On May 9th, Steve Hennigs and Roger Fuhrman of Siteimprove met with the Baltimore City Group to present an overview of website best practices related to content and analytics. Their presentation covered document structure for website content, pre v. post publication error checking, and web analytics.
Document Structure: Good document structure, which many, but not all, firms use includes using page titles, heading tags, and subheadings in online content. Use of this format, also referred to as “speech outline format,” helps to highlight keywords in a way that search engines understand, thereby improving rankings of specific web pages.
Pre v. Post Publication Error Checking: Steve noted that while many firms check their sites for pre-publication errors, it’s critical to do a post publication check to find misspellings that might have originally been overlooked. This includes misspellings in navigation, meta data and even external links. A post-publication check ensures that you are seeing your website as your clients see it.
Web Analytics: Steve also touched on web analytics, suggesting that firms implement five simple strategies to help them take action with their analytics data. The strategies included identifying key performance indicators and setting targets, segmenting data in various ways (i.e. by type of visitor or a visitor action); having actionable analytics reports; tracking campaigns; and using Voice of the Customer to get beyond clickstream data in order to find out not just “what” web visitors are doing, but “why” they are doing it.
The Baltimore City Group will host a social event in July.
By: Aileen Hinsch, Knapp Marketing for the May/June 2013 Issue of the Capital Ideas Newsletter.