Web Design and SEO Thoughts and IdeasHelp us make this a place for exchanging unbiased thoughts and ideas.

I’ve been asked a number of times over the last 6 months or so about “doorway pages”, mostly by people who have them but don’t realise it.  Largely they don’t realise because they don’t understand what they are and what the implications are of using them.

Doorway pages (sometimes mistakingly referred to as landing pages) are simply spammy pages where the content is pretty much similar for different parts of your website.  These are used to try and put you on page one of google for just about any term you like in whichever area or product field you like.  For example:

If I were selling Marquees (apologies if you are, I’m not picking on you because I’ve seen you do this. It’s just an example!), I might be based in one part of the country but want to sell all over the place.  So how do I get to the top of Google’s page one if I currently optimize my site for where I live?  Or, how do I appear locally all over the place if I’m optimizing for a generic term such as Marquee Hire.  Doorway Pages, that’s how!

To create a doorway page, simply write a generic page of content about the product you are particularly trying to promote.  Then, cunningly insert this line at the star of the page; “If you are looking for [your keyword goes here] in [name of a town or region goes here] then check out….”.  Then you can insert the rest of your copied page and away you go.  When you upload it, you’ll instantly rank high for your product in that town because Google is too stupid to realise.  WRONG!!!

Google is a very smart cookie (not to be confused with cookies used by web browsers).  The boys in the search engine room have started to clamp down on this very spammy, blatant trickery and it could hurt you if you’re not careful!

Google has long since said that it likes unique, interesting content that reads as though a human wrote it.  What this essentially means is that your content needs to be unique and look like it was written by a human.  So if you have a human to write the interesting content and it’s unique, that’s good.  See what I’ve just done?  Read the last three lines again……….all different yes? No, if you didn’t suss it out, they all may look similar but still different so I’m safe from Google yes?  No, theses three sentences share 90% of the same content just in different orders and mixed up.  So why would Google see these as the same?

Google looks at the use of words on your page, where they are in proximity to each other, how often they are used and it can tell from this analysis if pages share more or less the same content.  Even though you’ve tried really hard to make it read differently.  So, what happens if you have doorway pages now?

One of two things will happen.  Google will ignore the issue on your site for now (lucky you!), but it will get to you eventually or, Google will realise and penalise you. 

So what happens if your penalised?

Google will probably do one of two things. It will either stop indexing and caching some of your duplicate pages or it will remove your site from it’s index altogether.

Will they really remove my site?

Yes they sure will as chips is chips, they will remove your site.  You’ll then have to write to Google and appeal (obviously having corrected the blatant spamming issue) to have your site reinstated.  When Google can be bothered it might get round to looking at your request and deciding to give you a second chance.  By then you may have gone bust!

Simple rule of thumb, pay attention to what Google tells you not to do!

I have doorway pages now, what should I do?

Scale them back, focus your content on products and services.  It’s ok to talk about specific areas where you offer your services but the pages need to still be unique, interesting and valuable content.  Chances are you don’t do business in every area you have a doorway page for anyhow.

Try and trick them if you dare but Google will find out!  You’ve been warned!

Some real life examples from recent experience with clients:

Care hire company approached me and said that Google wasn’t caching pages for their site.  Out of 400+ pages, only 200 or so were indexed and cached by Google.  When I looked into the issue, I could find no problems with the sites pages setup, links, sitemap etc, all pages were visible on their server.  Once I looked at which pages weren’t being indexed I started to realise they had a lot of doorway page which, essentially looked a little different but not enough to trick Google.  But what about the competition of whom many were doing the same thing?   Tough break, Google has found you out and not them yet, but they will!

An events company approached me saying their site had dropped down the rankings since they launched their new site (steadily dropped over six months).  When I looked into it, Google hadn’t been reducing their ranking, they pulled their site completely due to hundreds of doorway pages, plus some other “black hat” SEO practices that their web design had used to try and trick Google.  We had to write to Google and sort the site out before finally getting it reinstated over four months later….not good for business!

So, the moral of this story – Google is not static, what worked today will not necessarily be acceptable tomorrow. Doorway pages might seem like a clever idea and you may be lucky in the short-term but I guarantee, it won’t be long before this is a fully fledged black hat practice.  If you have doorway pages and are concerned by the risks for your site, get in touch and we can help you work out the best strategy for reviewing your site.

Take care

Andy

Generating great keywords is a vital skill for any Search Engine Optimization (SEO) company.  It’s the first piece of the whole chain of events that leads to your listing showing up as the end result.  So how do you decide which keywords to choose for website?

The answer; some good research and some good judgement.  “Judgement you say”, where does judgement come into it?  I’ll illustrate it with an example.

I was reading one of the many forums I frequent, looking for people to help, future customers, that kind of thing.  I read a post from a lady who works for a reasonbly large business and is something important in marketing for this company.

Her questions was relating to choosing keywords.  Before I go into the story, I need to explain a couple of terms I’ll use.  The first is “impressions” and it’s the term used to describe when your advert or listing has appeared in a person search results i.e. has someone had the potential to see your advert or listing.

The second term is “clicks” which is used to describe someone actually clicking on an advert or listing which then takes them through to a website, usually their own.

Now, the lady in question was obviously trying to research keywords using data given on the number of impressions and clicks given for a range of keywords.  Wow, don’t I sound really techy and geeky.  Ok, let’s try it again.  Said lady had looked up some keywords (how I don’t know) and in looking up these keywords she had some information which told her the number of times the keyword has appeared in search results and the number of times people had then clicked through to the website.

So, she was stating that obviously it made sense to consider the number of “clicks” as important and wanted to know if she should also be considering the number of impressions.

When I read her post, I thought it was quite an interesting dilemma.  Clicks or impressions or both or neither?  Hmm decisions decisions!

Ok, so my take on her dilemma.  Impressions are simply the number of times a keyword has appeared in search results. That’s it.  The information doesn’t tell you how many customers bought products using that keyword.  It doesn’t tell you the average sales generated from that keyword. It simply tells you how many times it appeared in the results for a search.  It doesn’t even tell you if someone’s eyes actually looked at all the listings on the page.

What it does tell you is the potential visibility that the keyword may have and only the potential.  As an analogy; if I were a fisherman and I cast a huge net in between two boats and drove forward in the hope of scooping up lots of fish I should have a pretty good chance of coming up trumps.  Except, how do I know I’m where the fish are?  How do I know that these fish are the best ones?  How do I know that the holes in my net aren’t too big and I risk losing fish.

All I really know is that I have a net and that some of the fish are hopefully going to end up in the net.  Reality is, there is lots of experience, research and judgement that goes into getting all these things right so that I catch exactly the right type and size of fish.

This is similar to impressions,  it’s showing you a big net, but not how accurate, targeted or focused the net and catch will be. They just tell you the potential passing traffic.

So what use are clicks?  Clicks are obviously a bit more accurate because they show that someone has actually taken the time to click on a listing or ad.  But again, that’s it.  They don’t tell you how many of those clicks turned into paying customers, nor do they show how much people spent or how long someone spent on a site once they’d clicked through.  So an analogy again.

I’ve now deciding to be more targeted with my fishing.  I by myself a rod, get some bait and go fishing.  Surely this should yield the right type of fish?  But how do I know if I have the right type of rod or bait.  If the fish come and take a look at the bait but don’t like it, I lose my fish.

This is what clicks are, people coming to take a look, but it doesn’t mean they’re going to bite.

So how useful are these in keyword identification.  Honestly, they are useful to help you hone your initial list of possibilities but other than that they are broad estimates of potential traffic and customers and not a lot more.

If you really want to get some good keywords, I’d suggest you go looking at your most successful competitors and harvest their sites for they keywords they are using.  Interrogate thier titles, headings, bold text, hyperlinks and you’ll soon get an indication of what words they are targeting.

Do this for about five or so of your competitors and you’ll be getting a competitive based list of keywords.  If your competitors are successful with them, why shouldn’t they work for you.

But, and this is a big but.  All the fabulous keywords in the world won’t turn your potential traffic into customers if your site content is naff.  So, when you’re analysing your competitors sites, look at their content too.  See how they write it and how they get their sales message across.  Look for the “call to action” and the “unique sales proposition”.

Keywords don’t sell things, great content on great sites do!

On behalf of Prestige Conservatory Blinds

Furnishing a conservatory can be quite costly.  It can, in some cases cost as much as the conservatory itself. Conservatory Blinds can be very expensive so it is important to know what the choices are and what benefits the different types of blind will bring. This article looks at the most popular known types of conservatory blinds and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Pleated blinds are an attractive conservatory blind. They are available in a hundreds of different frabics and colours and create a striking decorative element to your conservatory.  They are a value alternative to pinoleum blinds and are often made with reflective material.  This reflective material can provide really valuable protection against harmful UV rays and the sun’s heat.   Typically, the pleats come in 25mm width but are increasingly available in 20mm. Pleated blinds are very versatile, attractive and can be used in whatever style of conservatory you’re looking at.  Made to measure pleated blinds are readily available.   They can also be supplied as an encased blind within the window itself.

Pinoleum Blinds

Pinoleum blinds are a popular style of conservatory blind. Pinoleum is made up of thin strips of wood which are sewn or woven to create variations of shape and pattern. Roman or Rolled-up Pinoleum blinds are available.  A great plus with pinoleum blinds is the diffused nature of light they allow between the strips of wood.  As with pleated, they can create a dramatic look and lighting effect in your conservatory.  The disadvantage with Pinoleum is their inability to reflect the light and if the light comes in, the heat comes in too.  This can be a real problem if you want to control heat and light, in which case this type of blind is unlikely to suit your needs.  It is possible to fix reflective material to the back of pinoleum blinds, but this greatly reduces the lighting effect which is one of the nicest aspects of pinoleum blinds.

Roller Blinds

The biggest offender in a conservatory is the sun, often making your lovely garden room either too hot to sit or full of glare which can make watching tv impossible.  Also, the heat, UV rays and light can damage your valuable furniture and ruin your favourite plants. Now most people don’t want to entirely block out the light otherwise what would be the point of a conservatory. Roller blinds are a very versatile solution, while not as attractive as pinoleum or pleated blinds, they do offer a very practical solution. Also, they are great value and are usually at the lower end of the budget range. Roller blinds come in either standard sizes or made to measure. Or you can even adjust them yourself. Another advantage is that as they are typically made from synthetic material, roller blinds can be easily cleaned. Also, you can get reflective material to help keep the conservatory cool in winter and the heat out in the summer. Roller blinds are the easiest type of blind to fit yourself. The blind sits between two brackets that are fixed to the inside or outside of the window recess.

Hopefully this brief discussion will provide some assistant in choosing your blinds. As a general rule it is always a good idea to learn from other people’s experience and so tap into friends and family who have already gone through this process. In addition talk to some experts and get some no obligation quotes, but make sure you know what is being quoted for.

We don’t believe in unnecessary development work when a lot of what customers need is now already available on the open market.  We like to think that we pull together what’s available, build what’s not and present a complete solution.

If you are looking to create a website or improve an existing one, then you can’t get away from the need for web design expertise.  The choice really is down to who you use, or do you do it yourself?  Now whilst it doesn’t pay for us to recommend you do it all yourself, we understand that not everyone has deep pockets and needs to do some of it themselves.  So, we want to introduce you to a tool that can help you create a greater level of interactivity with your customers and collect information about them that is useful to your marketing and sales.  It’s called Wufoo.

A key part of what we do is providing SEO Services and so we also like this tool because it fits very well with optimising your site for search engines.

What is Wufoo?

Wufoo strives to be the easiest way to collect information over the Internet.

Their HTML form builder helps you create contact forms, online surveys, and invitations so you can collect the data, registrations and online payments you need without writing a single line of code.

Ten reasons to consider Wufoo.

1. Wufoo is easy.

If you’ve ever used a desktop form building application, then you’re familiar with complexity. If you’ve ever hired a programmer to make a form for you, then you’re familiar with delays and communication barriers. Enter Wufoo. Wufoo gives anyone from students to secretaries to office managers the ability to publish an online form within minutes. Your forms, on your terms. Programming experience not needed.

2. Wufoo is fast.

Why wait days and weeks for someone else to build a database and all the scripts needed to just collect simple information from your form? With Wufoo, you can build, design, and collect with professionalism and personality in only a few short minutes.

3. Wufoo is fun.

Just because you’re working with forms and data, doesn’t mean you have to do it without personality and style. Gathering information from your users is exciting, why shouldn’t your tools be exciting too?

4. Wufoo is secure.

They’ve done everything possible to ensure the safe keeping of your data and the data you collect. Their servers are located at 365 Main and backed up onsite and offsite—every 12 hours in Toronto and every 24 hours in Virginia. They also offer plans with 128 bit SSL encryption on form submission. They have the expertise of BitPusher, a company whose founders have experience with Napster and Netcom (among others), to ensure that everything is safe and stable on the hardware end.

5. Wufoo is portable.

Wherever you have an Internet connection, you have access to Wufoo. Plus, all the data you collect with Wufoo can be exported to Excel or CSV so you can take your data offline and with you wherever you may go.

6. Wufoo helps you understand.

Your data is pretty useless if you have no way of organizing and understanding it. Wufoo allows you to filter through entries, create reports, and build graphs based on your collected data. They also give you the power to share and password protect this data, so you’re in control of who can see your information.

7. Wufoo integrates with your web site.

While they do offer hosting of all of your forms, they realize that placing a form on your own site is often a priority. Wufoo offers easy, copy/paste solutions for integrating a Wufoo form into a web page. For advanced users, full CSS and XHTML markup is also included. To simplify the process even further, the intuitive Wufoo theme manager allows you to customize the look of your form with a few clicks of the mouse so that your form seamlessly matches the look of your site.

8. Wufoo is affordable.

Desktop software, outsourced programmers, and even an internal IT department are all expensive solutions for building a form. With Wufoo’s tiered plans, ranging from FREE to $199/month, a more affordable solution is offered to anyone with form building needs.

9. Wufoo talks to you.

Forms are built to collect data, but wouldn’t it be nice to be notified when submissions come in, and have a statistical look on the activity of your forms. With Wufoo, you can have all entries emailed to you, or updated in your RSS feed, as they are submitted. On top of that, each form comes with graphs on the usage over the day, week, month, and year.

10. No long term contracts.

Wufoo costs less than most desktop software and a lot less than hiring a development team. After creating an account, you can leave at anytime without any questions asked. Why not try it out when it costs so little to be the office hero?

I’ve spent the last few years fairly well engaged in the various social networking sites and have been using live chat programmes for even longer.

There is no doubt that generally people like to know other people’s stuff and keep in touch, however strong or loose the connection might be.  The explosion of sites such as facebook, twitter and linked in have created a media vehicle that is not only instantaneous but is also hugely rich in “interesting” content.

I say “interesting” and I mean it, although there is obviously some filtration of what I deem this to be compared to my 18yr old niece for example.  Nevertheless, my niece and I share a lot of common contacts and we both seem to comment on their information, news and interests.

Now, imagine having a facebook just for your company.  Imagine having a Linked-In set up to develop the networks inside your business.  Hugely beneficial or potentially damaging?

The way I see it (and this is just my view), most of the development of individuals and teams I do with organisations often carries a common performance issue – not enough sharing of best practice and not enough time taken out to maintain working relationships and networks.  Yet, so often I see examples of situations where one person has faced a similar situation or issue to another yet they never thought to share it until it became obvious in a training session or development activity. Why? Because much of the time there is no “desire” or “impetus” to do so.

So how can we change this?  Well, it may require a bit of a leap of faith and some pretty good policy management but I think corporate facebooks and linked-ins present a real opportunity.  An opportunity to make some real leaps and bounds in our corporate networking, sharing of news, knowlegde, support, resource and countless other benefits besides.  We already have things like lotus notes databases and intranet sites that try to do this in a fashion but I haven’t seen a really successful example of one yet.

So, my challenge to you reading this – Do you you of one such system?  Have you seen it in use?  Do you use this within your current organisation?  Is this indeed an opportunity for some budding entrepreneur?

Give your comments, let me know your thoughts and views, get involved.

When you write your website copy, each page should have headings.  You should always have a main heading, or headline, for every web page that offers a presentation.  Whether it’s a sales presentation, simple product description, or an informative article, the headline is what entices your visitors to keep reading.

What are Heading Tags?

Heading tags label your headline so that search engines will recognize it as “important” on your web page.  The heading tags will make your headline bolder so it will stand out.  The following examples show how your headlines and sub-headings might look within a heading tag in the raw HTML code.

<h1>5 Ways to Skyrocket Your Web Business</h1>

<h2>1.  Test Your Content for Results</h2>

<h2>2.  Use an Email List to Bring Visitors Back to Your Site Again and Again</h2>

<h3>a.  How to Send Bulk Emails without Spamming</h3>
<h3>b.  How to Write an E-zine or Electronic Newsletter</h3> 

What are Different Types of Heading Tags?

Notice in the example above there are three different heading tags (h1,h2,h3).  These indicate not only the size of the heading but also the importance.  Once again, the main headline will need an “h1″ code to give it the greatest importance.  The main sub-headings, which are numbers one, two, and so on in the article outline deserve an “h2″ showing they are next in line when it comes to importance.  The “h3″ can be given to sub-headings under the main sub-headings such as “a,b,c” points in the article outline above.

SEO and Heading Tags

When the importance of a heading is established with HTML tags, you’re actually making it easy for the search engine robots to determine what your web page is all about.  The search engine doesn’t have to guess at it.  It can see exactly what your main topic is and place you under the appropriate keywords so your potential customers will be able to find you on the WWW.

Heading Hints

When writing your headings, include your main keywords in the headings.  Be as specific as possible to increase your chances of being listed in a reasonable spot in the search engines.  General search terms or keywords usually generate poor indexing because so many websites use them.  Use a research tool such as the one available at Overture.com to find popular keywords in your field.

Examples:

General keyword:  web design
Specific keyword:  web design training

Headline:  Web Design Training for Beginners – Learn Design with Simple Instructions

General keyword:  home decor
Specific keyword:  bathroom home decor

Headline:  Use these Bathroom Home Decor Tips to Add Value to Your Home

Also, don’t forget to optimize your entire web page, not just your headings.  Your headings are only a small part of SEO.  There are other key areas to include your important keywords as well such as your text links, alt text within graphics or photos on your web page, within your article text, and in your HTML meta tags.