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.

Why Hire A Professional for Internet Marketing?

I get this question a LOT, surprisingly. If I talk to someone about what I do and they express interest, eventually, the question pops up: why should I hire you to do something I can do myself? I can actually think of a lot of reasons why most all businesses with an online presence should hire a professional marketer to handle their web site and social network marketing, but here are the top 5 reasons off the top of my head:

1. Effective Internet marketing is not a "set-it-and-forget-it" proposition. Most web sites need to be updated at the very least on a monthly basis. This includes fresh textual and graphic content, blog posts, product listings, and more. And more than just making an announcement, in today's over-saturated media environment, your messages have to stand out. Hiring a professional means that your message gets contained in the most appropriate medium possible, including images, videos, sound bites, text, articles, white papers, and more. As an example, imagine your store is having a sale. Which Facebook post do you think will garner the most attention (and, subsequently, sales):

The More You Spend The More You Save, This Black Friday!

OR

2. Most business owners are busy running their business. Since effective Internet marketing means making posts to all your social media channels at least once per week per channel, having the time to have an effective social marketing campaign can be tough. Hiring a professional Internet marketer means that posts are being made every day across all the media channels you're a member of, and you only have to deal with the decisions once per month at an hour-long planning meeting (sometimes shorter!) on the phone, via email, or in-person.

3. Having an effective Internet marketing plan that is getting done means an increase on your bottom line. I have seen my clients more than double sales once I implemented a social media and Internet marketing plan for them. Having a marketing plan that doesn't get implemented or isn't consistent doesn't do you or your customers any good.

4. "I have employees for that," is an excuse I hear a lot, and that may be true; however, in practice, it may be counter-intuitive. A professional Internet marketer will ensure that your messages have a consistent voice, which just is not possible when Internet marketing is done by committee or piecemeal whenever an employee has the time to update your Twitter feed. When a businesses' messages aren't consistent - either in frequency or in tone or both - it's easier for customers to tune you out.

5. A consistent message structure and tone builds trust. Your brand/store/service loyalty among new and existing customers will increase, even when there is competition for their buying dollars.

The bottom line is, whenever I get asked "why should I hire you to do something I can do myself," I answer, "But are you? Can you? Can you afford not to?" Today's marketplace means that people are turning more and more to the Internet to research businesses before they go, even for something as simple as a phone number or address. Could a visitor to the area find you? Would they like what they saw if they perused your Facebook page? Would they see a busy, informative page with new posts every day or would they see months (or years) outdated posts that show that you don't take them seriously? And it is more than making the occasional post on Facebook: it's getting your business seen by the right people who are looking for your products.

Next time: Ways small businesses are shooting themselves in the foot  on the Internet.

The Double Standard of Facebook Advertising

One of CMDS' clients is The Vapor Depot, an electronic cigarette retailer with local brick-and-mortar establishments and a web site where they also sell their products. CMDS has been doing social marketing and other tasks for The Vapor Depot for nearly two years now; in that time, they have seen a huge growth in social reach.

But it could be so much better, were it not for a ridiculous set of rules on Facebook that prohibits The Vapor Depot from purchasing advertising. Because the store sells "tobacco products" (electronic cigarettes contain zero tobacco or tobacco byproducts), we're not allowed to buy sidebar or news feed advertising. We have come to accept this, even though, quite frankly, it's ridiculous, especially when I personally see Facebook advertisements for electronic cigarette products DAILY in my news feed and sidebar. (This gets even more ridiculous in a moment.)

But what's really damaging our potential is that Facebook throttles the reach of Page posts in order to get Page Admins to buy Facebook advertising. You read that right: not only can The Vapor Depot not purchase any advertising, but the reach of their posts are limited amongst the audience (fans) that they already have in order to try to get The Vapor Depot to buy advertising - that will CERTAINLY get rejected.

So we thought, well, Facebook won't reject ads that are specifically supposed to go to the audience we have already built (through a TON of work because we're not allowed to advertise). So, I tried to promote a post for a commercial CMDS made for The Vapor Depot... but ONLY to people who already "liked" The Vapor Depot's Facebook page, figuring, "why would Facebook turn down free money to serve a post to people who already like the page?"

But they did. I took a screenshot of the message I received (less than 2 minutes after "Boosting" the ad):

The rejection text reads:

"Your post wasn't boosted because it violates Facebook's ad guidelines by including profanity, or language that refers to a person's age, gender, name, race, physical condition, or sexual orientation. The post is still published, but it is not running as an ad."

So, I wrote them a reply:

"The rejection said that the ad discriminated against someone? It doesn't. It's pretty clear that the ad was rejected because we're selling electronic cigarette products. But here's the thing: we know we can't advertise the products on Facebook (for whatever reason - ignorance is my guess) even though others are (I have seen ads on Facebook for electronic cigarette supplies in my own feed, and they're getting more frequent), but even though we're not allowed to advertise (which we're willing to do; we are willing to give you money), our posts are also being limited among people who already like our page. That's not fair. We should either get to advertise normally or all of our fans should get to see all of our posts, especially when it is clear that there is a double standard going on and other e-cig retailers are getting their ads through your system through duplicity. We're being honest here, and are willing to even pay to reach our own subscribers, and you won't let us? Seriously? Maybe I should let some other people know about the double (and triple) standards with Facebook advertising so that they can save their money, too."

And then I went to take a screenshot of the rejection screen as Facebook requested, and I got that shot above.

Look over there on the far right hand sidebar, at the very bottom.

Do you see it?

IT'S AN AD FOR ELECTRONIC CIGARETTE E-LIQUID! .... on a page that is rejecting a post of video for a cute commercial that was only supposed to be seen by people who already subscribe to the page.

So, I guess, actually, Facebook has a TRIPLE standard: fly-by-night businesses who deliberately skirt Facebook's advertising rules can place ads for electronic cigarette products, but people who play by the rules cannot even get their posts seen by their entire audience, even when they're prohibited from advertising at all.

The answer to all of this is REALLY SIMPLE, Facebook:
If you are going to selectively prohibit businesses from advertising (seemingly at random considering the advertising I personally saw on my ad rejection page), at least turn off the audience throttling for them. It is not fair. Either let us pay to grow our audience or let is get it organically, but for the love of pixels, don't get so greedy that you lose your base. People are already looking for the next big thing; don't get stupid greedy. Be smart.

I got what is CLEARLY an automated reply to my message this morning. It reads:

"Thanks for writing in. I'm here to help. Your ad was rejected because it violates the content policies of the Ad Guidelines. Ads may not promote tobacco or tobacco-related products, including E-cigarettes, cigars, rolling papers, bongs and hookahs. I understand your concern and appreciate your feedback but unfortunately, we cannot make an exception to this rule.

 Learn more about prohibited content here: https://www.facebook.com/help/174908809241578/?ref=cr

Please consider this the end of our correspondence about your ad.
Thanks for your understanding,
Anna
Facebook Ads Team
Facebook

How condescending is that? Zero acknowledgement that I have evidence of the double standard. Zero apologies, zero working resolutions to the problem. I'd be flabbergasted, but I'm really not. The bottom line is this:

If you happen to sell "prohibited" products, you're going to have to work your butt off to get people to see your posts.

Social (Media) Blunders

Over on Facebook, users get to "like" pages of companies, products, groups, bands, books, etc that they enjoy in real life. Which is all fine and dandy, except that, for quite a lot of these companies, etc, their posts come off as "spammy," and people start "hiding" the posts, or they skip over them. What's the point in doing social marketing if you're just going to annoy your readers into ignoring you?

So, how do you avoid coming off as "spammy"?

Well, for starters, don't post personal stuff. That means when someone ticks you off, don't post about it. Your social marketing should be professional. I remember when I was subscribed to the Facebook feed of a music publisher out of Texas. She had contacted me about licensing some of my songs, so I "liked" her page. For the next two months, I was subjected to 20 to 30 posts per day about her gripes with her ex, her problems at school, her issues with men in general, and her bragging constantly about how great she was... all the while, I was waiting for her to do something about my music she had asked to license. She rarely talked about music or her music publishing company except to complain about how the industry was unfair to her. It got annoying. I tired of reading about her personal issues and problems - laced with expletives for good measure - so I unsubscribed. (To this day, she has never contacted me about the music she was interested in.)

Secondly, don't overpost. While you want to keep your business and products on the minds of your followers and friends, there is a limit on how much people can take... and how much they're going to read. Usually, I recommend a MAXIMUM of 15 Facebook updates per day, but, usually, less. You want what you say to be deemed as "important," so posting random things 10 times per day while mixing in your "important" stuff - new products, links to news articles relevant to your business, new videos, etc - means that, more than likely, your "important" stuff is going to get "lost in the shuffle," so to speak, and you've lost an important marketing opportunity.

Thirdly, when you sit down at your computer to post updates and Tweets, start by making a list of all the things you want to post that day - doesn't need to be detailed; just a short list of what you want your customers to know about - and then organize them in order of importance. Delete or cross out anything that isn't particularly important, or save it for a slow news day.

Don't Update Bomb. You need to post updates and Tweets and other new content fairly consistently, every day, every other day, or at least 2 to 3 times per week. When you ignore your social networks and don't post anything for weeks or months, you end up DELUGING your audience with too much info all at once. When your audience doesn't hear from you for months and then you start posting ALL your updates in a few day span or over the course of week, people stop paying attention to you, like ignoring a shouting protester while waiting for the bus. It means that all your posting was, essentially, for nothing. but there's a solution: Create a schedule for posting and stick to it. It's perfectly okay to miss a few days in a row, but try to update at least once per week.

Unless your site is a humor blog or video channel, don't repost or "share" the randomly "funny" things that come across your feed. Your page is supposed to be professional, unless, like I said, humor is your focus and that's why your audience subscribed to you; for most businesses, that's NOT going to be the case.

In the next installment, we'll look at a social marketing posting schedule that WORKS.

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.

Changes

You may have noticed that I have not kept up with this blog for almost a year. The reason for that is a number of changes to my personal and professional lives, some good, some bad. Another reason is that blogger.com discontinued support of blog posts posted via FTP to a person's web site. I needed some time to think through the options available to me regarding keeping this blog active and accessible. In the end, I decided to host the blog through blogger.com's service, blogspot.com, so the new url to this blog is http://www.cmdstips.blogspot.com/. (Update your bookmarks!)

But, like all things in life, changes are something that we all have to cope with, at one time or another. Just as I went through some of the most life-changing alterations to my life and world, many people across the globe deal with changes to their lives that touch their businesses, and that includes their web presences. How we react to those changes often defines us and our businesses, if not for ourselves, then for other people, including our customers.

When changes come and we have to adapt our businesses to them, it's important to get perspective on those changes and our reactions to them. Sometimes, the changes are miniscule and customers and clients never notice them. At other times, the changes are huge and require us to be aware of our customers, their wants and needs, and may even involve encouragement, praise, or criticism from our customers. We may even lose a few.

The most important thing to remember is, when changes are thrust upon us, we should look at them not as destructive, negative powers out to destroy us or our businesses, but as opportunities to expand, reach out, be positive, and make positive changes that we may never have had the opportunity to develop without the unexpected change.

What's Best For Your Company

I was going to write today about effective social marketing updates, but another topic got my attention this morning. I recently had a client call to tell me that his company was going to go with a web designer/SEO company that was local to him. The choice to have a local company handle your search engine optimization is a personal one, and I always encourage my clients to do what's best for them and their business. Since Crescent Moon Design Studio does business both locally and worldwide, I understand when a client wants more face-to-face contact with their Internet marketing professionals. I released his hosting and domain accounts and gave him all his site files and content for use with his new design company.

That was a few months ago. Today, out of sheer curiosity, I went and looked at my former client's new site. It was efficient, professional, and laid out well when it displayed in different browsers. But then, I looked at the source code.

There were literally ten pages of code before you ever found any content in the source code. There are some schools of thought to this that support the idea that search engine spiders will ignore code when crawling a page. Other schools of thought hold that the spiders won't crawl past a certain point in the code and will simply stop after a certain number of characters. The literature isn't particularly clear on this point; on the one hand, I can see how search engine spiders' algorithms are complex and could be coded to skip over the reams and reams of JavaScript, Applets, Flash, et cetera, that's been embedded in the source code. On the other hand, I've always thought it better to be safe than sorry. Besides, it's not that hard to write a line of code referencing JavaScript, Applet, Flash, and CSS files that loads them off the page. The effect is the same, and if the spiders don't like code, well, then, it doesn't matter, does it?

The second problem was that the new designer had buried the main keywords under a hierarchial menu, which means that the content that contained the keywords only appears two to three clicks away from the main page. This means that his main keywords, cultivated over literally years of working with the site, never appear on any of the main "hub" pages.

I suppose my advice at this point would be to keep an eye on the site to make sure it gets indexed properly by search engine spiders and alter the content on the main pages accordingly. Since I am no longer in charge of that site, that would be left up to the new designer or the site owner. There are, of course, dozens of other aspects to the SEO of a site that would have to be considered, as well, but, in the end, what's the point of having a flashy, professional-looking site that nobody visits?

Social Marketing & You... & you... & you....

Social marketing is something of a new "buzzword" in the search engine optimization industry, but it has been around a lot longer under different names. In the modern context, what we're talking about is using sites that link people to one another in order to market your business, venture, product, whatever it may be. The most popular places for this are Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. There are several others, including YouTube - which will get its own post here eventually - but the essential function is this: if people you know (or people in general) like something, you might, too.

These various networking sites give different names to this concept, but the end result is that, via recommendations, other people learn about some information, a page, a product, a movement, a business, a project, a video, a song, or any other thing or idea out there in the world of Internet content (and sometimes real-world content). Facebook calls these recommendations a few different things: "liking" someone's post, becoming a "fan" of something, or joining a "group" about something. MySpace calls it "friending." YouTube calls it "favoriting." Twitter calls it "Re-tweeting," "hash-tagging," or "@-ing." On Digg, you can "dig" or "bury" something.

The point is, if enough people recommend something, it can go "viral," meaning that, for a period of time, the "thing," whatever it is, will be everywhere on the 'Net.

This concept drives home the idea I've been promoting here of having excellent content that people will want to look at and share with others via links, tweets, likes, digs, or whatever the site happens to call it. How do you make this great content? Sometimes, you have a business or product or service that's a little quirky, so using that funny angle, you could create a humorous commercial and post it to YouTube, maybe even as a "reply" to a similar, popular video, so more people will see it. Then, you post that link to your Facebook account, which is linked to Twitter. This means that, once you post that link to your cute, funny video to your Facebook status, it automatically updates your Twitter status. Your Twitter account should by synched to your MySpace account, so the Facebook status updates your Twitter status, which updates your MySpace status. From there, you can also have the Twitter feed going to your web site and blog, so it updates that, too.

Finally, you would posted either a link or an embedded player of your video on your RSS-enabled blog. Over time, if your content is good enough, people will come and take a look. And they'll share your content with others. If your products or services are what people are looking for, you'll make sales. And that's how it links back to your web site content.

Next time, we'll talk about effective social marketing updates that don't come off as "Spammy."

Flyout Menus Using Only CSS

One of the things that frustrates those looking to optimize their sites is that, to really do it right, every single page needs to link to every other page in the site. This could create an enormous list of links somewhere on the page that just ain't pretty or functional. Though some sites might not mind it, there is another way. It's not, necessarily, easier, but it is prettier, more functional in more web sites and site designs, and it's still good for SEO: the hierarchial menu.

Clunky name, but they're also known as flyout menus, drop-down menus, et cetera. What happens is, when a user hovers over a link in a navigation area, it highlights like a normal link. It is, in fact, CSS-styled text in an "unordered list." Inside that main navigation, you can have sub-menus where you need them, and those can have sub-menus, and then those can have sub-menus. In all, you can have up to four levels of sub-menus wherever you need them.

There are many places on the web where you can find such a code to use; I have designed a proprietary version that I use for my clients, but, like I said, there are many of CSS flyout and dropdown menus available on the web. Some are free; some charge a small fee for commercial sites or suggest a donation for personal sites.

In any case, this linking system removes all the Flash and JavaScript from the process, making it strictly styled using CSS (linked externally, of course), and all the links as simple text on the site's actual pages.

Next time, a trip into the world of social networking!

Page Heirarchies & Stuctures

The most commonly pictured graph of a hierarchy is probably the "management" or "chain-of-command" type hierarchy, where all the different areas branch off downward from one main area, with the bottom rows never in contact with the main starting point. The image to the left is an illustration of this kind of structure.

With a web site, the main area (your index page) needs to be connected to every other page of your site directly, or within one degree of it. The picture to the right over there kind of illustrates what I am talking about.

More than that, though, each page of your site has to be directly connected to each other. Imagine each of your pages connected by little lines, something like this:

See how it's starting to look more like a spider's web rather than a traditional kind of hierarchial structure? They call it the World Wide Web for a reason. More than that, though, this kind of structure increases the chances that every page in your site gets indexed by seacrh engine spiders that get on your little "web" there, looking for content.

It's a lot like linking to a site from your site: when you link to another site that you think your users/customers might find useful, you are, in effect, creating a spider's thread from your page to the resource, not only for spiders to follow, but for your users, too. It works conversely, too: when you've got great content that people link to, they create a thread from their page to yours, increasing your relevance to Google, in particular, thus helping your SEO.

To break it down: your index page should link to every other section of your site, and so should every other page in the site. A page without links to the other sections of your site or with only one way into it is pretty useless for both your customers and for search engine spiders (though I'm sure there are arguments for "orphaned" or "semi-orphaned" pages like that, though I can't imagine what they are).

In our next few installments, we'll discuss how to built a functional navigation system for your site that won't hurt its SEO (no Java or scripts?!?!), and effectively using linking to keep your social networks up-to-date and relevant.

Copywriting, Keyword Density, & Content

Traditionally, content is anything that is on a web page. That can be text, pictures, Flash movies, embedded content, music, links, documents, et cetera. Each of those things can be optimized using keywords in order to bring people (customers) to your site via search engines. Search activities have surpassed e-mailing as the #1 activity conducted online.

But, as I mentioned in an earlier post, while you're writing your content to get better rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs), ultimately, you're still writing for customers. The balancing act that has to be achieved here is to write content with enough relevant keyword density to rank well in search engines for relevant searches, but also - and more importantly - make users want to use your site and ultimately buy something from you. It doesn't matter what you're selling - your services as a landscaper to designer handbags - the goal is to make money with your web site.

That can't be done unless people can find you, and the fastest way to do that, as you have probably surmised if you've found this blog, is through SERPs. How do you accomplish this balancing act of writing content that brings in the search engine spiders and ranks you well in SERPs for your keywords and writing content that users won't find "spammy"?

It's actually easier than you think. And I am going to reveal that secret to you now:

Sit down at your keyboard and start typing about your products or services.

(It's really that simple.)

No, really. Think about it this way: nobody knows your business, customers, products, services, employees, and all the rest better than you or someone who works with you or your company closely do. So, in the beginning, just write. Write about each of your products or services. Write about your business. Write about your policies and prices.

Just write.

Once you've written about every aspect of your business that you can think of, look back to your list of keywords, and count how many of those keywords automatically appear in the text. Lots, huh?

Now, just start replacing generic words with keywords. When describing a product, instead of saying "It's made of 100% recycled materials," say, "This custom, tattoo-themed handbag is made of 100%$ recycled materials." Instead of saying "we provide a full range of products and services for the sawmill industries," make a list of all the products and services you provide, and then add a few short lines or a paragraph describing each product and its functions.

Then, go back and replace generics with specifics again.

It's easy to get complacent about writing about your products or services. You know them so well, that it can be easy to overlook details. but try to think about your product from the standpoint of someone who has heard of the product but knows very little about it. Describe it in as much detail as possible. The keywords will come with this writing.

In our next installment, we'll talk about page heirarchies and structures. Sound boring? Trust me: it isn't.

Scoping Out The Competition

When you're checking out your competition on search engines for how they rank for certain phrases, it can seem a little like a covert operation. It isn't, really, but it's kind of fun to think like you're some kind of spy, looking for clues.

Because that's what you're doing: looking for clues as to why your competition is ranking highly for search terms/phrases/keywords that you'd like to rank highly for. I mentioned in a previous post about how some keyword research tools will give you an idea about how your competition got ranked so high for certain keywords. Now, we'll get into the nitty-gritty, manual way of doing it. This way will allow you to see the SEO side of things in action, first hand, and in context.

Sticking with the example of a purveyor of purses, you would first start performing searches for the keywords/phrases/terms in your list you made. Let's say that, at the top of that list is "tattoo-themed purses." Click on the first result. Count the number of times the phrase you searched for appears on the text of the page. (This is the keyword density.) Let's say it's three times. Look also for variations of the words/terms/phrases. Maybe instead of "purse," the site uses the word "handbag." That gives you another term to add to your list to search for and possibly optimize for., if you haven't thought of it or run across it already.

Next step, right-click anywhere on the page. Hopefully, they've not blocked right-clicking. Once you do this, select "View Source" from the list. Near the top of the HTML coding, you should see some kind of META keywords there in the header. While Google doesn't rely on the META keyword, description, or content tags, some other search engines do. But what you're looking for here is more keywords. What do you find there? Most likely, if the page is the first in a search results list, there is something in that META header section. Some e-Commerce software - like the kind Crescent Moon Design Studio uses - even allows you to add unique header META information for each product, which is an awesome benefit for SEO.

Continue to go through your list, searching for terms on different search engines. Are the results the same? Do the same pages appear throughout the different search engines? In our example, just doing a brief search, I found that the results pages varied WIDELY between Google, Yahoo!, and Bing!. The top results from Google were - with the exception of one site that appeared on both Google and Yahoo! SERPs for "tattoo-themed purses" - completely different from Yahoo!. Meanwhile, over on Bing!, you can see that there are several results that appeared both in Google's SERPs as well as Yahoo!'s, but, strangely, the one site Google and Yahoo! had in common didn't appear in Bing's list. That one site? Linked to a site map on both Google and Yahoo! SERPs.

You might be asking yourself, "Why the disparity?" Different algorithms, some say; different SEO practices by the sites' owners, say others. But that's not really why we're looking at this stuff. You're looking at all these different pages in different search engines to find more keywords and to see how their content works. Because no site ranks well without good content. Some sites may be flashy with Flash-based everything, but, unless they have a text version lingering around somewhere, they probably aren't doing very well in SERPs. And they may even be asking themselves why.

And the reason is that search engine spiders have a lot of difficulty reading Flash; sometimes, not at all. And, if a search engine spider can't read your page because the text is buried inside a Flash code, it'll move on, maybe without even indexing it. Nobody wants that.

While you're doing this, stick to just the first page of results; many customers won't go any farther than that when searching for something. If you feel you must go farther into the SERPs, don't go a whole lot farther than page 3. Hardly anybody looking for something will go that far; they will have typed in something else by then. Read the content from the pages from those sites that appear in your searches for your keywords ony our list. How many times does that keyword/phrase/term appear on the page that ranked in your search?

Next time, we'll talk about the beginnings of copywriting for your site's SEO. We'll discuss keyword density, writing for customers, and inserting keywords into your text.

Keyword Research Tools

In today's post, I am going to talk about search engine keyword research tools. It's important to remember that many of these products merely make suggestions as to what might make good search terms for your site, products, and customer base, but you will always know the best, so don't take what a keyword research tool says as set-in-stone. Make your own judgements as to how productive and relevant those terms are going to be in the context of your site and your products.

Having said that, keyword research software can help you "think outside the box" for keywords, key phrases, and key terms that your potential client base might be searching for. Taking our previous example of a custom purse store in New York, one place to start would be to select a keyword research tool and just type in the word "purses." How do you find a good keyword research tool? Just do a search for "keyword research tool" on your favorite search engine. Literally hundreds exist, and many are free. Several hundreds more offer free trials so you can find the ones you like best. I hesitate to recommend any specific one over another because people's tastes for different features vary so widely, but Web CEO puts out a good product, as does WordTracker, though both can get expensive. Web CEO does offer a free version. Play around with some of these tools and find one that you like.

How do you know if a keyword research/suggestion tool is a good one? What a good keyword suggestion tool will do for you is show you 1) related phrases that you might be interested in or that might be relevant to your site, products, services, or customers; 2) how much competition there is for that specific keyword/phrase/term; and 3) (and maybe most importantly) how many searches are done per day on search engines for that word/phrase/term.

What I like to do is make several lists from numerous keyword research tools. I compile all the results (including the competition for those words and the number of daily searches for those terms) and narrow down that list to the best 25 to 100 word/phrases/terms. How do you narrow it down?

By my estimation, the best way to narrow down your keyword lists to the best ones, the ones to focus on, is to order the lists, first, from the most relevant to your site, your customers, and your products. Delete or cross out any terms that are irrelevant and focus on the rest.

Once you've made that list of relevant keywords, the next best thing is to rank them according to what you want to drive customers to your store for. If you run a custom purse shop, and you want to rank highly in search engine results pages (SERPs) when people search for purses with tattoo designs, then you would make sure that incarnations of phrases containing the words "tattoo" and "purse" appeared prominently and several times.

Side Note: Remember that you're writing for real people - customers - not search engines. Only use the keywords/phrases/terms in your content when it seems like it would fit. I'll go over this more in-depth in a later post.

Once you have that list, you're almost ready to start writing your content. The next step, and what we'll focus on in the next installment, is taking that list and seeing where your competition ranks for those phrases. While many keyword research tools offer the competition for a phrase as feature, sometimes, they aren't real accurate. In the next installment, I'll go over what to look for when scoping out your keywords/phrases/terms in the context of your competition.

Welcome to the CMDS Tips Blog!

Thanks for stopping by! I hope to make this blog a go-to source for tips and tricks of web design, search engine optimization, graphics, copywriting, and more. I'll also be answering questions, so feel free to ask any question pertaining to any of the topics listed above, as well as any computer hardware or software-related questions. I'll do my best to help... at no cost to you.

Let's get this thing started with the most basic piece of information regarding search engine optimization that I can give you: write for your customers. Don't write for search engines; they won't be making you money. They won't be buying your products or services. Your customers will.

Think like your customer: if you were looking for your products or services, what would you put in a search engine "search" field? Make a list of things you might use to find your products if you were a customer, or, better yet, ask your customers what they might search for. If you're just starting out and don't know what people might be searching for to find you, make that list, anyway. Think like a customer. "Custom purses New York" might be a phrase with too much competition to bring you results, but "tattoo purses" might not have that competition.

Next time, we'll talk about some tools to use to see what phrases and words from your list are being searched for, and what the competition for those words and phrases are.