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NBD News
November 23, 2008

New for November: a Contest!

That's right folks! In place of my News & Notes section, this month we have the first-ever NBD News contest. In the regular sections, you'll find: Shannon Wilkinson as our Featured Client, an informative What's Next about the important topic of search engine optimization (SEO), and a fun Explainer about Avatars and Gravatars.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Featured Client: Shannon Wilkinson

Shannon Wilkinson is a life coach in Portland, Oregon. She first contacted me in Fall 2006 and we put together a site (including a blog) promoting her services. Shannon has been proactive about evolving and improving her site. In the past few months, we have:

This is a great approach to website ownership. Obviously, I love having the ongoing business. But more than that, I love it when a client's site successful, and I think continual maintenance is a part of that. Besides keeping features and content fresh, it also allows me to keep the back-end up-to-date, with the latest version of the CMS, new CSS techniques, and support for new browsers.

It also drives me to keep learning. In fact, Shannon's recent query about SEO led me to do quite a bit of research on the topic, and begin integrating some of the techniques into client websites. 

What's Next: SEO

 Many people will find your site through a friend's recommendation, a link on another site, or some form of advertising. But you also want people to find you via Google or other search engines, so it's helpful to use some Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, techniques on your site. SEO should be factored in to all stages of web development: content generation, site building, and ongoing maintenance. SEO in the site-building phase, consisting mostly of coding to best-practices I have long adhered to, is up to the web designer, so let's take a look at the two parts that are the site owner's responsibility.

Content generation

When writing content for your site, keep in mind what search terms people might be using to look for you or your services, and use those words and phrases throughout your site text (while keeping it informative and succinct). Google Adwords has a great tool, meant to help choose keywords for online advertising, that you can use to identify keywords related to your site, and see the search volume for each (and here is a helpful post on how to use it). Employ these key words and phrases in the headings of your document, as headings may carry more weight with search engines.

You should also write up a short (150 char.) description and a set of keywords/phrases for each page on your site. These items, part of the "meta data" for each page, aren't visible to your site's visitors, but are used by search engines. Be sure to proofread everything for grammar and spelling.

An excellent resource about writing for the web is copyblogger.com, and I have posts about writing descriptions and picking keywords.

Ongoing maintenance

Keep up to date on keyword search trends. and on the terms people use to find you (using Google Analytics stats), and refine your content and metadata accordingly. Google Trends is another tool that can help you track the popularity of various keywords and phrases. Also, use internal linking to point users to other pages on your site that may be of interest to them. 

Conclusion

Big sites invest vast sums in search engine optimization, but you can accomplish a lot with a little research and well-written content.

Explainer: Avatars, Gravatars

What the heck is an avatar? In short, it's an icon or visual signature -- a little symbol of your online self. It can be anything from your photo to an abstract design (mine, as displayed on the Textpattern forum, is at right). Many forums and sites that accept comments or other user input use avatars to help identify participants. Your avatar can be consistent across websites, making your contributions more recognizable. However, it's pretty annoying to keep adding your avatar to every forum and blog you comment on, and that's where Gravatars, or Globally Recognized avatars come in. Gravatar.com is a service that allows you to upload a single avatar to associate with your email address. Then, on any website that hooks into the Gravatar database, your avatar is automatically added. Neat! If you're interested in adding Gravatars to your blog, drop me a line! Or, maybe you just want a cool avatar for yourself, in which case you should...

...Enter the NBD News Contest!

The prize for the first ever NBD News contest is an Avatar created just for you, set up in your own Gravatar account. It could be based on your company logo, your website colors, your photo...anything you can fit in a 60-pixel square.

To enter, all you need to do is leave a (somewhat substantive) comment or question on any post on my blog. I will shuffle the comments and pick one at random.