By Kim Krause Berg

1. There is not enough persuasive or value oriented information to convince visitors to stay on the page. I compare this to car shopping. Automobile's in a showroom have a sheet of paper taped to the window that lists every detail you could possibly imagine about that particular car. How often do you actually stand in one spot, directly in front of the window, squinting to read the tiny words on the page? Usually you are spotted by eagle-eyed car salespeople who leap to your side and begin telling you all the reasons why the car is cool. They ask what you had in mind too, and from there, start to narrow down matches that fit your requirements. Write as if you are a car salesperson for your homepage. Cut a deal. Introduce the manager. Offer a test drive.



2. Don't place 100 links to the inside pages from your homepage. It is not a playground where you run screaming out onto the area trying to beat the first person to the swing set. A homepage should be married to your site requirements and especially your visitors' top tasks. This could be price checking, searching for part numbers or clearance items, finding your contact information or finding the only baby items that are not pink or blue on the planet.



3. Quit talking about yourself so often. Nobody cares how great you are. What they do care about is what you have for them that's worth their time and money. If you're the All Powerful Oz, you can slip that in, but just remember that even OZ lied to Dorothy. If you need help with your ego, try the We We Monitor.



4. Feedback and email newsletter forms are some of the funniest things I've witnessed on the web. Why would you demand a phone number from someone who is just letting you know your links are broken? If you want general feedback or better yet, sales leads, your form should scream trust. Start by trusting that if site visitors want you to call them, they'll enter their phone number. Requiring one is something managers tell you to do. Ignore them. Consider your prospects that desire email contact only or impress them with customer service clues with a choice of either email or phone contact. Never require a phone number for free newsletter signups, but if you insist on this unheard of practice you invented, offer a sample of the newsletter that requires that phone number and by all means, tell us why you want to call us.



5. If your navigation only goes forward, you didn't learn to dance properly. The actual steps are:
   
   
   • Move forward.
   
   
   • Move back if your partner doesn't like that move.
   
   
   • Continue forward if your partner really liked where you landed and trusts where you want to go next.
   
   
   
   In other words, don't rely on the "Back" button to go backwards. Guide your visitor's steps backward, forward and side to side with breadcrumb navigation, embedded text links, buttons or links that continue a task's forward momentum. Design navigation to be fluid and effortless. Your visitors should be able to glide along the dance floor and not get lost or spun around into dizzying loops.
   
   


6. Application functionality. If you only knew what exists out there in web site land. For example, there was a travel site for camping that only lets you book hotel rooms because the campgrounds werenâ€^(TM)t programmed into the options anywhere. There was the application with many parts in the process, however, no matter what link or button was pushed, it only landed on one of those parts. An application is only intuitive if you program its brains properly.



7. Mystery links confound visitors. Non-descriptive labels force us to guess where we will end up. While I love a good game of hide and seek as much as the next person, when I think I know where you're taking me and you take me somewhere totally different, I stop letting you drive.



8. Related to this are Absolute Shock Links. These are navigation links that take you to PDF files without any warning. Since it takes time for the computer to go pull Adobe out of the kitchen, rev it up, load the file and then I swear you have to resize the thing from 200% down to something that doesn't make you get the shakes reading, well, you can see how a little warning is appreciated. The other form of visitor link shock treatment is linking to a totally new domain, with new layout and brand new navigation and no way back because it opened up a new window and cut off all ties to where you were. At least, if you plan on dumping your visitors off somewhere new, work out a nice little warning system and arrange visitation time with the Mothership site.



9. If you want to capture someone's attention, do it above the page fold. Large monitors didn't signal the end of browser laziness. We still like an incentive to use the mouse to scroll, hover or click. If half the page is needed to describe how to use a contact or sales lead form, what is doing business with you like?



10. If you have a FAQ, there had better be a good reason for making your visitors go to a page that displays a long list of questions and answers. They want you to answer the question when they have the question. I remember when I used to show horses and entered jumping classes that required me to memorize the course I'd need to guide my horse around. I could never understand why they didnâ€^(TM)t put directions inside the show ring itself that said "Turn left here", "Weave around these scary high jumps" and "Slow down, the judge usually stands about here." A FAQ is nice for backup if you have a complicated process, but user instructions during the actual task are far more considerate and easy to remember.

 

If you're based in Australia and have been looking for face-to-face SEO training, you might want to keep the dates of 23/24 June free. Why? Because I'll be in Sydney to present a Sydney SEO Training Workshop in conjunction with City Desktop Training.

The SEO Workshop will cover the main topics of our SEO 101 and SEO 201 online training courses that we offer at Search Engine College, but in a tutor-led, interactive format, with PCs. The cost of the 2 day workshop is only AUD 1,295 and includes a textbook (Shari Thurow's Search Engine Visibility) and a 1 GB Flash drive containing all lesson materials, SEO resources and reference links.

If you ask nicely when booking, you might even be able to take advantage of the AUD 400 discount that City Desktop Training are offering my blog or newsletter subscribers. To book, call Jamie on (02) 9516 1715, but be quick as places are filling up fast. See you in Sydney!
 

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Have a great day! 

Hi Kalena,

This may be a little off your normal topics... But, you always seem to have such a well thought out view that I want to know your opinion of SEO Standards?

What do you really think about the idea? Good and bad?

Adios

Chris

Hi Chris

It's interesting that you bring up this topic, because we've been hashing this very subject a lot on Sphinn lately. Jill Whalen made a post on Search Engine Land where she stated that she didn't think we needed standards and this resulted in some passionate arguments both for and against standards.

My opinion? Until search marketing has an official, widely accepted industry body, I don't see how we can have official standards. This industry has unspoken standards and they've worked well for 10 or more years. We white-hat educators promote the unofficial standards and search engine guidelines already. The creation of official standards without a ruling industry body would, in my opinion, just spawn more problems.

Besides, creating standards is not going to get rid of shoddy SEOs or make them switch hats. Creating standards is not going to prevent the general public from being ripped off by SEM cowboys. Buyer beware has to come into play at some point.

I've written an article about this for SiteProNews about this: SEM Industry Standards: Nonsense or Necessary

Kalena

Hi Kalena... 

I have a question regarding Server Side Includes. Do search engines index them? The navigation menus in my company's website are SSI files, meaning that their content is not visible in the main index.htm file. Do you reckon search engines ignore the content of the navigation menus in my case?

Marco


Hi Marco

For my readers that aren't familiar with Server Side Includes, they are a way to tell the server to insert something into a web page before it is sent to the viewer. What is inserted may be the content of a plain text file or it may be the output generated by another program running on the server such as the processing of a form return using a PERL script.

I don't use SSI much but I was pretty sure the code generated by the SSI would be indexed. To be sure, I asked my SEO homies on Twitter to confirm this and they said:

"They are normally fine, spiders just see the html thats outputted" (thanks Patrick).

"So long as they are generating HTML I can't see why they would not be indexed" (thanks Dave).

So just to confirm - YES - search engines will index the HTML generated by your Server Side Includes.

Kalena

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FAQ 5: Does the canonicalization of my url impact my search rankings?

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Hello Kalena... 

I was wondering if you know anything about the www prefix. My hosting company has my site registered with the www and without, as the same for all sites, I believe. Does this affect how the websites are viewed by the search engines? Also, some directories have my site listed without the www even if I have submitted it with. Does this affect how Google for example counts external links to my site? I have asked many people and no one has been able to answer my question.

Mirna


Hi Mirna

Timely question! I was just discussing this issue today on Twitter. Just to clarify, when you talk about your site being listed with and without the www prefix, that's called the canonicalization of your domain. Basically, it just refers to your preferred URL for a site, whether that's with the www prefix or without. Matt Cutts goes into more detail about canonicalization in this post.

Search engines can sometimes index both versions of your domain, creating duplicate content headaches for you and also link popularity dilution. For those reasons, I strongly recommend you decide which URL version you are happiest with and implement 301 permanent redirects at the server end to ensure your preferred version is served no matter which version is typed in. You can also set your preferred domain within Google Webmaster Tools.

Loren Baker wrote a post about the canonicalization issue today, so you might find that helpful. I concur with Loren that using the www is a no-brainer.


Kalena

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FAQ 6: How should I charge for SEO services?

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Hi Kalena... 

I'm very excited about finishing the SEO course today and getting my certificate! Thanks for a great course.

One thing I was hoping I'll find in the bonus lesson and I didn't, was some information on service pricing. I personally started providing web design services to my clients then wanted to add SEO to my services. How do you recommend I charge for this "extra" service??

Lamees

Hi Lamees

I'm so glad you enjoyed the course and are preparing to launch SEO services to your existing clients.

Regarding SEO pricing, Patrick Altoft's recent blog post Peanuts, Monkeys, Tailors and Charging for SEO should help you. Also check my older blog posts about salaries in SEO/SEM.

For anyone interested in starting a career in SEO, I suggest you read my article about the subject.

Best of luck Lamees and please stay in touch.

Kalena