Pixel Thread

sIFR uses javascript, CSS and Flash to replace short passages of plain text with text rendered in any typeface - regardless of whether or not your users have that font installed on their systems.

sIFR 2.0: Rich Accessible Typography for the Masses

Update: sIFR 3 is now available here , although still in beta I think…

The SEO Playbook, is a long blog post by a guy who goes by the name of Stuntdubl. It’s a useful overview of where SEO is today, breaking down the many different aspects that exist to the practice.

SEO is the thought process of lateral thinking and understanding of website creation and marketing combined.

A lot of companies see SEO as something for the techies to deal with, but it’s about much more than just the code.

If you want to get your head around some of the jargon and some of the tactics that surround Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), check out the SEOmoz Beginner’s Guide to SEO. It’s a great resource for anyone new to SEO, as well as old hands who might need a quick refresher on some of the basics.

The amount of care and attention author Rand Fishkin puts into the guide is inspiring. He’s great at sharing knowledge and experience and comes across as very altruistic. creating a lot of goodwill for his company, SEOmoz.

It’s a perfect example of good content driving traffic and links (like this post).

I’ve been working with Modern Glass Bristol (window films and glazing), looking at their online marketing and working out on the best way for them to increase their visibility on the web.

This was an interesting project for me - it was in an unfamiliar area, windows and glazing - which made it a challenge.

Modern Glass were interested in a localised campaign which made the project very focused.

I looked at their business and talked to them about areas they wanted to build on and areas that were the most profitable. I looked at their existing online and offline marketing and gave them a proposal that included:

• a new website, focusing on specific keywords
• a google adwords campaign
• targeting of natural search results

They were keen on all aspects of the proposal and I’ve been working on the campaign over the past few months. Their new website is simple, accessible, and usable. It’s optimised for search engine spiders (the software that search engines use to crawl the web indexing new sites) and people…

I also discovered a great way of hiding an email address from spammers while working on this project and so far it’s been very successful. Details in the next post.

Without trying to write a post that is in itself ‘link bait’ by being controversial, the title of this post is my genuine feeling about ‘link bait’. My immediate response to the term, is ‘what a waste of everyone’s time’, but then I can also see ways where it doesn’t need to be a waste of space.

If you haven’t come across the term yet, ‘link bait’ refers to any content posted on the web that the poster hopes will generate them traffic.

The most obvious form of this is using controversy to try and interest people in your opinions.

For example a blogger might post something with a controversial title just to get people to read their blog.

But what’s the point in saying something controversial if you don’t mean it?

This desperation for clicks just adds to the endless inane chatter that the web facilitates so well.

Alternatively, if someone posts something insightful which gives a new perspective on a current debate, then that’s also link bait, because people will want to link to it. Content is king again?

The moral of this story is only publish genuine content that you believe in. Don’t try and be controversial to generate links, you’re just wasting everyone’s time.

More:

Matt Cutts (Google) on link baiting
Link baiting on Wikipedia
Boris Johnson - king of link baiting in the real world ; ) (NB linking to Boris certainly does not imply support of his policies, but just proves that his baiting works!)

Just continuing from the post below where I argue that in some respects there are conflicts between SEO and usability, I came to this post on A List Apart (an indispensible website about websites) via wikipedia, which gives some good examples of how making your site accessible can also make it more visible to search engines.

High Accessibility Is Effective Search Engine Optimization

The ALA post was made over a year ago, but it’s as relevant as it ever was.

SEO and usability are generally mutually compatible. Often what’s good for usability is good for SEO and what’s good for SEO is good for usability. But when it comes to the creation of written content, SEO and usability don’t get on.

Firstly here are some examples of SEO and usability being friends:

1. Readable URLs

URLs that are logical and readable are great for SEO and for usability. Users can see what they might expect in a page and search engines can see what a page might contain and rank it accordingly. E.G.

Good: bbctraining.com/televisionCourses is pretty clear as to the what the content of the page will be, but…

Bad: bbctraining.com/courseDetails.asp?tID=1179&cat=2781 is much less obvious.

Search engines have had problems with query strings (starts with a ‘?’ and uses ‘&’ to separate values) in URLs for a long time.

Query strings imply that the page is dynamically generated, i.e. it’s created from a database when a user visits the page. Dynamic pages are also considered to be less search engine friendly - it’s easier to generate lots of SEO spam dynamically.

The value of the relevant words in the URL will also be diluted because the URL is much longer, so there is less importance attributed to them.

Query strings in URLs are also not very user friendly - they don’t tell you what the URL is about.

2. Semantic Mark-Up

Semantic is code that can be understood by humans as well as machines. It’s great for SEO and for usability.

The code behind RSS feeds is generally semantic, the tag describes the content, eg Bang Your Drum.

More on writing semantic mark up here

3. Valid Code

Code that validates with the W3C Markup Validation Service, makes search engines happy and means that your code is most likely to work for as many users on as many different platforms as possible.

4. Separation of style from content

The separation of content and style, that’s replaced the ubiquitous HTML tables over the past few years has made the code of web pages infinitely more readable. CSS files control page styles and layouts while content sits in the HTML files.

Great for SEO, search engines can easily read the content of a page, and great for usability - pages are quicker to load and are more accessible on a wider range of devices e.g. mobiles, blackberries etc.

5. Logical Information Architecture

Having a broad subject area at the top of a site, moving down into a narrower topics as the user gets deeper into the site will tell search engines that the site is covering a lot of detail. In terms of usability, it’s also a logical way of structuring a site for users to find information.

A site map - a page with links to all other pages on the site - will help search engines index your site and users find content.

6. Small File Sizes

File sizes should always be under 150K, larger files don’t get fully indexed by search engines, and are slower to load. So small files = good for SEO, good for usability.

But when it comes to written content there are SEO and usability incompatibilities

In written content, SEO encourages:

• keyword repetition on a page, making text read less easily and longer than necessary
• content created for search engines rather than users - there are companies that will supply pages and pages of search engine friendly text on any subject imaginable to boost a site’s search rankings
• creation of extra pages in a site, purely for the benefit of search engines
• inclusion of extra detail, where really extra detail often isn’t needed

All this text is cluttering up the web. People are having to wade through unnecessary content to get to what they really want. The battle to rule the search engine results pages is damaging the web.

Of course it is possible to create content that’s valuable, useful and search friendly, but it’s always cheaper and easier for a company to buy in content that they know will boost their ranking.

I’ve just been having a Christmas drink with my sister and brother-in-law. They’re starting a bespoke furniture business, and I was talking to them about how they could be doing things online. They’ve commissioned a website, and they’re pretty confident they’ll be able to get customers through adwords.

I encouraged them to think about their natural search results positioning, because:

1. In the long term it’s more economical - it might take a bit of effort to achieve the natural results but over time this effort will pay off. You don’t have the continual pay out that you have for adwords campaigns
2. Managing adwords campaigns effectively is really time consuming
3. Natural Search pulls 250% more traffic than the paid search
4. Natural search visitors convert nearly 30% higher than paid search

More details on the comparison between natural and PPC in this blog post.