2. Why
Websites Fail!
If your website isn't working then I absolutely 100% guarantee you that
it will be because of one (or both) of these two things.
Not enough people are visiting your website.
Not enough people are being persuaded by your website to take action!
The Two 'P's
I like to call these two things the two 'P's of website success.
Promotion
Persuasion
If your website 'promotion' is poor, then very few people will visit your
website. If your website is not 'persuasive' then very few people will be
persuaded to take action.
3. Promotion
• Online Directories - listing your website in online directories such as
www.yellowpages.com
• Email Marketing - building a database of customers who have given you
permission to send them email promotions and newsletters.
• Search Engines - creating your website in such as way so as to get a high
ranking in the search engines.
• Search Engine Advertising - placing text advertisements within the
different search engines.
• Stationery Promotion - promoting your website on your business cards,
brochures, letterheads and other stationery used within your businesses.
• Website Advertising - placing banner or text advertisements promoting
your websites on other related websites.
• Affiliate Marketing - promoting your website through referral partners.
4. Persuasion
• Fast-Loading Website - your website must load in under eight seconds on
a standard modem, otherwise you are losing business!
• Standard Website Layout - your website must follow accepted layout
standards for websites. Getting too far 'outside the box' with your website
layout is a sure-fire recipe for disappointment!
• Professional Design - your website must be designed by a professional! If it
doesn't look professional - results will suffer!
• Clear Sales Pathway - every website needs to have at least one clear
and well understood goal! Everything about the website should then
drive the website visitor along a well thought out conversion pathway
towards that desired goal.
• Trust & Credibility - right up front you need to establish your trust and
credibility. This can be done through a number of means - great
testimonials & references, a strong guarantee or even the simplest of
things like a clear privacy policy or terms of trade.
5. The bottom line is this ...
The most effective ways to increase the number of
people visiting your website and the rate at which
you are persuading people to take action will
depend on many different factors ... your industry
... your competition ... your product(s) or service(s)
... what makes your organisation special ... and so
on.
7. site/domain
1. Domain age;
2. Length of domain registration;
3. Domain registration information hidden/anonymous;
4. Site top level domain (geographical focus, e.g. com versus co.uk);
5. Site top level domain (e.g. .com versus .info);
6. Sub domain or root domain?
7. Domain past records (how often it changed IP);
8. Domain past owners (how often the owner was changed)
9. Keywords in the domain;
10. Domain IP;
11. Domain IP neighbors;
12. Domain external mentions (non-linked)
13. Geo-targeting settings in Google Webmaster Tools
9. Architecture
1. URL structure;
2. HTML structure;
3. Semantic structure;
4. Use of external CSS / JS files;
5. Website structure accessibility (use of inaccessible navigation,
JavaScript, etc)
6. Use of canonical URLs;
7. “Correct” HTML code (?);
8. Cookies usage
10. Content
1. Content language
2. Content uniqueness;
3. Amount of content (text versus HTML);
4. Unlinked content density (links versus text);
5. Pure text content ratio (without links, images, code, etc)
6. Content topicality / timeliness (for seasonal searches for example);
7. Semantic information (phrase-based indexing and co-occurring phrase
indicators)
8. Content flag for general category (transactional, informational,
navigational)
9. Content / market niche
10. Flagged keywords usage (gambling, dating vocabulary)
11. Text in images (?)
12. Malicious content (possibly added by hackers);
13. Rampant miss-spelling of words, bad grammar, and 10,000 word
screeds without punctuation;
14. Use of absolutely unique /new phrases
11. Internal
Cross
Linking
1. No. of internal links to page;
2. No. of internal links to page with identical / targeted anchor text;
3. No. of internal links to page from content (instead of navigation bar,
breadcrumbs, etc);
4. No. of links using “no follow” attribute; (?)
5. Internal link density
12. Website
factors
1. Website Robots.txt file content
2. Overall site update frequency;
3. Overall site size (number of pages);
4. Age of the site since it was first discovered by Google
5. XML Sitemap;
6. On-page trust flags (Contact info ( for local search even more
important), Privacy policy, TOS, and similar);
7. Website type (e.g. blog instead of informational sites in top 10)
13. Page-specific
factors
1. Page meta Robots tags;
2. Page age;
3. Page freshness (Frequency of edits and
% of page effected (changed) by page edits);
4. Content duplication with other pages of the site (internal duplicate
content);
5. Page content reading level; (?)
6. Page load time (many factors in here);
7. Page type (About-us page versus main content page);
8. Page internal popularity (how many internal links it has);
9. Page external popularity (how many external links it has relevant to
other pages of this site)
14. Keywords
usage and
keyword
prominence
1. Keywords in the title of a page;
2. Keywords in the beginning of page title;
3. Keywords in Alt tags;
4. Keywords in anchor text of internal links (internal anchor text);
5. Keywords in anchor text of outbound links (?);
6. Keywords in bold and italic text (?);
7. Keywords in the beginning of the body text;
8. Keywords in body text;
9. Keyword synonyms relating to theme of page/site;
10. Keywords in filenames;
11. Keywords in URL;
12. No “Randomness on purpose” (placing “keyword” in the domain,
“keyword” in the filename, “keyword” starting the first word of the title,
“keyword” in the first word of the first line of the description and
keyword tag…)
13. The use (abuse) of keywords utilized in HTML comment tags
15. Outbound
links
1. Number of outbound links (per domain);
2. Number of outbound links (per page);
3. Quality of pages the site links in;
4. Links to bad neighborhoods;
5. Relevancy of outbound links;
6. Links to 404 and other error pages.
7. Links to SEO agencies from clients site
8. Hot-linked images
16. Back link
profile
1.Relevancy of sites linking in;
2. Relevancy of pages linking in;
3. Quality of sites linking in;
4. Quality of web page linking in;
5. Back links within network of sites;
6. Co-citations (which sites have similar back link sources);
7. Link profile diversity:
8. Anchor text diversity;
9. Different IP addresses of linking sites,
10. Geographical diversity,
11. Different TLDs,
12. Topical diversity,
13. Different types of linking sites (logs, directories, etc);
14. Diversity of link placements
15. Authority Link (CNN, BBC, etc) Per Inbound Link
16. Back links from bad neighborhoods (absence / presence of backlinks from
flagged sites)
17. Reciprocal links ratio (relevant to the overall backlink profile);
18. Social media links ratio (links from social media sites versus overall backlink
profile);
19. Back links trends and patterns (like sudden spikes or drops of backlink number)
20. Citations in Wikipedia and Dmoz;
21. Back link profile historical records (ever caught for link buying/selling, etc);
22. Back links from social bookmarking sites.
17. Each Separate
Backlink
1. Authority of TLD (.com versus .gov)
2. Authority of a domain linking in
3. Authority of a page linking in
4. Location of a link (footer, navigation, body text)
5. Anchor text of a link (and Alt tag of images linking)
6. Title attribute of a link (?)
18. Visitor Profile
and Behavior
1. Number of visits;
2. Visitors’ demographics;
3. Bounce rate;
4. Visitors’ browsing habits (which other sites they tend to visit)
5. Visiting trends and patterns (like sudden spiked in incoming traffic)
6. How often the listing is clicked within the SERPs (relevant to other
listings)
19. Penalties,
Filters and
Manipulation
1. Keyword over usage / Keyword stuffing;
2. Link buying flag
3. Link selling flag;
4. Spamming records (comment, forums, other link spam);
5. Cloaking;
6. Hidden Text;
7. Duplicate Content (external duplication)
8. History of past penalties for this domain
9. History of past penalties for this owner
10. History of past penalties for other properties of this owner (?)
11. Past hackers’ attacks records
12. 301 flags: double re-directs/re-direct loops, or re-directs ending in
404 error
20. More Factors
1. Domain registration with Google Webmaster Tools;
2. Domain presence in Google News;
3. Domain presence in Google Blog Search;
4. Use of the domain in Google Ad Words;
5. Use of the domain in Google Analytics;
6. Business name / brand name external mentions.
21. Website
Success
Metrics
Website
Objectives
New
Visitor
New Visitor
Conversion Rate
Return
Visitor
Return Visitor
Conversion
Rate
Avera
ge
Sale
Enquiries/Lead √ √ √ √ X
Sales Revenue √ √ √ √ √
Advertising
Revenue
√ X √ X X
Referral
Revenue
√ √ √ √ X
Present
Information
√ X √ X X
The Golden Rule :
If you can increase anyone of the website success metrics the your
website will deliver more results!!
It is as simple as that !!
The following table outlines the exact success metrics that determines
performance of your website depends on your objective