Posts Tagged ‘Web Design’

I was recently browsing the web for new information on website quality evaluation when I stumbled across Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. While lightly perusing the guidelines for any updates, I thought that it might be worthwhile to explore the guidelines in-depth. However to make the review more interesting I will be approaching each guideline in one of 4 possible ways. Each of which reflects a different perspective in the search world.

• P – Paranoogle – “Shhhh! Googlebot can Hear You…”
• N – Nihiloogle – “Guidelines are Meaningless… just like the Universe”
• Z – Zealoogle – “Google is the very fabric of my existence”
• J – Jasonoogle- Unfiltered and honest thoughts by yours truly.”

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While this session was largely dominated by Daniel Goldman’s Opera discussion (which was marked with many mysterious references to the Nintendo Wii, or more specifically the Opera Browser contained therein), there were a couple of interesting bits that I captured from the panelists:

• Even those that evangelize the use of well formed CSS and HTML still find tabled designs acceptable.
  I personally agree, at least until we get some cooperation between browsers.
• Reducing code bloat brings discipline to an unordered arena.
  If the unordered arena is WYSIWYG generated web pages, then I wholeheartedly agree with this concept.
• Using well formed, streamlined code strengthens semantics.
  I have been saying this for a few years now and was pleased to hear some support from an expert panelist.

To insure that we got the most out of PubCon, our fearless leader assigned sessions to each team member. My first session was SEO & Big Search, moderated by Jake Baillie.

This was an interesting session in that it was primarily an opportunity for some of the primary search properties to discuss their own in-house SEO campaigns. This is what each had to say:

AOL: Represented by Melanie Mitchell, Director of SEO/SEM. Melanie gave a detailed account of AOL’s SEO initiatives. She described their approach to SEO as focusing on 3 key areas:

• Indexing – Insuring crawlability and page focus.
• Ranking – Achieving prominent rankings for targeted search phrases.
• Metrics – Defining clear and measurable objectives and acquiring tools for measuring progress.

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Over the last several weeks I’ve been working on a new version of our website and was able to finally rolled it out. Its not a complete re-design, just a minor upgrade over the previous version of the site. Take a look at it here.

Here’s what’s changed:

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While the debate on the Grand Sierra Resort logo has been raging, one commenter was kind enough to point out that this blog might have its own logo issues. I was reminded of Luke 6:41 which says

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

OK, fair enough. Let’s take a look my own plank: the EMP logo. Now, I have to say that I absolutely love this logo, but that’s because I get it. I know what it represents, or at least its my own interpretation of what I want it to represent. But before I spill the beans on that, lets upon this up to see if anybody else gets it.

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I’ve been doing SEO for years and I can’t get past the fact that optimization continues to be the “after thought” of website development. This was all well and good in the late 90′s as SEO was just beginning to come onto the scene, or even in the early 2000′s when SEO was moving into it’s prime. Back then websites were always developed first and then considerations for online marketing came later.

But in the past couple years, as online marketing becomes more and more important to the success of any business, online or off, it simply no longer makes sense to wait until after a website has been developed to start thinking of how best to market it on the Internet. The two are so completely intertwined that doing one before the other often times causes you to have to go back and redo, or worse, undo things in order to create a compatible synergy between the website and its marketing campaign.

I often get calls from people exploring search engine optimization but want to wait until their website is fully developed and operational before they sign on with any particular SEO company. It makes sense on the surface because they want to make sure the site looks and performs properly before dropping money into a long term commitment to an online marketing firm. But that’s like making sure your brick and mortar store is up and running before you develop your business plan. It should be the other way around.

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Stanford’s Guidelines to Web Credibility:

Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem.

Typographical errors and broken links hurt a site’s credibility more than most people imagine. It’s also important to keep your site up and running.

We all make mistakes. The worst are the little things that are often overlooked but easily correctable. Before publishing new content on your website, take a few extra minutes to run the content through a spell check program. Even if you’ve made a only few minor edits, don’t assume that you don’t need to double check your work.

Just like any other form of medium, it’s best to get a third party to proof read your site’s content. Undoubtedly, they’ll find something you missed even after several proof reads of your own.

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Stanford’s Guidelines to Web Credibility:

Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers).

If possible, avoid having ads on your site. If you must have ads, clearly distinguish the sponsored content from your own. Avoid pop-up ads, unless you don’t mind annoying users and losing credibility. As for writing style, try to be clear, direct, and sincere.

Let’s set the distinction here between commercial sites and informational sites. Ads on informational sites and blogs are fine and a great way to create an additional source of income. Of course, this only goes so far. Even informational sites can lose their credibility if you have too many ads or utilize annoying popup/popunder windows.

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Stanford’s Guidelines to Web Credibility:

Update your site’s content often (at least show it’s been reviewed recently).

People assign more credibility to sites that show they have been recently updated or reviewed.

Have you ever been to a website and you could just tell the content was old and stale? Maybe it wasn’t obvious right away, but as you browse through the site you begin to see things that perhaps don’t align with other things touted on the website. Or maybe you see a “Valentine’s Day Special” still hanging around a week AFTER Valentine’s day.

Small thinks like this can really turn visitors off. One the less obvious stuff you have a bit more leeway–until someone actually recognizes the contradictions–but on the obvious stuff, it can be a clear sign that you’re not paying attention, leaving a potential customer wondering what kind of care or service they’ll get from you.

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Stanford’s Guidelines to Web Credibility:

Make your site easy to use — and useful.

We’re squeezing two guidelines into one here. Our research shows that sites win credibility points by being both easy to use and useful. Some site operators forget about users when they cater to their own company’s ego or try to show the dazzling things they can do with web technology.

How do you make your site easy to use? Clear, concise and consistent navigational elements.

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