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Hi Everyone! It’s me again: Mayur the designer. First off, I want to thank you all for taking the time to read and respond to my last newsletter. I recieved great feedback with many comments and support - even a few calls from UK and abroad! Some of you asked for more substance and content. This issue, I definitely delivered. Just like Obama, you wanted change.

This Issue: How web design actually works, and SEO in simple terms

This issue, I will walk you through my web design process briefly covering the 5 steps I complete with clients. It’s a bird’s eye view of the process, but still packed with lots of detail. Of interest to many of you, the last step about SEO offers an easy to understand explanation: i’ts just like finding great Sushi.

On all projects, there are dozens of technical details I take care of behind the scenes that you don’t see - or need to. The whole process from start to finish looks like this:

1. Picking a great domain name
2. Choosing the right hosting and email service
3. Getting the right editing solution
4. Making a slick, customized theme
5. Getting your SEO on a roll

Finally, my favorite links at the end of this newsletter are all about the back to school season. I have some great sites for the kids this month for speed reading, finding cheap textbooks, saving money, great music for studying and more. I am also sharing online tools that I love and use. Some I visit on a daily basis like Mailbuild, Freshbooks, Google apps, Google analytics, Google alerts, CrazyEgg and Flickr. Others are great gems for photo and video editing, web site user tracking, todo lists and more.

Pull up a chair, sit back and enjoy the Newsletter this month.  I hope its exceeds your expecations!

Step 1: Everything starts with a smart address

One of my first conversations with clients is about domain names. Creating the right domain name isn’t about what’s easy for you, it’s about thinking like your potential customer. Your customer needs to easily find you, identify some unique relationship with your domain name, and be able to remember it easily for return visits.

The easier your domain name is to remember, the more likely they will tell their friends and visit your site again. Bad strategies like weeard spellingg, numb3rs, hy-phens, hard to remember extensions, all work against you. Keeping the domain simple, using words describing your product or service, using .com whenever possible, keeping the number of words low, avoiding plurals, and using the most commonly used words describing your product or service all work in your favor.

How your domain sounds when spoken is equally important. When you tell a friend your domain name (or your friend tells someone else), they must be able to spell it without your help.  Just think about all the phone conversations you are likely to have about your web site.  You shouldn’t have to say “b for bob, d for david, s for sam, f for frank, 1 - the number one” etc.  If spelling mistakes are impossible to avoid or it’s too late for you now, register multiple domains covering all the phonetic possibilities and have them all point to your web site. It’s easy to do, and the small extra expense is better than having a frustrated customer not find you when they are ready to buy.  Sometimes, in rare circumstances, the right choice is NOT to change your domain name. My domain name, as an example, is difficult to mis-spell (say “red primary” out loud) but it doesn’t follow all of my other rules (common words, what people search for, etc).  I won’t change it today, because it has been around for a number of years and I have built up significant “online equity” at this point.  Changing domain names for me today would be a step backward.

You should always register domain names yourself. If problems occur with your hosting company or domain name ownership, you don’t want to be held ransom to the identity you worked so hard to build. It’s a lot easier for you to make changes to your domain name if its under your own control.  If the registration is done correctly (yes, it is easy to do it incorrectly), nobody can take your online identity away from you. Don’t ask your web hosting company or web designer to do this for you - many offer it as part of their service package. The domain should be in your name, held under a high security registrar lock, registered with your street mailing address (helps to prove ownership if your primary email is unavailable), and have you listed as the primary administrative and registrant contact (a third type of contact on a domain name, the Technical contact, doesn’t have to be you).  If you are unsure about ownership of your existing domain name, just send me an email and I can tell you the appropriate steps to take.

My recommendation for registering and moving domain names is directnic.com. I use them for all my domain registrations today and have my clients use them as well. With directnic.com, you won’t run into any domain ownership issues. Directnic.com doesn’t do Canadian .CA domains so visit namespro.ca for equally great service. If you wish to use a domain registration company other than my recommendations, make sure you can manage your own DNS records. Custom DNS capability will give you easy access to Google Apps (mentioned further down).

Step 2: Choosing the right web hosting service

Once the domain is registered, you need to have a place where web pages can be served to the public. All web sites today have a host that provides this service. Good web hosting companies will:

• Easily handle lots of traffic
• Create backups on a regular basis
• Have multiple connections to the Internet for redundancy
• Promise near-zero downtime or outages
• Ensure their systems are up to date, patched, and virus-free
• Employe perimeter defense systems to keep hackers out

In the hosting world, you get what you pay for. Not all hosting companies are the same and not all carry a track record of fast service. Many low cost domain registration companies like Godaddy.com and Shaw provide free hosting but they are unlikely to offer all the features I mention above. Low cost or free hosting companies are also less likely to provide a quick response to solve your issues. Think of hosting like insurance: quick response and service are crucial when you run into problems.

My recommendation for quality hosting companies MediaTemple, GoGrid or Nextmill.  They are worth every penny for the small extra expense. If you still don’t think premium hosting is for you, ask yourself this question: Can you afford to have your site down after spending thousands on a marketing campaign and working hard to get visitors to your web site? Are you ready to risk losing online visitors for the cost of a weekly lunch? Would you like to know right away when your site is down? If any of these questions are important to you, then premium hosting is something you shouldn’t skimp on.

Free email, calendar, and online documents

Hosting is only one more piece of the puzzle. Nearly all hosting companies offer free unlimited email accounts and web access.  There are better options though. Thanks to a great service from Google called Google Apps you can have a branded email address like you@yourname.com. This free email service comes with

• Multiple email accounts and addresses
• Great virus scanner and spam blocker
• 10gb for each email account
  
• Lots of mailing lists and Auto responders
• iPhone and Blackberry interfaces for checking email
• Online Calendar, Online Documents, and Chat.

All of these free services are branded with your own email address and look much more professional than an @gmail or @yahoo address. For a small extra fee, you can also get email audit control, enhanced security, desktop synchronization, company-wide email signatures, and much more. If you aren’t happy with your current email system and have a domain already, you can switch to Google Apps without much trouble. Visit http://www.google.com/a or give me a call.

Step 3: A great content solution

Once your domain is registered and your hosting and email services are running, you need to start looking for the right content editing software. I have found with every web project to date, the ability to edit content quickly and easily is crucial for my clients. As a result, I’m always looking for great content management tools and software. Adding new, good quality content to your site on a regular basis is one of the secrets to better search engine results.

My preferred web site content solution is a combination of powerful software that sits on your server, and some dandy software that sits on your desktop (the desktop software is optional, but it makes editing a lot easier). On the web server, I install Wordpress. Wordpress is the “Hummer” of content management systems. It runs huge sites like Techcrunch, Engadget, New York Times, CNN, and NASA (see a list of more sites here). It’s superbly designed and architected, completely ready for SEO, and is actively developed software that’s improving all the time. Even though sites like NASA use Wordpress, it’s just as popular for small business sites too. You can see a few examples of my Wordpress installations for clients here, here, here and here.

Wordpress comes with a complete suite of back office management tools for creating pages, blog posts, news entries, videos, images, embedded items and much more. The back office tools that come with Wordpress run right inside your web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and all the others) so you can edit your site from anywhere in the world. It can even recieve new content by email or be edited from your iPhone.

The other piece of dandy software I mentioned earlier is optional desktop software that replicates a lot of what Wordpress can already do. The software is great because it lets you include maps, photos, and videos into your content more easily than the Wordpress running inside your browser. For Microsoft Windows, the highly acclaimed Windows Live Writer is very popular. It has many plugins that provide cool tools like inserting PDFs and Powerpoints, Image editing and more. Windows Live Writer is free and is improving all the time. Best of all, its designed by Microsoft so it looks like Microsoft Word which makes learning to use it a breeze. For an in-depth review of Windows Live Writer watch video one, two, three and four. For you Apple users, Marsedit for the Mac is the way to go and has nearly the same features as Windows Live Writer.  If you don’t like either of my recommendations for desktop blogging software, there are more options.

Step 4: Your brand and unique style

Once your site has Wordpress installed, it must be styled and branded to fit your business theme, colors, and images. Out of the box, the default theme (seen above on the left) is completely naked, un-styled and missing lots of essential features like menus and sub-menus, your color palette, your logo and brand identity, your photos, a better search, background colors, a newsletter subscription box, web statistics, and so much more. The visual experience between a designed theme and the default theme can’t be compared. Left unbranded, your site will not drive visitors to do business with you. With a custom designed theme, visitors will pull up a chair and stay on your site for a while. Designing a custom theme isn’t an instant process (like picking from a menu). I spend a lot of time designing your graphics, bringing in your photos, playing with ideas, and injecting my design skills to make it fit just for you. Just like a custom-tailored suit gives you the edge, a custom designed them will make you stand out from your competitors.

Step 5: After the site is online, it’s ready for SEO

SEO means “search engine optimization”. It’s the process of making your sites clearly visible to Google, Yahoo and other search engines. Many SEO consultants offer guaranteed top 10 Google placement without much effort on your part. Back away slowly from these hollow promises. The process of SEO is nothing like buying a domain name or getting a hosting account. Instant-on top 10 ranking is bound to last just that long too: an instant.

To understand the right strategy for top 10 ranking, you first need to understand how search engines work.

Think of search engines like this: If you ask many people for their favorite Sushi restaurant, you will see a trend develop. Many will mention the same restaurants over and over because of the great food and nice atmosphere. You are likely to do business at these favorite restaurants, and chances are you will tell others about your positive experience too. As a result of the collective referrals and recommendations, better restaurants become more popular. This increasing popularity is termed “organic” in that it will happen naturally from positive recommendations.

The exact same thing happens on the Internet: Google surveys web pages to determine which web sites get mentioned the most. They survey continuously, with many computers, 24 hours a day and visit pages more than once to look for changes. The computers run mathematical equations that analyze web pages looking for text, images and links.  The links are harvested and compared to all the other web pages they track reaching a trillion pages recently. Google engineers constantly tweak and improve the mathematics and algorithms to account for all types of links, even bad ones (site and comment spam, link baiting, etc). They have people dedicated to ensuring spammers are watched closely too. Due to this ever-improving formula, and the flood of new pages created every day, Google has achieved greater accuracy over time. Today search has become more precise and reliable. Less popular sites and spammers rank lower so that you aren’t caught into a virus trap or link bait scheme as often as before. Google has a majority share of the search market due to their simple search interface and sophisticated search algorithm.  It’s an impressive accomplishment for a company that didn’t exist 10 years ago.  Amazingly, Google is still staying search is nowhere close to being solved.

So what happens to restaurants where quality drops?  Well, the first thing that occurs is that you hear it by word-of-mouth.  If you tell one ore two friends about the poor review and they do the same, the restaurant sales will suffer and that’s exactly the outcoume to expect for bad food and poor service.  Restaurants can fight negative publicity with mass advertising and new customers, but that’s not a sustainable strategy long-term. It’s important, as well, to remember that not all recommendations have the same value. Newspapers, food critics, and magazines are a more reliable opinion than casual rumours and word-of-mouth.  Thus, when picking a restaurant, the qualifications of the reviewer matters as much as the quantity of all reviews made.  For web sites and their Google ranking, the same approach is applied to search. The quality of links and where they come from matter as much as the quantity of all links they find.  It’s not good enough to have 1000 web sites all mentioning your web address if those web sites don’t have much traffic  (by the way, some SEO consultants try to sell packages that do this). Popular web sites where many users gather lend a greater credibility to how links should be ranked vs spammers strategies, link baiters, and dead pages which lend a lower credibility to their ranking. Sometimes, overly aggressive SEO tactics can even get you blacklisted or penalized by search engines.

So far I have said SEO and search engine positioning is like finding a great restaurant.  There IS one very important difference.  With traditional advertising, if you want people to do business with you, you tell friends, family, your local community, and the consumer audience through mass advertising.  This approach is typically un-targeted (or poorly targeted) in that you need to tell a lot of people - most not ready to buy - before making a sale.  Real estate agents do this kind of mass advertising with bus bench ads and pizza joints do this by sending out menus to everyone in their area.  Most people seeing these ads aren’t ready to buy and probably won’t remember you when they are ready to buy.  Online Marketing is different because you have control over how your site appears to search engines.  For example, if you had a web site selling yellow rubber duckies with information about types of rubber, duck bouyancy, and the color consistency of your ducks, Google would be likely to show your web site if someone searches for “yellow rubber duckies”.  People will find you because your web site has what they are searching for.  Paid advertising works in a similar fashion by letting you control which keywords you want your business to display with: you can specify which keywords should trigger your ad. Traditional vs Online marketing is like floodlights vs laserbeams - one is simply better at pointing.

All of my discussions on linking thus far should give you insight into at least one strategy: popular web sites (preferably for your target market) are places you should spend time and participate, and post your web address to (so Google knows about it).  The more your web site is mentioned, the more likely Google will reward you with inclusion and high rankinginto their search index.

Ready to get started with your web project?

I’m ready! Start your web project right now by asking me for a FREE quote! I can take all the fear about starting a web site:

1. You don’t need to be a web or computer expert
2. You don’t need to know anything about design
3. You don’t need to spend a fortune to get started
4. You don’t need to commit to a 5-year contract
5. It’s easier thank you think

Sneak Preview of upcoming newsletters!

I couldn’t possibly cover ever aspect of web design this newsletter - my collective experience goes back more than 10 years. Expect future newsletters to include topics like:

• The correct way of building a brand
• In-depth domain name analysis
• my SEO toolbox and an Interview with a pro
• What are Tags?
• What makes a great designer
• Picking perfect color palettes
• Effective and catchy writing techniques
• How to really make money online
• Saving time every day with great web apps

Are one of these topics of special interest to you? Please let me know. I’m always ready to change gears and focus on the issues that matter to you.

How about telling your friends?

Hey, they might actually want find this newsletter useful! How about forwarding it to them or tell them to visit my site at www.redprimary.com

Links, Links, and more Links!

Back to School links for the kids!

• Turn your cellphone into a scanner with Qipit
• Capture any thought using a cellphone, web browser, iphone or desktop software using Evernote
• Books aren’t getting cheaper but you can find deals at Bigwords, Adall, Half, and DirectTextBook
• See lots more research at the best apps for College Students

Business and Productivity

• Never forget anything ever again.  Type, Talk, or Photograph a thought with your PC or Mobile for FREE using Evernote
• Defending your rights online, look for theft and plaigarism of your content with Copyscape
• Bookkeeping can be a pain. Send out invoices in a flash on Freshbooks
• Download, categorize and graph all of your personal finances with Mint
• Easily deliver e-newsletters like this one with Mailbuild
• “Brandify” your email, calendar and documents with Google Apps
• Once your photos are online, there are some pretty slick things you can do with them. Start by putting photos on Flickr
• Take the pain out of video conversions with MovAvi
• Do videos edits like the pros without software using Jumpcut
• Automatically fix old home videos for free with FixMyMovie
• Life moves too quickly to write down every little detail. Do it easily with Remember The Milk
• Use your phone to convert messages into text with Jott
• Get a free, lifelike remote assistant with the incredible IWantSandy
• Google will tell you when they find something new with Google Alerts
• Convert images on your phone to searchable PDFs with ScanR
• Send files that are too big for email with Sendspace

• Do you know who is visiting your site? You can with Google Analytics
• Monitor your site visitors with stunning data using CrazyEgg
• See stuff about your website you didn’t even know with Quarkbase (here is mine)
• See how you score with search engines on WebsiteGrader

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Newsletter.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.