Designed by Krista
Web Design

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a key part of any successful website because most internet users will find your site via a search engine. It’s a good idea to check your site to see if there are any areas you could easily improve in order to maximize your search engine rankings.

There are two tools I like to use, both free, shown below. It is unlikely that you will get a perfect score, so don’t fret if your score is low the first time. Some factors that impact your score are out of your control, such as inbound links, retweets, etc. The key is to improve as much as you reasonably can.

In each case, the tool will grade your site based on criteria that are important for high search results. From that, you can make a to-do list of improvements. I suggest working on the “low-hanging fruit” first – if there are any easy changes, do those right away. Then, you can consider the more difficult tasks and weigh out their relative importance for your particular site.

I’ve shown some examples below for my own site. In each case, I spent about an hour making small improvements, but there were also several things that I don’t plan to do, or can’t reasonably do. For example, I don’t plan to list myself in Yahoo!Directory because I do not need the additional marketing boost, so my $299 could be better spent elsewhere.

So, take a moment to grade your site and see where you can make easy changes – every little bit helps!

Website Grader

Before: 78
Interim: 81 (domain name renewal not included)

SEO Warnings:

• The domain for this website is set to expire in less than a year [Fixed]
• Permanent Redirect Not Found for designedbykrista.com to www.designedbykrista.com [Fixed]
• designedbykrista is not listed in the Yahoo! Directory. [Um, yeah - like that's gonna' happen at $299 a pop...]
• We could not find a Twitter account associated with your website. [Fixed]
• The web page does not seem to contain any type of signup form where visitors can subscribe to a newsletter or future updates. [Imagine Dana Carvey saying, "Not gonna' do it..."]

SenSEO Firefox Addon

Before: 85
After: 93

SEO Warnings:

• Meta Keywords: use only keywords found in content of page [Fixed]
• Too many meta keywords – keep it to 10 or less [Fixed]
• Use Robots declarations to control Search-Engine access. [Fixed]
• Use H2 and H3 tags. [Fixed]
• Domain should include all keywords. [Don't I wish...]

Web usability expert Jared Spool recommends that you make your hyperlinks 7 – 12 words long for optimum usability. Now, I would have thought links that long would be too hard for users to scan easily, but his research has shown that users are more likely to find what they want on your site if you have just a few more words within your links. Why?

Success Rates are best if Hyperlinks are between 7 - 12 words, Source: User Interface Engineering

Users will come to your site looking for something – let’s say it’s a woman looking for a shirt to wear on a beach vacation. She will have some term in mind for this item – maybe “beach wear” – and she’ll be looking for that word on your webpage. We refer to this as her “trigger” word.

What are the chances that you will happen to name your women’s shirt section “beachwear”? Well, if you are only using 1 – 6 words in your link, such as “Ladies Shirts” the chances are low! However, if you are naming things a little more specifically, such as “Women’s Wear for Beach, Lounging, and Casual Day at the Office” – there is a much bigger chance that any given user will spot their trigger word in that link.

However, my initial reaction (short links are more scannable) was not completely off-base – it turns out that links which contain 13 or more words tend to be overlooked, because they are now too long to be scanned quickly.

What the heck is a long tail keyword … and why should you care, right? Internet users, like you and me, type a word or phrase into a search engine, like Google or Yahoo!, and these are generally referred to as keywords. A “long tail” keyword indicates that the searcher typed in a phrase – not just one word, but maybe half a dozen words to search for.

In order for you, the website owner, to have your page show up first in the search results, you need to have those words strategically place on your web site. However, there is a lot of competition for the most common keywords on any given topic – the most common keywords are on so many sites that it’s hard for any one site to pop up first on search engine results.

The good news is that if you begin to focus on the longer, more descriptive terms – a.k.a. long tail keywords – you can achieve some great results because these longer phrases account for 94.3% of website traffic! For example, if you focus on the keyword “books,” you’ll have a very difficult time competing with Amazon.com. If you change the focus of your pages to “books for preschoolers” or “books about curing depression,” you have a far better chance to placing highly on search results.

Chance are that your site is already set up to optimize pages by the title of the page. So, consider your titles carefully – can you add more description to your blog post title? Subject of your forum post? Name of products in your store? Category or tag names in your store or blog? If you get stuck, you can start typing your keyword in Google, and then choose a name from the list of search suggestions that Google gives you.

Why Long Tail Keyword are so valuable. Source: www.wordtracker.com

The following quote is often attributed to John Ruskin, but that is currently in dispute. However, it’s tough to dispute the meaning of these words – a more elegant way of saying that you get what you pay for. What does this mean for web design? It means that saving money is about trade-offs, and I’ve compiled a list below to help you weigh these out for your web project. In some cases, the trade-offs are worth the risk, perhaps because you are a non-profit or just starting out your small business. There is nothing wrong with this, because you can always upgrade as funds become available, but knowing what you’re getting can help you make the best choice at your budget level.

“It’s unwise to pay too much, but worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money; that is all. When you pay too little you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balances prohibits paying little and getting a lot. It can’t be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run. And if you do that, you will have enough to pay for something better.”

Risks of Paying Too Little for Your Website

Do-it-Yourself: You may have to do all or much of the work yourself. This can work if you are technically savvy and you have reasonable writing skills.

Templates: Most websites in the $200 – $500 price range are built using pre-made templates. This means that your site will not be perfectly unique, but it can still be very serviceable. Watch out for search engine ranking problems, though. (see below)

Inexperienced Designers: If the hourly rate of your web designer is very low, he or she may possibly be just out of college and can’t demand any more. Everyone has to start somewhere, though, so just do your best to make sure the person sounds like they know what they’re doing and that they have a good work ethic. It may not be worth the risk if you have complex programming needs on your site.

Language Barriers: Off-shore web developers are becoming more common, and usually offer attractive pricing. If you are satisfied that they are experienced enough for your project, you must decide if a non-native speaker can write effectively in your language and if you will be able to understand them even when discussing technical issues.

No Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Many low-end websites are not constructed with search engine rankings in mind, and this is detrimental to your site, especially if you are running a for-profit business. Does the template or developer use a lot of tables? Is key text, such as your company name, shown only as an image? Is the browser’s title bar show just your company name, or worse, just a generic term like “Home” or “Welcome”? If so, you are likely to get low search engine rankings.

Websites that don’t work: Broken links, misspelled words, missing images, and random error messages all detract from your professional image, and usually make your users go to another site. If you choose to work with a low-end provider, make sure to do a lot of testing yourself to try to prevent these things from the outset.

Conferences are great for networking and keeping up to speed on technology. Don’t you find, though, that it’s hard to actually take a step back from the designing and coding to go learn about designing and coding? I made it my goal this year to break away and get to a conference, and I reviewed several great options online. See the dates and cities below, along with my impressions of each from their websites. Did I miss any good ones? Let me know!
UPDATE, 2/18/2010: I found some more to add, courtesy of SitePoint, listed below…

Adobe Max, Los Angeles, October 24 -27

Impressions… Focus on Adobe products (understandably). Personally can’t afford to spend this much time on all Adobe. To repeat a quote I heard recently: “Real developers use notepad!”

An Event Apart, Seattle, April 5 – 7 (other cities offered)

Impressions… Corporate, perhaps even stuffy, though I would love to be a fly on the wall to hear Microsoft Product Manager’s topic: Microsoft: Help Us Kill IE6. I’ll do my part, Pete!

A Day Apart, Seattle, April 7

Impressions… Spend a day getting the latest on HTML5 and CSS3. Can I say goodbye to Verdana and Tahoma? I may attend just for that!

Future of Web Apps, Miami, February 22-24

Impressions… Cutting edge, beach parties and so forth; focus on application development.

In Control, Orlando, February 22-23

Impressions… Good coverage on a wide range of topics; perfect for a freelance generalist such as myself. *my choice*

Internet Week, New York, June 7 – 14

Impressions… Can’t tell, because the schedule is not online, but I don’t think I could do any conference for a whole week: overload!

MinneWebCon St. Paul, April 12

Impressions… Focus on education, though the topics seem to be a great overview in one day.

Microsoft MIX10, Las Vegas, March 15-17

Impressions… Not as product-centric as I expected, but probably still not for someone (like me) who is determined to remain product-agnostic…

SXSWeek, Austin, March 12-21

Impressions… Focus on music & film.

Usability Week, Various cities/dates

Impressions… Focus on usability.

Web Directions, Atlanta, Date TBA

Impressions… Based on a brief look at past events, seemed high on theoretical, low on practical.

WebVisions, Portland, May 19-21

Impressions… Only 1 of 3 days are currently scheduled, but what is there looks intriguing: HTML5, CSS3, iPhone Apps, and Photography tips.

International

I can’t justify heading off to New Zealand or London, as much as I would love to, but here are some International web conferences if these countries are closer to home for you.

• @media: London, June 8 – 11
• Design It, Build It: United Kingdom, April 28
• Form,Function & Class: Philippines, July
• UX London: London, May 19 – 21
• Webdesign International Festival: France, June 4 – 5
• WebhostingDay: Germany, March 17 – 19
• Webstock: New Zealand, February 15 – 19

A search engine, on the internet, is just a computer program that retrieves web pages based on keywords typed in by the user. The most popular search engines are Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. The hot topic today is “Search Engine Optimization,” in which you try to structure your website to be the first web page in the list of results, so that more people will click on your website.

Key Point: Search Engine Optimization is vital, and there are many ways to improve your rankings.

1. How to create a free website
2. Adding content to your website
3. Making your website user-friendly
4. What is a search engine?

(more…)

Keyword Questions Tool

I’ve just heard about this useful free tool for finding “long tail keywords” that pertain to your website. As you know, keywords are terms that your potential site visitors will type into a search engine to find sites like yours. A long tail keyword is actually a phrase that contains keywords. For example, a keyword pertaining to my site would be “websites”, and a long tail keyword would be “best website design for small business”.

The benefit of a long tail keyword is that there may not be as much competition (i.e. other websites like yours) for that phrase. While there are thousands of sites using the keyword “website”, there will be a lot less using the key phrase of “best website design for small business”. So, I have a better chance of appearing high on the search results if I feature that phrase on my site.

The Keyword Question tool allows you to search on your topic to find the types of questions people are typing in to search engines, like Google, Yahoo! or MSN. This is a great benefit, because you can put the question on your site, such as the title of a blog post, and then use that page to answer the question.

How would you use this? In my case, a search on “website” shows 100 questions people frequently ask. The top one is “how to unblock a website.” Well, that is going to vary depending on who has blocked the site, so it’s probably too complicated for me to write a short article on that one. However, one question that appears in many different forms is “how to make your own website” (see also how to make a website, how to make a free website, etc.). Since I’m a web designer, I happen to know a lot about these questions, and I can make a post containing some tips for how to proceed. In fact, I plan to create a series of posts on this topic, so stay tuned!