Six Revisions » Content Strategy

Creating Websites Optimized for Google’s Panda Algorithm

Jacob Gube — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 10:14:50 +0000

Whether you’re in the process of building a new website or redesigning an existing site, it’s vital to build it with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind.

The king of search engines, as everyone knows, is Google, making up over 65.3% of all search traffic (in October 2011).

Google’s goal is simple: to give their users the most relevant, high-quality search engine results as accurately and quickly as possible. So in early-2011 Google introduced an update to their search engine algorithm, dubbed Panda, as part of the company’s continual pursuit of that goal.

For those of you who are unaware, the Google Panda update reportedly affected the rankings of almost 12% of all search results — more than any other update before.

Since then, Google has rolled out several other updates to Panda, dramatically changing how thousands of websites are ranked.

Those that were considered to be high-quality sites saw their rankings improve, while those of supposed low-quality essentially vanished from ranking at the top.

So now, the obvious question is this: How can we make websites that are seen as high-quality in the eyes of Google Panda?

Read the following tips to make sure your site is optimized for Google Panda.

Design for Engagement and User Experience

To put it simply, Googlebot is starting to view websites more and more like humans. Thus the design of a site is going to start playing a much larger role in how it’s ranked more than ever before.

The Panda update is looking closer at several metrics to see how engaging and user-friendly a web page is. Some metrics that help quantify engagement and user experience quality are:

Amount of time spent on the website
Bounce rate
Number of web pages per visit
Page response times
Conversion rates

These metrics give you a clue as to how good a website is in keeping visitors engaged. For example, a website with a high number of web pages per visit could mean that the visitor thinks the website is interesting and engaging.

Well-designed sites are typically more visually pleasing, easier to understand and often fare well in the metrics mentioned above than those with poor designs.

Thus, your goal is to craft a website with a great user experience that captivates your audience. In addition, make sure that the website is optimized for speed, as this also affects the user experience and the site’s usability. Remember that usability and SEO go hand in hand.

For tips on improving engagement and the user experience, read the following articles:

Spelling and Grammar are Important

This might sound obvious but you will be very surprised at how many websites suffer from poor spelling and/or grammar. Google does evaluate content quality of websites. In fact, Matt Cutts, a highly-regarded individual in the SEO community and member of the Search Quality group at Google, addressed this in a YouTube video.

Cutts said, "We noticed a while ago that, if you look at the PageRank of a page — how reputable we think a particular page or site is — the ability to spell correlates relatively well with that. So, the reputable sites tend to spell better and the sites that are lower PageRank, or very low PageRank, tend not to spell as well."

Focus on Content Quality

Google likes content. This is not a newfound idea, but it is one that is often neglected. You have to be dedicated to developing high-quality, original content.

Try to become an authority in your industry by writing content that visitors would want to bookmark, share or recommend.

Google specifically states what they look for in a high-quality site by providing you questions to ask yourself. Here are just a few questions they suggest you ask when you produce content:

Would you trust the information presented in this article?
Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?

As you can see, a large emphasis in quality is being placed on the creation of content. This must be at the forefront of any design or website management duties.

For tips on improving content quality and content strategy, check out the following articles:

Avoid Too Many Ads

Again, this goes back to designing with humans in mind. Having too many advertisements can make Google think the site exists just to serve ads rather than provide authoritative information.

Avoid Duplicate Content

Avoid having the same content being displayed on any pages. Each web page should have their own unique content specifically tied to what that page is about.

A web page should also have its own unique meta description and meta title attributes. For more information on this topic, read 5 Common SEO Mistakes with Web Page Titles.

Less is More

Over time, if a website is not regularly tended to, it can begin to have hundreds of pages that, many times, even the website manager is unaware of.

Google states that having a lot of poor quality pages on your site can bring down your rankings, even if you have plenty of high quality pages.

In these cases, it is best to consolidate to create a cleaner experience for the end user.

Ensure High-Quality Code

It is important to run your website through code quality assurance processes. Good markup hints that the quality of the website is also good. At the simplest level, you can just use the W3C Markup Validation Service to ensure your HTML complies with W3C standards.

To get tips on how to improve your site’s code in terms of quality, standards compliance and web performance, read the following articles:

Conclusion

As the Web continues to evolve and become more humanized, it’s imperative that you take these tips into account when dealing with your current or new website. Search engine algorithms will only become better with their ability to distinguish what makes the end user happy. And if they are happy, you will be happy too!

About the Author

Adam Heitzman is a web designer/developer with a strong background in SEO. He’s a Managing Partner at HigherVisbility, a Memphis-based internet marketing agency that offers a full range of marketing services ranging from SEO, Pay Per Click Marketing, Web Design and Development, and Social Media Marketing. Connect with HigherVisibility on Facebook and Twitter.

7 Blog Design Tips from a Content Strategist

Jacob Gube — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 14:00:41 +0000

Advertise here with BSA

As a content specialist, I prefer web designs that support content rather than conflict with or ignore it. Web designers should have a real appreciation of content strategybecause it is crucial in launching a successful blog.

For blog design, content issues are particularly important to pay attention to, because, fundamentally, the purpose of a blog is to deliver quality content to a strategically defined audience or community.

For that reason, web design and content must never work at cross-purposes. Here are a few tips for web designers creating weblogs.

1. Design with the Topic, Value Proposition and Audience in Mind

Here are the three main factors that should drive design decisions for a blog:

What is the blog about?
What is the blog’s unique value?
Who is the audience?

Topic: What is the Blog About?

Obviously, a blog about woodworking should look like a blog about woodworking, not like a blog about parenting.

From a design standpoint, this means creating a website header design that clearly conveys the subject matter, and also selecting imagery, fonts and other design elements that have a woodworking feel about them.

We want the woodworking enthusiast to recognize this is a blog designed for him or her — without having to read a single word. Tweaking standard themes usually isn’t enough to accomplish any of this: a blog with a generic feel won’t inspire visitors to explore the content. If a blog has a high bounce rate, consider punching up the design.

Value Proposition: What is the Blog’s Unique Value?

Once the woodworker grasps the blog is about woodworking — the next question is, "Why should I read this particular blog about woodworking?"

Every blog should have a value proposition. In this case, options include tips for woodworking on a budget, tips for the master craftsman, or tips for the beginner.

Again, the blog’s value proposition should be immediately obvious in the header, and brought out in the texture of the entire design. This is a common weakness in blog design. If there is a value proposition in the header or sidebar at all, it is often overwhelmed by other design elements that compete with it for attention rather than draw attention to it.

Audience: Who is the Audience?

How would the design of a woodworking blog differ depending on whether it was geared to master craftsmen or beginners? A dense design packed with links and information would intimidate a beginner, whereas a master might dismiss a design with a grade-school feel. Using a plain, rectangular cutting board as the header image might attract the beginner, but appall the expert.

The point is to make the target visitors immediately feel at home when they land on the blog. Of course, in order to do this, the designer needs a crystal clear understanding of who the audience is, which comes back to content strategy. As a side note, no amount of design wizardry can compensate for a blog lacking in strategic focus.

2. Pay Attention to Details

With all things, the devil is in the details. Even if we get the big things right, users will have a disappointing experience if the little things are executed improperly. Here are a few design details that I hope you will agree are important to get right.

Author Attribution

Nothing is more off-putting than a blog post authored by "Admin." Blogs are a personal medium: names, and sometimes author thumbnails and bios, are crucial to establishing a human connection.

CSS-Tricks displays the author attribution right after the post title.

Internal Search Feature

Users get frustrated if they are looking for something specific and cannot see where to search for it. A surprising number of blogs offer no internal search engine at all, or position it in a place that is harder to find than Atlantis.

Catalyst Studios has its internal search feature at the top-right of the layout, a common location that users look to for search forms.

Blog Excerpt

Most blog themes provide the ability to display short text snippets of posts on the blog’s home page. Snippet length and formatting should be carefully calculated; when this is not done, the blog can look like the visual equivalent of alphabet soup.

N.Design Studio displays blog excerpts on the home page.

I could go on and on in this vein: seemingly minor features such as clickable titles, prominent "read more" links and image size and style consistency can make or break the blog. The main takeaway is that details are important.

3. Don’t Be Too Unorthodox: Follow Blog Design Patterns

Two places where designers should not flex their creative muscles are social buttons and subscriptions. To get users to follow on Twitter, connect on Facebook, tweet and Like posts and subscribe to the blog, the imagery and positioning of these features must be familiar.

Vandelay Design Blog places subscription buttons at the top-right of the blog layout using recognizable icons.

Joining a blogger’s community should be like buying gum at the checkout counter. If users have to exert effort to join your club, conversions are going to be terrible unless your content is irresistible. But even if it is, why make life difficult? I’ve never yet heard anyone say, "I subscribed to this blog because it had a really unusual RSS button."

Social sharing buttons are tricky. If you display buttons for every social network under the sun, you may wind up confusing the visitor. On the other hand, if you only include a few networks, you may sacrifice powerful shares on networks you don’t display.

As a default, my company includes share buttons for Twitter, Facebook and Google+. If we can identify other social networks that have particular strength with a blog’s audience, we will add them as well.

I like to display share buttons at the top and bottom of the post: some people will share just on the strength of the title and never even read the post; others will read the post thoroughly and be inclined to share at the end if they really like it.

The point is this: There are certain blog design patterns that you should be implementing and maintaining on the site’s design.

4. Have the Sidebar on the Right of the Web Layout

A common blog design pattern is having a section for auxiliary content, containing things such as a short description of the blog, a search form, banner ads, a listing of top blog posts and so on. This is typically a column in the web layout and is usually narrower than the main content area column (to denote visual hierarchy). This section is often referred to as a sidebar (infrequently, it’s also called an aside).

Squarespace’s blog positions the sidebar on the right.

Nothing is quite so vexing to me as a blog whose sidebar is on the left. The natural movement of our eyes is from left to right: if we want visitors to read our blog post, we want their eyes to land on it first. This idea is reinforced by usability studies done by renowned usability expert Jakob Nielsen (e.g. Horizontal Attention Leans Left).

Some bloggers opt for the left sidebar on the theory that it will lead to more ad conversions (because ad banners are typically placed in the sidebar). While monetization is a worthy blogging goal, my belief is that on a blog, ad conversions are earned by enthusiasm for a blog’s content rather than mere positioning of an ad. Putting obstacles in the way of content put obstacles in the way of monetization.

5. Image Placement and Selection Need Serious Consideration

One statement with which writers and bloggers violently agree is that images enhance the appeal of a blog. However, where images are placed makes all the difference.

Best practice is to place images at the top of a post and/or top right. Similar to the sidebar issue, we do not want images to fight with the post for attention. Rather, we want the image to reinforce the message.

Beyond image placement, using (attractively styled) captions with images is an outstanding way to reinforce messaging. Images get more initial reads than text; a strong caption entices a visitor to read the post.

Matt Brett styles his images and captions well on his blog.

Outstanding blogs have a definite strategy behind their image selection. Blogs that appeal to technical folks often rely on annotated screenshots. Blogs that appeal to a more general readership tend to choose images that arouse curiosity or convey a message humorously. Our agency blog has taken the latter route and we’ve gotten very positive feedback from our readers.

Infographics are a fabulous image strategy since they have the potential to become viral. The challenge is the time and effort to create a series of useful and captivating infographics.

6. Put Careful Consideration on Ad Placement

Internet ads are, by nature, interruption marketing. Blogs, on the other hand, are social marketing. Mixing the two is like oil and water.

Make sure you understand your audience before saturating a blog with ads — you could be inviting a nasty backlash. Ongoing split testing of ad layout and positioning is time and money well spent if ad revenue is important. (If it isn’t important — why display ads at all?)

Do not use pop-up ads because they are annoying. Avoid places where ads detract from the content.

Instead, place ads above the post title and on the sidebar. These areas are widely regarded as appropriate for advertising; even "purists" who disdain blog advertising in principle probably won’t be put off, provided, of course, that the content is good.

7. Determine What’s Appropriate: Diary or Magazine Format?

We recently switched our agency’s Internet marketing blog from diary to magazine format. Our decision included the following considerations:

The blogosphere is saturated with diary-formatted blogs, and we wanted ours to stand out from the crowd.
In general, our posts are not time-sensitive. Chronology is not especially relevant to our readers.
We wanted to do away with post snippets altogether, as they looked rather clumsy despite our best efforts. Posts displaying titles only look cleaner in a magazine layout.
The magazine format gives more emphasis to our images, which we feel are strengths of the blog and motivate visitors to read our posts.
The magazine format visually separates individual posts more strongly than the diary format, where everything tends to flow together in a continuous stream.

Hopefully our experience will help you discern which format is best for your blog project. Without doubt, there are design solutions to the difficulties we experienced using a diary format, but regardless of which way you go, all of these issues affect readability and must be dealt with somehow.

Conclusion

What I admire about web designers is their ability to convey complex ideas with a simple yet powerful visual. If a designer understands what a post is trying to say, and what a blog in general is trying to say, the design will get the message across — often more powerfully than words.

So I would encourage designers to always ask questions of the client, the blogger, the creative director, the project manager and whoever is involved with shaping the content strategy behind the blog.

If you have doubts about the objective of your design work, the entire success of the blog is in doubt. That’s one thing I’m certain of!

About the Author

Brad Shorr is Director of Content and Social Media for Straight North, a Chicago-based Internet marketing firm that specializes in B2B. He works closely with technical clients including BluePay, a provider of merchant processing services and TSI, a performance measurement solutions manufacturer. Follow him on Twitter @bradshorr and Facebook.

Viral Content: Why We Share Some Things and Not Others

Jacob Gube — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 11:00:27 +0000

Advertise here with BSA

There’s been a lot of talk lately in the bustling world of journalism about why some newspaper and magazine content goes viral and other bits fall and fester. As the print industry slowly wanes, magazines and newspapers are hyperaware that online, they have greater control over how their content is received, thanks to quick turn over and tangible reader reaction (I hear these discussions all the time at my day job).

They all know that some of their content gets tweeted more than others. Some of it hits Digg like crazy, some shows up on Reddit.

Surely, there are some common denominators for the good stuff, right?

This is a question the magazines and news rags are all asking, all tightly crossing their fingers that some deeply mysterious algorithm exists that bears the secret to the Almighty Viral Content.

This problem is best approached in two steps.

First, why do people share?

Second, what do they share?

By attacking this problem via users and content, we get the best illustration of what’s actually going on. It’s all triangulation from there.

Cats. People share cats. Image by red.dahlia.

The New York Times, which has one of its articles tweeted every four seconds, recently went ahead and asked the first question — and asked it of Science.

The tweet counts per minute of a New York Times article. Image from New York Times.

To complement this research, I invoke another study called What Makes Online Content go Viral published in the Journal of Marketing Research which attempts to address the second question.

Articles, videos and songs go viral because they engage their audiences, which is something any content officer should be concerned with. Dead content deadens users.

This isn’t a discussion to further hammer in the now-rather-trite idea that "content is king." What I hope to do here is to share what’s been discovered by marketers and researchers, and see what valuable bits web content developers can take away.

Too little science is covered in the web development community (this applies doubly in content-centered forums), and when it is, it’s often done so by someone trying to sell you on something.

But not this stuff, which is why you should read on.

The Research

When I discuss scientific research, I typically provide a series of caveats centered around the funders of the research, if applicable. For instance, check out this story about how dairy makes women stronger and less fatty. It was paid for by Big Dairy, which is a tiny conflict of interest.

But the two studies I’m talking about now exist in one of the rare areas where businesses and large organizations are paying for bona fide scientific and statistical research.

I say "rare" because, at this point, so little is understood about viral content patterns that no interest group stands to gain anything by tweaking the results; although The New York Times has sanctioned some of the most targeted research, they get nothing if the results simply say "content goes viral because Times’ articles are just awesome."

Granted, this is hardly an academic pursuit — many, many businesses stand to gain a great fat ton out of this type of information. But — and I truly hate to say it — one of the big differences between academic and privately driven research is how immediately practical it is.

So with these things in mind, let’s get to it.

Why Do People Share?

It probably comes as no surprise, but people share things to make themselves feel good, one way or another. It’s very human. It’s what we do.

For those of you unfamiliar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, once we have our physiological needs taken care of, we search for safety. Once we feel safe, we look for a sense of belonging. Then comes self-esteem. Finally, when all else is covered, we search for the "higher" concepts like morality, equality, and other idealistic "alities."

Image from Wikipedia.

It’s the top two tiers of Maslow’s hierarchy that drive us to share — be it tweeting, watercooler chatter or half a cookie with friend. People want the respect of others, and they want to feel a sense of belonging.

And tweeting helps how, you might ask? Well, according to the NYT’s Consumer Insight Group, whose study consisted of 2,500 subjects, people are sharing content not only to "enrich the lives of others" in their online networks, but also to define themselves in whatever community they’ve taken part in. And we keep sharing to make sure we stay connected.

Of course, that’s a sweeping generalization. The study would be amiss without discussing the different types of sharers. These boil down to some basic personas.

Some people are more geared toward self-promotion, for instance. Others want to get the word out about some cause, and they use social media as a soapbox. Some people are just hipsters, and share things that make them more hipstery. (That’s seriously in the study mentioned earlier; not verbatim, but "hipsters" is a persona.) Others are hyper selective and only interact with a tight community.

But from hipsters to altruists, they all have those top two Maslow tiers urging their behavior.

What Do People Share?

Think about any recent content you’ve shared. Clearly, if you were driven to share it, it struck you as worth it. Let’s see, for me it was a scientific article about researchers making mouse embryos transparent. The one before that was an io9 article about Neil Patrick Harris guesting on Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time.

I shared these things for a number of reasons, but it all boils down to what the researchers in the virality study call emotional valence.

Think of this as graph: on the y-axis, you’ve got anger and sadness, the latter being on the negative end. On the x-axis are happiness and relaxation.

Both "positive" values — anger and happiness — are factors that are very good indicators of what gets passed around the Web.

The more highly charged those "positive" emotions, the better the chance. People want to be surprised and shocked, too (hence the old journalism adage, "If it bleeds, it leads"). And almost universally, people want to laugh.

So What?

These studies have narrowed down the characteristics that make content resonate with readers; I urge content wizards and wranglers to read the studies in full. I’ve by no means been exhaustive here.

As with a lot of psychological or statistical research into human behavior, much of this might strike you as intuitively obvious. It did for me.

But what’s not obvious is how anyone dealing with the direction of Web content should learn from this.

Viral content goes viral because it hits people upside the head, which is good.

It’s not forced. Just ask any marketer, business person or writer — no matter how much we’d love it, we can’t force content to hit home.

Keep viral characteristics in mind when developing and directing any content. All niche communities have their own versions of viral (Keyboard Cat, for instance, might not be super relevant to the antique tractor collector community), so as always, user research is the keystone no matter the content.

Writers must know their audience. Web and content developers, their users.

About the Author

Kristina Bjoran is a science writer based in San Francisco, California. She works in editorial at Wired magazine and is a managing editor at UX Booth. Connect with her on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

How to Develop Your Website’s Tone of Voice

Jacob Gube — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 13:34:49 +0000

Advertise here with BSA

There are two branches of Starbucks near my office, but I will always go to the one that’s slightly further away. Both sell exactly the same products, the decor is identical, and the queues are always a similar length.

Why go to the one that’s further away? I like the way the barista talks to me.

Although the content of our brief exchanges is no different from the conversation I’d have at the other branch, there’s something very different about how this interaction sounds and feels: tone.

His tone is unfailingly friendly and upbeat, which always leaves me with a smile and keeps me coming back to that particular branch.

My loyalty is certainly not unique. In a competitive market where businesses strive to match each other on cost and quality, most consumers’ choices will be influenced (consciously or not) by the tone of voice in which services are presented and delivered.

In many ways, it’s easy to choose an effective tone when your customers are standing right in front of you and you can see their reactions. However, a huge proportion of business has shifted from the verbal face-to-face into the textual via websites, emails and social networking. In this shift, many businesses lose their voices.

Faced with the task of writing web copy, someone whose spoken tone of voice is friendly and confident can turn mechanical and distant as if they were tasked with producing a formal report. What’s most dangerous about this is that they can’t see this unnecessary tonal shift putting off their customers in the same way they would if they were to conduct a meeting with a client in the same way as they write.

In this article, we’ll look at some of the common problems with tone of voice in web copy and how to avoid them. Beyond that, we’ll consider how to go about developing an effective tone of voice for a website and maintaining it through the use of tonal guidelines.

Voice vs. Tone

Before diving in further, we should first examine the distinction between tone of voice and voice itself.

Tone is a verbal expression of mood best adapted according to the audience. You present the same information very differently to, say, a 4-year-old as opposed to a 40-year-old. You do that through tone of voice: the words you choose and the way that you structure them.

Your voice, however, is your overall verbal personality. Regardless of whom you’re communicating with and at what level, your voice remains the same. This should be true for the voice of a business as well. Different media geared to different audiences may demand an alteration in tone, but voice should remain stable.

For an example, let’s take BBC News and their youth-oriented site, CBBC Newsround. Both are from the same organization, both cover similar material, but, as shown below, the tone is markedly different to match the respective audiences.

From BBC News, "Wimbledon 2011: Relaxed Murray ready to ‘up his game’"

From CBBC Newsround, "Wimbledon: Andy Murray says he’s ready for Nadal showdown"

It’s clear from the word choice and structure that the tone of the second example from CBBC Newsround is geared towards a younger audience than the first: it’s lighthearted and lively, whereas the first example is more serious and composed.

Despite the difference in tone, though, it’s evident that the source is the same — there is a consistent voice across both websites.

Setting the Tone

There are two key points to determine before defining the appropriate tone for your website.

Who is your target audience?

What is their age group?
Where are they located: urban or rural, domestic or international?
What sort of values do they hold: conservative, ethical, cautious, impulsive or economical?
More importantly, what do they want from you?

What does your website want to achieve?

Is it an e-commerce site designed to generate sales?
Is it a portfolio of your work?
Is it educational?
Does it offer an online community for users to engage with?
Is it meant to draw in new consumers, support existing ones, or both?

These are both points that should have guided the visual design of a website and, equally, they should be the force behind its content.

Forgetting the target audience or the ultimate purpose of the website sounds like an unimaginable faux pas, but it happens surprisingly frequently.

Let’s consider the example of Goldman Sachs below. The company has invested large sums of money to make the company appear competent, ethical and approachable, but their website tells a different story.

The above example isn’t just poorly written and unpersuasive, it also conflicts with the stated values of their brand. The grammar issues make them appear incompetent and the tone is distant and cold.

Developing Tonal Guidelines

Once you’ve determined your audience and your site’s purpose, you’re halfway to deciding on tone of voice. It may be helpful to consider the personality of an employee you’d want to represent your brand at this point.

For example, if you’re advertising housing for students, you want someone friendly, open and fun. If you’re selling organic fruit on the Web: you want your representative to sound healthy and ethical. If you’re describing services at a care home: you want someone kind, professional and understanding. You get the idea.

These adjectives are a good start, but they’re all subjective. The next step is to start defining what these adjectives mean and don’t mean.

Let’s take the student housing example:

	Friendly	Open	Fun
Does mean	Informal: avoid jargon. Conversational: could the copy be read aloud to students without sounding misplaced?	Inclusive: use uncomplicated language for students who don’t speak English as their first language. Personal: use active voice.	Enthusiastic and upbeat: be passionate about the services on offer. If the copywriter believes in the services they’re writing about, that impression will be transferred to the reader.
Doesn’t mean	Unprofessional: avoid grammatically incorrect language, even if it’s common in verbal conversation. Overuse of slang: use it sparingly.	Untrustworthy: open and honest with students, and confidential with their data. Patronizing: be straightforward but don’t "dumb down" any necessary information.	Excitable: don’t overuse exclamation marks or other punctuation to get the point across. Unrealistic: don’t exaggerate to get the reader’s attention.

Guidelines like these don’t take long to put together, but will offer an invaluable reference to your copywriters, be that you, another member of your organization, or an external copywriting agency.

Going a step further and including examples of copy you do and don’t like is also worthwhile, because it’s easy for different people to interpret your guidelines differently.

Consistency is Key

Take your tonal guidelines and apply them to your whole website, including your contact information, your terms and conditions and even your 404 error pages.

Of course, readers will expect different vocabulary for legal information but that doesn’t necessitate a shift into passive voice and stuffy, "authoritative" language. Take a look at this section from Twitter’s terms of service:

The vocabulary is appropriate to the legal subject matter but continues in the active voice, even slipping in a pun in the middle to maintain a lighthearted tone.

Being bold enough to stand apart from aging conventions communicates confidence.

Things to Watch Out For

Watch out for other basic inconsistencies that will blemish your hard work on tone. No matter how seamlessly professional your tone is, a typo or misplaced punctuation mark will make you look foolish.

Here are two tips:

A proofreader is not optional. Of course, the writer should proofread the first draft, but there is no substitute for a fresh perspective.
Edit without mercy. Cut, cut, cut. If you can identify unnecessary words, then remove them and get to the point.

Summary

To briefly outline the points we’ve covered:

Tone of voice, used well, will strengthen brand loyalty and set businesses apart from competitors.
Tone can be adapted according to the audience and platform, but ensure that the voice remains constant.
The key considerations in choosing a tone of voice for your website are 1) the target audience and 2) the type of interaction you intend them to have with your site.
Producing a tonal guideline sheet (example shown above) will help establish and maintain a distinctive tone of voice. Used as a reference by copywriters, it will yield consistent results, especially where multiple authors are involved.

About the Author

Ailsa Partridge is a copywriter at Cooper Murphy. Cooper Murphy is a copywriting agency that writes copy and develops tone of voice for the world’s biggest brands.

What Potential Impact Can HTML5 Have on SEO?

Jacob Gube — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 10:00:15 +0000

Advertise here with BSA

Although still a work in progress, HTML5 is the next major revision of the HTML standard. HTML, which is the markup language that allows us to structure and present our web content, is the primary factor in search engine optimization efforts. HTML gives search engines the needed context they need to understand what’s contained in a web page.

How might HTML5 change the way we approach SEO? What are the possible impacts of HTML5 in search engine algorithms? In this article, I will attempt to answer these questions.

Web Page Segmentation and Increased Semantics

One key component of HTML5 is that it adds new elements that help us better express what’s on a web page. This helps improve web page segmentation so that different parts — such as the header, footer, main content area, etc. — can be easily be distinguished from one another.

Once HTML5 becomes more widely adopted, search engines can use these new elements to help them find page elements of interest to them.

Currently, we use

elements to organize and segment a web page.

The issue with using

elements is that the element is meaningless. It doesn’t add semantic value or give context to what’s inside it.

With new elements such as

and

, the segmentation of the web page becomes more meaningful.

The benefit of this is that it will allow search engines to easily crawl the website, possibly skipping sections such as

or using them for different indexing purposes (such as identifying copyright information or finding the site’s name or logo). Search engine indexing will thus be more efficient, meaningful and possibly more advanced.

HTML5 Elements That Can Affect Search Engine Indexing

Below are some new HTML5 elements that can have a direct impact on SEO.

You probably already know the importance content plays in your website’s search engine ranking.

The new

element is probably one of the most important additions to HTML5 when it comes to SEO. It allows you to indicate the main content of a web page.

One potential change to search engine indexing is that search engines may put more weight on the content inside the

element.

The

element is meant to indicate various sections on a page. The advantage is that each section can have its separate HTML heading. This can give search engines a better understanding of how the web page is segmented and structured. Search engines might be able to tease out the information hierarchy of the HTML document based on

tags.

The

element can give search engines a clue as to where the site name and logo is on a web page or where the primary navigation is (as this is often the place where navigation menus reside).

In web design, a footer usually contains auxiliary information such as copyright information, licensing terms, privacy policy information, links to static pages, and links to social media profiles. This section could be used by search engine spiders to identify items related to copyright, terms of use, privacy policies and social media profiles.

Since

contains auxiliary information, will its content be heavily discounted in search engine algorithms? Possibly.

This new element can give search engine indexing algorithms clues to the information architecture of your website, (just like how sitemaps help them gain a better understanding of the website’s structure).

Link Types

One of the ways search engine rankings are determined is through hyperlinks in a web page. Search engines study links in a web page to see what web pages it points to as well as to see what web pages point to it.

Link types in HTML5 allow us to give our links better meaning. This gives search engines greater context for each link they encounter.

You are probably familiar with rel="nofollow", which was a non-standard rel value in HTML4 that many search engines use to identify links that the current web page doesn’t endorse. The new link types, which also use the rel attribute, works the same way.

New attribute values like rel="author" and rel="license" essentially allow us to describe our links better. The rel="prev" and rel="next" attributes, which is a link that points to another web page that is related to the current web page, can be used in circumstances where a blog post is broken up into several web pages.

Below is a table containing interesting link types for elements that can influence search engine indexing in the future.

Link Type	Description
`alternate`	Links to an alternate presentation of the current web page
`author`	Links to a web page related to the author of the web page
`external`	Links pointing to external domains
`help`	Links pointing to relevant help pages
`license`	Links to licensing terms of the current document
`next`	In a series of web pages, this links to the next web page
`nofollow`	Indicates that the link is not endorsed by the site
`prev`	In a series of web pages, this links to the previous web page

See a full list of link types here.

Improved Media Handling

The addition of native multimedia elements such as and can mean increased interoperability with search engines. Google, for example, presents YouTube videos in search engine results. Google already indexes images in Google Images. We could see video and audio being treated like images indexed in Google Images.

About the Author

SEO Beyond Your Site

Jacob Gube — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 11:42:40 +0000

Advertise here with BSA

The most common initial SEO strategy is to follow best practices for building user-friendly, well-formed websites. Optimizing your content and HTML, using good web page titles and generating links to your website are all ways you can help search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing index your site better and more accurately.

However, because of an updated Google search ranking algorithm (dubbed "Panda") — which aims to reduce the efficacy of content farms with shallow content that often have artificially inflated backlinks and black hat search engine optimized content — the status quo has drastically shifted.

Google, along with other search engines, has gotten smarter and now includes social signals as a top ranking factor.

In order to succeed in this new search engine landscape, we must therefore look beyond our own website.

In this article, I’ll share some tips for using social media to help with SEO. The fundamental idea I want to convey is that these tips are good practices to begin with and, when applied correctly, will stand hand-in-hand with your social media engagement efforts. Just like with any successful search engine optimization plan, when you put your users’ interest first, good search engine rankings often follows.

The New Era of SEO

Google has made it clear that social signals are now an important part of SEO. I like breaking down social signals into two main categories: Virality and Social Media Presence.

Virality

Virality is when your content has a strong reach in the social media realm. Websites like TechCrunch, Mashable and The Oatmeal have strong virality because the content they publish — breaking news, controversial topics and humor — is sharable and well liked by social media users. These sites also have strong communities and loyal followers who are vocal and who love to share content.

Social signals defined in this category are thus a mode of voting. Each retweet, Facebook Like, Google +1, Digg upvote and so on can help search engines distinguish which links their users will likely prefer over another.

Social Media Presence

If your site is just starting out and hasn’t garnered a large base of fans yet, it will be an uphill battle to rank well with virality. However, creating and actively maintaining a presence in social media has proven to increase the authority of your website in the eyes of search engines.

You don’t have to produce viral content on a regular basis, but if your Facebook Page gets comments and your Twitter account gets mentions, then it’s good for your site.

If you’ve neglected social media as part of your site-growing strategy, SEO is a reason for you to start paying attention to it.

How to Optimize Beyond Your Site

Let’s talk about some strategies and tips for optimizing your site through social media.

Being the most popular right now, the obvious social media sites that we should talk about are Twitter and Facebook, so let’s begin there.

SEO Using Twitter

Google looks at specific elements from Twitter and Facebook to use as ranking signals, as discussed by Google’s head of webspam team, Matt Cutts, in this video.

For Twitter, Google looks into a Twitter profile’s biographical data such as links it mentions, its geographic location and the number of tweets, mentions and retweets it has.

The more a Twitter account is mentioned, the more authority Google will give it. Thus, a Twitter account with more authority tweeting about a web page on your site could have a bigger impact on your search engine rankings than one that doesn’t have as much authority.

Another important ranking factor is the keywords that surround a link contained in a tweet. For instance, SEOmoz, a highly-regarded SEO blog, reported an unexpected Twitter case study a while back that showed a single tweet being able to help generate a fourth spot Google ranking as well as 160 unique visits.

Because the tweet contained the words, "Beginers Guide", even in its misspelled form, a Google search query of "beginner’s guide" ranked the post it was linking to in the first page of the search engine results on the day the tweet was made.

Source: A Tweet’s Effect On Rankings – An Unexpected Case Study

SEO Using Facebook

Facebook optimization is very similar to optimizing a regular website. Content should have SEO-friendly titles and text when being posted to a Facebook Page.

In terms of Bing, which has some different SEO requirements, the number of Facebook Likes and Facebook shares help organic rankings, as highlighted in a post on TechCrunch by Erick Schonfeld. In the post, Schonfeld says that Facebook could soon look at social signals to "identify experts related to various searches," including those who aren’t part of your friend’s list.

Another benefit of having a Facebook Page and Twitter account is they take up space on the first page of Google search engine results when a search query mentioning your company is made. This can help replace spam and unrelated web pages that share the same keywords.

Less Obvious Social Platforms to Optimize

Aside from Twitter and Facebook, there are other social media web services you can use that you might not necessarily have thought of before. Let’s talk about two of those platforms.

Using About.me for Personal Rankings

The beauty of an About.me page is it acts as a virtual business card. It can hold personal information you want to share with your network and to the public.

When a search query is made for a name of the person, the About.me page could be one of the top search results.

How does this help a website? In many cases, your staff becomes an extension of your site. A search related to a person connected with your website may generate leads in organic search.

Q&A Sites and Their Impact on Search Engine Rankings

Sites like Stack Overflow and Quora have been on the rise in recent times. They have had positive impacts on businesses because the questions asked on these platforms are starting to rank for competitive keywords.

One of the reasons for this is the increasing number of keywords that are questions. For example, phrases like "where can I buy an iphone" and "how to unlock an iphone" are beginning to replace keywords searches such as "buy iphones" and "unlock iphones".

Q&A sites accumulate questions and answers from their community, which is eventually indexed by Google. Where this is interesting for other websites is if they can provide an intuitive answer to a question related to their industry to generate clicks.

About the Author

Alex Galasso is a tech enthusiast with experience in online marketing, startups and videos games. Alex is currently co-founder at Groupideo which is a social video application. Feel free to contact Alex for any inquiries at alex [at] groupideo [dot] com.

The Importance of Web Content Strategy

Jacob Gube — Sun, 15 May 2011 13:12:38 +0000

Advertise here with BSA

Some web design and web development agencies have it all. They provide their clients with a complete site solution from beginning to end, from site planning and information architecture to web design, web hosting, and SEO. It’s tough for a smaller web design company or the solo freelancer to compete.

Or is it?

It may be easier than you think to broaden your competitiveness by adding web content writing services to your web design company.

By adding content writing services, you will be better able to adapt to the needs of potential clients. Some clients prefer to deal with one-stop shops. They don’t want to track down specialists for each component of their website project. If you can offer both site-building and content-writing expertise, you too can appeal to the one-stop shoppers.

Benefits of Providing Web Content Writing Services

In addition to landing more clients, adding professional content-writing services brings many other benefits. Here are a few of them.

Fewer iterations and revisions: If you have authority over all aspects of a site build — design, development and content — your work will be more efficient. There will be less need to go back and make changes because you can synchronize design and content from the outset.

Better content: Clients receive error-free, professional content. They can have web content that complements and works well with the web design.

Better branding: Clients benefit from web content that positions their brand well, along with a style and voice that engages their users.

Fewer headaches and project delays: By incorporating content writing into your services, you eliminate the headache that stems from clients delivering web copy that’s weak or late (who needs another delay?).

Optimized content: Quality content is optimized for search engines. Google and other search engines will rank your clients’ sites higher and more people will visit if the content produced keeps good SEO practices in mind.

Better conversion rates: Professional web content writers can increase conversion rates by optimizing calls to action and by writing compelling web content, making more money for clients to invest back into website development. You might get more work (and referrals) as a result.

Assistance with other website project components: Some content writers — especially those that focus on web content — can help with sitemaps, information architecture, wireframes, unique value propositions, calls to action, taglines and more.

Stronger client relationships: Content-writing services often extend beyond website launch. If you can maintain client relationships by updating or adding new content on their site, they are more likely to call you when their site needs a redesign.

Adding Content-writing Services to Your Web Design Company

So how do you incorporate content-writing into your web design company? You have a few options, and you don’t have to pick just one.

Develop referral agreements
Hire freelance web content writers
Subcontract a professional web content-writing company
Employ in-house web content writers

Develop Referral Agreements

In a referral arrangement, you refer clients to your preferred content-writing company. Your preferred content-writing company, in turn, refers clients to you. Obviously, you need to vet the content-writing company thoroughly and make sure they are capable and reliable.

The greatest advantage of referrals is that they create new revenue streams. With just a phone call or email, you can set clients up with your recommended company and receive a referral fee. You don’t have to manage the content-writing process, freeing you to focus on website design.

This approach also sidesteps possible cash flow issues. You don’t need to pay contractors out of your own pocket while waiting for the client to pay.

Similarly, you could work out a referral arrangement with a web content writer or web content-writing company, without paying fees. You will still help each other by generating more business.

Hire Freelance Web Content Writers

Another approach is to post an ad on job boards like Authentic Jobs, Smashing Jobs, etc. and then see if you can hire a few content writers. In this scenario, you manage the writers directly.

The biggest advantage of this approach is its low cost. You pay the writers directly, with no infrastructure to support. You pay only when you require the writer’s services, so you have a great deal of flexibility in how you use them.

If you find a good freelance writer, then you have the benefit of possibly grooming him or her to work for you in-house should you have enough work to justify it.

But there’s a downside to hiring a freelancer. Your content-writing services will be limited by the ability and availability of your freelance content writer. Not all freelancers are versatile, or experts in usability, SEO, or conversion tactics.

You also run the risk of the freelancer not delivering. If the freelancer fails to deliver on time or delivers poor quality web content, then you are responsible and your professional reputation will be at stake. You can’t just go back to the client and say, "my writer got sick," or "my writer’s computer crashed" or "my writer disappeared." The client will not distinguish between your company’s performance and the performance of your freelance web content writer. They’ll hold you accountable.

Subcontract Out to a Professional Web Content-writing Company

In a subcontracting arrangement, clients hire you to provide content-writing services, and you subcontract the work to a web content-writing company. (Full disclosure: as a web copywriter with a professional content-writing company, I have some bias here.)

Professional web content-writing agencies typically have a stable of writers working for them in-house, under contract, or both. These companies can often accommodate short deadlines because they can free up a writer to meet the deadline or divide the work among writers.

Having a bevy of writers and communications specialists also allows professional content-writing companies to offer a wider scope of related services, i.e. keyword analyses or meta data development, video script writing, etc., and match writers to clients. If a writer has a particular area of industry expertise or subject knowledge, the content-writing company can assign him or her to clients who will benefit from this expertise.

Many professional content-writing companies also have the advantage of additional copy review. Copy is often routed through other writers and editors for feedback or to catch errors. For instance, at my company, Webcopyplus, a senior copywriter reviews all copy before it’s released to clients.

There are some disadvantages to hiring a professional web content-writing company. Prices may be higher as there is more infrastructure to support. Also, it may be difficult to get adequate attention if your project is small and the web content-writing company has bigger projects on the go.

Employ In-house Web Content Writers

Your most integrated solution is to employ a part-time or full-time content strategist. As an employer, you have direct control over your employee’s project priorities and performance. As a result, you may have quick turnaround times as your writer is dedicated solely to your projects.

By having the web content writer in your staff, you also get to know the writer’s strengths and you will be less hesitant to invest in his or her professional development.

The risk is, at some point, you may not have enough content-writing work to keep your writer busy and cover his or her salary. But you don’t need to hire a full-time staff writer, and in some cases, you can make flexible arrangements.

There are also added training and costs, not to mention administrative demands. You will have to manage payroll deductions, vacation pay, medical plans, insurance and performance appraisals.

Finally, it can be very challenging to find talented, reliable content writers. At my company, we reviewed more than 400 portfolios before we filled our last position.

Conclusion

Don’t limit your ability to win projects by taking a one-size-fits-all approach. Consider the client’s preferences: if you want to appeal to one-stop shoppers, consider adding content-writing to your web services arsenal.

About the Author

Rick Sloboda is a Senior Web Copywriter at Webcopyplus. Their company’s client list includes AT&T and Scotia Bank. He advocates clear, concise and objective website content that promotes readability and usability, and conducts web content studies with organizations in Europe and the U.S., including Yale University. Follow him on Twitter @Webcopyplus.

Five Social Media Mistakes That Suck

Jacob Gube — Fri, 06 May 2011 11:58:30 +0000

Advertise here with BSA

Along with all the excitement over the potential power of social media, a handful of common bad strategies and decisions have begun to pop up.

These aren’t just small issues, either. Several of them are serious enough to critically damage your overall social media efforts, and could even stop your program dead in its tracks. I’ve seen several of these terrible mistakes appear repeatedly across companies of all sizes.

Shining a light on these common social media missteps will help you (or your clients) avoid the same mistakes.

1. The "Shoot First, Then Aim" Mentality

It’s amazing that there are still many companies and organizations who launch their social media presence without first establishing a clear purpose and goal for it. Who are they targeting? What’s the ideal outcome? These, and most other basic questions that must be identified and answered, are left ignored.

I’ve witnessed Facebook pages that grow to tens of thousands of Likes based completely on the strength of a brand. It’s only a matter of time before your fans realize that the overall strategy is missing and call you on it. Updates are sporadic, the information shared is not exclusive, and questions go unanswered.

I believe one of the best ways to view your social media presence is this: Think of it as a small town/city. If you had a town of 10,000 or 100,000 citizens, do you think it could run effectively without some sort of governance and leadership?

If you hope to have an effective presence, start with this in mind and be sure you know how you (and who) will govern it.

2. Using the "If You Build It, They Will Come" Strategy

There are Facebook pages and Twitter accounts that catch fire with little promotion. These are edge cases; perhaps it’s a big, recognizable brand or a celebrity that already has a big following offline.

It’s more common to see the opposite: A social media presence that’s launched with no marketing and no existent fan base. Much like the early days of forums, blogs, and e-commerce, many companies set up Facebook pages and Twitter accounts because everyone else is doing it. And they expect fans will eagerly beat a path to their door.

There are dozens of articles, books and blogs that can help to promote your social media presence. Use of online as well as offline promotion is vital to building momentum and developing an effective Facebook page, blog, or Twitter account.

3. "Our Public Relations Agency Will Take Care of It"

Agencies can be a great help in launching your presence, but that’s just the first step. What about the long term? Do you plan to have the agency continue to develop and promote your presence one year from now? Three years from now?

In most cases, the cost of an agency can make a long-term relationship cost prohibitive. Have a vision of how you plan to handle the care and feeding of your presence over the long term.

In addition, social media users seek authenticity. They want to hear updates directly from those that run the company — the developers, the CEO, the secretary, the new intern. It’s no fun getting updates from people who aren’t engaged directly in the company’s day-to-day.

Be sure to consider how you might manage customer care via social media as well. If you do a great job of building awareness and relationships, it’s only a matter of time before your customers and prospects begin to use it as a core communication channel for customer service and support. Who will monitor your social graph and respond? What tools could you use to make social media engagement more fruitful and efficient?

Odds are that your agency is great at marketing and promotion, but they are not close enough to your product to effectively offer customer care. Look to the model you use for offering customer support via phone and email and consider leveraging the same resources to support customers through social media. That can be a more effective and possibly more affordable way to offer support compared to using a public relations, advertising or marketing firm.

4. Neglecting Traditional Media ("Social Media is All We Need")

Just like print ads or any other media, social media should not stand on its own. It should be supported by broader strategies for both marketing and customer support. Over the past two years, too many businesses have pushed aside traditional approaches to building their brands in favor of social media.

No doubt that social media is vitally important and is here to stay, but only as a component of a bigger overall strategy. If your entire strategy is social media, you would probably be best off to pause and reevaluate your approach.

5. Anyone Can Be a Social Media Strategist

The good news is that many companies now realize that social media is not an easy thing to do. That means there are more people taking it seriously and not asking a niece or nephew or an in-house Facebook aficionado to manage social media on behalf of the entire company.

The bad news is that it can be hard to tell who is truly qualified to help. It seems everyone’s become social media gurus.

In my opinion, social media has evolved so quickly that almost no one should claim to be a guru or expert. Even the most veteran "Facebook guru," at most, only has seven years of experience, and that’s if they helped Zuckerberg build it!

Odds are, most self-proclaimed experts have two or three years of experience in a field that is shifting and evolving rapidly. Take any statements of anybody claiming to be an "expert" regarding their level of expertise with a grain of salt.

My general rule is if someone refers to themselves as a "guru" or "expert", run away. Fast.

A few suggestions that can help you avoid the false gurus:

Gather and follow up on references with needs similar to yours. How did the project go, and what has the ongoing involvement been?
Do your best to understand if they have a complete understanding of how the various components of marketing and customer care fit in with social media. If they don’t have broad experience in these areas, it will be difficult for them to understand how social media fits in.

Launching and growing a social media presence is a long-term proposition, so be sure you choose a partner who will be there to support you over the long term, even when social media becomes old news.

Conclusion

Social media needs to be a part of your overall marketing and customer care strategies. It should not stand on its own, and it needs long-term goals to have any chance of real success.

If you or your clients decide to venture into this space, take the time up front to develop a strategy, ask for expert help, and put a long-term plan in place with concrete goals.

What mistakes have you seen? What would you add to this list? I’d love to hear your ideas, so share them in the comments.

About the Author

Jason Schubring has built more than 100 websites and delivered e-mail campaigns for companies of all sizes. His strategic, design, and Web development background creates a unique perspective on effectively combining digital and traditional marketing. To connect with him, follow him on Twitter @jasonschubring or find him on LinkedIn.

Effective Communication Tips for Web Designers

Jacob Gube — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 10:00:15 +0000

Advertise here with BSA

We lay increasing importance on doing things in the user’s best interest and meeting their expectations, but we often forget that content and design is the window to a website’s soul.

Our designs tell visitors something about us and build emotional bonds to brands through first impressions and reputation.

By taking advantage of communicative design, we can better engage audiences and more effectively serve user needs.

Reactive Design: Beyond Simple Objects

In digital communication, computers act as a portal between our input and output devices. How they display websites to users and how those users respond indicate exactly how communicative our work really is.

I refer to this process as reactive design. We produce something that is presented to our users, and users react or respond to that.

Forget email: your website speaks volumes by itself, and as you progress through the iterations of a website (more on this below), you’ll find that an improved layout can make all the difference.

If you examine a website closely, you’ll see that it attracts the user’s attention in multiple ways.

Of the many factors in website design, content is a big component. If we have a block of text that explains the service we offer, that is communication. If we stream useful audio content to visitors, that is communication. If we provide interactive training or videos, that is communication.

Website content is a repository of words, visuals and sounds that trigger the senses. Don’t let all of that power go to waste.

Tips for Optimizing Content

To help you optimize your content, here are a few tips:

If applicable, inject some humor into your work; it can liven up dry boring discussions.
Break long pieces of content into smaller segments (users can handle only so much data).
Beware of sarcasm; it can be quite hard to interpret.
Images can support text very well, so don’t be afraid to use them to get a point across.
Don’t condescend; produce technical content at a level that visitors will understand.
Always label menus and links; confusion often begins when choices aren’t defined.
Personalize what you write; use testimonials to give perspective.
Be direct and to the point.
Moderate all forums and blog comments, because spam will reduce credibility.
Always keep your content up to date, and sustain the conversation with users.
Having one active voice on a website is okay, but user involvement adds depth.
Video is a wonderful communication aid, but don’t forget about accessibility.
Don’t just tell people what to do: show them with video (especially good for visual and practical learners).

Inject some fun into your content. Stale, boring material is often skipped over!

Enhancing Visual Communication

Next up, we have the visual design or layout of a page. While more abstract and open to user interpretation, we do know that design affects usability.

The very fact that usability plays a part in our layouts says something about its value and importance. If visitors can learn to use an interface and find some easier to use of than others, it stands to reason that design speaks to users through association, recognition and other types of non-verbal communication; they can see something on the screen and either know what it does or can find out.

These tips can enhance your website’s visual communication:

Use color to enhance a website’s appeal; color association can be quite strong.
Your logo represents your identity; it should be professional and high quality.
Icons are your best friend. They provide recognizable points of reference.
If you want your website to look professional, keep visual clutter to a minimum.
Your website layout should be compatible with browsers and devices.
It takes less than a second for a user to make a judgment; try to impress rather than shock.
A design should represent your content and services; don’t use templates without customizing them.
Size matters! Large font can draw attention to important bits of content.
Don’t be afraid to make the website fun and quirky; just be sure it’s not too distracting.
Design patterns put users at ease because users are able to recall features from memory.
Visibility is central to communication; give users the cues they need to scroll.
If you redesign the site, keep the things that work! Users hate having to relearn skills.
An attractive layout will get a user’s attention, but make sure there is substance to maintain it.
Advertising is a classic form of communication, but too many websites overdo link placement.
If your website promotes a physical location, match the designs so that visitors know what to expect.

A well-structured, clean, organized website gives a feeling of professionalism.

Enhancing User Interaction

While thinking mainly about content and appearance are fine for the average static website, we also have the big factor of interactivity, which many modern designers offer these days in order to create dynamic, engaging experiences.

Consider JavaScript or PHP: in their own way, they encourage users to talk to the website through clicks, key presses and data entry.

In fact, users actively speak to websites whenever they fill out their profiles and user other personalization features. Giving the user attention, recognition and a record of their contributions helps to create a sense of community.

These tips will help you engage with audiences and harness the power of interactivity:

List other content that readers might enjoy; visitors like to window shop.
If you have user profiles, have your website address users by name, to add a sense of personalization.
Quizzes and games reinforce memory, and they could be popular tools for content.
Letting users customize the theme or layout could help them digest content.
Every action should have a reaction: if a user enters incorrect data, inform them immediately.
Clickable regions should be friendly; make sure they are large enough to accommodate interaction.
Take readers on a journey by progressively disclosing content to them.
RSS feeds help infrequent visitors stay in touch with a website.
Exposing old content to users can lengthen their visit; offer related (but useful) content.
Web forms that are quick to fill in and non-invasive discourage users from entering fake data.
Supplementary content can be distracting; allow users to turn comments on and off at will.
Mobile device users interact with websites differently, so adjust your design to match, perhaps by using responsive web designs.
Don’t include widgets (such as clocks) unless your website really needs them.
Use confirmation dialogs for critical actions, so that users have a chance to rectify errors.
For complicated steps, provide a wizard to guide users to their destination.

Good functionality not only helps users achieve their tasks, but strengthens the message.

Going Beyond Protocol

While subtle improvements to the message of your website will of course have a dramatic impact on how engaging and appealing your content is (especially if the subject is a bit dry), we can’t forget the other form of communication that our websites facilitates, and that’s the person-to-person (or direct) method. Skype, instant messaging, email and even IPTV all present an opportunity to both target an entire audience and provide something a bit more personal to each user’s needs. Service providers often fall short of satisfying the latter.

Below are some tips to improve direct communication with users, whatever the medium:

Confirm that the user’s message was received (and provide a time frame for response).
Always respond promptly; the longer users wait, the less professional you’ll appear.
Address frequent issues on your website to avoid answering the same questions.
If something can be automated (like account closures), do it; it will usually make things easier for everyone involved.
Provide live assistance only if you can handle the workload; don’t make users wait for hours.
Chatting in person over Skype avoids the back and forth of email, and it saves time!
Never ignore users, even if the request seems silly. Just thank them and note their issue.
Critics are worth listening to because they want to help you do better. Just don’t start flame wars with them.
Transparency is critical to communication; admit your faults, deal with the issue, and tell users.
Problems occur, but what matters is how you deal with the issue, not the problem itself.
Don’t send users information that doesn’t apply to them or you’ll be labeled a spammer!
Give users a simple point of contact; helping them helps you be a better provider.
Don’t be afraid to bring the community together; forums allow users to assist each other.
Comments add to discussions; they bring out unique perspectives and useful content.
Allow users to remain anonymous if they prefer to; communication should not be mandatory!

Offering live support will help you appear more responsive and attentive.

Golden Rules for Communication

there are some golden rules that can help us maintain the highest level of communication with users. While there are probably more, I’ve narrowed them down to the top five best practices:

Be considerate
Be prompt
Be helpful
Be inclusive
Be friendly

Improving Communication with Customers and Clients

Because we are first and foremost designers (rather than consumers), our communication must cater to two types of individuals: our visitors (or customers) are the ones whose attention we have to get, while our clients are the ones whose goals we are serving.

Be under no illusion: the visitors should always come first (because without them, a website is pointless). But as designers, we have a duty to those we design for!

Visitors and clients are different beasts, and we’re responsible for connecting them to each other.

Communication between visitors and clients comes with different variables to consider. When we build a website for a client, our focus is often on their business objectives (things like cost, scope, etc.).

Ensuring that both the client and visitors end up with something that encourages the client to retain our services is a bit of a balancing act. If you want to be a web designer, you must be able to communicate through your portfolio and other direct methods.

Below are some tips and tricks for working with clients, bosses and other third parties:

Tell people who you are; individuals posing as faceless corporations are impersonal.
Clients want to know what you know; always state outright what you provide.
Price is everything! Most things in life come down to numbers, and so estimates are important.
Your portfolio does not need to be big; it just needs to make a positive impact.
Avoid jargon because other professionals will see through it.
Maintain confidentiality; it’s not the world’s business to know how your last meeting went.
If you can’t convince others to design how you think best, make a better case.
Be confident, and be willing to compromise; business is all about give and take.
Never be afraid to say "No" to offers that look suspect; you might save yourself some trouble.
Opportunities come to those who work hard; do your very best with every project!

Here are tips for communicating with customers:

Customers want to reduce the risk of purchase, so offer trials if possible.
Money-back guarantees inspire confidence and are an incentive to purchase.
Provide frequent customers with offers, discounts and benefits for using your service.
If the website is for someone else, make sure the experience matches user needs.
Every audience has different needs, so make the layout fit them.
Visitors want to be gratified; your website should be well-rounded and purposeful.
A blog can be useful for keeping users up to date, but only if it’s updated frequently.
Version history logs are useful for tracking a service’s evolution; maintain one online.
If your service relies on a third-party product, consider the consequences if that product disappears.
Downtime is a big issue on the web; do your best to keep the website going during traffic spikes.

Final Reflection

The key to successful communication is to think beyond the items on the page. Our users want to be engaged and feel that they are welcome and special.

Our ability to communicate through content, code, visuals, interactivity and just about anything that can be crammed onto the page speaks volumes. What does your own website’s content say about you? How could you better converse with users? It really does matter!

How a website reacts and interacts with users and caters to their needs has repercussions. Consider how poor websites abuse users’ trust (through privacy violations), confuse their message (through poor usability) or simply neglect users (through inadequate accessibility); the damage will foster a negative attitude toward the services.

As designers, our job is to make our websites communicate with attitude, professionalism and (perhaps) a sense of humor. Anything that keeps a reader’s energy level up is more than welcome.

And as we try to out-do our competitors, we need to realize that what matters is not always what we say, but the way we say it!

About the Author

Alexander Dawson is a freelance web designer, author and recreational software developer specializing in web standards, accessibility and UX design. As well as running a business called HiTechy and writing, he spends time on Twitter, SitePoint’s forums and other places, helping those in need.

A Commonsense Approach to Improving SEO of Images and Videos

Jacob Gube — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 16:00:58 +0000

Advertise here with BSA

Search engine spiders haven’t yet evolved to the point where they can directly extract the meaning from a visual medium such as a photo or a video. Instead, search engines must rely on the metadata we provide them through alt attributes, title attributes, surrounding elements (for context), and so on.

With some basic techniques, we can enhance the semantic value of images and videos so that search engines, as well as humans, can better deal with them.

SEO Image Optimization

The simplest thing you can do to increase the meaning of elements is to use human-readable file names.

For example, let’s say we have a web page about a local hockey team called Spitfires, and I took a photo of the team at their latest hockey game that I want to post up on the page. Instead of using the auto-generated file name that digital cameras assign to our photos (such as DS10213.JPG), I would rename it to something semantic and human-friendly such as spitfires-local-hockey-team.jpg.

This way, the URL of the image will be something like:

http://example.com/spitfires-local-hockey-team.jpg

The image now has a better chance of being indexed for terms such as "spitfire" and "hockey team". The image may eventually rank in the top rows for Google Images and drive traffic to your site.

The second aspect involved in optimizing images for SEO is placing important keywords in the image’s alt attribute.

Here’s an example:

The alt attribute is typically regarded as the primary attribute of an image that a search engine will use for gaining context and meaning.

Much like writing title tags and meta description tags in the of an HTML document, image alt attributes must make grammatical sense. In other words, don’t stuff keywords in them. Write your alt attributes for humans, first and foremost. Search engines view alt attribute keyword-stuffing as a bad practice and may ban your image from search results.

SEO Video Optimization

Much like images, videos can’t be crawled purely by its contents. However, there are signals and metadata that search engines use to understand what the video is about.

The main thing to optimize is the title of the video, especially when you’re using a third-party streaming service such as YouTube or Vimeo.

Google’s video tutorial for Webmaster Tools on YouTube is a great example of an excellent video title.

The title of the video, "Google Webmaster Tools", contributes to the ranking of the video on YouTube searches as well as regular search engine results.

Another element that affects the search results of a video is the video’s description. Below is an example of a video description from a Java programming tutorial. The targeted keyword, "Java tutorial" is mentioned at the beginning of the description, and again in the second sentence. This videos ranks second on YouTube for the search phrase "Java tutorials".

Another way to increase ranking in the search results for videos is to get as many views and Facebook Likes on your video as possible. This is based on the assumption that search engine algorithms take social proof as a ranking factor.

If your video gets a substantial amount of Facebook Likes compared to other videos in the same vertical, there’s a higher chance you’ll rank better for your targeted keywords.

Summary

SEO for images and videos takes little time to implement and can provide significant results in niche markets. For example, when you’re having trouble getting a page or article to rank for a competitive keyword in your niche, posting an optimized video or image may help you get a leg up.

At this time, search engines can’t index the actual content of an image or a video, but with our help, we can provide them with greater meaning and context using simple and practical (but often neglected) techniques.

About the Author

Alex Galasso is a SEO Analyst at the Montreal web design company, NVI Solutions Inc. In his spare time, Alex also writes about independent video games and manages a portfolio of websites. Feel free to contact Alex for any inquiries at agalasso [at] nvisolutions [dot] com.

Six Revisions » Content Strategy

Creating Websites Optimized for Google’s Panda Algorithm

Design for Engagement and User Experience

Spelling and Grammar are Important

Focus on Content Quality

Avoid Too Many Ads

Avoid Duplicate Content

Less is More

Ensure High-Quality Code

Conclusion

Related Content

About the Author

7 Blog Design Tips from a Content Strategist

1. Design with the Topic, Value Proposition and Audience in Mind

Topic: What is the Blog About?

Value Proposition: What is the Blog’s Unique Value?

Audience: Who is the Audience?

2. Pay Attention to Details

Author Attribution

Internal Search Feature

Blog Excerpt

3. Don’t Be Too Unorthodox: Follow Blog Design Patterns

4. Have the Sidebar on the Right of the Web Layout

5. Image Placement and Selection Need Serious Consideration

6. Put Careful Consideration on Ad Placement

7. Determine What’s Appropriate: Diary or Magazine Format?

Conclusion

Related Content

About the Author

Viral Content: Why We Share Some Things and Not Others

The Research

Why Do People Share?

What Do People Share?

So What?

Related Content

About the Author

How to Develop Your Website’s Tone of Voice

Voice vs. Tone

Setting the Tone

Who is your target audience?

What does your website want to achieve?

Developing Tonal Guidelines

Consistency is Key

Things to Watch Out For

Summary

Related Content

About the Author

What Potential Impact Can HTML5 Have on SEO?

Web Page Segmentation and Increased Semantics