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3 Easy To Remember Web Writing Guidelines

If you feel at all intimidated when facing a blank screen with the task of inking out your next page of website content or blog post, please know that this is normal.  Writing for the web is not an overly difficult task when you get down to it, but it can certainly seem daunting enough until you really learn the ropes and get some experience under the belt.  Again, this is definitely the norm.

With that said, here are 3 easy to remember web writing guidelines that can really help take a little bit of the pressure off as you face the task…

One – Keep it simple.

This is a favorite golden rule of the web no matter what the task—but it works especially well for writing.  Just think about what you want to say, sketch out a quick rough outline, and then say it in type.  There’s no need to over analyze or second guess yourself—facing a blank screen is intimidating, but once you begin to get some words on the page, the pressure practically vanishes into thin air.

Two – Have a plan.

It’s especially difficult to write something for the web when you really don’t know what you’re going to say.  If you’re faced with the task of writing or blogging on a frequent ongoing basis, be sure to keep a swipe file of ideas and draft a plan of topics to attack in advance of trying to write.  Having a plan, or at least an overall theme, works wonders.

Three – Write like you speak.

This is perhaps one of the best things about web writing for most folks.  Simply type the words as you were speaking them conversationally to a friend or customer.  In almost all cases, this style of conversational writing will be both appropriate for your website audience and also easier for your readers to tackle.  Avoid academic-style writing for the web at all costs when you can.

It’s amazing how just loosely sticking to these three easy to remember web writing guidelines can make the process much simpler, much more effective, and even—gasp—enjoyable.  Yes, that’s right, web writing can actually be enjoyable when you alleviate some of the pressure and common misconceptions about writing.

And if you still have an aversion to writing for your website or blog, that’s okay too.  Please know that as a full-service search engine marketing company, WSpider is more than happy to handle your web writing tasks on your behalf.  Happy to help!

An Easy Way To Keep Website-Initiated Spam To Minimum

Are you getting dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of spam messages in your email inbox every day?  This has become a really common problem for so many—often to the point where it simply makes email impractical to use.

Now, this advice doesn’t necessarily apply to everyone out there.  And it definitely isn’t the only action you can take to cut back on the annoyance.  But it is something that can indeed help you cut back on a significant source of spam—your website’s contact page.

Here’s the deal.  For more than a decade, it’s been common practice to post a company-wide or individual business email address as a contact method within your website’s contact page.  Some organizations even list their entire list of employee or department email addresses on publicly on their websites.  This is not a good thing.

It leads to an ever growing spam snowball effect.  Spam bots scour the web looking for email addresses publicly posted on websites.  They will find your email address if it’s there on your site and add it to their list of addresses to send spam broadcasts to.  This happens again and again, and the spammers even trade or sell their lists to each other.  Before long, you’re email address is a part of more spam mailing lists than you’ll ever want to think about.

It’s got to stop, and really, the only way to stop this from happening is to take a deep look at your website to find out if that’s where a lot of the spam is originating from.  The idea is to completely prevent spam bots from having access to your email address from your website in the first place.  And if nothing else, it still helps to at least discourage the bots from digging through your site.

A few of things you can do today to help:

    - Change email addresses if it’s become overwhelming. Start fresh and spam-free.

    - Remove your email addresses from the contact page (and all other pages of your website too).

    - Consider having your email address or contact form replaced by a new spam-resistant form that requires the entering of a humans-only verification code.  WSpider can help you accomplish this.

    - And if you still must list your email address on your site, at least try spelling it out in an unusual format that only humans will understand.  For example, if your email address was johndoe@sampledomain.com, you might publish it on your site as johndoe AT sampledomain DOT com; it looks strange, but most people get it and understand.

    - Finally, you might also consider using a Gmail (Google) webmail address to publish on your site and set this address to forward to your real email address.  Gmail is among the best at filtering spam, plus this keeps your actual email address from prying eyes as well.

Just because you have a website doesn’t mean you need to be inundated with spam that originates from the site.  Take precautions and you’ll never have to worry about this common spam source again.

10 Ways To Put Social Media To Work For Your Site

Actively using social media is a great way to turn the extremely popular trend into a benefit for your website.  Here are 10 ways to put social media to work for your site.

 

1.       Guerilla Marketing – Social media outlets work really well for running promotions and implementing other “guerilla” promotional tactics.

 

2.       Search The Networks – Try searching Twitter for answers and help that might relate to something you’re working on in your business or on your website.  It’s full of experts eager to help.

 

3.       Stay In Touch With Customers – Using social updates to reach out to your customers and clients with your latest news and updates is just a natural fit for these kind of services.

 

4.       Promote Your Blog – Social media is a great way to promote your latest blog posts and other new or improved website content.  It’s quick and easy to send out a social broadcast too.

 

5.       Meet New People – The interaction of social networking is incredibly conducive to meeting new people—or in business terms—new prospects and potential customers.

 

6.       Answer Questions – Just like you would use social to reach out and seek answers to questions you have, turn the concept around and be the expert who answers the important questions of other askers out there.  Everyone’s an expert on something—be your niche’s preeminent expert on the social networks you use.

 

7.       Keep Your Website Fresh – By installing social media widgets on your website that automatically relay the your latest posts and tweets to a designated spot on your website, each time you make a new social media post, you’re also effectively updating your site with a little piece of new content.

 

8.       Reach The Top Search Listings – Google has recently begun showing recent Twitter posts prominently within their search listings results.  Other search engines and social networks are certain to follow the trend.  By posting social updates frequently about your niche, you’ll be able to participate in the benefits this trend offers.

 

9.       Expand Your Presence – While there are certainly several dominate social media options out there in heavy use, there are also many smaller niche-audience social media networks that would love to have your participation.  Each one you use helps expand your presence and promote your site.

 

10.   Boost Your Link Popularity – Again, by participating in several social media services actively, you’ll be promoting your site’s link in more places than you might initially imagine.  It’s a remarkably effective tool to use to help build up your link popularity.

 

Need help setting up your social media strategy?  At WSpider, we can help with practical expert advice or by managing the entire process for you—just drop us a line…

Are Web Directories Still Important?

Dating back to the early days of the web, the concept of web directories is more or less extinct among today’s web users. Human web users, that is.

Not to say that some folks don’t still find their way to Yahoo! Directory or the Open Directory and find some relevant, helpful information within—millions of people use the major league directories every month. But if you were to ask the average web user what exactly a web directory is, they’re likely to say, “Who knows!”

It’s really a shame that famous directories like Yahoo! Directory have pretty much gone by the wayside in pop culture (it’s how Yahoo! got their start, after all), but these days with the automatic use of search and the ever-increasing growth of social media, the Directories are no longer the first-stop place to visit for most human users of the web.

But this trend of declining importance simply doesn’t apply when it comes to non-human visitors to the directories. By non-human visitors, we’re talking about search engine spiders and other web crawler bots that are primarily used to find new websites to list and help determine how they should be ranked in the search listings. Spiders are frequent users of the directories—in fact, they depend on them.

For this reason in and of itself, getting listed with the directories is both advisable and worth your while if you’re looking to improve your website’s SEO factor. Directory listings are a major factor when it comes to rounding out a website’s link profile and building highly-respected backlinks.

The big directories are very important, of course. But also, you won’t want to overlook the smaller niche directories either. While they’re not likely to directly drive tons of traffic to your website themselves, they will help search engines determine your site’s focus and help significantly towards improving your all around link popularity.

It’s not always easy though. That’s why it really helps to have SEM experts like WSpider, who know the ins and outs of obtaining the best web directory listings results, to manage the listing process on your behalf. The bottom line is that the pros will generally be able to obtain better results and really expedite the process for you at the same time—saving you time and money in the long run.

The directories are still important. Why not put them to use for increasing your website’s traffic levels?

Three Steps To SEO-First Website Planning

SEO, the common term for search engine optimization, does not have to be as complicated as you might think it is. In fact, the basic premise of SEO is actually very simple in theory: build web pages that are topical and follow the suggestions offered by the search engines.

In reality, putting it all together and competing with others that are also doing things correctly according to the guidelines and suggestions is where it can become slightly more difficult to pull ahead in real world SEO practice. Today, let’s focus on one very important area of search optimization—building your site around SEO instead of trying to force SEO to work with an ill-suited site later on.

Step One: Better SEO-Focused Content Planning

Part of establishing the layout and structure of the website is aiming to present your information in a logical and usable way. It should flow well, it should read well, but it also must account for SEO. To do this SEO-focused planning with peak effectiveness, it really helps to research and understand keywords first. While your entire site should revolve around one topic or niche, each page should definitely drill down and focus on a unique sub topic that relates.

Step Two: Planning A Web Programming Solution That’s SEO-Ready

Just like planning content for SEO is an essential step, the same is true when planning the site’s programming structure. On some static-coded websites, it’s easy enough to go in and add the appropriate SEO code where necessary on a page by page code basis. However, with today’s more dynamic websites and CMS systems, it is vital to build in the option to edit Meta-data and other important SEO information on each and every individual page.

Step Three: Plan External SEO Aspects At The Same Time As On-Site Components

To take effective SEO full circle, there are many off-site areas that need to be planned and focused on too. In other words, what you do on your website as far as content, design, and web programming is certainly extremely important to your overall SEO effectiveness. But another very large piece of the pie is done off-site…things like link building, directory listings, and social media. In order to promote a site that truly hits the ground running in the optimization department, it’s a very good idea to devote a respectable portion of planning to off-site components ahead of time, just as you would for the design and content itself.

Here in San Jose at WSpider, we’re confident in our approach to integrate all aspects of SEO from the very conceptual stages of planning a new website. How can we help you?

3 Ways To Avoid Being Bamboozled By Your Web Designer

Planning that new website, but a little leery about some of the designer options you have available? It can be a scary thing—making a commitment to follow one web designer’s recommenced path versus the polar opposite proposed strategy of another can be quite daunting.

· Who’s right?

· Which option will look better?

· Which designer will produce better performing results?

Well, in the end, the only thing you can really do is weigh the options carefully and do your due diligence by checking a web designer’s past work, references, and really getting a good understanding of how the process will work. Here are a few more ways to avoid being bamboozled by your web designer…

One: Ask tons of questions upfront.

To the point of becoming slightly annoying even. Now this usually goes against intuition of being an easy person to do business with, and please don’t confuse it with the need to pester your designers perpetually throughout the project even after all of the terms have been agreed upon and everything would seem to be A-Okay. But by being a little bit annoying upfront, you can test the designer’s patience to see how well they answer questions and handle things when the going might get a little bit tough.

Two: Ask for numerically verifiable past results.

Any web designer can show you a few decent looking sites they’ve created recently. Don’t settle with this alone—ask to see some traffic stats on a handful of projects to see how the websites they build actually perform in the real world. The best looking site in the world is more or less worthless if it has no traffic producing capabilities. Ask for the numbers.

Three: Ask your designers what their system is.

There many great design software systems out there. Some truly excellent designers prefer to code by hand even. The bottom line is you want to get a feel that a designer has some kind of professional system in place that they’ve developed over the years. It doesn’t necessarily matter too much what the specific details are as much as it does to see if a designer is really efficient in the way they create websites. In other words, you might not want to be the guinea pig for the new software the web designer has just purchased and decided to start learning this week.

Now these are just 3 quick things to look for right off the bat. To really get a feel for what kind of service your web designer will provide you with, you’ve got to think about this one and make a good list to interview them with. Due diligence pays dividends!

Should I Use SEO Or PPC To Build Traffic To My Website?

Should I use SEO (search engine optimization) or PPC (pay per click advertising) to build traffic to my website? This is a really common question regarding a dilemma that seems to plague many decision makers trying to figure out just exactly what strategy will work best in promoting the website they are responsible for. And fortunately for all involved, the answer should be really straightforward.

You’d be crazy not to use both.

Really, it’s true. SEO and PPC work perfectly hand-in-hand towards creating a better balanced approach to growing your website’s targeted traffic stream. In some circles, this combined approach is called SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, but we won’t worry too much about the terminology right now; instead, let’s focus more on why it’s such a good idea to at least try both SEO and PPC together before limiting your decision to just one method or the other.

PPC excels with short term, long tail traffic.

The short term benefits of using PPC means you can start gaining traffic to your website within the hour with a simple campaign. No need to wait days, weeks, or months (like a good SEO campaign will take to begin being effective). So PPC is quick.

But perhaps even more importantly, PPC excels at attracting long tail search traffic extremely well and extremely affordably. What does this mean exactly? Well, if you’re bidding on a popular, high-competition keyword search like “vacations,” you’re just a needle in a very expensive haystack. But if you focus on a large well-selected group of long tail keywords like “Northern California spring vacation ideas,” you’re going to own the top results for such terms for just nickels per click.

The idea is that you purchase traffic to your site this way and then convert it into sales or profitable leads. Measure your ROI (return on investment) and track the search traffic you’re purchasing through PPC. Keep on purchasing the traffic for terms that produce a positive ROI. It’s that simple—you’d be crazy not to continue your PPC this way, even once SEO begins to kick in with its own full effect.

Speaking of which—SEO works wonders but takes more time.

That’s right. SEO done right will produce a remarkable amount of free targeted traffic. And this is definitely a really great thing—something you must pursue indeed. But don’t expect serious results in just days; instead it’s a better idea to focus on the long-term gains looking at a month by month picture when it comes to SEO.

And remember, even when SEO is delivering results like crazy, you’d be crazy not to invest some resources in high-ROI PPC. If nothing else, you could use the additional revenue generated to pump back into developing your long term SEO strategy. And one more thing—please know that while many of our competitors only promote one technique or another, here at WSpider, we’re here to help build high-performance search campaigns for our clients using an ideal balanced combination of both techniques.

Everyday Website Apps And Add-Ons Your Visitors Will Appreciate

Building that new website for your business or organization is probably a really good idea. It’s hard to get by without having a quality web presence these days, after all. You’ve probably given some serious thought and planning aptitude towards getting the major components of your new website right—you know, the things like what pages you’ll have, what you’ll say through the copywriting, and so on. But have you given much thought to the incidentals involved…the little extras that make your visitors’ experiences with your site overwhelmingly positive?

Here are a few easy add-ons that will make your visitors’ and customers’ lives a little bit easier while making your website more effective than ever…

Print-Friendly Option – This is really helpful when you happen to be presenting a bulk of information via your web pages that is likely to coax visitors to hit the print button. Instead of obliging them to print several too many pages of extra stuff that they don’t want (you know how this goes…), why not offer them a simple printer-friendly format link that allows them to print just the body of information they’re wanting a hard copy for. It’s good for your customers and the paper saved is a good thing to consider too in the green-sensitive world we live in today.

Social Networking Links – Make sure your visitors can click a quick little button on each and every page of your site to send it to their social networking profiles. This is a great way for visitors to interact with your site by sharing the content they like. It’s also a free way to grow some viral traffic for your new website. Easy enough, right?

Video Features – If you can swing it, a few well-produced videos placed strategically within your website can really take your site to the next level. With today’s readily-accessible video production technology, creating videos is simpler and more affordable than ever. And the real benefit is that visitors to your site really love videos—it’s an especially effective way to reach out to weary web users with the common case of information overload. Video content is simply easier to digest when compared to the daunting task of dredging through pages of written content.

These are just a few quick ideas to get you started. To really come up with an effective list of add-ons and website apps that will work best for your particular website and its market, browse around some of your competitors’ websites (those that are good, anyway) to help brainstorm a list of features that will be beneficial in your own case as well.

Need some suggestions? Feel free to give us a call here at WSpider if you’d like…we’re always happy to help!

Freelance Web Developers Vs. Professional Web Development Teams

Freelancing has really become super popular over that last several years for quite a few practical reasons. First of all, designers and programmers—the kind of “geeks” (they’re usually proud to call themselves a geek, after all)—are simply the kind of people that often like to work independently. But there are also some really incredible designers out there that much prefer the camaraderie of working in a small team approach to web development.

So the question is this: Should you choose a freelance designer or a professional web design team to crank out your next big website project?

If you’re looking for professional results with a good balance of efficiently, affordability, and superb design, you might just be better off working with a professional team of designers like WSpider instead of going the freelance contract route. Now obviously, we’re a little bit biased because we are proud of our web team design approach, but we’ll still try to be fair and reasonable to freelancers out there too.

Freelancers might do a fantastic job on a web design project…but do they really have the resources and depth of players to pull off the bench to really get the job done with a well-rounded game plan? Let’s face it…most of the time the freelance web designer is faced with doing the planning, the business end of the deal, the wire framing, the graphic design part of the project, and only then having to code and program the whole thing to work effectively and correctly.

It’s not an easy task no matter who’s doing the work—a professional team or a freelancer. But one thing is reasonably easy to discern. A web development team that includes incredibly knowledgeable experts all working in synergy together is more likely to provide a better balance finished product. No offence to the jack of all trades freelancer of course, but it’s just really difficult to be an expert at all different components of web development—especially when some are so creative, and then other parts of the job are at the opposite end of the spectrum.

The analytical mindset required to logically devise and implement masterful programming solutions is not the same creative side of the brain that puts together artful graphic design. The person that can work hours on end implementing SEO on the back end is not always the same person that’s really great at managing customer relationships. Of course, there are plenty of exceptions, but the point stands.

The moral of the story, so to speak, is that it just takes all different kinds of skills and ideas to make web development go around. By working with the WSpider endorsed team approach, getting balanced results is practically guaranteed.

A Few Online Trends Worth Paying Close Attention To

Are you up to date with the latest trends in web design and search technology? Sometimes it is not really worth paying too much attention to the latest trends; after all, they are just that—trends. But every now and then, something new comes up that really has sticking power. It just makes sense, or it is simply appealing and worth attempting to satisfy a trend demand.

Here are a few such trends that might be worth paying attention to as of late…

The Large Feature “Slider” In Web Design

We’re seeing this trend pop up more or less universally on all of the major name websites out there right now. All in all, it’s actually quite simple in concept anyway. A feature slider is pretty much just an oversized rotating image section on a home page of the site that’s loaded up with prepared graphical slides that usually use big catchy text alongside the image itself to draw visitors in or lead them to a desirable part of the site. It works well because it fits the “above the fold” philosophy and grabs attention through catchy design right when a visitor lands on a home page. The graphical feature slider trend is definitely here to stay for a while!

Going with jQuery Over Adobe Flash

All of the programmers out there will know exactly what this means and why, but for the rest of us—here’s the thing. Flash components have traditionally been used to spice things up a bit with web design, but are not always compatible with a wide variety of mobile device web browsers…or very functional with search engines, for that matter. jQuery is being used as another way to rotate images and add some degree of animation to the overall design of websites while being a little bit more favorable in situations where Flash can be a bit sticky. Here to stay? Probably so, but with the latest trend, HTML5, just around the corner, this is very quickly becoming a competitive market these days.

Location-Influenced Search Technology

The SEO world is experiencing some changes lately with the trend of improved, more robust location-based search results becoming more widespread in use. For certain search categories especially—such as product-specific searches and the like—you’ll notice some of the search engines are putting geographically local results first in the search results list. This is a big change when an ideally SEO’d web page not long ago would have ranked in the same top position no matter where in the world it was being searched from. This trend is intuitive, and makes pretty good sense as a helpful benefit for searchers. Count on this one being here to stay.

That’s it for today’s installation of trends worth following, but stay tuned here on the WSpider blog for future posts covering trends you should keep an eye on. Located here in the heart of Silicon Valley, WSpider is immersed in cutting edge web developments—we’ll always do our best to pick out what’s relevant and noteworthy and keep all of our readers up to speed!