I’ve seen numerous posts where people have claimed that good clean HTML leads to better SEO rankings. I’ve even talked about the lie that of the link between SEO and valid HTML.

I’ve yet to see any studies done which verify this claim and in fact I’ve even seen evidence to the opposite effect being true. I pointed out how in some competitive markets, the higher the ranking for the site the worse the validation recently in another post. This does not mean that poor code relates to higher rankings – just that valid HTML code doesn’t correlate to better rankings as some people would like to say, just like good clean code doesn’t mean the site will look better to visitors.

Matt Cutts recently did a short video on why Google’s own code doesn’t validate. (video opens new window – not allowed to embed)

Now does this mean that you should only have your web designers write invalid code – not, but it does mean you shouldn’t waste unnecessary time on it either.

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• Google Says Pages That Validate Do Not Get Ranking Boost (seroundtable.com)

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About a year ago, Google release their own browser, Chrome.  They been hard at work updating it, wanting to take more of the browser market share.

They built a good browser for power users, if you didn’t mind not having the extensions you’ve come to love and expect in Firefox.

Well now they are adding some of those extensions as well as other improvements. Read the official release here.

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Previously, I’ve talked about optimizing your website to improve how fast it loads.  This not only improves the perception of your site, but also how likely it is for people to stay and make a purchase, or request more information.

Optimizing your site for sales isn’t as easy as optimizing your site for speed. When we want to increase speed we know many ways to improve the performance.  We can modify files to be smaller, have files load in a different order, move the server to a faster computer, etc.

However, modifying your site to increase it’s sales requires knowing your users and testing assumptions.

Recently I was helping a client test her website to get more conversions. While using the same traffic gathering methods previously used, she noticed  a whopping 500% improvement in lead generation during the first month alone. Another client saw improvements of over 40%.

So what do you change?

There are several things which you can easily change to find improvements.

• Improve your site speed – whie not directly related, Google  notices a 20% drop in usage for every half a second slower their web page is.  If your users leave early, they cannot buy from you, or contact you for more information.
• Change headers – the client who noticed a 500% improvement, tried three different headers. Her original, and 2 new headers on the conversion page. One header did worse, and was pulled half way through the test, the other blew the first out of the water.
• Change images - pictures can tell a thousand words -  so picking the right one is important. The client with a 40% improvement got it from picking the right images to let his customers know about additional items for sale.

There are of course others, such as the call to action, guarantees, opening paragraphs, etc. When you test these, you can see improvements in how much and how often you sell.

If you need help with optimizing your site, contact me and we can start working on your site.

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SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a way for your company to get new visitors by using search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN Live Search. Some people will say that they don’t like to spend money on SEO, because who knows how much money they are spending, and can they get any return on their investment (ROI) for their optimization. Some people even wonder if SEO works at all, saying it is nothing more than 21st century snake oil.

Well I’ve never thought so. When I set up an SEO campaign, one of the things I do, is also set up some form of  website tracking. I want to be able to show the change in website traffic. I will use other tools to show where a site ranks for given keywords, and how many times those key words and phrases are used to find the site.

I send this information to clients because I want to show them what I do, and how it affects their websites, and business. Sometimes, as sites slowly start to rank better over the course of several months, the changes might mean that they don’t recognize the change.

client saves $25000 per year by optimizing his site for Google

All this is good, but when going through several tools I use, I found something more interesting for a customer.  I found a tool on-line which estimates what they save each month by ranking organically (coming up in the regular search listing) compared to if they had to buy those visitors using a pay-per-click type of advertising. See a small sample of this report on the right.

Turns out he is saving approximately $2100 per month, over $25000 per year, with how he ranked organically in Google alone. (This doesn’t include savings to be found with other web search tools, such as Yahoo, MSN Live Search, etc.) Now this was a report he could understand.

This customer is a small company, in a niche market, and so they don’t get a lot of traffic (several hundred visitors a day on average), so this ends up be a huge savings to them. Of course in our current economy, any savings can be viewed as good savings.

From now this will be part of the standard reports I send people when I work on search engine optimization for clients.

If you are interested in expanding the reach of your website through search engine optimization, saving money on pay-per-click campaigns, or even finding out about how well your website is performing, please contact walt design and development for more information.

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