Webmaster Articles

Visitors are Human!

I hate to state the obvious, but the real visitors to your site will always be human. It may seem like a strange statement to make, but I feel it sums up well a point that is often overlooked by Webmasters who are permanently in "promote" mode.

Don't get Carried Away...<br>
The algorithms used by the search engines are constantly being tested and improved, thus the techniques needed to keep a good ranking are constantly being tweaked. If you don't keep up to speed you could loose the number one spot to a competitor, and they will get all that traffic you worked hard for.

While it is nice to be ranked in the top ten resources for a particular keyword, you shouldn't become obsessive with your position in the search engines. If you are tweaking your pages even once a week then that is probably too much, and isn't really worth your time. The problem is, once you get serious about search engine optimisation purely for better rankings, it can be hard to stop!


One Step Forward, Two Steps Back...

Some of the tricks employed by search engine optimisers are just a waste of time. That's not to say that they won't work, as there are some ingenious tricks used to deceive the search engines, but the search engines and the optimisers are in constant battle in an effort to stay "one step ahead" of each other.


Just because you can get your site a high ranking through the use of sneaky optimisation tricks, doesn't mean that it deserves to be there! Only the visitors to your site can decide if your site is relevant to their search terms, and they will be able to recognise a site that doesn't belong in their particular search results.


If a search engine becomes too polluted with sites that have little relevance to the keywords being searched for then everyone loses!

The visitors will find their searches return fewer relevant results and go elsewhere.
The search engine will earn less revenue as visitor numbers dwindle.
The site owners will get fewer and fewer visitors to their sites.

Sites that try to achieve higher rankings by deceiving the search engines not only run the risk of getting poor quality traffic, but also of earning themselves a bad reputation with those who were "tricked" into going to the site. Nothing can be more damaging to your reputation than an unhappy customer, particularly one with access to the Internet!

Real Search Engine Optimisation
If you are about to embark on a bit of search engine optimisation, then remember your reasons for doing so. Search engine optimisation should be about getting your pages listed for the most relevant searches, not about how many people you can get to visit!

The problem with a lot of the optimisation tricks is that they do little, if anything, to improve the experience of visitors coming to your site. Keyword rich content is often difficult to read, becoming more like a shopping list of synonyms than a readable article. The information people are looking for could be hidden underneath all those words, but extracting anything useful could take some time and a lot of perseverance! Even when a technique doesn't make it more difficult to read a page, it will often add to the download time of a site.

If you really want to optimise your site for better visibility, then forget about applying the latest scripting or HTML techniques for achieving top rankings. You don't need them! Good text copy will use the right mix of keywords for the topic while keeping it readable and useful; get it right and your content will rank naturally high in the search engines without having to resort to other promotional techniques.

I know you are constantly reminded of the fact, but content really is the key to a good site. Various search engine bots visit to try to understand and categorise it. The real visitors come to utilise it!

Quality, not Quantity
Don't become obsessed with visitor numbers, particularly if you are running a business! Just because you can demand the attention of the search engines and other media doesn't guarantee that you will make money from your visitors. The owners of Boo.com learn that lesson the hard way!

Large volumes of traffic are not always desirable anyway, particularly when you are not prepared for a sudden surge in "popularity". With such large volumes of traffic the chances are you will make a sale or two, but once you've paid for all the extra costs of getting that traffic, you are unlikely to make much of a profit!

If you let your site rank "naturally" you may not get a vast number of visitors to your site, but you will get a higher percentage of interested visitors as most will have actively searched for what you offer. It is much easier to convert the interested visitors into paying customers than those with no interest in what you are offering.

Getting visitors to your site is easy. Getting them interested in what you have to offer is not. Making them loyal is harder still!

Community Building
Your visitors will appreciate any special attention you can give them with a particular problem they may be having. They will also value the effort you put into improving their experience at your site, particularly if they are able to see the changes being suggested by others being implemented when appropriate.

Offering your visitors the opportunity to interact with other like-minded individuals who may be interested in your site, can also make your visitors feel that they are welcome and important. Features as simple as allowing the posting of comments to articles or a chance to email something interesting to a friend can add a community feel to a site.

It is not necessary to have your own message board to build up a community of people that are interested in your site. You could bring people together by offering your own ezine, or simply offer help whenever you can by becoming a regular at established message boards frequented by your target audience.

Time you spend building your relationship with your real visitors is time well spent. Loyal visitors to your site are often loyal because they believe in what you do and want to see you succeed. Some will even adopt the site and think of it as their own, doing whatever they can to promote and protect it without you having to ask them to do so! Look after your visitors, and they will look after you!

So, the next time you feel like optimising your web site for the search engines, don't forget... your real visitors are human (and robots don't carry credit cards)!

posted by Miguel Mateos Romo @ 10:32 PM