When website visitors don’t enter through the homepage: Why it’s a problem and what to do about it

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If the chapters were out of order in a book, you wouldn’t know where to start. If your website visitors don’t enter your site through the homepage, they may be confused too. Take a few steps to introduce your organization.

Imagine you open a new book and the intro chapter is buried in the middle. You would be a little confused, wouldn’t you?

When new people come to your website, they need to start at the beginning – learning who you are and what you do. Then they can start learning about the details of your initiatives and how to get involved.

If you look at your analytics, you may find that you have many landing pages. That means that the first page people visit on your site may not be the homepage. Surprised?

The homepage used to be the place to showcase your most current stories and tools. Now, social media has filled that role. While your homepage may not be the first page visitors land on when they visit your site, it’s still a place for new people to learn how to navigate your content. And since the first page many people see may not be the homepage, it’s important to have information about your organization readily available from any page on your site.

 

To do:

  • If you have a rotation banner on your homepage, make sure at least one of your banner images links to information about who you are and what you do.
  • Have information and links to learn more about your organization in the footer of your site.
  • Make sure it’s easy to find the homepage and the “about us” section from every page of your site.
  • Create a “welcome” page to help new visitors navigate your content.

How to make your images SEO-friendly

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Even if you’re a person that doesn’t use recipes when cooking or baking, you should follow certain steps to make your images SEO-friendly.

If you’ve ever done any cooking or baking, you know that timing and temperature can make a big difference in the success of your dish. Sometimes you can wing it and it will turn out just fine, but other times the wrong temperature or cooking time could result in a ruined dish. That’s a lot of preparation with nothing to show for at the end.

Finding and using quality photos in your articles is like the preparation process in cooking or baking. The prep takes up the majority of your time and effort and makes it possible to put your best work forward.

You could wing it, and upload your photos and hope for the best. However, with the right tweaking you can make your images work for you.

There are a few ways that your images can help give you extra SEO juice. So if you’re someone who “wings it” in the kitchen, you might want to use a different strategy in this area. A little planning and preparation can go a long way.

 

To do:

When uploading images, first and foremost you need to make sure they’re eye-catching. This doesn’t necessarily help improve your SEO, but it will help the shareability on social media. When you share an article on social media, many networks will pull the first image directly from your article. That’s why it’s important to put some thought and effort into the images you use to accompany your web content.

When uploading your images, use these tactics to help improve your SEO:

  • Be descriptive in your file name. You could name it the headline of your article, or another name that uses keywords. Using a name like “10-resources-early-childhood-development” will help your SEO; “IMG_1987” will not.
  • Don’t include spaces in the image name. You might be able to upload files with spaces in the file name without a problem, but search engines will not be able to understand the spaces.
  • Resize your images to the largest size you will actually use. For example, let’s say the resolution of your photos is 5000×2800 pixels. That high resolution is useful when printing large banners or posters. On the web, it’ll slow your site down. On a blog post, you may use an image that’s 300×180 pixels – a small fraction of the original size. Keep the original photo as-is and upload a resized copy to your website.

Why your headlines are too revealing

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Headlines for print and the web serve different purposes and need to be treated differently.

News flash: Print and digital are not created equal.

In print, once people have a magazine or newspaper in hand, their attention is concentrated on that publication. When you’re writing headlines for print, often the goal is to give the reader the most information possible.

Online there are many distractions, and it’s important not to give away all the juicy details right away in the headline. If you do, they will have no incentive to click to read more.

Here’s the cold, hard truth – if your headline doesn’t grab people’s attention, no one will click on your link and read the content you’ve labored over for weeks (or even months!).

So if you want people to click on your links and read your content, it’s time to start focusing on headlines. This is a must.

 

To do:

  • Review your website analytics. Take a look at which articles are the most popular, and which are the least popular? Write down any differences you find. (For example, for one organization I found that most articles on the “least popular” list had a specific location or program name in the headline, whereas many articles on the “most popular” list highlighted a particular issue area.)
  • For the 10 least popular articles, use the information you learned from the first step and change your headlines accordingly. If you are able to do more than 10, go for it!
  • Use this worksheet to help you write great headlines for future articles.

Advanced tip: Use Twitter to see which headline ideas resonate with your audience. Come up with several ideas you want to test, and put that text into the mix of your tweets, all linking to the same article. Track which text generates the most interactions and/or clicks and adjust your headline accordingly.

Don’t miss this opportunity to get your message across

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Baby goats can provide many lessons for getting your message across.

What??? Baby goats?! What do baby goats have to do with getting your message across? Not much (though they sure are cute). But your eye was drawn to the photo and the caption, wasn’t it?

Captions are often overlooked in web articles, but they’re a great opportunity to get your message across. People may not read the entire article, but they will likely look at the photo. And if they look at the photo, chances are they’ll read the caption too.

The caption is a chance to get your message across to people who may not read the article, and it’s also a chance to entice them to read more.

 

To do:

Look at your top 10 most visited articles. Do you use captions in your photos? If so, are they descriptive of the photo, or do they tell a mini story?

For example, let’s say you have a photo receiving an award for their project. A caption in a print publication might say something like, “Girl Scout Troop #857 from Oklahoma City receive the Mayor’s Award for outstanding service to the community.” The web isn’t print, so you don’t have to play by those rules.

Try something like, “These girl scouts devoted their summer break to rebuilding the run-down park and are now being recognized by the mayor for their service.” Doesn’t that sound a little more inviting? Then, if visitors want to know more, they can find details in the story. If they click away from your site without reading the full story, at least they might be aware of the work the girl scouts did.

Take a look at the captions in your 10 most visited articles and think about how you can use them to connect the photo with a key point in your content. The more useful captions you can write, the better.

Bonus tip: These updated captions could make great social media posts!