64 website optimization things you'd rather know

Though it may help if you know the myths of website optimization, you may as well learn some truths to guide your way.

Site building

1. Before you build a website, you need to research the market and your customers
2. Building a website is only a start.
3. Website optimization is a continuous process..you can always create new content, tweak existing one and increase conversions.
4. You'd rather entrust your site to the professionals

Learning

5. You can learn any aspect of website optimization, if you spend your time on it
6. You will always learn something new on SEO, usability, copywriting, etc, so don't afraid to act now and tweak later
7. SEO is only one of the aspects that affect a website.
8. If you aim to give to your customers, you'll be fine.
9. You need to know the words your customers use and use them on your site
10. As the sites are for the people, you should analyze your site yourself or with the help of a professional.

Rankings

11. There is quite a number of factors that affect search engine rankings
12. There may be no guaranteed results when it comes to search engine rankings
13. If your site is new, you need to get links from a lot of trusted websites and wait for several (normally, six) months to start getting decent traffic from Google
14. Search engine rank pages, not websites.

Linking

15. You should only link to sites that you want to show to your visitors
16. You'd rather only get links from sites on the same topic
17. The best links are those that get you targeted traffic
18. You'd also point links (when you can) to your internal, more focused, pages
19. Link exchange programs are easily detected and disregarded (or even penalized for).
20. PageRank is only one of the search engine ranking factors (detemined by the quality, relevance and amount of links).
21. Though a couple of links from DMOZ will help, you may be successful without them, if you get other quality links
22. Using Google Sitemaps will help your site to get indexed (though the main factor is links from established websites).

Traffic

23. Though large amounts of traffic may be good, you'd rather get targeted traffic
24. You'd rather make sure you convert that targeted traffic to your customers, than focus on getting more visitors
25. The goal of website optimization is to get most targeted traffic and convert it to customers.

Content

26. You should write your content for the humans - forget about keyword density, which is nonsense.
27. There is a duplicate content filter.
28. You can offer quality articles to established publications to brand yourself as an expert and get targeted traffic (if you get the links)
29. You should always focus on creating your own unique, quality content

Software

30. SEO software is not essential to achieve high search engine rankings.
31. Using software to get links is the least efficient way to do this.
32. Automated directory submission is disregarded by the directories.
33. You should rather submit to topical or local quality directories manually, if at all.

Service providers

34. There are good SEOs and crook SEOs (though there can't be plenty of top quality SEOs, of course)
35. Even a mom and pop and small business website owners can hire a contractor to optimize their site for $300-1500 to tweak the most important things.
36. The more you invest in your website through quality service providers, the better.

Usability

1. Any site can actually use some usability love.
2. Any site can benefit from usability, especially business sites
3. Even small websites can get most of their usability issues identified for $300.
4. Usability can be easily integrated in the web design process, along with SEO, copywriting and accessibility
5. Though you can fix the most popular issues to see significant impovements, you'd rather fix your site specific issues, too
6. Though experts have solid knowledge and experience, your site can only be improved in its own way
7. If you focus on making the site easy to use for your customers, you can do basic usability yourself
8. Usability is deep site analysis and user testing experience, no voodoo magic there
9. Shopping carts are one of the major culprits when it comes to usability
10. There is a difference between what people would like and do on your site and what they actually do on your site
11. For the above reason, site surveys are not 100% reliable.
12. If you have the FAQ/Help section on your site, improve your site so you could remove it
13. Usability reduces costs and time, required to maintain the project
14. If you integrate usability in site creation and development, you won't spend much more time - you'll hardly notice.
15. Site visitors only know how to use common site elements - they see your site for the first time, mostly.
16. Sites made of Flash are mostly user and search engine unfriendly
17. Though visual appeal (design) plays a role in improving conversions, it is only one aspect of a website
18. If you offer something for free, you'd rather not place obstacles (like multiple forms with lots of fields to fill) in front of your visitors
19. Use only enough fields to get the necessary information. Mark other fields as not required, if you do need them.
20. If your business is international, you'd rather provide content and interface, tailored to the geographically disperse visitors
21. You can't please everyone with your website.

Copywriting

1. Copywriting involves a lot of subtle aspects, so not every writer can be called a copywriter.
2. If you want quality site copy, you'd rather hire a professional.
3. The best copy can be written about a product that the copywriter likes.
4. Learning copywriting is never fast. It takes patience and persistence.
5. Quality articles start at $30-50 per piece. Some go for $300 per article.
6. Copywriting costs as much as other web services. Don't expect to pay less to get more quality work.
7. Quality copywriting also involves formatting the text for the readers.

If you want more tips about copywriting, go to CopyBlogger.

Learn more about building better websites at the Cre8asite Forums.

Can you add something else to the list?