Barbara Saul and what she gets up to most days!

Musings and opinions around business and WordPress

Everything within 3 clicks

Firstly, I am making the leap and using the word “click” without being concerned that it deters those visitors who do not “click”. By now we all know that click equates to “follow the link by your preferred means”. I will explore that on Birds on the Blog to see what a wider audience (no offence!) thinks too, but for now…

25 Years of Apple Mouse Evolution
Image by raneko via Flickr

I was chatting with a long-standing client and realised that my assumption that everything on a website is available within 3 clicks perhaps needs a mention. For so long usability has been essential to any website I work with that I forget to mention something that is to me fundamental.

So it’s worth reminding ourselves that on any website the information that your visitor wants should be available within 3 clicks.

Now with my preferred method of building websites these days, WordPress, that is even easier – we can use categories and even tags to assist with the ease of usability. But even so, a little planning can make a huge difference to your visitor’s experience. And that matters – well it does if you want something from said visitors. Keeping It Simple still rules!

Finding Google Instant…

So Google have evolved their search again, to speed up our online surfing and searching, and there is some buzz about what it may mean for the SEO geeks and their clients, and what it actually means for us searchers.

The thing is, I could not see a difference to what was happening when I searched this morning – either when logged in to my Google account (so using iGoogle) or not.

So when my friend and colleague, Sarah Arrow, said she was investigating it I knew that she would find out what all the fuss is about in real terms. There follows an excerpt of our Skype chat…

Babs: I can’t see any difference, tbh
Babs: probably doing it wrong
Babs Saul: (chuckle)
Sarah: lol
Sarah: same here
Babs: but what happens, exactly. when I do a search it’s been bringing up suggested words for a while now
Babs: is that it or is it supposed to do something more
Sarah: am not totally convinced it is a change at all
Babs: me either
Babs: ah – http://www.google.co.uk/instant/
Babs: it’s for those signed in
Babs: perhaps an “in a nutshell” post – will see if can do that
Babs: we could blog this discussion
Babs: cos if we don’t get it, a lot of others won’t either
Sarah: we could
Babs Saul: nope – still don’t “get it” – are results supposed to show up before i finish typing?
Sarah: I think so
Babs: needs a video to show what should happen
Babs: wonder if my connection is too slow for it
Sarah: yes, in need of a video
Babs: as to what it means for SEO pov, need to let it shake down a bit, methinks
Sarah: hmm, will look around to see if anyone is getting their knickers in a twist over it, if they are, then its worth looking into more

Babs: aha – it’s doing it now
Sarah: it is? and what is it doing?
Babs: well it was but now i’ve lost it again
Sarah: (rofl)

Ok – so you get the idea. And once I had found this wondrous new toy, I did a quick screencast in case that’s useful for anyone else!

The nutshell – you need to be logged in to your Google account for it to work, and using the Classic Home view. And you can switch it off.

Here is the blog post by Graham Jones that I refer to – he writes about and considers the psychology of the Internet – way over my head!

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Will you buy without the BS? Awesome (stop laughing)

As the WordPress Blogmistress grows gently, all the while with none of this “Get your Kick-Ass WordPress Website Here!” or suchlike, I constantly see otherwise quite sane and personable people selling in what I call the “Awesome Rock Star” way. You know what I mean – every blog post or article is “7 ways to knock the competition into next Tuesday” or “87 secrets that you cannot ignore”. It’s only if I respect the writer, or if someone I respect suggests I take a look, will I bother. I hate that kind of marketing with a passion!

But! People don’t buy from the nice guys (or girls), or not many of you. It seems that we all do need to be slapped in the face with immediate “pain” or easy rewards for us to even bother reading something these days. Our time is precious so we need to know immediately what we’re getting.

Heavy Metal 2000
Image via Wikipedia

So, do I have to use **** words in my blog posts for you to take notice? It seems that I’d sell more if I did, and if I added one of those sign-up boxes that suddenly flits across the screen or rises from below, or pops up when you’re just about to read (I hate these too – can you tell?). It’s true – my colleagues have tested it – they work. Having a gentle, discreet sign-up option in the sidebar, timidly awaiting your attention should you happen to glance that way is useless from a marketing point of view. You want it to jump in front of you and tempt you with an irresistible “kick-ass” tagline.

And if I want to buy my little smallholding in a few years, I need to stop trying to beat them with my holier than thou approach and just get on with it! Even one of my heroes, Ian Lurie, is doing it – I’ve noticed, Ian – including a number in your blog post titles with snappy “pay attention” topics.

So watch out for my awesomeness – I’m going to rock your world!

(really – stop laughing now!)

Babs

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Get back here and play, you SEO marketeers, you

Last Thursday was my day for writing, so any avenue for procrastination was of course explored…

Car salesmen
Image by hartboy via Flickr

Imagine my devilish delight when an email landed in the Blogmistress inbox suggesting that the sender could get me onto the first page of Google.

It was too tempting to see just what they had in mind, so I politely (really) replied asking which terms they suggested I be on page one for, and what their methods might entail.

Now of course this is highly unfair – obviously no research had been done into an initial email – this firm, and many others, will simply send blanket emails and enough people must reply wanting to genuinely know more about the service, rather than want to play, but I could not resist. The Blogmistress is already on page one for the search term of choice, WordPress Help, and the strategies are in place to hold that and build on any others.

What bothers me about the SEOs emailing companies and individuals is that too often, too many of them only look at one aspect of Internet marketing for the business they’re selling “at”. I have a client with whom I’ve worked for years now, in a hugely competitive market, and he is constantly called and emailed with offers to get him to the top of the search engines in the hope that one of them will have the magic solution. What they don’t know is that one such firm had a go at this a while back by simply adding 100 pages to the website, all with duplicate content except for the poorly researched keywords. I know this did not do his website any favours on several levels and it certainly did not bring more customers. Sigh.

Anyway – they never replied, bless them. Perhaps a little research was then carried out and they decided that perhaps I was being a bit of a troll (shame on me). Or they’re too busy with genuine enquiries who are biting their hands off to do what they promise. Oh dear…

/rant

Babs

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Updating Facebook from Twitter – selectively!

Just a quick post for those of you who want to select which of your Twitter updates then update your Facebook status.  Updating from Twitter with everything is simple to do, but most of us, especially if we use Twitter and Facebook for different things, should be more selective!

A young man in Oxford, Andy Young, has created the Selective Twitter application in Facebook. It’s very straightforward to set up and will result in your Facebook perhaps looking less frantic, making more sense to your friends there, and probably not losing some!

It’s all very straightforward, hence the lack of step by step notes here – thanks to Andy – you can follow him here http://twitter.com/andyy

Have fun!