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.

SEO Must #2c: Organizing Your Keywords

Delete Failed Keywords

Now is the time to look back over your list and remove any keywords that in hindsight you don't believe belong on the list. Be brave, but don't be brutal. Just remove those keywords you honestly believe don't belong. The judgment here should not be based on strength of the keyword. It is appropriateness you are looking for. The reason for not removing keywords based on strength is because in the next blog we will use these keywords to expand our list and find stronger alternatives.

Create Groups

See if the keywords fall into natural groups. If there is more than one group, definitely divide your keywords
list into groups and put the keywords into whichever of the groups they belong. It may happen that some
keywords belong in more than one group -- well, put them into each group it belongs.

Prioritize

Now look at each group and prioritize the list for each group. Put the keywords in order of importance -- most important at the top, least important at the bottom. The importance is measured by your standard. The keywords that you believe to be the more important go at the top of the list.

SEO Must #2b: Brainstorming For Keywords

Brainstorming for keywords is the process of gathering candidates for keywords and keyword phrases. One place to find such keywords is off the top of your head. There are other places you can look for keyword phrases too. Here are a few.

Where to look

• Off the top of your head
• Your website
• Websites of competitors
• Amazon reviews of books related to your content
• Correspondence written to you from readers and/or customers.
• Suggestions from friends

Off the top of your head

This will be one of your easiest and most fruitful places to find keywords -- assuming of course that you are creating a website with content related to something you are familiar with. If you are creating a website on a topic about which you know nothing then skip this section and jump down to "websites of competitors." Otherwise, spend a little quality time with yourself jotting down all the keywords that relate to your websites topic and/or topics.

Your website

If you have an existing website, then definitely mine it for keywords. Read through your pages jotting down words that jump at you. If you want to get more detailed use a word frequency counter. The writewords.org website is designed for writers. I would guess to make um, sure that um, they are um not using um certain um words to um much in their writings. Is a nice tool. You can copy the content from your page and just paste it into the appropriate box. Who knows you might even want to learn a thing or two about writing in general while you are there -- but later. Just bookmark it for now. Keep in mind you are on a keyword hunt.

Websites of competitors

Might as well use this valuable resource to help you locate keywords that you may otherwise not think of. If you don't know who your competitors are, then do a quick google search and go visit them -- it's about time.

Amazon reviews of books/products related to your content

If you know of books and/or products related to your website topic(s), then look on Amazon.The first place to start is on the search results page. Glance at the array of suggested answers to your search, look in the descriptions, jot down any keywords that jump out at you. Next, look at a product page or two. In the review section (toward the bottom of the page) you will find reviews -- some of which are written by real people with real interest in the product. See what keywords they drop in their review.

Correspondence written to you from readers and/or customers.

If you have correspondence from existing readers and/or customers you are in luck. Look to see what they say. "Hey Joe, do you have a blank blank in stock." This tells the keywords that at least one person uses to reference your products. So mine these correspondences.

Suggestions from friends, family, coworkers

Too many people ignore this useful resource. Whether from embarrassment or not wanting to impose, get over it and get on with it. Let these good people help you with your project. Later you are going to ask them to review your website in detail. So there is no time like the present to get them involved -- not just through emotional support, but as part of the team.

How to look

Choose your keywords carefully. Turn up your attention. Bring yourself into present time. And, focus.

Be specific, be direct, be honest. Tricking potential readers to your website is not the way to start a fruitful relationship with someone.

Remember, keywords can be a single word or short phrases. A two or three word combination can be very
effective -- actually essential.

Keep a look out for colloquial terms -- characteristic of or appropriate to ordinary or familiar conversation rather than formal speech or writing; informal. Ordinary and familiar sounds like pretty good idea when hunting up terms that normal folks will use in looking for your content.

Write down every relevant keyword and keyword phrase you find. You will trim the list later. So don't hesitate to include a work or phrase. This is brainstorming -- so don't be too restrictive. You can always delete insignificant keywords later.

Think like a customer or website visitor. Listen like a webmaster, but think like a customer or visitor.

Next to come is Organizing Your Keywords and Expanding Your Keywords.

SEO Must #2a: Know your keywords

Keywords have to be one of the trickier parts of this SEO business. And one of the more neglected.

Why are keywords so important? Because, keywords are used by search engines to facilitate fetching results for an online searches.

There are two basic approaches to dealing with keywords.

• Approach 1 -- ignore keywords entirely. Create your website by generating content without worrying about keywords. Just do whatever it is you do. If you happen to be selling zen meditation productions, just write about your zen meditation products and let the chips fall where they may.
• Approach 2 -- deliberately and voluntarily determine which keywords relate best to your content and will bring in users to view said content.

There is something to be said for the ignore keywords approach. If you don't really know what you are doing the effort to monkey around with keywords might be so off-putting that you give up on the whole idea of doing a website in the first place. In that case it might make sense to just do your website, create the best content you can and worry about keywords later.

But then again there is much to be said for getting it right in the first place. If you have an existing website then it is about time to start the process of getting it right. If you are just starting to build your website, it is definitely worth the time to investigate keywords.

Picking keywords requires combining several factors. Two important factors are:

• Which keywords best represent your website content
• Which keywords do real people use in real searches

Both of the above must be taken into account. If you have a website devoted to finding, curing, or preventing disease in fish then the keywords "piscis" and "morbus" would represent your website content. However, given that most people don't use latin when doing a search, it might be better to use "fish" and "disease" as your keywords.

Your first task it to use your wit and wisdom to make your best guess at a few keyword phrases that will both represent your website and actually be used in real world searches.

After you have a set of best guess keywords, it will be time to poke around in Google's Adword  Tool Kit to refine your keywords.

See SEO Must #2b: Brainstorming For Keywords for the next step in this process.

Why Should I Have A Website?

Recently I was asked by a new client "Why should I have a website?"

This is a good question. But it is not the whole question. To really get at the issue one needs to address all of the following (together and separately)

• What can a website do?
• What is it I do?
• What can a website do for me?
• Is the benefit worth the cost/risk?

One of the things I do is wash my car every week or two. Can my website do this for me? No, not directly. So let's ignore that type of answers when working with the question "What is it I do?"

Another thing I do is try to keep my clients up-to-date on what I'm doing and future presentations they might find of interest. This sounds like something that a website can do. In fact, you could probably name a half dozen ways in which different websites accomplish this exact type of service. So, this looks like a fruitful direction. Even though I would really like some help in getting the car washed -- it just happens to be that websites are better at communication than using soap and water, websites don't have opposable thumbs.

Below is a sample list of what a website can do.

• Advertising -- stand alone or as an extension of other campaigns (radio, tv, press, etc)
• Announcements
• Answer common questions for you
• Art Exhibit -- show your art in a public forum
• Appointments -- let folks schedule service calls and/or meetings
• Biography -- inform people about yourself
• Bookmarks -- store your book marks in a public, or semi-private, or private ventue.
• Branding -- increase public awareness and identification of you and/or your service and/or product
• Build credibility
• Collaborate with others -- on a book project or other venture
• Community -- establish a virtual community to interact with others
• Consolidate -- bring related but desparate content under one roof to highlight the connection.
• Contact Information
• Coordinate activities -- some of the original flash gatherings were communicated through website.
• Customer Service
• Demo tape -- let people listen to your music
• Diary -- many blogs are of this exact sort
• Direct Sales - generate money through direct sales
• E-Commerce -- take credit card information directly
• Educate -- students, customers, friends, family, and potential customers
• Forum -- provide a place for people to meet and talk on a certain issue
• Gather customers
• Generate Contacts
• Globalization -- sell outside your area of direct contact
• Image -- enhance company's image
• Information -- present information such as "Warning Signs of a Stroke"
• Links -- publishing a list of related links
• Map - provide directions to your location
• News -- deliver news/information on topics
• Point of Presence -- establish an internet presence
• Portal
• Position yourself in marketplace
• Product fact sheets
• Profile - Give folks an impression/feel for you
• Prospect for new clients
• Provide a service
• Public Relations -- offer company information and public impression
• Publishing -- either self-publishing or for others
• Qualify prospects
• Referrals -- direct folks to distributors and retailers of your product
• Research
• Review
• RFP -- request of proposals
• Sales -- a website can support each of the main phases of a sales process.
• Schedule Events
• Sell a product
• Soap Box -- websites can provide a place to rant and spew forth with one's opinions
• Tell your story
• Trademark -- A website can be used with trademark office to demonstrate useage.

The above list is fairly complete, yet still a partial list. Every day someone finds a new way to carry what they are doing in life onto the web through one website or another.

Even though we have the above sample list of what a website can do for you, it is still your task to go directly to the source (yourself) and answer the question: "What is it I do?" along with the companion question "Can I get a website to do that for me?"

Your alternative to performing this bit of homework is to let some snake oil salesman dangle promises of what a website can do for you in front of your eyes until there is a "hit". After which you will find yourself suddenly motivated to get a website to do exactly that.

You should never go grocery shopping hungry. You should never enter into a conversation about getting a website until you know what you would like it to do. A webmaster might know html and css a heck of a lot better than you. But, you know your business.

Come to a meeting with your webmaster as an equal. The way to do that is for you to know your business and what you want. The webmaster has the job of knowing his business. And you have the job of knowing your business.

Given a "wish list" of what you would like your website to do, I could tell you pretty quickly what the cost and projected benefit will be. Armed with this information you will be in a great position to make decisions about how you would like to start your website, and your first milestones of functionality.

SEO Must #1: Get the title right.

The title of you web page is found in the <head> of the document HTML.

The <head> contains several important fields of importance to your SEO. The one we are speaking about today is the <title>.

The title will appear at the top left of the browser -- typically next to the program icon. In Microsoft Windows that is the blue bar at the top of program windows. Most users never see this area of the screen. They are busy concentrating on the content found in the body of the page.

 Another place the title will appear is on tab headers -- if the browser allows for tabbed browsing. Tabbed browsing is where you can open several pages at the same time -- each one in its own tab. When this occurrs the first part of each page's title appears as the identifying text in the page's tab.

In the image above, you can see the at the top left the title of the web page I have open at the moment (my Blogger Create Post window). Then near the bottom of the graphic you can see two tabs. One of the tabs (to the left) is for this same page. The tab next to it is my Blogger Dashboard. This is how it looks in Firefox 3.6 on WinXP. The details will vary in different browsers -- but the general idea should remain the same.

Another place the title will appear is on toolbar icons typically found at the bottom of the screen when you have multiple programs running -- provided you are using a standard windows installation. This will look different in Mac and Linux. But still, in a multi-tasking environment the title of your web page will be used in some fashion to label the icon leading back to the application showing your page.

For SEO purposes the most important place that your title will appear is in search results. Here is the big duh of SEO. Whenever a user does a search engine search the results include your title.

Above are the google search results for "morphotony" -- meaning "to become bored with change  ( See "Morphotony A Little Of The Story" for a little history on this little adventure.)

If you study the above image a little, you can see that in google's search results the title is used for the link text, and is the top of the listing.


I ask you: does the search results page contain just one result or many? It contains many of course. So when your page appears in the search engine results you are competing with every other result appearing on the same page. Hence, your title needs to give the user enough information so that he or she can determine whether or not your page is a better match for the content they are looking for.

Please note, (turn up your attention) I did not say that your title needs to help attract the user to your web page. Rather, I said your title needs to help the user determine if your pages is the one they are looking for.

Herein lies a major difference in attitude and headset. One headset is: "I am doing my best to trick, hoodwink, and generally bamboozle readers into coming to my pages." Another headset is: "I have content that will be of interest to the right audience -- if only they can find it -- hence I need to do my best to quickly and efficiently let that audience know what I have so they can decide if they wish to visit my pages."

Very different approaches. Even if you are desperate for traffic -- I mean really, really desperate for the traffic -- you still need to use the second approach.

The true secret to SEO is to provide good content, then manipulate things such as title so that people can quickly and efficiently find your content -- provided it is what they are looking for.

So given all of the above, what is the general rule for your titles?

Every page on your website needs a unique and accurate title. 

And, because some uses for the title will truncate the title after a few characters make sure that the beginning of the title contains some of the uniqueness.

How Do You Know If Your Website Is Working?

After you have worked out (to your satisfaction) exactly what it is you want your website to accomplish, then how do you tell if it is working? Or, in other words, how will you measure success?

Let's suppose that what you really want from your website is to increase sales and find new sales leads.

If you have set a goal for your website to increase sales, then you must implement some method of tracking sales coming from the website.

If you have set a goal for your website to find new sales leads, then you must implement some method of knowing the source of sales leads.

Basically, you need analytics. If you know that you were getting 20 sales a day prior to adding the new product catalog and now you are getting 30 sales a day, then you can demonstrate an increase of 50%.

If you know that marketing was receiving 50 inquiries a week before the website and now they are receiving 150 inquiries a week, then you have 300% increase in new leads.

If you have no method of tracking sales or of counting new sales leads, then you have no method of determining changes in stats.

This seems very obvious. But until you sit down to actualize the process it may escape your notice that the  current invoicing system doesn't have a data field for source. Or, you may not discover that it will become necessary to expand your reporting software to sort on sales source. And, it is not that impossible to imagine   your sales people don't even collect information about where new leads are coming from. They could be so happy to have a new lead they don't even bother with "where did you hear about us."

All of the above you most likely are very familiar with, and should not need to be told. The part that may have escaped your attention is the importance of going through this process as early in the website design as possible. The reason is: your webmaster may need to revise the structure of the site to facilitate tracking of your goals.

What do you hope to accomplish by having a website?

That is a question that should be asked by every website owner -- maybe not in that form. But it still needs to be asked. Other versions of this question could be:

• Why Do You Want A Website?
• What do you want your website to do for you?
• What do  you think a website can do for you?
• How will you measure success of your website?
• What changes in your life (or business) do you expect after getting a website?
• If you don't do this website how will that change your situation?

The above questions are more or less the same. However, like the five blind men feeling an elephant -- each question will give a different perspective on the same animal. In this case that animal is the expectations you have for your website.

Those expectations can be reasonable or they can be totally unreasonable. That is not the point. Before you can even begin to assess the appropriateness of an expectation you really need to know what the expectations are.

These expectations for your website are very important. If you can confess to your web designer what it is you want the website to do you will make life and the development of your website so much easier.

Armed with knowledge of your expectations the web designer might suggest splitting your proposed website into two or more smaller websites. How could this be? Well, let's suppose your expectations for your website are to establish better customer relations, support your sales staff in their marketing campaigns and explore your family genealogy.


An odd combination of expectations for a single website. But very valid expectations for two or more websites. One website could be created devoted to the family genealogy. Another website could be created to handle the customer support with a sub-domain devoted to sales staff support. Or, perhaps you could benefit from three separate websites -- two public domains and one running on an intranet devoted to staff issues.

Each of the above goals (or expectations) were equally valid. However, it could be very difficult to design one website to do all of the above. Thrusting personal and family topics into a business website is just a bad idea -- unless of course you are in the business of genealogy. The language and topic appropriate to a frank and open discussion with your sales staff might be a little off-putting to your customers. Or, perhaps not. Depending on the nature of your business, you could very easily use public communications to sales staff as a back-door method of speaking to customers about topics that might be more difficult straight on.

There is no single solution. However, until you confess your expectations for your website it is very difficult to even start the process of getting down to it.

Optimize Communication With Your Webmaster

Get Maximum Results By Optimizing Communication With Your Webmaster

Seven Simple Steps that will increase effectiveness of website development and decrease costs by optimizing communication with your webmaster.

• Have a List
• Ask For What You Want
• Email Confirmation of Phone Conversations
• Single Topic Emails
• Expect Confirmation
• Expect Milestone Deliveries
• Freely Confess

These hints for better communication were not invented just now.
I expect you may already be very familiar with many of these suggestions. They are just being stuffed into one common location for perusal's sake. Admittedly this is not a complete list. But these should get you headed in the right direction.

Have a List

Lists are wonderful -- Christmas lists, todo lists, shopping lists, lists of all types. They are great
tools. If you are preparing for a phone conference with your webmaster create a list of points you wish to
cover. This list can include points that must be discussed today, and also include points that just need to be
discussed at some point -- not necessarily today.

If you have friends, family and/or staff doing usability testing of your new website collect their observations
into a list. By having a list you can check off items as they are covered and make certain to not become distracted by topics of the moment. Seems obvious, but I really could have used such a list last week when speaking to my tax accountant. These recommendations come from a combination of things we have benefited from doing *and* from things we really wish we had done.

Ask For What You Want

Admittedly, it is not always possible to know what you want.
But if you do know what you want, then ask for it. Don't be bashful. Do not think that the current
status quo is the only way it can be. Don't fall into the "good enough, we'll wait and see."
The current status of a project is simply the current status of a project.
If you suddenly decide that you really want the background
for the site to be black not white, ask. If you realize part way into the project that
you need more in the way of social media integration, then ask for it. Problems do not improve with age.
The sooner you communcate the better. This is after all your web design project. The webmaster just
happens to be someone skillful enough in html, css and other programming to help you with your website.

Email Confirmation of Phone Conversations

After a phone confersation email the webmaster with your understanding what transpired. Include requests for
changes, specification of additions, and perhaps acknowledgments of points that were completed.
This type of email confirmation does not need to be massive or ultra detailed. Just include enough detail
to confirm whatever the specifics were.

Who knows... after sending such an email you might get a reply such as: "Thanks so much for the heads up,
I thought we discussed dropping the one thing and doing the other thing instead."
The fewer the number of hours your webmaster works in the wrong direction the better for all concerned.

Single Topic Emails

Whenever possible dedicate each email to just one topic or a set of closely aligned topics.
For example, if you have several graphic issues to discuss in addition to a pile of content corrections,
write two separate emails. In one email address the various graphic image issues. In the other email enumerate the various content modifications you want done.
Why? Because, graphic manipulation and content correction are different types of activities. When
a webmaster is working on graphics they will tend to continue working on graphics until all known graphic
issues are handled. And, when a webmaster is making content corrections, he (or she) will continue
making content edits until they are complete.

So, if you send the instructions in two separate emails the webmaster can break your job into two
separate work sessions without fear of letting anything fall between the cracks. And, they can hit the
email reply button to acknowledge completion of all items in an email. This type of focus has many benefits. Not the least of which is ease of tracking completed and open items.

Expect Confirmation

Make it clear to your webmaster that you expect confirmation on each aspect of your work together.
If you give him or her a list of todo items for the website, expect one email confirming that your requests
have been received and understood and a separate email confirming completion. This may seem like too much
communication. But, it can be so invaluable for detecting lost emails and misunderstandings. The savings
in time and confusion are well worth the few extra clicks.

Expect Milestone Deliveries

I'm a big believer in Agile Programming -- basically reviewing results periodically during development
so that adjustments can be made when changing status of the project suggests them. It makes a
world of sense to have your webmaster design and present a rough template of your pages before
spending hours or days creating those pages. Let the webmaster use latin gibberish to fill in
paragraphs and clip-art as placeholders for grahics. In this way you can see where the page is going,
and make adjustments before a dozen pages have been created based on a bad design. Granted no web page is carved in stone. Design can be adjusted quite easily. But it will still cost time to move paragraphs around.
It would be silly to have a printer produce 10,000 brouchures before you have a chance to review and approve and proof. And typically you will be shown a mockup before the printer invests time in typesetting.
Use everything you know from standard business practices.

Other types of milestones might be related to functionality. For example, it could be useful to
view a slideshow widget in basic operation before having it fully programmed. Basically make sure you are
in the loop and get to see what is happening in smaller chunks so that you can change directions
when your newly educated vision dictates.

Freely Confess

Everyone runs into speed bumps and even road blocks. If you have tasks on your plate that you are
finding difficult or impossible to complete, then tell the webmaster. For example: "Just wanted to let you know
that I am not going to be able to deliver the graphics in a timely manner. I just can't find the right program
to convert the tiff files to jpgs." The webmaster upon hearing this should instantly reply: "Not a probem at all
just send me the tiff files and I will convert them. Will just take a few minutes.
Or perhaps you can't find the sales brouchure from last falls marketing campaign. Tell the webmaster: "Just letting you know it may be a week or two before I can get you that brouchre we discussed." At this point the webmaster may reply: "Perfectly fine. I was hoping to use the brouchure as a way to develop an appreciation for your standard look and feel. But after last weeks meeting I think I have everything I need."
Or, perhaps the webmaster will reply: "You idiot how can you expect me to do this project without that." This will tell you two very important things. 1) It is important to find that thing (whatever it is) and 2) You need to get a new  webmaster that has more respect and is a little more flexible and creative.

How often should I post my blog?

That was my question. How often should one post to a blog? What is the recommended frequency. So, I went to google (still prefer google over ask, bing, yahoo, and all the rest). In google I did a simple search on the expression "How often should I post my blog?"

One (less than helpful) article suggested not posting too much and not posting too little. I kinda think that bloglet was posted to meet some daily quota.

Another article suggested the following pattern:

• 3-5 times a day for your super bloggers
• 1 (once) a day for good steady growth of your blog
• 2-3 times a week if you are serious at all
• less than 2-3 times a week for someone that is just playing around (i.e. not serious about traffic)

I didn't see any listing for once every couple months.

So, until further notice, based on the dozen or so articles I've looked at I think trying for once a day with a few days missed because of god only knows what interruptions will be a good plan.

Okay, now let's see how that goes......

Google Is Sincere

Or, at least they intend to be sincere

"About What" you ask? Here I am referring to the following comment found on their Webmaster's Guidelines page.

Quote: "Google's goal is to provide users with the most relevant results and a great user experience."

"That's nice" you say, "But what does this have to do with me or anything else for that matter?"

Here's the deal. There is much said about Search Engine Optimization. And, there are many, many folks out there trying to make a buck by either swindling you or serving you in the area of SEO.

Again you say, "That's nice... But what does this have to do with me or anything else for that matter?"

Well, 90% of all search engine optimization falls under the category of "Do whatever it takes to give those readers of your webpage a quality experience."

That means,

• provide good content
• make sure the page html is valid
• test your links
• keep the page fast
• organize your site well
• make sure you contribute something new

Basically be sincere about your own desire to provider users with a rich enjoyable and rewarding experience when they visit your website.

To quote further from Google: "Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit." (the bold is my subtle way of making sure you caught that part. Google is actually striving to create search engine algorithms that will reward webmasters that give good content.

The shysters and tricky loop-hole exploiters will win in the short run. But if you are building your website for the long run concentrate on content first. You will do better.

However,..... (note there is a however here) there are very specific recommended actions that go beyond anything you would normally do when creating just content.

Here's an example: "Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it." This is not something you would normally do when just writing content for your own webpage. At this point you are being recommended to stop, think about what some stranger might type into a search window when looking for your website. Then, deliberately insert those keywords into your webpages. This is an artificial, contrived action that is specifically designed to increase the chances of a stranger finding your webpage. This is not only allowed, it is specifically recommended.

So, first things first: create great content. Then second things second: take those steps necessary to make sure strangers have the best opportunity of finding your great content.

SEO's Dirty Little Secret

Poking around the web looking into the basics of SEO (search engine optimization) you'll soon discover many articles professing to give the basics of SEO. After reading a few of these page you should soon notice something interesting, they all cover the same basic points AND they cover the same basic points in the same order.

If you know how to do a little behind the scenes prodding, you'll discovered that Google has published a pdf file called Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. This is the source of most if not all of the so-called basic SEO guides on the web.
Do yourself a favor. Before doing any general research on SEO read the Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. Since they are the original source of this document you can get it straight from the horse's mouth -- so to speak. And, when you do further research you will be better prepared to identify new information.