2.2 Core components of the business web site

A homepage is a front door to the web site, generating major traffic flows. A company should introduce itself and clearly explain its sphere of activities. First-time users should be able to gain an instant understanding of what a web site is about, and what they can do here. Many companies use slogans or summary text near the top of the page so that it is easy to find, and make sure that there are clear pathways to the major functions of your site. If users find it difficult to figure what the site is about in the first moments, they will instantly hit the back button and take their money elsewhere.

All new visitors arrive at a site with an initial level of concern or caution about the risk. Using credibility indicators such as awards, privacy policies, certifications, and testimonials to foster trust, helps to reassure visitors

Use cases describe a set of actions expected from visitors to accomplish on-site. For example, these can be: customer searches for a product, a customer has a problem and wishes to contact support, new user registers an account on the site. Nowadays users are more comfortable than ever using search tools to find what they are looking for, so including a search bar to the homepage is vital.

Landing pages are the strongest tools you have to convert visitors into customers. Marketers put a lot of effort to attract visitors to these pages, so the way they success construct determines future income.

The difference between poor landing page and a great one can be summed up in just a few basic principles.

A landing page should focus on one primary objective—a call to action. A call to action might be to encourage a visitor to order a specific product, sign up for a newsletter, or create a new user account on your site. A visitor should find it easy to understand what it is, so a call to action should be clear and concise. A marketer should ensure that everything on the landing page is focused on encouraging that objective to be met—images, text and even the layout.

Maintaining the benchmark becomes marketer’s activity after the web site was uploaded on the server. The homepage, landing pages, and all other pages in the site should never remain stagnant. The needs and motivation of visitors will change over time, and so the company needs to evolve along with them. Marketers should continually test, analyze, and refine the web site to improve conversions and keep a step ahead of competitors.

III. Internet advertising techniques

3.1 Search engine optimization

‘Search engine optimization (SEO) is the function of improving a web site’s position in the results of a search engine query for a target set of keywords. This includes optimizing company’s pages—making a web site attractive to search engines, as well as encouraging other sites to link back to it [page 49, 1].’

When a user enters a search term or a phrase into a search engine, the search engine examines its database of known web sites, decides what’s most relevant, and returns the results to the user. These are called the Search Engine Results Pages—or simply SERPs. The company’s main objective in search engine marketing is to increase their site’s ranking on the SERPs—preferably making it to the first page, and ideally nailing the top spot. That is so important because the amount of views reduces significantly from first to second page (see Exhibit 1).

Front Page Position	Click Through Percentage
1st	89%
2nd	33%
4th	17%
5th	17%
7th	6%

Exhibit 1. Typical click-through rates on results from the first SERP [page 51, 1]

Search engines build and maintain their massive database by sending out millions of small applications every day. Called spiders, these little applications play an important role in how a site will perform in search engines. Spiders continuously crawl through web sites, collating information and updating the search engines’ database of sites. If a spider has problems viewing, interpreting, or navigating a site, the company will struggle to perform well in engine results.

There are two main approaches to achieve high spots on the SERPs—white hat techniques and black hat techniques.

‘White hat marketers employ a common sense, ethical approach to SEO. These techniques include:

• creating quality content

• building legitimate links

• developing a solid keyword strategy

• maximizing spider friendliness

• building page rank over time

If a company is serious about SEO, it has to stay away from black hat techniques like keyword stuffing or posting hidden links [page 54, 1].’

There are two main concepts to consider for successful SEO: keywords and web site content.

Identifying the generic terms for the type of traffic a company would like on its site is the first step in keyword strategy. Keywords can be a single word, several words, or a phrase that potential customers will enter into a search engine that is applicable to the products/service the company provides.

Having identified top-level keywords, a marketer can now move on to the next step: choosing more focused terms. In order to identify the ideal set of terms, a number of factors need to be considered, such as overall search volume, competitiveness of the search term, and variations. If a company is providing a physical service, it may be limited by geographical boundaries, so keywords should reflect this. It’s also helpful to observe the kinds of words and phrases people use to describe your products and services on community forums, or on applications like Twitter and Facebook.

Once the company decided on target keywords, it’s time to start the next phase of search engine campaign: working on web site design and content.

Understanding the elements that are important to SEO is a task independent to knowing how to design a web site. Still, there are some principles a marketer needs a good comprehension of in order to have an intelligent conversation with web developer. ‘The most important elements of web site content from a SEO perspective are the heading, paragraph, title and hyperlinks.

Heading elements range from H1 to H6, with H1 being the most important heading. A page should contain one H1 heading and ideally, heading should include keywords. A search engine spider will look at headings to determine relevance for the site.

Most of the text on page should be contained in paragraph elements. A web site developer should endeavor to include keywords in the first few paragraphs, but not at the expense of the text’s meaning. A copy should flow naturally and be easy to read. It is necessary to focus on communication foremost, and then bring in selected keywords.

The page title is important for a good search result ranking, as well as the big difference it can make to click-throughs from search engine results pages. What is contained in title tag is what will be presented in the search engine results page as the heading for the result.

‘As with keywords in paragraphs, a web site developer should ensure that links fit naturally within page and make sense to a real visitor. He should check that there are other pages in site that link to the landing page using keywords [pages 63-64, 1].’

Once the site is set up, the content and keywords are loaded up, there appears a question of getting spiders visit it and build the index.

One way is to submit a site to search engines so that they know where it is. Most search engines have a contact form that allows a webmaster to enter some details about the site, including titles, keywords, or other information. The other way is through a link from a popular site. Popular sites are crawled frequently by spiders, so they will pick up the new link in little time.