CSS Float Trick

Do you ever have a list of items (such as a ul) in which each item is floating to make them appear side-by-side (an example is the list of sites at BlizzardDigital.org)? Tired of using a non-semantic, empty div after the ul to clear the items? A useful trick is to add float: left; to the ul itself. This fits the ul‘s box around its inner items. Without float specified, the ul‘s box does not wrap around its items at all, making everything on the page after it scoot up behind all the list items. Very annoying. The normal fix for this would be to make the following element clear, but this isn’t always desirable. Your options are probably to have an empty div after it specifically to clear it (yuck) or make the probably unrelated following element clear it (yuck also). Just float the containing element (in my example, a ul) and set its width to 100%. The width makes sure no one squeezes in on the sides and therefore no clearing is necessary.

Clear as mud, right? 🙂

Social Networking is Marketing

Can social media be used to market your company? Yes, print media and telemarketing are giving up a lot of ground to Internet marketing and social networking could be another nail in the coffin. Social media can be used for marketing, branding, and customer relations but is it really free? Not at all, anything that takes your time or an employee’s time is not free. You need to determine the cost and estimate the value in order to budget for this avenue of marketing.

The Twitter buzz: Here are some good starter tips right from the horse’s mouth, Twitter 101 a Special Guide. You can use Twitter to mingle and rub elbows, virtually. You can find out when people are talking about your company or products and services. You can respond to questions about your service and make new connections. You can provide a link to your Twitter account on your company website and blog and give customers a look at your personal side. In moderation you can use Twitter for SEO by linking to new product releases or blog posts but it should be a low percentage of your overall tweets. Twitter is not a great SEO tool, it’s Internet marketing.

Step back now and look at your business without the rose colored glasses. Are you really so big and popular that you need to watch for tweets about your company? Is monitoring Twitter going to improve your customer service? For small companies the answer is probably no so don’t buy in too deep. Stick with the things that will benefit you.
Do you really have something to offer, something to say, or something you can give away? If the answer is yes then start tweeting and building your social network. Spend a few hours per week building a network and offering something of value. Value may be found in humorous replies, interesting sub culture news, industry news, personal experience with a product, free samples, free work, or just be that person that lets others know someone is listening. You aren’t selling your services directly, you are marketing your company.
Remember, if your customers can’t get a reply to an email or a call back because you are too busy Tweeting then you have missed the point of Twitter.

We know Facebook is the cat’s meow for personal socializing but how is it for business? It’s not anywhere near as hot as Twitter for business but the water is warm. Facebook has a different set of rules for business accounts or pages. Should you set up a company page on Facebook? If you have the staff to use Twitter to its potential then you probably have the resources to maintain a company Facebook page so the answer is yes. If you are a small company and you are going to set up a facebook page and then neglect it as if setting it up was all you needed to do then no, you shouldn’t. If you have time to make new product or service announcements then it can be useful. Did you know you can run an ad campaign on Facebook?

Some other sites to consider are www.LinkedIn.com and www.MerchantCircle.com . Like Facebook, they will require some setting up and then maintenance but only occasional work is required. With both sites you need to build your connections and with MerchantCircle you can try adding coupons and get your customers to write reviews. That reminds me, Google Maps offers the ability to offer coupons and reviews too.

Blogging is probably the number one social media that can improve your visibility, build brand, keep customers informed, and it can be leveraged for search engine optimization. If you have a blog you should make it a unique host name like blog.[yourdomain].com or a unique domain name. I believe there is some value in your blog being a separate site rather than [yourdomain].com/blog. Don’t use free blog services for a company blog. You should treat your blog just like you do your company website and build something of value on a domain name that you own. Unlike Twitter where you will make connections almost immediately a blog requires marketing and SEO work the same as your company website. A blog has all of the marketing and social value of Twitter and Facebook and then some but it does require more work.

Should you use some of your advertising budget to advance your social networking? Social networking is marketing so you could justify this. You might want to take some of your print media budget and try hiring a copywriter to advance your blog until you have more time yourself or the staff to do it for you.

Email marketing, is it social networking? Yes, a newsletter is a very good example of social networking. Let people know what is new with your company, include customer success stories, contests or drawings, tutorials, you can even share videos. As long as it’s not all about a sale or laced with ads or buy now buttons then you are networking. If you are giving and not trying to sell then it’s networking. Like I said, networking is marketing.

That’s it, the basics. Smaller companies should not get caught up in the hype and neglect normal business operations. Do what you can now, grow your company and then you can increase the time you spend on social media when you have the time or staff to accomplish your goals.

Basic SEO For Everyone Chapter 3

[ Basic SEO: OneTwoThreeFourFive ]

As promised this will be about onpage and under the hood SEO basics. Starting at the top (of the html) we have the……… nope not the title, first let’s take a look at the Doctype. What does the Doctype have to do with SEO? Almost nothing but why not start out by telling the spiders what type of page you attempted to make and what type of code you are trying to write? It can’t hurt and might help them parse the page better. If you aren’t sure what the Doctype is then run over to the web standards authority and check it out and also read SEO and Validation.

OK, now the Title, what makes a good title? How is it used? The title will show in the title bar of most web browsers. There are not really any good statistics I’m aware of for how many people look at page titles when they are on your site but when they search, they are generally served your title in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). We also know that Google, Yahoo, and Bing look at and put enough weight on your page title that it really matters. You can change your page title and only your page title and watch some of your search positions change, that’s how important the title is. If that’s true then why not SPAM the title? Simple, if I need a jack and the search results at position 4 is Jack : Lift : Heavy : Duty : Ultimate : Hydraulic and the position 5 result is The Ultimate Heavy Duty Hydraulic Jack by the JackMan then which one do you think gets more clicks? Another reason to make good titles is because the algorithms are very good at detecting SPAM and chances are you will do more harm than good if you just create stuffed titles. Moving on let’s decide what the page is about and craft a good title for humans and bots. For humans we need to strive for a complete sentence that makes sense and draws attention or demands action. Pick the topic of the page and try to get the main keywords or phrase in the first half of the title. Wow! All that in less than 70 characters including spaces, good luck. Good titles can be  a challenge but you will be rewarded for your effort. Try it, pick a product or service and try creating a title that would make you click it. After all, that is the goal, we want clicks because clicks equal traffic.

What about the page description meta tag? The search engines will most likely use your description to form the SERP description. Don’t copy the title, don’t use special characters. Include the main keywords or phrase for the page content. There is no penalty per se for a short description but you might be missing out on some keyword opportunities. Too little content could get a bot generated description that misses the point of your page. Take the opportunity to sell your product, service, or idea and use between 30 and 150 characters as a guideline.

The once powerful and now dusty and often forgotten keyword meta tag can still be useful so don’t completely neglect it. Put in your secondary keywords and key phrases, the ones that aren’t in your title and description. Limit duplicate words in phrases to 3. You can even include common typos. You can use up to 500 characters as a guideline but that’s probably more time than it deserves. I can’t tell you what search engine spyders still look at the keywords meta but there is some indication that Bing (Formerly MSN – Live Search) will grade your keywords but the weight is probably very low.

Well, I’m out of time so we will get to heading element, page content and copy writing in the next chapter.

SEO and Validation

I was reading The Truth About Validation and I felt the need to respond. First off, Tim makes some valid points but only if the article is renamed “The Truth About Validation and SEO”. I agree, if a web developer tells you that you can’t be much of an SEO if you don’t write valid code then that developer is a clown and should be ignored. If they are just saying that you are not a valid coder then that would be true. From a coder’s point of view they could go as far as saying that you are a hack, would they be wrong? That said, there are many other reasons to write valid code.  Some of the best SEO gods, gurus, evangelists, provide detailed change requests to web designers and this is often preferred on a valid site so the SEO does not break the valid code. Maybe SEO specialists should inform the client that there is such a thing as validation and let them decide. It’s similar to an auto mechanic letting the customer decide if they want a factory replacement part or an aftermarket part, is it worth the extra money? Determining that invalid pages are ranked high for certain terms does not tell the complete story but it does tell most of the story. What if a search bot reaches a certain point on a page that is so invalid it stops parsing? At that point the rest of your content would be ignored. What if the next algo revision applies more weight to valid code or is modified so that it halts when a missing end tag is encountered (is Bing already doing this)? You would have partial page results in the index which means you have wasted copy.  More important is the fact that invalid code might not render properly on the next update to your audience’s preferred browser. At some point the invalid code will probably rear its ugly head and then you will need to pay the piper to write valid code, or at least new code, so why not let the coders get paid for what they do?

We could argue that having a shade tree mechanic use bailing wire to fix a dragging muffler will allow you to use the car again but for how long? Yes it will cost more money to order the new muffler hanger and have a muffler shop install it properly but when you hit that big speed bump at the grocery store which one do you think will hold up? At that point did it really cost more money to have it done right?

I agree if you charge someone to do SEO work and you don’t write valid code then you aren’t ripping them off. What if you are upfront and tell them, directly, I am going to make the changes using invalid code, will they care? Should they have a choice or is OK to leave them in the dark since it is to your advantage?

One point Tim implied that I disagree with is that it’s more expensive to work on valid sites. It is much easier to work on a properly designed CSS and XHTML site than a hacked, table infested, monstrosity. We charge a lot more, well actually, we usually require a complete redesign before we start working on a hacked site but this is strictly related to design work, not SEO. Let me repeat here that I agree that validation has little to do with SEO if anything. I say if anything because we don’t know if any search engines pay greater weight to valid code and there can be a case made for a parser getting stuck or stopping after a bad or missing tag. Maybe not Google but can we guarantee this won’t happen with any search engine?

I give the thumbs up to valid code because without validation then you have to set some other standard for when the code is acceptable. It would be much more difficult to create a list of what code is bad or invalid but acceptable. Why not follow the standards that are used to design every web browser?

I also read “source code validation common sense” over at SEOBook by Aaron Wall. Wow! He really goes off and I don’t blame him but I have never personally heard a good web designer that is proud of his ability and trade claim that validation is an integral part of SEO work. I say ignore those monkeys but let the design experts maintain their status of elite, or cream of the crop, by writing valid code and proving they are at the top of their game just as you are at the top of yours. Here are some of the top reasons to validate.

added: I would be considered a hack when it comes to XHTML and CSS. If I perform onpage SEO I check to see if the client site is valid. If it is then I make sure it’s valid when I finish. Often I find errors that I have caused and then I have to employ someone from our design team to fix it. I have been known to render this site invalid just by blogging 🙂

Basic SEO For Everyone Chapter 2

[ Basic SEO: OneTwoThreeFourFive ]

In Basic SEO Chapter 1 I discussed domain name age and registration as well as redirects. Now let’s take a step back for those that don’t have a domain name yet. What should it be? Some suggestions I see are company name, company name padded with a keyword or phrase, and keywords separated by dashes. My personal preference is your “real” business name for a main site and NO dashes. It looks more professional, it helps brand your company and you don’t lose traffic to a competitor because a prospect forgets to include the dash. As of this writing there is proof that search engines give extra weight to words in a domain name but there are other ways to rank for keywords so why choose a name for SEO reasons only? A good example for not using your company name would be a company that sells widgets, if they can afford a name like widgets.com then this could be very beneficial for search and most important it is easy for customers to remember. Good luck with finding a single word domain, the days of inexpensive common word names are long gone with the exception of a few non-DotCom names. If you are planning a site that is not for promoting a business entity then you might want to use keywords for your domain name. I suggest trying to pad it with local terms like the city or state you are targeting and the items or service you will be promoting. If you use dashes I would limit it to one. If you are buying a personal domain name try to get your first and last name.

What top level domain should you purchase .com .org .net .us ? If you are planning a business site then you should try to purchase DotCom. If you advertise your domain name or tell it to people there is a very good chance by the time they try to find you on the net they will type it as a DotCom even if you told them it was DotNet. They will also leave out the dashes so beware when choosing a name. If you buy a DotNet it’s probably because the DotCom was taken so you are automatically sending the DotCom domain owner traffic just by the nature of how people think and browse. The same is true with a dashed domain name. Your best choice is a name that you can secure the DotCom and the DotNet for.

Let’s move on to URLs (file and path names). Should you pad them with keywords? Simple answer, yes. Don’t go all out spamfest but it does help with search and navigation if your primary topic is in the URL. Try not to use more than two dashes. Keeping it less spammy is future looking in case the natural search stops giving credit for stuffed URLs. It is definitely a turn off for some visitors that associate the tactic with spammers so I advise against using more than two dashes. When creating URLs make sure you like them even if there was no search benefit. Does it provide value to the user or your sitemap?

Should you use an underscore in a URL? Almost always the answer is no. Unless you use a term that requires an underscore naturally then you are better served by using dashes.

That’s it for Chapter 2. Be sure to tune in for Chapter 3 where I start talking about your titles, description, and keywords.