Content That Brings People in to a Website

Web content that is well written, has value and is meaningful works like gravity. It brings traffic to your web site design and holds them there. When a user finds something they think is cool and exciting on the web they tend to spread the word. This is a human nature that good advertising is built around: everyone wants to be the first to bring exciting new things to their friends. If the site offers nothing to hold their attention that user is gone.

Think about how you shop. Say you are looking for a TV and start with a general Google search. The first thing you see is the search results. This is the first chance to grab attention and is why you need a properly designed domain name and search description. You have questions about TVs, like who has the best picture, best service record, how do I hook it up, do I need special wiring or equipment, HD or not to HD, etc.

You go through the list. The first site just has a list of where you can get TVs; nothing useful there. The next site is just a catalog with pictures and 'buy now' buttons; nothing helpful there. Next you come across a site that catches your attention. It has catchy graphics but a simple to follow layout. Besides the normal online store the site offers product and user reviews. There are links to "how to" articles answering the above questions. The site provides links to other web sites that have more useful information. All this quality content has eased some of your stress, answered your questions, given you choices and made you feel like this company wants to help you.

Human nature number two: since you found everything you need at that site: they sell TVs and you are comfortable with this company, you order the TV from them.

Now a few days go by and the TV arrives. The first thing you do is go right back to the web site to find guidance with the set up procedure. Because your experience with this web site was so positive you tell all your friends. You also go back to the site and post your own review. You are so excited you even mention the site, with a link, on your personal blog.

Everything that happened was due to great content and meeting the three goals of findability: help people find your site, help people find what they are looking for within your site, and encourage repeat traffic. All these goals were met because of quality content.

Let’s look at how this was achieved through content.

1- Keywords and phrases located in the articles and reviews created search engine results.

2- You were able to find what you needed through links in the reviews and articles.

3- You returned to the site multiple times to read more articles.

4- You created more useful content by posting your reviews.

5- You were so pleased with your experience that you do not hesitate to recommend the site.

Not only did the web site's findability improve your experience by including relevant and well produced content, it actually caused you to add to that findability by adding your review. This is how great content works.

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Author Chris Kaminski is head web designer at Lone Bird Studio, an Asheville web design and SEO company located in North Carolina.

The Google Canonical Problem

Did you know that Google sees www.lonebird.com and lonebird.com as two different sites?

This is called the Google Canonical Problem, and it will not only have a negative affect on your hit count and your page rank but can get you dinged for duplicate content. This is really important to you SEO content people. This is also another spot for me to reinforce something I feel very strongly: your SEO and code writer need to be joined at the hip.

So what is canonicalization? According to Google it is the process of picking the best URL when there are several choices, and it usually refers to the home pages. Here is a better example: take lonebird.com, www.lonebird.com, www.lonebird.com/index.html, lonebird.com/home.asp. To most of us these are the same. But technically they are four different URLs. In theory, during a search a web server could return completely different content for all four. When Google “canonicalizes” a URL, they try to pick the best representative from that set.

Now that we know what canonicalization is the next question should be, how is your website indexed and how can you tell? Simple. Go to Google and type "site:your-domain.com" in the search bar. What you should see is a list of all the pages Google has indexed. Now type in "site:www.your-domain.com". Do the search results show the same number of pages? If not, then you may have a problem.

So how do we get Google to pick the URL we want and what do we do with the listings that are already out there? The best first step starts with the site itself. Be consistent with your internal links. Be consistent across the entire site. Don’t make half of the links go to http://sitename.com/ and the other half go to http://www.sitename.com/. Pick the URL you prefer and always use that format for your internal links.

Next, be consistent with listing the site. When listing and indexing the site be sure to use the same URL.

Now, the overall best solution depends on whether your site is hosted on a Linux or Microsoft server.

For those on Linux the answer is to use mod_rewrite. What is that? It is an Apache module which will automatically map all requests to a single and consistent URL. Basically you add a short script to the htaccess.txt file located in the server root:

Options +FollowSymLinks

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^expression-web-tutorials\.com$ [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.expression-web-tutorials.com/$1 [R=301,L]

The htaccess.txt file allows you to send instructions to the server on the fly. Obviously you need knowledge of Apache, php and you need server access. Most of you will need to ask your code writer or site host to help you with this.

If you are on a Microsoft host the process is similar. Windows uses IIS (Internet Information Services) and like Apache it uses modules to extend its instruction set. These are called ISAPI filters (Internet Services Application Interface). An ISAPI filter can be used to rewrite URLs just like mod_rewrite.

You can write your own ISAPI filter but it can be a little complicated. Your best bet is to search online for a pre written one. Though there are free ones the better examples are paid. Again you will need a little knowledge and you need server access so you may need the help of your site host or developer.

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Author Chris Kaminski is head web designer at Lone Bird Studio, an Asheville web design and SEO company located in North Carolina.

SEO Elements that Search Engines Like

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is an important component of your overall web strategy and you should be using several to build a finable website. BUT … successful SEO depends on your understanding of the search engines, what they like to see and how they like to see it. There are many important factors to keep in mind as you build find-ability into your website design. This list is just a few of the more important ones that will really help you build points with the search engines:

- Honest content and not trying to trick the search engines. Make sure your content is relevant and has value to your users.
- Content that is readily visible to spiders with nothing to block the full indexing of pages, such as old html and nested tables or content not placed properly.
- More content than code on your pages. If you are not up on things, html is old news. In fact, with older template and WYSIWYG created sites this can actually cost you in ranking (MS Front page for example). This is why your code writer is as important as your keywords. (See my article "You can’t separate the code from the SEO").
- Keyword rich and valuable and meaningful content. This means content that is not "stuffed".
- Content with a clear information hierarchy so spiders can tell what a page is about. Again this goes back to the code, the order and priority assigned to header tags for example.
- Content that loads quickly and easily for the spiders. This insures proper indexing. Bring your site up to standards using new CSS standards, and make sure your content is marked up correctly (bolding keywords is an example).
- Clean meaningful URLs with keywords when possible. This works for people too.
- Back-links to your web site that are from reputable sources. Search engines use this to determine the credibility of your website. And back-linking counts really high toward your overall ranking.

When you look at these you can understand what the search engines want. They want us to give them plenty of clean, relevant, honest, high quality content. On the coding side we have coined a phrase for this: we call it "Search Engine Positive Code". And as we build all this into our overall Asheville web design the benefits are more than just promoting SEO: there is accessibility.

For example most of the points listed are also part of the new accessibility standards. By building your website to meet these new standards you will broaden your overall audience. This includes users with disabilities and those using alternate devices like handhelds. Placing content in the "alt" and "title" attributes, (a couple of the tags that aid accessibility) provides context and relevance to you website. This helps the search engines understand your page and accurately connect searchers with your web site. Accessibility and find-ability overlap.

People and search engines both appreciate great content. When people find content useful they tend to evangelize and spread the word. They create links on their blogs and even talk about your content on discussion boards. Plus, those in-bound links not only bring more people to your website, they help build your reputation with the search engines. Search engines evaluate your site's reputation by the quality of the sites that link back to you. So it all strings together, good content, clean code, and back-links all blend to improve your find-ability, reputation, and search engine optimization.

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Author Chris Kaminski is head web designer at Lone Bird Studio, an Asheville web design and SEO company located in North Carolina.

The Importance of the Title Tag in Proper SEO

A month ago I started a series called "Essential Tags", which is basically a 101 on XHTML tags and their relation to the search engines. But for this article I decided to jump over some of the preliminaries and talk about one of the most forgotten tags, the title tag. You know how heading tags can be a powerful way to build findability in your markup code but what about the others. The title tag is simply one of the most important positions to place keywords or phrases.

Here are a few guidelines for an effective title tag.

1- Do not use it as a dump for all of your keywords. Keep it short and relevant. 12 words or less is what is recommended.

2- Make sure to make your tag readable for humans as well as the search engines.
Don’t forget, title tags are still an important part of site navigation.

3- First impression. Your title tag is the main heading and link when displayed on the search results pages. It also determines whether or not a user visits your site.

4- Write your title in a way that can be read by stat applications like Google Analytics.

Here is a tried and recommended format for a title tag:

page title | site name or organization | short keyword rich phrase

Let’s look at this format. Up front is the page title. Putting the page title first before the organization or site name gives the user a way to identify quickly the page they are on, This is followed by the site name or organization. At a quick glance the user will know what page and site they are on even if they have their browser minimized. The way you write your tag will also have an affect how you will be able to read the page traffic statistics. Normally stat pages list page view results by the page title. If you place keywords first it will be harder to follow what pages your visitors are viewing.

How you craft your title tag will have another direct effect on your users. When tags are stuffed with keywords, browsers will awkwardly clip your text if the window is not wide enough. Your viewers may not be able to view the name of the page or the name of the site they are on. This also carries on to bookmarks, another reason for a proper title tag. When your users bookmark a page in either a browser or social network these systems use the title tag to identify the bookmark. If the title tag is stuffed with keywords up front the important information like the name of the site is lost. And an important marketing fact to remember, a bookmark label that makes no sense is not likely to generate many return visits.

Finally, a short keyword rich phrase at the end of the title tag will provide viewers and search engines a quick summary of what the page is about. It is important to keep it brief and descriptive. To sum up, the title tag should efficiently notify both viewers and search engines about the title of the page they are viewing, on what site and what the page is about.

So there you have it, one humble page tag so much importance. As with all search engine optimization projects everything starts with good research and a very targeted keyword / phrase list. After you have your list, it is just as important how you use them and the title tag is right at the top.


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Author Chris Kaminski is head web designer at Lone Bird Studio, an Asheville web design and SEO company located in North Carolina.

Why you can’t separate the code from the seo

When I wrote my first web site 13 years ago nobody knew what a keyword or Meta Tag was. I did notice that in the infant days of search engines some sites were easier to find than others and put 2 + 2 together. I didn’t know it then but search engine optimization was born. Since it has grown into an industry and has gone full circle.

For awhile keywords and Meta Tags were king and queen causing web development split. One person designed and wrote the site and then you took it to someone else to optimize.

Humans being what they are the Meta Tags were abused and turned into a spammers dream. The search engines reacted by demoting the Meta Tags to reference only. This was actually very good. Competition breeds innovation, in fact I have found that by using other creative techniques you can leave the keyword and many other tags out completely.

In the next phase, SE’s (Search Engines) relied mostly on the site content and the SE wars moved there. Competition grew even more fierce. But like Meta Tags there are only so many keywords and everyone is trying to use the same words.

Again, I noticed something curious. Web sites that had been re-built to bring up to current standards would move faster and differently in the SEs. This was especially true with re-done MS Front Page sites.

Light Bulb! The cleaner the code the better the rank. Others soon picked up on this and a few years ago Google made a big deal about changing their algorithms. The other major SEs followed and now your page code has become as important as content and the new SE wars have moved there, to the code and on-page optimization.

Competition is tough here too, and to be an effective SEO (Search Engine Optimization) person you have to at least understand code. There are different techniques and tricks used today through code manipulation and on page optimization, the real “meat” of a site, that it will cost you if these are ignored. And that is why the code and search engine optimization cannot be seperated.

This is the new truth of business on the Internet for the 21st Century. For your website to succeed you need your code writer / designer and optimization person / team to be one and the same. If your designer is not an SEO person then be sure they work very closely with one.

This leads to another change I have noticed, an evolution of web design companies. Because of the necessity of this closeness between development and optimization many are moving the SEO back in house. And the SEO companies see the writing on the wall too, many have shifted their marketing focus. In the past they worked mostly with end users. Now they are marketing to design companies hoping to form this new code / SEO relationship.

This is what I meant about going “going full circle”. Web site design went from the domain of the code writer and now back again. It is so important for design and SEO to melt together that I think the days of individual companies doing one or the other is rapidly coming to a close.

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Author Chris Kaminski is head web designer at Lone Bird Studio, an Asheville web design and SEO company located in North Carolina.

Is the Keyword Meta Tag dead?

Actually, how much value do the Meta Tags still hold in general? It still depends on who you are talking to, there are a few who refuse to let go and that includes some of the older search engines themselves.

Leading SEO companies have realized that the search engine wars as moved back to the code. There are just so many ways to use a keyword and everyone is trying to use the same keywords. So now the search engines look at the page code and that can help boost your rating more than Meta Tags but that is for another article.

For those who don’t know, the meta keyword tag is a way to insert text into an HTML page that is not visible when the page is viewed through a browser. Some search engines read the content of the tag and associate the words in the tag with words within the page's regular body copy. The first major crawler-based search engines to use the meta keywords tag were Infoseek and AltaVista which began supporting tags in early 1996. By mid-1997, four out of the seven major crawlers at the time supported Meta Tags. Since, experience with the keyword tag has showed it to be a spam magnet. Some web site owners insert misleading words about their pages or use excessive repetition of words in hopes of tricking the crawlers about relevancy. For this reason, Lycos quietly dropped its support of the tag in 1998, and newer search engines such as Google and FAST never added full support at all. Pretty much by 2000, the meta keywords tag was left with only two major supporters: AltaVista and Inktomi. Now Inktomi remains the only one, with AltaVista having dropped its support in July.

MSN and Yahoo place some importance (very little-but some) on Meta Tags. Google doesn’t use Meta Tags for anything besides your listing (if there is very little content on page). You won’t be penalized by Google for having a keyword tag providing you don't include words or phrase that are not present within the visible on page text. Google will ding you for this.

Indeed, my advice about the meta keywords tag is simple. For those running large web sites or short on time, don't worry about it. The stress and time involved in trying to craft a tag is not worth it, in terms of the minor benefit it might bring. It is far more important for site owners to instead concentrate on creating good title tags for their pages, a key page element that has consistently shown it can help with ranking across all major search engines.

I’m not going to lose sleep over the decline of the meta keywords tag. It has always been a point of confusion. How many times can I repeat a word on the page without getting banned? How many words are too many? If I don't list a term in the tag, does that mean my page won't show up? Those are common questions consistently raised over the years and represent time wasted worrying about a page element that a minority of search engines supported, and for those that did support it gave very little if any ranking boost.

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Author Chris Kaminski is head web designer at Lone Bird Studio, an Asheville web design and Asheville SEO company located in North Carolina.

Importance of Web Design and SEO Combined

I’ve seen it many times now, a great idea, an outstanding web site and wham, nothing. Why? Because they broke one or both of the 2 golden rules for a successful web site. And the illusion put up a web site and you will make a million dollars. Nothing is more false.

GOLDEN RULE ONE. Just like a traditional store you have to market and bring in traffic. To put up a site and wait to be found is suicide. This is a solid truth whether the shop is along side a real highway or the Internet super highway. Know your market, know your competition. Seek out a web designer who has marketing experience and works closely with an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) specialist. Not one of these “organic” people but a true specialist. They will provide the info and experience you will need to develop a good web marketing plan. Do this first!

GOLDEN RULE TWO. Ok, this is the second big mistake. It is also the most costly to fix or is in the end, fatal. Choosing a web designer. This rule is so important to success that I’m going to cap it: CHOOSE A WEB DESIGN, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION TEAM! We are all tempted to save money but this is truly a “penny wise pound foolish” situation. If you go to anything less, if you go to ‘someone who does it on the side’ or a “graphic designer” who will do a site, or any number of “dream weaver developers “(as we call them) your idea failed the moment you handed over your deposit.

There is so much more to a professional and competitive site than a cute design and a few key words. So much has to be done both on and off page and during the launch that you want a company that has more than graphic design abilities. You need a company with combined marketing skills and proven e-commerce experience. Site development and SEO will probably be one of the largest upfront expenses in the project. But it will be money spent wisely and in the end, much less expensive then doing it over again. Your company image, web site, marketing all have to blend and work together, see rule one!

They chose poorly

The Yellow Dinosaur

Traveling down the road a few weeks back I noticed the now familiar line of yellow bags lining the road. Later that day I caught 3 random remarks in different places. All were negative. All along the lines of litter, useless, and saving trees hence this article.
You have to ask yourself, in this communication age, an age of Google and cell phones do we really need the yellow page phone books? This only leads to the next logical question, in this time of global warming and green awareness, do they not get it or do they not care? Since all the major publishers are moving hard to build their web programs you can only assume they don’t care. That, and they do not understand market delineation, there are just too many of them for any one to be of value.
For example, at our office we get 8. We are in a small county, less then 200k and we get 8 phone books, 2 from Yellow Book, 2 from Verizon, 3 from Bellsouth and now a new one littering the road, PDC. Guys, how many do we need?
Now don’t get me totally wrong, I still believe we need hard copies of phone lists but as an advertising vehicle, their main reason for being, yellow books have outlived their time.
The environmental damage goes beyond the trees. It includes everything from first cutting, the chemicals used in processing and printing and the staggering amount of petroleum products used in production and transport. Who pays this bill, we do. Who pays the clean up bill for the books rotting along side the road and in landfills, we do.
The phone book as we have known it has become obsolete. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, it’s just technical evolution. What is sad is their failure to adapt. Some call it revolution but either way, evolution or revolution there is only one survivor.

Pick a web designer

In today’s world a business without a properly designed website is at a huge disadvantage. And just not any site will do, but one created with usability and SEO in mind. To work well a site needs to be designed properly, logically and cleanly. If it’s not then all your online marketing / PR / advertising and social media promotions to sell the site will just be wasted.
So much depends on the site design it is important to choose the right designer. So, here are a few tips to help you make the right choice.
1) Check out some of the other sites the designer has created. All creative designers have a unique style to them and certain elements common to .coms they develop.
2) Talk with the designer, tell him/her what your needs are. A good designer will be completely honest with you and be happy to tell you exactly his/her capabilities. The sign of a great designer is one that will ask what your current .com is, talk to you about your company and its goals and really get to know you. This is above and beyond, and what separates the good from the great.
3) Don’t separate the design and coding of your .com. You want one person or company conceptualizing, designing and implementing your .com. Splitting this is never a good idea and you will never get as good a product as you will if everything is done with one person.
4) Do separate the web design and the external marketing. Everybody can’t do everything. You want a designer who works closely with an SEO specialist. A proper web design starts with SEO and design from the very beginning.
Having the proper design is just the first step. It also takes a solid commitment to get your site a decent amount of steady traffic. And remember, once you start, it is an ongoing process from both your designer and SEO team for a time after the site is launched to build and maintain results.
When the website is created properly from step one, it will be something that you can build upon. You will have a valuable piece of virtual real estate.

Asheville Web Design studio combines design and seo techniques

With the economy in a recession, business trends have moved online. Companies large and small are making the move to survive. What they are finding is competition for front page exposure in the top search engines is stiff. Increasingly , they are seeking out web design and SEO companies that demonstrate the experience and track record of proven success. Due to higher gas prices and increased internet security, shoppers are buying online.

According to the Census Bureau, revenues from online sales have grown by nearly fivefold from $7.4 billion in the third quarter of 2000 to $34.7 billion in the third quarter of 2007. In July 2008 alone, there were almost 12 Billion U.S. searches conducted on the top search engines, according to Search Engine Watch. With decreasing local sales due to the economy, many small business owners are investing in online virtual real estate by creating a website to expand their reach and market.

Internet competition for top page exposure in the large search engines has increased dramatically due to the influx of the number of new websites coming online. Many small companies are going online without a clear niche marketing target and plan of action for online business growth.

Lone Bird Studio has developed a method that involves a unique blend of combining the design phase closely with the (SEO) search engine optimization of the web pages. The SEO promotion is as important as the design. Working the two together provides the client with a highly targeted and cohesive website. That has proven better than using unrelated web design and seo companies.

Today’s web design techniques have evolved with the internet and the demands for search engine friendly technical web coding. This combination of marketing and web design are a natural reaction to changing market conditions. Top selling websites seek out teams of web designers and seo specialists who combine their ideas to create a successful and marketable website.

This method has also proven to be a more cost effective approach, especally for startup and small business. A well designed and coded website with researched and correct SEO optimization combined with a continuing off-page SEO promotion provides the client with a piece of online real estate that increases in value. An investment in your online presence, or virtual real estate, is becoming as valuable as hard real estate, and can be acquired for a whole lot less money. It's just a wise investment.

Chris Kaminski is the head designer and web developer at Lone Bird Studio Ltd., an Asheville web design and SEO company in North Carolina. Clients include top companies in North Carolina health insurance, medical, news media, and government. Lone Bird Studio also specializes in creating niche market websites for that realize the necessity of ecommerce as the new marketplace.

What is in a .name?

The Internet has grown no argument there. It has replaced ground mail and the phone book. It has revolutionized business and banking but, there is one little piece that has gone un-noticed until now. In fact it has become the fastest growing segment in the private sector (a little corporate talk) and that is personal web sites.
And, that is because of the .name web extension. We are all familiar with .com, .net, .biz, .tv, but the real sleeper has been .name.
Why a personal web site?
- It's memorable. Use your first, middle, last or nickname in any order. The only thing anyone needs to remember is your name.
- You can have your own personal email.
- It is a global top level domain, .name works for individuals in exactly the same way .com works for businesses.
- It is personal. Use it to show off your family photos, or as an online portfolio, your .name domain is the best way to express yourself online.
- It's non-commercial. No companies no third parties in your domain. It's your name ending in .name, and that's it!
One of the great things about the Internet is freedom of expression, the opportunity for anyone to publish something on your own. It can be about your favorite sports team or music celebrity, personal or family news, political views, anything. There are a huge number and variety of individuals' web pages already online, including some very professional family and personal websites intended to keep relatives and friends up-to-date.
It is relatively simple to produce and publish your own pages, it can be great fun, and you also can learn some IT skills. Software for web page creation is easily available on the web, with many free or low costs. There are many websites that give advice and tips for budding designers. Many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offer space to "host" personal web pages as part of their offers, and there are websites that offer free space for personal pages.
So, what’s in a name? A whole lot and you can take it global.

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