A little over a week ago I wrote an article entitled “The Three Most Common Web Design Mistakes“. It started some discussion about what mistakes are made on websites, but a couple of the comments had to do with onsite problems that did not fall into the area of the Design. Design of a site is its look coupled with how user friendly it is. Design has nothing to do with the CONTENT of a site. Whereas Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing have EVERYTHING to do with the content of a site. I’ve also been reading a thread on WebProWorld with opinions on whether Onsite SEO is dying. My thoughts on both have led me to write this follow up article.

First of all, this is an analysis of the mistakes my clients make over and over and over again, no matter what I’ve told them they should be doing. Yes, most of them don’t listen to me about these things, after I’ve handed them the keys to the kingdom and the bill has been paid. They should. I rank within the top ten for a lot of niche keyphrases on the top three search engines, and make my living off my websites.

There are a lot of mistakes that others make that don’t exist on my client websites, and I’m not going to go into detail about them. We who design websites have a leg up over others, since we know what proper coding structure and semantic site structure and navigation can do to boost our sites up. But I build much of that into the sites I build for my clients so they don’t have to think much about it. The use of content management systems of all sorts automates all those SEO chores so that they’re automagically done for you by the web software. I also create their websites so that the tools are there to automatically create backlinks into their websites. Yes, they can do more with that by submitting to directories, and writing for the article banks, but even if they have no time for this sort of activity, their website software will, if they use it properly, help to generate backlinks.

So . . . what are most of them doing wrong?

There are five basic areas where all of them can improve.

1. Adding new website content FREQUENTLY– A minimum of weekly.
2. Writing compelling and easy to read copy, which fills one or more needs of the intended audience, and which includes a “Call To Action” if it’s an article that falls into the category of “marketing”.
3. Editing that content so that their “Industry Shorthand” is turned into searchable keyphrases understood by people outside their industry and which are used by SE visitors to search for things within that industry.
4. Creating killer Article titles which are concise, which entice people to click, AND which reinforce at least one keyphrase in the article.
5. Using carefully crafted Technorati Tags for their articles.

The first item, adding new website content frequently, is without a doubt the most important of all, and the one that my clients pay the least attention to. Why is this a problem? For many reasons.

The frequency of content additions will determine how often your site gets spidered. If you add three articles in one week, then don’t add an article for two months, the spiders will not be spidering you often after they’ve not found new content for awhile. And that new content, if crafted properly, is presenting new niche keyphrases that are going to create new opportunities for people to find your site, since new content that contains new niche keyphrases can also be compared to putting a new door on your building. Every time you add a new page of content, you are creating another page that will be indexed and that people can enter your site through. People rarely come in through my “front door” on my site. Much more often they’re coming in through one of my hundreds of “back doors”. The more back doors you have, the more chance you have of growing your traffic. Also, the more good content you have, the more likely it is that others will link to it.

The second item concerns the actual copywriting. Not everyone is good at this. If you aren’t, then finding someone who is and who can do it for you will pay huge dividends. Web articles should be relatively short, in the neighborhood of five to ten paragraphs, and from 300-800 words in length on average, though occasionally breaking this “rule” is acceptable if the scope of the subject warrants it, though breaking longer articles up into subsections with the use of subheaders or bold print, as I did in this article, is a good idea.

Each article should be written to either answer a specific question or solve a specific problem that a visitor has. The copy should be very easy to read, and free of spelling and grammar errors that would make you look unprofessional. If the article is one where you can market your service or product, then a call to action should be included, whether it’s a form on the page or a link to either the product page or the contact page. Whenever the form can be put directly into the page in question that’s preferable, rather than linking to a form in another page. The less clicks for a user, the better. If you don’t include the call to action, then your website won’t convert.

The third item is turning your Industry Shorthand into Niche Keyphrases. In my industry it’s “site” for website, “SEO” for Search Engine Optimization, “SEM” for Search Engine Marketing, “spider” for Search Engine Spider, “design” for website design, “WP” for WordPress, “Theme” for WordPress Theme, etc. Problem is that few outside of my industry will use my industry’s shorthand words to find me, and the people outside my industry are the ones who purchase my service. So after I’ve written copy following the guidelines in item two, I then edit the copy to rephrase all that shorthand into meaningful keyphrases that people outside of my industry routinely use in the search engines to find people like me. No matter what industry or endeavor you’re in, you have a lexicon of shorthand jargon you routinely use. That’s okay when speaking with co-workers or industry insiders, but it’s death in a website if you’re trying to get listed well in the search engines and have outsiders find you. So a second edit of your copy to include better keyphrases in a natural and flowing manner will get you better rank and better indexing.

The fourth item is creating killer article titles that contain the one main keyphrase for the article. When I configure a content management system I set up the templating so that the article title is also the html page title. Html page titles are important for good Search Engine Optimization, since they tell the spider what the article is about and how it should be indexed. So if you have a site about golf, and you’re writing an article about golf clubs called drivers, then don’t title your article “Great Drivers” since that doesn’t give enough information, and in fact falls down because it uses Golf industry shorthand. “A great Driver will improve your Golf Game” would be a better title for both the article and the html page title.

The fifth item is using carefully crafted Technorati Tags. I really had this point brought home to me when I upgraded the bitchslappin blog’s Wordpress installation and started using the integral tagging system . . . and my traffic was cut by a third. Why? Because the native Wordpress tagging system doesn’t create technorati style tags. I installed a plugin to convert them and it instantly fixed the traffic flow issue. I am a nutcase about technorati tagging. It gives me a chance to strut out all the secondary niche keyphrases that relate to the article in question, and in such a way that they’ll generate a huge chunk of traffic and very targeted backlinks for me. So, to use the example above, if in your article about golf drivers you have named your five favorite drivers by brand name and model number, those make and model number combos should be your technorati tags. I just wish my clients would remember to put technorati tags in the little textbox at the bottom before they click the publish button. Their traffic would increase pretty quickly if they did.

And to tie things together, you should also, within the body of the article, link each brand name and model number you used in the golf driver article to either your product page, or to more information elsewhere if you don’t sell these golf clubs. That link text will further help the Search Engine spiders to figure out what your site is about, and give you more back doors into your site.

None of this stuff is rocket science. None of it is hard to do. But doing it all a minimum of weekly will guarantee you a leg up in the search engines and a steady climb in your traffic and conversions. So why don’t my clients listen? Maybe I need to start charging them for this info so they value it more.

Technorati Tags: SEO Mistakes, SEM Mistakes, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing

An acquaintance, who is an attractive young woman, is having a problem with her relatively new Dell Laptop, purchased at the start of the school year, and is now showing a fairly large black spot on the screen, right in the middle. My friend, Jesse, who is computer savvy, was on the phone with me while Elisa had Dell Support on chat. Jesse and I both had a “WTF?” moment when the chat person asked her to let him take over her computer, and we both told Elisa to tell him he wouldn’t be able to see dead pixels on her screen from his screen, so there was no point in him doing that.

Apparently this isn’t the first time this has happened to her, a young woman with an obviously feminine name. The last guy told her she was really cute, after he activated her webcam remotely so he could see her, which was an amazingly ballsy thing to do. I suspect the second CS rep was intent on doing the same thing, since there is no way in hell he’d be able to see any dead pixels on her screen by accessing remotely.

This is an incredible invasion of privacy. It’s also points up a lot of repercussions. It’s possible these guys are just woof-woofs looking to catch sight of the skin they’ll never be allowed to touch. it’s also possible they’re criminally minded, and they have access to all your information. Whether they’re looking to catch a good bit of video to sell to the nudie sites, or casing your living room to see if you have valuables, you do NOT want this happening.

And it makes me feel that a built in webcam is the one feature I might not want on any new box I buy. If it’s a peripheral, it can be unplugged before getting in touch will Dell Customer Service. Or any other computer CS for that matter. I doubt the Dell CS reps are the only ones doing this.

Technorati Tags: Dell Customer Service, Invasion of Privacy, Web Privacy, remote computer access, built in web cam

There are three common web design mistakes I see over and over and over. And they are made on sites big and small, by top designers and by amateurs.

The most common web design mistakes stem from the web designer’s inability to see the web as a medium that is much more in the control of the viewer than it is of the web designer. Designing websites in a way that will allow them to function well despite different choices than the norm on the part of a viewer is what separates out a good webdesigner from an average one.

There are so many different ways that people viewing the web can change their viewing environment, and we, as web designers, have to anticipate those changes and design the website to withstand whatever gets thrown at it and still give the viewer a good and usable experience. Three of the most common ways viewing environments can differ are:

• Default Font Size
• Screen Resolution
• Default Background Color

The most glaring error in Web Design is Font Sizing. Default font sizes can be changed, and for good reason. People who have vision issues often change the default font size in their browser or on their operating system so that they can read the text. But many, if not most, web designers do not take this into account, leaving the person viewing their websites with a broken and barely usable experience. Or, even worse, they set them in pixel sizes, which don’t allow fonts to be rescaled in IE, forcing those with vision problems to squint at text that is too small for them to read. Even web designers who should know better make this mistake. And this is not solely an “amateur” mistake. Websites of recognizable brand names are broken in this way. An example of this problem on a website for a top US Retail Chain– http://www.circuitcity.com. This website makes a further mistake in not being cross browser compatible, and only looking acceptable in IE. But regardless of which browser you use, if you kick the font size up even ONE notch, the website either breaks badly (everything but IE) OR the fonts don’t scale (IE). I find it interesting that http://www.target.com still has issues with this, even after being sued for a less than accessible website.

The second most common problem Web Designers make is assuming everyone has their background color set to the standard default color of white. In looking at websites I’ve designed on the machines that belong to friends and family, I can assure you that though it is rare for someone to change this setting, it is occasionally done. Out of approximately twenty machines I’ve tested on besides my own, I’ve found two that had this setting changed, which is 10% of my admittedly small sample. When the default background color setting is changed, then the website that does not have a background color set in the code is guaranteed to look awful. If you don’t believe me, set your default background color to something garish, such as fuscia. Then look at http://www.ebay.com or http://www.qvc.com. Pretty awful, huh? And if someone sets their default background to the same color as the website’s text, it’s even worse . . .

The third most common problem is a problem I call trying to stuff ten pounds of manure in a five pound bag. Whether it results in side scrolling for those who use smaller resolutions such as 800 x 600, or it results in such a busy layout with so much flashing and so many colors pulling the eye in too many directions at once, and/or there is so little whitespace in the layout that it’s hard for the eye to land on any one item, these websites are very difficult to read, especially if the individual viewing the site uses a non standard resolution or window size.

The most well designed websites take a viewer’s computer environment into account. The most well designed websites adjust gracefully in all browsers to different default font sizes, to various resolution and window sizes, and will set both background colors and font colors to assure good contrast and easy viewing for everyone, no matter what choices they’ve made in their default environment.

Technorati Tags: Web Design Mistakes, Website Design, Font Size, Resolution, Background Color