Usability is a qualitative attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. More impotantly it shows the user behaviour who interact with your webpage first time.
In this post I'm sharing some very useful tools for webmasters to check website usability. Here's the following list:
Feng-GUI
Feng-GUI simulates human vision during the first 5 seconds of exposure to visuals, and creates heatmaps based on an algorithm that predicts
what a real human would be most likely to look at.
This offers designers, advertisers and creatives, a Pre-testing technology that predicts performance of an image, by analyzing levels of attention, brand effectiveness and placement, as well as breaking down the Flow of Attention.
Five Second Test
A simple online usability test that helps you identify the most prominent elements of your user interfaces. A central test management screen helps organise and visualise your responses so you can get all the information you need at a glance.
Loop11
Loop11 is a web-based user-experience testing tool, allowing companies to conduct online, unmoderated user testing on any kind of digital interface. Loop11 is not a survey or web analytics tool, but a user experience tool… helping you to understand user behaviour.
CrazyEgg
CrazyEgg is simple - show the hotspots where users click on in a site. This information is not the same as popular pages; instead this is practical information about how and where people click on your site. More importantly, CrazyEgg's approach lets you understand the difference between where you want your users to click and where they are actually clicking.
Traditional site tracking tools offer you a ton of information, including:
:: Popular pages :: Entry pages :: Exit pages :: Came from :: Visitor Paths :: Visit Length
Clixpy
Clixpy is a web usability testing tool. It’s very easy to install, just by pasting a few lines of JavaScript code in your site’s HTML. When users browse your website Clixpy traces everything they do and then plays it for you, giving you the opportunity to extract any information you may need.
ClickDensity
More than a Heat Maps ClickDensity is a full usability toolkit. With a unique integrated A/B Test suite, you can trial and analyze improvements at the touch of a button. It takes minutes to set-up. From the second you see the reports, they just make sense. Complements your existing web analytics for an unbeatable analysis of visitor trends.
Know more about Usability
Share your thoughts and ideas about website usability, leave a comment
List of Best Tools to Check Your Website Usability
List of tools to test a website
Importance of Sitemaps In SEO
Importance of Sitemap in Search Engine Optimization
3. The tag of the sitemap.xml file gives the searchbot an indication of how frequently the web page will change. This tells the searchbot to visit the website with the same frequency to index the changes made.
A Typical Sitemap.xml File Looks Like:
< ?xml version= “1.0” encoding=”UTF-8” ?>
< url>
< loc> http://www.yoursite.com/
Sitemaps provide a way for Web sites to specify what pages within the site should be indexed and what new content has been added. Basically, it provides a communication channel between the search engine and the site.
A site map (or sitemap) is a graphical representation of the architecture of a web site. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for web design, or a web page that lists the pages on a web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots find pages on the site.
A hierarchical diagram of the pages on a Web site, starting with the home page at the top. A site map helps visitors navigate large, complicated sites by showing its entire structure. It is also used as a master diagram of the Web site for Web designers.
A sitemap is an XML file that contains a list of site URLs and related attributes detailing what should be indexed within a specific site. It must be UTF-8 encoded. The following XML elements are required in the sitemap file:
The webmaster can generate a sitemap containing all accessible URLs on the site and submit it to search engines. Since Google, MSN, Yahoo, and Ask use the same protocol now, having a sitemap would let the biggest search engines have the updated pages information.
Benefits of Sitemap:
· Site maps can improve search engine optimization of a site by making sure that all the pages can be found.
· This is especially important if a site uses Macromedia Flash or JavaScript menus that do not include HTML links.
· Most search engines will only follow a finite number of links from a page, so if a site is very large.
· The site map may be required so that search engines and visitors can access all content on the site.
The Importance of Sitemaps From SEO's View:
A Sitemap is the representation of websites architecture and contains links to all the pages of a website. A Sitemap can be of two types, each having its own distinct purpose.
HTML Sitemap:
An HTML sitemap is created with keeping a visitor in mind. It helps the visitor in navigating the website along with giving a clear view of a websites sections and categories.
XML Sitemap:
While the HTML Sitemap is designed with keeping visitors in mind, an XML Sitemap is designed specifically for Search Engines. Search Engines send their robots, also called a
Why Is A Sitemap.xml File Important:
Searchbots to index a website wherein they encounter the sitemap.xml file.
1. The Sitemap simply lists out all the pages of a website in front of the searchbots so that the searchbots know about all the pages in the website and index them.
2. A Sitemap helps the searchbot in distributing Page rank across all the web pages with the help of tag. This ensures that all the inner pages of a website also have a good page rank.
One can either generate a sitemap.xml file manually or there are free sitemap generator tools available online to help generate a sitemap. Though most of the free sitemap generator tools have a limit of up to 500 pages, Paid tools give you the freedom to create a sitemap of unlimited pages.
< url>
< loc>http://www.yoursite.com/about-us.html
< priority>0.8
< changefreq>weekly
< /url>
< url>
< loc>http://www.yoursite.com/services.htm
< priority>0.8
< changefreq>monthly
< /url>
< url>
< loc>http://www.yoursite.com/contact.htm
< priority>0.7
< changefreq>weekly
< /url>
Worst SEO Mistakes You Can Make
Biggest Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Mistakes Expert Make
Search Engine Optimization is a very hot topic in the World Wide Web. After all, everybody wants to rank higher and come up on the first page of Google search and get more traffic. I have identified and made a list of top 15 SEO practices that I tend to forget quite often. These simple SEO techniques if practiced properly can make a significant difference as to how my pages are ranked in the Search Engine Queries.
1.Use rel=”nofollow” tag on low value links to not pass the page rank juice. For example ‘Read the rest of the entry’, ‘About’, ‘Contact’ etc.
2.Use proper anchor text for interlinks. Don’t use ‘here’ or ‘there’.
3.Optimize the images, always create alt tags and write description in the alt tag.
4.Use search engine friendly permalinks. Make sure the URLs do not have ‘&’, ‘?’, ‘!’ etc characters.
5.Use hyphens (-) between words to improve readability.
6.Do not use underscores (_), use hyphens (-) instead.
7.Do not use session id in URLs.
8.Use sticky posts.
9.Use tag clouds.
10.Have a category description paragraph.
11.Let the visitors subscribe to category specific RSS feed. (Use category specific RSS plugin for WordPress)
12.Use internal linking when possible and appropriate.
13.Use sub-directories rather than sub-domains when possible. Sub-domains do not share link love from the main domain as it is treated as a different domain.
14.Research the target audience and aim the site content appropriately.
15.Keep the content up to date. Visitors don’t like outdated content. Updating the content frequently also attracts the Search engines spiders to index the web pages frequently.
Have you identified any SEO mistakes that you commonly make?
Search Engine Optimization is a very hot topic in the World Wide Web. After all, everybody wants to rank higher and come up on the first page of Google search and get more traffic. I have identified and made a list of top 15 SEO practices that I tend to forget quite often. These simple SEO techniques if practiced properly can make a significant difference as to how my pages are ranked in the Search Engine Queries.
1.Use rel=”nofollow” tag on low value links to not pass the page rank juice. For example ‘Read the rest of the entry’, ‘About’, ‘Contact’ etc.
2.Use proper anchor text for interlinks. Don’t use ‘here’ or ‘there’.
3.Optimize the images, always create alt tags and write description in the alt tag.
4.Use search engine friendly permalinks. Make sure the URLs do not have ‘&’, ‘?’, ‘!’ etc characters.
5.Use hyphens (-) between words to improve readability.
6.Do not use underscores (_), use hyphens (-) instead.
7.Do not use session id in URLs.
8.Use sticky posts.
9.Use tag clouds.
10.Have a category description paragraph.
11.Let the visitors subscribe to category specific RSS feed. (Use category specific RSS plugin for WordPress)
12.Use internal linking when possible and appropriate.
13.Use sub-directories rather than sub-domains when possible. Sub-domains do not share link love from the main domain as it is treated as a different domain.
14.Research the target audience and aim the site content appropriately.
15.Keep the content up to date. Visitors don’t like outdated content. Updating the content frequently also attracts the Search engines spiders to index the web pages frequently.
Have you identified any SEO mistakes that you commonly make?
Seo Tips for Launching a New Website
Basic Tips For Launching a New Website While Keeping SEO In Mind
Search Engines like Google and Yahoo have become intelligent in the past 4-5 years. It is very difficult to game search engines nowadays by manipulating tags and keyword stuffing. For a new site it may take 6 to 9 months to achieve competitive rankings at Google. From SEO point of view, I recommend the following steps for launching a new website.
i) Registering a domain name with similar Keywords
Pick a domain name which either has keywords associated with your product/service or your brand name. It is better to go for short domain names which are easy to remember. If your target market is global, go for a .com domain. If you are targeting a particular country or language, it is better to register a domain name in TLD of that country. For example, go for a .jp or .co.jp domain, if you are targeting Japan. I recommend you to register the domain for at least 2 years; more the better to gain the trust of search engines.
ii) Domain Hosting
Host your site with a reliable hosting company. Stay away from companies which allow hosting of pharmacy, gambling and adult sites, or have a history of serving spam. If you are targeting a particular country/language, it is advised to host your site in that country to boost your rankings in the local search engines for that country/language.
iii) Registering with Search Engines
Since search engines give important to domain aging and can track parameters like the registration date & first crawled date, you better register your site with search engines as early as possible. Even if your site is not fully ready, it is better to make a temporary one-two page site and register with the search engines at the earliest. Getting indexed in MSN may take only 3-4 days, whereas it may take 2-3 months to get indexed in Google and Yahoo. To speed up this process, you should build incoming links from authority websites. More the links a site receives, the less it is ignored by the search engines. It also reduces the Google sandboxing time for new sites. Submitting your sitemap to Google Webmaster Central also ensures that your site would get crawled and indexed regularly.
iv) Build trust with Search Engines
To build trust with the search engines, you should build your incoming links and content at a regular pace. Keep your content unique and relevant to your products/services. Building links from relevant websites will boost your rankings.
v) Have Web Analytics In Place; Monitor Results
The only way to know whether you are satisfying your goal (and delivering results to your business to make up for the investment!) is to track and monitor your increase in visitors and conversions. As a general rule, if your end result is too design focused, you’ll see fewer leads; If it’s too search focused, you’ll see fewer conversions. With balance in mind, results you will have…your boss will thank you for it!
Search Engines like Google and Yahoo have become intelligent in the past 4-5 years. It is very difficult to game search engines nowadays by manipulating tags and keyword stuffing. For a new site it may take 6 to 9 months to achieve competitive rankings at Google. From SEO point of view, I recommend the following steps for launching a new website.
i) Registering a domain name with similar Keywords
Pick a domain name which either has keywords associated with your product/service or your brand name. It is better to go for short domain names which are easy to remember. If your target market is global, go for a .com domain. If you are targeting a particular country or language, it is better to register a domain name in TLD of that country. For example, go for a .jp or .co.jp domain, if you are targeting Japan. I recommend you to register the domain for at least 2 years; more the better to gain the trust of search engines.
ii) Domain Hosting
Host your site with a reliable hosting company. Stay away from companies which allow hosting of pharmacy, gambling and adult sites, or have a history of serving spam. If you are targeting a particular country/language, it is advised to host your site in that country to boost your rankings in the local search engines for that country/language.
iii) Registering with Search Engines
Since search engines give important to domain aging and can track parameters like the registration date & first crawled date, you better register your site with search engines as early as possible. Even if your site is not fully ready, it is better to make a temporary one-two page site and register with the search engines at the earliest. Getting indexed in MSN may take only 3-4 days, whereas it may take 2-3 months to get indexed in Google and Yahoo. To speed up this process, you should build incoming links from authority websites. More the links a site receives, the less it is ignored by the search engines. It also reduces the Google sandboxing time for new sites. Submitting your sitemap to Google Webmaster Central also ensures that your site would get crawled and indexed regularly.
iv) Build trust with Search Engines
To build trust with the search engines, you should build your incoming links and content at a regular pace. Keep your content unique and relevant to your products/services. Building links from relevant websites will boost your rankings.
v) Have Web Analytics In Place; Monitor Results
The only way to know whether you are satisfying your goal (and delivering results to your business to make up for the investment!) is to track and monitor your increase in visitors and conversions. As a general rule, if your end result is too design focused, you’ll see fewer leads; If it’s too search focused, you’ll see fewer conversions. With balance in mind, results you will have…your boss will thank you for it!
Building Backlinks through Forum Posting
Backlink Building through Forum Posting / How to Build Backlinks
There is no doubt that quality backlinks from relevant sites are important for SEO success. If a page has good content, other websites will start linking to it in a natural manner; this is the main hypothesis for including backlinks as part of the search engine ranking algorithms. Thus, a page with better content will naturally have more backlinks, and will rank better. However, in practice, one will have go for other ways of gaining relevant quality backlinks, as a part of his SEO strategy.
Getting listed in web directories, article directories, posting in forums, and blogs are some of the acceptable methods of acquiring quality backlinks. Generally, search engines index forums frequently, so posting in forums is a good way to gain quality backlinks with the anchor text of your choice. While submitting articles to directories can be a time consuming process, it does not require much effort and time to post in forums; however, one has to do his homework and take some precautions in order to be successful using forums for gaining backlinks.
You must do some research before joining any forum. You should join forums that are relevant to the sites you want to get backlinks for. You should only choose forums that are popular and active. Backlinks for high authority forums are very valuable. The number of active members and the Google PageRank of the forum can give you a good idea about its popularity. You should keep your signature short and link it to your main website. You should never create posts that sound like a propaganda or which are irrelevant to the post topic. You should pay attention to the TOS of the forum, or you will risk yourself of getting banned and losing all the backlinks you built.
If you post something which is important or useful to other readers, they will visit the site in your signature. Thus, posting in forums can give a significant traffic to your website, apart from building relevant backlinks. Forums are also good for creating your brand or image – Some of the best bloggers, Internet Marketers and SEOs spend a significant time posting on forums to increase their publicity. That is another benefit you may get from forum posting apart from using it for link development strategy.
There is no doubt that quality backlinks from relevant sites are important for SEO success. If a page has good content, other websites will start linking to it in a natural manner; this is the main hypothesis for including backlinks as part of the search engine ranking algorithms. Thus, a page with better content will naturally have more backlinks, and will rank better. However, in practice, one will have go for other ways of gaining relevant quality backlinks, as a part of his SEO strategy.
Getting listed in web directories, article directories, posting in forums, and blogs are some of the acceptable methods of acquiring quality backlinks. Generally, search engines index forums frequently, so posting in forums is a good way to gain quality backlinks with the anchor text of your choice. While submitting articles to directories can be a time consuming process, it does not require much effort and time to post in forums; however, one has to do his homework and take some precautions in order to be successful using forums for gaining backlinks.
You must do some research before joining any forum. You should join forums that are relevant to the sites you want to get backlinks for. You should only choose forums that are popular and active. Backlinks for high authority forums are very valuable. The number of active members and the Google PageRank of the forum can give you a good idea about its popularity. You should keep your signature short and link it to your main website. You should never create posts that sound like a propaganda or which are irrelevant to the post topic. You should pay attention to the TOS of the forum, or you will risk yourself of getting banned and losing all the backlinks you built.
If you post something which is important or useful to other readers, they will visit the site in your signature. Thus, posting in forums can give a significant traffic to your website, apart from building relevant backlinks. Forums are also good for creating your brand or image – Some of the best bloggers, Internet Marketers and SEOs spend a significant time posting on forums to increase their publicity. That is another benefit you may get from forum posting apart from using it for link development strategy.
Changing Title Meta Tag Hurts Google Rankings
Does change of Meta Description affect Google Ranking?
It is no secret that the title meta-tag is one of the most important factors when it comes to on-page search engine optimization. Search engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN give quite a bit of importance to the title and description metatags in their algorithms. What many people, however, do not know that the same title tag could actually hurt your rankings, if you try to change it abruptly with a hope to improve your search engine rankings.
If you are currently ranking well with your page title, you should not risk with changing it to improve your rankings. You may often see your current Google rankings go down with such a change. I myself have experienced negative results when I tried to change the title tag for a site which was already ranking well. In fact, Google slammed the site with a -950 penalty.
Your page title is the main entry gate of search engines. Changing the title meta-tag could easily make your Google rankings fluctuate. If you change your title, Google and other search engines will take some time to reflect rankings for new titles. Especially, it would definitely look suspicious in the eyes of Google and other search engines if you have made the changes in the main title and description tags after a long time.
In short, changing the main title of your site, although it’s already ranking well is not a good idea. Instead of changing the page title to try to have improvements on certain keywords, it is better to work on adding content about those keyword phrases on your page, and add links with appropriate anchor text from sites with relevant content. Google always penalized over-optimization. Now it seems as if it frowns normal search engine optimization too. So the best policy is to optimize the website at the time of creation - Do it once, and do it right !
It is no secret that the title meta-tag is one of the most important factors when it comes to on-page search engine optimization. Search engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN give quite a bit of importance to the title and description metatags in their algorithms. What many people, however, do not know that the same title tag could actually hurt your rankings, if you try to change it abruptly with a hope to improve your search engine rankings.
If you are currently ranking well with your page title, you should not risk with changing it to improve your rankings. You may often see your current Google rankings go down with such a change. I myself have experienced negative results when I tried to change the title tag for a site which was already ranking well. In fact, Google slammed the site with a -950 penalty.
Your page title is the main entry gate of search engines. Changing the title meta-tag could easily make your Google rankings fluctuate. If you change your title, Google and other search engines will take some time to reflect rankings for new titles. Especially, it would definitely look suspicious in the eyes of Google and other search engines if you have made the changes in the main title and description tags after a long time.
In short, changing the main title of your site, although it’s already ranking well is not a good idea. Instead of changing the page title to try to have improvements on certain keywords, it is better to work on adding content about those keyword phrases on your page, and add links with appropriate anchor text from sites with relevant content. Google always penalized over-optimization. Now it seems as if it frowns normal search engine optimization too. So the best policy is to optimize the website at the time of creation - Do it once, and do it right !
Google Page Rank Updates : Last Google PR Update
It looks like Google is rolling out a PageRank update. I woke up this morning and some of my sites were getting a new PR.
Are you guys seeing the changes too? Let me know how your PR fluctuated.
It looks like Google is getting a regular schedule for the PageRank updated again though. The last one happened at 29/30 October 2009 , so that is more or less one PR update every three/ four months or so. It would be good if they kept that pace constant.
When’s the Next Google PR update?
Let’s see if in the middle of January/ February 2010 we will get another update.
Dates of Previous Pagerank i.e PR Upadates:
Last Confirmed - 30 October 2009
Confirmed - 27/28 May 2009
Confirmed – 1 / 2 April 2009
Confirmed – 30-31 December 2008
Confirmed – 27 September 2008
Confirmed – 26 July 2008
Confirmed – 29 April 2008
Confirmed – 9,10,11,12 January 2008
Confirmed – 26 October 2007
Confirmed – 28 April 2007
Are you guys seeing the changes too? Let me know how your PR fluctuated.
It looks like Google is getting a regular schedule for the PageRank updated again though. The last one happened at 29/30 October 2009 , so that is more or less one PR update every three/ four months or so. It would be good if they kept that pace constant.
When’s the Next Google PR update?
Let’s see if in the middle of January/ February 2010 we will get another update.
Dates of Previous Pagerank i.e PR Upadates:
Last Confirmed - 30 October 2009
Confirmed - 27/28 May 2009
Confirmed – 1 / 2 April 2009
Confirmed – 30-31 December 2008
Confirmed – 27 September 2008
Confirmed – 26 July 2008
Confirmed – 29 April 2008
Confirmed – 9,10,11,12 January 2008
Confirmed – 26 October 2007
Confirmed – 28 April 2007
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