Not long ago I read that Google and others would soon be able to read the text content in Flash web pages. I thought at the time that many of the things that I have been saying about SEO and Flash are no longer true, but the more that I read about this the more I’m not sure.
I think that I still will advise it’s probably not a good idea to have your navigation in flash and if all the pages of your site is in one big flash file there’s no way possible to send visitors to an individual page. That means they go to the main page and then have to search for what they are looking for. Which means that many will go away before they find it.
If you want to read more there is a very nice post on Site Pro News by Ross Dunn that really explains it well.
It happens so often that we concentrate our attention on our own business that often we miss the way that our customers sees our business. In our own store or one that we’re designing we know exactly where everything is and also how it works so we often assume that someone who is not familiar with it knows everything that we do about finding what we want.
There are so many factors to consider that someone who is very familiar with the business and the site might miss. Is this website easy to navigate. Can a human visitor find exactly what they are looking for with just a click or two? Is there a search feature that will give some possible pages to visit even if there are no exact matches for the search term? Is the site so concerned with pleasing the search engines that human visitors are not shown anything that keeps them interested in seeing more?
Is all of the contact information readily available? Email, snail mail and phone? Speaking of the phone if you are giving out the number, when a customer calls can they easily speak to a real person who knows how to connect them to the person or department that they want or are the callers caught in a never ending loop of recordings?
Sometimes what I like to do when designing a site it really helps to step back from it for a while and then go back a while later and look at how it works with a new perspective. Sometimes I’ll show it to my customer first without any explanation as to how it is supposed to work and find out if they can easily find what they want.
Jackie Baker writes in the Search Engine Guide about having someone who has absolutely no connection to your site give it a once over and they give their honest opinion. There’s some more good advise there.
The general manager at a fairly large store asked me recently if I knew of any inexpensive ways that they could promote their Saturday business and add some excitement for their sales staff. They had tried several different things some were successful and some were not. They had already tried signs, banners, balloons, newspaper ads, hot dogs and hamburgers, and many other ideas.
One promotion idea that I liked came from one of my local Wal Marts. My niece’s high school band had a car wash there. Every Saturday they donate some space in their parking lot, a hose, some fancy sprayers, a couple of buckets and car wash soap. These are also all things that they sell and even though I went there just for the car wash I ended up buying a sprayer, too.
I found out that different groups from all over the area line up to reserve these Saturday slots. They get to keep all of the money that they earn for the band, cheerleaders or whatever. This kind of event generates plenty of excitement and the groups do their own promotion. They tell everyone that they know all week that they are having a car wash, where they are having it and how nice the business was to donate the space. Not only that, on the day of the event having happy kids jumping around with signs promoting their car wash brings much more attention to the business than balloons ever will.
The groups earn much needed money and the business who donates the space gets promotion, excitement, community goodwill and maybe even an extra sale or two. It sure sounds like a win-win situation to me, so I thought I would pass it on to you.
Word of mout advertising has always been one of the best kind of promotion that you can have. People tend to believe referrals and references more than almost anything else. I have found out that these can be from people that they don’t even know. The things that matter are that your customers believe that the references are honest and accurate.
Having recommendations that sound like they are only your friends and relatives won’t help, but kind words from some of your other customers can work wonders. That’s why I always recommend a testimonials page when I make a site that let your potential customers know what your current customers think of your work.
I recently read an article on Search Engine Watch that talks about how this kind of mord-of-mouth promotion can also be very good for link building.
One of the things that I mention to my clients that want to start a blog and allow others to add content to their site is that besides blog spam you probably will get some commenters that don’t like you or what you say. I usually say that instead of just deleting the negative comments the best policy is to let the comments stay and just honestly answer their criticism.
By allowing their comments and then answering them you look like you are not afraid of talking about all aspects of your business. Just about everyone knows that no matter how good you are you can’t please everyone. So a blog that doesn’t allow any negative comments will apprear strict and censored. Open conversation not only makes you look better and fair there’s a good chance that if you keep an open mind you can learn from complaints. I have always believed that listening to a couple of honest complaints can help you improve your business much more than a thousand praises.
Of course on your own site you do have the option of just deleting negative comments, but what can you do if they are not on your site? I recently read a great post on the aimClear Search Marketing Blog by Marty Weintraub that really offers some great ideas about what you can to to help you recover and even benefit from damaging negative comments about you or your business posted on the web.
I have tried several different ways to have my meta title tags. Those are the descriptions that you see at the very top of the browser window that describe the page that your on.
Search engines use these tags in different ways, including the text on the results page for your site and I have never been sure if I should Lillicotch.com in them. Some people say it’s much too valuable of a space to waste on your domain name when everyone already sees that.
I have gone back and forth on this issue. Currently I have my name int the title, then today I read Stoney deGeyter’s post on Search Engine Guide and now I’m torn again. There is no real answer here, but this post is good food for thought. Maybe I’ll sleep on it.
Read Does Your Company Name Really Belong In Your Title Tag?
There are many things about designing web sites that have changed from the beginning of cyber time and many things that haven’t. I try to point out a well done site every week in my Favorite Site Design category.
The truth is that while the look of well done websites has gotten cleaner, easier to read and interact with, the main goal of a website is still to please the visitor. It doesn’t matter whether you are trying to sell, entertain or educate them, you need to offer something that is pleasing to the eye of most human visitors, as well as, offering something that interests them.
Business Week has a nice article on what to do when designing a site today and I noticed it’s almost the same good advice that worked well ten years ago.
I probably will still advise not using Flash for making the navigation for your pages, but Google is starting to look at your Flash pages with new eyes.
They still probably won’t see your site like your human visitors do, but it looks like things are getting better for them being able to know what’s on your page.
I believe that even though I don’t use much Flash anything that helps people find exactly what they are looking for is a good thing.
I know that I could write better titles for these posts. When I scan through my past postings I know it right away.
What I usually do when I write my posts is to write the title first and then start on the post. Sometimes I change the title later, but not very often. Then once I’m done writing my post I read it over and make any changes to the wording spelling, etc., but I rarely go back and change the title.
Search engines consider titles very important when deciding where and how high to rank your page for any particular keyword search so it also is important for your titles to really say something about what your article or post is about.
Recently I found this post on Wordpreneur called “Is Your Title Compelling?” I’m going to try out some of these suggestions and you can decide for yourself if it helps or not. I invite you to let me know what you think and to visit Wordpreneur and
Read Is Your Title Compelling?
I recently read where a TV station in Philadelphia (CBS 3) is launching a revenue sharing partnership with local blogs and social media websites.
This is a great way to promote your content. Paying them is probably even more than they need to do. Just giving them help promoting their content would probably have been enough, unlike Viacom who is suing Google and everyone else that they can think of. My take on this is that Viacom is shooting themselves in the foot and will regret it.
Congrats CBS3 In Philly. Hey Pittsburgh media outlets, I can probably be bought!
