PlanWebs Web Design, Online Media & Marketing

Future Now
Clients that target a specific niche of well-informed customers may think that they don’t need a Web site full of descriptive copy–or that they can get away with having product images and a one-line description to draw those customers in. But Robert Gorell says that even companies in the most obscure verticals need copy on their Web page. After all, the best SEO is great content.

Take a retailer of industrial construction tools like 100-ton drill rigs, for example. Gorell counsels a search strategist who’s struggling with getting this construction retailer to understand that they need more on-page copy. “Descriptions are hardly necessary,” the strategist says, as the products are auctioned to companies who “already know what kind of equipment they’re looking for.”

Gorell says that the first step is to stop taking the client’s assumptions about things like how knowledgeable their target is at face value. “Yes, they know their business better than she (or any other consultant) possibly could, but that doesn’t mean they know how to market it,” Gorell says.

The strategist should go back to the client and “push back for answers” about their business, get them to reexamine their goals, and understand that even the most educated customers will come to the Web site searching for info like how long the retailer has been in business, what the return policy is, whether they sell replacement parts–and most important–why they should trust the retailer’s brand. Just answering those kinds of questions can fill up a few pages worth of copy.

by Jim Sterne 

Besides being fun to say and a legitimate excuse to wear my “Mind The Gap” hat purchased the last time I was caught in the rain in Covent Garden, the Feedback Loop Gap is the most pernicious problem faced by those in large companies tasked with running large, sophisticated Web sites.

I don’t for a minute discount the trials and tribulations of those plagued by shrinking budgets, incredulous senior executives, or IT departments facing mergers and acquisitions. I am not turning a blind eye to the pending economic downturn. I am simply responding to what I hear from clients, audiences, blogs and online discussions.

Your Web server generates a great deal of information. It creates logs. Mountains of data are collected in your server logs every day. The assumption is that this information is generated to help you determine how well you’re doing. Nice thought, but not the case.

Log files are merely the result of good, solid engineering. If you create a system that does something, it’s a good idea to record what happened. That way you’ve got a history file to look at when things go bump in the site. Log files are, therefore, the results of a server doing its job, and not a formal effort to capture valuable business intelligence.

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Small Business SEM
Matt McGee is an avid amateur photographer–and he’s managed to turn his passion for snapping flicks into a supplemental link-building strategy via Flickr.

By taking shots of random objects like refrigerator magnets, spare change and a Barnes & Noble entrance, he’s managed to snag links from high ranking, authoritative Web properties such as the Discovery Channel, Wired and The Consumerist.

Allowing others to use your Flickr image as long as they provide proper credit (usually in the form of a link to the image itself or your homepage) is a great way to drive additional traffic to a Web site–and if the linking site is strong enough, gain some PageRank or authority along the way.

Jennifer Slegg
Search engine spiders aren’t the only ones that can interact with a Web site’s robots.txt file. As Jennifer Slegg illustrates, sometimes the very file Webmasters use to keep the crawlers out are like beacons drawing competitors in.

Slegg notes that when you exclude a directory from being indexed with robots.txt,, crafty searchers can actually use the file to find it, and without password protection, they’ll be able to see all of the content you tried to hide. In addition, if you’re developing any new content, or pushing out a new product and plan to promote it on the site, then using robots.txt to keep it unseen is a no go.

“Play it smart with your robots.txt file so you don’t inadvertently hand your competitors the keys to your site or give them the edge up by alerting them to what you are working on,” Slegg says.

by David Koretz

Henry Ford said “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.” In this new world of Web-based applications, advertisers and application developers alike are mistakenly searching for a faster horse.

I stumbled onto the advertising world by accident. I am a software guy, and have been building Web-based applications since the mid ‘90s. In 2006, I began studying how Web-based applications were being monetized. Our customers, large ISPs and Web publishers, were asking us to build advertising support into our Web-based email and calendaring application to help them turn email into a profit center.

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ISEdb
While permanent 301 redirects are typically what Webmasters use when trying to shift users to a new Web site, Schott Van Achte notes that sometimes a temporary 302 redirect may be more useful. Unlike 301s which tell the search engines to remove the old location from their index and stick with the new one, a 302 redirect tells the engines to read and use the content on the new page, but to also keep checking the original URL first, as it will ultimately be reestablished.

301s are the most SEO-friendly way to redirect traffic, and should be used whenever you’ve deleted or permanently moved a page, if you’re (heaven forbid!) switching to a new domain name, or want to prevent PageRank split between the www-prefixed and non-prefixed versions of your URL.

Van Achte lists the need to temporarily move a page, send traffic to a special promotional landing page, or shorten a long, obscure URL of a home page that’s been created by a content management system (CMS) as some possible reasons for using a 302 redirect instead.

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SEO Space
Microsoft unveiled a suite of Webmaster tools for marketers running Live Search campaigns in November, accessible by signing up with a Hotmail, Passport or MSN Messenger account.

The Live Search Webmaster Central offers in-depth details on the health and productivity of a Web site, including a summary of the top-five ranked pages, how many pages have been indexed in Windows Live, and the last time the MSNbot crawled the site. In addition, the suite provides data on the 10 best performing in- and outbound links, sitemap location (if there is one), and any errors or changes to a site’s robots.txt file.