hire somebody else to fix your layout. Make sure it’s accesible, and not just pretty, as having to put forth effort to visit a website is definitely not on everybody’s to-do list.
If you have bad content, this is difficult to fix. If you’re not the most talented writer, you can still try your best. Be sure to proof-read to eliminate errors and maybe have others read over it before it’s published. Consider keeping every article for 24 hours like we do and make your changes when it’s “cold” in your mind and you can look at it more objectively.
If your site has a poor layout or if other pages are not easy to find, this is another potential contributor to a high bounce rate. For WordPress blogs, this is an easy fix: simply install a related posts plug-in. For other blogs, I’m not sure of a fix, and for general website constructed from scratch, the fix involves including a lot of extra links alongside your content. The best way for such sites is to switch to a content management system such as WordPress to include links for you.
Be sure to always include a link to your homepage from every page as it helps for search engine optimization and getting people to your homepage (and thus to the rest of your content).
Our final problem on today’s post:
I’m not getting any clicks on my advertisements.
Well, this is also a complicated problem. Not getting a good click-through rate on advertisements can lead to poor income which is less than the cost of hosting and a domain name (in other words, not worth your time and energy).
The solutions to this problem are mentioned all over Google’s adsense tutorials, Yahoo’s tutorial, etc. But it basically boils down to this: Have a good placement. First, be sure advertisements are “above the fold,” or visible without having to scroll down your pages. Make sure they look like they’re part of your content, but also that they stand out enough to avoid being simply ignored.
Another problem with this is many people using web browsers like FireFox also use AdBlock Plus. That means your ads aren’t visible to them. However, while it does kill some potential clicks, it shouldn’t be that detrimental.
That sums up this episode of How Clean is Your Site? Next time, we’ll tackle another tough issue: conversion rates. Thanks for viewing and be sure to stay tuned for Marketing With Butch.
