From time to time different clients call me up to ask me about something that comes across their desk. Most of the time their gut instinct had it right, and they were looking at a scam.

Sometimes the scam is legal, just immoral – like charging $100 a year for a domain name when it can cost under $10. Or they are charging $200 for submitting your site to Google every month for a year, when in reality, you can do it yourself for free. By the way, over submitting to Google or the other search engines doesn’t help you and can actually hurt you as they see it as a form of spam.

Other times the scam is illegal. I don’t want to post too much just yet, as legal action might be taken, however I wanted to post a couple of links for helping you check out a scam.

www.ic3.gov/ – Internet Fraud Complaint Center
http://www.nethelp.org/scamhelp/ – list of common scams and types of scams
http://www.b4usplashcash.ocba.sa.gov.au/money/scams.html – from the Australian government
http://www.forexscams.org/ – foreign money exchange. This can take many forms, and a variation of this was attempted on my client.
http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams.html – from Craig’s List – a simple easy to follow guide
http://suckerswanted.blogspot.com/ - a list of scams and how to protect yourself

Luckily my client kept her head, realized some of the issues, and when she stepped back to look at the big picture, she saw it as the scam it was, before losing any money. (She did lose about 6 hours of time over a week – and time is money…)

Hopefully the links will be able to help other’s out.

If you know of any resources, please let me know as well.

Popularity: 45% [?]

One thing I’ve noticed, is that while working on other companies web sites, the one web site which tends to get updated the least is…. my own. This apparently isn’t specific to me, as I’ve talked with many other web designers who have the same issue. I’ve even heard of web designers hiring other web designers to do their web site.

Since it has been a little while since I did a major update to my site (this past summer when I added the blog), I decided I should be performing some updates. Some are for aesthetics, others provide speed enhancements, and some improve search engine ranking and results.

• Simplified my right column on the blog. This has done several things.
  • It makes the site faster to download. Fewer widgets to process and download, result in faster page loads and less work for the server to perform.
  • It reduces “duplicate” content for the site. When the same content can be accessed from several different links, it makes it harder for search engines to determine which is the best one to display, so the results get spread thin, instead of showing a stronger single page more often.
• I’ve edited my pages to make them more efficient. By reducing the processing on the server, I’ve increased the responsiveness of the web server.
• Gearing my pages to be more about web design instead of web development. Why? Well in searches web design is searched for about 4 times as often as web development. So while I technically do more web development work, most of my customers will know it as web design, and I need to cater to them. This has included adding more and better meta tags, re-writing some of my menus, and adjusting my content.
• What you can’t see yet is adding more images to my site. After working and reading about how I’m optimizing my site to be faster, you might wonder why I’m adding images and flash content. Simple – it aligns with giving users what they want and expect. By giving them more of what they want, I expect to see higher conversion rates from my prospects.

Popularity: 24% [?]

Everyone wants to be ranked in Google – and who doesn’t.  As the #1 search engine, people go there before the other search engines over 50% of the time.  This means that a lot of Search Engine people will focus on trying to get their customers on Google.  This can be relatively easy for niche-markets, but harder for more general terms.

For example, I have a customer who ranks in the top ten for about 11 search terms on Google.  It varies depending upon what shows on the Google report. He sells portable jewelry display cases, so since there isn’t a lot of competition, it is easy for him to rank.

I was looking through my sites today, and saw something that made me both happy and sad.  I currently rank #2 for Web Development on Google.  This may change slightly day to day, and based upon geographic preferences.  This is a general term, so it is harder to rank for it.  So why am I sad.  Because Web Design is a much more common search term – and I’m not ranking for that.  Because more people search for it, more people try to optimize for the term – therefore it is harder to rank for this term.

Some people will  recite stats on how they got a ranking for a key word or key phrase, but they use only obscure phrases, or niche market phrases, so it doesn’t have as much effect.  Your search engine efforts need to focus on how your market searches, not what you can rank for.

So what am I going to do?

1. Work on reducing Web Development mentions, and increase Web Design on the site
2. Add more pages showcasing this type of work
3. Improve link structure on internal and external sites to showcase what I do better

I’d love to come back in a few months with being #2 in web design on Google.  We’ll see…

Popularity: 32% [?]

There was recently a good article explaining the difference of On Page vs. Off Page SEO (Search Engine Optimization). What many people fail to realize, is that what is going on in their site is often as important or more important long term than what is going on outside of their site, and can be done easier.

For example, it would (probably) be easier to ensure that page titles had better value for the page, than to get 10 people to link to a brand new site. I say probably because it takes time, and depending upon the number of pages you have, it can take any where from a few hours to a few days or more.

Other forms on On Page Optimization I like to look for and work on when I am improving a site include:

• Link Text – the text that is used in the link itself to the other page
• Page Titles – it shouldn’t be Company Name – Home. And yes, I’ve made that same mistake myself.
• File Names – should be descriptive and organized with the content they are displaying
• Header Tags – this is missed most often by designers new and old alike. Make the header tags fit into the page, and use them appropriately.
• And more… – this is just the tip of the iceberg.

While it does cover the majority of what needs to be done, I often see it poorly implemented on web sites.

None of this can make up for poor content, but then again neither can a 1,000 incoming links. Quality content will encourage people to link to you, and keep your visitors on your site doing what you want them to do.

Many people have the wrong impression, or think that SEO can only be done one way. They will try to tell you that this is what it is, and there are many parts to SEO. Now that we’ve seen where to start looking for internal optimization, let’s look at what it isn’t.

• Links from other sites
• Pay-Per-Click
• Banner-Ads
• Redesign the Interface of their website

I mention the last because I hear lots of people, usually recent graduates try to tell me that redesigning the interface will help the optimization. The search engines do not care how your page “looks”. They care more about the structure and content than what color you are using.

Now if a redesign incorporates the aforementioned enhancements, then yes, it will help your SEO efforts. But it should not be required. If someone wants to sell you on the design enhancements, make sure you know how they intend to incorporate the SEO techniques before signing off on the project – otherwise you might end up in a place even worse then where you are now.

If you need someone to help you evaluate your Search Engine Optimization, please contact us.

Popularity: 35% [?]