Posts Tagged ‘business website marketing’

Website Optimization and Promotion: The Secret to Effective URLs Names

Monday, February 8th, 2010

websitepromotionThere’s a lot that goes into effective website optimization and promotion. But for a lot of people just learning about optimizing their website forget one important rule: when developing URL names, it pays to plan ahead.

Why? It’s because planning ahead will almost always save you time-consuming problems related to your website’s structure. No matter what kind of site you have, the best way to achieve effective website optimization and promotion is to create URLs that can be easily read. URL names that are too long and too complex won’t achieve maximum optimization. Here are the two basic rules of creating URLs that search engines will love.

Make your URL as short as possible. Keeping URLs short will make it easy for your customers to remember, and easy for them to type.

Use keywords. One great thing about using keywords in your URL names isn’t just that they help with website optimization and promotion on search engines, but they’re also usually easy to remember, which makes them user friendly as well.

There are more advanced website optimization and promotion strategies for crafting effective URLs, but there’s really nothing more powerful that these two tips when it comes to the best optimization practices. These are the two rules all other URL optimization efforts should stem from.

Will Your Business Website Marketing Plan need a Favicon?

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

Do you have a favicon?

If you’re like most people, you may be scratching your head, just trying to figure out how to pronounce favicon, never mind actually having one.

So first of all, “favicon” is a jamming-together of the words “favorite” and “icon,” and it’s pronounced “fav-eye-con.” It’s the tiny icon that appears right before the “http” address in most modern Web browsers. Favicons also appear in browser tabs and in a Web browser’s bookmarks, hence the significance “favorite” in the word. Their use in business Website marketing so far has been slight. But that could change soon.

Google has experimented with a few favicons. Go to most Google pages now and you’ll see a lowercase “g” surrounded by blue, red, green and yellow blobs. Go to CNN’s Website, and you’ll see a simple favicon containing CNN’s famous red letter logo.

Even though they’re pretty small, most business Website marketing experts notice the branding opportunities in favicons. A small, compact icon that’s always next to your Web address is a great way to give people something visual. The favicon also makes it easier for visitors to distinguish and remember your Website.

But why are we talking about favicons for business Website marketing now?

Because it looks like Google is experimenting with including favicons in their search results. As with most new Google features, right now only a random few have reported seeing these, so it looks the feature is still in the testing stages.

Right now, business Website marketing experts may tell you that a favicon provides a nice, professional flourish to a Website. But if you don’t have one, it’s not exactly something to lose sleep over. That could change if favicons start appearing in Google’s search results. In order for your Website to stand out, favicons will be necessary.

This also raises some interesting questions for business Website marketing professionals. Will the search results pages look cluttered with too many little icons? And what about favicons for Google AdWords that appear on search results pages?