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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I was somewhat startled to discover a copy of “Creating Web Pages for Dummies (1998)” on my desk this morning. The book promises I’ll be able to “Create Dazzling Home Pages – In No Time!” I’m still not sure who put it there, or what they are trying to tell me, hopefully that mystery will soon be solved, and hopefully they were thinking I’d get a laugh from it and not that I’d learn something from it. As I glanced at the table of contents, it did generate a grin or two – there’s a whole section devoted to geocites. However two chapters stood out more than the rest “Ten Web Publishing DO’s” and “Ten Web Publishing DON’Ts.” I just knew these tips from the early days of the web would create some laughs, so I flipped ahead and looked at the lists. I could not have been more wrong. Why I was wrong is connected to the fact that there is something very important to note about this book – the ONLY mention of anything search engine related is this brief definition:

Search engine: Web-based services that help you find things you are looking for.

Why is that important you ask? Because this book was written before web designers/developers thought that getting attention from Google was more important than giving visitors good content. The fact that the authors were concerned with content makes both of their lists still (mostly) accurate. Below is the list of ten “DO’s” along with my comments about how they may (or may not) apply today.

1) Do think about your target audience

Who is your Website targeting? A little thought along those lines can make your pages much more appealing to your visitors. Before you begin creating your website, choose the right look and feel and style of presentation that is appropriate for your audience. Include links that your visitors find interesting, not just the ones that you find interesting – unless that’s the point of your page, of course. In addition to using good sites as models (see the next “DO”), research other media, such as newspapers and magazines – the articles and the ads – that have a similar audience as yours to find good and bad examples.

This is still great advice – it’s impossible to deliver great content if you don’t know what your audience wants. Your site might hold the secret formula for free energy from the ocean, but if the reader is looking for instructions on how to make great mojitos, to them, your site sucks.

2) Do use good sites as models

Many good sites are out there. Ignoring those good examples when designing your own site is not the best idea. Take a look around and find the designs that work. Think about why each design you like works well for you. Is it the use of color and layout of the Web page? The fact that the site loads quickly? Well-organized content? Note what works and why, and then strive to duplicate that effect in your own Web pages. Look for conventions in presenting information that Web users have grown accustomed to, neat design ideas, and various types of content. You’ll be surprised how many ideas you get from this huge reservoir of Web expertise.

I had a boss once that was fond of saying “I don’t need you to re-invent the wheel, just find a better way to use it.” Keep that advice in mind while you research other sites for ideas. You don’t always have to do something completely different, just do it better than the rest. It’s interesting to me that in 1998 (when people were lucky to have a 56kbs modem at home) a quick load time and well-organized content where obviously important factors. Today, when most teens (college students) have NEVER used a dial-up connection, we are once again concerned about how quickly our pages load.

3) Do get permissions for content

You can easily peek at the HTML source of any Web page, and that’s a good way to learn new design techniques. But you can also easily grab any content that exists on the Web, even privately owned content that belongs to others. However, the fact that grabbing others’ content is easy does not make it right or legal. It’s also not necessary.

A great deal of public domain content is out there, and getting permission to use private content is not hard. If a Web page does not explicitly say that its content can be freely borrowed, assume that it’s copyrighted or otherwise protected – which means you should ask before borrowing any of it. Many people are happy to let you use their content in order to gain exposure on your pages, as long as you provide proper attribution and reciprocal links. In the process, you may just gain new friends or business contacts, as well as avoid legal problems down the road. (And in case you get tempted to borrow quietly, keep in mind that word of unethical practices gets around quickly on this amazing global network.)

Sadly, this is something that seems to always be forgotten. C’mon folks, don’t be a jerk – it only takes a minute (or two) to do things the right way.

4) Do use links to outside sites

No matter how great your content is, you’d be wasting the most important feature of the Web if you did not include links to sites outside your own. No matter what your topic, you can find complementary sites out there on the Web. Giving your visitors links to those sites is only courteous. If you research your links carefully and organize them well, your links can be a valuable resource to others. In your own Web surfing, you’ve probably found it to be true that one of the best experiences on the Web is the serendipity of stumbling upon some cool link that you had no idea existed; give your visitors that experience. Point them to the outside world. That’s why it’s the Web and not the Thread.

I can recall conversations with clients about this, they would get so upset about me linking to OTHER sites. “Why do you want them to leave?” they would ask. Thankfully, I think most people have now realized that links to other sites are not only NOT evil, but people like them. And, since people like them – guess what, the search engines like links too.

5) Do use graphics and multimedia

A prime attraction of the Web is that it is designed to present graphical information, yet there are still many beginning Web authors who are intimidated by graphics and shy away from using them. Include a picture, icons, bars, and graphical menus in your Web page. Go ahead, try out transparent and interlaced GIFs. Multimedia is a great addition tool one or two sound files, a QuickTime movie, even a simple animated GIF can really liven up a site. The bottom line is that sites rich with graphics and multimedia are much more interesting than purely text-oriented ones. Give it a go. (But be prudent)

This is still true, in fact it’s been shown that pages with images actually get more readers than those without. Just don’t go overboard, you don’t want to give people seizures.

6) Do think before you create

It may sound basic, but a surprising number of people lust jump in and start throwing around text and HTML tags with no clue about where they’re going or what they want to accomplish. That approach is fine if you just want to play around – in fact, that approach can be a lot of fun. But if you want to make a good impression on the Web, sitting down and thinking about a few things ahead of time really pays off. Sketch your Ideas on paper. Then describe them to someone else and ask for feedback. This prep work forces you to consider things that you may not think about otherwise: Page layout, graphic design, relationship between pages, target audience, content structure, link grouping, and other issues that, when properly integrated, can make your site a first-class Net surfing experience.

Back in 1998 look and feel were among the biggest concerns of somebody building a website. The web hadn’t started creating applications yet, sites were mostly information storage locations. While look and feel are still very important today, you need to go beyond that in your planning phases. Think about your site structure, what directories, file names, tags, categories – even how much traffic you might eventually get. It can be difficult to gather all of this, but if you don’t get it right in the beginning, your growing pains might be bad enough to kill a whale.

7) Do ask for feedback

You’ll be amazed by what people say about your pages. (Some of the comments may even be complimentary!) Put your e-mail address on your home page and ask for comments. People who have never before seen your site will have a good, fresh perspective and can give you feedback on things that you may not have thought about. Everyone can benefit from outside input. Criticism by your prospective audience is not only useful, it’s also educational. You can learn a lot about what people expect and want. Criticism can’t hurt anything but your pride, and it almost always improves your site.

It’s hard to believe, but there was a time when people would only tell you what they think of you if you asked them. Now, in the era of Twitter and Facebook, it can sometimes be difficult to make them stop talking about you. That can be good or bad, depending on what they are saying – but in any case – LISTEN TO THEM.

8) Do test your pages

Testing your pages is easy. You probably don‘t send e-mail without spell-checking lt. Similarly, you should not put up your Web pages without testing them. That means looking at your pages on your own machine before testing them on the web – follow links, see how graphics and text fit together and so on. Also, looking at your pages in different browsers doesn’t hurt. If you can`t do it, ask a friend or even a stranger to help. Oh, again, don t forget to spell-check your pages.

This is just plain crazy-talk, right? While some people are comfortable throwing up gibberish, I don’t know many people who enjoy reading it. And, as the authors pointed out – make sure all your images load correctly, links are coded with valid addresses and yes, even on 2010 you STILL have to check your site in multiple browsers.

9) Do publicize your site

Nothing is more frustrating than putting up a site that no one visits. Fortunately, publicizing your site is not hard. Add your site to the popular indexes, for example, through the excellent “Submit-it” site: www.Submit-it.com (NOTE: This is no longer a submission site)
You can also post to appropriate Usenet newsgroups, put out a press release, or shout it from the rooftops. Just building a site doesn’t necessarily mean people will come to it. You still have to get the word out.

Of course site promotion is still important, but I would certainly suggest you avoid sites/services that claim they’ll submit your site to thousands of engines and indexes. Press releases, done correctly are a good way to start. Does anyone use UseNet anymore? You should make sure your site has a valid sitemap for the engines to crawl, but beyond that – there are lots of ways to promote your site.

10) Do update your site

A static site is a boring site. True, it works for some purposes, but in general, if you want people to continually revisit your site, you must keep it updated. The best sites are those that continually provide new and interesting content. Include pointers to information that’s frequently updated, like “Thought for the day” or “Links to new, cool sites.” Let users know how often to expect updates and be sure to showcase new content. A “New” icon next to recently added or updated content can work wonders.

You’ve probably heard the phrase “content is king” more times than you care to remember, but it’s based on the fact that both people and search engines like for you to keep your site fresh and the easiest way to do that is with a steady stream of new content.

There you have it – Ten Web Publishing DO’s, straight from the web design time machine. What did you do then that you find yourself doing again today?

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

Ten Web Publishing “DO’s” from the Web Publishing Time Machine

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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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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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That’s the word for day two – just WOW!
For me day two was more about meeting great people and learning about great tools than anything else.

Of course the highlight for the day was that Rhea Drysdale (@Rhea) decided it was safe to follow me on Twitter, even though every time she looked over her left shoulder, there I was.  It was really great to meet you Rhea!

Matt Cutts of Google fame also chatted with a few of us about his recent weight loss success and shared his secret to success.  It’s hard to believe, but apparently if you exercise and eat more fruits and vegetables, it’s good for you.  Who knew?

Matt Cutts – Opening remarks

This was my first time to see/hear Matt speak.  He is quite entertaining.  Much better in person, with a crowd than in his videos (Sorry Matt).

The big announcement for Matt – which he said he hates to do at shows – was that  Google has created a system called Friend Connect and associated plugins for WordPress, Drupal and PhbBB that make it possible for people to use their Google/Yahoo accounts as identification when leaving comments on blogs, rather than having to create a site account with yet another username/password.  Honestly, I didn’t think this was an issue, but there were a few “ooo’s”, “ahh’s” and “cool’s” in the crowd.  I’m certainly not a huge commenter, but I leave them when I feel the need.  The sites I visit just ask for email address, a web site name and my comment.  That’s not a big deal for me.  Maybe it is for you.  I’m not gonna go all @GrayWolf, Google  conspiracy theory on you, but the evil side of me wonders how this information is being collected and used – you have to know that Google is not going to waste an opportunity to know exactly where you go on the web and how you feel about the things you read.  Seems like a no-brainer to me, and I’ll neither be installing friend connect on my site nor using it on others.  In fact, it makes me want to double check that I am logged out my gmail and yahoo before I start surfing.

Matt was asked, and spoke briefly about the issue of duplicate content.  He said Google is less concerned with www vs. non-www versions on the same domain and more so with the same content on different domains.  He did suggest that use of the new canonical tag would be a great way to avoid issues.  However – it is vital that you fully understand how it works and test thoroughly before implementing in a live environment.  He suggested that all your internal links should use full URL so that if your site is scraped/copied the links still point to the right place

Of course, Matt was asked for some search engine optimization (SEO) tips.  He pulled out his “standard response card”  he didn’t call it that, but I’m it is.  He had 7 tips to share – Most are pretty common, one I had not heard before, but makes good sense.

1. Use good URL & Site structure
2. Use good and unique page titles
3. Use your chosen keywords in URL and titles
4. Use keywords naturally withing your content (don’t try to stuff them in there)
5. Page title and site URL do not have to match
6. Check your site logs often to see what you already rank well for
7. Post often

It was great fun to meet Matt an hear him speak, a great start to the day.

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

PubCon South Day 2 – Matt Cutts Opening Comments

Related posts:

1. PubCon South Day 1 Recap
2. Should I use the keywords meta tag?

The keywords meta-tag  was created when the web was young to help site designers let engines know what a Web site was all about, and it worked well.  Too well.  Early SEOs started abusing the system by stuffing them with popular search terms that were not at all related to the current page to drive up rankings and page views.  The search engineers figured this out pretty quickly and either decreased the importance of the tag, or ignored it completely.

So why the debate then?  Because two of the major engines, Google and Yahoo seem to have different opinions of the tag.  Yahoo tells us to use it to improve the ranking of our sites.  Though they give no indication of it’s importance.  On the other hand, Google says nothing about the keyword meta tag.  They don’t say to use it, but neither do they say they ignore it, as they do with other tags.

I recently conducted a survey of SEOs, Web Designers and E-Marketers to see who uses the keywords meta-tag.  45% of respondents said they do not use the keywords meta-tag.

In September, 2007 Danny Sullivan from searchengineland.com proclaimed his hatred of the keyword meta-tag and attempted to kill it once and for all.  His article was well researched, articulate and convincing…to some.  Scrolling to the bottom you’ll see the same debate again with some agreeing with Danny, others disagreeing.

So what’s the average Joe to do when the experts can’t even agree?  That’s a decision you’ll have to make on your own.  However, I will tell you that I use them.

Why do I use them?  First because it’s easy to do.  Second, if I don’t stuff them and the engine(s) use them, I get a boost (however minor it may be) in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).  If the engine(s) don’t use them; well, I’m only out a minute of my time.

Yahoo tells us they use it, so that’s a no-brainer as far as I’m concerned – why waste a little help?

Google, well that’s a bit more tricky.  Their silence on its use makes me suspect that it is used by the algorithm in some minor way.  Perhaps as a part of an overall keyword checklist;  I think they read all the places a keyword might appear (page title, URL, description, keywords, content, alt tags, headings, etc.) and compute a score.  Of course no one but the engineers know for sure.  So again, if they do use it, great.  If not, well I’m not out anything but a minute of my time.

If you decide to use them, use only about 15-20 words that relate to the content of the site – DO NOT STUFF THEM WITH SPAM.

So what will YOU do?  I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Post from: Austin, Texas SEO - Jack Leblond

Should I use the keywords meta tag?

Related posts:

1. Finding Your BEST + and – Keywords
2. How NOT to get your SEO article on the first page of Google
3. Rankings are great, traffic is better