Aah…January will begin clean…empty…with so much promise. Like everything at school upon returning from summer break.

I used to love that feeling of a new school year.

On that day we all have hope; Hope that this year will be different.

The sprucing up of the school sets us up for a “shot at success”.

I’d like to give you a similar shot at a successful business year by helping you spruce up your websites for 2012. A little bit of change can be enough to increase your traffic because it spruces up your website and people are drawn to that change.

So what kind of changes can you do that are major enough to cause your potential customers to notice but minor enough to not redo the whole site?

Add Some Pictures

If you don’t have any graphics or photos to help your page “sell”, then look to the royalty-free websites. There are a ton of these sites that will sell you professional photos and graphics for what amounts to a dollar or two per piece.

The little known secret is that some of these sites have thousands of graphics you can not only use royalty free, but ones you can download and use “free” free!

That means your site can take a giant leap towards looking more attractive and professional for less than 10 bucks…or in some cases nothing!

Try Some Strategic Highlighting

A yellow highlighter can be your friend when trying to optimize your page for selling. The highlighter is great for “pulling” must see parts of your sales message out so even copy skimmers can’t miss them.

But…when highlighting, remember this phrase: “When you draw attention to everything, you end up drawing attention to nothing.” Put simply…use your highlighter sparingly!

Add (Or Change) Color

There are styles and trends in advertising colors that change from time to time. Not as often as fashion changes, but still something you should put some time into. That’s why I keep The Big Book of Color in Design on my desk at all times.

It explores how color can be a feeling or feelings. While you may not think of black, yellow and cream as feminine they can be. In fact you probably have seen that combination in the store if not at your home on a bottle labeled Olay.

But if you are trying to portray, like soothing, technological, rich, etc, you can flip to a section with that “feeling.” Then you will get numerous examples with exact colors in the exact combinations…with the hex numbers you can punch right into Photoshop!

Freshen Up Your Fonts

As with color, fonts sometimes fall in and out of fashion. We all know by now that the vast majority of time you want to use a sans serif font. Serif—if you don’t know are those curly bits on the ends of fonts like Times New Roman or Courier. Sans serif simply means “without serif”.

So…your website should probably use a sans serif font, but which one?

That’s when Google can be your best friend. Just search for “new fonts”, “font trends” or things like that and you’ll find page after page of people who know better than either of us. One place I find myself going to find the newest trends in fontage (is that a word?) is FontShop.

Consider Switching Over To WordPress

It’s getting to the point now where almost no one puts up static HTML websites anymore. Whether your site is a catalog site, services site or a standard salesletter, it can all be done inside the confines of a WordPress blog.

These days there is a theme or template for anything you want to do with your blog. Just search around for 10 minutes and before you know it, your page is not only better looking, but more easily updated.

In summary, website changes that create sticky traffic:

• Add pictures
• Highlight special text
• Add or change colors
• Change your fonts
• Switch to WordPress

Extracted from StomperNet SEO Intelligence Report, December 17, 2011.