Are there ways to align your website’s “chakras” to get more vitality from each page? The answer in a minute. First let me explain what a chakra is for those who may not be familiar with eastern beliefs.
A chakra is thought to be a point of energy in the human body. They are supposed to be aligned in an ascending column from the base of the spine to the top of the head. The function of the chakras is to spin and draw in this Universal Life Force Energy to keep the spiritual, mental, emotional and physical health of the body in balance. In short if your chakras are in line, you are at maximum capacity for health, life, etc.
The concept of points of energy lining up might seem a bit mystical, but it certainly has basis when it comes to your website or more specifically any given page.
To explain a good alignment, I’m going to point out some bad ones first.
1. Page Title and Content are Inconsistent
The title of the page should be the shortest version of the page’s overall content. Even if you want heavy keyword density, you won’t get any points with the SERPs (Search Engine result pages) by titling incorrectly. After all the SERPS are looking for content. By making the title and content agree, you are improving you chances to match a given search term.
2.Poor Use of Header Tags
Header tags are the first thing a reader scans for on the web. It tells them to read more or that what you have to say is not what they are looking for. In short, they are the bold print, the advertisement for the paragraphs below them. If you study your web traffic and note the search terms used to get people to your site, you can understand how to title the headers. In most cases a question is a better title than a statement. For example a paragraph on Hiking in Yellowstone Park, might look more intriguing if it were title, Can I hike at Yellowstone Park?
3. Poor Navigation
Navigation is like posture, if it’s good then you don’t notice. If it’s bad, then everyone notices. Regardless of side menu, top menu, mouse over or java, you have to ensure your navigation system works and makes sense to the casual, first time, browser. The viewer could be using a cell phone, device for the blind, or just a tiny monitor, so think about this when laying your site out. Have alternative text links at the bottom of each page, so they can find there way around, regardless of how they land on your site. You’ll also want to choose navigation phrases that match desired anchor text, as each link is worth a few points to a search engine. Once you have your link text figured out, add an alt or title tag so the viewer knows what they will find before clicking. Those little pop up boxes are gold to search engines and can help boost your sites rating.
4. Font Soup Anyone?
If you can avoid using manual font settings, please do! An army of font controls, hidden in the code of your page will not only slow down your load times, but it will also prevent consistency in the look of your page. Cascading style sheets are best, because they make your text more readable and professional looking. Style sheets also ensure one page agrees with another, as viewers will click multiple pages on your site.
5. Over Abundant Use of Graphics
Everyone prefers to see pictures, let’s be real! But too much of that and your site can look cluttered, slow and unpleasing. People are there to learn more, to read and see if you have the answer they want. Images here and there are fine but keep in mind that each picture can greatly slow down the load time on a page. Try to keep the image sizes under 10K for general purposes. If larger ones are required use them modestly.
That’s it, just a few ideas to make sure your site reaches it’s maximum potential by aligning your web chakras of title, tag, navigation, fonts and graphics.
