Understanding Links, for Search Engine Optimization

Understanding how links work, from a search engine's perspective, can be a bit confusing for some. My experience has been that many people think of links as bi-directional entities – sort of like, "gee, if I put a link from my site to yours, then that link will benefit both of us because we're linked, right? Which means the benefits go both ways, right?"

Actually, no. That's because links are basically uni-directional entities – they take you in one direction (forward), but they don't take you back. Yes, I know what you're thinking – you can go "back" using the back arrow in your web browser, right? Yes, but that's different ... it's important to understand that the link itself is not what's taking you back – it's the web browser software, which has been designed to remember the last page you visited so that you can go back.

It's best to think of links as being either inbound or outbound (from your perspective). So if you link to me (an outbound link, from your perspective), then you help my search engine rankings because by linking to me, you're signalling to the search engines that you think I am a valuable source of info – so my ranking goes up. The only way I can really help you in return is to create a separate link from me to you (an inbound link, from your perspective). This signals to the search engines that I think you are a valuable source of info. (And linking to each other like this is called "reciprocal" links.) It's important to note: having outbound links doesn't hurt your site rankings, it just doesn't help. (Or if it does help, it only helps a little.)

As I've discussed before, having inbound links to your site (that is, links from other sites to yours) is by far the most powerful way to get great search engine rankings. If you get 5 other sites to point (i.e., link) to your site, that tells the search engines that a few people think you're an important source of info, and your rankings will be helped a bit. But if you get 100 sites to point to yours, or 1000, that tells the search engines that A LOT of people think your site is a valuable source of info, so your rankings will benefit much more.

*However* before you run off to start asking other site owners to create inbound links to your site, please read my previous blog post about how to raise Google search rankings ... there are right ways and wrong ways to get inbound links, and if you manage to get a bunch of the wrong type of inbound links, Google just might blackball your site, which is something that nobody wants to happen.

Wed Design Ideas II: Using Photos and Illustrations

In this article, I talk about design (that is, web site design) and content : Design includes the parts of your web page that show up repeatedly throughout your site – typically, this includes the header area, navigation bar, footer area, and maybe the background. Content includes only the bulk of your text, which is typically located somewhere in the middle of each page.

When talking about design, I cannot stress enough: High quality photography and/or illustrations are the best way to create visual interest in your design – they will really, really increase the level of professionalism of your web site. And it is especially important that you invest in high-quality photography or illustrations rather than using low-quality snapshots you might have lying around ... the difference between the two is stunning, and your site visitors will notice. If you are unable to buy or create high quality photography or illustrations, then it is probably better to leave photos out completely than to use low-quality snapshots in your design.

On the other hand, snapshots are a great way to supplement your content: You can use snapshots to convey meaning, to show something specific (a person, place, pet or an object), or to help illustrate an idea. Plus, they add visual intrest to what is typically the most visually boring area of the site (long paragraphs of text).

In a design, photos or illustrations can be displayed as they are, they can be cropped to show only specific parts, they can be blended into a background (example: the blue lights photo at the top of the BlacksDesign.com pages) – obviously, photos can be used in numerous ways.

For professional photos and illustrations at fairly reasonable prices, check out online sources such as Corbis.com and Shutterstock.com. Another source that tends to be a bit more expensive but often has a bigger, higher-quality selection is GettyImages.com. All of these sites offer low resolution photos and illustrations, which cost less and load faster than high resolution graphics, so they are perfect for use on the web. (Note that I said "low resolution" -- not "low quality"!)

Web Design Ideas I: Home Page Content

Every web site should have certain qualities, such as easily-understood navigation links and a clear, up-front description of purpose. But it is also critically important that a site's home page capture a visitor's attention by being visually interesting – but not cluttered – and by offering something of value to the visitor.

A web site is not read like a book!

Most of the time, people skim the home page of a web site much like they skim the front page of a newspaper – quickly, looking for any "headlines" that indicate there may be something of value to them, something worth reading in-depth. And just like with a newspaper, people start reading more carefully once they find an interesting "headline" and click farther into your site to read more about it.

So when you think about the home page of your site, think about posting content and/or images that will capture your visitors' attention and – most importantly – that will show your visitors what terrific value you can provide for them.

Search Engine Optimization - High Quantities of Site Visitors May Not be Enough

The primary goal of most new web site owners is to get their site registered with as many search engines as possible in hopes of getting as many site visitors as possible. The idea behind this is "the more visitors my site has, the higher my sales will be." Surprisingly, however, this is often not true.

The e-commerce industry is leading the way with a new discovery that applies to all site owners -- e-commerce or not -- and this "new discovery" is something that Marketing people have known for years: When it comes to site visitors, your best bet is quality, not quantity, and there is no substitute for using good, old-fashioned targeted marketing methods to attract high quality visitors to your site.

People in the e-commerce industry study every aspect of the online shopping experience in detail, and they have created statistics for just about everything -- number of visitors, time on site, shopping cart abandon rate, number of page views -- you name it. But one of the most important statistics is turning out to be conversion rate, as in "how many site visitors convert into actual, paying customers?" By studying this, the e-commerce industry has discovered that higher quantities of visitors often do not translate into higher sales -- what is more important is attracting high quality visitors to your site: Visitors who have a higher chance of actually wanting to buy what you are selling, rather than just lots of random visitors.

To attract higher-quality site visitors, you should consider using a combination of targeted marketing methods, including online ads, pay-per-click schemes, personal referrals, print ads or even direct mailers to appropriate mailing lists (I am talking about legal snail mailers sent to carefully targeted customer lists, NOT spam).

I wanted to share this information with you because I believe that the concepts of "conversion rate" and "targeted marketing" do not apply only to e-commerce sites -- I believe it applies to all of us who want to attract paying customers to our sites, no matter whether we're selling goods or our own services. Happy selling!

Are You Over-Paying for Your Web Host Service?

The decision to start a web site is usually accompanied by a great sense of pride, excitement and anticipation - as it should be! But sometimes that excitement and anticipation can lead you to an unrealistic assessment of just how much "service" you need from a web host service. Almost all web host service companies break up their service offerings into three packages (at minimum): a basic package, a mid-level package, and a high-level package. The names of these packages run the gamut, such as "bronze," "silver," and "gold," to "value," "business," and "pro." Basically, there are as many different names for these packages as there are marketing people to dream them up. But almost all packages have the following traits in common: a basic package will typically cost less than $10/month, a mid-level package will cost about $20-$50/month and a high-level package will cost maybe $100+/month.

What's the difference? Well, usually the higher level of service you buy, the more amenities you get, such as larger disk space and greater bandwidth, right up to the point where you can rent a full server all to yourself (those would be the highest-level packages, typically costing well over $100/month).

The fact is, most people only need a basic level of service because most web sites just aren't as complex as their owners believe (I am NOT talking about e-commerce sites - that is a whole different story, for a future article). Below are some of the most common mistakes I've seen with respect to choosing a web host package:

1. Thinking you need huge amounts of bandwidth from the start - a sort of "build it and they will come" mentality. The fact is, web host services offer plenty of bandwidth with their basic packages, and even a 100-page site that has many photos on it will usually only cause a blip on the radar (with respect to bandwidth usage). What web host companies are really looking for:

(a) Web sites that offer massive downloads files, such as mp3 files, video streams, or any other type of massive data transfer. A regular web site, even if it's packed with photos, is rarely a concern.
(b) Web sites that receive massive numbers of hits. Even a regular web page can take up a lot of bandwidth if it receives a massive number of hits - but keep in mind, we're usually not talking about "thousands" of hits per month; we're usually talking about "hundreds of thousands" of hits per month before you start pushing the edge of your bandwidth needs.
(c) Web sites that have a combination of (a) and (b) above.

2. Thinking you need huge amounts of disk space. The fact is, most web host companies offer anywhere from 3-15 Gigabytes of disk space with their basic packages nowadays - there is simply no need to pay extra for more disk space, unless you happen to be a professional photographer who needs to keep thousands of high-resolution photos on your web site. Photos used on web pages are usually quite small - 10-30 Kilobytes or so. Web designers use low-resolution photos so their pages load quickly; otherwise, you would be singing the Jeopardy song while you waited for all the high-res photos to load. The point is, a regular site is hard-pressed to use up even 1 Gigabyte of disk space, let alone 15 Gigabytes.

3. Going with an e-commerce web host service when you don't need to. Web host services that specialize in e-commerce charge more $$ per month because they bundle shopping cart services & support into their packages - fair enough. But if you go with one of these companies and you aren't doing e-commerce, then you're paying too much.

I'm not saying you shouldn't have big dreams of having 100,000 visitors/month to your web site - of course you should! What a great problem to have! Just keep in mind: Your web host service will be delighted to upgrade your service package to whatever level you wish, anytime you wish, and they typically need only a few minutes to upgrade you. Therefore, all I'm saying is: don't pay for a higher level of service until you actually need it.

All the best!

Web Browser Caching, or: "Why Can't I See the Changes My Web Designer Just Made?"

OK, here's another AOL situation. Let's say you're an AOL user. You ask your web designer to make a change to a graphic on your site. She says "OK, the change is done." You go to view the change, but cannot see it and assume that the web designer has made a mistake, when in fact she has not.

Here is what's happening. All web broswers temporarily store the graphics of recently-visited web sites on their local hard drive, so that if a site is visited again within a short period of time, a browser can just pull the graphics off the hard drive vs. pulling them from across the Internet. This allows web browsers to load web pages much faster, because graphics are slower to load across the Internet than text. This process is called caching, and all web browsers do it.

After some time (typically about 4-6 hours), a web browser will toss out it's locally-stored copies of a web site's graphics and will download fresh copies because if the browser continues to load the old graphics, the user will never see new changes made to the site. This process is called refreshing the cache.

But here is where AOL is the exception. By default, the AOL browser takes about 24 hours to refresh it's cache - a lot longer than any other web browser. No other browser holds graphics in it's cache for so long.

You can easily force most web browsers to refresh their cache on-the-spot, just by clicking the refresh button (so you can immediately view new graphics). But I've never seen this work for the AOL browser - it just keeps on using the old, cached graphics no matter how many times you click refresh.

Fortunately, there is a setting in the AOL browser that users can change so that it refreshes it's cache more frequently. I changed this setting once for a client, but this was quite a while ago so I'm not sure the process is the same anymore. Suffice to say, it wasn't hard, so if you use the AOL browser, just snoop around the settings menus a bit and you'll find it.

Domain Registration: Keep It Separate From Your Web Host Service

Some words of wisdom regarding domain name registration and web hosting.

Keep your domain registration company separate from your web hosting company.

Here's the deal: Let's say you (or "the son of a friend") got both your web host account and your domain registration through the same company (let's call it "XYZ Company"). Let's say you did this because XYZ Company offered you a "free domain for life" or some other tantalizing deal. Later, you decide to move your web site to a better web host service. So you close your web host account at XYZ Company. But you don't realize - when you close your web host account at XYZ, you also lose access to your domain, and you can't get domain control back unless you re-open your web host account. Gotcha! "Free" has suddenly ended up costing you a lot. So keep your domain registration company separate from your web hosting company and you'll always be in control.

To be fair, there are many decent web host companies out there that don't behave this way -- if you have a web host account + domain registration through a good company and you choose to close the web host account, you will still have access to your domain. However, the scenario I described above is real -- I've seen it first-hand, more than once -- and I've found it to be especially prevalent with Australian companies, including Hostway.com and HostOnce.com.

Domain Registration: Register It Yourself

Some more words of wisdom regarding domain name registration and web hosting.

Register your domain yourself. Whether you hire a web designer to build your web site for you or not - register your domain yourself.

Here's the deal: To a domain registration company, the person who registers your domain is automatically the owner of the domain, whether you paid that person or not. So if you hire "the son of a friend" to do your web site and he registers your domain for you, he is the legal owner - not you. His name, address, phone, email, credit card and mother's maiden name will be used to identify the account owner - not yours. So when "the son of a friend" gets a real job and suddenly can never be reached anymore, you call the domain registration company and tell them "it's my domain - I paid the son of a friend to register it - now give me access." They will say to you "OK, we'll give you access if you can provide the following:
(a) the account login id and password and/or
(b) the last 4 digits of the credit card used to open the account and/or
(c) the mother's maiden name of the person who opened the account."
Of course, this information belongs to "the son of a friend," not you, so now you're stuck.

You get the picture. So if you can't get "the son of a friend" to respond, your only two options will be to start legal proceedings or to give up and register a different domain - both of these options stink. (This really does happen, folks - you wouldn't believe how many clients were stuck in this situation before they came to Blacks Design.)

So register your domain yourself. Carefully record
(a) the company name/web site used to do the registration,
(b) the login id you chose, and
(c) the password you chose.
When you have all this information, then you can go ahead and give your web designer access to the domain registration account, if necessary, so she can get your site up and running (or you can modify the DNS yourself - but that's another topic).