Here’s something just for some fun on a Friday. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)
One of the most popular “Friday Fun” posts on this blog has been “Turn Your Photo Into a Simpsons Character.” It still gets visitors every day so I thought that I would have another one today. “Simpsons Scenes and their Reference Movies” is a page with scenes from Simpsons shows and the famous movies that they mimic side by side. I enjoyed it and I hope you do too.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the best thing going, right? Kind of like “Why don’t we slice the bread before we put it in the package?”
Have a look around the web these days and see how many sites ignore SEO completely. I used to wonder why that was and then one day I realized why. SEO is simple, but it’s also hard work!
You need to get good quality, related outside sites pointing their links at your site, but as I mentioned yesterday you also need to keep updating your site. There are many things that you can do right away to help, but it’s really an ongoing thing.
I subscribe to several Craigslist feeds for web design, email marketing and promotion work in cities in the Eastern US. Many times I have come across ads for SEO services and they are almost all looking for some “magic bullet” that will rocket them to the top of the search engines and keep them there for the most competitive keyword that they can think of. Many times they want this done for their site that contains about four pages.
I used to write and try to explain the problem until I realized that these folks were probably looking for snake oil salesmen and I was just banging my head against the wall. They were were probably going to get exactly what they were looking for.
In the cases of both web design and SEO there are no shortcuts. If you don’t do it right it will not work at all or if it does work it will be limited and will eventually come back to bite you.
I wrote yesterday about keeping the copyright date on your pages up to date, but there’s much more to keeping your site current than that. One of the things that search engines look for is that they are able to find new information on your site on a regular basis.
There’s a good reason for this. Why would you want to revisit any site? That’s right, to find something new.
Search engines want to provide the best possible search experience for their users. Simple enough, right?
Finding new content that’s relevant to your site can be the tricky part. You may ask yourself, What’s new about my business that’s worth adding to my site?
The answer can be almost anything
Erin Ferree is a brand identity and marketing design strategist. Erin’s site is elf-design.com and she has some good ideas for keeping your site updated in her article “The Art of Website Maintenance”. It’s well worth reading.
When sending email for marketing if you offer some good free information along with your ad it’s much more likely that your recipient will open it and read it.
Plus if they know from experience that there may be something useful for them in your mail they will be much more inclined to look at your ad.
I do think if you are going to put a copyright date on your pages you need to keep them current. If you don’t think you will be able to update the date every year just leave it off.
I wrote the other day on my newest favorite sites page that I stated that they would do better if they converted their news page from a PDF to a regular HTML page, but I suppose that’s not completely true.
Search engines do indeed index many of the PDF documents available on line these days. What they do is convert them into HTML and then index them just like any other web page. If you look at any search result that is a PDF document you will usually see another link next to it that says “View as HTML.”
If you look at these pages converted to HTML you should notice that they may or may not look like the original document. I guess that offends my sense of design or maybe I’m being picky, but there’s also the chance it won’t convey the same message. There’s also a chance that the PDF is an image and not a text based document which means the search engines won’t be able to read it at all.
Search Engine Land has a good post by Galen DeYoung called “Eleven Tips For Optimizing PDFs For Search Engines” which explains this well.
I have a page on my site with some of my favorite new sites that are showing up on the web. These are not my sites, but they are the kinds of things that I like in a website. There are different reasons that I picked these sites, they all look good, and are clear and easy to use. They don’t use Flash at all or use it only when necessary and never for navigation. The graphics are good, but not overpowering. Sometimes I just like a picture or the name. Some of them are not in English and I still know what they are about.
The newest one is called Barn Painting and Advertising Inc. a company that specializes in roof top advertising on barns and traditional barn painting. The site looks just like what they do. It has a country feel and even though the navigation is on the right, there is no doubt about where it is and what it’s for. The look of this site tells their story well before you even get to the words.
I do think if you are going to put a copyright date on your pages you need to keep them current. Their news is also a bit old and the link leads to a PDF which should have been an HTML page that would be able to be read by search engines.
They used pictures of words for navigation, but probably could have gotten the same effect with actual text for links. The pictures do have the same name as the links so I suppose that’s not such a big deal.
I live in Pittsburgh PA and have all of my life.
This morning I heard news that The ‘Burgh wants to install cameras everywhere.
Then this afternoon I check the blogs that I like and see Bruce Schneier has posted London’s Security Cameras Don’t Help. There is always lively discussion on his blog.
I hate to see this camera thing coming to be, but they are already on the highways, at traffic lights and I suppose it’s inevitable in this age.
Maybe I’m just nostalgic.
In the end it’s probably going to be Google that does a better job with the technology. They already have Street View.
I believe that there are more proven methods of crime prevention which would make better use of the money.
Although it may be one of those deals where you have to spend the money on this project or lose it, I’m not sure.
I wonder about things like…
What would happen if the system was hacked without detection, from outside or inside and used to commit crimes?
Good movie plot, no?
Here’s something just for some fun on a Friday. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)
The Etch-A-Sketchist. Here are some amazing sketches all done on the Etch-A-Sketch by Ohio Art. If you have ever tried to draw anything on this “toy” you know just how amazing these drawings are. Send him your photo and maybe he will sketch you.
This is an example of how the Internet has turned what would have been called “offbeat” skills and hobbies into something that can be a business.
Besides great art there are also links to some very funny videos on his pages.
I have written before (and here) that I believe that if you have a site that is over optimized for search engines chances are that your human visitors could find it hard to read, use and understand.
I ask my customers what good is having all of the traffic in the world if they just stop by for a second and then click to go somewhere else? Search engines are now thinking like this. They can tell how long visitors are on your site and how many pages they are visiting and I think this is incorporated into their algorithms.
My advice is to read your content out loud. If there’s someone else there to hear it so much the better, but even if you are by yourself it still works. If your content sounds like it’s stuffed with keywords or sounds unnatural and forced it’s probably not good for your site.
For SEO there are rules for exactly how many keywords to use and where to put them, but this formula (besides being a search engine secret) is changing all of the time. That means to keep up the ranking that this has achieved your content may have to be changed often.
If you write in a natural sounding way it will be a better experience for your human visitor and that really is what the search engines want to provide for their customers (the searchers). That also means that your content can stay the same and not be affected as much or at all by the changing search engine algorithms.
There are some good points in an article by By Rusty Ford on the SEO-News site called “Key Wording Your Web Site With Natural Language” that may help you decide what is “Natural Language.”
Well it’s September 19th again. If ye haven’t been “Talkin’ Like A Pirate” yet ye can start. ARRRRGH!
Avast, when I first be hearin of “Talk Like A Pirate Day” I wrote me a small blog post.
That turned into a bigger article that I be postin’ herein this site.
Other swabs have been Googlin’ for “talkin like a pirate” and findin’ my site.
It be more this time of year, but my mattes be findin’ my article all year.
BE WARNED!
