KISS Computing Ireland is pleased to announce it has been selected as the web site design and development company by Mike Lavelle for his business, Lavelle Investments and Financial Elucidation LTD (T/A L.I.F.E. Ireland). The web site will be at the address of www.lifeireland.ie.  The new web site will offer mortage, life and general insurance, pension and general investment services and advice throughout Ireland.  KISS is pleased to have been selected for this project and wish Mike well in his business.  The new web site is expected to be ready for launch in late August or early September.

Earlier this month numbers became available for search engine company performances in the second quarter of the year. While the money Google, Yahoo, MSN and others made might not be of interest to you, if you are active in the CPC (cost per click) business for your web site, it should be. Google changed its strategy and processes in Adwords earlier this year, and the second quarter performance was the first indicator following those changes.

In case you missed the news, Google has dropped the number of advertisements it will place on a search results page. The average number of ads per keyword shown on Google has declined from 6.5 to 4.0, a nearly 40% drop. That could reflect on our poor economic environment at the moment, but it’s more likely the result of Google’s ongoing efforts to improve the quality of its ads. The theory is not dissimilar to the evolution of search results over the past five years.

Remember a time when Google and Yahoo took great pride in telling you, at the top of your search results page, that it had just presented you with 3,700,000 results for your search? Did you notice how over time that number dropped significantly? It was not because there were fewer web sites - on the contrary, as that number now is well over 110 million. Rather, it was each search engine’s effort to present a higher quality of results, results that were deemed to be more relevant to the search.

It’s the same philosophy Google is employing with its new practice of presenting fewer advertisements in its Adwords program. Google believes it will place more pressure on advertisers to prepare a higher quality advertisement and landing page on their web site for the chosen keyword, thus making the sponsored results more relevant to the searcher.

What about money, you ask? Fewer advertisements placed in the Sponsored Results space would mean lower revenues, you say? Google doesn’t think so, and in fact Google believes that because the results will be arguably more relevant to the search, an advertiser’s conversion rate will be better, and therefor would justify higher bid prices. Conversion rate refers to the number of clicks it takes to generate one transaction - - whatever that most desired response might be, whether a sale, a telephone call, a contact form submission, an email address. The quality scoring Google employs in the advertisement and the landing page is something those who have a CPC campaign underway (Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing) will need to watch closely.

As for those of us who concentrate on web copy writing and search engine optimization for better organic rank, it means the same thing. It will be important to monitor changes as they occur and their effects on both the paid and the organic results as Google strives to provide the better results they’re targeting through paid search now but at the same time improve their revenue.

There’s one other point worth mentioning here, and that is how one views sponsored results vs. SEO. In earlier columns, I’ve recommended SEO over sponsored results when a web site owner has to choose just one. Sponsored results should be viewed as a temporary means of promoting your web site, and not a permanent solution. The reason is a pretty simple one: once your web site has achieved a good organic rank, it becomes less necessary to spend money on a CPC campaign. So, temporary in the sense that it might be necessary only until you’ve made it to the top 20, or better still, to the top 10 on your Google and Yahoo.

The thing about bought traffic (your CPC campaign) is that it stops when you stop buying it. However, when you’ve become ranked well organically as a result of your SEO efforts, that traffic just keeps coming, or at least it keeps coming so long as you maintain the practices that got you ranked well in the first place.

KISS Computing Ireland is pleased to announce it has been selected as the web site development company for Cathy McCrone at the web site address: www.imagestylematters.com which has just been registered for her. Ms. McCrone is a fashion industry veteran and a professional who provides style and image consulting, and her new web site will reflect her experience and services, as well as related products for sale.  KISS looks foward to working with Ms. McCrone and the new site is expected sometime in late August or early September.

Politeness over Purpose is a bad choice to make.

The home page of your website is the most valuable space on it. Notwithstanding its importance, I see so many websites wasting the space. I’ve written about web site architecture, and the structure of content in past columns, but it would be good for many people to read them again.

Content should be well organized on a site’s home page, and by organized, I mean headings and paragraphs. Word count should be in the range of 400-700 words. Why? Because that is what search engines will reward. This word count gives you the opportunity to include 9-20 keyword instances, a good density, something that will give search engine robots enough to feed on so they know what your web site is about.  That, in turn, gives you the best opportunity for a good indexing, and a good rank,  for your most important keywords.

Your first heading should have your most important keyword, and the paragraph that follows should repeat and reinforce that keyword’s importance.  The second heading should contain your second most important keyword, and so on.

Now, take a look at your web site.  All of you whose first heading is the world “Welcome” raise your hands.  I’ll bet the first sentence of the copy that follows says something like “Thank you for visiting my (our) web site.”  Is “welcome” your most important keyword?  How many searches do you think will be conducted this year on Google or Yahoo for the keyword “welcome”?

Politeness is good, of course, and I don’t mean to disparage it.  However, the most valuable space on your web site is being wasted, and with no chance of a return for you, if you raised your hand.

A case in point will illustrate the importance of good headings and copy.  One of our clients, Golf Glider, in Dublin, is the manufacture of electronic golf caddies.  Their products are really terrific, and they stand behind them fully.  Yet, for the keyword “electronic golf caddy” they did not appear within the first 100 results on Google.  Their first heading was - - you guessed it - - “Welcome.”

We wrote new copy, including a new first heading, and made sure we included their most important keyword in it - - “electronic golf caddy.”  Within six weeks of that new content, Golf Glider rose rapidly in rank, and as of the writing of this column is ranked #3 on Google for both “electronic golf caddy” and “electronic golf caddies.”

The purpose of an e-commerce web site is to make money, whether the most desired response is a sale of your product or the hiring of your services.  Choose purpose over politeness, and you’ll position yourself better to achieve that sale or hire.

Clever over Clear and Consistent is bad choice number 2.

There are two “Best Practices” standards governing the development of a site map, and by site map I mean the navigation menu of your web site.  The first is to make it clear and consistent; the second is that you be able to get to any page on the site from any page.

Visitors who have to figure out how to navigate your site, have to stop and think, are going to lose interest in your site very quickly.  Attention spans in real life are short today, and on the Internet they are shorter, still.  If you slow a visitor down with a confusing site map, they will leave your site and go somewhere else.  You’ll lose the possibility of a sale or a hire.

Navigations should be in the left side bar or across the top, as that is the majority of Internet users’ experience.  If the main navigation menu items have sub-categories to them, give the main menu items sub-menus.  A split navigation menu is a bad idea, as it slows visitors down and forces them to think about their next step.

I’m sure you’ve encountered what we refer to as “orphaned” pages on a web site.  You clicked on a link in the text of something you were reading, and go to a page that is accessible only by that link, as opposed to a navigation menu item.  It’s not a page that can be reached from every other page on the site, and thus has been “orphaned.”  It means you have to remember how you got to it in the first place, because it’s not part of the site map, or main navigation menu.

A site that tries to get clever with its navigation by splitting it, or hyperlinking images or photographs to a page not listed in the main navigation, will lose its audience quickly.  A bad site map defeats the purpose of an e-commerce website, which is to make the purchase or hire of products and services easy.

Remember those two cardinal rules about your site map:  clear and consistent; and, getting to any page from any other page on the site.  Make that sale or hire easy for your customers.  It is, after all, why you have your web site.

KISS Computing Ireland is pleased to announce it has been selected by Dogs in Distress to design and build a new web site. We’re pleased to have been chosen for this project and are looking forward to completion and public launch.  Dogs in Distress is based in Dublin and assists with the care and the adoption of displaced dogs.

The new site will include a home page with a “Dog of the Week” feature prominently placed, as well as a photograph and biography section for all dogs available and looking for a good and worthy new home.  The site will also include banner advert space for sponsors as a means of raising revenues to continue with the organisation’s good work.

I am willing to bet that no one reading this column can list the twenty-five top ranked web sites in the world. No cheating allowed, either, so don’t look it up. Put your list together, make your best guesses, and then read on.

Before we get to the list, let us chat about the Internet. The book “The World is Flat” postulates well the notion that the Internet makes the world a smaller place and levels life’s playing field to a great extent financially, politically, culturally. But just as we have difficulty truly grasping the size of the planet we live on, or the true value of $1 billion, we also have difficulty truly grasping the size of the Internet. We also find it hard to think of ourselves as different than everyone else, and assume we are all the same when it comes to the Internet.

We know what sites we regularly visit for our news, our weather, our online searching, our online shopping. We know how we ourselves use these web sites, how we find them, and what we like and dislike about the sites we visit. We assume every other person’s observations about and experience on the Internet is the same as ours. We know what we do, what our workmates do, what our friends do, what Internet stories we share with everyone, and we glean from that what we assume is universal experience.

So, there’s me, the family, the three people I work with, my friend Brian, the guy next door . . . . okay, then, that’s at least 20 people. “Everyone” I know thinks what I think about the Internet and we all do things the same way. It works for me, so it must work the same way with and for everyone.

In Ireland today, there are an estimated 2.06 million regular Internet users. Your 20 people as against those 2.06 million represent 0.00009709%, a share that does not rise even to statistically insignificant. When you add in the rest of the world’s numbers, we have an estimated 1,407,724,920 regular Internet users (according to Internet World Stats). This puts the Ireland number at roughly 0.01463354% of the world’s user share.

To really “get” the Internet it is necessary to grasp these concepts. Individually, we are not necessarily representative of the “average” Internet user, and I’m not sure it is even possible to calculate “average.” Collectively, we in Ireland are not necessarily that average user, either.

Let me get to that list now and then offer just a few comments about what it means:

1. www.yahoo.com
2. www.google.com
3. www.youtube.com
4. www.live.com
5. www.msn.com
6. www.myspace.com
7. www.wikipedia.org
8. www.facebook.com
9. www.blogger.com
10. www.yahoo.co.jp
11. www.orkut.com
12. www.rapidshare.com
13. www.baidu.com
14. www.microsoft.com
15. www.google.co.in
16. www.google.de
17. www.qq.com
18. www.ebay.com
19. www.hi5.com
20. www.google.fr
21. www.aol.com
22. www.mail.ru
23. www.google.co.uk
24. www.sina.com.cn
25. www.fc2.com

How many did you get right on your list? How many of these sites have you visited, or even heard of? Eight of those top twenty-five reflect traffic from Japan, India, Germany, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and China(2).

What’s it mean? I’m just one Internet user, and although KISS Computing Ireland and KISS Computing United States has a quarter million unique visitors’ worth of monthly data to crunch among the web sites we host and manage, my insight extends not much beyond that, and certainly not into India or China or Japan. Here’s what I think, though.

The world is flat, and the Internet makes it a much smaller place. From an e-commerce standpoint, though, it does so without in any way diminishing the size of the marketplace. With over a billion folks in it, we can’t know everyone’s experience or Internet observation. But, then again, why do we need to? With over a billion folks, one needs only a very small market share to make a living online, and for the e-commerce small business entrepreneur, that is very encouraging. It doesn’t matter where you find that market share from, either. The Internet makes commerce easy, including fulfillment.

From a practical standpoint, it means you follow SEO best practices to rank well, and then let the marketplace tell you if your web site and your product work well. You measure performance regularly and adjust accordingly. You accept the fact you aren’t necessarily representative of the average Internet user, and instead let that data guide you. And, when you find that market share, you tend it well and wisely.

Interesting list, eh?

KISS Computing Ireland is pleased to report that a new shopping cart has been added to the website for Golf Glider, a Dublin-based manufacturer of electronic golf caddies. Within the first month of turning the new shopping cart on, Golf Glider sold its first caddy online, to a customer in Denmark.

In addition to building the shopping cart for Golf Glider, KISS Computing Ireland also lent assistance with search engine optimization for the site.  Previous to that work, Golf Glider was no where to be found on Google for its primary product.  New copy was written, and a new heading was included for that copy, all optimized for good indexing by Google.  Within the first month, Golf Glider moved into the top ten, and ultimately the top five, on Google.ie for the keywords “electronic golf caddy” and “electronic golf caddies.”  We don’t think it was a coincidence that the first online sale through its new shopping cart happened with the website’s new top five ranks on Google.

We wish Golf Glider well and continued success in its business.  As the new heading on the web site says, “The Best Electronic Golf Caddy in the Business.”

I was engaged recently in an interesting back-and-forth with a potential client on the subject of pretty vs. purpose and process in a new website design. It gave me very good reason to more thoroughly think through the concepts in order to explain them well and clearly in that conversation. I’m not sure I did so well in that effort, but I’m going to try again here.

Every research study I have read on the subject of Internet attention span tells me that we have about 2/10ths of one second to make a favorable impression on a first time visitor with the design of a website. Thereafter, we have about 2.5 seconds to explain to that first time visitor what they should do on the site, and how to do it, before we’ve lost them to the next search result at Google or Yahoo.

Does that mean that pretty is very important, though? Not necessarily, and in my humble opinion, no. I think the bar is pretty low here, actually. It’s more than saying it can’t be ugly, but not much more. Let me expand upon and explain that, please.

Today’s design standards pay more attention to minimal, with maximum emphasis on purpose and process. Some suggest that function is design today, although I have a better way of portraying the concept . . . . the dancer becomes the dance.

The best example of minimal on the Internet today is Google. Raise your hand if you think the Google home page design is pretty . . . . . not so much, it seems. Purpose and process are all you will find, but for the occasional themed iconography for special days. Yahoo’s home page is a little busy for me, but it is clearly purpose and process oriented. It’s fair to say that pretty does not get in the way of purpose and process here. It is also very fair to say that the “design” matches the business of each site, and this is a crucial element for success.

These are extreme examples, though, and not your everyday e-commerce web site. The company I was having that pretty vs. purpose and process discussion with is in the technology industry. I was suggesting to the company that their “design” should match their industry and their business, and that I would be hard-pressed to find anyone who thought “pretty” when they thought technology. If there is an industry where purpose and process are more important than pretty, it would certainly be technology.

Let’s look at a couple of examples to illustrate the point. There’s Network Solutions, the first of the big domain name registration companies in the technology industry. Some color, some non-descriptive figures, and the rest of the home page is pure process. Same with Register.com, one of the next domain name registration companies to follow Network Solutions - - a guy on the phone in front of a laptop, and then pure process.

There is the managed hosting company, Inetu, as technology-ish a company as you will find. It offers Windows hosting and Linux hosting, and will be happy to provide a quote. Look at the left sidebar - - Windows hosting, Linux hosting and Quotes. Pure process. Sure, there’s a guy standing in front of racks, but this site design is all about purpose and process.

You aren’t looking at fashion, flowers or flash at these sites. The website design matches their business purpose and process, and stays within what they are and what they do. The dancer certainly has become the dance for them. Contrast that with some of our work at KISS: Nauset Lantern Shop, or Puritan Cape Cod, or Terrapin Logo, or Massachusetts Cultural Coast. These sites sell early colonial copper, brass and pewter lanterns, high fashion clothing, children’s educational software, and culture along the Massachusetts coast, respectively. The purpose and process are clearly defined on each of those websites, but the design matches the products and services each offers. Each design is within the character of the company or organization, and is consistent with their identity. The sites have not tried to make them into something they are not.

What does all this mean? How is it one should approach website design for their business? Be yourself, stay within who and what you are, and stay out of your customer’s way when it comes to design. That’s good website design. Pretty should never get in the way of purpose or process - - that’s the rule to follow.

I read an interesting article over the weekend in one of the E-zines I subscribe to on the subject of Google Adsense revenues. It was reporting on the rise of complaints by publishers on the drop in Adsense revenues over the last year, and blaming changes by Google in the program as the cause. A little background might help here.

Google Adsense is a program that permits web site owners (publishers) to insert Google Ads onto their sites. It actually is a pretty cool concept - - you open an account in the program, pick your method of display (simple text lists, or theme-able boxes and presentations, number of ads to show), and insert code Google provides into the HTML of the page on your site where you wish to display the ads. I’m sure you seen them, perhaps in the right or left sidebar, or maybe in the middle of text on a web or blog page. For an example, visit Josiah’s site here: JoseFresco.com, and look in the right sidebar for the section headlined “Ads by Google.”

The Google algorithms then review the copy on the page where the ads are to appear, picks what it thinks are the right keywords from the copy, searches its data base of advertisers for the appropriate ads based upon those keywords, and sends the ads to the web site where you’ve inserted the Google code. If a visitor to the site clicks on one of those ads, the web site owner/publisher earns something from Google - - maybe 10 cents, maybe $1.00, or anything in between. A nice little revenue stream for sites with a lot of traffic.

I’m telling you all this not only to explain how it works, but also to illustrate two points. The first is that Google searches the copy on the page for what it deems appropriate keywords, and then sends ads targeted to those keywords. Put another way, Content is King.

Secondly, and here’s a direct quote from the article I was reading:

“AdSense Publisher Support pretty
much says so, reminding publishers that content is king:

‘[Smart pricing] leads to higher payouts for publishers by
drawing a larger pool of advertisers and rewarding publishers
who create high quality sites… The best way to ensure you
benefit from AdSense is to create compelling content for
interested users.’ “

And, there it is again . . . . . “Content is King.”

You might think there are tricks and magic and special little things that can be done to help your site’s rank position on Google, Yahoo, MSN and the rest of them, and once in a while someone will suggest that the “King” is dead and replaced by social networking sites. I want you to know that the “tricks and magic and special little things” remain and center around developing solid and well crafted content for your site. Google says so itself, and it remains the 800 lb gorilla in the room. I’d say you ought to listen to it.

Words. Well researched. In proper count. In proper places. In proper keyword density. Measured regularly, and refreshed accordingly. High quality sites with compelling content.

It’s not magic, and it’s really no trick. It’s not sexy or especially exciting. It’s simply Internet “Best Practices,” and it’s called Search Engine Optimization. Google Adsense publishers are earning less because they don’t pay sufficient homage to the “King” that is content. It’s not Google, it’s them.