Note: The following blog post, while being serious, is meant to be read with a sense of humour and is not intended to be arrogant in any way, shape or form. So, put on your Serious Hat and your Humour Pants and start reading.

Your Website Might Be Outdated

It’s true and chances are that it probably is, well, not entirely at least… but probably parts of it. The web is a constantly changing environment and what was relevant and current six months, a year, two years ago, just don’t make the grade today. If you want your site to be current, you need to not only look to the future but also be prepared for change. A good web designer and developer not only has a rough idea of the upcoming forecast but they also plan for future changes. They can see shifting trends in designs and technologies and plan to utilize them properly for you.

When Was the Last Time You Got a Redesign?

Better yet, when was the last time that your competitor got a redesign? Is their site design more recent than yours? Are they taking advantage of current trends in technology? Why aren’t you?

Has it been over a year or two since you’ve had a new design for your site? If not, chances are that you aren’t taking advantage of a lot of the great new technologies out there that have been released in the past few years. jQuery, Mootools, HTML5, and CSS3 (to name a few) have taken the web by storm in the past couple of years and are major players in where the web will be going.

Was your site designed 4 or 5 years ago? You’re in dire need of a site design. Look at your competitors, chances are that they’ve had theirs done in the last little while. Now think about the two sites from a consumer’s point of view, which one are you going to gravitate towards? Exactly, the more modern, stylish design. Why isn’t that you?

You’re Using Social Media, Right?

“Social what?!” you say? Social Media sites like Twitter and Facebook, for example, are great ways for you and your business to interact with clients in real time. Prompting users to “Like” your Facebook Fan Page on your website will give them instant access to your Page and keep up to date with you and your business even if they aren’t looking on your website itself. The same goes for Twitter. Having a Twitter feed appear on your site or at least prompting users to follow you on Twitter will give you another means to connect with that user. Keep them up to date by Tweeting updates and prompting them to visit your site.

Look around my site. There are a million and one ways for you to get ahold of me and to interact with me. Why don’t you take advantage of that for yourself and use Social Media tools on your site?

Is Your Site Build Using Tables?

HTML Tables are a thing of the past. It’s not 1995 any more… and hasn’t been for about 15 years so why is your site coded using Tables? They don’t allow for easy changes done to the site. They’re clunky and messy and severely outdated. Your site should have been coded using a combination of HMTL and CSS that will allow for easier changes to be made to the layout and format of your site. View the source of your site (View > View Source [or similar] in your browser), if you see “table” “td” “th” and/or “thead”, you’re in trouble. Time to get an update!

Do You Have to Get Your Web Guy To Update Your Content?

If so, why? Why are you paying your web designer/developer each time you want to add a new news item to your site or change your contact information? Why wasn’t your website coded using a content management system which would let you update the website at your leisure without paying extra to do it? Content management systems like WordPress (for example) are becoming easier and easier to use and install. It shouldn’t have to cost you extra each time you need to change something on your site, which brings me to the next point.

How Often Are You Updating Your Website?

If you’re paying your web guy their hourly rate each time you need to update your site then chances are the answer to that is “not very often.” Taking advantage of a content management system will let you make changes whenever you want, on your own time and without having to pay an arm and a leg to do it too! Using a content management system will even let you easily install a blog onto your website where you can keep users up to date with new product arrivals, business changes, pretty much anything that you want. Hell, they can even subscribe to an RSS (really simple syndication) feed and be notified instantly of new news items or blog posts made on your site.

Flash Sucks

Not everyone is going to agree that Flash sucks, and really, it doesn’t. It’s extremely powerful and used in the right way, it’s absolutely perfect but its days of being the leading way that websites are built are in the past. As a web building tool its dying. Search engines can’t read content in a Flash file so if your website’s navigation is built in Flash then they have no way of visiting the pages on your website and therefore don’t know that they exist and therefore can’t index them which then means that they aren’t searchable to users using the search engines. See how that’s a bad thing for you? I’m not going to use any names for the following anecdote but rest assured that it’s true.

Recently we were approached because a website wasn’t showing up in search results, even when you searched the domain name itself. This was absolutely horrible for the site. What’s the point in having a website if it can’t be found, right? The problem was that the whole navigation was coded in Flash and like I said earlier, this means that the search engines can’t read it and therefore couldn’t find any of the other pages on the website. The content itself was also coded in Flash, again not readable. It was no wonder that this site wasn’t showing up anywhere. Combined with a number of glaring search engine optimization errors, the site was a disaster. After a couple hours rebuilding the framework and recoding the site it was good to go and was relaunched. Within a few days it was indexed by search engines and quickly skyrocketed to the top of search results. Its been holding steady at or near the top of the results ever since.

I ask again, why was your site coded in Flash? To do some fancy rollovers and your navigation that can be done using CSS and HTML and maybe a little Javascript? Combine that with the fact that Flash isn’t viewable on iPhones or iPads and you’ve got yourself one hell of a problem. That’s right, if I go to your website on my iPhone (which happens A LOT) and your navigation is in Flash then I hit a dead end and I can’t go any further and immediately start looking at competitors’ sites. I’m not the only one. How many people do you know that have an iPhone? Ask them to go to your site.

Maybe it’s time to re-examine why your site was built using Flash, eh?

I Can Help

I can. It’s true. I wouldn’t lie. What’s stopping you from sending me an email to get the ball rolling? Is it the lack of a contact form? I can help with that too. VOILA!

Search engine optimization (SEO) is, in its simplest form, making your web site easy to find via search engines with targeted keywords and key phrases. The main goal is to increase the volume and quality of organic search engine traffic to your web site.

Search engine optimization starts with the coding of your web pages (including meta tags, meta descriptions, browser titles, etc.), proper keyword placement within the content of your web site as well as other techniques used to increase the effectiveness of search engine indexing.

Many SEO companies focus on pushing as much traffic to your web site as possible. There are many methods used to achieve high rankings with search engines, and some of these methods (known as “black hat SEO” or Spamdexing”) are not considered relevant or proper by search engines and can have negative results such as lower ranking or even blacklisting from the search engines themselves. All of our SEO techniques conform to search engines’ guidelines and involves no deception.

When we work with our clients to search engine optimize their web site, we focus on one key metric, quality of traffic first, then quantity of (relevant) traffic. In the end, the main goal for many companies’ web sites is to sell more products or services, and/or provide valuable information to their current clients.

Pushing as much traffic to a web site for the sake of getting traffic does not benefit the web site owner in the least, and performing simple web site traffic analysis will quickly show you if the traffic to your site is relevant or not.

Essentially, a search engine optimization strategy should be no different than a basic business strategy – provide answers and solutions to people’s problems and needs. With this focus in mind, you will not only achieve higher rankings (as you will be addressing the needs that people are searching for) you will also increase the conversion of these leads into customers! This is really what search engine optimization is all about – connecting people with questions and needs to web sites that answer or fulfill those needs. Converting your web site traffic into relationships is much more successful with highly targeted and relevant traffic!

Search engine optimization is really just a piece of puzzle. The first step is to make sure you have a web site with focused goals and methods of tracking success. Understanding these goals will help you optimize your site to attain relevant traffic to reach your goals. Once this is achieved, your search engine optimization and marketing starts to pay off!

Now you are getting traffic on your web site. This is where the fun begins! With traffic analysis, you can determine how people are finding your web site, and how that traffic is interacting with your web site. Adjustments must be made on your web site to better service and fulfill your visitor’s needs. Analyzing the keywords they are currently using to find your web site will allow you to search out and find other keywords that your target audience may be using to find similar products and services you are offering.

The loop starts over. You optimize your web site for these new (and sometimes better) keywords and key phrases and analyze the traffic that comes in from them to determine if the conversion rate is improving.

You can probably see now that merely shoving non-relevant traffic to your web site will not help you convert traffic into client relationships, but only increase the number of people that leave your web site annoyed that they wasted time on your site looking for something you did not offer.

Source: http://www.connetik.com/website_seo_services.php

For a little over a year now I’ve been using Hubspot’s Twitter Grader to measure my Twitter “score.” While Twitter obviously isn’t a race (although some will lead you to believe that it is) this online tool helps measure influence, track followers and other stats. Combined with other tools like Twitalyzer, you can get a pretty good idea of your influence and whether or not there are things that you need to improve to make yourself more noticeable on Twitter.

I kind of went off on a tangent there…

Like I said, I’ve been using Hubspot’s Twitter Grader for awhile now and it got me using their Website Grader as well. This grader takes numerous things into account to give your website a rough score out of 100. While it’s not perfect, it does give you a good idea of things that you need to improve on with your website like your SEO, content, images, etc.

The grading system is split into five main categories, each with their own sub-categories which give you a more in depth analysis. The categories are:

I. Create Content

• Blog Analysis
• Blog Grade
• Recent Blog Articles
• Google Indexed Pages
• Readability Level

II. Optimize

• Metadata
• Heading Summary
• Image Summary
• Interior Page Analysis
• Domain Info
• MOZ Rank
• Last Google Crawl Date
• Inbound Links

III. Promote

• del.icio.us Bookmarks
• Link Tweet Summary
• Twitter Grade
• Google Buzz Count

IV. Convert

• RSS Feed
• Conversion Form

V. Analyze

• Traffic Rank
• Score Summary
• Historical Data Available

The system isn’t perfect but it gives you a good idea of what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong and also gives you a good idea of what search engines are looking for as well as users. The site doesn’t leave you hanging with just a score, it gives you tips on how to improve the different aspects of your site as well. If you have a blog on your site, check out their Blog Grader as well for tips and tricks on how to increase the visibility of your blog.

I’ve been using the Website Grader for a little over a year now and it has helped me understand a bit more about visibility of websites. My initial grade was a somewhere in the low 30s but I’ve managed to increase it to a 77. It’s not something that I’m obsessing over but it’s nice to see it increase.

This week I’m proud to announce the launch of the new River Valley Arts Alliance website. The website is build on the WordPress content management system, letting the client update the website at their leisure.

The site features:

• an events calendar
• photo slideshow
• photo gallery
• member application forms
• donation forms
• an artist database
• a microsite for their annual Dooryard Arts Festival

The website is going to be a great resources for keeping up to date with RiVA and the arts community in and around the Saint John River Valley. Be sure to check back frequently as we near the festival dates for Dooryard as more events and festivities are announced.

Search Engine Optimization is one of those things that most people think they can do easily, while this is somewhat true, there are a lot of common mistakes that are made which either hurt you or do absolutely nothing to help your ranking.

Search Engine Optimization is not as easy as you might think. It requires a lot more effort than just adding a couple of keywords here and there and waiting for the Google Fairy to come along and rocket you to the moon. That being said, Search Engine Optimization isn’t complicated either. Whoa! Hold the phone! I just said that it wasn’t easy and then I turn around and say that it’s not complicated? What the deuce? It’s hard work and you need to be on top of things but it’s not overly complicated at all. The underlying principles of Search Engine Optimization are pretty simple; use keywords wisely, focus on your target market and don’t be stupid. It’s not rocket surgery.

With all that said, I’m going to talk a little bit about common misconceptions and mistakes made with Search Engine Optimization which for sanity’s sake we’ll refer to as its more common abbreviation; SEO.

Myth: Meta-tags carry the most weight in rankings

What is this, 1995? This couldn’t be further from the truth. Meta-tags are essentially one of the most useless things on your website as far as SEO is concerned. Google has even said it themselves, they don’t look at meta-tags like meta-keywords anymore. They have absolutely no weight in SEO and rankings anymore. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Who is to blame for that? Porn. Plain and simple. The porn industry used to, and still does for that matter, flood their websites with keywords not related to their content just to get you on their sites. Search engines saw through this ploy and opted to focus on other aspects for rankings.

Fast-forward from 1995 to today and you’ll find that search engines now use hundreds of variables to determine rankings including title tags, content and the freshness of said content, incoming and outgoing links, alt and title attributes as well as your header tags.

All that being said, not all meta-tags are bad. Meta-descriptions help users find out more about your site on their search results. You can also add in useful data like your geo-location, the author, copyright information and much more so don’t write off meta-tags altogether – just meta-keywords, toss those buggers to the curb.

Myth: Hidden text is a your key to success

Designers and developers used to think that they were clever when they hid content on a website by making it the same colour as the background (white text on a white background). These clever chaps flood their websites with keywords that may or may not (usually the case) be related to the content of their website. Their train of thought was that they were being clever hiding the content this way because you as a user couldn’t see it but the search engines could.

Well Hot Shot, guess what. It doesn’t work. It does absolutely nothing to help you out. In fact, it actually hurts you. That’s right, it hinders your ranking. Search engines aren’t dumb robots that troll through websites collecting data and throwing it in a database. Like the T-800s in Terminator, they’re “learning computahs”. They’re smart and they know what to look for and most importantly they know when someone is trying to trick them. When search engines find that someone has attempted to trick them by flooding their sites with hidden keywords red flags shoot up and you get classified as a jerk for your shenanigans.

Long story short; hidden text on your website is a no-no.

Myth: If you build it, they will come

So, you paid good money to have a website designed and coded by a world class designer and your site goes “live”. Days pass and no matter how much you search yourself on Google or Bing you just don’t show up. The first thing that shoots through your head is that you’ve been had! That SOB walked away with your hard earned money! Sue that sumbitch!

Ok don’t. Simmer.

This semester my students have been building their portfolio sites and a week after one of their sites went live one of them asked me why he couldn’t find himself on Google. The answer is simple – Google didn’t know that the was there yet. Their bots hadn’t stumbled across his corner of the Interweb. Patience is a virtue. It takes time for search engines to crawl your website for the first time. Having incoming links to your site will help speed up the process so get on those social media sites and share your URL with people.

Before you run off to Twitter and Facebook and piss off all of your friends by flooding your status with “Check out my new website” and “I done got me one-a-dem-der websites” you also need to consider that there’s more to it than just patience and incoming links. According to Google, “[c]rawls are based on many factors such as PageRank, links to a page, and crawling constraints such as the number of parameters in a URL. Any number of factors can affect the crawl frequency of individual sites.”

A website not only needs to be built in a search engine friendly way but once it’s launched it will need an Internet marketing campaign or at least a reason for people to visit your site. Hopefully you’ve already taken this into consideration before you decided to get a website and paid someone to design and code it. If you haven’t then what the hell?

Competing websites are probably already using some sort of marketing campaign so a site without a campaign of its own will fall to by the wayside pretty quickly – and no one wants to be by the wayside, it smells there.

Remember that it will take days, if not weeks for search engines to find you in the first place and then even more time for you to climb your way up the rankings. Keep your content fresh with blog posts and changing content. Give the search engines and ultimately more importantly, the users, a reason to come back to your site more and more often.

Myth: Your website will be “number one on Google”

This is such a common request for designers and developers to come across. Mary Sue Internetexpert wants her website to be “number one on Google.” It’s not going to happen for a couple of reasons. The first being that the number one ranked website on Google is Google. Go ahead, try to get ahead of them. If you do it, I’ll give you a buck. The second reason being that I’m fully aware that when the client wants to be “number one on Google” that they don’t mean the first ranked site on Google itself but that they want to be the first ranked site under a certain keyword but they don’t know how to articulate that.

That being said, chances are that you won’t be the number one ranked site for your search term either unless your search term is something completely obscure like “The mating rituals of the Lower Shibobian Albino Alpaca”, in which case, it’s yours for the taking.

Vague search terms are not your friend. You really need to narrow down what search terms users will find you with. Personally, I know that I’m not going to be ranked anywhere near the top of the Google search results for the phrase “web design” but if I narrow it down to “Fredericton Web Design” I’m not doing too bad. It’s in your best interest as well as your client’s to focus where and how you want your website to be found. A broader, more vague search term is going to lead to millions of results but if you narrow your focus then you’re going to find it easier to step into the spotlight.

Myth: Flooding your content with keywords helps

It’s a common misconception that flooding your website’s content with keywords over and over again will do wonders for your ranking and search results. The reality of it is that it couldn’t be further from the truth.

Flooding your <title> tag, alt and title attributes and content with keywords is not going to help you. Like good old hidden text; it’s probably going to end up hurting you. Search engines will begin to avoid you like the plague if you start using the same keywords over and over again. Search engines see repetition of the same keywords as spam. The best way to avoid this is to read your content out loud. Have you used the same word 15 times in the span of three sentences? Does what you’re reading sound really awkward to you? If the answer is yes, then you need to cut back on the keywords. Don’t forget; the content on a website isn’t there just for the search engines to read – there are real people out there that will (hopefully) be reading that content as well. If you repeat “[your city]‘s number one night club” 15 times in a paragraph then they’re going to think that you’re a bit of an oaf. So be smart when you’re writing your content and placing keywords.

What have we learned today class?
• Meta-tags like meta-keywords do absolutely jack for your rankings.
• Hidden text is for amateurs.
• SEO doesn’t happen overnight so stop assuming that it will.
• Vague search terms are like camouflage; you won’t be found.
• Read your content out loud, does it sound stupid? If so, change it.

Search Engine Optimization isn’t the most complicated thing in the world. A lot of it is common sense. If you know when and where to place keywords as well as to use <title> tags, header tag and alt and title attributes you’re going to go a lot farther than Mary Sue Internetexpert.

Search Engine Optimization is one of those things that most people think they can do easily, while this is somewhat true, there are a lot of common mistakes that are made which either hurt you or do absolutely nothing to help your ranking. I’m going to talk a little bit about common misconceptions and mistakes made with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

You Will Not Be “Number One on Google”

You would not believe how often I receive requests from people that “want to be number one on Google”. It’s not going to happen for a couple of reasons. The first being that the number one ranked site on Google – is Google. Good luck getting ahead of them. The second being that I’m fully aware that you don’t mean that you want to be the first ranked site on Google, you want to be the first ranked site under a certain keyword but you don’t know how to articulate that.

Vague search terms are not your friend. You really need to narrow down what search terms users will find you with. I know that I’m not going to be ranked anywhere near the top on the Google search results for the phrase “web design” but if I narrow it down to “Fredericton Web Design” I’m not doing too bad. It’s in your best interest to focus where you want to be found. A broader, more vague search is going to lead to millions of results but if you narrow your focus then you’re going to find it easier to step into the spotlight.

In August when I launched my friend Nick Forret’s photographer site he wasn’t even registering under the most common search term for local photographers; “Fredericton Photographer” but now, 2 months later, Nick has sky rocketed up to the first page and is quickly overtaking established sites. What’s this doing for Nick? Well, it’s increasing his business for one. People are now able to find him.

This leads me to my next point…

Search Engine Optimization Does Not Happen Over Night

No, it doesn’t. It happens more often than not that people pay to have SEO applied to their site and then they call the next day or week and ask why they “aren’t the first result on Google.” Half of the answer to that is above, the other half is simply because it takes a while for search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo to crawl your site. It takes time for these bots to travel around the internet and read sites. According to Google “[c]rawls are based on many factors such as PageRank, links to a page, and crawling constraints such as the number of parameters in a URL. Any number of factors can affect the crawl frequency of individual sites.”

Expect the time between crawls to be a week to a month for a low traffic website. Sites with much higher traffic with more incoming links get crawled more frequently and thus have their reports updated quicker.

Flooding Your Site With Keywords Does Not Help Your Ranking

Flooding your <title> tag, alt and title attributes, meta description and content with keywords is not going to help you, if anything it’s going to make search engines avoid you like the plague. Using the same keywords over and over again raises flags with search engines and they see it as spam. The best way to avoid this is to read what’s your writing out loud. Have you used the same word 15 times in the span of three sentences? Does what you’re reading sound really awkward to you? If the answer is yes, then you need to cut back on the keywords. Don’t forget, that content isn’t there just for the search engines to read – there are real people that will hopefully be reading the content on your site as well and if you repeat “Fredericton Web Design” 15 times in a paragraph then they’re going to think that you’re a bit of an oaf. So be smart when writing your content and placing keywords.

Meta Keywords Do Not Do Anything Anymore

This doesn’t count as a full item so it only gets half a point. It’s been speculated for years that search engines don’t see much weight in Meta Keywords and just recently Google announce that they don’t even look at them. It’s true, Google said it themselves. Adding them to your site does absolutely jack. You can thank the porn industry and spam sites for that.

I hope this has helped clear up a few misconceptions about search engine optimization. So next time you’re going to talk to your web guy about being the “first on Google” just stop and think for a second and remember what you just learned.

Thoughts? Feedback? Hate mail?