What NOT To Do On Your Website: Professional Advice
August 4, 2021
The Importance of Anchor Text in Backlinks
August 4, 2021
Can Any Inbound Linking Hurt My Ranking?
Inbound links, also known as backlinks, can have a positive impact on your website’s search engine ranking if they are from reputable and high-quality websites.
The answer is simple – inbound linking cannot hurt your search ranking. How is this known for certain? Well, for one, if inbound were to hurt your rank, your competitors would continually link to your site from link farms. Such a scenario is beyond your control. For this reason, Google cannot penalize your site for any inbound linking.
Professional Website
My personal perspective on e-businesses and their websites is that if they don’t take pride in their websites and show to their customers a passion for what they do, chances are, they won’t take pride in their products, and the passion for providing good customer service will also be missing.
What you must remember, is that your website is a direct reflection of you and your business. The appearance of your site is the most important factor in determining your potential success rate. In short, if your site doesn’t look professional or pleasing to the eyes at first glance, the majority of people will assume your products and/or services to be of a similarly poor standard.
Build a Quality Website
At the other end of the scale, you could fall into the trap of going overboard with the design and overcomplicating things by incorporating high costing flashy graphics. You may end up with a great-looking and highly aesthetic website, but the danger with this is that your site may prove unreliable and at times may take too long to load. There is nothing worse for a customer than trying to visit a slow-loading site, and most will close the browser window in complete frustration. As I’m sure you will be able to work out, this will ultimately cost you business.
The other major consideration (if not the most important) when designing a website is your content. Not just links, but content with passion, relativity, and understanding to the customer. When someone is searching for something in particular and they visit your website, they’re visiting for a reason. Your site has something they want, Whether this is your product, service, and/or information. If they cannot obtain what they’re looking for, they move on to the next site, and so on. To be able to get your visitors to stay and look around your website, you must give them a reason to. Providing them with quality content will achieve this goal.
Anchor Text
The prime mistake newbies make is to put their website name into the anchor text. Unless your website contains your keywords this is a waste of a perfectly good link. Remember that Google puts a very big importance on those Anchor texts and they should always use your keywords.
The second mistake is trying to put every single keyword into your anchor text and give that to everyone. There are two mistakes with this technique. 1.) Google assigns weight to each word in anchor text so if there are a lot of filler words (common in long sentences), they will “dilute” your target words.
Slow Loading
According to two recent surveys, conducted by Forrester Research and Gartner Group, e-commerce sites are losing $1.1 to $1.3 billion in revenue each year due to customers’ click-away caused by slow-loading sites. If a page takes too long to load, your potential customer will not wait. Ultimately costing you business.
Theme
Be cautious when selecting your background and text colors. Busy backgrounds make text difficult to read and draw attention away from the text. Always be consistent with your background theme on each page of your site. Your site should be nicely organized and uniform throughout. Keep in mind, colors affect your mood and will have an effect on your visitors as well. Bright colors such as yellow and orange, cause you to become more cheerful or happy, while colors such as blue and purple have a calming effect. Dark colors such as brown and black have a depressing effect. A good rule of thumb would be to use colors based on the type of effect you’re trying to achieve.
Home Page
Your main page should specifically let your visitors know exactly what you’re offering. How many times have you visited a site and never figured out exactly what they were selling? If your potential customer can’t find your product or service, they definitely won’t waste a lot of time looking for it. They’ll go on to the next site and probably never return. They’re visiting your site for a specific purpose. They want something your site offers. Whether it is information, a product, or a service.
Frames
If you must use frames, use them sparingly. Frames, if not properly used, can make your site look unprofessional. Avoid making your visitors have to scroll from side to side to view your content. This can be very irritating and cause your visitors to leave. If you must use frames, offer your visitors a choice. Frames versus no Frames. Try to keep the number of clicks required to get from your main page to any other page on your site down to four. Keep in mind, your visitors may enter your site from pages other than your main one. Always have good navigational links on every page and place your company logo on each page.
Quality Backlinks
Inbound links can have a positive impact on your website’s search engine ranking if they are from reputable and high-quality websites. However, if the inbound links are low-quality or spammy, or if they come from a source that Google considers to be a black hat SEO tactic, they can harm your website’s ranking. It’s important to monitor the quality of your inbound links and take action to remove any harmful links.
