Table of Contents

1. Highlight Your Site Goals ...................................................................4

2. Simplify Your Navigation ....................................................................5
3. Reduce Clutter and Noise ..................................................................5
4. Optimize Your Copy for the Web.........................................................6
5. Think Like a Designer ........................................................................6
6. Optimize Your Images for Search ......................................................7
7. Make Sure Your Website is Mobile and Tablet Friendly .....................7
8. Post New Content Regularly ..............................................................8
9. Socialize Your Website .......................................................................8
10. Add a Downloadable Press Kit .........................................................9
THE TOP 10 WEBSITE OPTIMIZATIONS YOU SHOULD DO RIGHT NOW 3
Greetings website owners, dreamers, artists, and authors! The
following guide is chock-full of easy website improvements anyone
can quickly make in order to improve trafc, sales, return visits, and
more.
Today, the web is a whole lot bigger than it used to be, but its also
a lot easier to create and manage a website. You dont need to know
how to write or read code or use complicated programs. Creating a
website is quite easy. The real challenge is standing out amongst the
millions of websites that are competing for attention on the Web.
Thats where this guide comes in! Follow each tip in this brief
guide and youll be well on your way to creating and optimized web
presence.



THE TOP 10 WEBSITE OPTIMIZATIONS YOU SHOULD DO RIGHT NOW 4
1. Highlight Your Site Goals
What is the most important thing any given visitor on your website can do? Sign up to your
email list? Buy a product? Download a le? Leave a comment?
When you ask your website visitors to do something on your website, its called a call to ac-
tion. Calls to action are found everywhere on the web: Sign up here! Join my mailing list,
Fill out this survey, Buy the eBook. Simple commands like these are an effective way of
letting your website visitors know what to do when they land on your website.
A website can have many different calls to action, but its important to focus on a primary call
to action on your homepage (rather than confusing your audience with too many options). Sec-
ondary calls to actions are ne too. Just be sure that your primary call to action gets the most
emphasis and screen real estate.
Quick Tips:
1. Before you choose your call to action, take a few minutes to write down a list
of what you think your visitors are looking for on your website, and also a list
of things you want visitors to do on your website. Try to choose a call to action
that occurs prominently on both lists.
2. Use your website analytics data to determine the most popular pages and
actions on your website. This can help you decide what actions to focus on.
3. Test different wordings, graphics, and placements of your call to action.
Sometimes a small change can make a big difference in clicks.
4. When youve decided on your primary call to action, make sure to let your
web visitors know how taking this action will benet them. Ex: Join my
newsletter and get weekly news and special offers.
THE TOP 10 WEBSITE OPTIMIZATIONS YOU SHOULD DO RIGHT NOW 5
2. Simplify Your Navigation
People get stressed when faced with too many options. And my guess is you dont want to
stress-out your website visitors (I know I dont). Crowded or confusing navigation creates a bad
user experience and discourages return visits. If you have more than six primary navigational
links on your page, try cutting it back. Also, use easily recognizable menu items. Being cleaver
can confuse your not-so-cleaver visitors. Thus, Store is better than Joes eShop and Con-
tact is better than Holla at me.
Quick Tips:
1. The fewer clicks it takes for a site visitor to get to where they are trying to go,
the better.
2. Get rid of pages that nobody visits. You can use your website analytics to
weed out your low-trafc pages.
3. Group similar pages under a single navigation item (i.e. drop down menu).
4. Combine similar pages into a single page.
5. Consider which pages are most important to both you and your visitors, and
make sure those are featured in your primary navigation.
3. Reduce Clutter and Noise
Sometimes visiting a website can be like visiting an amusement park. You walk into it for the
rst time and your expectations are high. It seems like theres lots of fun stuff to do, but you
may not know where to start and you dont know what choices will bring the most fun. So, you
start scanning the landscape looking for signs, looking for the biggest or shortest lines, looking
for something to grab your attention and say this way to the best ride youll ever experience.
As a website owner you can help direct the glazed-eyed visitors by reducing the distractions
that do not contribute to your primary website goals.
Quick Tips:
1. Dont use auto-play on videos or audio. Theres nothing quite as off-putting
as a website that starts blaring audio as soon as you land on it. Let your visi-
tors hit the play button themselves.
2. Ditch the splash page. A splash page is an introduction page that loads be-
fore someone gets to your actual website. Why create a road block between
your fans and the great content on your website?
3. No animations especially ash animations which are not supported on
many mobile devices and tablets. Animations are fun, but they are often slow
to load and distracting. Never give your visitors a reason to hit the dreaded
back button.
THE TOP 10 WEBSITE OPTIMIZATIONS YOU SHOULD DO RIGHT NOW 6
4. Optimize Your Copy for the Web
People scan when they read websites. They dont read every word. Its just a side effect of
our caffeine-infused, technology-addled brains. So, to make it easier for readers to quickly dis-
cern what you are jabbering on about, make liberal use of the following techniques:
1. Lists. Lists are easy to read. Lists with bullet points are even easier to read.
2. Double space between every paragraph. It gives your text room to breathe.
3. Use headers that describe what the text that follows is about.
4. Never use fancy fonts for paragraph text. Use something like Helvetica,
which is easy to read.
5. Use pictures to succinctly communicate what might otherwise take dozens of
paragraphs.
5. Think Like a Designer
You dont have to be a great designer to create an awesome looking website. There are so many
beautiful and customizable web templates available that theres little excuse for publishing
a poorly designed website. The web is a visual medium and if you want to stand out, your site
needs to look great.
Sometimes changing just a few minor things on your website can improve your site design ten
fold. Remember, the best design is often design that does not call attention to itself.

Quick Tips
1. Stick to a color palette. Try to keep your website colors down to just a handful of colors.
Be consistent and use a site like www.colourlovers.com to pick out a killer palette.
2. Adding photos is an excellent way to add depth and interest to your website. Profession-
al photos are ideal, but a beautiful iPhone pic can do the trick too. Dont be afraid to up-
load panoramic background images and large banner photos. Large images will infuse
your site with life. If you dont want to use your own photos, check out a site like
www.istockphoto.com or www.shutterstock.com where you can buy professional imag-
es for use on your site.
3. Stick to just one font. If you use two, use one for headers and one for paragraph text.
There are some exceptions, but using more than a few fonts will create an inconsistent
experience and can make it hard to read. (Also be consistent with your font size).

THE TOP 10 WEBSITE OPTIMIZATIONS YOU SHOULD DO RIGHT NOW 7
6. Optimize Your Images for Search
While many website owners worry about how discoverable
they are in traditional search engine results, there are
many additional ways to be discovered online. Google
Image Search (and other image-based search engines)
can be a valuable source of trafc. Best of all, Image
search is not as competitive as traditional search results
so you have a better chance of ranking well.
Optimizing your images for search is easy to do.
There are three ways to describe your image for Google.
1. File Name
2. Title Tag
3. Alt. Tag
File Name
Before you upload your image, make sure to name your image using dashes between each
word and choose descriptive keywords.

Ex: limbo-dance-contest.jpg
Title Tag
When you upload or insert an image into a blog post or page you will be given the option to title
your image. I recommend using a slightly different conjugation then you used in the le name.

Ex: Limbo contest winner
Alt. Tag
The alt tag is an opportunity to describe your image for the sight-impaired. Google Image
Search also uses these, so be sure to enter something descriptive for your alt tag.

Ex: Person doing limbo
Note: It can take a few weeks for Google to index all your images once you have opti-
mized them.


File Name: limbo-dance-contest.jpg
Title Tag: Limbo contest winner
Alt Tag: Person doing limbo
OPTMIZED EXAMPLE
THE TOP 10 WEBSITE OPTIMIZATIONS YOU SHOULD DO RIGHT NOW 8
7. Make Sure Your Website is Mobile and Tablet
Friendly
Make sure your website looks great and works well on mobile and tab-
let platforms. Currently over 20% of on-line trafc comes from mobile
and tablet devices. If your website doesnt work well on mobile, youre
neglecting 2 out of every 10 visitors to your website.
While dedicated mobile websites were popular in the past, the best
solution for creating a website that works great on mobile devices is to
make sure your website uses responsive design. Responsive design is
Googles recommended format for handling websites on mobile de-
vices. Its no joke. A responsive site will automatically resize to t any
screen sizeso you dont have to pinch-and-zoom just to read text.
Quick Tips
1. Test your website on the most popular mobile devices, such as iPhone, iPad, and
Android devices.
2. Check to see if the text on your site can be easily read on a mobile device without
zooming. Make sure you can easily navigate through the site by touch.
3. Dont use Flash graphics on your site. They wont render on many mobile devices.
Create a Responsive Website with HostBaby.

8. Post New Content Regularly
Nothing says, I dont care and neither should you like a prehistoric event calendar and a blog
post endorsing Ross Perots presidential candidacy. Even die-hard fans will give up after a few
visits to a stagnant website. If you want your audience to keep coming back you have to give
them something to come back for. Luckily, it doesnt take a lot of time to keep your website
fresh. Upload a few photos, post a funny video, add a link to an interesting article, give a brief
update on your current project or update your calendar with upcoming events. Try to update
your website once a week. Your fans will appreciate it.
Quick Tips:
1. Embed video. It doesnt matter if its your video or simply a video you found on YouTube
or Vimeo that you think your fans will enjoy. Video is one of the easiest ways to engage
your audience and keep your website fresh.
2. You dont have to create new content to post new content. Ask your fans to send you pho-
tos, videos, essaysanything and post the good stuff on your site. You can even offer
prizes for the best submissions.
THE TOP 10 WEBSITE OPTIMIZATIONS YOU SHOULD DO RIGHT NOW 9
3. Invite friends, fans, or colleagues to guest-post on your blog.
4. Add a Facebook or Twitter widget to your website sidebar. This way, every time you post
something on your favorite social network you will be simultaneously updating your
website.
9. Socialize Your Website
Social media is huge. Social media is how people use the Internet. If your website isnt social,
you could be losing out on loads of trafc. The bare minimum you should have on your website
are follow buttons so that people can nd you on social networks like Facebook and Twitter
and share buttons so people can share your content on their favorite social networks.
Adding Follow buttons
Whether you use HTML to add your buttons or use a free service, social media icons are great
way to get your website visitors to engage with you on social media. But remember: people
have become accustomed to seeing those generic Facebook and Twitter icons. Make sure to
choose icons that stand out and include a call to action. Instead of saying follow me on Twit-
ter or follow me on Facebook Why not get more specic? For example:
Follow me on Twitter and get updates and special offersor Follow me on Facebook to get
all the tantalizing details about my life on the road

Adding Share Buttons
Not to toot our own horn, but HostBaby Site Builder Websites have share buttons built in.
Alternatively, ShareThis and AddThis are both free services that make adding share buttons to
your website easy.
www.sharethis.com
www.addthis.com
www.niftybuttons.com
http://www.hostbaby.com/features/











THE TOP 10 WEBSITE OPTIMIZATIONS YOU SHOULD DO RIGHT NOW 10
10. Add a Downloadable Press Kit
Make it easy for bloggers and journalists to write about you by providing them with the essen-
tials. Create a zip folder that includes: a one-sheet, or bio (Word doc preferably), and 2 or 3
high-res photos (at least 300 dpi) of yourself and or your collaborators. You can also include
any articles or reviews that might be useful to a journalist or blogger. (Links work, too.)
Upload the folder and link to it on your Press or Bio page. Thats it.
Quick Tips:
1. Be creative with your photos. Avoid clich settings. Try to capture what makes you
unique.
2. Keep your bio or one-sheet brief. Include only the most important facts and make sure it
tells a story journalists love good stories.
Watch a quick video on creating a band or artist one-sheet:
VIDEO - How to Make an Effective Band/Artist One Sheet
THE TOP 10 WEBSITE OPTIMIZATIONS YOU SHOULD DO RIGHT NOW 11
Thanks!
I hope you enjoyed our guide! You should be able to deploy any or all of the tips
covered here provided you are working with a competent web host and an easy
to use Site Builder. If thats not the case, please consider HostBabys 30 Day
Free Trial and build a website where you have complete control.
Questions?

Contact HostBaby at
1-888-448-6369
hostbaby@hostbaby.com
P.S. If you enjoyed the content in this here guide, youll
love the HostBaby blog.
Check it out here: http://blog.hostbaby.com
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