Marketing, Design And Development In Seattle

You Need A Video

Most sites need at least one video, typically an introduction that describes who you are and what you do. There are several good marketing reasons to do this, involving a ‘human touch’. But one less-appreciated idea is this: search engines like videos. (Google especially likes Youtube videos–since Google owns Youtube.) What do I mean by ‘search engines like videos’? If you look at a typical Search Results page, you’ll notice that videos now tend to rank at the top. The […]

SEO Sticker Shock

One of the human challenges developers run into when designing budget web sites… and Lord knows I’ve tried to avoid this… is what I call ‘SEO Sticker Shock’. The client typically approaches me to do a new web site with the primary goal being to update the look. But as a secondary goal they also want the site to rank better with search engines. This second goal is not an unreasonable request. But where it gets tricky is when the […]

SEO Included ‘Free’ With Your Hosting Account!

Many hosting services now include all sorts of ‘free’ or very low cost add-on services, such as mail, ‘web-site builders’, ‘SEO’ or ‘visibility improvements!’. Despite the ever-present risk of appearing self-serving most of these do not provide good value, especially the ‘SEO services.’ As I’ve explained before, there are two basic flavours of organic search engine optimisation (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM): on-page and off-page. And I’ve tried and tried to get clients to understand that on-page SEO/SEM is […]

Review Sites

Like everything else since the time of Adam, customer reviews are an innocent idea that quickly becomes subject to corruption from all sides. I have had clients who want me to find a way to magically generate ‘positive reviews’. And I have had clients who grouse about troll reviewers and disreputable review sites who are ruining their business and want me to try to ‘expunge their record’. Both strategies are (usually) not worth trying. Here is my advice: You cannot […]

Learn What Google Values

If you follow Google’s corporate statements, recognize that their search engine has certain values which are not about ‘keywords’. Their engine is optimized for the things they believe deep down in their heart to be important. In other words: They have a philosophy of what content should matter and they are constantly tweaking to socially engineer the web to match this philosophy. If you don’t take their philosophy of ‘good and evil’ on the web, you cannot hope to rank […]

Do Something Interesting

And do it regularly. New release? New product? New something. Even if you sell antiques, there has to be something going on, either with customers using your stuff, or your people evangelizing your stuff and it has to be interesting. If you don’t have something -genuinely new and interesting to talk about all the time? Your web site is not worth visiting. Google understands this.

Be Consistent

Consistent look. Consistent spelling. Consistent narrative voice. Consistent images. A consistent universe makes people feel like God knows what He’s doing and there’s a point to it all.

Think About The Web Sites You Visit

Really think about why you spend time on them. What makes them valuable to you? Are they especially good looking? Or not? Then do that on your own web site.

Intra-Site Search

While you’re working on your Google Search? Do the same searching intra web site. Pretty sad, huh? As yer ma would say, “If you’re beautiful on the inside, it shows on the outside.” You can never have really great SEO until your internal search is golden.

Write Good Content That Is Useful

Then worry about the SEO. Most of my clients find it almost irresistible to focus more on ‘keywords’ than content. There’s just nothing else to say about it. But that never stopped me before, so… If you have content that people need, you will rank well.

Learn About Redirects

Learn how to do redirects really well. If you don’t know what I’m talking about? That’s what I’m here for. You need to be constantly thinking about routing your visitors to critical pages.

Use Google Alerts

Start getting Google Alerts for -anything- having to do with your product, your people, your competitors, your industry.

Learn Your Product

In order to do good SEO, you have to really learn the product. A guy can’t give you good SEO advice unless he searches for stuff the way your customer (not -you-, your customer) would search for stuff. You don’t count… unless you can channel how your customer thinks. If a guy is charging you a ton o’ money for SEO and can’t tell you why your Turbo-Max 5000 is better than the other guy’s Super-Tronic 3.0? Boy are you […]

Forget The Spreadsheet

Schedules always fall apart. We all have only so much bandwidth and there are too many people on the ‘committee’ who want to put in their two cents on the new site. No matter how detailed the instructions; and how every I was dotted and every T was crossed? It happens. So don’t put all your resources into trying to get it right the first time. People don’t know really know what they mean until they have something to react […]

Assume Your Visitors Are ADHD

Because on the web? Everybody is. You have a great product and are justifiably proud. That can create a desire to cram as much information as possible onto each page. But the more complicated your product, the simpler your presentation should be. A complex page has many minuses, not the least of which is that it can come off as arrogant—you’re assuming a level of concentration that must be earned. So unless arrogance is a part of your branding—perhaps you’re […]

Blog

These are some general purpose rants on SEO and SEM I occasionally share with clients