Tips for Cleaning Up Your Website Presence  


 

A great website is not static; it is a changing, thriving organism. Don't make the mistake of thinking that, once developed, your web copy, web links, and information architecture need not change. To keep your fans engaged, try taking a user centric approach to your web presence, so that you are always thinking of what information you are conveying to the user and whether it meets the user's information needs.

 

Setting aside time once or twice a year to evaluate your web presence can be helpful. Think of this like "spring cleaning" for your website. It's time to sweep out the dust and breathe new life into a static site! You may uncover small bugs that affect page performance, lists of resources that you intended to beef up that promise more is coming soon, and outdated images that no longer reflect your business goals or customer needs.

 

Begin by searching for your brand, company name, or site URL in your favorite search engine, such as Yahoo, Bing, or Google. When you search Google, preview text appears beneath the site name that often holds keywords and descriptive data about your site. Are the keywords that appear relevant to your business and SEO rich, or would you be better served by changing them? If no keywords appear, adding some to your web page's section can boost your SERPs. If you find you are suddenly--and unintentionally--advertising prescription drugs like Viagra, your page has been hacked. Remove the spam links from the and reset your site password to get clean again. Pay attention to Google Instant, or the phrases that pop up as you type in your business name. For example, if you're a hotel and the name of your hotel plus "bed bugs" comes up in Google Instant, you've got reputation trouble. If you're suffering from a bedbug problem, you've got all kinds of trouble. If you update keywords, you may want to change keywords in your online marketing?

 

For content networks, however, keywords should describe the sites in more general, broad terms. This is a different strategy from designing keywords for search. Using broader keyword terms widens the net for more relevant sites to show your ad.   Maintain separate keyword lists for search campaigns and content networks.   Google scans the millions of pages in the content network on an ongoing basis. Google looks for matches between your keywords and other campaign data to put your ad on the most relevant sites.   To succeed in content networks, you must keep track of all of the sites on which your ad appears. Pay attention to how much traffic you get from each site. Exclude low performing sites from your campaign.   It is also advisable to bid lower on content networks than you bid on search campaigns. Keep search and content network campaigns separate, use broad search term keywords for content networks, and keep track of which website in the network send you traffic for advertising success.