In my last article I published a list of “TEN DO’s” from the 1998 edition of “Web Publishing for Dummies”, today we review ten things the authors thought you should NOT do. You might be surprised, as I was, that all ten are still applicable today.

The great thing about this book (if you ignore references to CompuServe, Prodigy and GeoCities) is that it was written before the search engines moved to the front of everyone’s mind. The information presented is primarily focused on creating a better experience for your visitors, and that is something that we should all be working towards.

Take a moment or two and review this list – did I miss anything?

1)  DON’T inadvertently limit your audience

Be careful when designing your pages not to inadvertently limit your audience by using some oddball feature that can’t be read by large numbers of people who use different Web browsers. Stick to basic HTML and Netscape additions through Netscape Navigator Version 2.0. Think twice before using HTML frames, Java programs, or ActiveX programs; many people won’t be won’t be able to access them. Warn people if you u se nonstandard features. Often providing alternative pages, such as text-only versions of your pages, is worthwhile. And including links to the software that works with your pages often pays-off; a link to Netscape if you use Navigator-specific tags, or a link to the RealAudio site if you include RealAudio sound, are two good examples.

This is still true, however, this advice is all-too-often ignored.  While the various browser makers are getter better about following standards, some still offer “extended capabilities” that some developers take advantage of; ignoring the fact that the rest of the world probably will see none of their hard work.  A larger problem though is the remaining site-owners that insist on having their site mostly in flash.  Years ago people were leery of flash because not everyone had it, and the download for the player was large (based on slower connection speeds), eventually though the folks at Adobe managed to get flash pre-installed on almost all machines.  This made some owners and developers think is was OK to go 100% flash.  WRONG. Aside from the SEO issues (that’s a whole other post), there are millions of people that access the web via mobile devices that have no idea what to do with your flash pages.

2)  DON’T abuse netiquette

Abusing the etiquette of the Internet is easy to do and can bring you a lot of negative attention. If you make any serious offenses, your Web service provider’s server may remove your page. And you can even get into legal problems. Avoid dubious practices such as spamming, sending unwanted e-mail to publicize your site; flaming, being fervently disparaging of other people or other Web pages; or putting up offensive material without some kind of warning label. Netiquette is an amorphous and evolving area of online behavior, so you may want to join a Web-oriented newsgroup where you can ask questions before publishing. Also, check out this site for more info: www.fau.edu/rinaldi/netiquette.html (link no longer valid).

Netiquette is as important now as it was then, just the ways people can ignore it have changed.  I used to say “if you wouldn’t do it in front of your mother, don’t do it on the ‘net”.  Then I moved to Texas (it’s hard to believe what people here will do in front of their mothers).  Even if you WOULD do something in front of your mother, the web may not be ready to see it.  Don’t make assumptions about anything – ever.  Ask lots of questions, participate in the community.  After you know what they want – make sure you have at it.

3)  DON’T “borrow” content without asking

Make sure that content you get from the Web to use on your own Web page is labeled as being freely available for reuse, or else get permission to reuse it. Most people are quite happy to help if you ask nicely and credit their work. The best part is that you make some good contacts with other interesting people. You also keep the law on your side.

Stealing is wrong people, no matter what you call it or how you do it.  Aside from the legal and ethical issues, this is what the search engines call “duplicate content” and it’s a good way to get your site dropped from the listings.  You want good content? Create it yourself, or pay somebody to do it for you.

4)  DON’T make your site hard to navigate

Beginners often organize their pages so that their sites are hard to navigate. If your site has more than two levels, you should give some thought as to how your visitors will navigate it. Nobody likes wandering from link to link with no idea what is where or having to follow ten links to find one piece of information. Keep the relationship between your pages simple. Make it clear which links are internal to your own site and which go out to other sites. Provide an index page or a common menu. And make navigation work consistently throughout the site.

Good site structure is becoming even more important, at the 2010 SMXAdvanced conference, one speaker used a slide that said something like “site structure + SEO = BFF”.  This is another case of the engines liking something that is good for users.  Users have always liked it when it’s easy for them to get around a site and find what they want – now the engines like it too.

5)  DON’T abuse graphics and multimedia

The biggest mistake beginning Web authors- and some experts- make is overusing graphics on a page. Keep in mind that not everyone has fast, expensive T1 lines (special high-bandwidths phone lines) wired directly to their home PCs; by far, the greatest majority of folks receive your web page via a more limited 28.8 Kbps modem. Keep your page size, including text and graphics, under 100K. Here are ways that you can do this without sacrificing design flexibility;

• Convert all photos to JPEG format.
• Use simple icons and banners- images without very many colors or complex textures-in FIG format
• Lay out your site to limit the amount of graphics on any one page, adding pages if you need to display more graphics
• Use thumbnail icons to give access to larger images

All those strategies make your pages smaller and faster for others to download. Your Net surfers will thank you.

Raise your hand if you ever connected to the ‘net via a dial-up connection…bonus points if you remember what your “baud rate” was.

Of course page load times are still important, though I can’t imagine a non-mobile page being under 100k anymore.  Once again (you may get sick of hearing this) the search engines are mirroring what users like;  Users want fast load times and the engines have started putting more emphasis on it as well.  Even though most homes now have super-fast connections, and even mobile devices are getting faster, you’ll want to make sure you tweek every ounce of speed out of your site.

6)  DON’T forget ALT tags and text-equivalent menus

Another basic mistake is not using text-equivalent menus forgetting that many people surf the Net without graphics turned on. Who would turn off graphics, you ask?

Many home user turn off graphics to speed things along, downloading only the graphics that they really need. Some people pay a high hourly rate for their Internet access, especially in much of the non-Western world, and turn off graphics to save money on their connection time. Others receive Web pages via e-mail because they don’t have a direct Internet connection. And some people who are visually impaired use the web with software that translates text-but not graphics-into spoken words. Always use the ALT tag to provide text equivalents to your graphics, as described in Chapter 7. Using the ALT tag is easy to do and will make it possible and easier for all these people to access your content.

It’s somewhat disturbing to me that the primary reason (according to the authors) to use alt-tags was for potential cost savings for users and the last reason was for screen readers/visually impaired.  Sadly, it’s only slightly better now.  Most people include alt text in their images because it helps with search engine indexing and the fact that it helps with screen readers is a nice bonus.

7)  DON’T forget the basics

Your site may be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but if you forget to include contact information for yourself in the site, how will you find out that you misspelled “bureaucracy” all over the place? Similarly, you won’t get many orders for your spiffy new widget if you put the ordering information five levels down in a web page called “fruit bat guano statistics-1876.”

More basics:

• Use mailto: tags (HTML tags used to specify your e-mail address; for example, <A HRES=*MAILTO:comments@mysite.com>).
• Include a copyright notice
• Add an index
• give credit where credit is due
• Make the important info prominent. Be ready to revise, based on user feedback.

OK, this literally made me laugh.  You have a book “for dummies” and assume they know the basics and are reminding them not to forget them.  Alrighty then.  How about instead of waiting for a site visitor to tell you about your spelling mistakes, you use this new thing we have now…maybe you’ve heard of it – “spell-check”.  But otherwise, yes – do remember to include your contact info, and make it easy for visitors to use. Do have both a site index and a menu, and for the LAST bullet (which should have been first)… make important content easy to find, and adjust if it’s wrong.

8)  DON’T start by setting up your own Web server

There are several “easy-to-use” Web server packages on the market, and Web server capability is even being built into Macs and PCs. But even with these efforts, buying, setting up, and maintaining a Web server can become the most expensive, most complicated, and most frustrating part of Web publishing. Luckily, you can use the free services described in this book, or paid services, to put your content on someone else’s Web server while you learn the other tricks of the trade. Then, as your knowledge and experience grow, consider setting up your own Web server.

I don’t think most people would even consider this an option any more, thankfully there are lots and lots of powerful and affordable web hosting companies available – I’m a fan of hotgator.com.  There are very few cases where it’s necessary to maintain your own server.  Additionally, the phrase “easy-to-use” should never be used to described any web server package.

9)  DON’T forget the “World” in the World Wide Web

Remember that your Web pages are available and accessible to the whole world. Think a bit about that foreign audience. Is it worthwhile to include some foreign language content? Do you use colloquialisms that may not be understood by your foreign Net surfers? How do your pages look to your overseas colleagues who view them through the slow transoceanic Net link? Will your humorous or risqué content offend someone in another country of culture?

When you become a Web publisher, you also become a global citizen and your Web pages play on a global stage. Think through the meaning of your page in advance.

This really boils down to knowing your audience – and being able to adapt if needed.  Usually, a site’s content will fall into a consistent them or category and people who want to read about that content will understand most of how you write about it, regardless of where the live. However, writing for an international audience does take a little forethought.

10)  DON’T be afraid to learn more

Web publishing is not rocket science. It is computer science, but it’s relatively easy computer science. You’re not trying to land the space shuttle here- and chances are, lives are not at stake. Experiment, try weird things. Ask for feedback. Never be afraid to learn complex and hard stuff. (It’s only complex and hard because you don’t understand it yet!) Neat stuff is being developed (and some cool stuff is already out there) that will make Web publishing even more exciting- VRML, Java, new browsers and publishing tools, groupware, Net-based games, and online business infrastructure. All this new stuff is understandable and usable by normal folks like you. Don’t be intimidated. You can use all of them. (If you’ve come this far, you’ve got what it takes!)

Not only should you not be afraid to learn more – you should do your best to always be learning more.  Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, rarely do you learn something by doing it correctly.  Be sure to document how you do things, what works and what doesn’t – this sort of testing will make your life easier.

There you have it – Ten Web Publishing DON’Ts, straight from the web design time machine.

What did you do then that you find yourself  NOT doing today?

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

Ten “DON’Ts” from the Web Publishing Time Machine

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3. Should I use the keywords meta tag?

This post will be updated from time-to-time when there are significant updates to the plugin.  Items that are new to this post will be bolded.  Additionally, I’ll mark items that could be detrimental to your rankings with a caution sign.

Updated on 6/1/2010 – The version currently being covered is 1.6.11.

Version 1.6.8.2 contained some unknown updates so that it was compatible WordPress.2.9, also the developer introduced a “pro” version that is available for purchase.  As far as I can see the there are no functional differences between the two versions.  The pro version seems to intended for use by hosting companies and consultants who do not want the donation request displayed on the configuration pages of their clients’ sites.

Version 1.6.11 adds an language update, some bug fixes and code optimization.

I am disappointed to say that the author of this tag seems to have less and less time for answering questions and communicating with the millions of people that have made his tag so popular.  As a former web application developer, I know first-hand it is a time-consuming and seemingly thankless job.  I cannot fault the author for wanting to make some money with a “pro” version.  However, I completely disagree with how he has done it.  Monthly charges for upgrades is, in my opinion, crazy for this software.  I donated before the pro version existed, and I am sure that many others would gladly pay for this wonderful tag if not for the monthly fees.  According to the WordPress.org plugins directory, it’s been downloaded more than 5,000,000 times.  Lets all send him a dollar so we can get rid of the monthly fees and he can hire a team to maintain the tool while he sits on the beach…how about it folks?.

Visit the SEO pack creator’s page for a reasonably complete change log.

All in one SEO Pack Configuration – site settings

From within your WordPress admin, go to the settings area, then select “All in one SEO”. There are a lot of options here, but don’t feel intimidated, we’ll walk through most of them.

All in one SEO Pack Configuration – post settings

When creating a new post you’ll want to scroll to the bottom of your post editing page to the All in one SEO Pack section. There you will see the following four options.

All in one SEO Pack Configuration – page settings

When creating a new page, be sure to update the All in one SEO pack settings, found near the bottom of the editing screen.  Page settings are almost identical to the post settings, with just one additional option – menu label.

What are you waiting for?

There you have it, all the info you need to configure your All In One SEO Pack and get your page rankings climbing. This plugin makes it easy for anyone to optimize their WordPress blog posts and pages for better search engine placement.

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

All in one SEO Pack configuration

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1. Should I use the keywords meta tag?
2. How NOT to get your SEO article on the first page of Google
3. PubCon South Day 2 – Matt Cutts Opening Comments

I’m growing concerned that pretty soon people will be thinking the same thing about SEOs.

What if you were number 1 and nobody searched for you? Are you still number 1?

A while ago, I wrote about how to hire an SEO, and more recently about what questions you should be asking about your web measurements.  Both of those should help you become a more intelligent SEO shopper.  I’ve stumbled upon the site of Austin SEO company that made me realize there is still more you need to know in order to protect yourself from the snake oil salesmen.

This particular SEO Company had a pretty site, all full of keyword stuffed pages and links.  Their portfolio looked quite impressive, listing numerous clients that they had helped “shoot to number one on Google”.  Naturally, they provided screen shots of the page rankings so we could all see it was true, they even included some nice testimonials from the clients that were so pleased at now being listed so highly in Google.

We need an SEO BS flag.

There’s just one minor problem with the awesome rankings they achieved for their clients.  They are all useless.  All of them were for obscure phrases that have little, or no search traffic.  It’s great to rank well for a phrase, it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  But, if nobody uses that phrase when they search, what good is it?  None.  I’d rather have a site on page two of a search with volume than page one of a search with none.  Rankings are good, traffic is better.

How do you spot BS rankings?

It’s actually a lot easier than you might imagine.  First, before you settle on your keyword list make sure your SEO company can tell you what the current search volume is for those words – if it’s low, it may not be worth the money needed to get the rankings (HINT: If your SEO company can’t, or won’t, tell you the search volume – get a new one).  Second, have a set of baseline rankings.  When you hire an SEO you should get a report telling you where you currently rank for the various words and phrases you have agreed upon.  It’s possible that you already rank well for these phrases.  Both of these will help, but it won’t catch all of them.  Google’s keyword tool will help you with the rest.  You’ll need a Google account to use the tool, but there’s no cost to use it.

After you log in to the tool you’ll see a box to enter a search word or phrase.  Enter yours.  Below the box you’ll see a check box marked “use synonyms”.  Un-check it.  This tells Google you are only interested in results for that exact phrase.  Click the “get keyword ideas” button.  The resulting page provides information about your phrase.  Look at the two columns called “Local Search Volume” and “Global Monthly Search Volume”.  These tell you approximately how many times that phrase has been used.  The numbers for local are for a recent month, for global are a yearly average.  Looking at a search for “jack leblond”, a phrase I (thankfully) rank pretty well for, you can see that locally there is not enough data to report, but globally it was searched 58 times.  I’m pretty sure 53 of those were my Mom (Thanks Mom!).  So, while I can be happy I rank well for my name, I have to be sad because nobody is looking for me.  When your SEO firm calls to congratulate you on your new and improved rankings, be sure to ask them what the search volume is for the phrase – hopefully you won’t be sad.

Try this with a few of your search phrases, are you actually ranking as well as you thought?

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

Rankings are great, traffic is better

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3. I have great parents.

Not long ago, I was dropping some shirts off at the cleaners.  I had noticed that a few of my buttons were cracked and broken.  I asked the young woman working the counter if they repaired buttons.  She simply replied “No, we don’t.”  I was puzzled, I thought all cleaners did this – now I would have to either find a new cleaner, or repair them myself.  But then, possibly sensing the building frustration on my face, she added; “We can replace the broken ones if you’d like.”  What? I was dumb founded.  How could this woman be so clueless as to not understand that is what I had meant?  It seemed fairly obvious to me that I didn’t actually expect them to be sitting back there with a tube of crazy glue repairing the buttons.  Then it occurred to me, I had asked the wrong question.  Even worse, I had expected them to interpret what I asked into what I meant.

What’s your reason for asking the question?

Before you ask any questions, you have to have a qoal – or two, or 10.  What is it you want your Web site to do?  Guess what? Tony Robbins and all the other self-help dorks have something to teach us about SEO.  If you can’t measure it, it’s not a goal.  It might be interesting, but it’s not a goal.

Which of these statements might make a good goal for a Web site?

1. I want a web site full of silly pictures of cats that spreads joy and happiness throughout the world.
2. I want a Web site full of silly pictures of cats that attracts 25 bazillion visitors a day and makes so much money in ad revenue that I have to use a wheelbarrow to take my checks to the bank.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for joy and happiness, but how do you measure it?

Are you asking the correct questions?

After you have a goal, no matter how simple or grand, you must also set measurable steps to achieve it.  Each of those measures are the questions you need to be asking.

If you want to have XX number of visitors per month, that’s an easy measurement.  If you want XX dollars in ad revenue a month, also an easy measurement.  If you want to rank on page one of Google, well, that too is measurable.  However, is the phrase your are measuring the right one?  Does it support your end goal, or is it just interesting?  For example, many companies set a goal of ranking on page one for their own name.  While that certainly is something that every company should be able to do, I don’t see that as a worth-while use of time.  Simply because if you don’t rank for your name, you have bigger problems.  A more important question; How does your site rank for the name of the products you sell?

Just because you can, does not mean you should

It’s important for you to understand that just because you CAN measure something, does not mean you should, or need to.  If you are selling widgets for $10.25 a piece, perhaps 2,00 page views is pretty good for you.  Perhaps 10,000 page views translates into sales of 150 widgets, enough to keep your staff maxed out.  But are page views really what you should be measuring?  Are they what drives the success of your site? Sure, you could show a chart the demonstrates an increase in page views equates to in an increase in sales, but that’s selling harder, not smarter.  There’s a reason wal-mart doesn’t count people as they walk into the store.  They know it doesn’t matter.  Sure, there is a general correlation, but what really drives sales is shopper’s ability to find what they want quickly, and at a price they are willing to pay.  Can you say the same about your Web site?

What if the reason it takes 10,000 page views to sell 150 widgets is because your Web site is difficult to navigate? Or your products are hard to find, or your check-out process is too complicated?  Perhaps, the questions you should be asking are;

• What’s the ratio of completed to abandoned orders?
• How much time does someone spend on the site before they make a purchase?
• How many pages do they look at before they purchase?
• What are people searching for with your on-site search tool?
• What is your bounce rate?

Conversion doesn’t not have to mean selling something, maybe you want people to request more information, or to call an 800 number or download a white-paper.  Whatever it is, identify real things that may effect your conversions.  Those are the things worth measuring.

Compare Apples to Apples

While you may be able to make some broad industry comparisons, don’t get caught up in “benchmarks”.  Your site is your site.  Even if a competitor sells the same products as you, they will (probably) be using a different method and process to do it.  You can’t and shouldn’t model yourself after what you *think* they are doing.  Do what is right for you, for your company.

Test Everything

Now that you have your goals and measurements established, make sure you do lots and lots of testing.  It’s possible that something as simple as a button shape, or the hair color of a model could make a big difference in your sales.

Share the love

Now get busy setting your goals and determining the right measurements so that the next time your boss asks how many page views your site had, you can tell him “Sorry, we don’t repair buttons.”

Have fun!

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

Are you asking the correct questions?

No related posts.

If you’ve been surfing the web for more than a few years, you may remember the days when seemingly every Web site was constructed using frames.  I built more than a few of those myself.  On the surface they seemed to be an ideal solution to many of the problems both coders and marketers had with non-framed sites.  For coders it meant you didn’t need to copy your navigation, headers and footers into every single page – saving you lots of time.  For marketers, it meant that your menus. logos and other branding information was always viewable by your site’s visitors, no matter how much scrolling they did.  In the days of Yahoo and other directory pages, it was a perfect way to build pages.

Then came the next generation of search.  Instead of relying on human provided data to build a huge list of web pages, these new search indexes used “robots”, “spiders” and “crawlers” to automagically navigate the internet.  Following links, they located pages and read their content dynamically.  This is when using Frames become a bad way to build pages.

Most web developers slowly stopped building pages with frames, mostly on their own, some after repeated, severe beatings by SEOs.  They are a very rare thing today, but I happen to stumble across one this weekend that is a perfect example of why using frames is bad, so I thought I’d share it with you.

Frames are Bad for SEO

I’ve been planning to replace my above ground pool’s small paper filter (which seems to always be clogged) with a more robust sand filter.  Thanks to some good luck (and Sherry’s Craig’s list addiction) we scored a used filter for next to nothing.  Now we just need a pump.  I spotted one at our local Home Depot and rather than buy it on the spot thought I would do a bit of research on it.

When we returned home I turned to my good friend, Google, and asked it to show me information on “flotec pool pumps.”  Considering that I included the company name, I was surprised at the results.  They were on page one, but way down at number nine. It seems the Flotec brand is well known on the web, but most of the results were for resellers or local pool shops. The fact that they did not rank higher for a query including the company name was odd.
My puzzlement grew when I clicked through to the page. As you can see, it does have some navigation to various product categories, but no other site navigation or information about the company. I kept clicking through, eventually working my way to the pump I was interested in. It looked like it would suit my needs, but I wanted to know where else I could buy it, if Flotec offered a warranty, where they were located.  I could find none of that information.
Noticing that all of the URLs I had visited contained an .asp file and some dynamic code information, I decided to strip off all but the root domain name. Happily, I was greeted by a not altogether unattractive home page. The page had decent menu, branding and links to the additional information I had been looking for.  The layout seemed a bit too familiar to me though.
I clicked the “pool & spa” link to see what navigating from the home page would show me. The scroll bar revealed the answer to the mystery.  When the scroll bar does not go all the way to the top or bottom, you can be sure the page is loaded inside some kind of frame. This is also why the layout seemed so familiar to me.  Branding on the top, navigation on the left.  It was the same layout used by nearly every frames-based site ever built. This is why the pages I found in my Google search looked the way they did.

Search engines are dumb

You have to keep in mind that as “smart” as the algorithms get, they are still pretty dumb.  They do not understand images and do not care about layout – well, not entirely anyway.

The most important thing to the search-bots are links and content.

Even though the Flotec home page appears (to us humans) to contain both content and links, what the search engines see is just three links.  This is where the problem begins.  To the engines, each of these links exist as independent documents.  Some have content, some just have more links.  The engines don’t care, they just crawl and index as they move along.

Because the engines are dumb, they don’t know that these content pages contain no site navigation and rely on other pages to provide it.  So, when a query comes along that seems to fit the content, they deliver it in the results.

That brings us back to where we started – an interior products page, devoid of any navigation or branding.  Obviously, that is bad.

Bad SEO bonus points.

The Flotec site earns a few bonus points in the bad SEO contest.  Not only are they using frames, but they also have at least two domains serving the same content, and also allow the pages to be served by both www and non-www versions of the domain.  That makes Google think there are FOUR sites with all the same content.  And what’s even more fun?  Google site searches for each of the four return different numbers of results.  They are throwing Google goodness right out the window.

site:flotecwater.com – 68 pages
site:www.flotecwater.com – 61 pages
site:www.flotecpump.com – 191 pages
site:flotecpump.com – 192 pages

Yahoo’s site explorer reveals even more trouble for Flotec and their web site.  Each of these four valid domains has links pointing back to it.  Having links distributed to multiple domains like this (without properly redirecting them) hurts their overall rankings.

Now you know why frames are bad (and why canonicalization is good).

Oh – if you happen to know somebody at Flotec, PLEASE have them drop me a line, cause we seriously need to talk.

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

Frames: Good for pictures, bad for Web sites

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You see, as an SEO consultant I had made a very bad mistake.  I assumed the customer would want to help me, that they would want to take an active role in optimizing their site and improving it’s search rankings.  This is the story of how it happened.  The names have been removed and the keywords have been changed to protect the stupid.

How it began

I was referred to the company, a local small business, by a friend of mine that does social media consulting.  She told me they were not happy with how the site was ranking and that the person they had been working with previously had not been able to make any progress.   I was naturally a bit skeptical, for all I knew the owner was unhappy for not ranking for “cat food” or “shampoo”.  However, I agreed to give the site a quick review and see if anything obvious had been overlooked that might be affecting the site’s rankings.

Bake sale anyone?

You’ve probably heard the over-worked term “low hanging fruit” which refers to finding the quick and easy answers.  If I had been able to hold a bake sale from all the fruit I found, I could have sent every marching band in the greater Austin area to the Rose Bowl parade – and still had money left over to send a few girl scouts to summer camp.

The code was a mess, there were no headline tags, no internal linking, page titles were not optimized, no sitemap.  Name any SEO 101 task and it was undone.  No wonder the site didn’t rank well.

The Project

Reluctantly, I asked my friend if she knew what the phrase was that the company wanted to rank for.  I really did expect it to be something ridiculous.  I was shocked when it turned out to be a very localized, long tail phrase.  The phrase did have a fair amount of competition, but nothing unbeatable.

I agreed to help them out.  With all the simple fixes and the easy key word I’d be measured by, it seemed like an easy task.  I was wrong.

I did a more thorough review of the site, sent the results and recommendations along and was told “fix it.”  Alrighty then.  I asked for some additional content, some images with descriptions and some short video clips.  While waiting on that, I went to work cleaning up the pages and optimizing the content I did have.

I signed them up for Google analytics, and submitted them to be listed in Google Local. Now I wait for them to send me the info they get from Google and the content I requested so I can continue.

And then I waited some more.

The beginning of the end

I get an email from them.  No, not content.  No, not info from Google.  They want to know why they are still not on page one of Google when they search for themselves.  I reply and explain that without the content I can not continue that the rankings will not improve.  And, without info from Google they will not be added to the local listings.  They explain they are busy and do not have time now, but will get to it soon.

I wait some more.

I get another email from them – again complaining that they are not on page one of Google.  This is frustrating, I know that with a little bit of cooperation from them I could have them on page one.  I again explain the situation and again I am told – just fix it.

After nearly a week, I still have nothing from them.

You’re fired!

I (nicely) let them know they can either complain or be uncooperative, but not both.  There is no way we can achieve the desired results without their cooperation.  They are too busy.  Sigh.  I decide it’s time to cut them loose.

Who’s to blame?

I’ve already said I can’t entirely blame them.  I did things I advise others not to do.  I made assumptions and I did not have crystal clear documentation regarding who was expected to do what and how long it should take.

I went into this project thinking I was doing them a favor, not doing a job.  That was my biggest mistake.

There should have been a well defined set of goals and time-lines.  Without those we were just stumbling around in the dark hoping to get somewhere.

I flushed time (and money) down the toilet, and they (I’m sure) are now even more frustrated with the SEO industry.

I know I came out of this a little smarter.  Hopefully they did too and the next person to work with them has the benefit of my mistakes.

When do YOU know it’s time to fire a customer?

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

When to fire your customer

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Link Building

Getting other site owners to link to your Web site is one of the best ways to improve your search rankings.  Researching the best places to get links, and convincing the site owners to add them can be a time-intensive task.  While I don’t suggest you take link building to the extreme, I cannot stress strongly enough its importance.   For your time and efforts to be properly rewarded, you need for the links to be created in the most beneficial way possible.

Deep Links

When other sites link to yours, it’s important that they link to more than just your home page. Google and the other engines interpret links to your home page as “courtesy links”, something you do to show respect to another site or its owner, but not really a strong recommendation of content. These links are good, but not great. For best results, links should point to content inside your site – and not all to the same place. Links to posts inside your site tell the search engines that you create good quantities of relevant content. Search engines consider these deep links to be votes of confidence, recommendations of expertise.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the text that is used as the link (or the alt text in the case of images). Anchor text gives readers some indication what to expect on the destination page if they click the link. Search engines, especially Google consider this to be of the utmost importance. How important you ask. Consider this; If you do a Google search for the phrase “VP of Internet Strategy“, my web site is ranked number one. You might think that would take a huge number of links. Nope, there are only 11 [OK, so now there are 12 ;-D], but those links all use that very specific phrase. Want your site to rank very well, very quickly? Identify what phrase you want to rank for and get several links for that phrase from sites around the country. Of course, the more competition there is for that phrase, the more links you will need.

Sneaky Links

When you post a comment on another blog – which you had better be doing frequently – always enter your web address when it’s an option. Whenever possible, link to a post within your site that is somehow related to the post you are commenting on and not just to your home page. It is true that many blogs use “no-follow” links for their comments. However, many SEOs have found that Google defines “no-follow” to mean many different things – the least of which is “don’t follow the link”. The amount of value these links pass, if any, is debatable – but Google DOES follow them. Forgetting the engines for a moment, if your comment is a good one you may entice another reader to click back to your site, and that’s what you are after anyway.

Paid Links

In almost all cases, paid links are NOT a good idea. However, there are a few fuzzy areas that are generally acceptable. Links to your site from an obvious directory of businesses, even if you had to pay to be included in the directory are usually OK. However, if you pay someone to link to your site from a non-directory, and it is discovered, it could have severe effects on your search listings. Specific effects vary on the links and the mood of the spam person at Google that finds it.

Link Positioning

It’s important to note that Google knows the difference between the various parts of a site and assigns different values to links depending on where they are located. Links located within the body of a post have much greater strength than those of a “blog roll”, footer or worst of all a long list of “related links”.

Internal Linking

When you write a post for your site, is it the end-all, beat-all post that never needs any additional information? I’ll venture to guess that no, it is not. Your readers know this, so do the search engines. Internal linking allows you to highlight your breadth of knowledge. Having related posts on your site shows both your readers and the search engines that you are an expert.  Be sure to link to them from within content whenever possible.

Get Started

Hopefully this helps you to understand a little better how important back links are. Now, go ahead and get started by leaving a comment…and including a nice link back to your site ;-D

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

Links, links and more links – A site owners best friend

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I spent some time recently scouring the app store looking for tools that might be useful for those who want their sites to rank better on the search engines, for people interested in buying domain names, reviewing web statistics or monitoring the health of their web servers.

I was pleased at the number of applications available, many for free, some at reasonable prices, others – well – just a bit too high priced for me.  The following lists are by no means all inclusive, and are not sorted in any particular fashion.  They just happened to catch my eye somehow.  You can (and should) click the app names for screen shots and more details about the app.

Search Engine Optimization iPhone Apps

Everyone wishes that their Web site(s) would get better placement on the search engines, everyone.  Some of these might help, others – might get you banned.

1. Rankings
   Cost: Free
   What it does: enter a website address and a key word/phrase and the app will show you where the site ranks on Google, Yahoo & Live.
2. iSEO
   Cost: Free
   What it does: Enter web address and a search term and it tells you what page your result is on – but I have no idea what engine it checks.  It also shows how many inlinks a web site has, but again – no idea where it gets the info.
3. WebFight
   Cost: $.99 for full version, or Ad-supported lite version for free.
   What it does: Enter two search phrases and it will tell you which has had more search traffic and provide snapshots of Google search for the phrase.
4. Pokeseo
   Cost: $0.99
   What it does: Enter a web address and the app shows you (occasionally) what the PageRank is and how many backlinks the site has from Google, Yahoo,Bing and AOL.
5. SEM Calc
   Cost: Free
   What it does: Provide 5 nifty calculators that help PPC and email/banner ad marketers determines true costs.
6. SEO Submit Pro
   Cost: $2.99
   What it does: Submits your web site to 20 search engines.
7. URL Site Submitter Pro
   Cost: $0.99
   What it does: Submits your site to 20 search engine.

Domain Name Research & Registration iPhone Apps

Can you ever have too many domains registered?  I know a few people who would say “NO NEVER!”.  If you are one of those people, these apps are for you.

1. DomainScout
   Cost: Free
   What it does: Enter a domain name and the app checks to see if it is available, shows you whois info for those already registered.
2. Instant Domain Check
   Cost: Free
   What it does: Enter a domain and it tells you if it’s available or not.  Provides links to GoDaddy and Network Solutions if name is not already taken.
3. TLD Lookup
   Cost: Free
   What it does: Provides a glossary of all the top level domains.
4. HotNameList
   Cost: Free
   What it does: Displays names of recently expired domains, grouped into related categories.
5. Whois
   Cost: Free
   What it does:  Uses the Network Solutions whois to look for available domain names.  Provides registration link if name is not taken.

Network/Server iPhone Apps

Every once in a while it’s just nice to reach out and ping someone, right?  Well maybe not, but with these apps you can do that a few other network style geeky things.

1. iNetUtil
   Cost: $0.99
   What it does:  Allows you to enter a list of sites you want to verify are “alive”, reports on the IP address and server software, provides whois information and displays the source code of the site.
2. Network Utility
   Cost: $0.99 for full version, or ad supported free version
   What it does: Allows you to ping a web site, scan its ports, perform GeoIP Lookup and whois queries.

Web Site Statistics

Without analytics, anything you do online (maybe anywhere) is just a moo point.  If you want to know how your site is performing, these apps might just be what you need.

1. Analytics Agent
   Cost: $2.99 for full version, or a ad supported “lite” version for free
   What it does:  Enter your Google account name it displays your Google analytics information for you.
2. Analytics App
   Cost: $ 5.99
   What it does: Provides access to every detail of your Google analytics data and reports.
3. Domain Tracker
   Cost: Free
   What it does: After you enter the domains you want to track, it provides you with the Google and Alexa page ranks.  Allows you to track the history of the site.

In closing, it’s worth noting that many of the iPhone app developers have figured out the art of keyword stuffing.  Hopefully Apple will figure this out soon and put a stop to it.  As I browsed through the App Store it was clear from many of the title and descriptions that the developers were hoping to be found for words that don’t necessarily apply to their application.  One of the SEO apps I considered reviewing, but decided to use the $4.99 elsewhere, had a 17+ rating and listed a huge list af reasons – including “Frequent/Intense Sexual Content or Nudity”.  How disappointed must the people be that buy this app based on that disclaimer?

Do you have a favorite app that I missed?  Love, or hate one of these?  Let me know!

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

17 iPhone Applications for SEOs and Web site owners

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Selecting professional help of any type for your business can be a complicated and often difficult task.  But when you add back-biting and in-fighting among the possible candidates the task becomes nearly impossible.

Some disagreement about the best way any job should be done can always be expected within any professional community, but lately the members of the SEO community seem determined to undermine and discredit one another.  Some even going so far as to say the entire industry is a boondoggle, except of course for what they say is the right way to do it (of course).

With all the disagreement within the community, how can someone who knows nothing about Search Engine Optimization possibly be expected to make an intelligent choice about who is the best SEO consultant for them?  They can’t.  No more than you could buy a boat, a car, or even hire someone to paint a room in your house unless you know at least something about what you are paying for.  You must research the basics of SEO and analytics.  Without this knowledge, you will not be able to effectively communicate your wants and needs to any prospective firm or agency bidding on your project.  Even worse, without a basic understanding of SEO and what you hope to accomplish, you are a sitting duck, practically begging for a less-than-reputable company to slither in and sell you a boatload of useless services at outrageous prices.

Do your homework

Before contacting any prospective SEO, you should do these things yourself first;

1. Have a few keywords in mind
   Part of your SEO contract will probably include the research of keywords your Web site should be optimized for.  However, you should have a few rather obvious ones in mind already – product names or your primary services for example.
2. Know how your site currently ranks for these keywords.  Simple queries at the major search engines are all that is needed for this step.
3. You should be familiar with web analytics and hopefully have them running on your Web site already.  Most hosting companies provide them free of charge, you just have to know where there are and how to read them.  You should have an idea how much traffic your site is already getting, what parts of it are getting the traffic and how are visitors getting to you.
4. If you have a physical location where you conduct business, you will need to know who your local competitors are and be familiar with their Web sites.
5. If you plan to target national and international visitors, find out who your competitors are and be familiar with their Web sites.  While your ultimate goal may be the number one listing, you should probably focus on the those on page two first.
6. Have a goal in mind.  For some it might be to increase page views, or improve search rankings.  Increased sales is a popular goal, or even something as simple as getting more white papers downloaded.  Whatever your goal is, it must be measurable and you must have or be able to get an accurate baseline.

Define your SEO goals

When you are ready send out your requests for proposals, you should have in mind what you want to have done by the various agencies.  Unless you give them specific requirements it will be impossible to evaluate them equally.  If you hope to have measurable outcomes, you must be able to express your expectations.

Each project will have different needs, but some common tasks often completed by SEO consultants include;

1. keyword research
2. back-link analysis
3. back-link building
4. on-site page review & optimization (which may include)
   1. page titles
   2. meta-tag review
   3. site structure
   4. content review and/or generation
   5. internal cross-linking
5. Review competitors’ sites
6. Identify areas of the site that would benefit the most from optimization.

Locate possible SEO firms

Now that you have some idea what search engine optimization is, and what you’ll want your SEO consultant to do for you, it’s time to locate one.  First, decide if you want to work with a local agency or if you are comfortable working with someone remotely.

If you want to stay local, you can simply start by googleing for SEO in your city & state.  For example, a query of “austin texas seo” returns several good candidates.  Hopefully you are able to do the same for your locality.  Look at the Web sites of the companies listed on the first couple pages, try and locate a short list of companies that look like they might be a good fit for you.  Reach out to your peers within the community, ask them who they have used – who have they heard good or bad things about?

If you don’t feel the need to work with a local, then you will have a much larger pool of candidates to pick from – just be careful you don’t drown in it.  Simply going to google and entering “seo” and surfing through the 200 billion results probably won’t work for you.  You’ll need to reach out via your social network.  Use Twitter, facebook, linkedin – ask for references for a reliable SEO firm.  Lurk on sites where SEOs congregate and share ideas – places like sphinn.com, searchengingeland.com, searchenginejournal.com, searchenginewatch.com and searchengineguide.com.  Look for lists of SEOs, compiled by other SEOs.

Once you’ve compiled your list of possible SEO firms, put together your formal request, based on the goals you established earlier, and send it out to the agencies you selected.

Review the proposals

Deep breath – now the really hard work begins.

Hopefully you request contained enough information that your prospects were able to submit similar proposals.  Remember, the less info you send them, the more difficult it will be for you to accurately compare them.

You will likely get a few proposals back that look like the agencies should be able to accomplish the goals you set for them.  Resist the urge to make the final choice based on price – would you hire a brain surgeon based on being the lowest bidder?  I hope not.  The proposals should have included references.  If not, ask for them.  Contact these people, ask them each specific questions about the SEO services they received.  What were the before and after metrics?  How long did it take for measurable results to appear?  Were they easy to work with?  Did they explain everything they planned to do – and why they thought it should be done?

You should again turn to your social networks, post questions asking about the firms you are considering.  Unless you are their first client ever, somebody out there will know something about them.  You might get a very different picture painted by former customers that are not on the list of references.

Trim the fat

Now that you have the short, short list, you to need to have discussions with these firms.  Get a feel for how well you or your team will be able to work with them.  And, you should plan to and be able to work with your SEO firm.  If they want to do everything alone, without your help -  hang up the phone and remove them from your list.

When you have eventually narrowed down your choices and selected a firm, be sure to take the time and make sure everyone involved knows the goals, expectations and how success will be determined.  If you do not, you will certainly end up with considerable confusion and heartache in the end.

No shortcuts to success

If all of this seems like a lot of work, it is.  You must take the time to set proper goals and expectations.  You must work with your chosen SEO consultant.  After all, if you hire the right SEO firm to help you with your pages, then you should expect greater visibility and hopefully more income.  On the flip side, if you hire a bad firm, not only will you have wasted your time, their time and possibly a pile of money – your site may end up being banned from the search engines and then where will you be?  Having coffee with Kay Hutchinson perhaps.

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

How to select an SEO

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I know,  I know. Who isn’t?  Video can help.

I’ll assume you have completed an SEO site audit looking for ways to improve your on-site optimization and are seeking out quality back-links to improve your off-site presence.  If not, well, video can still help – but you REALLY need to make sure you do these steps too.

Video has long been known to rank well in the search engines, and thanks to universal search its done even better in the last year or so.  If you are not familiar with universal search, in a nutshell it means that Google (or the other top engines) search all of their indexes for possible results to your query and return the top entries for web, news, video, images and local on one page.  Getting your content returned by more than one of these indexes GREATLY increases the likelihood of your link(s) being clicked. Web video is one of the easiest to create and get indexed.

How do I get my web video ranked?

In the “olden days” of web video, all you could do was give your video a great title (with your desired keywords included of course), fill the description with keyword rich, user friendly content, post it to YouTube and hope for the best…and lots of viewers.  Thankfully, that’s not the case any more.  A few years ago when the music industry was getting all worked up about it’s music and videos being uploaded illegally, the engineers at YouTube (who is owned by Google by the way) created an algorithm that analyzes the music in uploaded videos to determine if it’s copyrighted or not.  After that, it was almost simple for Google’s geeks to create a process to extract the voices in a video and analyze it’s content.  What that means is the engines actually LISTEN to your video with some nifty audio-to-text tools and try to figure out what it’s all about.  They essentially treat the words in your video like content on a web page.  WOW!  That is powerful stuff.  I recently saw an example of a (poorly done) YouTube video that had a good title, an iffy description, very good narration, and had only been viewed 79 times.  However, a search for it’s main subject put it third on Google.  Makes you want to get some video up quick, doesn’t it?

What camera should I use to create web video?

What camera do you already own?  Use that one.

Technology has come a long way in the last few years.  Not long ago if you wanted to create your own videos you had to either record to tape and manually capture to your computer; a long, slow task.  Or, spend big money to record directly to a hard drive or other digital format.  Now digital video recorders are a dime-a-dozen.  Everything from “real” video cameras, to cell phones and web cams have the ability to record to digital file.  Many even allow you to upload directly to YouTube, though I don’t recommend that for your business related videos.  Before you buy a new camera, make sure it saves video in a format your software can recognize.

I wont get into the ins & out of creating video, but here few a few tips to help get you started;  Make sure your subjects are well lit, Be sure to include contact info at beginning & end, and since you want the engines to “listen”, make sure your audio is crisp & clear without a lot of background noise.  Of course,  be sure your audio is keyword rich, without being spammy.  Remember that what’s good good for the reader (or viewer in this case) is great for the engines.

How do I create web video?

I’m no Spielberg, and don’t have a big budget…

Not to worry, video is easy – seriously.  If you purchased a new computer in the last 3 or 4 years you probably have a basic video editing program already installed.  Microsoft has “Windows Movie Maker” and Apple has “iMovie”.  Both are reasonably intuitive and can step you through creating an acceptable final product.  With practice, you can create some really good videos.

Are you camera shy? No worries.  Just create a snazzy PowerPoint presentation with a voice over and use one of the many available tools to convert it to video.  This is how the video I mentioned earlier was created.  It probably won’t go viral, but if your goal is index rankings and not link building, that’s not an issue.  Of course, viral would be a nice bonus.

Once you have your finished video, save it to the best quality your software allows, then upload to YouTube.  The YouTube search does not use the audio so you still need to pay attention to the title, description and tagging.  Hopefully this is not new information, but make sure your YouTube profile includes a link to your site.

Is web video that simple?

YES!  Of course I have simplified the process of creating good, quality video, but you now have enough information to get started on your first project – what will it be?  Let me know how it goes and what it does for your rankings.

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

Improve your search rankings with video

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