Include a Tagline
Draft out a one-sentence tagline that explains to the visitors the purpose of your website and company. If you are fairly new in the market and desire to create awareness most your products and services, a tagline is a must for you. This is because the tagline crapper be squeezed under your brand name and it crapper be verbalised with the consort name in the same breath. A good tagline directly informs the reverend what the consort is most and how multipurpose crapper it be.
Mark Title Tags
Make sure the title tag of your homepage begins with the consort name and gets followed by a short description of the website. Avoid starting the phrase with 'The' or 'Welcome' etc.
Provide Corporate Information
Visitors seldom meet your website to gather information most your consort and business. But that doesn't negate the necessity of putting clear information details most your methodicalness on your website. Corporate information is absolutely primary if the website aims to support investor relations, PR or other recruitment process. It is every the more necessary for smaller companies to establish credibility in the market.
Clear Information
People become to your website with an aim. Either it is to intend information or it is to share. Whatever may be the reason for their visit, attain sure they find the line readily available on your homepage.
Include a Search Box
Search box is an vital tool for websites, especially so for large websites. You cannot expect your visitors to construe finished every the pages of your website in search of some particular they hit in mind. Therefore, the homepage of your website should hit a diminutive search box that scans finished the entire place and brings backwards the desired piece of information.
Reveal Good Content
The homepage of your website should carry the most important pieces of information. Put the most fresh and stylish content that you hit on your homepage so that users find it substantially updates every time they become in.
Start Links with Keywords
Make it a point to begin the link obloquy with the important keywords of your website. This is because internet users do not stop to read the table of a website rattling carefully. Their attention movement is restricted to meet scanning finished the text and catching glimpses of anything that they find important. If you start your link obloquy with important keywords that they are potentially hunting for, they directly stop there and muse further.
Use Meaningful Graphics
All the graphics and mages that you use on your website should be relevant and complement the content therein. Otherwise you would meet be adding coefficient to the load time of your website and irritating visitors at the same time.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Should You Translate Your Website?
It is quite an interesting idea as to whether you should translate your website or not. One of the things to consider is the spoken language of internet users and whether you want to target those that do not speak English.
It is worth considering that 350 million people in the world speak English as their first language and about the same also speak it to some degree or another. However there are now over a billion internet users and this number is growing in non English speaking countries. In fact, by the end of 2006 there were more internet users in Asia than in the USA.
It is also worth considering that the search engines see a translated page as a new page on your website. So if you have a simple 5 page brochure website but decide to translate it into 10 different languages you will then be seen as having 50 pages. As the number of pages on a website is one of the ranking factors this can be a great thing to do for your search engine rankings.
Translation Options
1. Automatic Translation
If you are looking to offer page translation as a service to your visitors and not for search engine optimization then this could be the option for you. There are a few free services out there that will give you a bit of code to paste into your site. This is best to go in a header to menu bar so that people can instantly translate your page. This is obviously limited to the languages that the service provides.
There are a few issues that you might want to consider before going for this option:
a. It will not create any new pages on your site so will not help you SEO campaign
b. The translation is not always accurate. If you think about, the translation is just being done by a computer and so it is not unusual to get very odd translations.
c. You will be limited on the languages you can choose.
d. The automatic translation can distort the look of your page.
2. Use an Online Translation Company
There can be some issues with this as you need to make sure the company is not using an automatic translation service and then charging you for the privilege. One way to check them out is to look at their client list and if possible contact some of their clients to check the quality of their work.
3. Use a Freelance translator
This is probably the cheapest option and will allow you to build up a relationship with the person doing the translation which will probably make translations easier in the future.
One important thing to consider if you are going to have your website in different languages is that you may receive enquiries in other languages. If you do not speak any of these languages this may be a problem to answer them so you need to think of a strategy for this.
If you use a freelance translator and you have built up a good relationship with them then they may be able to help you with this. Obviously though this could become quite expensive. Another option is to use a free translation service online to get the idea of what the enquiry is about. You can then have some general text in that language explaining that your answer is in English and giving them a link to a free translation service online. This can be very effective and cost you nothing at all.
So if you have a website think about the audience you are targeting and if there is any way you can expand this by using different languages. Remember to leave some allowance in your website build costs to add the translated pages in.
It is worth considering that 350 million people in the world speak English as their first language and about the same also speak it to some degree or another. However there are now over a billion internet users and this number is growing in non English speaking countries. In fact, by the end of 2006 there were more internet users in Asia than in the USA.
It is also worth considering that the search engines see a translated page as a new page on your website. So if you have a simple 5 page brochure website but decide to translate it into 10 different languages you will then be seen as having 50 pages. As the number of pages on a website is one of the ranking factors this can be a great thing to do for your search engine rankings.
Translation Options
1. Automatic Translation
If you are looking to offer page translation as a service to your visitors and not for search engine optimization then this could be the option for you. There are a few free services out there that will give you a bit of code to paste into your site. This is best to go in a header to menu bar so that people can instantly translate your page. This is obviously limited to the languages that the service provides.
There are a few issues that you might want to consider before going for this option:
a. It will not create any new pages on your site so will not help you SEO campaign
b. The translation is not always accurate. If you think about, the translation is just being done by a computer and so it is not unusual to get very odd translations.
c. You will be limited on the languages you can choose.
d. The automatic translation can distort the look of your page.
2. Use an Online Translation Company
There can be some issues with this as you need to make sure the company is not using an automatic translation service and then charging you for the privilege. One way to check them out is to look at their client list and if possible contact some of their clients to check the quality of their work.
3. Use a Freelance translator
This is probably the cheapest option and will allow you to build up a relationship with the person doing the translation which will probably make translations easier in the future.
One important thing to consider if you are going to have your website in different languages is that you may receive enquiries in other languages. If you do not speak any of these languages this may be a problem to answer them so you need to think of a strategy for this.
If you use a freelance translator and you have built up a good relationship with them then they may be able to help you with this. Obviously though this could become quite expensive. Another option is to use a free translation service online to get the idea of what the enquiry is about. You can then have some general text in that language explaining that your answer is in English and giving them a link to a free translation service online. This can be very effective and cost you nothing at all.
So if you have a website think about the audience you are targeting and if there is any way you can expand this by using different languages. Remember to leave some allowance in your website build costs to add the translated pages in.
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