| LED Digest 2530: Listen To Your Visitors |
|
|
|
================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom www.GetWebContent.com/LED : the LED's Key Sponsor The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. November 7, 2007 Issue no. 2530 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= <Moderator Comment> ~ Quickies --== Stop Supporting IE 6? ==-- ~ Lisa Hephner "As with many decisions about your website, listen to your visitors..." ~ Mark J. Welch "This seems like a no-brainer to me." ~ Shel Horowitz "I get very annoyed at sites that are unfriendly to printing." --== Usability Comes Before SEO ==-- ~ Shari Thurow "You see, I think pretty much everyone is confused." ~ Dirk Johnson "...it takes no experience whatsoever to call oneself an SEO consultant." --== Social Media - What's the Point? ==-- ~ Alex Hughart "...am I diluting the whole thing by going too broad?" ======== CONTINUING =============================== <Moderator Comment> Just a few quickies today. 1) Halloween's over, but the fun continues. Ever wondered what it's like to work with Bruce Clay? Wonder no longer: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bruceclay/1809795538/ . Check out some of the other get-ups too... my fave is definitely Lisa Barone: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bruceclay/1808950773/ 2) One of my favorite new finds is the Marketing Piranha blog by fellow LEDer Thomas Schmitz: http://www.marketingpiranha.com/blog/ . Informed, useful stuff can be found here - although it's still new and yet to fill out. Looking forward to more great stuff, check out this post to see what I mean: How The Golden Apple Killed the SEO Goose http://www.marketingpiranha.com/blog/how-the-golden-apple-killed... 3) One of the things I'm doing with the SEM 2.0 list is a weekly topic. Check out this one, I'd love to hear your input: Getting Too Satisfied with PPC Campaigns http://groups.google.com/group/SEM2/msg/412d094204f6d608 -adam --------------------- From: Lisa Hephner Subject: Browsers > ... what would you guys do? Demand an IE6 work-around from > the programmer? Tell the clients to get out of the '90s and come > to terms with today's Internet? Continue creating printer-friendly > pages and just charge clients more in the future, if they want their > pages printable? - Beth Ann Earle, LED Digest 2528 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1942/190/ I've run into this issue several times before, both from a website standpoint re browsers, and from a software driver support standpoint re Operating Systems. Everyone has an opinion about what % of users, and what % of their audience, uses a particular browser or OS, and which one they should support. The best way to answer the questions is to look at your web logs. They can tell you exactly what percentage of your audience uses a particular browser and a particular operating system. If you find that a substantial percentage of your users are on IE6, then definitely demand that your site be fully compatible. If you find that 90% of your users are on FireFox, then you have a different decision entirely. As with many decisions about your website, listen to your visitors (often as translated via web log data), and the correct decision will present itself -- as well as silence those people who pressure you to make decisions based on some dubious statistic. Lisa Hephner www.paysimple.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Mark J. Welch Subject: Browsers Beth Ann Earle reports that her web-development team is suggesting that she insult all the people who use the single most popular browser in the world (IE6) by telling them they need to upgrade to IE7, and refusing to let them print pages unless they do so. I think my restatement of her question makes my answer clear: absolutely not! If IE6 had dropped to 5% of users, perhaps things would be different. If the upgrade were very minor, maybe I'd support it. But IE7 is a major upgrade involving a fairly significant change to the user interface (tabbed browsing) and requires enough computing power Beth Ann's own team admits that 5% of users can't upgrade. A lot of people are uncomfortable upgrading; my wife has refused to upgrade to IE7 because her 3-year-old computer is already running so slowly that she fears any change (but last week she bought a new PC which came with Windows Vista, so she'll be making the switch anyway). This seems like a no-brainer to me. The #1 browser used by her visitors is IE6 (35% of her visitors); she needs to serve those customers, not insult them. Mark J. Welch http://www.MarkWelch.com/ -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Shel Horowitz Subject: Browsers It's past my bedtime and I'm going to sound cranky -- but I couldn't let this one wait until morning. it hits on too many of my pet peeves at once. > 1. only 5% of computers in the world can't handle IE7 > 2. we should stop supporting IE6 As you've already discovered, your guy is very, very wrong. Among other issues, I don't believe there has been a version of IE for Mac since 5.2. That's a heckofalot of alienated users-and the percentage who will ever use an emulator just to use the browser of your convenience is not going to be a large number. > 3. ... put some coding on all our CSS-based sites > that, upon detecting an IE6 browser, throws up some > wording telling the user to get with the program and upgrade... Tell him to get a clue. Annoying customers is not the way to increase profit. I'd prove the point by sending you an e-copy of my book Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, but I wouldn't trust someone with that attitude to honor the copyright in my intellectual property. > For the time being, we're putting a "print" button > on each page of the CSS-based sites that have > to be "printable". At 50 years old, I may be a different generation than you. But I can tell you that I have demanded a refund on e-books that wouldn't print, that I print frequently from the web, that my eyes get waaay tired staring at the screen -- and that if any programmer turned in a website that couldn't be printed, I'd immediately stop the check. I get very annoyed at sites that are unfriendly to printing. I want to be able to load one page, print the entire article, and not discover that it cut off after 300 words, or that it shrank the type to 4 points, or that it had a toner-eating dark background or four pages of useless clutter below the article. And yes, these experiences skew my perception of whom I'd like to do business with. Shel Horowitz, award-wining author, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First http://www.principledprofit.com ========= Begin Sponsor Message ========= Who *DID* Put The Jolly In Ol' St Nick? Santa's copywriter, of course! How incredible has that person's work been for the past four or five centuries? For SEO'd web content that's fresh as a Christmas rose and relevant as a reindeer, visit http://www.GetWebContent.com/LED today! ========== End Sponsor Message ========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Shari Thurow Subject: SEO and Usability > ... for the professional search marketer, usability > should come first, and SEO should come second. - Grant Crowell, LED Digest 2527 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1941/190/ Hi all- I've been reading the thread about SEO and Web site usability with great interest because this is an area in which I spend a great deal of time and expense studying, both as my formal and "work" education. You see, I think pretty much everyone is confused. I believe that the whole concept of "search" is misunderstood by both Web site usability and search engine optimization (SEO) professionals. Both groups seem to believe that the word "search" only applies to querying, which is at the core of the misunderstanding. I recently wrote an article about the topic in SearchEngineLand at: http://searchengineland.com/071101-090126.php I believe, IMHO, that "search" encompasses a wide variety of behaviors, not only querying behavior. Everyone exhibits search behavior, some types of behavior more than others. It seems that Web site usability professionals tend to minimize the importance of querying behavior and SEO professionals tend to minimize the importance of other types of search behaviors. So which should come first? Well, usage-centered design focuses on user behaviors more than user-centered design (UCD). And all users search using a wide variety of behaviors. It just seems to me that search behavior should be a part of a persona, profile, and/or role profile. And an interface (Web site) should accommodate these search behaviors. I think the Web designers, developers, and usabiility professionals that understand the whole concept of search usability probably deliver the most effective sites. I wish this concept would be taught more in colleges, universities, and online training. Usability is first. Accommodating search behaviors should be a part of Web site usability. Heck, not only Web site usability, all interface usability. Sincerely, Shari Thurow, Founder and SEO Director Omni Marketing Interactive http://www.search-usability.com/ -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Dirk Johnson Subject: Usability SEO > I've often read forums where SEO professionals, and > even the forum leader in one case, are sharing very > basic marketing ideas as startling new discoveries. - Michael Linehan, LED Digest 2528 BINGO! Which is why I rarely post in SEO forums these days. You simply end up arguing with dogmatic, myopic nitwits who have a very limited scope of understanding. Here's a glaring example... Should two sites in the same realm of interest link to each other, to their mutual benefit? Basic Marketing 101 would say yes, of course. An automotive graphics company should link to and from a body parts company, etc. They both benefit, in several ways. It's been happening since the very inception of the WWW. Most people would look at that and say... Duh! But in the convoluted logic of the SEO world, they should not link to each other. Instead, they should devise some kind of contrived scheme to hide or bury these links, or work around it. It is ridiculous. This kind of odd approach can only come from people with very limited business backgrounds, combined with a lack of understanding of the history of the World Wide Web and the most successful niche sites that pre-date the search engines. People from the outside of the SEO world often fail to realize that it takes no experience whatsoever to call oneself an SEO consultant. The most vocal, brash and self-promotional among them are often pushed to the forefront, and turned into "celebrities". They are the ones who claim that the sky is falling every day. Lately, they have been very active. Once an SEO consultant reaches that "celebrity" status, they have acquired enough momentum and a horde of parroting disciples to reflect away any inquires as to their qualifications and source of their theories. Skill and true understanding do not come into play here. There are no standards or required qualifications. It is often interesting to examine the backgrounds of some celebrity SEO consultants as well as the regular posters in the SEO forums. In the forums, the most vocal and dogmatic seem to be the ones with the most limited business backgrounds. Because of that flimsy business background, they treat SEO issues as a game, and not genuine marketing. They advise that their clients do things that make no sense, from a fundamental marketing perspective. Good, genuine SEO advice ALWAYS stands on it's own as good marketing advice. This is not a game. Best regards, Dirk Johnson www.domaindrivers.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Alex Hughart Subject: Social Media Follow Up Hi everybody, The last week's Ask the Expert issue re social media prompted me to finally join the Web 2.0. It's a general interest Wordpress blog (an "omnibore" blog, as per Urban Dictionary), open to others to write articles as well. www.TheParticipator.com , bear in mind, it's a soft-launch. Here's my thinking: the wider the topic range, the wider the potential reader pool, more opportunities to place links within some meaningful content. Also, I'd like to showcase projects I worked on in an unobtrusive, case study / promotional article manner (as soon as I shape them up) and kill two birds with one stone. The question is: am I diluting the whole thing by going too broad? I'm still learning all the technical stuff and blog lingo (chicklets? icons weren't good enough?). The search aspect is puzzling me. At Wordpress, search boxes are rare like mall escalators - they make you pass by every single store. Supposedly, tags are the same as categories but, are they the same as keywords for search engines? How do you optimize a blog? So, check it out at www.TheParticipator.com Thanks, Alex Hughart (c) Copyright 1995-2007 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well." - Rene Descartes |
