In short: quality matters and clarity is the key to quality. Basically clarity works.
When we think of quality content we tend to think of aspects such as:
To get a deeper look at the quality of your page content, consider the following: when a visitor looks at your page are the following key points clear: Continue reading
Humans love to find patterns – we are pattern finding machines. Don’t believe me, sit in front of a vintage television tuned off-station. Watch the television snow – the visual chaos of buzzing color dots. After a surprisingly short time, you will begin to see images emerge from the visual static. Some of these images will be so detailed and so specific that you will become convinced that somehow a nearby channel has shifted frequency and the television is now displaying a partial transmission. Even with no antenna, no cable, no signal input of any sort, you will not be able to shake the notion that the television is somehow picking up images from some source – they can become that sharp in detail.
You are correct to assume that there is a source of origin for these images. However, do not look to the television or satellite as the source of these images. There is a source. That source is you. Somehow, somewhere lurking amongst the lumps of neural circuitry that passes for your brain is a little something or other responsible for these images emerging.
If you feel inclined to be impressed by your ability to create a detailed image of a cowboy riding a bucking bronco from the stuff of television snow – go ahead, be impressed. But don’t be surprised. After all, are you not able to create amazingly detailed, fully tactile hallucinations at night? The same salt-water bioware that creates these dreams could easily make a horse and cowboy from television static.
Not only is the human brain eminently capable of finding these patterns, it wants to.
Humans love to find patterns – patterns in sights, patterns in sounds, patterns in actions, patterns in intentions, patterns in behavior, patterns in movement. patterns in just about everything. In fact, every form of data perceptible by the human is subjected to this pattern finding mania.
How did we come to do this? The answer to this is an interesting study in evolution, and the anthropology of humans.
How do we do this? The answer to this is a thoroughly engrossing adventure in biology, chemistry, neurology, and every other aspect of human biophysics.
What comes of this pattern finding? The answer to this could lead us into the deeper recesses of human psychology.
Where we do this? The answer to this can provide a handle on the engineering of entertainment and the human environment.
The above questions while full of potential, are beyond the scope of this short discussion – remember it’s supposed to be about Jazz Art. For the moment, the fact that this mania for pattern finding exists is enough.
Take it as given that we love to find patterns.
You’ll notice that I’ve said: “we love to find patterns.” A simpler formulation of this might be “we find patterns.” But that would overlook the essential element – we love to find patterns. Not only are we good at finding patterns, we take pleasure in doing it.
That’s right. Paypal has made it their business to provide web page design & SEO advice.
Use this link to check out their article.
So, why do you think Paypal would involve themselves? What is their gain? Simple. Paypal makes money processing orders — a few percentage points on every sale a merchant processes through the Paypal system. So, it is simple math.
The more sales a web page generates the more money Paypal makes. So, the quality and functionality of a web page is of intimate concern to Paypal.
Admittedly, the appearance of being helpful can be of benefit to Paypal. I’m sure the marketing boys and girls are happy to use this to enhance the company image. However, the fact of being helpful is of even greater value to the bottom line. So I trust that they did not dredge up miscellaneous waffle to parade in front of webmasters. I believe Paypal either paid for the best advice they could find, or turned an in-house team loose on the challenge of finding their five design element suggestions.
Below you’ll find Paypal’s five points with a few comments from myself. Continue reading
The text below is extracted from a book I’m currently working on.
Perhaps you have heard the quote “An unexamined life is not worth living.” While you may attribute this to Johnny Depp or yet another Hollywood celeb, the quote actually comes to us from a friend of Bill & Ted – Socrates.
It was during the punishment phase of his trial, that Socrates uttered these words: An unexamined life is not worth living. He was convicted of being an interloping old fart – and generally a nuisance to the state. You see, Socrates had this habit of poking and prying and generally seeking after truth. The state took a dim view of this behavior.
When asked during the penalty phase whether he should be killed, exiled, or imprisoned Socrates suggested he should be given a reward for his selfless contributions to Athenian society. For some reason this suggestion did not sit well with the judges. Ultimately, Socrates chose death as a final punctuation mark for his stated view that participation in conversation whose goal is the search for wisdom is essential for the nurturing and growth of a soul as well as for the health and welfare of the state. And this is how a hemlock frappuccino became the exclamation point of Socrates life.
While we certainly aren’t suggesting a hemlock frappuccino, we definitely advocate participation in conversation whose goal is the search for wisdom and nurturing the growth of a soul – i.e. living an examined life. There are many ways to go about this. Socratic Debate is one method, journaling is another, and the RPS (Roll Playing Safari) Game is yet another.
There are many other, perhaps more important, aspects of SEO. However, there is no time better than the present to make sure your website is free from missing pages and that it has clean html and css.
Never forget, google’s fundamental aim is to provide search results pointing to quality content that is on target with the posted search query.
So let’s look at a few things that will help with the “quality” part. Continue reading
The page description is part of the meta tags found in the <head> of an html page.
<meta name=”DESCRIPTION” content=”Description goes here”>
Now that you have a good list of keywords — or at least an excellent beginning list — it is time to work on your page descriptions. There is much that is said about how to write these descriptions. Below is my short list of key principles for generating a description. Continue reading
At this point you should have created your keywords list, organized the list, and expanded it. Now it is time to start using this list. In this blog article we shall go over a few things to do, and a few things to not do.
When it comes to using your keywords on web pages, that’s a most excellent idea. Just be sure to use them correctly, use them enough, and don’t use them too much. Keyword stuffing is a bad thing. Stuff yourself with turkey on Thanksgiving if you insist. But, do not, stuff your pages with keywords — not even one day a year.
In this case, page name means the actual file name or URL that is used to access your page. If possible and reasonable, use keywords in the name. Use the dash (-) separator between the words so that search engines will recognize the separate words — rather than one humongous oddity. For example golf-art has no ambiguity. But if you remove the dash this word can be read in a few different ways — whatever gol means :)
Use keywords in your title. In fact, the few two or three words in the title should be keywords. The page title I am referring to here is the one found in the <head> of your page.
The page description is another prime spot for keywords. First and foremost make sure that your page description actually describes the page — just make sure to use keywords while doing that. The description is the meta tag found in the <head> of your page.
Incorporate keywords into the H1 header of your web page.
The first paragraph visible to search engines should be rich with keywords. The first paragraph that browsers see may not be the same first paragraph that the search engines see. This could easily happen if you have a div that floats to the right of your page. In which case, the first paragraph may end up on the right side of the screen.
If the first visible paragraph happens to not be the same as the first paragraph that search engines find, then make sure that the first visible paragraph (when viewed by browsers) is rich with keywords as well.
Incorporate keywords into a few H2 headers on your web page. The H2 headers will typically define separate sub-sections of a page. This gives you an ideal opportunity to incorporate different keywords.
When linking from one page of your website to another page of your website use keywords as the anchor text.
When linking to your website from your blog, forum postings, friend’s websites, or anywhere other than your own internal website, also use keywords.
When adding images to a web page you should be properly using the image alt. Proper use of the image alt is a little more complex than we can describe in one paragraph here. The point for the moment, is that when entering text for the alt property of images keep your keywords in mind and use them as you are able.
Your website should have a tagline. That tagline should be keyword rich.
You will notice that nothing has been said as yet about the <head> keywords meta tag. That is because search engines still tend to ignore it. They will not penalize you for using it — if you use it properly. They just tend to ignore it. How does one use the keywords meta-tag properly? Don’t include a work in the keyword meta tag for a page unless that word appears on the page. If the word does not appear on the page you could potentially be penalized.
You have just spent a good deal of time brainstorming, organizing, expanding, and cleaning your keywords list. Thus, let’s take it for given that the keywords on that list are important to you. If this is the case, then you should have at least one page on your website with a name created from each keyword and/or keyword phrase in your list. If for some reason you are making a one page website, then this would not be the case. However, unless for some reason you are intentionally restraining your website to a single page, then the more the merrier.
As you may know google plays their cards close to the chest — meaning they do not publish their search engine algorithms. Whatever you have heard about or will hear about search engine algorithms comes from observation, experimentation, conjecture, and perhaps the fantasy of various writers. Some of these writers have suggested that when it comes to pages more is better. The presumption is that the more pages you have on a website the more effort has gone into the website reflecting more intention and perhaps better content. Keep in mind that google is honestly trying to help people find pages with good quality content. Thus all of their algorithms are designed to detect and give higher ranking to pages with good quality content. So for the moment, more pages are a good thing.
So if you are going to be making more pages, make sure to make at least one page for each keyword and/or keyword phrase in your list. If you find it difficult or impossible to make a page for some of your keywords then perhaps they did not belong on your list in the first place.
As you may recall, during the generation of the keyword list there was an organize process. The organization of keywords that was established during the process is very likely an excellent hint on how your website should be organized.
Some social media sites will only allow you to create pages related to your name or the name of your company. However, there are many social media sites that will allow for the creation of auxiliary pages. You should definitely see about nabbing pages created from your keywords. http://www.facebook.com/your-keywords-here would be sweet.
When you embark on using google adwords to market your website you will be using your keywords. This might be pretty obvious since you used google adwords in the generation process. However, the “etc” part includes any promotions and marketing for your website. Brochures need to incorporate keywords from your list. Classified ads in the newspaper should draw from your keywords list. Everything you do in relation to marketing your website should be influenced by the keywords list.
If after reading the above suggested ways of utilizing your keywords list you get the feeling that perhaps you should have put more attention in the process, perhaps now is a good time to go back and redo that work.
I was reading an article by Jakob Nielsen on Website Response Times, when an odd thought crept into my the edges of my awareness. What if we applied these comments to communication response rather than browser response?
When a user clicks on a link in their browser they expect the browser to respond by fetching the page and rendering it in the browser window. Not only do they have an expectation that this event will occur, they have very definite expectations about how the event will occur.
They expect the returned page to be the one they clicked on. They expect the page to be rendered rapidly. And, they expect the page to be rendered well.
Jakob points out in his excellent article, two of key reasons for the need for speed is: 1) As we wait for response the inevitability of short term memory erasure causes us to suffer the decay of information. 2) We like to feel in control of our destinies rather than subjugated to the whims and control of something else. And when companies make us wait instead of providing responsive service they seem arrogant or incompetent.
These comments work equally well whether talking about response time from clicking a url on a web page or or a customers communication through email, phone, or what have you.
When a customer contacts you it is important to do the following:
It is more important to reply promptly then correctly. If you don’t have the answer to a customers question, or if you know you cannot give the customer the answer they want, still reply quickly. Even if it is only to say, we got your question and will answer it soon.
Within the first sentence of the first paragraph you need to say something that tells the customer you “got” their question. If you do not in some way duplicate back to the customer their question, they may think you did not receive the original question. Or, they may think you are too stupid to understand the question. Or, worse yet, they may think you have no regard for their question as written — and by extension, no regard for the customer. So at best you will look incompetent, and at worst you will look callous and uncaring.
And it is important that your response is rendered well. Start with spell check and grammar check. But, don’t stop there. Actually re-read your response to see it from the perspective of the customer. Is the answer well handled. This will reflect significantly on you and your company. Unfortunately you have more opportunity to lose points than to gain points. Customers expect a well formulated response. So if you answer well, that is par for the course — no extra points for doing your job as expected. But, if you respond poorly, you will lose points big time.
All of these points make sense, and have been covered before separately — and perhaps even together. The thing which struck me today was a new rationale for why this makes sense. It goes beyond following protocols that have been proven in the past to have good results. It gets right down to the meat of the matter.
These suggestions are made because they 1) Get back to the customer at a time when they still remember why they wanted to contact you in the first place — while it is still new business. And, 2) It allows to feel in control rather than subjugated to your whim.
When the customer initiates communication they are predisposed to communication — maybe not purchase, but certainly communication. You have their interest, and you have their attention. Having a customer’s attention is paramount. Without it nothing is possible. So act while you have that attention.
Allowing the customer to maintain that sense of control will keep thing flowing. Make the customer feel like they are at your whim and under your control and you lose their willing participation. You might be able to trick them to do what you want in any case. But it is so much better to have a willing participant in any interaction.
If you are the kind of person, or the kind of company, that allows the customer to have a sense of control, you will go much further — and have a better time getting there.
You will note, however, that I have been careful to say “allow the customer a sense of control. It is possible to control the flow of communication and get your business done while allowing the customer to feel empowered.
And this brings me to the something I was hoping to communicate. I know businesses want to do their business. If they are in the business of selling cars, they want to sell cars. If they are in the business of selling cable services, they want to sell cable service. But, here’s the thing. If they just change how they do their business they can contribute to the healing of the world and still do business.
It is totally possible to sell cable service and deliver that service without at the same time making the customers feel powerless and at the whim of uncaring forces over which they have no control and can expect no mercy. I believe there is a model of business that will still get the job done and treat the customers with dignity.
The simple act of treating customers with dignity could go a long way toward healing the deep wounds from which so many suffer. I know this runs counter to the abusive “me: tyrannical feudal lord” and “you: serf” attitude so prevalent amongst power possessors in our corporate culture. Still it would be nice.