File This Under: How A Web Pro Protects You

When you design and develop web sites, it's inevitable that you're going to set up domain names; it's part of the job. MX records, FTP logins, DNS... all sound scary to the lay person, but to those of us in the industry, they're no big deal. Another thing that's no big deal to us any more: frauds and scam attempts.

This past weekend, I registered a domain for one of my newest clients, The American Legion, Post #217 of Cusick, WA. and put their site online in advance of the long weekend. This morning, I received the following note:

Attention: Important Notice , DOMAIN SERVICE NOTICE
Domain Name:  legionpost217.org

legionpost217.org
Response Requested By
9 - Sept. - 2015

PART I: REVIEW NOTICE

 As a courtesy to domain name holders, we are sending you this notification for your business Domain name search engine registration. This letter is to inform you that it's time to send in your registration.
Failure to complete your Domain name search engine registration by the expiration date may result in cancellation of this offer making it difficult for your customers to locate you on the web.
Privatization allows the consumer a choice when registering. Search engine registration includes domain name search engine submission. Do not discard, this notice is not an invoice it is a courtesy reminder to register your domain name search engine listing so your customers can locate you on the web.
This Notice for: legionpost217.org will expire at 11:59PM EST, 9 - Sept. - 2015 Act now!

Select Package:
[SCAM URL WAS HERE]

Payment by Credit/Debit Card

Select the term using the link above by 9 - Sept. - 2015
http://legionpost217.org

On the surface, this thing's got all the hallmarks of a legitimate warning letter: got my name and the domain I bought accurate, comes from a domain-based email address, uses a bunch of business speak... but a little deeper reading, and you start to see the cracks. Most of the biz-speak doesn't mean anything: "Privatization allows the consumer a choice when registering." What? The registrars ARE private companies, so what does this even mean? The threats of people not being able to find the new site... to someone else, that might be a little unnerving.

To someone less familiar with domain names and how they work and what you have to do to make them work, this could sound like a scary notice and you might write them back. For me, it's just spam, but I worry about what if some of my clients who manage their own domains got one of these letters? Would these scammers get credit/debit information? After doing a little research, I see that these people have been at this for a while, changing tactics based on blog posts and critiques like this one (for instance, not emailing from a Hotmail account), and searching for the domains in the email headershow that they're purporting to be Internet marketers... but if they do things like this, they're actually scammers.

Web design professionals know that these kinds of scams have been going on for a long time and have no bearing on how your site will perform in search engines. What does have a bearing on how people find your site?

1. Relevant text and keywords
2. Easy-to-spider site design
3. High-quality in-bound links
4. Constantly updating with new content

Want to have a professional looking out for you on the web? Give CMDS.co a call today for your free, no-obligation quote.

DON'T DO IT!!!!!

Perhaps it's just that I am getting older and crankier, but I doubt it.

I've been seeing this all over the Internet lately, and I have to say:

FOR THE LOVE OF PIXELS, STOP MAKING ME CLICK MORE THAN ONCE TO GET TO YOUR DAMNED CONTENT!

Seriously.

An example: At Pinterest, there was a post touting "186 DIY Christmas Gifts." Now, what creative, financially conscious, crafty sort of person WOULDN'T want to see that, especially with the attractive candy canes as the "come on" photo accompanying the link? (The canes looked like they'd been dipped in white chocolate and nonpareils and wrapped in a red-and-white stiped box... very appealing, visually speaking.)

Anyway, so I click the link from the Pinterest post to go directly to the blog. On the linked page, the DIY content was broken up into sections of 30 crafts, accompanied by collage-style photographs of more attractive crafts. Okay... where are the details? Where is the content?

BEHIND ANOTHER LINK!

Under the collage photos were links that said, "To learn how to do these crafts, click here."

My blood's simmering at this point, but I click. Do you know what I found?!?!?

A page EXACTLY like the last,  including collage photos and links that SUPPOSEDLY led to the instructions for the freaking crafts.

Blood is beginning to boil, but I click. Can you guess what I found?!?!?!

A list of blog posts to which I would have to click to SUPPOSEDLY get to the content.

But you can probably guess what I did instead of clicking.

I closed the damned window, because there is no way that I have time to sift through thousands of blog posts to find the content I came to the blog to find in the first place.

And this, my dear readers, is a classic example of creating content people want and then FREAKING BURYING IT beneath layers and layers and layers of "organization." Don't get me wrong: I am all for organizing your content into something you can manage on the back end... but don't forget that your readers still have to be able to FIND that content.

And, make no mistake: Most people WILL NOT click more than three times to get to your article. And right there, you have lost your audience. And they're probably not coming back.

Another reason people link content in this fashion is to get the most "bang" out of it via page impression advertising. These people aren't interested in whether users actually find their content, read it, click on ads, find the article useful, or even share it with their friends. ALL they care about is the advertiser's pay check when the total reaches $20. That's it... or, at least, that's how I see it.

Because, if these blog designers and social linkers actually gave a good-golly-gosh-darn about the readers, when they linked their content from Pinterest or Facebook or Twitter or wherever, THE LINK WOULD GO TO THE ACTUAL CONTENT... NOT another stupid page listing links to the damned content.

This "at least three clicks to content" mentality is even worse when your site is selling something. Like I said, I understand the need for back-end organization, but you have to stop thinking like you and start thinking like your customers would think. Do you think that your customers are REALLY going to want to click on "Products" and then one subcategory, and then another, and then another, and then ANOTHER before they get to the product page of the item they want to buy.

NO!!!!

No, your customers NEED your site to be simply organized so that they can spend their hard-earned purchasing dollars at your site and not your competitor's.

But, honestly, your competitor's site is probably designed with the same tectonic plate structure of subcategorized obsfucation, so it will hardly matter, anyway, when they go buy the Chinese knock-off at Wal*Mart.