Web Design & SEO Blog, Inverness Blogs

And so after wrapping up work for today, it leaves us to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and all the very best for 2012!

Here’s the e-card we sent to clients and friends for your enjoyment as well!

Okay so this post will be a rant and hopefully quite a short rant.

I’ve been doing a spot of link building tonight for our own business – it always happens late at night well after it’s even feasible to work on client websites!

I was focussing on our website hosting services and came across a problem, which I have seen in so many other arenas – sites make you register. Most want at least the following from you for a most basic interaction:-

• E-mail Address
• Your Name

Some even go so far as to require an actual address and maybe a phone number. Why? Why do they want this volume of data. I can tell you they won’t get more money out of me because I’m annoyed we have have had to give over some information.

So Why Do Sites Make You Register?

I don’t have huge amounts of evidence, but experience indicates the following potential reasons:

• The ability to send you e-mail by a clause in their ‘Terms and Conditions’ which you almost certainly won’t read
• Control: sites that think they have something worth giving your personal details for will convince you that’s the case so they can control (and monitor) access to their content
• Data is valuable: the more data a site can get on you the more it can analyse user behaviour, sales patterns, geographical regions and more which is powerful for marketing and sales

No doubt there are more and I am going to open this post for feedback on your experiences and opinions on the matter. So what can we begin to conclude?

A Lesson from Cart Abandonment

Cart Abandonment has been linked to forced registration, which is why when I reworked Harris Tweed Gifts seller, Hillcraft of Harris we removed the necessity for registration and guess what – we got sales!

I feel a lesson can be learned here – unless registration is absolutely necessary, don’t make people register! People who have freedom are likely to be happier with your offering, may be more likely to buy, interact and share your content.

And those verbs are much more useful and give a greater return than ‘register’, so let’s not enforce it anymore, eh?

Open to the Floor

I have purposefully left some things unsaid to get some feedback, which can be included in the post itself if useful – so why do you think sites force you to register and how can we change the ‘registration culture’ we have?

Comments Received

• @RootsWebSol – making people register is terrible for accessibility. most sites that u register for are just building a list to sell to.
• @AudreysCat – interesting – good points – but as I’d have to leave my email to comment….I’m commenting here instead…
• Very valid point. As a result I have removed the necessity to provide e-mail address on this blog. I hadn’t spotted that in the settings and ensures I’m ‘practicing what I preach’ – so thank you.

Secure Socket Layering (SSL)

Google have announced changes to its privacy for users of personalised search. The main points appear to be

• SSL (Secure Socket Layering), used to encrypt data sent over the Internet, will be turned on by default for Google.com users and for logged in users.
• Google Analytics will no longer show for this group of people which search terms they entered to find a website.
• Analytics will show that an organic search through Google resulted in a visit
• As @yoast points out if you’re buying Adwords space you will still get the data.

So what does this actually mean and should we get too excited about it? Well we got excited about Google Instant Previews, saying that would cause havoc with SEO and not a lot changed. And I suspect the same will apply here. We need to keep things in perspective:-

• The search terms concealed will only relate to a relatively small percentage of results – .com searches for users who are logged in, or .com users who have purposefully chosen to use the SSL version of search.
• Google Webmaster Tools will still show the search data, which can be imported into Google Analytics if you are an authorised administrator of both for that site
• Here in the UK it should have minimal impact at least for now. I have asked @mattcutts if a UK roll-out has a timeline, I will wait to see if we get an answer

Some may cry that this will destroy SEO efforts, as has happened on numerous occasions, but the principles of Google SEO will still be the same – quality content organised around relevant keywords, which is shareable, naturally linkable and gets some social media buzz. You can still measure success of keywords and visitors from search in general, which is a see KPI of SEO.

Although I agree with Yoast that it is not right if privacy is genuinely the motivator for Google that advertisers can get the data but non-payers can’t, I don’t think this will be as drastic as some may be making out.

But as with everything in SEO, we wait and see. What’s your opinion and where do you think this could lead?

Here is an edited version of the exciting news we sent out to clients and friends of mOxby Design on Monday!

To friends, clients and contacts of mOxby Design,

We’re going through a bit of a change at the moment at mOxby Design, and are currently in the process of packing up our home office, along with our home, as we are moving!

In five weeks time, the end of October, we are relocating ourselves and the business to Inverness in Scotland.

We’re moving for a number of reasons, both personal and business related, but wanted to let you all know way ahead of time so that you can speak to us about it directly.

For clients local to Peterborough, we will still be very much available on the telephone, e-mail and we will be more available on Skype from November too.

Due to family commitments we will be visiting the Lincoln/Peterborough area periodically and therefore will also use this time to arrange see clients and friends of the business.

We look forward to working for you in the beautiful Scottish highlands, and hearing from you in the near future.

So… moving to Inverness!

There is much work and packing to do over the next month, but we can assure you the same quality of service, web design and SEO our clients are used to. Please, if you have any questions please get in touch and we would be more than happy to answer your queries.

This week, I attended a networking event at Stamford, not far from Peterborough. It is a group I periodically pop along to and meet some great new people, some with their own business and some part of larger organisations or support networks.

You get about a minute to introduce yourself and your business and then have time just to get alongside people, make some new connections, potentially some new clients. It was during one of the two chatting sessions that I spoke with a lady about SEO services. Her observation of me was that I seemed to think more technically or analytically about search engines and how they work. Which made me think tonight – is SEO too technical, or have people allowed it to appear so?

There are technical elements

Considering search engines use an algorithm (basically a stupidly complicated set of calculation with over 200 different ranking influences) to decide how great your content is compared to others, I’m afraid there is a fair amount of maths and analysis to do. From information architecture (how your site’s content is structured) to competitor analysis, there are numbers to deal with.

Something as apparently simple as ‘link building’ can appear more technical as it’s not just about getting a load of links, but harnessing good quality, authoritative websites to get them to link to you – understanding authority is partially down to statistics.

And of course in order to find out what phrases you want to rank for you need to do keyword research, may with Google Adwords, for a while, or the Google Keyword Tool, where you look at search volume and competition – all displayed in numbers.

So SEO can be very technical, with understanding statistics and maths underlying it. But that’s only part of the picture.

SEO Can Be Very Natural

The true aim of SEO should be to make better content rank higher in the search engines for terms that are relevant to that content. But it’s not just about rankings. You want traffic to your website, and people (traffic is impersonal, remember you’re dealing with real people, really typing stuff into search engines) who you would love to fill out a contact form, make a telephone call or buy something from you.

In the age of the Internet, I believe we risk losing the ability to develop good customer relationships that go beyond the monetary transactions. So here’s a few tips.

1. Provide Good, Sharable Content – people will begin to respect you if you show you know what you’re on about. Make that content easily sharable
2. Don’t write content purely for SEO or for links – this just disrespect people’s intelligence and does not provide actual useful content.
3. Get involved in community – don’t just go after people to make them link to you or to add you as a Facebook friend or follow you on Twitter. Get involved with people, share opinions and content. Link to someone without asking them to do likewise.
4. Remember Social Media is ‘Social’ – today’s Whiteboard Friday at seoMoz shows you can build links with twitter – and if you listen carefully, it works because you develop relationship first and not just to get a link – but to be genuinely helpful now and in the future.

Holistic SEO

These are only a few points, but to do SEO effectively, you need to use the data, most definitely. But it’s bigger than that – you need to see the bigger picture and also question your own aims for your website, but get out there and be human, not some sort of ranking machine!