A Presumption of Guilt

While British and American Jurisprudence is based on a presumption of innocence there are a number of systems which are not.

If you have an internet presence in which you market your services or products, you should consider your website to be presumed to be difficult to use until proven otherwise.

Stoney deGeyter wrote an article entitled "Are You Guilty of Crimes Against Usability? Let the Jury Decide"

Ranking Magic

(Next Week. there will only be two articles.)

Actually, there is really nothing magical about it - but sometimes you have to perform a transformation "trick."

You have to cease to be a business marketer and transform into Internet Publishing Man (or woman.)

Able to leap across the continent in a single click. Faster than a dialing cell phone. Able to provide research information as if by mind reading. Okay, the algorithms on the Search Engine had a little to do with that last one.

Sarah Worsham wrote "Think Like A Publisher, not a marketer."

Without Vitality, there is no Viability

In mid-twentieth century Sci-Fi flicks, the actor who supplied the voice for a robot would attempt to speak without inflection and without imbuing his/her diction with any emotion. (Later films tended to feature robotic characters with personality.)

One of the problems with many business blogs, especially the blogs of older corporations, is that the textual content is written to sound objective or journalistic.

Most successful business blogs are very opinionated and written from an editorial standpoint rather than a journalistic standpoint. Additionally, the successful blog's opinions are not focused on the services or products of the business which publishes the blog but rather on expressing the viewpoint of the business concerning other industry related developments or current events.

The successful blog also focuses on providing content which is useful for the reader but which is not merely a rehash of something which has been produced elsewhere.

The question of how to make a blog sound unique and imbue it with a consistent persona is one with which some companies have to struggle.

Dave Taylor wrote an article entitled "How To Write With a Distinctive Voice."

Lower Your Google Bounce Rate

One of the smart technologies which Google now incorporates into its search engines measures how dissatisfied your website visitor is when he or she first lands on your web page. (If you are unfamiliar with this topic, see Google's Bounce Rate explanation.)

Michael Fleischner wrote an article detailing Seven Tactics for improving the amount of time that visitors spend on your web site.

Karon rejects an SEO inquiry

Too many entrepreneurs and corporations think that they know what causes ranking in search engines. Most of the time, they are wrong.

Quick Note to anyone who wants good search engine ranking: Pleasing the site visitor is the modern solution to SE ranking. Keyword Density is NOT!

Karon Thackston wrote: "Please Don't Do This."

Tell it like it is, Karon - and everyone else - LISTEN up.

How is a Stopwatch like crude SEO

I love this quote from today's article.

What gets measured, gets done.

And guess what, when the thing that you measure does not improve your ROI, wonders of wonders those things which get done are also not the things that improve your ROI.

Listen Up - If you measure conversions, your profits go up. If you measure only site arrivals, your profits go down.

Bill Hogg wrote "Avis And Their Three Minute Promise."

If you don't understand why Avis is making a mistake, please read the article. And if you do understand why Avis is making a mistake, then why are you just measuring SE clicks?

Avis And Their Three Minute Promise.

HIgh Ranking Persuasion

The purpose of web copy is to persuade humans!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ranking is not the purpose, ranking is a tactic. Copy which makes ranking the main priority is self-defeating.

But there is a way to do SEO correctly. But it takes a writer who can write persuasive copy. Many SEO people couldn't persuade a child to eat candy!

Karon Thackston wrote an excellent article showing the difference between good web copy and SEO garbage. It is entitled "Stop the Slaughter of Innocent Copy."

You're Website is Up To Bat. Did it Get A Hit?

SEO thinks that the goal of SEM is getting a click.

It isn't. The Goal of SEM is satisfying the Visitor when he first arrives.

When a Search Engine user clicks a link on the Search Engine page for your webpage, its time for your website to step up to the plate. Will the batter, your website get a hit? Will it be a base hit or a triple or a home run? Or will your website STRIKE OUT?

If the visitor from the search engine looks at the link's landing page on your site and decides that this is NOT what he was looking for, then your website, STRUCK OUT! If the visitor decides to click on a link, that is a base hit.

What makes the difference between a STRIKE OUT and a Base Hit?

Content!!!!!!!

Copy which is Keyword loaded is probably going to STRIKE OUT! Copy which is focused on persuading the user may get a hit.

Maki wrote an article on how to reduce the number of visitors who leave your landing page without looking at any other content.

Developing a successful Local website

Business Owners whose market is geographically limited often think that only SEO can get them the exposure in local search that is necessary to be found. However, just as with any other website ranking in Search Engines is not limited to the artificial sounding copy which many SEO firms produce.

(In an upcoming post on this website, I will present an article from a copy writer whose use of keywords is so deft and subtle that it does not interfere with the reader. I once had to read a paragraph twice that she had written to find the second occurrence of the key phrase that she was embedding!)

John Jantsch wrote an article in which he shows a real life case study of a company whose Search Engine ranking was achieved by concentrating on Content, Links and HTML coding.