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Google Following Yahoo’s Webmaster Tools
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Loading ...Yahoo has been running a public beta for a while that lets you explore a domain or webpage, called Yahoo SiteExplorer. I always thought this to be a very useful tool in finding out some info on my websites. It generated a summarized list of other websites linking to me.
I just noticed that Google has recently included a similar service in the Webmaster section. In the past they didn’t release much information on who is linking to you. This new tool was actually released on February 5th as I read on Matt Cutts blog today. I was actually pleasantly surprised that the Webmaster Tools gave a better indication then the “link:www.domain.com” version in the search engine.
Granted it probably is still hiding most of the inlinks Google is counting in their algorithm, but it helps getting an indication of how your website is doing.
Phishing Killing User Experience
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Most people will know about the fake PayPal e-mail spreading across the web. Sent by people trying to gain access to the PayPal accounts of innocent and ignorant consumers. When hitting the link in the e-mail the consumer is taken to a fake PayPal website where they give away their username and password. That’s a classic example of phishing.
You might think that you as a company will never have to deal with any such problems. But you are wrong. If you are making money online, then your company may become victim to these type of scams sooner or later.
I hear you think that it’s not important. But realize that when ISP get wind of the fact that e-mail scams are going around for your company they may decide to block you. And what’s the use of you e-commerce if you can’t mail your users. Not to mention the risk of your customers actually falling for the scam and getting ripped off.
If you are victim of phishing then you should always take the following steps:
- Make a clear note on the front-page of your website about the scam e-mails circulating.
- Explain to users what you will never do (e.g.: ask for their password in mail)
- Update the policies of the website to include detailed steps on how users can identify scams
A final word: keep track of all e-mails that are sent in your name. You may just prevent phishing or other scams against your users.
Should Blogs Be Part of Your SEO Strategy
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...It’s been a while since I posted something about optimizing your website for search engines. So to continue my trend, and help you all a little, here’s the next article.
In the past I’ve talked about how to do some small optimizations on your website and how you can track your successes. Now it’s time to look at if and how you can raise rankings by using a blog. I now that there are a lot of SEO companies that claim to use blogs to do just that, but is it possible??
Having a blog can definitely be a positive experience for your users. It gives them the change to share their thoughts. Gives them some more insight into your company or goals. But does this also mean increased rankings.
After all now you’ve started a competition between your blog and your website. You want your website to rank good, but will the blog start to outrank your website. It’s likely to! Especially when you start optimizing it. And corporate blogging is even more difficult, as is explained in ‘A Lot of People Have to Die for Corporate Blogging to Succeed’.
Are you still interested in starting a blog. Then read ‘Optimizing blogs for the Search Engine’ written by Shari Thurow for some pointers on how to optimize it. I also suggest you read the article ‘Email vs. Blogs’, which will help you in what to write and what not to.
Choosing Between Usability And Crawlability
I’ve been experiencing a problem lately. I have started to redesign some functionality of one of my websites. Long time overdue, but that’s another issue all together. As part of this overhaul I decided to look at how to improve the user’s experience on the website.
One of the problems I’ve encountered is the fact that AJAX can make a website a lot more user friendly. An easy example is when you display a snippet of a text. If the user then clicks on the ‘read more’ link a new layer will be placed on top of the existing one with the full text in it.
I believe that this helps in usability as it makes clear what the full text belongs to, and probably more important what the context is. The big down size of this type of development is that search engines don’t like it.
Why is easy. Search engines have very poor support for JavaScript. Just imagine how this new technique using AJAX will impact the search engine rating. Huge parts of the content will be less accessible for the search engines. Which in turn could result into poorer rankings due to less content.
Faced with the choice between enhanced usability and features or pleasing the search engine I think I have to choose for the first of the two. I do believe search engines will play a big role in a websites success. But I don’t believe we developers should sacrifice features for increased rankings in search engines. Visitors should still come first!
Newsletters: What works and what not
I personally am receiving a lot of newsletters, some of which I actually want to receive and some of which I don’t. But what makes a newsletter a good PR tool. When does a newsletter attract attention. Or even more important when does it provide positive attention.
When receiving an e-mail what do you do. Going to open it straight away? Perhaps you look who sent it or what the title is. Most of these things you will do without knowing it. Next time you receive an e-mail think about what made you open it.
From some experience with newsletters I know that most people will automatically delete any e-mail that does not look important or that’s from a sender they don’t know. So when writing a newsletter these are the first things to be aware of:
- Can the reader see the e-mail is from my website
- Does the title describe the content as well as raise the level of trust
Notice how this is only about the title and the sender. It’s important to raise interest in the content of the e-mail by just using the title and sender’s address. But that’s not all, if only it were.
Just like with any online content is king. But what does that actually mean! A lot of people will have different opinions, but mine is as follows:
- The content of the e-mail is written for me,
Which means that if you are writing for a general public don’t include difficult words specific to your niche. But the same is true for the opposite. Writing for you niche then use these specific words as it will raise people’s trust in your expertise. - Not to flashy,
I know that I hate e-mails that look as if they were meant to be webpages. I think Clickz is a great example of how not to do it. They write for marketing people, but are just copying their webpages into the e-mail. Mind you if you are writing for a movie or music website you will automatically use more graphics and HTML in your newsletter then someone writing for a automobile website. Just try and balance it. - Don’t use online styles or pictures,
Not everyone reads their e-mail whilst connected to the internet. So don’t use images in the e-mail that are not embedded in the e-mail, or your readers may never see them. Same holds true for the stylesheet, don’t link but embed.
I personally always try to take these pointers in mind when writing for a e-mail or a website for that matter. It would be a shame if you ended up on blacklists just because people report your e-mail as spam!
