I send such gifts to potential clients or “business friends” with whom I do little or no major business, but who usually go on to recommend my work to others. It’s my way of saying thank you for past recommendations and goodwill they have sent my way.

More often than not, it leads to sales further down the line, so being nice often translates to good business sense.

Below is an assessment I sent to Ross at Canning Bridge Cycles. He’s become both a friend and associate over the years, but even he admits there’s a lot more he can do with his virtual business. The following is printed here with his permission.

I find a lot of physically oriented businesses like Ross’ tend to neglect their online obligations, when, in a perfect world, they’d love to spend more time at the computer, working “on their business” rather than “in it.”

As a web designer, I have the opposite problem, but that’s another story . . .

A “Happy Christmas” Website Asssessment :

Dear Ross,

You recently asked me to give your website a critical once-over. Here is a list of simple changes you could do to improve your existing site without too much effort. Feel free to send these on to your webmaster.

Have a very merry Christmas and hopefuly we’ll meet again early in the new year . . .

People don’t like to write, but search engines love to read. The Canning Bridge Cycles web site has about three blog posts written over a 4 year span. I don’t need to tell Ross that this suggests major on-line inactivity but more importantly, it could give some people a sense that the site is “old” or the business a bit “outdated.” One page invites (more experienced) riders to join a weekly group peloton around the river. I know that Ross still organises these rides because only a few weeks ago, he nearly knocked me off my own bike when riding to work.
 
 

. . . Keep up the blog, Ross. Old posts make your site look old and irrelevant. Why not spend 20 minutes writing once a week after a morning ride? 300 words is probably enough. More words means more “conversation” and a higher search engine ranking, more custom etc. etc. Search Engines read. It’s actually all they can do. If you are constantly feeding their robot scouts with relevant and up to date “chat” about cycling, it’s only going to help . . .

A few years ago I built a site for the Bicycle Transport Authority. I’m pleased to say they now have a thriving and very active community of cyclists with 2,000 unique vistors every month and a lot of two-way (customer / client) “conversation”.

Which brings me to my next point . . .

Harvey Norman got into a bit of hot water early in 2011 when he (and a consortium of like-minded retailers) placed a full paged ad in the West Australian asking the government to charge GST to overseas companies. By doing this, it was perceived that Harvey was experiencing a bit of sour grapes because his sales were low and he was blaming online, cheaper retailers.

We need to engage customers and potential customers in a conversation. Shouting at potential clients using an expensive newspaper ad as a soap-box is not “conversation” and will probably lead to (as it did in the Middle East) a little “civil unrest”. Most of us can’t afford one page shouty ads.

. . . You’re using WordPress which allows people to respond to your posts. Why don’t you switch on the comments facility? Presently people can’t leave comments on your posts (even the few you have up there). When clients (or potential clients) comment, try to respond to feedback in a meaningful way (within about 48hrs). Gone are the days of one-way advertising. The Harvey Norman strategy didn’t play out too well for him. Rather than writing in the newspaper margins, people responded to Gerry’s ad in an embarrassingly public way using Twitter, Facebook and online forums. There’s a moral to the Harvey Norman story. Business need to listen to their customers and not talk so much (ie. “sell”). The latest (annoying) term for doing business is “conversation marketing” but starting that conversation is really more about customer loyalty than it is about old ideas about “marketing” . . .

Allowing people to comment on your website gives them a bit of power. Plus, it’s kind of like seeing your name in print. Who doesn’t like being published?

In short, clients and potential clients are more likely to talk directly to you instead of talking behind your back on say, Iinet’s Whirpool forums.

Some buttons on the Canning Bridge Cycles navigation sidebar take users to another site.

As a general rule, main navigation should always link to on-site pages. Why not include a Useful Links page with brand decals linking off to company sites.

It’s also a good to not open outbound links in a new browser tab or window. It’s a bit like saying good-bye to a customer in your shop, but when they turn to leave, they find your hand in their back pocket. So it was great NOT to see this common practice.

. . . Rather than having a Brands button – call that page Links or Useful Links. Visitors assume that all links on your site will take them to on-site pages unless you tell them otherwise. When I clicked Brands I was expecting reviews, pics or a bit of research into the brands you supply. Linking to a company web page is fine if you politely let your visitor know what you are doing. Linking to other sites is fine, but try to be clear when you do it. If you need to link to other sites from within main page text, perhaps you could indicate this by drawing a small image with upward pointing arrow just to the right of the link . . .

It’s not unusual to link to another (separate) site where credit card payments can be made securely. In fact, setting up a secure server with real-time bank transacting is an expensive business and – y’know what? It’s probably not worth it. Google and PayPal have really simple to use payment systems, some of which can be built into your site.

Let’s face it. Your Bikes link is really a link to your shop.

Sometimes people have a button called “Shop” – which will takes us to some kind of shopping cart with paypal gateway, but it’s a good idea to provide a separate link, and as with point 3, let them know they are going off-site. Your shop is on a different server – which is common practice – but you should really have a shop button that is not a main site navigation button.

What I mean by a shop “button” – is a graphic, in a prominent place somewhere in the margin or on the main page of teh site that links to the off-site shop.

If you’ve managed to create an onsite (or offsite) community, then you’re winning. The web is all about community. It was originally designed for people to communicate. Because we monkeys love to trade, we’ve all stuck our businesses up there and it seems to be about commerce. But that’s just an illusion.

Your “Rides” page is great. It could use a few more images, but it’s a great idea to have such a page. Good also to tell your customers how fast and how far they will be expected to go on their bicycles. I know I’m not too happy going more than 30kmh on my bike, so I can see that these rides aren’t for me. I wanted to see guys (and gals) having coffee and fun at the Cottesloe cafe you talk about. Shots of long macs with bike helmets, rows of bikes, clippy shoes etc. Gimme the fantasy and maybe I’ll pick-up my pace.

The web is and always worked best as a connector, a community creator. I remember stumbling across a community of used teabag collectors. They were spread out all over the world. In any one city there probably wasn’t enough people to fill a small scout hall, but across the world, I found a virtual scout hall meeting in full swing.

One valid way to use your website is to “field” phone calls. It’s a repository of all those repeat questions one gets asked on a daily basis. An FAQ is the sign on the door which says, “Must read before entry”.

It’s good that you have Frequently Asked Questions. Well done there. People need to know this stuff. Go crazy and tell them more. Collect questions while you’re in shop and them upload to your website during that one hour per week when you update your blog! ;)p

I’m sorry if this sounds offensive, but we are all really a bunch of perverts. That’s right. What other animal has devised a system where it can watch repeatedly, the days of lives of other animals in a public forum? I’m talking about TV. And if you take just the evening news into consideration, you’ll get a sense of just how obsessive we are. People love images. They are more likely to look at images than read. So give them images. Just make sure to tag them correctly for all the search engines to read.

I mentioned pics before, but you really should have really good, big images (as wide as your content area at least) throughout your site. PLUS a gallery! Some companies pay me to add this sort of stuff for them for them. For example, I recently created these pages for an Air-conditioning company.

• Air Conditioning
• Advantage Air

Pics, images, bike music. Anything that you feel could help bring your virtual presence out of the screen a little and into the viewer’s world.

I know your industry is pretty physical, but you might consider making it less physical and more “virtual” as time goes on. I don’t see why you can’t make your business work for you more – instead of you working “for it” like I suspect you’re doing.

All the best.
Edwin

That’s pretty much a summary of the message I sent Ross and it’s certainly going to give him something to talk about over the Christmas break. I normally charge about $250 dollars for a full, 20 point website report. But if you are reading this, for January only, I can do a proper report for your existing website for $175. But only if you’re reading this. Knowing how these things go, you’ll probably get me to update a few pages on your own website.

Hopefully you got something out of this. I know Ross did. I bought a bicycle off him!

PS. Thanks for the bike, Ross. It rides like a dream.

Is SEO mostly a waste of their time and your money?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a very misunderstood term. In the web design industry, the term is met with scorn and sidelong glances. Even Google Webmaster Central warns about dubious SEO operatives.

Nobody knows how Google’s algorithm works

It’s a closely guarded secret because billions of dollars are at stake.

Google have been accused of anti-competitive business practices because that very algorithm often determines who gets the business. Add this to the fact that many of your competitors are also employing SEO experts and it’s easy to see why SEO is often referred to as “The Google Dance.”

With too many people on the SEO dance floor, your toes will get crushed. So why dance in the first place? Why not simply build a better website?

I’ve had sites banned from search results because I unwittingly employed “Black Hat” SEO techniques. Doing things such as;

• innocently using the same phrase too many times on a home page (my bad),
• using invisible writing (white text on white background) or
• using 0 size (zero pixel) keyphrases

… had one of my client’s website banned.

More blatant techniques such as building doorway websites with the aim of funnelling customers to your main website or flooding search engine results with your results are also considered “Black Hat” or “unfair” by search engines. If caught using these techniques, you’ll find yourself mysteriously omitted from the search results.

In my case, I was banned for a month and my client lost a LOT of business (we’re friends now). But the whole business made me uncomfortable about taking money for providing an SEO service. These days I put my efforts into building a great website and Google always seems to find me (and my client sites). It’s also hard to accept praise for getting a client to number one in their industry when all that may have happened is other SEO operatives might have been having a sandwich at the time.

Search engines consider Black Hat SEO techniques “spamming.” They send spiders (little programs) to crawl the web looking for genuine and viable sites. If you are caught “cheating” the natural flow, they see you as a spammer. It’s completely understandable and you know what? As a reformed web developer, I’m with them.

I’m forever deleting spam from my inbox, sent to me by self-proclaimed SEO experts promising higher rankings in search results and thousands of new customers. I get emails from clients asking if they need to “do anything” about seemingly important SEO emails.

My advice?

Write a blog.

Writing might actually be the hardest thing to do on Earth, but by jove, the pen is still far mightier than the sword.

The imaginary website :

Imagine writing an article, once per week (say Sunday night) about your business, product or service. Be honest. Reveal something about yourself and the way you think. Allow others to respond to your article by having a comments section. Imagine writing a helpful article – like this one. How can you help your future customer – no – scratch that … How can you help people in general? What knowledge can you freely give to the masses? And then imagine the Google spider comes crawling, every Monday morning before breakfast, scouring the web for useful tid-bits and other information to serve up to the public as a Google result. And imagine someone finds that article. The very thing they were looking for. They may not want to buy your product, but they are keen and subscribe to your site. Happy to have read your article and warming to the idea of receiving articles of a similar nature on a weekly (or fortnightly) basis.

Now imagine a site that rates number one in Google search. It has 300 sites pointing to it and there are 1000 100% positive reviews all linking back to a product landing page.

Which site would you rather visit?

While there are many things you can do to improve your web site ranking, you really need to keep your eye on the ball. That ball is NOT SEO. Before obsessively monitoring your position on the Google search page like it’s a stock market, ask yourself this very simple question …

Is my site worth visiting?

There’s no point in ranking number one in a search for “hardware stores melville” if your site is impossible to navigate and you’ve forgotten to add a contact form. You have to be worth it.

One thing I’ve learnt in my 16 years as a webmaster, is that the web turns everything upside down. Literally.

If your site is about promoting your services, increasing brand exposure, building a customer database and showcasing your awards … you’ve got it all wrong. That’s “old school” thinking.
- Geoffrey Multimedia ;)

Your website isn’t for YOU, silly, it’s for your customers.

Sure. You’ll check your new web layout on your friend’s iPad, set it as your office homepage and gloat over your company history and embedded YouTube ad for hours. After all, you’ve come a long way. Plus, your logo looks great (although it could be bigger) and your company name ranks #1 in a Google search for “Homocentric Slippers.” You’ve made it!

But where are the customers? This is the 24hr web. New customers should be pounding my door and I should be collecting untapped leads and making sales while I sleep. Something’s wrong.

Nothing is wrong.

Don’t subscribe to “if you build it they will come.” They will – for about 3.5 seconds on average – but if you’re boring or banging on about your company and your awards, they’ll quickly go find someone who cares. There are plenty of other places to go these days. Know this and you’ll start to see clearly how SEO works. Pretend it’s not the case at your own peril.

"Why doesn’t anyone else share my enthusiasm?"

You are enthusiastic about your new company website because it’s really a substitute for YOU. Nobody cares about your company unless they find something of value in it for themselves. Your employees will care if you give them a pay rise, a bonus, or let them take the afternoon off. And your customers will care if you include a few useful freebies with their swiftly delivered product.

I know if I’m going to buy a product, I’ll research it … to death. I’ll ask questions on Whirlpool Forums.

Sometimes price isn’t the only factor. Shipping, delivery details and speed of service might be important. I’m often interested in an “upgrade path.” Is there some way to offer an upgrade path on your physical item or service? It’s all the rage with software. Buy it today for $50 and when a new one comes out get 25% off! Think outside the box.

The key to a successful website is to find an obvious (or overlooked) weakness in your market, and deal it properly on your website.

It’s kind of why I’m writing this blog entry. SEO is such a minefield, that I really needed to get this off my chest. Also, to be honest, the web industry is full of sharks and charlatans, feeding off the technologically illiterate. I may get picked up by the Google search robot writing this article and (possibly) rank slightly highter on subjects like SEO, web development and web design in Perth, Western Australia, (there I go – seeding those crawlers, again) but my real volition here is to help wean small businesses (and people in general) off an unhealthy obsession with Search Engine Optimisation. Why rank highly if your site is nothing more than an egocentric business card floating in cyberspace? Why even have a website in that instance.

I don’t know about you, but I want to visit a great website that is updated frequently with lots of information and customer feedback and reviews or the service etc. I want to go where other people go and I want to read about what they say about the company. Good and bad.

Search engines read. In fact, until they come up with a better image recognition software, that’s all they do presently. So if you have something to say, write about it. And let others respond to your writing. Be brave. Go with the good and improve the bad.

If you take a look at all the great professional websites in my industry, you’ll notice one thing in common.

• www.sitepoint.com
• www.alistapart.com
• www.designfestival.com
• www.sixrevisions.com

All these web industry sites are centred around a blog structure.

By the way, nobody will search for your company name, except you. They might search for “comfortable slippers western australia” but they won’t tap in “homocentric slippers”. They’d be nuts, wouldn’t they? So why obsess about your company name – up there in lit pixels?

Nobody cares.

List 5 reasons why you visit 5 of your favourite websites and the answer will be staring right back at you. You’ll probably find they are doing one or more of the following things.

Giving users a voice.
Answering questions publicly.
Providing good service.
Posting the good and the bad.
Encouraging discussion.

They certainly won’t be obsessing about their company name.

Yes. There is such a thing as an SEO expert, but the only one I regularly read (and therefore trust) is Ian Lurie at Conversation Marketing. I read his marketing blog daily. He’s a sensible man who doesn’t do the hard sell and speaks plain English about search engines and what you can do to rank higher.

Here’s Ian’s site.

Interestingly enough, like the web professional sites listed above, Ian also presents information using a traditional blog layout. He knows. The most important page on your site is your home page. If you are refreshing that daily with regularly updated content (weekly is a close second), in theory, that should be all you need to worry about. That is, Providing you’ve had someone like me coding your site from the ground up – and with the Google search engines in mind. ;)

I’ll leave you with one last question, because there’s another well-established industry that operates a lot like SEO IMHO…

Would you pay for weather updates?