Website Basic SEO Review - Honey Do List Part 3

This week we continue the series of posts related to improving your company's web presence.

Past blogs have discussed simple usability testing and web design. Now we are going to look at some specific website issues related to SEO. You do not need to understand HTML to see if your site suffers from most of these SEO issues, but some issues require a bit of HTML to identify or fix.

Reusing the Page Titles

Does your site have the same "Title" on each page. This is one of the most common mistakes of do it yourself web sites. Search engines love titles, so you want them to be different, and describe what is on the page.

A page's title is the text that shows up at the top of browser window.

Luckily, this problem is easy to check for. If you use Google's Webmaster Tools (wiki reference) with your web site, the "Diagnostics/ HTML Suggestions" report will tell you what pages have duplicate titles.

If you don't have a Google Webmaster account, it is easy to see your site's page titles using Google.

1. Open your browser and go to google.com
2. Enter site:www.yourDomain.com (ex: site:www.zajon.com)
3. Google displays all the pages it has indexed on your site.
4. Look at the Links, these are your page titles.
5. Are they different?
   

Page titles are used by Google and other search engines to determine where your page shows up on search results, although Google et. al. don't say how much or how little they matter. Since you have control over the titles of your pages, it makes sense to utilize them effectively.

The beginning of your titles should use one of your keywords. If you are using a page editor, such as Frontpage or Yahoo Site Builder, the title can sometimes be found in the page's property settings. If you can get to the HTML Layout, it is near the top of the pages code inside the "title" tags.

Using Images (or the font tag) for Headers

Search engines also pay attention to headers, inside your site's content. By headers I mean the big text above the content of the page. Page layout programs can build these two ways.

The Good:
Using HTML Header tags, such as H1, H2, H3.

The Bad:
Using paragraph or div tags, with style commands to make the font appear bigger.

What To Look For
Determining if your site uses Header tags or style commands requires looking at the pages code, but does not require any HTML programming skill.

1. Open You Browser and load a page from your web site.
2. View the Page's source
   There is no consistent keyboard short-cut for all browsers. In most browsers (in FireFox and Chrome try Ctrl-U) otherwise look in the View menu for Page Source or Source.
   Most browsers let you right click on a page and then give the option to view "Page Soucre" in the list of available options.
3. Try to find the text from one of your pages header (using Ctrl-F to bring up the Find Next command works well here.)
4. Look at the code around the headline. Does it have a header tag (h1,h2,h3)? Sometimes the header tag will have an ID or Class. That is OK if it does.
   

If your website's headlines do not use headers, then you should plan on making a change. If you are using FrontPage or a template site builder you might need to investigate and try different commands to set headlines to their proper tag. It is worth the time to do it correctly.

Helpful Hint

Many people when they first start rewriting their site's content with SEO in mind go overboard. They  place key search words and phrases everywhere one the page. Remember that you are still writing for your audience, not search engines. Content should still be easy to read.

Next week we will continue to look at other common SEO issues: such as internal links and images usage.

Website Design Review - Honey Do List Part 2

This week we continue the series of posts related to improving your company's web presence.

Last week I talked about a simple and easy test for site usability and design. Now we are going to look at some basic website design issues. You do not need to understand HTML to see if your site suffers from these design issues, but you will need to know HTML to fix some of them.

Displaying too Much Text

Some websites have too many words on a page. This wall of words will discourage many website visitors from reading your content. This is probably one of the easiest issues to check for, but hardest to fix.

1. Look at the pages on your web site.
2. Do they look like this image?
3. Are they made of large blocks of text?
   

 If so your site is made up of a wall of words.

1. Break your content into smaller paragraphs.
2. Add Headlines where possible.
3. Include bullets, lists and highlighted words when appropriate.

 Janice Redish's book, Letting Go of Words is a good read if you need to rewrite your web content.

Making Links Hard To Identify

Users have been trained by other websites to expect underlined text to mean a link. Sometimes websites make it hard to figure out what is a link and what isn't. This makes getting around a site difficult for visitors. If your site is not easy to use, then they will be less likely to return or recommend your site to others.

1. Look at your site.
2. Are all links underlined?
3. Do they change when a user mouses over them?
   
4. Is a different color assigned to links that have been visited?
5. Is other text (not links) underlined.
   

Navigation links do not need to be underlined, but they should clearly be links and consistent throughout your site.

Confusing Navigation

Is your navigation easy to identify and understand? Look at last week's blog and reread the section on Quick Usability Testing.

Can people, not familiar with your website, identify navigation links? Do they understand them?

In the late 90's I worked on a site for a large discount retailer and we tracked user's searches. The most popular search was "Jobs". There was a main navigation link "Career Opportunities", but people did not associate that with jobs. After changing the text on the navigation link to "Jobs",  searches for that word dropped by about two thirds.

Good information architecture can help create meaningful and useful navigation and is as important as good user interface design.

Avoid Mystery Meat Navigation (MMN)

I'm not sure who came up with the term, I think it was Vincent Flanders. It means having navigation (or design) that makes it hard for people to use or remember what function goes with an individual design elements. It is a reference to the unidentifiable food historically served in many American public schools.

It is not just small businesses that use mystery meat. Large companies can incorporate MMN in their sites, for example here is a video from Qualcomm's old website.

1. Look at your website's navigation
2. Do the navigation links use acronyms, technical or phrases from your companies corporate culture?
3. Is site navigation made up of  images and not words?

If you answered yes, then you need to change your navigation. The exception to #2 is intranets. If everyone using the site knows and uses the same terminology, then acronyms or corporate slang is OK. Just remember that web hires still need to use and navigate the site.

Avoid Flash Splash Screens.

To check for this, go to your website's home page. Does a Flash movie load before the real content? Few sites still have a Flash introduction, but some do.

If so, remove it.

Do you remember searching on Google, clicking a link and seen a page with a flash movie that needed to load. Was there a "Skip" link and did you press it? Was there no "Skip this Movie" links and were you frustrated and could not wait for the real page to load.

I'm sorry to tell you, but your flash introduction is no more interesting that anyone other one.  People feel the same when they visit your site as you did on those other sites.

If there is a message that you need to tell about your company, and it can only be accomplished using flash place the movie on your home page. But make sure it does not take up to much real estate. Remember visitors will see the home page several times during their stay at your site. They can quickly become annoyed if they constantly need to scroll down your home page, past the huge flash movie, to see navigation or content.

Using Images Instead of Text

I'm not talking about using images for design elements, such as navigation links, on a site. Although from an SEO perspective text is better than images. This issue is for those sites where entire pages are made up of images instead of text. Yes they still exist and I run across them every week or so.

The easiest way to test this is as follows.

1. Go to a page on your website
2. Right Click (Apple Cmd Click for Macs) on the content of a page
3. Does the pop-up menu show commands such as: View Image, Save Image, Copy Image...?
4. If so, then your web page is made up of images and not text.

Why is this bad? Because it does not let users change the size of the text if they need to make it larger to read. It is also bad for SEO; move on tat next week.

You can use the "Test Image" to see how your browser responds to an image when right clicked.

The Goal of Good Website Design

Make it easy for your site's visitors to use your site and find what they are looking for. If you have good content and it is easy to locate, then visitors are likely use your website or suggest it to others.

Remember Jakob Neilsen's Law of the Web User Experience states that "users spend most of their time on other websites." This means that they form their expectations for your site based on what's commonly done on most other sites. If you deviate, your site will be harder to use and users will leave.

When designing your web site, or reviewing it, you should keep that idea in mind. Your site should function like other sites.

The Internet Honey Do List for Business - Part 1

Improve Your Businesses Internet Presence:

Are you feeling overwhelmed? Do you have a nagging feeling you could do more to improve your company's internet presence. This next set of articles will give you a list of tasks you can use to get started.

Small business owners can feel overwhelmed by all the different jobs they need to do.
There are tasks related to their web site:

• Setting up a website
• Managing its content
• Making sure Google, Yahoo and Bing find it
• And doing  more ...
  

Social media has another list of to do's:

• Setting up Facebook accounts
• Maintaining Facebook pages
• Creating a Blog (and everything associated with blogging).
  
• And doing more ...
  

Branding and internet presence ideas:

• Creating a Google Local Business Listing
• Updating Local Search listings such as Yelp and CitySearch
• Registering a YouTube channel.
• And doing much more....
  

Getting Started

Assuming that you have a website and nothing else I'd begin with these tasks. If you don't have a website then that is where you should start - build one. (Shameless plug) Contact Zajon, we design and build websites.

1. Review your website.
2. Prepare to blog.
3. Set up a Google Business Listing.

Step 1 - Reviewing your website.

Since people searching the web will glance at your website for a brief period of time to see if will help them, your site needs to convey some basic information very fast. It should tell the user what your site is about and who it belongs to. If you sell garden supplies people should be able to tell after glancing at your home page a couple of seconds. They should also be able to identify your company name just as fast.

Quick Usability Testing
We are going to do a quick usability test on your site. To do this you will need to find people  (two - four) not familiar with your site but who could potentially be a customer - your target audience. Once you know who you are going to test your site on do the following.

1. Print the site's home page and an interior page (ex: Services, Products, Portfolio). >
2. Tell your test subject that you are going to show them two pages from a web site for a few seconds and want them to answer a few questions.
3. Show them your home page for about 5 seconds.
4. Ask them what was the site about? Listen to their answers.
   
5. Ask them what company owned the site? Listen to their answers.
6. Show them the interior page for 5 seconds or so. 
7. Ask them what section of the site are they in. Listen to their answers.
8. Ask them what they thought about the site. 

Write down or record their answers. Did they answer what you expected? How fast did they answer? Did they make any interesting comments? If your testers will let you record them with a video camera that's great, but jotting down notes about what they said is fine.

Congratulations - You have just done a very basic usability test. If your potential customers could not identify your service or product, and had a hard time saying what company owned the web site then you might want to think about some changes to your site.

If you are feeling adventurous and want to try one more test pick a task that you want users to do on your web site.  Show the tester he home page and ask them what they think they should do to accomplish that task. Ex: If you wanted to look up information about a product ask them, "If you came to this site looking for information about __________ where would you start?"

There is a lot more to usability testing but this is a basic test that I like to do with client sites. If you want to read more about design and usability, check out Steve Krug's book Don't Make Me Think.

Web Design Mistakes:

Next you can look at your site for some basic design problems. There are millions of pages devoted to web design mistakes. Try Googling "web design mistakes" - there were over 70 million results when I wrote this post. Everyone has their top 8, 10 and 50 list. I'm going to give you my list of 10 common issues that I see with new client sites. Five are design issues and five are Search Engine Optimization mistakes.

• Displaying Too Much Text - When text is not broken up into small paragraphs it is hard for readers to scan. A wall of text can discourage users.
• Making Links Difficult To Identify - Not underlining links or having them match the text of a site, or not differentiating visited links from fresh links.
• Having Confusing Navigation - Site navigation should be easy to understand and identify in a site. It should also consistent through out the site.
• Starting With Flash Splash Screens - I skip them or get tired of waiting for them to load and hit the back button, if there is no obvious skip button.
• Using Images Instead of Text - Sites made entirely with images instead of text can be hard for users to read.
  

SEO Design Mistakes:

• Reusing Page Titles  - If page titles are the same one every page of a website you have missed a great chance to tell search engines what your page is about.
• Using Images or incorrect tags for Headers - You should use header tags (h1, h2, h3) for your headlines, not images or tags with large point sizes.
  
• Using Images Instead of Text for Content - Search engines can't read images and like text much more than image alt tags.
• Building Internal Link Poorly. - Many sites have links with "click here" as the name of the link. Search engines give more weight to pages with descriptive links.
• Picking Wrong Keywords - Choosing to concentrate on keywords that your audience is not using.

Since some of these issues involve HTML code, next week we will take a look at how to identify some of these mistakes. And what you can do about them.

LinkedIn - Useful but Not Social Media Marketing

You read the correctly. I don't think LinkedIn (LI) profiles are part of social media marketing. They lack the interaction that is a large part of social media. LinkedIn does allow for some interaction, through Status Updates and the Answers section of the site. Overall I would classify it as an information tool, which should be part of a marketing strategy.

Useful Marketing Tool

LinkedIn can be a useful tool in your company's marketing efforts if used properly. LinkedIn lets you have a personal and corporate profile. Your profile should provide useful information, not hype about your company, products or services.

Corporate Profiles: Basic and Premium

Corporate profiles are available in two versions, the basic free version and the premium version. The Basic profile lets you enter a short text description, upload a logo and provide a bit more basic information about your company. The Premium package lets you do all that and spotlight employees, post a poll, link video clips and have additional career based information about your company. IMHO the basic profile is enough for most small businesses.

Person Profiles Types

Personal profiles come in different versions. Cost range from free to $24.95/month or more. As far as I can tell there is no information available about upgraded accounts until you sign up for the free account. IMHO the free (Basic) package is all most people need. That is what the rest of this blog is about.

Your Personal Profile

Are you using your LinkedIn profile to promote your business? Use it to inform your clients, potential clients and vendors what is happening to you and at your company. Don't trawl for new clients by hyping your latest product or webinar. Like your blog, keep your audience in mind, provide useful and relevant information.

Use Status Updates

This is one of the few places to make regular updates to your profile. Take advantage of it. I'd suggest updating it once a week. Let people know what you are working on, or changes happening in your company. Just keep in mind that Status Updates are not archived. If you want to keep something visible on your profile, use the Summary field available when you edit your profile.

Following Your Network

You can set LinkedIn to send you weekly emails about people in your network. It is controlled in the "Receiving Messages" link under "Account Settings". The email will include their Status Updates and new people with whom they have connected. If you see something interesting send them an email or comment on their news.

LinkedIn Answers

There is a section of LinkedIn called Answers, it lets you post answers to other peoples questions or post questions of your own. (I blogged about LI Answers in January of 2009). Many people tout answering and asking as a good way to build your network. Be careful , resist the temptation to use this as a place to put advertising for your company. It is not the place to tell people they need to sign up for that great webinar your company is having this week.

Participate in Groups

LinkedIn lets you create or join groups of people with common interests. Be selective don't go out and join every group you see hoping to get in contact with everyone you can. Select those groups that are relevant to your business. Groups have have places to post jobs, news & discussion topics. Once again be respectful of others intelligence. This is not the place to hype your company. Post useful information and comments.

Promotion It

Promote your profile on your web site, blog and vice versa. Also place a link in the signature of your emails.

Generating New Business

All that being said, I don't think I've ever been contacted for new business because of my profile on LinkedIn. I have told potential new clients that they can check out my profile, and been told that they already have. In today's business world well crafted profile can be a definite asset.

Setting up your account

If you are not yet on LinkedIn here are some basic steps that you should do to set up your profile.

• Spend time creating an accurate and relevant profile. 
• Fill out past employment positions.
• Enter where you went to school. (Colleges and high school if appropriate)
• Enter links to your corporate web site and blog.
• Fill out the Interested In section
• Upload a professional looking headshot for your picture.
• Be selective asking people to join your network.
• Start small; invite 10 to15 people to start with.
  
• Don't ask everyone in your contact list to join.
  
• Get a custom URL (ex: http://www.linkedin.com/in/zajon) using either your name or company name.
• This can be found in the Edit Profile Tab
• The link to create a custom URL is called "Public Profile" and should be just above the Summary section in Edit your Profile.

Maintaining Your Profile

• Get LinkedIn Recommendations
• After people have joined your network, ask two or three people to give you a LinkedIn Recommendation.
• Don't over do it.
• IMHO it is better to have one or two new recommendations a year then eight when you create the account and none for the next two years. 
• Add your Blog to LinkedIn.
• Under "Applications" look for either Blog Link or WordPress applications.
  It isn't hard to do, but the instructions would be too long for this blog entry.
  
• Invite others to join your network.
• Once again don't invite everyone you run across.
  
• Share what you are working on with others.
• Once a week (probably not daily) use the "Share" button on your profile to tell people what you are working on. 
• Join a few relevant groups.
• Linked in has many "Groups" related to different industries. Pick a handful that you feel are a good match for you.
  

  Want a more detailed How-To Guide? Check out www.dummies.com they have several pages with screen shots for setting up a LinkedIn Profile.

Added Nov 14, 2009 Advertising Age Video Interview with LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman.

Social Media Won't Do That

There are several Won'ts for social media. If you are starting to market your small business using social media, you should understand these Won'ts. Understanding and remembering these Won'ts will help prevent you from becoming disappointed and frustrated with your social media marketing. You will be less likely to give up using social media to market your company.

Social Media Won't

• Work if you are not involved. It sounds obvious, but if you are not active with social media, you can not use it effectively. Are you using Facebook or Twitter in your personal life? Get involved so you can have a better understanding of what is possible and what is good etiquette when you start using it for your business.
  
• Attract interest by itself.  You need to promote your social media efforts just like any other online content. People will not find your company blog, Ning Network, Facebook page, twitter account if you don't tell people about it. You also need to give people a reason to return to your blog, Facebook page or twitter account.
  
• Replace other marketing efforts. Tweeting about your business products or weekly discount will not increase your sales. Social Media can be a good marketing tool, if used properly, but for most companies it shouldn't (and won't) replace your other marketing efforts.
  
• Give you immediate results. If you are not a large brand (think Google, Cisco, Zappos...) with lots of loyal fans then it will take time for your message to spread and for people to find you.
  
• Succeed if done half-heartedly. Don't expect to turn your social media efforts to "teens" that get social media, and tweet or text every minute of the day. You need to make a commitment to social media, both in time and resources. Sometimes this involves getting professional help.
  
• Succeed the first time you try it. You might get lucky, but chances are that you will need to try and try again before it works for your company. This is especially true since it is very unlikely to generate immediate results.
•  Tell you when it is working. You need to figure out what you should measure and how to measure it. Are you tracking sales from social media, comments on your blog and influence in the market place. The Four I's by Liana Evans is a good place to start.
  

Social Media is not a substitute for marketing, it is not a quick fix nor is it easy.