I’d love to hear a bit more on this, as well!

Stay inspired,
Christa
http://www.transformation-time.com

I think many people underestimate (and to an extent, misunderstand) the value of clarity in content and design where it relates to website growth. Here are some random ideas on both, that I try to practice and encourage:

CONTENT

Use simpler and fewer words to describe your ideas.

Visually break up your posts with strong subheadings and paragraphs that don’t allow your readers to get lost.

Edit yourself, or get someone to do it for you. Be consistent in how you write and strive to get better.

Good titles make a huge difference. Test different variations when you share your titles. Each source of traffic will respond differently to the words.

DESIGN

Forget that you made your site and visit it while trying to emulate a few different potential paths that readers could take. Some examples:

1) A user lands on your homepage via Google search. Do the keywords or phrases you rank for relate to the content/solution you’re offering on your site?

2) A user lands on a blog post via Google search. It’s more likely that the post relates to the specific keyword or phrase. Is your site laid out in a way that allows for easy consumption of the content, while having convenient ways for you to encourage another visit (email list signups, social subscription, etc)?

3) A user lands on your site from a referral from a friend, or from your social media profile. Does the site reinforce your value? Is it designed to support your personal and business goals to connect with people?

When a person visits your site, they need to instantly recognize (consciously or unconsciously) what it’s about. Many people have too much ‘stuff’ (text and images and widgets and other things) and so someone unfamiliar will have trouble categorizing and keeping your site in their mind for the future.

It should be easy to identify you/your site by the feeling(s) you’ve created with the color, layout, wording and graphic design of your site, as well as the obvious use of a symbolic logo and/or tagline.

Data is useful and will help guide your decisions. Everything should have a reason for existing, in your design. There are many ways to measure whether your reasons are sound, or not. Google Analytics, Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics (and many more) will give you valuable insight on where people actually come from, what they read, what they read it on, and so on. Measure, analyze, adjust, repeat.

Thanks, those are great tips Joshua!

There is definitely a grey area with this tactic. Promoting others will often get you traffic, but you can do that while you also provide useful information. Far too many focus on the former, and not enough of the latter. A good (bad) example of the latter is the ‘Top Whatever-Number Whatever-Type People to Follow on Twitter People’ post you’ll see on many sites, including many major online publications.

You (@amityuk) said it best here: “There has to be integrity with it, but if I get some reciprocal traffic then that’s great.”

PS – This is fairly in-depth, but I came across something related to this conversation today: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/influencers-who-want-your-content/

Hi @balajistirupur, here are some ideas:

– include your site URL/brand name along with ‘technology speaks…’ so people can have an easier time of remembering
– consolidate your top navigation bars, so you have no duplicates. You seem to be heading in the right direction, with the content types differentiated up top, and the content topics below that. It’s probably a good way to go about it.
– use consistent capitalization (whether it’s upper/lower/sentence/title case, just be more consistent) in your categories/titles
– be more descriptive with your categories (for instance, ‘Facts’ is vague and probably not going to attract attention when you have something specific like ‘Chrome’ or ‘Apple iOS’)
– be careful with your spelling (Chrome has a spelling feature that helps a lot)
– remove your regular search bar/field, and rename your Google CSE (or vice versa, the main thing is to keep only one, and to have it labeled ‘Search’)

And that concludes my 2 cents. Keep at it!

Completely agree with you there, Joshua.

Thanks for the link, I will dig into it!

TheAlternativeReview.com

Hi everyone,

I’m a blogger to and recently set up http://www.thoughtbrick.com. There’s still a long way to go, but I found this book quite helpful ‘Building an online cash cow’. It covers everything from backlinks to copywriting and social media.