Website Design and Promotion

You're #1 – But, for What?

Everyone wants their website to appear at (or at least near) the top of search engines' rankings. But, is that enough? Not if it's for a term that people aren't searching for!

Action Plan's Robert Middleton has written a very handy article about this topic (http://www.actionplan.com/mc/MoreClients083005.html). In it he discusses how to utilize Overture's Keyword Selector Tool to determine which keywords/phrases are best for your website.

You might try using it for your socially responsible business's website. For example, if your business sells environmentally friendly recycled paper, you can find out that last month only 27 searches were done for 'environmentally friendly paper product' and only 38 for 'ecofriendly paper'. But, for 'recycled paper', 1259 searches were performed. In fact, several similar 'recycled paper' phrases had more searches than the 'environmentally friendly' or 'ecofriendly' paper terms. So, which do you think will get you more results?

True, it's great to be at the top of the listings, because most people only look at the top 20 or 30. But, I'll bet you that you'll get much better results being ranked around #20 for a term that receives over 1000 searches per month than #1 for a term that only receives around 30. Something to think about when coming up with your search engine optimization strategy for your website.

Seth Godin on Marketing and Social Responsibility

Treehugger did an interview with Seth Godin, marketing guru and author of several best selling books  which touches on issues of marketing and social responsibility.

As in his recent book, “All Marketers are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World," Seth talks about the type of stories you must tell to get people to bring out their wallets.

He touches on topics such as global warming and why it doesn't fit the world view of many Americans as it's too "vague and distant." He also mentions his thoughts on the impending oil crisis and organic food.

Increasingly I have noticed that Seth seems to making political comments about marketing. It's great to see someone as popular as Seth talking about marketing and it's relationship to making the world a better place.

Why to Avoid Frames

Frames allow you to split your web page (frameset) up into rectangular panels (frames). A common example of their use would be to have the menu bar on the left, the logo and contact info up top, and the remaining space the content. Possibly another bar would appear at the bottom of the page with the copyright and disclaimer. Something like this...

In this common example, all frames except the content would be of fixed width and height. The content frame would be the only one with a scroll bar - i.e., it would fill in whatever space is left in the browser window. The advantage of this setup is that no matter how far you scroll through the content, all of the other relevant information is always visible and accessible. So you don't have to scroll all the way back to the top of the page to find the menu bar and go to another page. Sounds great, right?

So what's the problem? Each frame is its own page (in this example, we have 4 pages). Google indexes each page separately, based on their content. Then, when one shows up in Google's search results, it is linked only to that frame, not to the entire frameset. So, if someone clicks on that link, they only see the single frame. If that happens to be the content frame, at least they can read that part, but then have no way to get to the rest of the pages on your site. If that page that they reach is one of the other frames, it's even more useless. Basically, if being picked up by search engines is important to you, I'd highly recommend not using frames. (For more info on why Google dislikes frames, see http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/2.html, point #2, last bullet.)

The solution? If you do want the same look/functionality of the frameset above, I'd suggest using layers - i.e., have a small page with a scrollable content layer on top. Works nicely and Google reads it all as one page - no problemo!

The other, simpler, idea is to skip the idea of having only the content scrollable and making sure to put a duplicate (perhaps smaller, text version) of the menu, logo, and contact info at the bottom of your page. That makes it very easy to get from page to page.

Search Engine Optimization and Veggie Dog Food?

Wordtracker just released  a 75 page Keyword Research Guide. I have gone through the guide briefly and it looks very informative. It's also very cool that they used a fictional socially responsible business example (veggie dog food) to illustrate how to do keyword research for your website.

A sample of some of the chapters include:

• Why Keywords matter
• Gauge the Size of the Market 
• In Paid Search, Keywords Are Key
• Find the Keywords and You’ll Find the Marketplace
• Adopt a Healthy Position
• Designing an Online Marketing Strategy

Looks like it could be quite useful for socially responsible businesses of all types and sizes.

The Rainforest Site

Thumbs up to The Rainforest Site (www.therainforestsite.com). Every day that you click on the “save our rainforests” button, the site sponsors donate funds to save 11.4 square feet of rainforest at no cost to you. It’s purely sponsor driven. Check out the site for details on where the funds go, etc.

You can either add the site to your favorites and then go there whenever you remember or you can register to have a daily reminder sent to you. Overall, it’s a great concept in my mind.

Contact Forms

From personal experience, I've found that if you want visitors to your site to contact you — specifically to get a quote on your services — you'll get better results by including a contact form as opposed to only a "mailto" link (i.e., a link that opens up a new message window in the user's email program).

By all means, do include an easily visible mailto link on each page of your website so that people can send you a regular email, if they'd like (beware of spam, of course). But, it seems that, to get the ball rolling for prospective clients to contact you, they're generally happy to fill out an online form where, instead of typing a full message, they can simply check a few boxes, fill in their name and email address, maybe a comment/question, press Submit and off it goes to you. Quick, easy, and painless! Now the next step in the new client relationship is up to you...

Should I Hire a Search Engine Optimizer?

While there are many good search engine optimizers (SEOs), there are some unethical ones out there. How can you recognize them? Google (www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html) has several things to watch out for, including:

• Don't get too excited about someone who "guarantees" #1 ranking on Google. Nobody has a "special relationship" with Google and there is no "priority" submission process.
• If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Be very skeptical about firms that send you unsolicited email letting you know how wonderful their SEO services are.
• Take heed if the company is very secretive and won't let you know what they're doing.
• You shouldn't need to link your site back to the SEO's site.
• Do a bit of research. Find out about the SEO company — get referrals (preferably from people you know). Check out the rankings they've gotten for relevant keywords for their clients.
• Get a money-back guarantee — and check its fine print. SEOs often have many loopholes to weasel out of what sound like a no-loss situation for you.

The bottom line with search engine optimization is: if it feels like cheating it usually is. Whether you do your optimization on your own or with help from an SEO, make sure you feel comfortable with the methods used. Otherwise you could find yourself blacklisted by the search engines, highly frustrated, and a lot lighter in the wallet!