"mediocrity now howls in protest" by Hugh MacLeod

Without sounding overly simplistic, I think there are 3 types of businesses on the web, each with their own web philosophy:

1. Ones that try to milk or exploit the web (think spammers, Zynga, the “make millions on Google” crowd). These people aren’t always dirtbags nor are they breaking the law but they’re looking to take everything they can get without giving much back.
2. Ones that just see the web as another medium to conduct business. Decisions on the web are made the same way any other decision in the business is made. Should we change our health care provider? Should we move our office to another city? Should we invest time in a Facebook page?
3. Ones that have a sincere passion for the web and what it can do for people. These are people who contribute valuable work to open source projects, manage vibrant communities of people, and write about these things because they can’t help themselves.

I whole-heartedly fall into the third category; I love the web and everything it can do. I’ve been using this crazy conglomeration of pipes and nodes since its birth and have been contributing and building for at least 5 years in various capacities. The breadth and depth of humanity expressed on the web never ceases to impress me and I’m proud to be a part of this amazing global community by giving where I can and helping others do the same.

Being a designer/developer, I have a unique perspective on the web compared to other small businesses. I know what it looks like under the hood and can tell the difference between a Yugo and a Lexus. I know what works most of the time, what doesn’t work any of the time, and what needs to be explored and tested before putting it in place. I’ve also worked with many different businesses in many different industries and can appreciate different needs and approaches.

I took a hard look at what I’ve learned about being on the web and wanted to share my complete web philosophy. If you’re reading this on my site, I invite you to add your own pieces here or address anything I’ve said here in the comments. I’d always rather have a conversation than a broadcast.

1) Look for the path of least resistance

The best way to build something on the web is rarely the most expensive and never the most complicated. If it seems insurmountable then you haven’t done enough exploring. Every great developer will tell you that their most valuable tool is Google. I’ve found solutions to problems I didn’t even have, saved them, and found a use a year later. Finding the path of least resistance is simple with a few questions:

• Does what you want to make already exist? This is for anyone with a web-based business idea that revolves around a tool or a site. If you think you have a great idea for a productivity tool or a web application, it’s time to do some major research on what’s out there. If it doesn’t exist, are you looking hard enough?
• If so, are you sure you’re not the only one who would use it? It might be hard to be objective about a great idea you came up with so ask around and make sure that what you want to make actually needs to be made.
• If it does exist, does it need improvement? If so, does it need major improvement? Breaking into a segment with existing products is going to be tough if what you’re offering isn’t a big jump ahead of what is there. If your potential competition is open source, can you contribute instead of starting something new?
• If it kind of exists or exists in a partial form, can you extend or customize what’s there already? If you want to build a site with a lot of different features and functionality, you’ll need a starting point. Custom-built software starts around $20,000 and can easily cost 10 times as much depending on what you want to do. Check out Drupal, WordPress, Ning, Facebook, PHPBB, Joomla, Magento, and KickApps.
• For those looking to sell products on-line, who is your competition? If you want to sell shoes on-line you’re going to be contending with a big dog, Zappos, so you better be offering something very unique. If fact, that advice goes for anyone wanting to sell anything on the web. If you’re not standing out in some big way, you’re wasting your time.

2) Have a goal in mind

This is the first thing I ask everyone I start working for: what is your goal with your web presence? For many, this seems like such an obvious question but there is usually more than meets the eye.

If, for example, you’re a dentist, you might want a site for people to read about your practice and call you to set up an appointment. Sounds pretty normal but is it really a phone call you want or would you rather have an email with a bit of information? Are you looking to increase the number of appointments or improve the quality of your inquiries? Are there common questions people have about a service you provide?

Being clear about why your site should exist makes every decision down the road a matter of returning to your goal. If a feature or function doesn’t support what your goal, don’t implement it. Having a fun, exciting, pretty site is great but if it makes it harder for people to buy your product or contact you then you’re doing everyone a disservice. Be clear about what you want to do so you don’t buy yourself into non-performing site.

This speaks mostly to business websites, i.e. one that promotes a product or service but the same idea goes for community and informative sites. Even if you’re not selling anything your site still has a function to perform. If you’re providing information, then your structure should be simple and well-thought-out. If you’re building a social site then it needs to be easy to sign up, get started, and contribute. If you’re promoting a cause then you need to make your message clear and give people easy ways to take the next step (donate, volunteer, sign up for more information). Don’t fool yourself: every site has a goal.

3) Always consider performance

The more I construct on the web, the more I understand how important this piece of the puzzle is. I was tempted to put this first since it is so often overlooked but making something work well isn’t going to help you if you’re building for the wrong reason and don’t have a goal in mind. Also, a great idea with a well-designed but poorly-performing site can be corrected.

I see three major components to web performance. These are measurable and correctable and can make the difference between success and failure.

1) Page load speed – This is the low-hanging fruit of most sites. I’d estimate that 90% of the sites I come into contact with could have their loading speed improved (mine included but it’s in the upper percentile :) ). A faster site has been proven to increase the number of pages a visitor views (people are more likely to click around and stay on a site that moves quickly) and increase the likelihood someone will share a site with others.

Page loading speed comes down to how many things you’re loading on your page and how large those things are. The less your load, the faster the page. Keep your code small and combined into as few files as possible, optimize your images in an image editor like GIMP or Photoshop, and load as few external scripts (like share buttons and widgets) as possible and you’ll be in good shape. If you need an analysis of what can be done on your site, contact me.

2) Search engine optimization (SEO) - Another piece of web site performance is how well it’s constructed for search engines. On average, about a third of your traffic should be coming from search engines (more if you’re a content-based site like mine). If you’re under 20% then something might be wrong and you may need an analysis.

SEO is a set of rules dictating how a site needs to be structured to allow the search engine spiders to do their job. It’s also a strategy that comes from picking the right words in that structure and content to appear as high as possible on the results pages. Though there are outstanding questions on the finer points, there are also agreed-upon standards and it would behoove a business owner to understand the basics.

3) Conversion rate - I’m talking more and more about this as time goes on because I believe it to be the most important metric for any site that’s selling something. Your conversion rate, put simply, is the number of people who do what you want them to do (buy something, sign up, submit a contact form) divided by the number of unique visitors to your site. If I get 10 contacts a month and I have 1000 unique visitors then I’ve got a 1% conversion rate.

It’s really tough to say what a conversion rate should be and how, precisely, it should be calculated; it’s different for every site. What is universal, however, is having a sense of what your rate is and where you’re potentially going wrong. Conversion rate problems I’ve seen very typically come from an unclear path to the goal, convoluted verbiage leading to a confused user, and too many steps to take to reach the goal.

A final note on site performance. While it’s something that needs to be an important part of a site’s initial build, your performance, particularly in the areas of SEO and conversion, need to be monitored and re-visited. People change over time and so does what you offer. Collect data and watch the patterns and you’ll be surprised by what you can achieve with what you already have.

4) Put your best foot forward

If you’re talking to a designer, this is the only thing that matters. If you’re talking to a developer, this doesn’t really matter very much at all. The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in between. Aesthetics are, for the most part, relative though there are a few general rules to good design that should always be considered (alignment, grouping, negative space, and balance to name a few). That being said, there are some important things you can do to put your best foot forward on the web. These rules apply to everything from your Facebook page that you have fairly minimal control over to your own site that has few limitations.

1) Check your spelling and grammar. The web is rife with juvenile spelling and painful grammar errors (just look at all the pages devoted to calling them out). Because much of the web is informal communication, it isn’t efficient to spend a lot of time editing and proofing your blog comments, Facebook status messages, and you IM messages. But, on the important stuff, an obvious error could turn off potential customers, employers, or connections. Marketing content, slogans, emails … re-read at least once before sending and you’ll put forth a much more professional air.

2) Check your pages thoroughly for errors. It seems like the web just wants to break. As entropy in the world increases, so do the number of broken links, server errors, missing images, and layout problems. Finding an fixing errors on a web page, unless your a complete nerd like me, is tedious and feels unrewarding but it’s a very important part of upkeep. Click around your site on a regular basis looking for text that shouldn’t be there, missing page titles, broken links, and embedded code that doesn’t work. There are also tools to help you like Xenu for broken links and missing images.

3) Pay a WEB designer. This shouldn’t sound too strange from a designer but it’s a rule even I follow for certain projects. Design is unlike many other disciplines in that it seems like anyone can do it. In fact, anyone can do it since Photoshop and Illustrator don’t require a license to use. What some people fail to understand is how much work actually goes into a professional design. Designing for the web takes into account human interaction guidelines, information architecture, business goals, branding conerns, performance, eye movement, and so much more. Before you call your nephew in high school who just took a digital art class, talk to a professional designer about your project and what it would entail. You’ll thank me later.

4) It needs to look good to you. I say this knowing some people have a very strange idea of what looks good and what does not. I’m of the belief that there is always a sweet spot that can be found between someone’s person taste and a designer’s eye. This sweet spot can be exceedingly hard to find, so much so that there is usually some compromise. If you hire a designer (I should say “when”), take their advice but make sure you feel good about what they made. A web site is your face to the world and you should feel proud to show it off. Bonus tip: ask in the beginning of the process how many revisions are allowed.

Am I missing anything? I welcome your feedback and insight in the comments below.

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Knowing what pages are the most popular, what keywords people are using to find you, and where people are going paint a picture about your customers, one that you might not be aware of. You probably want people on your product pages and your sign-up sheets, right? How do you know they’re getting there? How do you know they don’t get there and leave? How many leads are you missing?

This post outlines the very basics of Google Analytics and what it can tell you about your website.

Site usage overview (Main > Dashboard)

Visits

Visits are the number of sessions that occur on your website. A visit is, as close as possible, one person who views one or more pages on the site. If the same person comes back, that’s two visits.

More visits to a site equates, basically, to more “traffic” and, potentially, more people in general seeing the site. A visit count increasing means more sessions on the site which could indicate 1) more people returning to the site or 2) more new people on the site. Combining the change in visits with the change in percentage of new visits can give you an idea which of these scenarios is contributing the most. Month to month, you typically want this number to increase.

Pageviews

Pageviews are the number of pages on your site that were viewed. Generally, each link you click takes you to a new page. If, in one month, 1,000 people went to the homepage, clicked on an article, clicked on another article, and then went elsewhere, that month would have 3,000 page views.

Like visits, this is also a number that, generally, should be increasing month-to-month. An increasing pageview count means that more content is being seen across the whole site. Two things could happen to increase the pageviews: more visitors could be coming to the site or visitors could be viewing more pages per visit. Combining the change in pageviews with the change in pages per visit will show which of these scenarios is occurring.

Pages/visit

Dividing total page views by total visits gives the average number of pages that are viewed per visit. Blog-type sites typically have a pages/visit number between 1.5 and 2.

An increasing pages/visit number shows that visitors are clicking on more pages on the site per visit. This is always a beneficial thing but on a content site such as ours, diminishing returns kicks in past 2 pages per visit. Content published, content displayed, and inbound links all contribute to pages/visit.

Bounce rate

The bounce rate is the percentage of people who see one page and leave the site (essentially “bouncing” off of a page). Visitors who bounce have a page/visit number of 1. Bounce rates for blog-type sites are typically around 75%.

A decreasing bounce rate is always a good thing. A decreasing bounce rate means that people found what they wanted and more. Bounce rate is affected by the same things that the pages/visit number is: site design, reader engagement, availability of related content, etc.

Average time on site

This number is the average amount of time that each visit lasts. This figure is tough to report accurately by any analytics programs.

Not a lot of good conclusions can be made from this number by itself. An increasing time, however, could be an indication of reader engagement and attention span. This number can be used in conjunction with bounce rate and pages/visit to get a sense of how involved the readers are and whether this is improving or declining.

% New Visits

This is the percentage of the total visits that came from new visitors. A new visitor is simply someone without our site’s cookie present in their browser. As such, this figure has a fairly high margin of error.

Though potentially inaccurate, this is another number whose trends are useful to watch. An increase in % new visits could be an indication of extended online reach or influence while a decrease could mean improved reader engagement. This percentage should show in increase during periods of strong promotion.

Traffic sources (Main > Traffic Sources)

This is the Google triad of traffic sources: direct traffic (people who type our URL in their browser or use a browser-based bookmark), referring sites (a link to our site from another site), and search engines.

There’s no right or wrong distribution of traffic sources but a healthy strategy will typically keep each piece close to a third. For a long-tail, content-rich site like ours, the search engine piece should definitely be near one-third. Watching a particular source grow or shrink should correlate to promotions, SEO, or other outreach efforts.

Referring sites (Main > Traffic Sources > Referring Sites)

This is the list of domains that sent visits to our site. This list also shows visit quality by way of pages/visit, time on site, and bounce rate.

This list can be used to measure the success of site-specific promotions, look for new sites that we might want to partner with, and figure out which sites are sending the best traffic. There might be a community site that we should be interacting with or a social network that is doing well for us.

Keywords (Main > Traffic Sources > Keywords)

This list shows all keywords that were used to find the site via search engines. Like the referring sites, this list also shows traffic quality metrics.

These keywords can be applied directly to on-site SEO efforts. The keywords with the best quality (low bounce rate, high time on site and pages/visit) should be used in post titles, tags, and categories. These can also be used to determine which content gets published and what direction we give bloggers.

Top pages and posts (Main > Content > Top Content/Content by Title)

There are two lists here: by URL and by page title. Some pages share the same title (default) and some are not set which means that the page name list will have some pages combined together. The URL list is an exact list of the pages (just add “http://sitename.com” before each one to get directly to the page).

These lists give an idea of the most popular content on a particular site. These numbers will differ from on-site view counts (likely smaller on Google Analytics) and are a more accurate representation of actual people seeing the content. Tracking the content that gets the most views and has the best traffic quality (fewer exits and bounces) can show content managers the highest performing pages which can help with choosing the right posts on the site.

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10 Must Track Google Analytics Goals (saved on Delicious )

I’ve been reading a lot more about web analytics these days and realizing the power it has in optimizing your website. Getting a website up and running is just the first baby-step towards actually being on the web and finding customers and clients. This ties into my concept of web strategy. Just getting out there is a great start but having a website without understanding how it’s working for you is just shooting from the hip. Having a benchmark and collecting data to understand how people are using your site is critical for every business owner.

10 Steps to Advanced Keyword Research (saved on Delicious )

Oh no, more SEO! Yeah, more SEO.

A big part of getting your site visible and getting people to come from search engines is picking a set of keywords that can perform. I’ve written about the basics of keyword research and even gotten a little philosophical about this keyword thing but this link from SEOMoz goes really in-depth. You might start scanning this article and thing “whoa… this is way over my head” but I would urge you to understand what they’re talking about. People treat picking keywords like it’s just a shot in the dark or just something to get out of the way but it’s hugely important. Improving your search engine rank is the same as moving your store front from behind the mall to the boardwalk. More eyes, more ears, and more mouse pointers means more conversions. The better site owners understand their own SEO, the easier it will be for them to exercise their business knowledge on the web.

15 sites web developers and designers should know (saved on Delicious )

Not everybody out there is going to need this but even if you’re not a designer/developer, there are some great tools on here to help you understand the process. First, try ColorCombos to get a sense of what colors work together and give you a few ideas for that redesign. Lipsum is where that crazy Latin text comes from on sites that aren’t finished… try sending a big block to your significant other and asking “so what’s your answer?” at the end. What the Font can identify fonts from images, a great resource if you need to recreate a logo or graphic but aren’t sure what fonts were used. Also, try Test Everything to see how your website is performing.

Twitter links

IE6 must die for the web to move on: The title says it all: Internet Explorer version 6 is really holding the web back. If you’re using Internet Explorer to view this page, go to Help > About and if the version number is anything less than 7, please upgrade.

Everything You Need to Know About Twitter You Learned from Grandma: Great post on how to use Twitter. It’s totally true: plain old-fashioned courtesy and respect go a long way both in person and online. Who knew?!?!

Swapster digital media trading: I’ve been working with the folks at Swapster to help them do a press release and, in the meantime, starting using their service. It’s a really easy way to list books, CDs, DVDs, and video games to trade with others. Try it out!

9 Marketing Tips from a Six-Year Old’s Lemonade Stand: Really well executed and thought-provoking past on how to approach your marketing.

H&FJ Fonts for Financials : I love REALLY technical posts about design, I’m not sure why. This is a nice long article about the types of fonts that should be used in financial documents… how specific can you get? Sexy fonts too…

Data on Social Media Use: I just found this interesting… quick 30 second read.

That’s all for know… hope you found these helpful. If you want more information about the stuff here or have a question, post it in the comments or find me on Twitter and I’ll be glad to help!

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Google Analytics (GA) and Webmaster Tools (GWT) are used to determine the health and performance of any public website. A small snippet of code is added to the very end of each website page which reports back to GA both quantitative and qualitative data about each site visitor. GWT uses the Google search engine to test and report back errors on the site and sitemap.

Using these tools in conjunction on a regular basis provides very detailed information about the following site attributes:

• How much traffic the site is seeing
• How many errors users are experiencing
• What keywords are driving traffic to the site
• The pages on the site are performing the best/worst
• How many incoming links the site has
• Where website traffic is coming from
• Detailed information about site visitors

Without close monitoring and regular reporting, websites run the risk of losing traffic, accumulating errors, and becoming difficult to search.

Tasks to complete

1. First, the website needs to have GA installed and a sitemap created (if it was not already completed) and submitted to GWT.
2. Both tools will need a couple of weeks to gather data before any useful conclusions can be made.
3. Once GWT has enough information, the fixes will be clear. All critical errors and issues should be corrected immediately before moving on.
4. An incoming link and keyword report can be made using the information in GWT. This is information gleaned from the search engine spiders.
5. Next, GA is used to analyze the overall traffic of the site using visitor, page view, and bounce rate metrics.
6. A top content report can be pulled to show pages that are performing well (seeing a lot of traffic and directing it to other parts of the site), pages that are performing poorly (low traffic or high bounce rate), and how people are reaching these types of pages.
7. A traffic source report can be pulled to understand where visitors are coming from and how they got to the site in the first place. Traffic is divided between three categories: search engines, direct, and referrals.
8. If needed, a visitor report can be created to show a cross-section of the people who are viewing the site. This includes technology, geographic location, and language.

Additional Analysis Tasks

In addition to GA and GWT, other tools should be used to find presentation, browsing, and search engine problems.

• Sites should be scanned and optimized for loading time. This includes script minifying, image optimization, and code bloat.
• Web site code should also be validated across the site. Invalid code can lead to accessibility problems, display issues, and on-screen errors.
• Broken links on the site should be scanned for and corrected on a regular basis.
• Search engine optimization including keyword strategy, keyword placement, and meta information should be examined and reviewed on a quarterly basis.

Lost already? Contact me and we can work together to get your site up and running great!

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The goal of this site

The website team set out with a few goals in mind (listed in order):

1. Increase sales leads
2. Claim a better position in search engine ranking pages (SERPs)
3. Create a better landing page for email campaigns and conference leads

To this end, the design and content of the site serves to drive visitors towards the Contact Us form (aka the request a demo form). The software being sold on this site is a large, campus-wide relationship management tool so the option to pay and download does not exist. Our goal is to convince people that we’re worth the time to check out, drive home a few salient points, and get them to call or email for a demonstration.

Information architecture to assist our sales lead goal

Since the goal was to funnel visitors towards the contact form, the site needed to avoid navigation confusion and always have the option to jump right to a contact form. Here’s what was done to achieve that goal:

• At the top of every page is an attractive button that leads to the demo request form. Studies show that page elements that look like things people can touch in real life get the most clicks. There’s no missing the button and no mistake what it does.
  
• Content resides only one or two levels deep. This means it takes only one or two clicks to get to the main content. Portal pages were created for topics with more than one page to create an index and a good landing spot for general links like the clients we support and our main selling points.
  
• Appropriate headlines and link text was used to both inform and entice. Whenever possible, long pieces of content were broken into sections and/or lists to make it easy to scan.

Other features

A lot of time, energy, and planning went into building this site. This is easily the most well-planned, fully designed site I’ve ever built. A few things I’m really psyched about:

• The whole thing is completely valid XHTML and CSS written by hand from scratch. It is served through PHP to make it easier to add pages and make changes. In the future, I’ll have certain pieces of content served up through XML (or CSV) so other members of the marketing team can switch around the content.
  
• We created a general keyword strategy for the site which is miles apart from what existed before. On the old site, we were accidentally ranking for a few different words. This new site is optimized for those words and a few others.
• Navigation at the top and the site map in the footer at the bottom make sure people don’t get lost in any particular section. I also added a dynamic breadcrumb function just below the header that keeps track of where people are in the site.
  
• The sidebar modules are just that – modules. They all reside in the same PHP file and can be changed in one place to affect each instance on the site. The content within each box is served up based on the page being viewed.
  
• The forms go to different mailboxes depending on the option that is selected. A special CSS-based anti-spam measure was added to replace the original idea of using a reCATCHA.
  

What’s next?

The site is not quite complete but needed to be launched. Here’s what’s just around the corner:

• Drop-down navigation for certain options
• Pages specific to each product (remove the annoying PDF documents)
• A little better linking in between pages
• Tighten up the keywords used for each page
• A few more design touches here and there (pull quotes, a little more texture on the sidebar, etc)
• More context for the Contact Us box (or, potentially, remove it completely).

Hope you like it! If you’re interested in something similar for your business, please don’t hesitate to contact me for an estimate!

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1. What should the website accomplish?

First, we need to start with the goal of the website. It could be as simple as “generate leads” or more in-depth like “improve specific community interaction.” It’s fine to have a primary goal and a sub-goal or two but, just like anything, as the purpose gets broader, the efficacy for each goal will decrease. A specific, attainable goal is key.

Who builds a website without a goal? Why go through the time and effort, why spend the money, and why go through the hassle if there’s no reason to do it? And yet, time and time again, websites are built, time is wasted, money is spent, and hassles are created without a solid outcome at the forefront of this flurry of action. As a thought experiment, think of a popular website. In fact, think of ten of them. Now, think about why they are popular. This should go a long way towards convincing you that a good website needs a goal. I’ll let a few and take an educated guess as to the goal they had.

2. What are the design, content, or technological constraints for the site?

There is no right answer to this; many people start out with no content and no identity which is fine. Other people already have a logo, slogan, content, and color scheme that can’t change. Before building a site, I have to understand what already exists and what my limits are. Here are some of the questions I’m going to ask you and it’s OK if the answer is “I don’t know:”

• Do you have a web host and/or domain name (the domain name is the main name of your site and costs about $10-15 per year depending on where you go. My domain name is “joshcanhelp.com”)?
• Do you have any content that has already been created? This includes product images, marketing copy, articles, company logo, anything.
• Does your company already have a logo? Color scheme? Marketing collateral that needs to be mimicked?
• Do you want to learn how to update content on your site by yourself or will you need assistance? This will depend on the site, your staff, and the amount of involvement you want to have.

3. Do you envision anything for your site?

Are there features, designs, or layout aspects that you’re interested in? This step is optional because you may not have a vision for the site but it’s important to ask. To answer this question, I usually ask people to send me 3 or 4 sites that they like and tell me what they like about them (interaction, usability, aesthetics, layout, etc). It’s good for me to understand your vision of the site so I can create something that you like and something that you’ll be proud to show people. I have worked with many people that come to me with a site that they did not have a lot of creative control over. If I see sites that you like then I can get into your head a little more.

During this step, I also want to explore what you see for the site in the future. Will there be more information later? Additional products? A blog? A gallery? The more information I have at the start, the easier I can make changes later. Having a short-term goal for the site with a vision for it’s future is great and will save you expense and time later.

4. Plan, budget, time frame, and paying Josh

With this information, I come up with a plan of attack for the site. This plan includes:

• A vague idea of the design and layout
• A list of suggested features based on what you want and your goals
• A cost estimate
• A suggested timeline

Once we agree on a budget range, I ask for half up front with the expectation that the rest is paid upon completion. Other payment options can be explored but I don’t release any files until the final amount due is paid.

5. ATTACK!

At this point, it’s time to get busy. First, I’ll come up with a content structure and navigation suggestions. Before we move on, I explain this plan in detail and make sure that everything is up to client expectations. Next, using this structure, we’ll come up with a Photoshop design for the pages themselves. Usually one or two photoshop files can suffice for the site unless each page is different. Tweaks are made, images are shared, and the project moves forward.

If we’re also handling keyword analysis, we’ll walk through the selection process and settle on the words to be used throughout the site. It’s important to nail these down early so they can be build into the site instead of being added at the end (saves time).

At this point, I also ask for all content, images, and logos that will be used. It’s ok for this information to come little-by-little but I need to be aware of everything that needs to created so the project does not go over-budget or far past the deadline.

6. Ongoing…

Throughout the process, I keep in very close contact with my client. I host the site on my URL and email as steps are completed. Tweaks are made, content is added, and everything comes together.

7. In the home stretch

Once the site is build according to specs and I’ve had a chance to scrutinize everything, I’ll ask you to make a very thorough walk-through to make sure the content is what you wanted and that no mistakes slipped through the cracks (we’re all human). You’ll want to look for the following:

• Correct images and content in the right places
• All information provided is incorporated
• Navigation works well
• Aesthetics are what you were expecting

I ask that all changes and modifications be submitted within a couple weeks of finishing the site. Mistakes on my side are corrected no charge (of course) but deviations from the originally supplied content and design will be charged at the regular maintenance rate.

8. That wasn’t so bad now was it?

When the site is completed and approved, I burn all files (PSD, HTML, JPG, everything) to a CD and, once the final payment is made, I upload all the files, send the CD, and test the site one last time. Your sales go through the roof, praise comes from far and wide, and the book/movie deals come rolling in (results may vary).

Sounds good, doesn’t it? If you need a website, blog, or other kind of on-line presence, download my pre-website homework form and let’s get it started!

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What are page titles for?

Page titles aren’t for you, that’s for sure. When was teh last time you tried to figure out what a website was about by looking at it’s title? Probably never, I never have.

Page titles aren’t for people, they’re for search engines. The the page title is what says “hey, this whole page is about quality graffiti mural art” so search engines have an introductino to the page. They also work together with the content on the page to rank you with the other pages that talk about the same thing. If you’re trying to show up on the first page for graffiti then your page title (and the rest of your content structure elements) better be talking about the right thing.

Why are page titles important?

The title of your page (the text that shows at the very top on the window of your browser) is consistently shown to be one of the most important parts of search engine relevancy. Think about it: you title files, documents, books, and emails with information relevant to its content, right? Web pages need the same attention. Your page title is what appears as the link in a search result.

For example, search “keyword” in Google, notice the link of the first result (Wikipedia), click on it, and look at the top of your browser window. See?

How do I use them?

Page titles need to be the right length and include your keywords (as they pertain to what is on the page). There is no magic bullet with titles, they just need to be relevant and honest, like the rest of your site. Describe in 20 words or less what that particular web page is all about and what people will find there, use the keywords you picked out, and you’re doing great.

What does Google have to say?

Google says:

Accurately describe the page’s content – Choose a title that effectively communicates the topic of the page’s content.

Avoid:

• choosing a title that has no relation to the content on the page
• using default or vague titles like “Untitled” or “New Page 1″

Create unique title tags for each page – Each of your pages should ideally have a unique title tag, which helps Google know how the page is distinct from the others on your site.

Avoid:

• using a single title tag across all of your site’s pages or a large group of pages

Use brief, but descriptive titles – Titles can be both short and informative. If the title is too long, Google will show only a portion of it in the search result.

Avoid:

• using extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users
• stuffing unneeded keywords in your title tags

Need some help figuring out what to put in your page titles? Do you already know and just need someone to help you do it? Please contact me, I’d be happy to help!

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Dissertation Writing ::: Billie / PartsnPieces ::: on Flickr.com

Each article should be directly and completely related to the reason why you have a website. The topics you pick should be related to something that the people you want to address would search (called keywords), something they would read, and something they would send to their colleagues. Additionally, it also needs to be directly related to what you’re selling; you want links in the article to point towards monetized outcomes.

When you write your articles, keep a few things in mind:

• Uniqueness is almost as important as usefulness with respect to web content. There are plenty of articles out there on financial matters so breaking through the noise is important. Even if a good portion of the article is about raising stock price, phrase the article towards a certain niche or industry.  You’ll show up for less search terms but you’ll rank higher for the ones that you do show up for. This translates directly to more eyeballs on your page (and more potential customers).

• Make sure you insert some personality and speak to the lowest common denominator. Your topic might be high-level information but the more people that can understand it and relate it to their own situations, the more likely it is that people will share it with others. Include a bunch of jargon and huge words are you’re going to alienate people.

• Invest in a recurring editor or an editing service. Typos, grammatical errors, and crappy punctuation could relegate a great article to the Un-clicked Archives of the Internet. Pick one person or one service and make sure they can retain your personal voice through their editing. Perfection is not required but poor sentence structure leads to a crappy read.

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Of all the various reasons that exist as inspiration and/or motivation to create a little spot on the web for you and what you have to say, there’s one that stands out. There’s one reason that leads to great websites, leads to innovation on-line, leads, even, to income and notoriety. This one reason is probably less common than you think but it’s the only real reason web sites prosper and thrive.

Because there is a goal

It seems utterly trivial to even mention it out loud, doesn’t it? Who builds a website without a goal? Why go through the time and effort, why spend the money, and why go through the hassle if there’s no reason to do it? And yet, time and time again, websites are built, time is wasted, money is spent, and hassles are created without a solid outcome at the forefront of this flurry of action.

As a thought experiment, think of a popular website. In fact, think of ten of them. Now, think about why they are popular. This should go a long way towards convincing you that a good website needs a goal. I’ll let a few and take an educated guess as to the goal they had.

Twitter: To popularize the micro-blogging format

Amazon: To sell a tons of books

Facebook: To act as an easy way for new students to become acquainted with Harvard

eBay: To help one subset of people get rid of their extra stuff and for another to get stuff for cheap. Either that or they wanted to make it easy for people to rip each other off anonymously.

Wikipedia: To democratize information and/or to gather colloquial and hard to find information.

Try it out on Alexa’s list of the most popular websites in the world (www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites) . I can pretty much guarantee you won’t find a website on there was created without a goal in mind.

If you’re looking to create a website, why? Should anyone care? Are you doing it just to do it or because you think you should? If so, is it really worth your time. If you already have a website, what is it doing for you? Do you want more out of it? Did it’s raison d’etre change once or twice or several times?

If you’re having trouble, I can help!

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I’m done selling tangible objects on Craigslist, I’m done using eBay, and I’m through with PayPal

Between PayPal’s ridiculous user agreement and business practices and all the unscrupulous people out there, I’ve been ripped off 3 times in the last year. In the end, the money lost has not been crippling by any means (probably about $300) but it has been frustrating and makes me think less of the human race in general.

Selling things on-line is tricky. My advice to anyone using eBay or Craigslist is to cover your butt completely. If you use PayPal (I wouldn’t recommend it), make sure you completely understand the user agreement and you don’t leave your money in there for longer than a few days if you can help it. If you ship anything, get a tracking number always (that should be obvious but I guess I needed to learn my lesson the hard way). All my advice comes down to not leaving yourself open to anything. I hate to say it but assume that everyone you’re dealing with is trying to rip you off. That way, when you think “I’m sure this guy will send my stuff back, I’ll just reverse the payment” you’ll immediately laugh and ignore phone calls and emails until you get your stuff back *cough*.

My first step towards avoiding any future screwings is to cancel my PayPal account for good. These guys make so much money for doing next to nothing and involve themselves in transactions when they aren’t needed. In an attempt to appear to protect buyers and sellers, they move money around, take money away, and will sick collection agencies on you before you know it. PayPal sucks and I won’t use them ever again:

eBay too:

I’m going to finish targeting/optimizing my website, clean up all the static content, and style all pages

It’s a bit sad that me, a person who helps other people build their on-line presence, has an un-optimized, incomplete, unsatisfying website. I still haven’t picked and optimized for keywords that I use, there are a few pages (like the search results and my 404 page) that aren’t styled, and I change my mind about the page content on a weekly basis.

Just like the lawyer who gets a DUI or the personal organizer with the messy car, I just don’t make time for my own projects because, well, no one is paying me for them. The problem comes when I miss out on work because someone doesn’t want to hire a web designer with an unfinished web presence. As such, here is my to-do list:

• The Portfolio page is going to be changed into more of a client presentation than a list of things I’ve done. It makes more sense to concentrate on the client, their needs, and how I helped them than on the individual projects I’ve completed. I see myself as much more of a consultant and an on-going resource than just a guy who builds sites and emails and then moves on.
• The Resume page needs to be updated and new testimonials need to be added. I’m putting together a list of questions that I will be sending to current and past clients about their experience with me and how they liked the outcome.
• The Hire Me page is going to be more of a list of products/services that I offer rather than a meandering list of stuff I can do. I want to offer 5-8 different products, each with its own base price (website from scratch, SEO analysis, page content re-tooling, full web presence package). I think this will go a long way towards showing people what I can do and what they might be missing.
• I need to pick out keywords and write for them, period. I made a few small changes and watched my traffic from search engines grow by about a third. Each post should be optimized and targeted or I’m just wasting my time.

I’m going to use Adobe Illustrator for design and layout more often than Photoshop

Unless you’ve used both programs, you might not understand the benefit of one or the other. I’ve been using them for almost a year now and, while I understand, for the most part, the benefits of one over the other in various realms, it just never occurred to me to use Illustrator for web design and layout.

The main and most obvious difference between these two programs is that one works in vector artwork (infinitely scalable and very flexible) – Illustrator – and one works in pixel artwork (only one true size but displayable anywhere) – Photoshop. When possible, you always want your artwork or logo or layout in a vector format and exported to pixel format (like a JPEG) for use on the web.

I’ve always assumed that since the web is displayed in pixels that you should probably design in a pixel program. What didn’t occur to me is that creating everything in Photoshop really limits you in terms of future changes and expansions. Since you can’t really “finalize” anything in Illustrator (make into pixels which can’t, for all intents and purposes, be changed), your designs are much easier to change and adapt later on when minds are changed or goals are modified.

On top of the many benefits of using AI to do layout, it’s also going to force me to use it more and get better at it. I like using Illustrator but I’m not very good at it and I want to get better. Practice makes perfect!

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Search engines are complicated, proprietary, heartless machines that chew up poor, unsuspecting websites and spit out a category based on what it tastes like. These categories are used to literally rank a site’s individual pages based on their relevancy for particular word or phrase. The rank, as it is referred to, is the key to getting more people coming to your website (called traffic) which can lead to more sales/appointments/contacts (called conversions).

Unless you don’t actually care if anyone goes to your website, you should be concerned with how findable you are on-line. Studies show that unless you’re on the first or second page (mostly just the first), you won’t get clicked on very often, your page will get minimal exposure, and your time and effort creating the site in the first place will be for naught.

Your rank in a particular search engine for a particular word or phrase is, simply, a combination of the following (more or less in this order):

1. How many other sites point to you as a reference, particularly for that word (known as incoming links)
2. How regularly that word is used on your page and where it appears (page titles, meta information, content)
3. How “good” your site is (lots of focused content, continual updates, age of site)

If you want people to see the information you have, if you want to turn web browsers into customers, and if you want to take advantage of the biggest marketplace of potential customers, you’ll give more than a second thought to how you are seen by a search engine.

Why is SEO important?

Consider what it would be like if no one could easily find your place of business, or even your telephone number. Most businesses could not continue for long in such a situation. The same thing can happen with your web site if people cannot easily locate it. Traffic volume, if it existed at all, slows to a crawl. Potentially valuable customers never even know you are there.

Key word strategy & generation

I’ll start off by saying that this is the single most important thing that needs to be done for a site… and, of course, it’s the hardest thing to do, the easiest to get wrong, and the most lengthy process. There is a lot of information available online about keyword strategy so this description will be brief.

Keywords are the words for which people are searching. Keywords for your own website are the words that people are searching to reach your website. Picking the right keywords is partially an exercise in putting yourself in your customers’ shoes and partially in avoiding words that are too common. Putting yourself in your customers’ shoes means that you’re thinking about words that your customers would use to find you. Avoiding common words means that you’re not competing directly in search results with sites that have a very strong presence and might be in a totally different industry.

Here are three simple steps towards picking keywords that can work for you.

1. Choose words that you think people might be using to find your site. Come up with about 20. These are probably not the words you’re going to use.
2. Go to google.com/keywords, type in your words, allow synonyms, and search. You should have a list of potentially hundreds of different words.
3. Pick about 5-8 words that have low-ish advertiser competition (under half), a good amount of searches but not too many (different for every situation but I usually pick words that are under 10K monthly searches), and a flat or upward trend (current month is higher or the same as the average).

These keywords should be used as-is throughout the site, it’s structure, image descriptions, and the text content.

Each step comes with it’s own set of complexities but, if you’ve walked through these steps, even if you’re confused by the end of it, you’re a step ahead of many, many people on the web.

Building a functional keyword strategy is not something you just do once. Seach engine optimization is something you need to do on a regular basis. I see it as a scientific process. You start with an idea, a hypothesis (“my clients will find me by searching ‘eye care’ and ‘cataract correction’”). Then you design an experiment to test your original hypothesis (“We’re going to write a few pages of content, each one concentrating on a different part of the keywords we chose”). Data is gathered and analyzed and a new path is chosen (“Our traffic went up 30% with these keywords… are we getting all the benefit that we can?”). Time and culture will change search patterns so what used to be a golden word for you, may become stale and unpopular. Keep checking those analytics reports!

Need help?

If you’re looking to increase traffic on your business website and need some help with all of this, give me a call (contact info on the top left of this site), I’d be glad to help. SEO techniques are important and confusing and it helps to have someone there to guide your efforts.

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What brought this up

I’ve been doing, inadvertently, a lot of thinking and reading about search engine optimization (SEO) lately. For the company I’m contracted with, we’re trying to come up with a solid strategy to rank better in our industry, get more online attention, and attract sales leads. For a couple of my clients, I’m trying to implement some simple changes and add information to get them as visible as possible. For my blog, I’m always looking for ways to help my ranking.

Working for other people and helping them build an online presence is a whole hell of a lot easier than doing one for myself. I can help someone easily summarize what they do, help them pick keywords, and put them all in the right places. For myself, however, when trying to pick a niche, I find myself in these very existential moods. I’m picking 8 words or phrases too some up everything I can do for people. Wait, I have to sum up my professional interests in 8 words?! How?

Keywords… those effing keywords

The problem isn’t finding things to write, thinking of relevant tweets, titling my blog posts, filtering what I want to write about versus what I should write about, the problem is picking keywords.

To rank well in a search engine, you have to write content targeted at a certain audience of people. Think about who you want to sell to and get to work, right? Wrong.

First, you have to summarize the things that people are going to search to find you. In other words, what headings do you want to be found under? This isn’t too hard, I did it and came up with 50 things. We already have a problem.

Now, put those things in a keyword generator like Google’s and see what else comes up. Not only will you add 50 more words that never occurred to you in the first place, you’ll find that the words that were the most interesting to you are the hardest words to rank for. Not only that, once you start picking words that you have a chance in hell of ranking with, you find yourself limited and a bit off-center from what you actually do or want to do.

I want to do it all and I want to do it from right here

So what do you do? No really.

I do a lot of different things... some of them don't even involve a computer

Searching for keywords for something as important and, dare I say, intimate as your freelance work (or writing or anything) puts you in this terrible position between passion and pragmatism. I want to write about art and science and the internet and web design and email and writing. I also, however, want my writing to help me reach people that need what I have to offer.

Part of my problem, in a business sense, is that I don’t have a well-formed “elevator pitch” for what I do. The value proposition (I hate that phrase but it’s relevant), the text at the top of this pitch, is about as close as I get. I help people build a web presence for their business or their own personal endeavors. That’s cool, sums it all up, right?

But I also help people with writing projects, advertisement design, document layout, and self publishing. I alter photos, help people write resumes, layout print ads, teach HTML and CSS, customize email templates. I teach people about social media (what little I know), explain technology concepts to friends and family, and fix computers. I set up printers, cure slow-running computers, and answer questions. I do it all, Josh Can Help, dammit.

Good for you. Now prioritize

That’s the key, prioritization.

First, I’m going to need to think about the work that I want. The most important reason I have a website/blog is to build a reputation, display my work, and get more clients. If I was guaranteed not to get any clients or feedback from my website, it would look worse, be updated far less often, include a lot more boring personal junk, and have less people who read it. Already, I’m making a pragmatic choice by centering it around my professional life.

I want to work with people to build or repair their website. I want to help them make it as visible as possible to all the major search engines. I want to show them what else is out there that can build a more robust presence (social networks and media, blogs to read, online resources that are valuable). I want to explore advanced web development stuff like PHP development and Javascript coding on my own time, implementing interesting functionality for people who never thought they could have one of “those websites.”

The people I want to help are small businesses and individuals. I love helping people in the art world because it keeps the right half of my brain active. I also, however, really want to get into the industry that I’m going to school for, chemistry. I want to help small technology companies do great things with the web and reach more people. I would love to work for a green technology company, either as an employee or a consultant.

Endgame

Off into the sunset...

In the end, I want all of this to lead to something amazing, something massively fulfilling, something that I can be proud of. I want to look back at a long list of people and companies and know that I did something great for them. I want to write a book, I want to help people do what they want to do, I want to make things easier for people, I want to work on a broad spectrum of things for a broad spectrum of people.

I want to bring people together, help them work better on things they are passionate about. I want to help people concentrate on what they’re doing because they want so bad for it to work. I want my name on something. I want to be accountable for something.

I want to work with a team of people that can’t be stopped. I want to work long, long hours, not because I’m forced to do so but because I can’t help myself. I want to collapse into bed with a smile on my face, mind racing, a million more things to do tomorrow.

I want to help you because I can help and I want to help. What’s the keyword for that?

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