Tag Archives: search engine optimization

Designing High Performance Websites

Posted on by

High performance delivered is a slogan that Accenture has made famous. It is a powerful reminder of how businesses can achieve success. The thinking can be applied to any business function: that includes websites.

When you hear the words high performance, your mind may immediately switch to images of glossy automobiles with highly tuned engines. In some ways a website can be similar to that glossy automobile. In both cases high-performance means doing what is necessary to ensure the vehicle will perform as well as it can. With both that only has meaning when there is a clear objective to be achieved. In the case of the automobile it may be high speed. In the case of the website it probably has something to do with how visitors appreciate and interact with the website.

Efficiency in meeting website objectives

High-performance is a question of efficiency. Only when you have scales to measure performance can you begin to tune it for even better performance results. For a time it was customary to do website reviews. As we pointed out in the previous post, with greater knowledge, people are now requesting website audits. As with any audit, this gives concrete results that measure what has been achieved and suggest what improvement can be targeted.

A website is much more than just what people see in the first ten minutes exposure to it. Many factors are involved in delivering the best customer experience to website visitors. A big part in getting visitors to the site may be the search engine visibility the website has created. Once on the website the first impression is very important. Thereafter the visitor must find it easy to navigate around the website in order to get the information they are seeking. The content of the site must be such that visitors develop a sense of trust in the website owner. This in turn increases the probability that they will react positively to any call to action. For example some may choose to buy the product they were looking at.

How to choose a website designer

If a website must now be strong in all these different dimensions, this raises the question of how best to choose a website designer. Any website designer who is aware of all these different dimensions will no doubt illustrate their team’s multitalented abilities through their own websites.

If one is seeking an all-around website designer, what might their website showcase. A prime example of this is PrimeView who offer Arizona web design.

Their website features a number of skill sets which they feel are important.. The main ones are web design affecting the immediate impression of the website, Internet marketing, e-commerce where online purchases are involved and Arizona SEO.

This is not the case of being good at everything but master of none as you can check by visiting their cool before and after gallery.

As more people become frustrated by a nonperforming website and become aware of those who are operating high-performance websites, the shift will be on. Websites can achieve very strong results if they are only built with high performance in mind right from the start.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Technorati Tags: , ,

SEO Clients Deserve NoFollow Discounts

Posted on by

SEO clients may well be aware of the furor that has been going on in the SEO world. Danny Sullivan described why SEO experts were so incensed in signaling that Google Loses “Backwards Compatibility” On Paid Link Blocking & PageRank Sculpting.  It is all concerned with the NoFollow tag that can be applied as part of the code for hyperlinks from web pages.

If you want to understand the implications of the changes then an article, PageRank Calculation – Null Hypothesis, will provide a lead-in to the ongoing discussion.

What does all this mean for SEO clients who have paid their consultants fees for Search Engine Optimization.  The aimClear Search Marketing Blog has a good account of what they are telling their clients in a post, NoFollow noWorries: An SEO Linking Update.

Though this 180 degree about-face in what Google had been preaching (literally) to webmasters was poorly handled from a public relations perspective, presumably it was made because the tag was overused, abused and had the potential to skew Google’s rankings. No worries. We actually think the change will bring some positive changes to the SEO process, though as always there are tradeoffs.

Of course this has all been going on in a time of recession where companies are trying to make sure they get the maximum bang for whatever bucks they still have in their budgets.  Companies paying SEO consultants who have implemented PageRank Sculpting programs are now told that such programs were ineffective.  This only came to light when Google decided to spill the beans since it looked as though SEO experts had not spotted that the Google advice was no longer effective.

It is all rather messy but the bottom line is that clients have spent money that produced zero returns.  What recourse do they have?  Who should they be talking to?

Unfortunately the biggest culprit, Google, will provide the defense that they are providing a free search service.  Too much information given away would mean that webmasters could perhaps manipulate the search results so that less relevant web pages nevertheless  would appear high in the keyword query listing of results.  If any information is given out, then webmasters should do their own checking to be sure that the information works for them.  This is somewhat facile reasoning since it is very difficult to do Split A/B testing on anything other than simple changes to web pages.

If Google is off the hook, this leaves only the SEO consultants to listen to the SEO clients.  Here again the discussion is difficult.  Reputable SEO consultants use their best skills and knowledge to provide maximum search engine visibility to their client’s web pages but without any guarantees on performance.  In this case, they were following information put out by Google and which was never withdrawn or modified until very recently. They put in the effort.  Google rendered their efforts for naught.  It would appear that the SEO consultants are off the hook too.

If companies were doing their own SEO, then they would have paid the salaries and again would have seen no results from the PageRank sculpting.  Using SEO consultants or doing SEO in-house would have had comparable effects. Perhaps this is just grin-and-bear-it time.  Search engine marketing is on average very powerful, but its mechanisms are sometimes difficult to discern. The NoFollow confusion has just added to those ongoing difficulties.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

Death, Taxes And Google

Posted on by

It was Ben Franklin who said “but in the world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.“   I was somewhat surprised at a recent article by Adam Penenberg in Fast Company that covered Google Bombing and the IRS.  He found that someone had cleverly arranged by manipulating search results that Google searches for IRS forms ended up on websites that could create serious online damage.  Google is everywhere now. 

I did some Google searches on some very popular topics and the results may surprise you.  The following shows the number of web pages on each of these very basic words. (M stands for million here.)

  • 1,700 M for Google
  • 1,420 M for Yahoo
  • 747 M for air
  • 660 M for water
  • 611 M for sex
  • 404 M for fire
  • 395 M for death
  • 238 M for search engine
  • 230 M for seo
  • 134 M for taxes

Death and taxes may be certain but it is quite clear that some other topics are much more on our minds.  Indeed there is much more written on seo (search engine optimization) than there is on taxes.  It is perhaps indicative of how ‘top of the mind’ Google is and why there should be such a demand for search engine optimization services.  Even if you go for quite local services such as MA seo or CT seo, you will find quite a slew of web pages on these topics.

Since people seem to use Google now-a-days rather than following some URL they may have, perhaps it is time for the IRS to be using some seo services to guard against these Google bombers.  After all, if you cannot trust the IRS, who can you trust?

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Reputation Management and Social Media

Posted on by

When Does Reputation Management Become Unethical? That is an interesting question posed by Jeff Quipp of Search Engine People.

There is obviously a great deal of power in being able to hide certain search results from the majority of searchers. With this power however, comes great responsibility. This responsibility becomes even more important if one considers that there are currently no guidelines to help guide us through the murky waters of morality.

It is certainly true that by careful SEO (Search Engine Optimization) one can push negative references down the Google search page, or with sufficient other online properties perhaps even off the top 10 page.  however you cannot make them disappear.  Now with the rise of social media, it is even harder to still all those dissident voices.

The words of Katie Delahaye Paine as recorded by Liana ‘Li’ Evans reflect current reality.

Trying to manage your reputation in a social media environment of today, is just plain silly (and futile), you just can’t.

Both PR Coverage and Social Media (it’s better when they are working together) have a big effect on how companies are perceived and in the end a big effect on what they are doing. The key though, is to measure both what is working and what is not working. Companies also need to understand that people are talking online, they are saying and doing things with brands, products & services, whether you are active in the conversation or not.

The first imperative of course is to try to make sure that the actions of your company are blameless, as far as you can achieve that.  With such a policy you no longer need to hide but can become active in the conversations.  You probably need a blog and may well decide to be active on Twitter. 

One example among many is the CPA advertising network, ClickBooth.  Early in the year, there were a number of negative comments from disgruntled affiliates that could be found through search.  Now there is a ClickBooth blog and you can also follow ClickBooth through Twitter.  The two approaches provide the best possible channels for dialoguing with any who may be dissatisfied.  Now that is the way to do reputation management.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

SEO Cash Cows Anyone?

Posted on by
 
SEO no longer offers easy pickings.

The Internet continues to get ever more crowded. Google is continually modifying its algorithms and its ways of presenting more personalized results to searchers. It’s no surprise that many feel that SEO, or organic search engine optimization, is getting increasingly difficult. That’s the view you’ll see in many forums. Just check a discussion at Cre8asite Forums for confirmation. It was titled ‘Been Reading That SEO Is Slowly Dying / Changing‘.

A coming SMM newsletter will discuss the state of the nation on SEO. As always, the aim is to create something useful for our readers but also create a memorable and search visible item. As we have recommended, potential titles were checked in both a Google Web search and a Google Blogsearch. The results were intriguing.

One possibility was the notion of a SEO Cash Cow. That kind of talk has not been around for some time. Back in 2006, a website offering SEO Cash Cows claims that all packages were sold out within 15 days of launch. Early in 2007. you could still find other sites that would help you build your cash cow or would turn your website into a cash cow. Since then, the Internet seems somewhat quiet on the subject of cash cows.

Another possible phrase to draw the eye might be fat cow. This seems to be in more current usage. That’s because of the efforts of Garry Conn with his John Cow dot Com website. His tagline is Making Money Online by Milking the Internet. Of course to an extent he is riding on the coattails of the much better known John Chow dot Com website. John Chow is a resident of Vancouver and and has the tagline, I Make Money Online by Telling People How Much Money I Make Online. It was visible on the fat cow query, because of a little sniping at John Chow from Garry Conn. Whether the efforts of either of these gentlemen and their interactions can be regarded as examples of fat cows or cash cows that others might wish to copy is open to question.

Clearly something is happening and webmasters must adjust. Perhaps the final word should go to John Mueller, one of the more visible Googlers who is always delivering eminently good sense, in his post on that Cre8asite Forums thread.

If you “fall” for a product/service that doesn’t deliver close to the expectations that they set in their marketing, you’re not going to fall for it a second (or at least a third time). If a search engine notices that it’s falling for content that doesn’t deliver close to the expectations set with regards to SEO, it’s going to work on recognizing and ignoring that. If you constantly have to adjust your SEO efforts because the search engines aren’t falling for it anymore, perhaps the problem is not the SEO.

What seems quite clear is that SEO is no longer a license to print money. There are increasing challenges which the successful practitioner of SEO must overcome. However, the ROI (return on investment) will still well reward the effort.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Search the Internet for other related articles.
Loading