Neekdesign

   Mar. 1, 2006
   Issue No.7


   Next Issue:

  • New Sites
  • Podcasts
  • Spam: Part II


   Neekdesign
   SERVICES
   PORTFOLIO
   CONTACT
   NEWS (Previous Issue)
   FUN

   ©2006 Neekdesign


  

 

Welcome to Neekdesign News
In this issue, we're highlighting a common fear among online business owners and managers - not getting your website enough attention. "SEO Help" and "Spam: Part I" will help you enhance your web presence and avoid technical mistakes that could get you into trouble with Google - and your customers.

More Cool Apps

Wishlist
We designed and built a robust Wishlist application for Just Copper that works directly with the Nexternal ecommerce system. Users can sign up, add products to their wishlist and view their friends' wishlists. We've called this application a "wishlist", but you may also recognize the flow of the application as that of a gift or bridal registry.

Pulldown Menus
Rick Hyde of HdV Wines wanted a clean, elegant site with pulldown menus. We integrated this functionality into the top navigation, but made sure to provide static links to each subpage within each major section. Providing the subpage links increases usability for trackpad-equipped laptop users, users with old or substandard mice, or browsers that have Javascript turned off.

Please let us know if you're interested in learning more about these applications.

SEO Help
Getting a search engine to rank your site first - or even appearing on the first page of search results - is more difficult now than ever before. There are upwards of eight billion websites. How can you even begin to get noticed? Why is your site not showing up in that coveted first page of results at Google?

Google themselves have an answer:

"Although Google crawls billions of pages, it's inevitable that some sites will be missed. When our spiders miss a site, it's frequently for one of the following reasons:

  • The site isn't well connected through multiple links to other sites on the web.
  • The site launched after Google's most recent crawl was completed.
  • The design of the site makes it difficult for Google to effectively crawl its content."

Usability For People - Not Search Engines
Each of us has some primary goal for our websites - to drive users to purchase, to contact us for services, or to find useful information. To reach this goal, website owners should focus on a single target: usability.

Sometimes, hoping to get "Googled," website owners try tricks and shortcuts, often at the expense of providing their customers with an excellent user experience. As Google states: "Don't fill your page with lists of keywords, attempt to 'cloak' pages, or put up 'crawler only' pages. If your site contains pages, links or text that you do not intend visitors to see, Google considers them deceptive and may ignore your site."

Some companies refer to these tricks as "search-engine optimization" or SEO. This "optimization" does not improve your Google results. In fact, aggressive SEO can get you worse than ignored by Google: BMW was recently banned from Google for unethical SEO practices (read the New York Times article).

These practices also make it more expensive for us to maintain your website, because your site architecture and code change significantly. SEO companies seeking to enhance your presence on Google can be wreckless with the careful design and code of your site, breaking pages and links and reducing usablilty.

Neekdesign Optimization
For every website design and redesign we do, we make your code as search engine friendly as possible. Our streamlined and easily maintainable code and structure follow Google's rules. We don't use images to display important names, content or links (Google's crawler doesn't recognize text contained in graphics). We use ALT tags if the main content and keywords on your page can't be formatted in regular HTML. We create naming structures that are clear and direct and easily understood by users and search engines. We edit your content to include your most important keywords, and always make sure your Meta tag information matches up with your content.

The Neekdesign website is crawled two to three times a week by national and international search engines. We add our client's websites to our portfolio upon project completion and write a brief client description with links to client sites. Search crawlers find you on our website and spin off to crawl and index your website(s).

Additional Optimizaton
If you have more than one domain name, we can help you forward that domain and make certain the site is accessible to search engine spiders. For our clients using the Nexternal ecommerce system, we can offer additional, effective Search Engine Optimization. We can help you:

  • Create accounts with Google Sitemaps and Froogle Shopping Cart and submit your site to them
  • Create links within Nexternal to automatically feed both Google Sitemaps and Froogle Shopping Cart
  • Add keywords to the site's Meta tags for your secondary domain names
  • Add these keyword/urls into the content of the website
  • Link to your secondary domains from the Neekdesign website
  • Help you with domain transfers and forwarding
  • Submit your URL to Google

According to Google:
"People usually look at the top 10 search results for a search query. That is only about 0.000004 % of all the search results for search..."

You have a huge challenge in increasing your search-results ranking, particularly if your business name consists of generic words (Excellent Wines, Inc. is sure to rank lower than Snodgrass's Excellent Wines, Inc.). Here are four additional things to help you rank higher under specific search terms:

  1. Get other sites to link to yours. This is the single most effective way to increase your Google ranking. It's going to take a combination of direct marketing - getting others to link to your primary URL - and time for the search crawlers to index your site.
  2. Submit the site to search engines (for example Google, Yahoo!, AltaVista) and directories (for example DMOZ, JoeAnt, GoGuides, MavicaNet, Yahoo! Directory). Google is free, but some of the others require payment.
  3. Create an ad with Google or one of the other search engines.
  4. Be patient. The crawlers are on their way. Remember, they have eight billion sites to get through.

More Information

Spam: Part I - Sending It
Everybody hates spam. How can I avoid sending it?

You Will Send Spam - It Can't Be Helped
If you have a website, you receive spam. This is an inevitable fact. Hackers build automated bots that search for domain names and send spam to generic email addresses such as info@, sales@, as well as names that stick out on your website. This is an unfortunate fact of doing business on the web.

But what about legitimate marketing emails you send to people who might genuinely be interested in your product or service - people who have opted to receive your newsletter, for instance, or past customers who submitted their addresses to your mailing list? These folks may want your email, but their email programs may see these emails as spam and send them to the trash.

Effective Email Marketing
You can take steps to avoid your email marketing from getting filtered. Here are some tips:

  • Use a well-known professional service such as Vertical Response for your email marketing campaigns. Besides conforming to anti-spam laws, a service can also provide added features such as "Forward this email to a friend", link tracking and customized HTML email templates.
  • Don't use ALL CAPS, excessive puncuation or misspelled words. Besides looking unprofessional, your message will never get to your readers since spam filters will simply delete messages with an abundance of these elements.
  • Avoid clichés. Many spam filters will look for frequently used phrases or terms.
  • Use verbs that trigger action.
  • Be affirmative.
  • Be clear and concise.
  • Tell your customers exactly what they should do.

Additional Tips from Vertical Response
"Here are a few tips to prevent your email from being blocked or filtered:"

  • Don't overuse the word free and never use tricks such as breaking up words with random characters (e.g. FR^E). This is a surefire way to get blocked or filtered as these are common tactics used by spammers.
  • Avoid being repetitive. Overusing punctuation ('!!!!') or repeating the same text over and over ('Click Here!') can also trip some filters.
  • Right from the start, get your recipients to add your From label to their address book. This way your email goes directly into their inbox."

More Information

Subscribe to Neekdesign News
If someone you know would like to subscribe to Neekdesign News, they can do so on the Neekdesign website at www.neekdesign.com/news. Past issues are also available here for your reference.

Tell Us What You Think
Our mission for the newsletter is to provide internet technology information that may benefit our clients. Let us know what you'd like to to see in Neekdesign News.

-- The Neekdesign Team