The StartUp Blog at PartnerUp

This is a guest post by Zeke Camusio, founder of The Outsourcing Company.

The Pareto principle states that for many events, roughly 80 percent of the effects come from 20 percent of the causes. This is one of the most important ideas in business because it helps you quickly assess what to do in any given situation. Always focus on the 20 percent and you’ll get the results.

Many Web designers take a very different approach to Web design. Their goal, it seems, is to pack a home page with as much information as possible. There are a lot of reasons they take this approach:

• Search engines use the home page as a launching platform for scanning the site.
• Packing as many keywords into the copy as possible.
• The home page is a launching point for all things they want to accomplish on the site
• They already created beautiful menus to organize the information

Let’s take our SEO caps off for a second and think about what the goals actually are:

1. Attracting customers
2. Getting those customers to do something specific (i.e. buy, sign up or click something specific)

Choice is a burden.
If there are too many options, potential buyers will get confused and do nothing. Smart retailers learned this concept a long time ago and stopped stocking 30 varieties of jelly and instead focused on the few that sold the best. Web designers need to think the same way. The more choices you provide, the less likely your potential customers are to choose anything at all.

Clutter distracts from your goal.
The more stuff on your page, the harder it is for me to find exactly what I need. It’s great that you have a full menu of options, RSS feeds and links to every possible option, but if I can’t figure out where to click, I’m going to leave your site.

Take a good hard look at your home page.

• What is the most important 20 percent? What generates 80 percent of my results? This isn’t something that you have to guess at. Google Analytics can easily tell you what most of your customers click on.
• How can I use graphic design to accentuate this 20 percent? You can use graphic boxes, colors, backgrounds, larger fonts, etc. to make sure your reader can’t miss the most important stuff.
• What can I cut from my home page? A great place to start is to cut text-heavy paragraphs. You’ll be amazed by how much you can say in just a few carefully chosen words. The next place to move is unused links. Is it really useful to have a recipe section on your site? Do you really need that news feed? Can you shrink your menu to a few common choices that can expand?
• Do I have the essentials? Clients need to know 1) who you are, 2) what you do, and 3) how to get a hold of you. Make sure this information is very easy to find.

How does all of this work with SEO?
An important part of SEO is the ratio of text to keywords, so cutting superfluous text will help your search engine rankings. Also, you may be optimizing for things that aren’t bringing you clients, so cutting some topics may help clarify what you’re doing for the search engines. Finally, the goal of SEO is to reach customers, not just unqualified traffic. Working on your homepage clarity will dramatically help with this goal of SEO.

Zeke is a serial entrepreneur, Internet Marketing expert and founder of The Outsourcing Company, an Internet marketing agency with offices in Aspen, Colo. and New York. Let’s Do It!, Zeke’s Internet marketing blog, has thousands of followers from all over the world.