Why I Don't Trust Link Popularity

First of all it does not matter that I do not trust link popularity. I'm just whining in the wind on the off chance that someone from google will happen by and bother to read my blog.

Link popularity is measured by the number of links that point to a website.

I like amazon.com, I use amazon.com, I would recommend amazon.com to a friend. I have zero self-generated links on my websites to amazon.com. (Please note, at bottom of article we will talk further about links to amazon.com)

Since I have no links to amazon.com that means that even through I have high-esteem for amazon.com they receive zero page ranking as a result.

Now Scum Brothers Spam Marketing Corporation have zillions of contrived links that point to their website. That is because they use white-hat, black-hat, no-hat, and toupee SEO methods to make sure they have zillions of links to their website. Does this mean SBSM Corp should be held in high-esteem. No this just means they are very adept as using the system to get links back to themselves.

I have clients and friends that read this blog. But, they do not count when it comes to link popularity because they have my blog bookmarked. They don't put links to this blog on their websites. They put more intimate bookmarks on their computers.

There is something not quite right about a system that rewards tricky dicks that know how to work the system in preference to average joes that just get along.

A little more talk about Amazon.com's links.

Something that Amazon did that was very helpful with SEO (even before SEO existed) was to use an affiliate program. Because I am an affiliate of amazon.com that means that on every page of my blog there are three or four links back to amazon.com. Not of these links are self-generated. All of these links are created by widget bots that work for my affiliate program.

All the same, amazon.com has four links on my page that count toward their link popularity. I venture to guess that 99.99% of all amazon.com links are from affiliate sales links. Good going Amazon.

SEO Check List

Things that help:

• Keywords in your website address (URL)
• Keywords in all your page <title> tags
• Keywords in link text of internal links.
• Keywords in link text of inbound links (external links leading to your site.)
• Keywords in link text of outbound links (your links to other people's webpages.
• Keywords in <h1> & <h2> headings
• Keywords at the top of the page (in the beginning of your text)
• Keywords in image <alt> tags
• Where inbound links come from.
• Links from sites similar to yours
• Description Metatag
• Unique content for each page of your website
• Frequent change or addition of content
• Site Accessibility
• Sitemap (html or xml)

Things that do NOT help:

• Keyword spamming & stuffing
• Keyword dilution (optimizing too many keywords)
• Hidden links (such as 1px image links)
• Deliberate Cross-linking
• Duplicate content (10 pages of the same stuff does not make your site look bigger)
• Doorway pages (
• Serving search engine different page than public
• Invisible text (too small to read or color same as background)
• Stolen Content
• Flash
• Frames
• Redirects (301 and 302)
• Telling robots to go jump in the lake (robots.txt bans)
• Dynamic pages with session IDs

Keywords in Anchor Text

Before we can talk about Keywords in Anchor Text we need to define what in the heck this Anchor Text is.

Anchor text is also known as: link text, link title, or that stuff in between the <a href=""> thing and the </a> thing.

Here is an example: <a href="http://www.galaxywebsitedesign.com/">Galaxy Website Design</a>

The http://www.galaxywebsitedesign.com is the link url. The Galaxy Website Design is the link text (or anchor text).

When another website creates a link that points to your website that is a good thing.

Google, and other search engines, consider the fact that someone bothers to create a link to your website as a vote of confidence. So if want to bad-mouth a website do not include a link. Google will interpret the link as a vote of confidence in the linked to website.

So what about the "Keywords in Anchor Text" thing?

Quite simply, if someone links to you with the following:
<a href="http://www.yoyodyneindustries.com">Crystal Quantum Meditation Devices</a>
then Google will assume from this link that you consider yoyodyneindustries.com to be related to meditation devices. So not only will you increase the page rank of the yoyodyneindustries.com website in general. You will also add credibility to the keywords meditation and devices (as well as crystal and quantum).

Thus not only are links to your site important. It is also important what text is used in the link text (anchor text). If possible, find ways to encourage the use of keywords in anchor text used to link to your website.

Social Marketing Truths

Here they are in the nutshell:

• Social media enables you to open up a dialogue with perspective customers.
• When you have a dialogue with a prospective customer, they grow to trust you.
• Once they trust you, they're more likely to buy your product or service.

The above three truths come from my notes taken during a seminar by Jamie Turner. These little tidbits were dropped on the path as he was making his way to the main topic of the seminar. However, I felt these were gems worth mulling over a bit.

Social media enables you to open up a dialogue with perspective customers.

Social media enables you.... It is a tool. Like a hammer (or screwdriver) you have to know what you are doing with the tool and know what it is you are trying to accomplish. A hammer is great for driving nails into a board. But this is useless without some idea of where the nails need to go. Do you have a plan you are working from. Or, are you just driving nails in order to drive nails?

open up a dialogue... There are at least two little tidbits in this. First of all it is designed to be a dialogue. So work to have it be a dialogue. Encourage perspective customers to engage in the conversation. Get them involved. An active participant will get hooked into the process much easier and deeper than a passive participant. Second, fundamentally almost all dialogues in social media are perpetually in the "opening up" phase of the conversation. Dialogues have various phases -- including resolution and conclusion. The nature of social media keeps them bound into the beginning phases -- the opening up part. That's okay. Just be aware of it. You are not going to conclude your business in the social media itself. That will happen else where.

perspective customers... Treat the folks you dialogue with as bosom buddies, pals and friends. But, don't forget why you are there -- perspective customers.  If you forget you are hunting for perspective customers you may lose your posture, you may forget to actually redirect them to a place for conversion. And yes, conversion will happen else where.

When you have a dialogue with a prospective customer, they grow to trust you.

have a dialogue with a prospective customer... Again, have a dialogue -- make it a two way street, get them involved in the conversation. And of course the "them" we are talking about are prospective customers. If your product or service is empty having no value to the customer then this perspective of treating others as prospective customers will be hollow and basically yucky. On the other hand, if you are an ethical marketer and actually represent goods that are of value, then this perspective takes on a flavor of service.

they grow to trust you.... This is the goal, this is the hoped for result of the social marketing. Your ultimate goal may be to make sales. But, the goal ascribed to the social media part of the strategy is simply to generate a relationship with the prospective customer -- one in which they can view you as a trusted source of information and transaction.

Once they trust you, they're more likely to buy your product or service.

more likely to buy... The result of social media marketing is a prospective customer that has been brought to the state of "more likely to buy." That is a good goal and a workable goal. Let it be what it is. The goal of your "landing page" is to convert customers. The goal of social media is to predispose customers to the state of "more likely to buy."

By the way, keep your focus, stay on beam. You are looking to sell your product or service. You are not looking for ego boost or fulfillment of any other personal agenda item. When doing business, don't worry about your dance card, or your anything. It is not about you, it is about the customer. This is a subtle point. The best way to see it is in hindsight after a relationship has soured because somehow the energy was channeled into something personal.

Title Attribute

Warning:

This article is about the title attribute NOT the title element found in the header of your webpage.

First a bit of advise

This might resolve the whole issue of title attribute for you. If you're looking at it because you would like to improve keyword density and work on your SEO then there's no need to dig any further: Google and most other search engines do not take the title attribute into account when spidering a website.

Yep, that means that all of your title attributes only serve to bulk up the size of your page and give you more typing to do. Since google gives points for smaller/faster downloads, the title attribute will cost you a little in speed. Also, keep in mind that you never have enough time to do all the web design and update you want to do, thus monkeying around with title attributes will take that little bit of time from something else. AND, google will not use the title attribute for keyword density.

Finally Some Info About Title Attribute

W3.org says this about the title attribute: "This attribute offers advisory information about the element for which it is set."

The title attribute can be used with all elements except for base, basefont, head, html, meta, param, script, and title. BUT, it is not required for any -- there is no element that requires the title attribute.

Some browsers display title text as a tool tip when the element is hovered over. Thus if you do use title attribute text please keep is small. No one wants to see a huge tool tip. And, besides, some browsers will truncate the tool tip.

Some Possible Good Uses

Title attribute can be used to add descriptive text to links. This could be a situation where the link text does not  give the destination. Then the title attribute might provide that tidbit of info.  This can be useful for users not in the habit of checking the destination url in the status line of their browser.

This could also be used to provide additional information for an image. Remembering that the alt attribute is used with screen readers in mind, it is possible that something like a date which would not be essential for the alt attribute could go in the title attribute.

Another, and perhaps most productive, use of the title attribute is on input elements in a form. You can use the title attribute to explain to your visitors what the intended purpose of an input field in a form is.

Summary

"Could be used," "might be useful," or "allowed" are not stellar recommendations to bother with the title attribute. My opinion is that proper generation of page content and proper use of the alt attribute handle the situation nicely.

Since the title attribute does nothing for SEO (at the moment), I suggest to just ignore it. Later when we find out it was the secret, most important attribute on the page we can lament our choice to ignore it. But until then, I think I'll just concentrate on other matters.

Image Alt Attribute

There is much confusion about the proper use of the alt attribute. The first confusion is reference to the alt attribute as the alt tag. This is more or less okay, but..... if you do a google search on alt attribute you will get results that are generated by more knowledgeable writers. So, while it is okay to use alt tag it would be better to at least know the proper term. If for no other reason when you see alt attribute used in an article you will know that they are talking about your good old friend alt tag. :)

Before we talk about the more philosophical aspects of the alt attribute let's get right to the meat of the matter.

Proper-ish Use of Alt Attribute

1. You must use an alt attribute on images.
2. It may not be used for any element other than img, area, and input. For our purposes just concern yourself with the img element. And know you may not use alt on tables, href links, or anything else.
3. Use the alt attribute to provide text for visitors who can’t see the images in your document.
4. For decorative/style images, use alt="" instead of irrelevant text such as "red line", "spacer", etc.
5. If the image contains text then use alt="that text". If the image is company logo such as Galaxy Website Design  then use alt="Galaxy Website Design".
6. Alt attribute is not for tool tips. It does not (or at least should not) work that way.
7. Remember the alt attribute is a substitute for those who cannot see the image for one reason or another. 

When & Why is Alt Attribute Displayed

The alt attribute is displayed when the image is not. The alt attribute is literally the alternative to the image.

Reasons for seeing alt text:

• Viewer is visually handicapped and is using a screen reader.
• Viewer has image download turned off by choice.
• Viewer is using slow connection.

First and foremost consider that the alt text is being used by screen readers. So be compassionate. The alt attribute is NOT the place to do keyword stuffing. Please have mercy on those using screen reader software.

Some people look at webpages with image download turned off by choice. Therefore they will see the alt text. They may have turned of image download for any one of many valid (and/or invalid) reasons. The choice was theirs. The alt text should make sense for these folks. You can turn off image download in your browser to see what this looks like. If you are a stuffer, hopefully you will be suitably shamed into better alt attribute behavior after looking at your pages in this fashion.

For those will slow internet connections, they will see the alt text temporarily while the image is being downloaded. When my broadband is acting more like narrowband dial-up, I will often see the alt text on the page while waiting for the image to download.

Alt Attribute Use Summary

1. Alt-text is required for all images.
2. If the image is active (link, button, area) the text alternative is the function of the image;
3. If the image is not active but conveys information, the text alternative conveys the same information;
4. If the image is redundant or conveys no information use alt="" for the text alternative.
5. If the image is text then the alt-text should (usually) be the same as the text in the image.
6. Make it as short as possible, but as long as necessary

Some Reference Links

• 456 Berea Street -- The Alt And Title Attributes
• Jim Thatcher -- Text Alternatives for Images.

Host Blog As Folder Not Subdomain

When deciding on where and how to host your blog consider the following.

If you have the choice between:

• myblog.someotherguysdomain.com
• myblog.yourdomain.com
• www.yourdomain.com/myblog

Use www.mydomain.com/myblog.

This will improve the ranking of yourdomain.com. Why put the work in to build the reputation of someotherguysdomain.com when that effort can go into building yourdomain.com?

So why is this blog on blogspot.com not GalaxyWebsiteDesign?  Well, if you use more than one blog to increase the width of your profile on the net they can't all be on one domain. :)

And, yes, having more than one blog can be one way to increase your profile on the net. Just be careful to not spread yourself too thin and/or over commit. Because I have different clients that ask for help on specific blogging software, I maintain blogs in several parts of the web -- so that I can experience first hand what my clients are going through. Thus, at the moment, I am not heeding my own advice and I'm spread a little thin. :)

In any case, given a choice, have your blog be a subfolder of your domain.

Back To Basics

In case you are wondering, I am not an expert in SEO. I am willing to share what I do know, and, I'm willing to learn. I think SEO can be a great and wonderful thing. However, I advise my clients to forget about it.

I advise my clients to concentrate on WSO (website optimization) and marketing. But isn't SEO mostly website optimization and marketing? Yes. But, it is a slightly obfuscated version. So lets get back to basics and and address the issues in their fundamental state.

I'm convinced that by dividing the tasks into WSO and marketing it will help to concentrate and focus our efforts.

First things first -- you need a website.

If you want to sell a product or service from your website you need a website. That much is obvious. Do not worry at this point about how people are going to find your website. When selecting a name and building your website, almost everything you need to know will come from an earnest desire to have the website and build it. I'll show you what I mean.

If you want a website devoted to cupcakes, then you need to think about using the word cupcake in the name of the website. Notice that I said, you need to think about using the word cupcake in the name. I did not say you MUST use cupcake. Look at google.com. No where in the website name does the word search appear. So it is possible to have a domain name that does not contain words exactly related to your prime interest. But they must be related somehow.

Using common sense you can deduce that a website name of Pets-Galore.com will be a poor choice for a domain devoted to baked goods in general and donuts in particular. A good friend is starting up a website about cooking called CloisterKitchen.com. That will work for her website. The website relates recipes and training videos related to cooking method developed in a kitchen that is part of a cloistered nunnery. Makes perfect sense. You could if you had an odd sense of humor and felt adventuresome use the name Yummy-Lumps.com for a website selling donut holes and cupcakes. The words cupcake and donut hole do not appear in the name. But it could work.

So using common sense and a sincere desire to actually tell people what your website is and does through its name you will inevitably come up with a reason name -- even though we have not talked about SEO stuff.

Having a name is not enough. You need content.

Again we shall avoid fancy SEO considerations and just talk about content from a common sense perspective.

If you write a letter to a friend inviting them to come for a visit, you need to actually include an invitation in your letter that asks them to come for a visit. Since a letter is a written form of communication you must use words to convey your wish for this friend to come visit. AND, you must use words that your friend will understand. When generating content you have to split your attention so that a portion of your attention is used to write the content and a portion of your attention is used to read the content as you go. This way you can answer that all important question: "Does this content get my point across?"

If you know that your friend is a lazy reader, then you might want to include your invitation in several different ways. You may want to repeat the significant portions of your message several times in the content of your letter. This just makes sense.

Start with a sincere desire to communicate, use your attention, and tell yourself the truth. You do not have to study SEO. Just care about your reader getting your message, use your attention, and be willing to see what is rather than what you hope.


It all becomes obvious. If you want your reader to know you are selling cupcakes, then you need to talk about cupcakes. If the words on the page discuss your pet cat, the neighbor down the street, and rainbows how can you dream that anyone reading such content will get your message about cupcakes.

In summary:

• A domain name without content is not a website
• Content unrelated to the purpose of your website is not a website.

More later.....

Just Say No To SEO

Admittedly a slightly inflammatory title for an article about SEO. The lesson that I hope you can take away from this blog is that it is a mistake to concentrate on SEO (Search Engine Optimization.)  You will be much better served by concentrating on WSO (WebSite Optimization).

To concentrate on WSO (website optimization) requires first that you divide SEO into two distinct and separate areas of endeavor -- 1) website development, and 2) website marketing.

All of the discussion around SEO have confused these two. The topics of website development and marketing of one's website have been mushed together. This has served (either deliberately or accidentally) to confuse the issues of web development and marketing. This has made it possible for certain service companies to create a niche for themselves that allows them to provide a service that is inherently difficult to measure.

Let's get back to basics. Let's have those folks that know the products and services represented by the website spearhead the development -- with expert technical help where and when necessary. And, let's have those folks that know marketing spearhead the marketing of the website. If you happen to be running a one man (or one woman) operation, then get yourself two hats and get down to business wearing only one hat at time.

In my next blog, let's start assigning SEO tasks to each of these hats.

It Takes Passion

I was speaking with two new clients this evening. A very pleasant couple, both artists with a background in several old school marketing. They know what they are getting into and are well prepared for it.

That's not what this blog is about. At least not directly. As I was speaking with the couple, asking questions, poking and prodding into their situation and hopes for their website I realized what it was I looking for -- I was looking for their passion. Before taking them on as clients I needed to uncover the degree of passion they had for their business.

It is clear to me that passion is the one thing that will help see one through the road ahead of each website owner. Need does not do it. Trying to get from here to there with "need" as your fuel is not the way to go.

Need can be a powerful motivator. But, working from need can be such a struggle.

I'll give you an example. We all know that social media is an excellent place to make contacts and create buzz about your website. And, we know that if your need is profound enough you can keep your nose to the grindstone without fail. However, if you have a passion then you don't have to worry about keeping your nose to a grindstone -- there is no grind.

If you are passionate about ceramics creating blogs, tweets, and writing on facebook walls about ceramics is no chore -- it is your passion. It comes easy AND the process is your reward. Using a need to drive you is so different. A need for sales is not satisfied in the present. The connection between writing yet another blog about ceramics and making a sale is tenuous at best. There is correlation. But it is hardly absolute. Hence, writing  blogs, tweets, and facebook prods will not translate into immediate satisfaction.

Need is good. A need for sales will turn a hobbyist into a pro. But the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine (of day to day work) go down is passion.

When trying to satisfy a need (such as income generation) I believe it is crucial to find a way that allows for the expression of your passion at the same time. This will give you the juice to make it through the humps and hurdles that are sure to come your way in this business.

Search Engine Spam

Spam is usually associated with email -- and for a few folks a pork-based meat cube in a can. We all agree that email spam is a bad thing. And email programs around the world are taking more and more steps every day to exclude spam.

There is such as thing as search engine spam as well. In email spam, the spam is volumes of un-wanted emails. In search engine spam, the spam is volumes of un-wanted content on a web page. If you let this notion of search engines such as google defining something like "un-wanted content on a web page" you might get a little annoyed at the prospect of google (or anyone else) trying to tell me what I can and cannot put on my website.

Here is the deal. At the moment, google is not making comment about all the content on your website. Google is making comment about that content on your website that is there specifically to influence google's page rank of your website and to influence how high in the search engine results page (SERP) your website appears.

So what is search engine spam?

Sorry there is no simple definitive answer. Every search engine has a set of constantly evolved rules used to define what constitutes search engine spam. Basically search engine spam is whatever programmers working for the search engine companies define it to be today. Today's rules may be different than yesterday's and tomorrow's rules may be different than today's rules. Hence a definitive answer is not so simple.

But, if we look toward a general definition of search engine spam the answers are very simple. There is widespread agreement among search engine professionals as to the basics of what constitutes spam.

The most obvious and agreed upon search search engine spam tactics are:

• hidden text
• mirror sites
• doorway pages

Hidden text

Hang on to your hats this part might get tricky. Hidden text is text that is hidden. There you have it.

If you have text that human readers of your website cannot see, then search engine programmers assume that you are doing something tricky directed at the search engine robots. This might seem a bit egocentric on the part of the search engine companies. But, the internet is their world and we only live in it. Also, I suppose that fact that zillions of black hat and grey hat web designers have used hidden text in exactly this way might explain why the feel it is directed at them.

How can text be made invisible to humans -- but viewable by robots?

• white text on a white background
• css style sheet tricks
• microscopic font sizes
• floating images over the top of the text

Text hidden in this way is usually just a bingy-bunch of keywords -- keywords repeated, and keywords in multiple variations. Some webmasters use this trick to accomplish keyword stuffing without making the page look ridiculous to a human reader.

If you try tricks like this you might get away with it for a short while, but eventually the search engine geeks will find a way to detect your tricks and then slap you silly for trying to out-smart them.

Mirror sites

A mirror site is a site that mirrors another site -- basically a duplicate site.

Now it is time to worry a little more about being accidentally slapped down. Ever noticed how godaddy and other registrars encourage you to register the .net, .org, .cc, .info, and dot everything as a means of protecting your branding? If you register the .com and .net for the same domain name and use a httpd.conf referral so that both names point to the same website you run the risk of having a search engine interpret this as mirror sites. They might think you are doing this as a trick or gimmick.

Before we continue along this line of discussion let's look at the types of mirror sites that the search engine manipulators use. SEM will duplicate (mirror) a website's content so that they can attach different keywords to the same content. One site will display the content with a particular set of keywords and another site will display the exact same content with a different set of keywords.

On the face of it, this is not a bad idea. Because different demographics search for the same (or similar) items using different keywords it makes sense to have different sites that are directed to each of the target demographic groups. Search engines do not want you to do this -- it clutters up their SERP pages. The search engine result pages are their pages and they do not like people doing stuff that clutters them up or has a negative impact on user experience of their pages.

Once upon a time search engines were a collection of links to internet websites indexed so that users could search for specific content. These listings were monetized by placing ads and other services on the margins. Now, however, search engines have become content.

Let me give you an analogy. A library has an index card catalog giving reference to the various books contained within its shelves. A library will typically exert no influence on the content of the index. An editor assembling an anthology of short stories does something very different. The editor will incorporate the stories directly in the anthology book. Thus the editor views the stories as content and will be very selective about which stories appear in the anthology. This is natural since each story included in an anthology reflects upon the anthology as a whole. That is the editors job.

Well, once upon a time search engine companies were like librarians. Somewhere along the line these search engine companies have developed into editors that view the presented pages as content not a card catalog.

Even if you think you have valid reasons (i.e. demographic targeting) it is best to never mirror your site. And, if you have registered multiple domain names as a branding ploy or a means to protect your trademark, do not point those domains toward the same website. It is risky. Search engines might be smart enough today to tell that you are using different names for the same content for legitimate reasons. However, in the future there could be a glitch that causes your site to look like you are "up to something." Also, having multiple links to the same content will dilute your page ranking. So don't do it.

Doorway pages

In order to define what a doorway page is, let's look at an example of why one might want to use a doorway page.

Let's say you have a product to sell. Let's say that your marketing guys have created a killer web page with with a super high conversion rate. I mean this page is a total killer. Anyone that gets to this page is totally compelled to buy. That is a very good thing. But, what if this page totally sucks as getting placement in the search engine rankings?

So now you have a page that converts like a king, but the page is not optimized for search engine placement. A natural idea would be to make a page that is optimized well for the search engines that will act as a doorway between the search engine and your killer sales page. This is a doorway page.

Problem is, search engine manipulators have used doorway pages in an abusive manner. Consequently, search engines now penalize websites that use this tactic. Not to worry though. If you truly have a killer conversion page just use ads to direct traffic to your page.

Please note, one of the methods used to mark a doorway page as a doorway page is website internal links. If you have a page with zero links to it from the rest of your website it starts to look like a doorway page.

The rule of thumb is "if you can't access a page from the interior of your website, it looks like a doorway page."

In conclusion

The search engine world is changing. It is your responsibility to look squeaky clean to the search engine robots. If you deliberately, or accidentally, use search engine spamming techniques you will be labeled as a search engine spammer and your page ranking will suffer the consequences.

Some of these so called tactics are innocent -- such as accidental mirror sites. But, search engine robots have little ability to detect your intention. As far as the search engine robots are concerned, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck then it is a duck.  It is your job to make sure you do not look like a duck.

If multiple urls point to the same content, then take down all but one.

If you have registered multiple domain names for the same website,  drop one of the names and use a permanent redirect to inform search engines of the change.

If hidden text has crept into your website, for legitimate reasons or not, remove it. You will eventually be slapped down.

A final thought

There are more than a few sensible marketing ploys that can be misinterpreted as spamming. Be careful. You will never receive a warning, you will never be issued a citation, you will never have access to a defined system of arbitration. Your pages will simply be slammed. It is your job to not only stay within the spirit of the law, but also within the appearance of the law. It's not our world, we just live in it.

Why I Do This

I had a great meeting today with an old friend that I haven't seen for about a decade.

He is preparing for retirement from a very successful dental laboratory service company that he built from the ground up. Now that he is getting closer to that magical day, he has begun in earnest the process of building a set of websites that will be enjoyable for him to run, exercise his penchant for creative activities, and provide a handy income to supplement his current portfolio.

For his purposes it looks like he will need seven websites. All of the websites involve hobbies or passions he has nurtured over the years. But, he just wasn't able to make the leap from thinking about doing it to doing it.

What was holding him back? A handful of progress blocking speed bumps -- a few web issues beyond his skill set. To him they were monstrous complexities. To me, because of my background in programming and website design, they were interesting challenges to be processed through rather quickly.

It was like a cork screw salesman stumbling upon a group of friends gathered in the park for an outdoor wine tasting event -- to which no one had thought to bring a bottle opener.

Through my geekitude and background, I was able to remove a road block that was keeping him from creative expression of his passions.

I didn't create his passion, I can't take any credit for the hard work ahead of him. But, I can feel good about helping him get started -- and perhaps lending a hand from time to time at need.

To me this is leverage of the best variety.

Morphotony -- An unexpected alarm mechanism

A few months ago I registered the domain morphotony.com after discovering that it had the word morphotony had zero search results in google.

How and why did I come to search for the word morphotony? Was in the process of looking up possible names for a band I play bass in. Morphotony was just one of many names we were looking into. (We finally settled on Faxl).

Any way, while looking to see if any existing bands were using the name I noticed that out of the trillions of web pages on the internet google had cataloged zero with the word morphotony. So of course I couldn't rushing out and registering the name. Somehow the fact that no one else on the planet had any interest in the word did not deter my enthusiasm. If I ever get a psychiatrist, I guess I should bring this up in a session -- or two.

Any, any way..... I now have the website and I have established a google alert to inform me of any new pages with the search term morphotony.

That means any time a page is indexed by google that contains morphotony I will be informed. Thus, I have an automatic ping back when google indexes a page. All I have to do is slip "morphotony" onto the page.

For your website, you would want to find a word that works for you.

Before You Promote -- Provoke.

Before we look at who (or what) you should be provoking, let's be clear about which usage of provoke we are intending.

Below are a few definitions for provoke that can be found at dictionary.com.

1. to anger, enrage, exasperate, or vex.
2. to stir up, arouse, or call forth (feelings, desires, or activity)
3. to incite or stimulate (a person, animal, etc.) to action.
4. to give rise to, induce, or bring about.

The form of provoke that is intended in the expression "Before  you promote -- provoke" is all of the above except for #1 -- stir up, arouse, call forth, incite, stimulate to action, give rise to, induce, or bring about.

And who should you be provoking. First yourself, then a few friends, then hopefully your target audience.

Before you promote a website -- or web page -- you need to incite yourself to really, really look at the site and make sure it does one very important thing. If your website does not do this one very important thing, then you should not be spending money to promote it.

What is this very important thing? In a minute, I'll tell ya in a minute. 

But first, let's look at this issue of provoking a few friends. What is that all about? Simple, before you spend money to promote your website you must provoke a few friends into looking at the site, really looking at it. Not saying they will look at it later, then watching some youtube clips. They really need to look at it. Will all the friends you ask actually look at your site? No. But, you must get at least a few people to look at your site and give you a little feedback.

What is the feedback you want from these few friends you have provoked into looking at your website? You want to know if your website accomplishes that "very important thing" mentioned above. Can your friends tell you this? No, probably not. But they can jabber on for awhile; and, if you listen carefully you might be able to glean from their feedback whether or not the said "very important thing" is being accomplished.

So what is this "very important thing?" Here it is. Does your website provoke readers to any action? Does it incite them? Does it stir them up, arouse them, stimulate, or call forth any action? If it does not do this, do not waste your money on promotion. There is no reason to promote a website that does not provoke some action.

That action can be contacting you for more information. That action can be making a purchase. Or that action can be clicking on a link that takes the reader to an affiliate program. But it needs to be something.

By the way. You may have noticed a lack of provocation to action in this blog. This blog is not designed to provoke an action. The information brought forth in these pages is for the benefit of my clients. When I get a question from a client, and I feel the answer to that question would benefit others, I post my response here. Admittedly some things fall into the category of "products of work in progress" and can't be shared. But for those things that can be shared, this is my way of handing out homework.

Remind me again, why do I care about SEO?

If SEO is not going to guarantee my page is on the front page of google search results why am I going through all this work?

Reason #1) All of the suggestions for improving your page ranking through SEO make your website more efficient, easier to navigate, cleaner, meaner, and a better experience for your readers. That's a good thing in my book.

Reason #2) SEO will influence your page ranking in a positive way. SEO by itself will not push your page rank to 5 or 6. But, it will keep you from shooting yourself in the foot and being relegated to the hell of page rank 0.

Reason #3) Even though SEO will not guarantee your page is on the front page of google search results, it will help. And anything that moves your website up the list in search results is a good thing.

Bottom line, it will help. It won't guarantee anything, but it will help. Remind yourself of this periodically. It might prevent you from stealing your kid's college fund in order to pay for the services of a flim-flam snake oil salesmen hocking guaranteed placement on google's front page.

Cost/Benefit. Everything is measured in cost versus potential benefit. Investing 1000 hours into some obscure aspect of SEO might not be worth the returned benefits. That time might have been better invested in promotions. Cost/Benefit. Don't forget that balance.

What is SEO?

SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. Some people think it is an acronym for Put My Website On The First Page Of Google. That would be PMWOTFPOG.

The job of SEO is to optimize your website for indexing by search engines. There is a relationship between how well your site is optimized SEO and its search engine results placement SERP. That relationship is simple. If you optimize your website at least you will not be shooting yourself in the foot.

Let's look at job interviews as an analogy. There are things you can do to optimize your chances of getting a job. But these things do not guarantee you will get the job. Let's take the following possible suggestions that one might make to a friend going in for a job interview.

• Clean Up (shower, shave, hair-cut, etc.)
• Dress Well (clean, undamaged, somewhat fashionable, appropriate clothes)
• Be Prompt (show up on time alert and attentive)
• Communicate Well (speak clearly, don't get off the topic, answer questions, be respectful, use appropriate language, etc.)

Doing all of the above things will not guarantee your friend will get a job based on the interview. However, if they show up for the job interview late with body odor, unkempt hair, smudged face, wearing raggedy clothes, hung over, speaking with a slur and rambling on about all kinds of unrelated topics they will effectively shoot themselves in the foot. Meaning they will have by their own actions guaranteed they would not get the job.

SEO has the task of cleaning up your website, dressing it well, helping you deliver it promptly in a responsive fashion, and presenting it so that it communications well on topic in fashion appropriate to visitors.

SEO does not guarantee search engine placement, visitors, or conversion.   SEO just helps to clean up the site so that it is not its own worse enemy.

Placement in the search engines, visitorship, and conversion are addressed by additional steps.

What is my SERP

What is my search engine results placement?

Step #1 -- Confirm you site is indexed by google.

Open a google search page. http://www.google.com

In the search box type in site:www.your-domain-name.com (note: replace your-domain-name.com with the name of your domain.)

Press the go button. If you see no results whatsoever, then you are not even indexed in google.

Step #2 -- Search your site for key phrase.

Open a google search page. http://www.google.com

In the search box type in "keyword phrase" site:www.your-domain-name.com (note: replace keyword phrase with the set of keywords you have chosen to search on.)

That's right. Keep the site:www.your-domain-name.com as part of the search. Let's just make sure that google finds the keyword phrase on your site.

Step #3 -- Search the world for key phrase.

Open a google search page. http://www.google.com

In the search box type in "keyword phrase" and press the search button. This will return results from all possible websites for the keyword phrase entered.

Step #4 -- Hunt for your page.

In google preferences select the option to display 100 results per page. This will cut down on the clicking.

Now start looking for your website in the first 10 pages of search results for the keyword phrase. This will look in the top 1000 web pages found for that keyword phrase.

Step #5 -- Celebrate or Lament.

If you find your page in the top 100, then celebrate -- things are looking up.

If you do not find your page in the top 1000, then lament -- things are looking pretty bad for people finding your website through search engine results. You will either need to concentrate on promotion or changing your keyword positioning.

Walk In Traffic

A Walk In is either a customer that happens to travel past your store and decide on the spur of the moment to drop in or they are a person whose original soul has departed his or her body and has been replaced with a new soul, either temporarily or permanently.

In this blog we are referring to customers. So please put your marketing thinking cap on.

Once upon a time, long long ago, in a land far far away a website would receive a far bit of walk in or drop by traffic. These are people that just happened to locate and visit your website through the vagaries of the internet.

Those days appear to be long gone. Unless you do something to deliberately promote traffic to your website it is most likely that you will receive zero traffic.

Let's look at some numbers to see why this might be.

If you expect to get traffic from a walk in they will need to see your page in the search engine results page. To see your page in they search engine results page, they need to have done a search. So what is the average number of searches performed per day?

• Google    91 million per day
• Yahoo    60 million per day
• MSN    28 million per day
• AOL    16 million per day
• Ask    13 million per day
• Others    6 million per day
• Total    213 million per day

Thus your total potential exposure is 213 million per day. That is if all of the above searches are for your keyword combinations. How many searches are there for your keyword combination? Great question. So far I have found no answers. Google is extremely protective of actual numbers. They will give you graphs depicting trends and hot searches. But they do not give actual numbers on these charts.

For example, if you look up the search trend on "obama birthday" you will find a dramatic increase in August. But there are no numbers shown. Just the percentage increase.

This is an unfortunate gap in our ability to get a handle on what is happening. Deliberate I'm sure. But unfortunate.

So let's just make up some numbers to illustrate the process. Let's assume that out of the 213 million searches per day 1% are on your exact keyword combination. This is an absurdly high number. That would mean 2.13 million people a day could potentially see your page in the search engine results. But what page are you on? And how many pages into the results can you reasonably expect people to dig?

On rare occasions I will dig three pages into the search results. How many pages will you dig? Two? Three? Ten? If you are not on page 1, 2, or 3 you can pretty much drop any expectation of being found in the search results.

This is the situation for most people. Most folks do not show up in the top of the search results. This means that either they receive zero traffic or they promote.


But, wait a minute I thought the holy grail of SEO was going to get me on the front page of google search results. Check out a short discussion on my take concerning what SEO is.

Now that the internet is a vast wasteland filling with trillions of web pages the accidental visitorship of days gone by are long gone.

Today there is little or no accidental visitorship. Count on promotion. Don't even dream you can bait a hook, drop it in the water and hope for a bite. It could happen, but it's not very likely.

Landing Page Quality -- A close look Part #1

Digging through Google's advice to webmaster you will find many useful suggestions and reminders.

In doing this one will come upon a definition for the three main components of a high quality website:

1. Relevant, original, (and authentic) content
2. Transparency
3. Navigability.

Along with the definition for these three main components, Google offers a covenant "Maintaining a positive user experience in these areas will help improve your site's landing page quality."

Strong words. Google is very invested in the promotion of quality websites that give users a positive user experience. In fact, they put their money where their mouth is. When bidding with adwords for position in the SERP (search engine results page) the higher the quality of your landing page the less you have to pay for top position. That's right. You pay less per click for the best spot if your page is higher quality than the competition. More about this later. For the moment just take it as read that they are very invested in promoting quality websites with quality user experience.

So what are these three things they consider the main components of high quality websites.

1. Relevant, Original, (and Authentic) Content

This speaks to the content of your page. The actual stuff you are presenting. You know the words and images that present something other than navigation and branding. This may come as a surprise to those that figured the internet was just a place to lay purchasing traps in the hopes of capturing customers and making thereby making money. Long ago, during the first few days of the internet, all you could find was relevant and original content. Posting content in those days was no easy task. Thus, anyone that was making the effort to present content was doing so for something they believed in. Granted some folks were highly invested and believed in content that made me wonder about the possible future of the human race. Even so, it was evident from their web pages that they believed in what they were doing. Unfortunately it did not take long before the invention of the banner ad and the new paradigm -- a web page became an excuse for housing as many banner ads as one could stuff on it.

If you are using adwords to promote your web page then you MUST be making money from viewership. You have to. If you are paying $$ per click you have to make enough $$ per visit to feed the fund that pays for the clicks. Or, perhaps you have a mysterious advertising budget which is funding the promotional campaign. This could be to generate branding, new product roll-out, or any number of valid reasons. Advertising budgets independent of web page ROI (return on investment) are a special topic we can discuss at another time. For the moment, let's take it as given that for most of us, any time we use adwords to bring readership to our website we have to generate enough $$ to pay for the click-throughs. This means we must be selling something on the landing page. This something can be a product or a "make a donation." But there must be something, otherwise adwords becomes a black-hole into which we throw money.


This is all by way of saying that in addition to the presentation of relevant and original content you will also need to be making a sales pitch. More about this another time. I just wanted to mention what I consider the elephant in the room when it comes to discussion of page content. It is all well and good to get high and mighty about content, but the reality for anyone driving traffic to a website is: the landing page must pay for itself.

Relevance

Relevance is related specifically to the ad that drove the traffic to your landing page. That is where the phrase  "landing page" comes from. They are landing on your page after clicking on an ad.

If the first thought that enters the mind of a visitor coming to your web page from an ad is "Hmmm, is this the right page? Or, did I click on the wrong button?" then you fail. Put your ad side by side with your web page. Can the average Joe on the street see the relationship? If not you fail.

Another form of fail is advertising a single product then linking to a page with multiple products. If you advertise a specific product it is wrong to make the visitor hunt through a collection of products to locate the one that motivated them to click on the ad in the first place. This will cause confusion. This is a fail. If you want to suggest other alternatives, put them below the fold. The fold is the imaginary line that represents the bottom of your page as viewed in the browser. This means the visitor will need to scroll before seeing the content below the fold. The value to the fold is that you can have content on the page (no click required to find it) without that content confusing the visitor during those most important first three seconds.

Relevance basically comes down to "say what you mean and mean what you say."

Originality

Original is easy to understand. If the content is new, fresh, inventive, or novel it is original. If the content is a copy and paste from somewhere else then it is not original. Ideally your content should be unique -- can't be found on any other website. Well, with billions of web pages "can't be found on another site" is bound to become pretty darn difficult. So in practical terms what does original mean?

To start with, copy and paste pretty much guarantees the content is not original. There are many reasons that you could find yourself using copy and paste to generate content on a landing page.

One reason you could find yourself using copy and paste to generate a landing page is: the product's parent company requested you to do this. In their effort to encourage the creation of quality pages that properly reflect the nature of their product they can encourage you to reuse their marketing pitches and their marketing graphics.

If your page is the same (or nearly the same) as a page on another website then the pages are considered to be mirrors of each other. This is bad. Pages that replicate the look and feel of a parent site are said to mirror the parent page. Don't do this.

Another reason that you could find yourself using copy and paste is to take advantage of the success of another reseller. "Hey, their page is making them a ton of money. I think I will copy their page so I can make a ton of money." This creates a mirror page. This is bad. It is bad because you are stealing. It is also bad because you will be caught.

Authentic

Google did not suggest authentic as a descriptor. This is my own invention to cover the special case of bridge (or redirect) pages. A bridge page can be relevant. A bridge page can be original. But they still fail because they are not authentic. There is no real intention to give the visitor anything. A bridge page is just a bridge, a connection, between your ad and the true landing page on the affiliate website. The whole purpose of the bridge page is to grab visitors from an SERP have them visit your page so that you can then re-link to the affiliate website after including your affiliate identification code as part of the link.

Redirect pages are another form of bridge page. The same type of page with a name that may be more familiar to some. A redirect page's sole purpose is to redirect traffic to a parent (affiliate) company.

Bridge pages are the worst. A bridge page is not really even a page.

In Part 2 of this article we shall address Transparency.
In the Part #3 of this article we discuss the effect of navigation on the quality of a visitor's experience.

Landing Page Quality -- A close look Part #2

In Part #1 of this article we discussed the contribution of "relevant, original, (and authentic) content" to the quality of a landing page. In this (the second part) we shall address the role of transparency.

2. Transparency

This is a totally different type of consideration. Now we move past consideration of content into considerations of relationship. You have a relationship with your visitor. This relationship may be brief. This relationship is long-distance. But you have a relationship. And as will all relationships transparency is important.

Anyone that you relate to wants to know three basic things:

1. Who are you?
2. What if anything are you doing to me?
3. What will you do with any personal information I give you?

In terms of a business interaction through a web page these basic concerns are phrased differently:

1. What is the nature of your business
2. Does your site do anything to a visitor's computer
3. How does the site intend to use a visitor's personal information

Below are some hints on how to maximize your transparency in regard to the above mentioned points.

Who are you? -- the nature of your business

Don't pretend to be anything other than you are. If you are a reseller of a product be open and clear about that. In fact, you can use this as a gimmick to create relevant and original content on your web page. If you are a user of the product, discuss that -- give your perspective and recommendation as a fellow user. If you are not a user of the product but are a reseller with unique information gathered from selling and serving customers that do use the product, discuss that -- give your perspective and recommendation based on your experience with others that have used the product. Whoever, or whatever, you are embrace that and use it as your foundation for establishing a successful relationship with a new visitor.

We all know that not all the content on our web pages is ours. Be open and honest about that -- i.e. be transparent. If you have sponsored links on your page, present them in such a fashion that visitors can tell the difference between what is yours and what is not. If you are using rss feeds or other widgets to embed content on your website be open and honest about that. Basically if you did not cook the corn bread don't accept the praise as if it was your dish.

Another place where transparency is very important is in pricing and delivery. Do not try to get all cagey when it comes to the "Buy Now" button. Be clear, open, and honest about what the cost will be, what the customer will receive, and when they will receive it -- should they happen to click the "buy it now" button. You can get as tricky as you like -- but don't expect a high quality rating for the such a page.

Something that I personally strongly object to is deceptive (non-transparent) insertion of recurring (subscription) billing. Twice I have found myself in the situation where the money I was paying in Paypal turned out to not be a one-time-only payment. Instead I found an agreement page for scheduling a subscription service. I instantly canceled the transaction and put the company on the "don't visit those scum sucking s.o.b.s ever again" list. Was this true trickier on their part, an oversight in content, or shear incompetence? I will never know because I have no plans of ever visiting that website again.

If a site does offer products that require recurrent billing or subscriptions that is okay. This is a valid type of product. Just be clear, open and honest. Put the necessary information in an obvious location on the page where a typical visitor will find it and be sure to include this information inline with the purchase form.

Another form of open and honest falls under the category of "opt-in". If the visitor is opting in to any kind of mailing list or other form of participation as an adjunct to getting a product you must use a clearly obvious opt-in checkbox on the form.

What if anything are you doing to me? -- Your site's interaction with a visitor's computer.

This consideration is pretty simple and is not actually relevant to normal honest webmasters. If you don't know what this is about, you probably are not and cannot do whatever it is I'm referring to here. In order to do stuff to a visitor's computer you must do it intentionally. What kind of stuff? Well, how about inserting a virus in their computer for one. There are websites that infect visitors with a virus. This is bad and google will give them a bad page ranking. I suppose websites that intentionally infect computers with viruses are not much concerned about page rankings. Not the best example, but it is the category of behavior we are talking about.

A less obvious form of intrusion is something like changing a visitor's home page to become your website. Or, perhaps automatically inserting a bookmark for your web page on the visitor's computer. These are not as bad as infesting their computer with a virus -- but they are still a form of intrusion.

There are other forms of intrusion (such as changing a visitor's back button behavior) that rely upon javascript. If you do not know what javascript is, don't worry about accidentally doing any of this. If you do program in javascript, then it would be a good idea to consider every now and then about what, if any, changers you are making to the visitor's computer or browser settings.

What will you do with any personal information I give you? -- how you intend to use a visitor's personal information

Let's start by following the personal information golden rule: only request the personal information required to fulfill whatever service you are providing.

This means that if you do not need to ship a product to a visitor, then you do not need their mailing address.

This means that if you do not need to be able to phone a visitor, then you do not need their phone number.

Do you start to see the pattern? If you do not need the info do not request it. Any other reason for requesting additional information would be for data mining.

There are occasions where data mining can be important. For example, you may be very interested in how a customer was referred to your product. If this is the case, feel free to ask "How did you hear about our product?" in whatever contact form you wish. However,... however, be very clear in your privacy policy statement exactly how you intend to use this information. For example, do you intend to store the referral information as part of the customer's record -- tagged to the customer. Or, do you plan on just keeping a running count of referral sources. Whatever you do be transparent -- be clear, be open, be honest.

With the advent of such services as Facebook, it has become increasing necessary to give visitors (members) clear and easy methods to control how their information is used and shared. Recently Facebook was forced to provide more detailed access to information sharing -- so that some information could be shared while protecting other information. This is a growing area of concern for many.

In the Part #3 of this article we discuss the effect of navigation on the quality of a visitor's experience.

Landing Page Quality -- A close look Part #3

In Part #1 of this article we discussed the contribution of "relevant, original, (and authentic) content" to the quality of a landing page.

In Part #2 of this article we discussed the contribution of "transparency" to the quality of a landing page. In this (the third part) we shall address the role of navigation .

3. Navigability

Why does navigability enter into the calculation of page ranking?  Or in other words, how does navigability enter into the question of page quality?

The answer to this lies in the question of "quality of experience" for the visitor. If a website has bad navigation, then a visitor's experience of that website will be diminished. Remember all of this stems from Google's interest in the quality of experience for visitors to their SERP (search engine results page). If clicking on an ad leads to a page which makes the visitor regret clicking on the ad in the first place, that reflects badly on Google. And more importantly, if visitors have a bad experience clicking on ad buttons they will be less likely to click on future ad buttons. And, dear reader, is Google being paid per view or per click?

I'm really not as cynical as the above may sound. I am more of a realist. A cynic has an attitude attached to the observation. I'm just making the observation. Good experience leads to repetition of that action that lead to that experience. Bad experience leads to avoidance of whatever action lead to the experience. Google wants people to click on ads, so they want the landing pages those ads lead to to yield a good experience for the visitors. Simple math.

In this case we are looking at the role of navigation in the creation of a positive user experience.

Why is navigation so important? Why does it have so much impact? The reason is simple once you think about it: navigation is typically the only means the visitor has to actively interact with your website.

Think about it, what is available for the visit to do on your website. They can look, read, scroll, and click things. Scrolling gives the reader some sense of control and interaction with your website. But, scrolling is something that is usually handled automatically by the browser. So mostly you are safe in this regard. But heed my warning, if you find some new way to mess around with the natural order of things and change how your page scrolls you can enter into whole new worlds of visitor dissatisfaction.

So basically clicking on links is pretty much the only means that your average visitor can interact with the average web page.

Do you like feeling out of control, at a loss, helpless, confused, and at the mercy of a heartless or idiotic system? No. We get enough of that at home, work, and from our government. So when we are browsing it would be nice to have a navigation experience that doesn't lead to the above mentioned (less than ideal) experience.

So what can you do to help provide a quality user experience when it comes to navigation of your website.

• Provide a short and easy path.
• Make sure that whenever a user clicks on a link that click action leads to fast response -- in this case quick load of the web page.

Provide a short and easy path.

No body likes to click and click and click in order to drive down a page hierarchy on an endless hunt for the final destination page. K.I.S.S. -- Keep it simple, stupid.

Optimize Load Time

Load time effect user experience in several ways. First of all there is the obvious aspect of not wanting to wait for a page to load. No one likes this. A second and less obvious aspect of load time involves the communication cycle between the user and the computer/internet. Click and load is the basis of a simple communication cycle between a user and the internet. I click something happens. But when does that something happen. If the time delay between click and something happening is too long -- I am not happy.  Or, in other words, the longer the delay between click and load the lower the quality of my experience.

There is more than one delay in this click and load thing.

1. Confirmation that my click is doing something.
2. Start of page load.
3. Mostly loaded.
4. Page load finished.

Confirmation that my click is doing something

When I click I want to see an instantaneous response that tells me the click did something. Unless you use javascript, this part is almost always instantaneous. If you use javascript it is possible to create a situation in which a click leads either to no response or to delayed response (while the javascript is thinking.) This is bad.

Start of page load

Start is page load is defined (by me) as the moment that some words first appear on the browser screen.

Mostly loaded

Mostly loaded to me is defined as that moment when the text content has been loaded and the style sheet cosmetic arrangement of the page has occurred.  At this point the only remaining elements to download should be images and other multimedia.

Page load finished

This is the moment when all of the graphics are available for viewing and the visitor can start scrolling and poking around the page. Ideally you want the page to finish loading as quickly as possible. This after all is the end result the visitor is looking for.

The following elements contribute to the above mentioned delays. I shall address this in a separate article (or series of articles.)

• State of the internet
• User connectivity.
• Database load
• Layout
• Javascript
• Widgets and feeds
• Image sizes

SEO #5a: Quality Content

In short: quality matters and clarity is the key to quality. Basically clarity works.

When we think of quality content we tend to think of aspects such as:

• writing style
• interesting
• informative
• engaging
• unique
• spelling, grammar, punctuation
• you know..... the traditional measures of quality.

To get a deeper look at the quality of your page content, consider the following: when a visitor looks at your page are the following key points clear:

• What is the purpose of your website?
• What is the purpose of the current page?
• What is special about your site and this page in particular?
• What other products, features, or services do you offer?
• How can I find these other products, features, or services?
• Is it clear what happens when the user clicks on something?
• Who is behind the website? In other words, who are you?
• What information (if any) do you collect?
• What do you do (if anything) with that information?

The last two points are handled by inclusion of a valid link to a privacy statement. It is not required to explain on each and every page your privacy policy -- at least not in words.

Before we discuss the next thing I'd like to bring to your attention, let's have you do a little experiment. This experiment will require access to about 15 people -- three groups of five.

For this experiment you will divide the 15 people into three groups of five.

Have the first group of five people look at three pages on your website. Give them 60 seconds to study each page. Immediately after the 60 seconds have elapsed have them answer the following questions.

• What is the website about?
• What does this web page offer?
• What products, features, or services are offered on the page?

After someone has studied 3 pages in this fashion ask them the following:

• Would you trust this company enough to make a purchase -- assuming you wanted the product?
• Would you be interested in finding out more about this company?
• Would you recommend to any friends that they take a peek at this website?

Have the second group of five do the same thing -- but this time give them only 15 seconds to study a page.

Have the third group of five repeat the above, with only 5 seconds.

These will be the 60 second, 15 second, and 5 second groups.

The 5 second group is gathering their impression about the website based almost entirely on the look and feel of the site. They don't have enough time to read fine print. Detail will elude them. So whatever impression they come away with will be based on that all important "first impression."

More about this later.

Webdesign Advice From Paypal -- 5 Design Elements that Can Boost Sales

Why is Paypal giving web page design & SEO advice?

That's right. Paypal has made it their business to provide web page design & SEO advice.
Use this link to check out their article.

So, why do you think Paypal would involve themselves? What is their gain? Simple. Paypal makes money processing orders -- a few percentage points on every sale a merchant processes through the Paypal system. So, it is simple math.

The more sales a web page generates the more money Paypal makes. So, the quality and functionality of a web page is of intimate concern to Paypal.

Admittedly, the appearance of being helpful can be of benefit to Paypal. I'm sure the marketing boys and girls are happy to use this to enhance the company image. However, the fact of being helpful is of even greater value to the bottom line. So I trust that they did not dredge up miscellaneous waffle to parade in front of webmasters. I believe Paypal either paid for the best advice they could find, or turned an in-house team loose on the challenge of finding their five design element suggestions.

Below you'll find Paypal's five points with a few comments from myself.

5 Design Elements that Can Boost Sales

1. Do make calls-to-action obvious

Make your shopping cart link easy to find on a page. Use contrasting and/or bold colors to call attention to CTAs, which allows them to stand apart from other elements and get noticed.

As with all good suggestions, this seems obvious when it is brought to our attention. Of course you want to have your call to action visually distinct from the general hubbub of your page. You want your call to action to stand out and either scream "here I am" or at least respectfully declare in a louder voice "give me a look."

Notice the suggestion to use contrasting and/or bold colors and the absence of a suggestion to use a different font face. Too many web designers use too many fonts in an effort to establish variety on the page. This is not a good idea. Is much better to use color, font-weight, and font-size.

2. Do use an action color for buttons.

People respond differently to different colors. Cool colors like blue and green have a calming effect. Warm colors like red and orange inspire passion and impulsive actions. Using red (or other warm colors) for your "add to cart" buttons will help increase clicks on those buttons.

The existence of action colors is something that you may or may not already be familiar with. Yes, there are colors that tend to elicit (draw forth) certain reactions. These action colors are partially determined by heritage, and they are partially determined by environment. That means that the effect these colors have can be attributed to a combination of how we are built and how we are trained. Thus it is possible that in some future warm colors could be replaced as the key action colors. Who knows with the massive fascination with Green This and Green That, it could become an action color.

At the moment, my money is still on warm colors as the action color of choice. And the fact that Paypal (or whatever high priced consultant they hired) agrees supports my own observations.

3. Do use the principle of proximity to group related items.

For clarity, place descriptions and buttons near the products they're associated with. Make sure each product, description, and button group is separated from other groups in some way to avoid confusion.

Read point 3, then point 4, then point 3, then point 4, then point 3, then point 4. Do this until it really sinks in. These two points are totally linked. You want a product image, description and call to action ("buy now" button) for each product. AND, you want them visually distinct on your page so that any half-witted, over-stressed, in a hurry, no time to study, gotta get in and get out quick, browser can instantly discern which piece of real estate on your page contains the image, description and buy me button for the product they are interested in.

4. Do control the flow in your design.

Show your product image, then your product description, and then your "buy now" button. Organize design elements to follow the buying process that goes through the customer's mind.

Actually, to be honest, I'm not a 100% sold on the necessity for the ordering. I accept 100% the need to have all three of these elements grouped into a single piece of web page real estate. But, I believe given proper grouping it is possible to put the "buy now" button near the product name/title.

Oh, perhaps this would be a good place to mention my own modification of the above law of three (image, description, cta). For clarity's sake I divide this into image, product name (or title), description, call to action.

A small modification I grant you. But an important one. Each product really does deserve its own name or title. And, as a design element it should be considered separately from the description. It will typically have a different font-size, color, or font-weight. Also, in my opinion, you will want to use h2 or h3 for the product name.

5. Do use whitespace.

Allow your design to breathe. Whitespace helps elements on a page get noticed, communicated the desire action to users. Whitespace also improves usability, is aesthetically pleasing, and increases comprehension.

Why would Paypal mention the use of whitespace? Well, it is nice to have 5 Design Elements that Can Boost Sales rather than 4 Design Elements that Can Boost Sales. Five is a better number than 4. But, setting aside that trifle of  marketing cynicism, I think there is something much more significant being said by the above point #5. There are far too many pages that fail when it comes to proper use of whitespace.

A suggestion to use whitespace is necessary because people are not using it -- or at least not using it well enough. I'm sure we are all guilty to one degree or another.

There are far too many pages with failed usability because of insufficient whitespace. There are far too many pages that look like dog do because of improper use of whitespace.

And as for comprehension, when is the last time you asked yourself, "Hmmm, I wonder how comprehensible my page is?" I think more than adjustment of whitespace might be required here. However, proper use of whitespace is a good place to start.

In Closing

I'm not suggesting that Paypal actually cares about you and your website. They may, or they may not. However, they definitely care about their bottom line. And, since they make money from your sales you can bet they are motivated to do whatever is possible to enhance your sales and their bottom line.

SEO Must #4: Fix 404s, Spell Check, and Validate

There are many other, perhaps more important, aspects of SEO. However, there is no time better than the present to make sure your website is free from missing pages and that it has clean html and css.

Never forget, google's fundamental aim is to provide search results pointing to quality content that is on target with the posted search query.

So let's look at a few things that will help with the "quality" part.

Fix Missing Pages & Broken Links

404s (missing pages) are a bad thing. They are disappointing, and generally are to be avoided. One way that google has of helping people avoid 404s is to lower the page ranking of web pages found on sites with an abundance of 404s. Why should google put your site on the first page of search results when there is a good chance that the page is missing?

Spell Check Your Pages

Why should google be sticking their nose into the business of spelling and other such content issues? Hey, remember that part about providing search results leading to quality content. Well, google is trying many things in order to identify quality content. I don't believe they have spelling as part of their algorithm at the moment. But, what if one of the misspelled words is a keyword? No good for you. Also the kind of attention/effort that goes into spell check and cleaning the written content is helpful for noticing other aspects of the page that would benefit from correction.

Sometimes the best approach is from the side. Reading your content for spelling and grammar errors also gives you an opportunity to notice old prices, bland or uninspiring ad copy -- any number of items that would benefit from correction.

Also, people are more likely to create links to your pages if they are not put off by obvious typos and sloppy content. And remember, links to your site count a great deal toward the page ranking.

Validation

I use the W3.org HTML Validator and the W3.org CSS Validator. There are others. Some may be far superior. I just have developed a habit of using these.

Why validate? Because, broken html and broken css will result in broken pages. There is a thing called cross-browser compatibility. Just because Firefox or Chrome somehow manages to render the tangled mess of html and css that you call a page, does not mean that IE, or Safari, or Opera, or any number of other browsers will. You want your page rendered reasonably well on many different platforms.

Also, the attention needed to fix html and fix css puts you in the right frame of mind for general refinement of your website.

Does food coming from a clean kitchen taste better? Maybe yes, maybe no. But which would you prefer to eat?

SEO Must #3: Get The Description Right

The page description is part of the meta tags found in the <head> of an html page.

<meta name="DESCRIPTION" content="Description goes here">

Now that you have a good list of keywords -- or at least an excellent beginning list -- it is time to work on your page descriptions. There is much that is said about how to write these descriptions. Below is my short list of key principles for generating a description.

1. Make sure the description describes the page content.
2. Use your keywords.
3. Keep the description around 160 characters.
4. Each page should have a unique description.
5. Remember your description is actually an ad.

1. Make sure the description describes the page content.

First and foremost the description needs to describe the page. If this seems pretty obvious, then you are on the right track. Unfortunately, many folks believe the prime purpose of the description is to do something tricky about search engine optimization.

Yes it is true that we want to do SEO. But, that comes second. The first order of business is to make sure the description functions to describe the page.

2. Use your keywords.

Make sure that your description is keyword rich. It is best if the first few words of the description are keywords. Basically make sure that you avail yourself of every opportunity to use keywords that you can -- provided that you don't detract from the functionality of the description as a description.

3. Keep the description around 160 characters.

Apparently it is allowed to have descriptions of pretty much any length. However, if you look at Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page) you will notice that they cut off the description at 160 characters. So that would seem to be to be a nice target length for a description.

Do a few google searches. Look at the results page. Visually appraise the different entries on the page. Count the length of descriptions that you like the length of. Shoot for that length in your description.

4. Each page should have a unique description.

This goes back to googles primary goal of providing search results that point to quality content that is on target with the posted search query.

When viewing the search results the primary three pieces of information provided to the searcher are your page url, the page title, and the page description. Searchers will use your page descriptions in order to determine which of your pages are most on target with their search query.

So make the descriptions unique. The pages are unique aren't they? LoL gotcha. In case, you didn't know it, you will be penalized for duplicating content on your pages. How much of a penalty is open for discussion. But google has definitely gone on record saying they don't like. This will usually translate into reduction in page ranking.

5. Remember your description is actually an ad.

As mentioned above, your description will appear in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Thus, there will come a moment when the description for your page will appear alongside the descriptions of several other pages. In this moment you are competing for the attention of the searcher. So be seductive. Put some punch and wow in the description.

Conclusions

If you have genuine content, the above rules should help you to generate descriptions that serve your pages well.

SEO Must #2e: Expand Your Keyword List

At this point you should have created your keywords list, organized the list, and expanded it. Now it is time to start using this list. In this blog article we shall go over a few things to do, and a few things to not do.

When it comes to using your keywords on web pages, that's a most excellent idea. Just be sure to use them correctly, use them enough, and don't use them too much. Keyword stuffing is a bad thing. Stuff yourself with turkey on Thanksgiving if you insist. But, do not, stuff your pages with keywords -- not even one day a year.

Page Name

In this case, page name means the actual file name or URL that is used to access your page. If possible and reasonable, use keywords in the name. Use the dash (-) separator between the words so that search engines will recognize the separate words -- rather than one humongous oddity. For example golf-art has no ambiguity. But if you remove the dash this word can be read in a few different ways -- whatever gol means :)

Page Title

Use keywords in your title. In fact, the few two or three words in the title should be keywords. The page title I am referring to here is the one found in the <head> of your page.

Page Description

The page description is another prime spot for keywords. First and foremost make sure that your page description actually describes the page -- just make sure to use keywords while doing that. The description is the meta tag found in the <head> of your page.

<h1>Header 1</h1>

Incorporate keywords into the H1 header of your web page.

First Paragraph of Page

The first paragraph visible to search engines should be rich with keywords. The first paragraph that browsers see may not be the same first paragraph that the search engines see. This could easily happen if you have a div that floats to the right of your page. In which case, the first paragraph may end up on the right side of the screen.

First Visible Paragraph of Page

If the first visible paragraph happens to not be the same as the first paragraph that search engines find, then make sure that the first visible paragraph (when viewed by browsers) is rich with keywords as well.

<h2>Header 2</h2>

Incorporate keywords into a few H2 headers on your web page. The H2 headers will typically define separate sub-sections of a page. This gives you an ideal opportunity to incorporate different keywords.

Internal Text Links

When linking from one page of your website to another page of your website use keywords as the anchor text.

External Text Links

When linking to your website from your blog, forum postings, friend's websites, or anywhere other than your own internal website, also use keywords.

Image ALT

When adding images to a web page you should be properly using the image alt. Proper use of the image alt is a little more complex than we can describe in one paragraph here. The point for the moment, is that when entering text for the alt property of images keep your keywords in mind and use them as you are able.

Website Tagline

Your website should have a tagline. That tagline should be keyword rich.

What about keywords meta tag?

You will notice that nothing has been said as yet about the <head> keywords meta tag. That is because search engines still tend to ignore it. They will not penalize you for using it -- if you use it properly. They just tend to ignore it. How does one use the keywords meta-tag properly? Don't include a work in the keyword meta tag for a page unless that word appears on the page. If the word does not appear on the page you could potentially be penalized.

Constructing Pages

You have just spent a good deal of time brainstorming, organizing, expanding, and cleaning your keywords list. Thus, let's take it for given that the keywords on that list are important to you.  If this is the case, then you should have at least one page on your website with a name created from each keyword and/or keyword phrase in your list. If for some reason you are making a one page website, then this would not be the case. However, unless for some reason you are intentionally restraining your website to a single page, then the more the merrier.

As you may know google plays their cards close to the chest -- meaning they do not publish their search engine algorithms. Whatever you have heard about or will hear about search engine algorithms comes from observation, experimentation, conjecture, and perhaps the fantasy of various writers. Some of these writers have suggested that when it comes to pages more is better. The presumption is that the more pages you have on a website the more effort has gone into the website reflecting more intention and perhaps better content. Keep in mind that google is honestly trying to help people find pages with good quality content. Thus all of their algorithms are designed to detect and give higher ranking to pages with good quality content. So for the moment, more pages are a good thing.

So if you are going to be making more pages, make sure to make at least one page for each keyword and/or keyword phrase in your list. If  you find it difficult or impossible to make a page for some of your keywords then perhaps they did not belong on your list in the first place.

Organization of Your Website

As you may recall, during the generation of the keyword list there was an organize process. The organization of keywords that was established during the process is very likely an excellent hint on how your website should be organized.

Social Media

Some social media sites will only allow you to create pages related to your name or the name of your company. However, there are many social media sites that will allow for the creation of auxiliary pages. You should definitely see about nabbing pages created from your keywords. http://www.facebook.com/your-keywords-here would be sweet.

Google Adwords, etc.

When you embark on using google adwords to market your website you will be using your keywords. This might be pretty obvious since you used google adwords in the generation process. However, the "etc" part includes any promotions and marketing for your website. Brochures need to incorporate keywords from your list. Classified ads in the newspaper should draw from your keywords list. Everything you do in relation to marketing your website should be influenced by the keywords list.

If after reading the above suggested ways of utilizing your keywords list you get the feeling that perhaps you should have put more attention in the process, perhaps now is a good time to go back and redo that work.

SEO Must #2d: Expand Your Keyword List

Now that you have created a keywords list and organized the list, it's time to expand the list.

Why expand keywords list?

The objective of expanding of the list is not to make it bigger. The objective is to find keywords and combinations of keywords that you may not have as yet stumbled across.

Tools to expand the keywords list?

The following list will give you some ideas of where to go to expand the keywords list.

• Your Products
• Thesaurus
• Google Search Suggestions
• Google Adwords Tools
• Friends, Family, and Co-Workers

Your Products

If you have not already done so, expand your keyword list by including product names, name of their manufacturers, and perhaps even product numbers. I like to keep these types of keywords in a separate list -- off to the side. I use them in a slightly different fashion during development of the website content and creation of ads. So for the moment, collect them if you have them. But, keep them in a separate list.

Thesaurus

Input keywords, one at a time, into a thesaurus program. For each keyword you will be presented with one or more lists of alternative words. This can be a gold mine of previously overlooked terms.

Google Search Suggestions

Have you noticed that google (depending upon your browser settings) will offer a drop down box with suggestions for a search based on a partially typed work in the input box. If you start typing a keyword into the input box you may find one or more interesting search suggestions offered. Play around with this for a little -- just to see if you get lucky. Don't belabor it.

Google Adwords Tools

Here you will find a wealth of amazing tools for working with keywords.

1. Get a google account (if you don't have on)
2. Sign in with your google account, then select "Adwords" from your "My Account" screen.
3. Sign up for Adwords if required.
4. Access the Adwords Tools

The UI (user interface) is a little weird. I think they might be testing different interfaces because one day it will look one way. Another day it will look another way. Here is a link for Google Adwords Tools in case you can't find it. Usually I will find it after a little poking around. It's annoying to me that the tools do not have an entry in the top menu. Perhaps by the time you read this there will be such an entry.
When you find the tools play with them. There are several tools of great utility and value. They are more than a little tricky to understand. Adwords is a deep subject from which you will benefit by studying. But, that study is beyond the scope of this blog article. Google does have quite a bit of help on each topic. Hopefully you can blunder your way through. I would recommend the Keyword Tool (top of the list) as your first stop.

Friends, Family, and Co-Workers

Once again, don't overlook those close to you. Being a stranger does not grant automatic knowledge. And being a family member or friend does not automatically disqualify someone as having potentially valuable input. Admittedly since you've been subject to observing the eating and mating habits of those close to you it is harder to imagine them as knowledgeable.

However, keep in mind you are looking for keywords that the common folk would use to search for your services and products. I think it is eminently possible for family members and friends to be of the common variety.