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10 Tips For Your Website Form

newsletter@limelightonline.co.nz (Suzanne Carter) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 10:29:34 +1300

Most websites include at least one input form. It may be a simple form on the Contact Us/Enquiry page, a registration form, a newsletter signup form or a form that has to be completed before you can purchase online.

The form is a core method of client interaction and done well it can mean the difference between a failed or successful conversion.

Any online form needs to be user-friendly i.e. attractive and easy to fill out so that each person who goes to the form actually does complete it and that you get the information you require.

We have put together 10 tips for the design and usability of your website form:

No-one likes to spend too long filling out a form so never ask for more information than you need. You can always follow up with a phone call if necessary – a good way to engage with your client/potential client.
Most forms have required fields i.e. your name. Make sure that each form is clearly labelled.
If the form is a registration form and requires a certain amount of information group by topic. Create sections such as Personal Information, Billing Details, Contact Details.
For dropdowns add the most common answers at the top. For example, if you need to ask for Country then put New Zealand as the first option if this is the most popular selection.
If you are collecting information about where people heard about you (always recommended) then provide a drop down list of where you think people may have heard from you. This will ensure your data is consistent and also that people won’t have to do so much typing.
It is very frustrating to have to complete the form all over again if the Back button is hit (perhaps a field has been forgotten). Take the extra step of rebuilding the form. You will get more completed this way.
Send an email with the information that has been completed so the user has a record of the information. This is in addition to an online ‘Thank you for completing our form’ message.
Ensure the fields are properly labelled and laid out well. If you need to give an example of what to enter into a field do so.
If several steps are involved in the completion of your form advise the user which step they are at and make it easy for them to go back to a previous step so they can check what information they have provided.
Make sure that your forms are not hidden on your site. If it is important to your conversion or client engagement for the form to be completed make sure that it features prominently as a strong call to action on your site.

If you make sure that your users can easily find your form, clearly understand why they need to complete it and have a good experience doing so then it is likely you will see an increase in the number of completed forms you receive.

Questions to Ask When Choosing a Content Management System

mark@apexinternet.co.nz (Mark Vassiliou) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:14:25 +1300

Choosing a Content Management System (CMS) to power your website is one of those business decisions that you’ll want to get right first time. Select the wrong CMS and you could be ruing the decision for years to come. That’s not to say that you can’t change to another CMS down the track, but doing so is costly, time consuming, and can have a significant impact on your performance in the Search Engines unless the transition is managed correctly.

If you’re considering getting your website built (or redesigned) using a CMS, then read on. The following questions are those you’ll want answers to before you sign on the dotted line.

How easy is the CMS to use?

The beauty of a Content Management System is that it lets you update your website content without the need to involve your web designer/developer. With that in mind, there's no point in having all of this editorial power at your fingertips if it's not easy to use.

A good CMS should be intuitive and very user-friendly. When it comes to editing content make sure your CMS offers robust WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editing capabilities via a user interface that is very similar to MS Word. Furthermore, if your website contains images then make sure your CMS handles all of the 'heavy lifting' for you, such as automatically cropping, resizing and optimising images.

Is the CMS ‘Search Engine friendly’?

By this I mean, in its ‘off the shelf’ form does the CMS lend itself to satisfying the coding best practices recommended by the major Search Engines (Google etc). Other questions to consider with regard to SEO include:

Does the CMS utilise a SEO friendly file/URL structure?
Does it make it easy to edit the meta data and page titles on a per page basis?
How does it handle redirecting old pages to new pages?

While some of these concepts/requirements are probably unfamiliar territory for many website owners, they’re vital for improving the chance of your website to be found in the Search Engines.

Does the CMS create good quality code?

Having good, clean code is the foundation upon which your website and online presence is built. The coding of your website is important for ensuring that your website is maintainable, bug–free, and fast. It will also go a long way to ensuring that your website can be viewed consistently across all web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera etc). Furthermore, good coding can also help the search engines read or index your website. Make sure you ask if the CMS you are interested in adheres to W3C world standards for web design.

Can my Content Management System driven website grow and change as my business grows?

It’s vital that your CMS can be added to over time in terms of additional functionality. For example, if you’re just starting out you might not have a need for full-blown e-commerce functionality rom your website, but as your business grows you might discover that e-commerce is something that you feel could really benefit your business. If so, how easy is it to add this kind of functionality to your CMS?

What sort of on-going support will you get?

No matter how good your CMS website is or how technology savvy you are, sometime, somewhere, somehow something might go wrong and you’ll need to contact your service provider for help. In these (hopefully very rare) instances it’s important to know that there is help at hand in the form of a ‘real person’ at the end of the phone. If your CMS has built in help files that’s certainly great too, but being able to talk to someone when you need them is paramount.

Is the content management system transferrable?

Although you might be completely satisfied with the level of service offered by your web developer and the CMS you choose, it pays to consider what your options are should you reach the point where you feel you’re not getting the quality of service you should be. Also consider what would happen if the web development company is sold and you want to switch to another provider? The key here is to ensure that you can take your website with you wherever you choose to go. The last thing you want is to be forced to change to another CMS should you be faced with the need to move to another provider.

Building Your Website's Authority Using Social Media

newsletter@limelightonline.co.nz (Suzanne Carter) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 09:16:09 +1300

Website authority is used to describe the trust and credibility of your website content. Search Engines such as Google favour sites that show authority as it is important for them to serve up sites that are deemed to be of high value. There are many signals that Search Engines look for when determining how trustworthy a site is and the more good signals associated with your website the more authority you will have.

A well-planned and thorough Search Engine Optimisation campaign should include techniques to build website authority. This blog will focus on building authority using social media signals and will provide a few tips to get you started.

It goes without saying that in order to build your website authority and your brand you actually do need to be an authority in your industry. This means keeping up-to-date with industry news and developing expertise so that others know that if they come to you they will get the answers they are looking for. Research blogs and forums to find out which ones are applicable to your industry.

It is important to know which other companies and their key people are in your industry so that you can interact with them online. For example, if they are on Twitter follow them and start interacting with them by replying to Tweets or retweeting, add a comment to one of their status updates on Facebook, comment on one of their blog posts. Perhaps start a group in LinkedIn.

As well as interacting with other industry members you need to interact directly with your target market via social media so send out regular Tweets or Facebook status updates sharing your company news, industry changes, updates to your website, for example. Update your blog or respond to questions in forums.

Make sure that every comment you make is a quality one showcasing your knowledge. You are promoting your brand so make sure you always have this top of mind.

Remember that before you start encouraging people to visit your site by engaging in social media you must ensure that the content on your website is worth reading and is laid out in an easy-to-read format.

If you would like some assistance in putting together a social media strategy then please contact us to discuss further.

How Secure Is Your Password?

shay@apexinternet.co.nz (Shay Porteous) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 11:59:01 +1300

Yes it is convenient to have a password that is easy to remember and that never changes, but how convenient will it be when you find a hacker has destroyed your website, sent spam email to all of your contacts or emptied your bank account? Password cracking software can be run at regular intervals to attempt to guess your password from common names or dictionary words, so never use a person’s name, pets name, street name, or name of an activity, event, place or thing.

If you are a business, you need to have a secure password policy. You will likely get immediate objection, because users generally hate password policies. They consider them onerous and time consuming because they don’t understand the potential implications of being hacked, so ensure you communicate to them why the policy is in place .

Put your password security policy in writing and ensure your users adhere to it – make it an employment issue.

Possible components of a successful password policy might include;

Have your users create passwords that comply with predefined rules. Never use any word that would be in the dictionary, this can be achieve by adding numbers or special characters to your password. The longer the password the better and throw in some capitalisation of letters - your favourite ‘spotty’ password could become sP0tTy
Force users to change passwords regularly, if you can, have your system configured to expire passwords to force users to update their passwords
Have your system configured to lock a user's account after a certain number of failed logon attempts and don’t allow them to reattempt login for a specified period
Monitor your security logs periodically. You will be able to determine if someone is trying to hack an account and can block the attacking IP address in your firewall
Disable default Administrator Accounts – at least the hacker will then have to guess at a user name and password rather than password alone
Never reveal passwords to anyone. Create a temporary password for an IT support person and delete it immediately they no longer require it
Physical security of passwords is just as important, never write your password down and ensure no one is looking over your shoulder while you log on
Log off your computer if you are leaving it and log back on when you return.

Is All Web Hosting Created Equal?

shay@apexinternet.co.nz (Shay Porteous) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 15:04:09 +1300

In the early days of the Internet, if you wanted to host a website, you had to have your own server with a permanent connection to the Internet and the know how to configure and maintain this hosting environment. Consequently web site hosting was the realm of corporates and computer geeks.

As the Internet gained traction in the early to mid-90s, the concept of shared hosting began to take hold. Utilising shared hosting, a website could be hosted on a server with other websites and centralised management, thereby negating the need for the in-house computer geeks to configure and maintain the hardware behind the websites. It was the advent of shared hosting that largely lead to the Internet boom as hosting became possible and affordable even for small companies.

Shared hosting does however have its downsides. Just as being on a server with hundreds of other websites meant that the costs were spread over many websites, equally the demand for the physical resources of the server were spread over the same websites. Consequently the memory, processor time and storage space of one resource hungry website could affect the performance of other websites on the same server. Likewise there may be hundreds of websites on a single IP address meaning that the poor reputation of one website (for spamming for example) could affect the reputation of all websites on that IP address. Unfortunately, although things are better today in terms of resource management, ‘bad neighbourhoods’ on the Internet can still mean that you website gets blacklisted through no fault of your own.

Limelight Online offers a Shared Hosting environment with a difference – we manage our own servers in 6 different countries and we only host websites for our own web Development clients, thereby ensuring that our clients websites are in a ‘good neighbourhood’. The environment on all of our severs is constantly monitored and very well managed. We know, generally within seconds, if there are issues with any of our servers and we are able to quickly login and correct most issues before any of our clients websites are affected. Furthermore, we always make sure that there is low resource contention meaning that no one website gets a bigger bite at the server resources than any other website.

If your website is often offline or slow and you would like to move to Limelight Online for hosting, then I am afraid you are out of luck. Your website has to have been built by Limelight Online if you want to be hosted on our servers.

Is Ranking in Google Really That Important?

newsletter@limelightonline.co.nz (Suzanne Carter) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 09:42:40 +1300

If your website serves more as an online brochure to which you refer clients and potential clients then doing well in the Search Engines such as Google may not be a priority for your business.

However, for the vast majority of businesses it is critical to their success to be able to attract targeted traffic to their website. This in turn drives enquiries and new business.

Websites that are well positioned in Google are the ones that are likely to get more visitor traffic because they are visible to searchers. So, for example, if you own a business that sells camera accessories and you are not appearing on the first page of Google results when users search for your product then you are not very likely to get visitors to come to your website. This is because enquiry drops dramatically if your website is not on the first page or two of search results.

When users have so many websites to choose from in the Search Engine results it is extremely important to optimise your site so that your website can be found easily and is the one that users click through to. If your competitors are positioned higher than your site in the Search Engines then it may well be their site your potential client visits instead of yours.

Regardless of industry, the online market is certainly very competitive, and continues to become more so, which makes it harder for websites to rank highly. Just having a website does not guarantee success. It doesn’t matter how fantastic your product or service is if no-one actually knows about it. Websites need all the help they can get which is why it is very important to start work on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) as soon as you can on your website, preferably even before commencing the design process. Unfortunately doing nothing is not an option – not if you are looking for new online business.

Search Engine Optimisation is a complex process which involves a number of techniques to improve the visibility of your website in the Search Engines. And it doesn’t end there. Once your website is optimised it is necessary to continue promoting your website in the Search Engines using Search Engine Marketing (SEM): the goal being to increase your website presence in the Search Engines. SEM assists with the promotion of your website in various ways including link building, Pay Per Click campaigns and Article Marketing.

Social Media Marketing can also assist with building your websites online popularity. Social Media involves building your networks on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn by regularly engaging with your fans, followers and connections.

Is ranking on Google really that important? Absolutely, if want to grow your business through your online presence.

Talking About This Metric on Facebook

webmarketing@limelightonline.co.nz (Lizette Bretherton) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 11:04:42 +1300

If you are a Facebook business page owner you may have come across the ‘People Talking About’ metric which shows on the left hand panel of your page when logged in:

This is all part of the Pages Insights analytics tool that Facebook introduced a while ago. It seems that the idea behind it is that Facebook users will think that a Page which has a high number of ‘Talking About This’ users, is a Page worth ‘liking’ due to its interesting content.

This metric measures user-initiated activity which relates to the Page. This includes:

Liking
Commenting
Sharing (either the page or content on the page)
Posting on the Wall
Answering a Question/Poll on the page
Mentioning the page in a wall status update or post
Sharing a deal
Checking in

‘Talking About This’ is just a part of the metrics which will become standard with Facebook Page Insights. Others include:

Likes – providing data around the ‘likes’ received.
Friends of fans – actual number of friends your fans have; this can serve as an indicator of your potential exposure.
Weekly total reach – overview of how many people have posted something about your page, this can serve as an indicator of how “viral” your page is.

Something to remember though with all of these metrics is that they don’t tell you the tone of how you are being ‘talked about’. So as with all Social Media Marketing it is important to keep track of this, via the likes of Google Alerts and other such tools. That way if someone is talking negatively about your business you can actively moderate comments.

PPC Marketing with Google AdWords

webmarketing@limelightonline.co.nz (Lizette Bretherton) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 14:50:51 +1300

Whilst most businesses nowadays have a website of some sort, many aren’t entirely aware of the online marketing options that they have. Search Engine Optimisation & Marketing are certainly options to assist a websites visibility in the Search Engines, but there is also the option of PPC marketing which can give more immediate results.

For businesses that have a relatively new online presence it can take some time for their site to appear in Organic Search Engine Results, even if an effective Search Engine Optimisation & Marketing strategy is in place. The same can be said of those in competitive industries such as tourism and real estate, and that is why considering a PPC campaign can help with getting results faster.

So What is Google AdWords / PPC marketing?

Google AdWords is like an online auction where you and your competitors will bid to appear in a higher position on the Search results page to attempt to get more traffic and in turn enquiry/bookings/sales.

Small text ads appear at the top and right hand side bar of Search results pages. Below you will see an example of a Limelight Online ad appearing at the top of the Search results:

PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click, which means that an advertiser is only charged when a user actually clicks on their ad in the search results and is taken through to the relevant website. As such an advertiser only pays for traffic that arrives at the website, not when the ad appears in Search results.

How Does a Campaign Get Set Up?

An account is set up within Google AdWords where the Campaign/s will be set up. From there the user is able to choose geographical target markets where they want their ads to show, along with a huge range other such options aimed at making your Campaign as targeted as possible.

Within each Campaign are Ad Groups in which a set of keywords are chosen relating to what you are advertising. These keywords are what generate your Ad to show in Search. For example, in the image above the keywords were ‘website design christchurch’. Each of these keywords has what is called a ‘CPC’ or Cost-Per-Click dollar figure assigned to them, which is the maximum you are willing to pay for a click related to that keyword.

Following this text ad/s are then created relevant to the keywords. What your text ad says is completely up to you (so long as you abide by the Guidelines provided by Google) or the company that you choose to set up your Google AdWords campaign/s.

Whilst this all sounds easy, not knowing enough about the particulars of a Google AdWords campaign can end up costing you more money than it needs to. Google have a number of guidelines, criteria and algorithms associated with their AdWords product which are all in place to ensure that there is a fair marketplace for advertisers i.e. less risk of spam advertisers using this product.

Talk to us today to find out more about PPC Marketing with Google AdWords.

Social Media Marketing or Search Engine Marketing - Which One Is For Me?

webmarketing@limelightonline.co.nz (Lizette Bretherton) — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 15:32:12 +1200

For those of you looking into the world of online marketing, you may feel overwhelmed with the array of different terms put forward to you by the many companies specialising in such services. Here we talk about Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Marketing – two common online marketing options which are often seen as a one or the other approach, when really they can be nicely intertwined.

Search Engine Marketing has been around for many, many years and has another counterpart which you will likely hear – Search Engine Optimisation (just to further confuse you!):
Search Engine Optimisation or SEO involves a number of techniques used on your website itself to improve the visibility of your site in the Search Engines.
Search Engine Marketing or SEM is generally what follows SEO and is the part of the process that assists with the promotion of your website through link building, PPC campaigns, article marketing and such like.

So what is Social Media Marketing?
SMM (as it’s often referred to in the industry) is a more recent form of online marketing and is the process of building networks of fans (Facebook), followers (Twitter) and or connections (LinkedIn) by posting interesting content for other users to share and engage with. This allows you to reach out and engage with a wider audience than you perhaps could with offline forms of marketing. This in turn can help with driving more business. Think of it as the modern day version of ‘word-of-mouth’. The most common forms of Social Media Marketing are Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and more recently Google’s own +1 button and Social Media platform, Google+.

Because these forms of marketing seem to target different areas of the online world; one Search Engines and the other actual people; people generally tend to approach them separately too, but here’s some reasons to think otherwise:

SEM and SMM are both about link building
One of the main factors in assisting your site visibility in the Search Engines is increasing its link popularity i.e. how many inbound links your site has from other sites. This means arranging for other sites to provide a preferably keyword rich link back to your site from theirs. In a way each quality link is like a vote in the Search Engines eyes – e.g. if the other site is willing to link to yours then your site must be worth it.

A Search Engine Marketing company will have a focus on building your sites link popularity though not only linking, but things like article and blog marketing, press releases and such like.

Now to look at SMM - When people post on Facebook or Tweet on Twitter they often include a link to a site that they found interesting or perhaps want to promote. What does this do? Any one of that person’s Facebook friends/likes can ‘share’ that link or Twitter followers can ‘ReTweet’ that link. The link then gets distributed out to more and more people. This is the Social Media Marketing version of link building and the Search Engines are beginning to take this more and more into account, when it comes to your site and its results in search.

SEM and SMM are both about traffic building
To put it simply every website needs traffic or else the site wouldn’t need to exist. The more traffic you get to your site the more people become aware of it and your brand and offerings and therefore leads and conversions should start occurring.

So how do we get traffic to our websites? It’s common to market our websites via offline methods as these are well known – the likes of mail-outs, newspaper ads, TV ads etc, but online marketing efforts such as PPC marketing (e.g. Google AdWords), Press Releases and so on, are often overlooked because people deem them too time consuming or costly. Social Media Marketing also falls into this category – many a time we hear the ‘we just don’t have the time’ or ‘our clients don’t use social media’ comments, usually due to a lack of understanding about the platforms, when really they will find the time and their clients likely are using social media of some sort.

Both SEM and SMM are part of the arsenal of online marketing efforts that can drive traffic to your site in an effort to drive up leads and conversions.

SEM and SMM are both about online brand presence
If someone was to search for your company name in a Search Engine you would hope that your website was there on page one in the top spot, but these days you are also likely to come across that company’s Social Media profile links too. Often even links that have been shared via the company’s Facebook wall or Twitter feed will also come up in Search too. This means that just like your website can be visible so can your social networking profiles, therefore increasing your online brand presence i.e. people have more than one avenue to find out more about your company.

Obviously you would want people to go to your website more so than your Social Media presence, but these days it’s important to understand that people are turning to the likes of Twitter and Facebook to find and get information fast. I for one today visited a company website and couldn’t easily find the answer I was looking for, so instead found them on Twitter then sent them my question via Twitter. My question was answered the same day, which is great customer service = happy customer.

Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Marketing should stop being compared. They are two different marketing efforts working toward the one common goal and therefore should be a part of the overall online marketing package.

SEM can largely be managed by a specialist company, but SMM does require effort on your (the company’s) part, but think of it as online networking and getting your brand recognised rather than a waste of time engaging with people you don’t even know about things that don’t really matter. The valuable lead or conversion probably won’t come straight away, but rather than sit around waiting for it, participate with your potential clientele and get your company noticed!

Social Media Marketing Facebook Twitter LinkedIn and Now Google+

webmarketing@limelightonline.co.nz (Lizette Bretherton) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 10:45:50 +1200

Social Media – everyone’s talking about it, everyone’s seems to be using it and everyone knows someone on one form of Social Media or another. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are common platforms used by individuals, groups and businesses exploring Social Media and recently the introduction of Google+ has seen much online discussion about whether this is the new ‘Facebook’.

Each platform offers something a little different to the other, here’s a brief description of each:

Twitter : Within Twitter you can send short (140 character max) messages out to anyone that wants to ‘follow’ you. You can ‘follow’ anyone that you would like too. A ‘follow’ is not necessarily reciprocated i.e. the number of “followers” you have vs “followings” could be higher and vice versa. Take a look at the Limelight Online Twitter account.

Facebook : In terms of business use, Facebook recommend setting up a “Business Page” such as the Limelight Online Facebook page where your customers/clients etc can ‘like’ your business. Each time you post something to your page, it is then syndicated out to those who have ‘liked’ your page, via their ‘News Feed’. Facebook pages allow you to have customised tabs and such like for your users to arrive on as well. You can also have photo albums, Facebook places (similar to Google Places) and behind the scenes tools such as Facebook Insights.

LinkedIn : LinkedIn is like the business networkers version of Facebook. Here you set up a profile for yourself and your employees (for instance) and set up a group page for your company. You can then select what sort of contact you would like e.g. networking, business opportunities etc. Those who are ‘linked’ to you can recommend your services and the number of ‘recommendations’ that you receive will show on your profile.

Google+ : Google+ offers five distinct areas – Hangouts, Circles, Instant Upload, Sparks and Huddles. Hangouts are where you can participate in video chats with those who you are connected to via this platform. Circles are the grouping type facility within Google+ allowing you to set specific groups of people to send messages out to and such like. Instant Upload is the feature that allows you to instantly upload images and videos to your profile. Sparks allow you to select things that you interested in and Google+ will keep a record of them for you to review at a later stage and Huddles are like an online chat room via your mobile.

There are similarities between LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ in terms of their functionality, so in terms of which one you choose to use it will depend on what market you are looking to target.

Now, just because there are all these options available to you, it doesn’t mean that you as a business or individual necessarily need to be on them all. It’s important to identify which ones are going to work for you and how much effort is required.

Social Media Marketing is about participation. There’s really no use in setting an account up if you aren’t going to actively use it. For those visiting your profile only to see no activity, it would instantaneously turn them away from “liking” or “following” etc you.

Many companies are opting for third party companies to manage their Social Media Marketing, but the danger with this is that the accounts often then become less ‘human’ and more marketing focussed – which seems fine to those who haven’t used any of the platforms, but for those with some experience, you know that no one wants to receive post after post about what your company can do for them or what you have achieved for this client and that client. Put it this way – if you were talking to someone at a networking meeting would you instantly start raving about what your company does? Chances are no, it’s likely that you will firstly make some small talk and get to know the person a little before going into what it is that they might need from you. That’s how you should treat Social Media too – be personable and friendly, don’t just market yourself, market others and network with them. The more you help and get your name out there, the more likely it is that you will be on the top of the mind of others to recommend your services.

If you are looking into Social Media for your business and would like some more information about which is the best platform for you to use and how to go about it, talk to us today.

Does Your Website Create The Right Impression?

newsletter@limelightonline.co.nz (Suzanne Carter) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:40:31 +1200

We all know that first impressions are created within seconds. In today’s competitive business environment, creating the right first impression is absolutely vital. Your potential client has other choices and you want them to choose you, not your competitor.

If the first impression a potential client has of your business is via your website (and this will largely be the case) then you need to make sure that your website creates the correct impression of your company and its products/services.

It is surprising how many businesses actually don’t think about their website in terms of it being their online ‘shop-front’. Your website needs to encourage visitors to it to stay and purchase a product, make an enquiry, submit a quote and so on. If it doesn’t then they will go elsewhere and that’s not something you want them to do!

If you are not sure if your website does give out the right messages then just ask friends or family to take a look and give you their honest opinion.

To create a strong initial impact your website design must be attractive, easy on the eye and include strong calls to action. Your logo is also very important so make sure you have a well-designed one and not one that your cousin has put together one evening!

If you have products to showcase then a photo gallery with great imagery is definitely beneficial. On the subject of photos, you should never underestimate the power of photography when it comes to creating a first impression with your website. Photos can make or break the aesthetics of a website. Therefore make sure all photos on your website are of a professional quality and accurately reflect your company and its products/services in the best possible light.

Content must be of a high quality, relevant and easy to read. Break it down into small readable paragraphs with bullet points and subheadings. Don’t mix font styles too much and make sure your spelling and grammar is 100% (don’t use American English on your site!). A website full of spelling mistakes is not only a bad look but it also makes it hard for anyone to read.

If you sell products online then make sure that your shopping cart is working properly. Errors during the buying process are a turn off and only serve to discourage your customer to continue with their purchase.

Having a website full of advertisements is also not a good look so if you are going to have advertisements make sure they are unobtrusive and do not have prominence over everything else on your site.

Check your site for error messages. The worst possible error message to have is one that says your website is no longer available.

So, remember that you must have a professional looking site as this will instil trust and credibility. A poor website creates a poor first impression and that is not a risk any business can afford to take.

Google Choosing What They Display As the Title for Your Site in Search Results

webmarketing@limelightonline.co.nz (Lizette Bretherton) — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 13:57:00 +1200

Every now and again when we do a search for a site in Google, we often get different titles than that of which the site uses in its tag (and at times the meta description element). This is because <a href="http://www.google.co.nz/">Google</a> aren’t always using your SEO data to display in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) for your site. For example, the below screenshot shows a search for ‘limelight online’ in Google – which returns our site in position one, but the ‘title’ is shown as just ‘Limelight Online Ltd’ rather than our actual <title> tag: So why does this happen? Google can choose to ignore displaying your title and meta tags if they feel that they are not helpful to the users search query. In fact Matt Cutts himself can be quoted in his <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NlJiLDn9-38">Snippets and Titles video</a> to have said “We reserve the right to try to figure out what’s a better title….”. Where is Google getting the new information from? Google are in some cases using the <a href="http://www.dmoz.org/">Open Directory</a> listing anchor text as the title for their search results. For example the <a href="http://www.limelightonline.co.nz/">Limelight Online</a> listing in the Open Directory is as below: Google can also decide to create a title by using text from the actual title tag, text / links from the page, the domain name or heading tags for example along with any other information that they deem relevant. If however, your site doesn’t have a title tag, Google may look at common text used to link to that page and use that as your search result title tag. What does this mean for SEO? Some might argue that there is no longer any point in having <a href="http://www.limelightonline.co.nz/searchengineoptimisation.php">Search Engine Optimisation</a> performed on your site as Google are choosing what they want to display anyway. The point here though is that if you don’t have your site optimised for keyword phrases which are not only relevant to your site’s offering but are ones which are being searched for, your site is less likely to appear in SERP’s or if it does your Click-Through-Rate could be at risk if you simply allow Google to choose what they want to display. Most importantly - In terms of the algorithms Google uses, they are still using SEO data but where necessary (in their eyes) they will find a better more informative title for their users. Here’s a checklist of things that a <a href="http://www.limelightonline.co.nz/aboutus.php">Search Engine Marketing company</a> will take care of for you: <ul> <li>Get your title tag and meta description optimised to be relevant to the individual page they are placed on. </li> <li>Ensure that your meta description and title tag relate to each other. </li> <li>Make sure that your site is optimised for keyword phrases that are being searched on. </li> <li>Ensure that your site is optimised with a unique title tag on every page – even those which you deem less important. </li> <li>Ensure that you have no odp tag inserted in <head> section <meta name=”robots” content=”noodp”>, although empirical evidence suggests that Google may still choose to use the title from a DMOZ listing. </li> <li>Ensure that the internal linking throughout your own site is relevant to the page you are linking too. </li> <li>Make sure that sites that are linking to yours are using relevant optimised anchor text where possible. </li> </ul> At the end of the day we cannot control what Google decide is best, but we can decide what is on our own sites and what we want to be appearing for. If we don’t do our best, then we are at the mercy of Google. </article> <article> <h1>Google Announces Further Panda Updates</h1> newsletter@limelightonline.co.nz (Suzanne Carter) — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 13:15:30 +1200 Following Google’s Panda algorithm update a few months ago (<a href="http://www.limelightonline.co.nz/blog/Low-Quality-Sites-And-Googles-Latest-Update/">read our blog on the topic</a>) they have released another version of this update. As a recap the intention of the Panda update is to ensure that websites that are deemed low in quality are weeded out of Google's results. The new update is targeting websites that scrape and then republish content and then appear in the search results in place of the original source of the content. This is another example of what is deemed as a low quality site. Some such sites have already experienced reduced Search Engine visibility, which from a user's perspective can only be seen as a good thing. When people search on Google they need to know that relevant, good content websites are going to be displayed against their search term. This is Google’s aim and they are working hard to achieve this by introducing such updates. The performance of a website is no longer just determined by on-page and off-page optimisation and quality of links etc, with usability, good quality content, relevance, trust and social signals also being taken into account. So, all website owners and administrators need to ask themselves several questions when reviewing your site (and reviewing your site is a must-do regular activity). <ol> <li>Does my content fully demonstrate our expertise/knowledge of our industry/products/services?</li> <li>Is any content repeated pretty much word for word on the site?</li> <li>Are there any spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, poor sentence structure, factual errors?</li> <li>Is all content relevant to my business?</li> <li>Does my content provide value to visitors?</li> <li>Do I really need adverts on my site? If so, are they all below the fold?</li> </ol> The above questions are just a selection of those that you should be asking yourself. Websites really must provide well-written, informed and substantive content. </article> <article> <h1>Things to Consider when Testing a Website Before it Goes Live Including Helpful Resources</h1> shay@apexinternet.co.nz (Shay Porteous) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 13:36:34 +1200 Why Test a Website? A website represents your (or your client's) business identity online. In order to make a great impression (and maximise ROI) it is vital to check that your website is functioning correctly and is usable for all visitors. If everyone had identical operating systems, screen sizes and were all using the same browser, testing would be easy. Unfortunately this isn’t the case. Below are a few things to consider before making your website live. Cross Browser Testing your website It is possible that your website may appear differently in different web browsers. For example, your website may look perfect in Firefox, but when viewing it in Internet Explorer the layout could appear broken. You should test your website in the following browsers: <ul> <li>Firefox</li> <li>Internet Explorer</li> <li>Safari</li> <li>Google Chrome</li> <li>Opera</li> </ul> If you are having problems keeping your design to be consistent in multiple browsers, think about setting default padding and margins to all your basic html attributes in your CSS file. Browsers set their own default padding and margins for html elements that do not have margin or padding assigned. These default styles can differ with each browser. Not only can different browsers display a website differently, but also various versions of each browser. For example how your browser looks in Internet Explorer 7 will not necessarily look the same in IE 8. Internet Explorer 6 is the most difficult browser to correct your website in, however luckily only about 2.86% of internet users use this as mentioned on <a href="http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php">W3 Counter</a>. Transparent PNG images on your website in IE 6 may appear to be unusual sizes and not transparent. To prevent your PNGs appearing on your website at the incorrect size, make sure to set the width and height dimensions on your tag. A good resource to use for making your images transparent is <a href="http://www.twinhelix.com/css/iepngfix/">twinhelix.com.</a> Checking your website using different Operating Systems Once all of your cross browser testing is complete it's a good idea to check the layout and functionality in an alternative Operating System. For example, if you have built your website on a computer with Windows 7, try viewing it on a Mac. Macs may sometimes portray colours differently to Windows. If possible, also try it out on a different version of Windows such as Windows XP. Testing Different Screen Sizes Load up your website and resize your web browser to the following sizes: <ul> <li>1280 x 1024</li> <li>1024 x 768</li> <li>800 x 600</li> </ul> Is your website still easily usable at these sizes? Does the layout on your website remain the same? Think about people using laptops with small screens and accessing your website, can they access the majority of your website without large amounts of scrolling? Checking links on the website If you have built your website on a staging domain, check all your links are pointing to the live domain. Check any emails on the website are set up as 'mailto:' links. Go through any links to linking to documents (e.g PDF's) to check these are loading correctly. Once your website is live, a useful resource to check for broken links is <a href="http://xenus-link-sleuth.en.softonic.com/">Xenu’s Link Sleuth</a>. Check your website content is understandable with either CSS or JavaScript turned off. Your users should still be able to view important content on your website with these disabled. To disable CSS or JavaScript: <ul> <li>Load up Internet Explorer.</li> <li>Under 'Tools' select 'development tools'.</li> <li>A tool bar will pop up along the bottom of your browser.</li> <li>Click 'Disable' and select either 'CSS' or 'Script'.</li> </ul> Check that your website has no JavaScript errors If you have used JavaScript on your website, make sure to check for any errors. In Internet Explorer if there is a JavaScript error a little exclamation mark will appear on the bottom left hand side of your browser. An easier way to debug JavaScript errors is using FIREBUG (<a href="http://getfirebug.com/">http://getfirebug.com/</a>) in Firefox. This will help you to identify what is causing the error, something which is not always clear from the error notification in Internet Explorer. Does the site look the same as the original design file? Compare your original design file and your completed website to check they both look as symmetrical as possible. Is the website using the same font as the design file? If the font used on the original design file is not a 'web friendly' font (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web">view core web fonts as listed by Wikipedia</a>) you can get around this by including files such as <a href="http://cufon.shoqolate.com/generate/">cufon</a> or <a href="http://www.google.com/webfonts">google web fonts</a>. Testing forms on your website Valuable business can be lost if the forms you use on your website to capture visitor information are not working correctly. Things to look at when testing your forms are: <ul> <li>Are required and optional fields obvious?</li> <li>Are field names clear and understandable?</li> <li>Do your forms utilise user-friendly validation, just in case the user enters something wrong or misses a required field?</li> <li>Is your form sending an email with the visitor's information to the appropriate person?</li> <li>Is there a clear 'success' message once the user has submitted the form?</li> <li>Are automatic response emails (if any) being sent?</li> </ul> Testing any additional functionality Make sure to check over all functionality on your website. For example, if there is a shopping cart on your website is it easy to add items to your checkout? After the user has added an item to the shopping basket, is it easy for them to continue shopping? Is it easy for them to get back to the checkout screen again without adding another item? It's a good idea to get someone with fresh eyes to look over the functionality of your shopping cart in order to check that everything is easy to use and is working as it shuold. Page Redirects If you are redesigning an existing website, make sure that any pages that will no longer be used from the current site are 301 redirecting to the appropriate pages on the new site. This way you can maintain your website's existing footprint in Google and any links to your old pages will automatically be redirected through to your new page, as opposed to returning a 404 page not found error. XHTML & CSS validation To ensure best coding practices you should use the following links to make sure your website is XHTML compliant and that your cascading style sheets are correct: <ul> <li><a href="http://validator.w3.org/">http://validator.w3.org/</a> - XHTML Validator</li> <li><a href="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/">http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/</a> - CSS Validator</li> </ul> </article> <article> <h1>jQuery - its more than just an image gallery</h1> nigel@limelightonline.co.nz (Nigel Wells) — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 14:07:57 +1200 jQuery is one of those tools people ask to have on their sites these days without really knowing why. You will often see jQuery being used in image galleries of all different shapes and sizes as it helps make a really nice interactive gallery without the need of an Adobe Flash developer. Here is a good list of example galleries of what can be achieved with jQuery: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.smashingapps.com/2011/01/07/awesome-jquery-techniques-to-create-visually-impressive-photo-galleries.html" target="_blank">http://www.smashingapps.com/2011/01/07/awesome-jquery-techniques-to-create-visually-impressive-photo-galleries.html</a> But jQuery is so much more than just an image gallery. It can be used to completely enhance the entire user experience of your website. These days a lot of people are looking for the "wow" factor and what sets your site apart from your competitors. Using jQuery throughout your site in simple and appropriate places can easily transform your website into something you're really proud of and enjoy showing off to your friends. So what are some other areas of a site than can benefit from jQuery? Here are a few ideas: <h2>Form validation</h2> Real time validation feedback is the best usability when filling out a form - nobody likes a page refresh these days. Here are a few examples that can be used to enhance your forms. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.position-relative.net/creation/formValidator/demos/demoValidators.html" target="_blank">http://www.position-relative.net/creation/formValidator/demos/demoValidators.html</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://web-kreation.com/demos/LightForm/" target="_blank">http://web-kreation.com/demos/LightForm/</a> <h2>Menus</h2> A little movement in menus that have sub menu navigation can always be complimented by a little animation. Here are a few examples. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://greengeckodesign.com/projects/MenuMatic/examples/vertical/index.htm" target="_blank">http://greengeckodesign.com/projects/MenuMatic/examples/vertical/index.htm</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.jeremymartin.name/examples/kwicks.php?example=1" target="_blank">http://www.jeremymartin.name/examples/kwicks.php?example=1</a> <h2>Content sliders</h2> Useful for displaying featured articles, products, specials on a page when you have limited space. Here are a few examples. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://css-tricks.com/examples/AnythingSlider/" target="_blank">http://css-tricks.com/examples/AnythingSlider/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://demo.webdeveloperplus.com/featured-content-slider/" target="_blank">http://demo.webdeveloperplus.com/featured-content-slider/</a> <h2>Other ideas</h2> Of course there are so many other ways to take advantage of jQuery on your site. You could cross fade in a thank you message after someone fills out a form rather than a page refresh. If you have a wizard type form, slide in/out different information based on options selected on the form - this helps keeping a nice clean uncluttered form for the user Displaying help tooltips that follow your mouse Fading an opaque layer over the screen to highlight an important segment Accordion and tabbed layout options can be another effective way to put more information on a page when you just don't have the room for everything <h2>Use your imagination</h2> At the end of the day all you need is a good idea and jQuery should be able to help you accomplish it. The best way to look at any of the examples provided is to not think that jQuery is just one thing as it can be anything. Any of the animation you see can be applied to any area of your website - and I mean anything! So next time you're getting your website designed, or just want a refresh, spend a little time thinking about how you can add the "wow" factor to your site. jQuery is a very powerful yet very simple to implement, and in some cases can be setup in a matter of minutes. Look into it as it might just get you that extra sale or review that you're after. Additional resources <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.jquery.com/" target="_blank">http://www.jquery.com/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.smashingapps.com/2011/01/07/awesome-jquery-techniques-to-create-visually-impressive-photo-galleries.html" target="_blank">http://www.smashingapps.com/2011/01/07/awesome-jquery-techniques-to-create-visually-impressive-photo-galleries.html</a> <a href="http://www.designyourway.net/blog/resources/55-jquery-form-plugins-to-download-and-use/" target="_blank">http://www.designyourway.net/blog/resources/55-jquery-form-plugins-to-download-and-use/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/css/36-eye-catching-jquery-navigation-menus/" target="_blank">http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/css/36-eye-catching-jquery-navigation-menus/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://webdesignledger.com/tutorials/13-super-useful-jquery-content-slider-scripts-and-tutorials" target="_blank">http://webdesignledger.com/tutorials/13-super-useful-jquery-content-slider-scripts-and-tutorials</a> </article> <article> <h1>Why Don’t Some Websites Work?</h1> newsletter@limelightonline.co.nz (Suzanne Carter) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 13:09:52 +1200 Most people using the internet to find a product or service are pretty impatient. If your website doesn’t meet their expectations or they can’t easily find what they are looking for these potential customers will leave and visit your competitors’ site instead. This is why it is vital that your website works because if it doesn’t, the impact on your business can be substantial. One of the main reasons why some websites don’t work is due to their design. Just as a shabby shop front will not encourage people to step inside, poor design will not encourage visitors to your site to stay and do what you want them to do e.g. purchase a product, make an enquiry, submit a quote request, sign up for your newsletter and so on. A website may have a strong initial impact but if it looks cluttered, has a number of different graphical elements, inconsistent font styling, a variety of font sizes and a lack of white space it will be difficult for your potential customer to focus and find what they are looking for. Having a clear and strong call to action on your website is essential as it can turn visitors into customers. Put simply, you need to show visitors the information they want, tell them what you want them to do and make it easy for them to do it. For example, if you want them to make a reservation then have a clear ‘Book Now’ button Never make it difficult for people to contact you. Your contact details should be on your Contact Us page which should be clearly visible on the menu. It is best to have a number of different ways for people to get in touch with you whether it is via an online form, email or telephone. Is your navigation menu intuitive? Visitors need to be able to find their way around your website very quickly and very easily. Don’t ‘hide’ important pages within sub menus. These pages should be prominent. Also, make it very easy for people to find their way back to your home page. Your logo should have a link to the Home page and also ‘Home’ should be located at the beginning of your menu. Have you looked at the content of your website recently? Are there any spelling or grammatical mistakes? Content should be clear and easy to read so use short and concise phrases and sentences. Come to the point quickly and break up your text by using headers, sub headers, visual elements and lists with bullet points. Another major reason why some websites don’t work is because they cannot be found on the Search Engines. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is critical to the success of your website and your business and should be part and parcel of your whole website development project. We all know that it only takes a few seconds to create a first impression. Chances are that by making a few small fixes to your website, you’ll be well on your way to making sure your first impression is a great one. </article> <article> <h1>Why Businesses Are Using Social Media Marketing</h1> webmarketing@limelightonline.co.nz (Lizette Bretherton) — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:22:48 +1200 Here in New Zealand we are seeing more and more TV and print ads with information on how to find the company on Facebook or Twitter and at times special offers associated with a ‘like’ or ‘follow’. Businesses are embracing <a href="http://www.limelightonline.co.nz/socialmedia.php">Social Media marketing</a>, but why? Here we look at some reasons why businesses are using Social Media: Feedback: Friends or followers are easily able to give feedback on products or services via means such as <a href="http://www.facebook.com/">Facebook</a> or <a href="http://www.twitter.com/">Twitter</a>. Any feedback is valuable to a business, if it’s bad feedback you can work to fix the problem, if it’s good you can thank people accordingly. Customers like to know there is an actual human there to acknowledge their thoughts. Attention: There are so many people in New Zealand and across the world that you might not normally have the opportunity to reach out to. Social Media allows businesses to do this relatively easily through a few simple posts or Tweets. Customer Service: Great customer service is key to creating a great company. If someone expresses a problem with a product or service via Social Media platforms, businesses can engage with them in real time to try and resolve the issue, before too much bad ‘word of mouth’ gets out. Watch Their Competition: Businesses need to be aware of what is happening around them, if their competitor is offering a better deal, its likely customers will try them out. Social Media allows you to follow or friend your competitors to track what they are doing in real time. Publicity: Sharing information in real time can be really beneficial for businesses. They get instant publicity for new products or services of interest. It’s a lot faster than having to wait for a print or radio ad to be released. If you come up with an idea, you can put it into action then and there. Networking: Beginning business relationships via Social Media is happening all the time. A catering business for example, might network with an events co-ordinator and there you have a beneficial relationship for both businesses. Recruitment: It might not always be for vacant positions within the company, but recruitment is taking place. Businesses that need things like Press Releases or guest blog entries written can easily ask and potentially outsource for this via Social Media and get a response relatively quickly. Traffic to Their Website: For some businesses just <a href="http://www.limelightonline.co.nz/searchengineoptimisation.php">getting their website noticed</a> is enough for success. The more people that notice their website the more traffic they are likely to get. The more traffic, the more leads, the more leads, the more sales and so on. These are just some of the reasons why businesses are using Social Media Marketing, if you aren’t sure if Social Media Marketing is right for you and your business goals, <a href="http://www.limelightonline.co.nz/contactus.php">talk to us today</a>. </article> <article> <h1>Low Quality Sites And Google’s Latest Update</h1> newsletter@limelightonline.co.nz (Suzanne Carter) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:08:23 +1200 Google’s aim is to ensure that when people are searching they are given the most relevant websites according to their search terms. As such, they are constantly making changes to their algorithms. Some are subtle and not very noticeable whilst others are more significant in the impact they can have on a website's visibility in the Search Engine results. Once such algorithm change was rolled out a few weeks ago in the US (yet to be released in New Zealand) and has affected 11.8% of all search queries. This update, known as the Google Panda Update, is designed to reduce the amount of visibility afforded to low-quality sites. These sites typically have content which is copied from other sites or they just don’t provide any value to users. The aim of this update is to provide a better degree of visbility for those sites which are higher quality in terms of their content and information provided. Google recognise that people want to see websites that offer relevant, original and well-written content. Now is the time to review your website and evaluate your content. For example, remove the lower quality content pages or rewrite them. Ensure that the content is well written (grammar and spelling) and if this means employing a professional copywriter to do this for you then this is an investment well made. Some sites in the US that have experienced redcued Search Engine visibility are sites that are heavy with advertising, particularly above the fold (what visitors see without needing to scroll). To have sites that are heavy with advertising is not recommended from a <a href="http://www.limelightonline.co.nz/blog/Website-Design-and-Usability---Why-Bother/">usability</a> point of view as this can turn visitors away from your site, so now is the time to review your site from this perspective. Another factor in the drop of visibility of some sites is the low quality linking. Linking is a very important part of <a href="http://www.limelightonline.co.nz/searchengineoptimisation.php">Search Engine Optimisation</a> but it must be done well. Now more than ever before it makes sense to have good quality, well written and meaningful content available for your visitors as your aim is to have them stay on your site, not leave as soon as they arrive. </article> <article> <h1>How To Avoid Duplicate Content</h1> newsletter@limelightonline.co.nz (Suzanne Carter) — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 09:03:13 +1300 In our <a href="http://www.limelightonline.co.nz/blog/What-Is-Duplicate-Content/">previous blog</a> I talked about Duplicate Content i.e. what it is and why it can cause problems for your site on the Search Engines. This blog will cover the topic of the common causes of duplicate content and what you can do to reduce it or avoid it. To recap, if a website has the same or very similar content on certain pages or different websites have the same or similar content between them then this is known as duplicate content. This is an issue because the Search Engines in trying to identify the original source of the content may determine that your page of content is not the original source and therefore your website will not appear in the Search Engine rankings. Some of the most common causes are: Multiple domain names When multiple domain names are used for the same website duplicate content issues can arise if these domain names are incorrectly pointed to the one site. Multiple URLs http://example.co.nz/ http://www.example.co.nz/ http://www.example.co.nz/index.html The above example URLs all lead to the same home page. So whilst there is just one page of content there are several URLs accessing it. This is called URL canonicalisation. e-Commerce sites One cause of duplicate content on these sites is that the site owners often just copy the product information text from their distributors’ website. It is best to write your own unique content or add extra content to the text that has been copied so as to avoid duplicate content issues. Printer-only pages Many sites offer print-friendly versions of the same content. In this case a meta “noindex” tag should be placed on the printer-friendly versions of these pages to prevent Search Engines from indexing them. Blogs/Articles Duplicate content issues occur if you write a blog or an article for your website and then submit it to other blog/article sites to publish without amending the text sufficiently so as to avoid duplicate content. Session IDs Session IDs (a long combination of characters added to a URL) are commonly used to track visitors on your site, particularly on e-commerce sites. The data from Session IDs is used from the time the visitor starts shopping until they go through the check-out process. Session IDs create multiple URLs for the same page. Duplicate content can be avoided by ensuring that the content of website pages, either within the one site or across multiple sites, is sufficiently different. In addition, there are various technical ways to also avoid duplicate content. These include: 301 permanent redirects should be used to ensure that, where there are multiple domains, just one version of the domain is shown by the Search Engines. 301 redirects are also used for multiple URLs to ensure that the URL you want to show is indeed the one picked up by the Search Engines. If the duplicate content is within your own website you can disallow the duplicate content by using the robots.txt file and/or the noindex meta tag to tell the Search Engines to ignore that particular page e.g. for printer only pages. Google also support a format (<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/product.php?item=itemname" />) that allows you to specify your preferred version of a URL. If your site has identical content that is accessible through multiple URLs, this format allows you to control the URL that is returned in search results. It is placed within the <head> section of the duplicate content URLs. Duplicate content can definitely have an impact on your site ranking in the Search Engines so it is important that the non-technical and technical issues are looked at and fixed as much as possible. </article> <article> <h1>What Is Duplicate Content?</h1> newsletter@limelightonline.co.nz (Suzanne Carter) — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 09:46:29 +1300 The issue of duplicate content on a website/s has come up quite a bit recently when chatting to people about their websites and the Search Engines. So much so that I thought I had best dedicate our next blog to this very topic. What is duplicate content? If a website has the same or very similar content on certain pages or different websites have the same or similar content between them then this is known as duplicate content. It is important to ensure that each page of your website has as much unique content as possible. If you have more than one website e.g. a separate site to promote your business in Australia then you also need to ensure that this site has content that is not similar to the content of your other site. What is the problem with duplicate content? The aim of all the Search Engines is to ensure that they provide searchers with as much relevant and unique content as possible. Users would soon get fed up if each result (URL) displayed in the rankings contained pretty much the same information. To combat this Search Engines have created their own duplicate content filters which means they apply algorithms that can determine which sites have duplicate content (either within the one site or across different sites). If the Search Engines identify duplicate content they will attempt to identify the original source of the content and determine the best version of the page to display in their search results. Usually this choice is based on factors such as page age, domain authority, number and quality of incoming links, PageRank and so on. The result of this filter could mean that your site or certain pages within your site will not appear in the Search Engine rankings thus reducing the amount of potential traffic to your site. The vast majority of the time duplicate content is completely unintentional but it is important to note that Google can penalise your website if it deems that the content has been deliberately duplicated in order to get extra traffic to your site or to manipulate your site’s search engine rankings. By penalise I mean that they can make adjustments in the indexing and ranking of your site and as a result your site may suffer and drop in the rankings. Worst case scenario, your site will be removed totally from the Google index and no longer appear in the rankings at all. How can I check whether duplicate content exists on my website/s? There are online tools available which enable you to check the similarity of content across pages. These tools are also useful in determining which other sites may have copied your content. These offending sites can be reported to Google allowing you to claim ownership of the content. In our next blog I will talk about ways in which duplicate content can be avoided. </article> </main></body></html>