Google hasn’t released all of the details, and they probably won’t (we still don’t know the exact algorithms Google uses to determine page rank – it’s a closely guarded secret).

I think one thing everyone would agree with is that a fast website is preferable to a slow website. Waiting over one minute for a web page to load is pretty much unacceptable by anyone’s standards. Most web users have gotten used to quick internet connections, and waiting more than ten seconds for a page to load is probably too much for most people to stand.

However, there could be deeper implications for smaller web shops and hosting companies than what might appear at first glance.

On the surface, it seems like a reasonable thing for most web developers to strive for anyway. If your page is that slow, chances are your user experience is going to end up being pretty bad. You probably won’t get many hits, and after a while your views will start to decrease. You really shouldn’t be on the first page of Google anyway. It’s a good idea to keep speed in mind anyway, right?

Of course it is.

Here are the concerns some people are having with this concept hinted at by Google. 

Many small e-commerce sites, web shops, and hosting companies rely heavily on page ranking for their business to succeed. It’s an extremely cost effective way to advertise, and for some tech savvy companies, they can do all of this internally and not spend an extra dime for the increase in business. What happens to these companies when Google starts putting the pages that load faster on the top of the list?

If Google starts implementing this scheme based solely on page load times, Amazon.com or Ebay.com, or any companies with the financial capitol to do so will quickly upgrade their servers, connections, hardware, software, etc. to the newest and fastest technology at their disposal, no matter what the cost. Some big companies might even be able to finance development of new technology to increase speed.

For the smaller companies, however, with servers costing thousands of dollars, the likelihood of smaller companies being able to compete with larger firms becomes harder and harder, and much less likely, nearly impossible.

Of course, none of this is set in stone, and it really all stems from an interview with an employee of Google, albeit very high level employee. Google has yet to release more information about what they plan to do.

It is possible they could base rankings on scores from applications such as Yahoo’s YSlow or Google’s own speed tester. If that is the case, smaller firms would be able to optimize their websites to compete with larger firms.

At Design the Planet we optimize all of our sites using these tools, which help us get quick load times. The problem, eventually, will be that companies with billions of dollars to spend will always be able to out spend smaller companies.

Is it fair they should be out ranked only because of lack of capital to invest in better technology? Is it possible that Google isn’t the gentle giant after all?

In the early days of the internet, basically the 1990s, the meta tags helped rank your website higher in the search engines for all of the keywords you listed in the meta tags. Website designers & marketers would stuff keywords, some useful and some fluff, to make their website rank higher. It was easy to saturate the website with keywords, but the search engines like Google, Yahoo & MSN (now Bing) quickly caught on and made it less important. Today, meta tags do not rank your website any higher, but they are important still. One of the most important meta tags is the description tag which is used by the search engines for the text just below your website when searched. (See example below)

The meta text also helps position your website correctly. Design the Planet is a New Orleans Graphic Design & Web Design firm that does not work nationally. We use keywords in our meta keywords text including “New Orleans” and “Louisiana”. Design the Planet does not need to appear with someone is searching for Seattle Design or London Website Designers.

In the end, meta tags are important, but not as important as they once were in ranking your website.

This is long overdue in my eyes. When searching for a web marketing professional it is hard to compare apples to apples or even apples to oranges. Each marketer has their own strategy, time lines, costs & degree of professionalism. I have had marketing campaigns quoted for as little as $250 a month to $4,000 a month for the same project guaranteeing the same results. Who is right in this instance? Does the cheaper company have no idea what they are getting into and wasting my time or maybe the more expensive marketer wants to learn on my dime. Each marketer sites their success, but you never see their failures or even the percentage of their campaigns that are successful. Any marketer can have a case study or two of successes when doing 100 campaigns. A degree will help qualify professional web marketers and ensure they are not a fly-by-night operation.

Even with a degree, professionals will need to continue to learn the latest techniques and experiment with the ever changing search engines algorithm. The degree will set them apart for others and allow a wave of professionalism to appear throughout the industry which is for the best.

Twitter over capacity because of growing popularity.

Design the Planet recently joined the Twitter ranks and started Tweeting (adding text about what we’re doing). We have read articles and talked extensively about the benefits of the service and the lack of actual usefullness the website service offers. One thing is for sure, Twitter is popular and surging in the number of users online each day. In fact, they recently had so many Tweets that they got overloaded and left this fun message on the right.

You can folllow Design the Planet on Twitter at:
http://twitter.com/designtheplanet

PUSH THE REFRESH BUTTON!! Quick!! Do it before the “window” closes!

Really, you can’t miss the end-of-the-year update event. Why you ask? Because, right now your customers and clients are pondering the year that’s past. They are considering their end-of-the-year purchases, and they have time in between gobbling turkey and sipping port with relatives to surf the web to see who’s been naughty and who’s been nice.

Whether you’re a B-2-B computer consultant or a B-2-C purveyor retail products, right now is the time for web site updating and content redoux. We are very busy with this kind of web work right now, and the reason for it is obvious. So, push your refresh button before Mardi Gras comes to town!

RobF.

So many people think that “if we build it” then it will market itself and “they will come” – that people will come to the site simply because it exists online. We can load the site with meta data and have all of the key words in the right places and have the best CSS programming and the most optimized graphics, but that only gets you so far. The truth is, some sites can market themselves, especially in the short term, but you need a long-range plan to market a site ongoing.

When we design and code sites they are optimized for search engines like Yahoo! and Google and most of our new sites do very well in Search Engine ranking in the first few weeks, but if there are no ongoing updates, web marketing, viral marketing, traditional marketing (like outdoor media, radio or print campaign), blogging or key word bidding that bring activity to the site it will soon only be found in the nether world of search engines.

We put a lot of effort into getting to know the people we work for, and because of this, we often take accomplishing their goals personally. So, we go to great lengths to make sure they don’t throw their brand marketing dollars at fancy stuff that doesn’t work for them. So I like to say that “If we build it – they will come…however you have to show it lots of love and attention if you want it to help you make more money and reach your brand community.”

The web is an ever-evolving medium and it is impossible to keep up with everything. Jeffrey Veen with Google Analytics discussed information overload at a great conference in New Orleans, An Event Apart. He said every minute on YouTube, 10 hours of video are uploaded. (There goes my life ambition to watch every video on YouTube in one year.)

Let’s start with Blogs (not blobs). The word “Blog” is short for “Web Log”. WordPress & Blogspot are the primary websites where you can get a blog and find other blogs. Maybe you’re thinking to yourself, “Hey, I don’t blogs, those things are just for kids.” Well, you’re reading a blog right now. Gotcha!

Blogs started about six years ago as an online, public diary & forum. People would write about what they thought about the world around them, a certain subject or just update family & friends about their life. A blogger (blog writer) becomes an expert on the field they are writing on, such as marketing, web design or even Smurfs. Where else could you find an expert about Smurfs, but on the web?

Now, do you need a blog for your business? Does being an expert in your field help? If you are looking for a house in New Orleans and you need a mortgage, whom do you turn to? You ask your friends & co-workers. You look online and ask some more friends. You may even look in the phone book, but how do you decide? You look for an expert in New Orleans mortgages. If a mortgage lender had a blog where he discussed different options, terminology and benefits; wouldn’t you think he was an expert, especially when you compare him to the other guy who has nothing. I do not know about you, but I’m going for the expert.

About Myface now. Let’s start with getting the name right; or rather – names. MySpace is a social networking website where people have profiles about themselves. These profiles contain information about that person, pictures, favorite songs, list of friends and a wall where friends can post messages. Facebook is a similar website, but a much cleaner system. While MySpace allows you to “design” your profile, Facebook only allows you to “customize” your profile. Facebook started with college graduates as a way to stay connected with college buddies & long lost friends. It quickly spread to high schools, corporations and then the general public. MySpace has always been open to the public, at least ages 13-99. (Sorry great-grandpa.) Traditionally, MySpace was more blue-collar and Facebook was white-collar and college educated, but both of these stereotypes are blurring today.

Now that you have a brief history about MyFace (just kidding), how can you use this in your business? You can add a profile on MySpace & Facebook and connect with others. We live in a word-of-mouth marketing society and this can be powerful (especially in New Orleans). If you are over 50 years old, maybe even 35, you will find it a lonely place at times. Both websites are full of profiles of people under age 30. So, now what? If you want to connect to friends & stay in touch with family, I’d try Facebook. If you want to promote yourself & network your business, check out LinkedIn (learn more) & Pulse by Plaxo. Both are great ways to connect with professionals, business resources & find contacts through friends and friends of friends.

If you have a social business, non-profit or are a politician, both MySpace & Facebook can be a great tool. A cool example of how to use social media is what we’re doing with the Original Dungeon. The Dungeon is a New Orleans bar near Bourbon Street that attract locals & is a tourist must see. We are setting up the Dungeon on MySpace, Facebook & Flickr connecting them with locals that are part of the brand community. Also, with each tourist that posts pictures from their trip to the Dungeon on their Facebook profile or Flickr account, the Dungeon is inadvertently being advertised as a must see bar in New Orleans. Customers can share photos of their Halloween parties, past Tattoo Contests and just every day life at the Dungeon — a unique place on any night.

When asking yourself if you should do something like the Dungeon, ask yourself if you have a fan club. New Orleans Jazz Fest has a fan club; your mortgage company does not. Having these accounts for merely business will not be profitable for the time you spend on them because you must hard sell customers. The Dungeon however would probably not do well with a blog.

If you are still undecided on what to do or are ready to get started, give us a call. It’s easy to get started & can be a powerful way to market your business. If you don’t agree, stop reading this blog.

You may have heard that search engines use a mathematical formula to rank their websites? and you would be correct. But, do you know what that formula is? Google and Yahoo are not known for sharing this information. Even if they did, it wouldn’t matter because the formulas change monthly. Sometimes the changes are slight and sometimes they are massive changes. Why change so often? To answer that question, we need to take a step back and ask ourselves how a search engine thinks. A search engine wants to give its users the most accurate response for each search. In plain English, if you search “New Orleans web design” you would want to see listings like Design the Planet, not Alaskan Crab Fishing.

Now, knowing this, what can we gather about the lengthy and complicated algorithms that search engines use? The good news is that there is a method to their madness and the items that weigh heaviest in the algorithm are content and links to your website. I call this the high school popularity method ? the best known and most liked website wins prom queen. When ranking each website, the search engine evaluates the text on your website and the number of links to your website from other websites.

The text on your website matters; all of it matters. Search engines evaluate the title of your pages, your headlines and each sentence – giving more weight to the headlines and sentences at the top of the page. For a search engine, it is better to title your page “Contact Design the Planet” than “Contact Us”. When in doubt as to how much text, remember one thing, CONTENT IS KING! When it comes to search engines, the more text, the better. Instead of having a few pages about your company and your products/services, you should have a book. This sounds like a lot, but search engines are looking for the authority for each keyword and key phrase. To provide the best search results to their users, search engines look for the master of each word, so providing more text presents you as the leader in your field. We all want to do work and buy products from the leader.

The other element of the algorithm that matters most is links. Not links on your website, but links to your website. Also, the more popular the website linking to your website, the better. In SEO talk, it is better to have links from websites with high PageRankings (we’ll discuss more later). It is important to take time to find non-competitor websites that will link to your website, especially if they are of a similar theme. For Design the Planet, a website of Louisiana web design firms or a web hosting company linking to our website is much better than a massive list of random websites. Also, when a website links to you, it is better to be descriptive saying “New Orleans Web Design Firm” instead of “cool link.”

How does a search engine like Google and Yahoo know what text is on your website or what websites link to your website? Simple, they use spiders. Yes, I’m serious. Search engines sends small robots (or bots) called spiders to crawl the web in order to gain this information. The spiders feed information about your website to a massive database and then the database ranks each website according to the previously mentioned algorithm. This ranking of websites is called PageRank. Google’s PageRank is number one of course. The search engine’s database then breaks down these rankings per keyword and key phrase. When it comes to links, Google considers each link to your website as a vote for your website and the better the PageRank, the more powerful the vote. Mostly democratic.

Surprisingly, traffic has little to do with your web rankings; partly because the search engines cannot determine traffic easily. They can, however, determine how much traffic you receive using the PageRanks of the websites linked to you and how long a user stays on your website after finding it through their search engine. If a user clicks on a website after searching a keyword and then quickly clicks back to the search engine, the search engine thinks that website was not the authority the user was looking for and eventually lowers the ranking of that website.

Now you have a few broad ideas of why your website is number one (or not number one) in the search engines. In later postings, we will discuss more specific methods of building your popularity and other things you can do to rank higher. We will even give you a few things not to do that will get you blacklisted from Google and Yahoo completely. Imagine what that will do for your web presence?