If you read the introduction on our home page, then you know the initial steps we recommend. In addition, the website design tips and SEO advice pages should also help in their respective areas. However, there are many other do's and don'ts that the novice person in charge of a trucking website should consider:

Please do not begin your website by stating: "The AAAAA Trucking Company has been in business since 1986." It would be better to use this bit of information just below your logo. Example: AAAAA Trucking Company, since 1986. Why? The very first few sentences of your website will play a major role in how your site is listed in the search engines - primarily on Yahoo. Please review our SEO basics page to get a better understanding on this.

Add a little blurb at the top of each of your forms that states something like: "estimated time to complete this form is 30 seconds" (example). The shorter the amount of time, the better. A form may look like it is very long, but may only take a few seconds to complete. Since looks can be deceiving, tell them it is short.

If you do have a very long form, try to break it up into two parts. Let the visitor complete a short form, then be taken to another page to fill out the rest of the information. This is a bit deceiving, but sometimes you have to break up the monotony.

Speak to your visitors in their own jargon, and try to create a relationship with them. Truck driver recruiters should rely heavily on bullet point items, and speak in terms that truck drivers will understand. However, that does not mean you cannot be creative. Every trucking company seems to have recruiting ads that say: "At BBB Trucking Company, You're A Name, Not A Number." Wouldn't it be more creative, and create a better connection with the truck drivers if the caption read: "My Name Is John. And BBB Trucking Company Knows It."
Although this example doesn't use truckingjargon, it does make the point.

Acknowledge holidays and seasons on your website. If you know that Halloween or July 4th is just around the corner, adding a little pumpkin or an American flag tells the visitor that the site has been updated recently without having to be bland, and actually stating: "This site last updated on..."

Try to stay away from Javascript as much as you can. Javascript menus seem to be ok, but java applets and Javascript functions are not easily read by FireFox browsers. In addition, the actual content within Javascript cannot be read at all, so why put critical information within Javascript?

Take a look at your statistics every day. Type in keywords and key phrases into the top search engines (same ones that your target audience would type in), and see what position your website gets. If you are not where you want to be, take a look at the "page source" (via your browser), and look at what the top placement sites are typing in as their page title, keyword content, and their first few sentences.

Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience. If you are a small trucking company in - let's say Atlanta, Georgia - who has a contract with a few carpet companies, and you need loads coming back from your destination, then a good idea would be to put the destination location into your website. Let me explain: If the destination location is Charlotte, North Carolina and you want to get loads to fill your trucks on the return trip - start putting phrases like "free quotes from charlotte NC, dry goods commodities shipping charlotte, add the Charlotte zip code, add small communities around Charlotte into your website. Do you get the picture? Some how or another, you would need a way to put this into your website, even though you are not in Charlotte. This may take two weeks to get picked up by the search engines, but it will help get you leads.

We could go on, and on, and on about small things to help you on your transportation website, but the best advice we can give is to use common sense, think like your target audience and write your site FOR your target audience.