SiteProNews Blog

Today's question is from Aaron, who writes:

Hi Kalena

SiteProNews recently featured your Article, SEO Basics in 45 Minutes. I was just wondering if you really agree with all that Jill Whalen is saying about SEO? A lot of this data conflicts with other top SEO experts. I listen to Michael Campbell, the founder of InternetMarketingSecrets.com and he says the opposite. I also bought the ebook The Unfair Advantage and again it conflicts with the Myths about SEO written by Jill Whalen. So who is right? Just thought it was interesting how these methods conflict. - Aaron


Hello Aaron

I personally agree with Jill on about 98% of the information. But SEO is not an exact science and so there will always be people who find different results or who have success with different methodologies to varying degrees. Apart from the basic SEO methods that vary from person to person, so much depends on a site's URL, content, products and services, competition, regional location in terms of SEO results and search rankings. So it's very difficult to pinpoint exactly what aspects of a site's SEO implementation has the most impact.

You don't say exactly how those ebooks conflict with Jill's myths, but I'm betting they don't really conflict at all, but only seem to conflict because the approaches are different.

Regardless, thanks for your input!

Kalena


Got a web site problem? A question about search engines? Email me via kjordan[at]sitepronews.com with "Reader Rescue" in your subject line and I'll do my best to answer it here.

Jason Santa Maria is a graphic designer from New York. He currently works as Creative Director for Happy Cog Studios and Art Director for A List Apart Magazine. Ever the design obsessif, Jason is known to take drunken arguments to fisticuffs over such frivolities as kerning and white space.

Jason started his Webstock presentation by changing his subject entirely. He originally wanted to talk about how to use grids and tyopography etc but realized he had to start with storytelling - storytelling with a plan. He decided that a better title for his talk was Design for Communication. How does a design tell a story? Jason explained that we first look at images for the narrative and thread of a story because we can't read the text. This is called graphic resonance. So the designer IS the narrator. Magazines combine the imagery with the text really well e.g. Wired magazine. Jason explains that the design differs for the story being told. Magazines set the tone for what you're going to read with design and images. When stories are converted to an online format, things change. The tone changes. The impact changes. The meaning changes. For example, a Wired article looks really boring on the web site compared to the magazine version. Stories online are being distilled down to content.

Why isn't the design on the web? Where is it? "Design can't NOT communicate" said David Carson of his Helvetica design. Every line, every pixel, every absence of pixel is communicating something. Our stories are lacking, says Jason, where's the passion? Jason made this point by showing a slide of 15 different web layouts. Speech bubble logos and web layouts are all doing the same thing, looking the same. Why are we plagued by the sameness? Most web designers aren't designers at all, he says. Should we just design harder? We don't have the limited typefaces we used to have. We only have constraints. So why aren't we using our options?

We all start with a blank canvas so why don't our designs look that good? It's the nature of the medium that is separating the print designs from the web designs. We define good web design by our view of what makes good print design. On the metaphorical page, Jason says there is an urgent need for communication based upon precision and clarity. These aren't new problems but old problems requiring new solutions. We should change the way we think about a page or what a page actually is.

Contraints of the web page include:

-> there are no limitations or definitions to how big a page can be
-> we can only see a small portion of a web page, unlike a book
-> everything needs to be on one page
-> we have a much shorter time to capture the audience

Online, you can change things like navigation. The user and the author can change the way they publish and read the content. Online you can't grasp how much information there is to read or how much time it will take to grasp the content. However a newspaper or a book has a finite amount of information that you can absorb at a glance.

The golden ratio in the design field (1.6180) is found so often in nature and used as a design principal - the rule of thirds. But these don't apply online because the web runs on a single fixed dimension (or on user defined or content defined space). You can't look at design online through the lens of print because we are dealing with a different medium. Jason gives the example of the book of short stories No-one Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July. To promote her book, Miranda created a linear web design which completely captivates the interest of the user because it is such an unusual technique.

Fray is a new type of interactive story telling site where the design/graphic of the site takes over the narrative. Jason says this is a simple, subtle and clever way to use web design. He recommends the book Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird as a source of inspiration.

Images are written with light, Jason says. Innovation makes new information available to the masses. Most stuff on the web is a bit like the first Model T Ford. You can have any color you like, provided it's black. Well, it's time to start looking for new colors, he says. Until now, design for the web has been driven by technology rather than by the masses. Jason thinks that the form of web design should be driven by the story you're trying to tell and he thinks we need to separate the design from the CMS. We're all capable of telling a story and we don't need a design degree to do this. Find inspiration offline in magazines, books and history. Turn your web site into a story.

Amy Hoy calls herself a user interface nerd designer writer educator programmer photographer extraordinary. As half of Washington DC based consulting firm Hyphenated People, she gets to help cool companies on the web every day and thinks that's just the best job ever.

Amy's t-shirt sets the scene for her Webstock presentation: "It's fun to use learning for evil". By evil, Amy is sarcastically referring to companies that manipulate people's subconscious weaknesses to make money.

So how do you use usability science for evil? Science is agnostic and can be used as a tool. You can use science to get people to do what you want. Amy gave the example of Stanford using persuasive technology to do evil. Amy sums up their tagline as "Using computers to get people to do things you want them to do". Using technology to create behavior change, compliance, motivation, attitude change, change in world views. Jakob Nielsen tries to persuade people to purchase Paco Underhill's book by saying: "You must teach your children to recognize this new class of manipulation". Yay, says Amy, Jakob Nielson is one of us! He advocates using technology to create money and be evil!

The pioneers of evil are people in advertising and public relations. Ads are evil because they are manipulative and depicting a world that doesn't exist. Branding has been researched thoroughly. Amy showed an ad from the war years. It said: "When you ride alone, you ride with Hitler. Join a car sharing club today!" and showed an outline of Hitler next to a man driving a car. We call this Nazi propaganda but it is really no different from regular advertising because it is manipulating reality.

Shopping malls are evil. Copy them! says Amy. They are deliberately designed to be confusing and things are placed in very inconvenient places, especially exits. Research has shown that the longer you keep people in shopping malls, the more likely they are to buy something. Shopping mall designers know things like you will almost always turn right when you enter a mall. Paco Underhill is responsible for much of this. His book "Why We Buy - The Science of Shopping" and the sequel "The Call of the Mall" had more impact on modern shopping malls than any other research. He actually created the term retail science and his books are an excellent guide for the "would be" evil doer. Douglas Rushkoff's book "Coercion - Why we listen to what "they" say" is another excellent manual for the would-be evil doer.

So how do we apply this to our online business model? Amy says there are 5 types of evil we can forge with this knowledge:

1) Emotional Priming

This sets the subconscious scene for specific response: scents, faces, babies, danger, sex. These are emotional triggers which you can use online. Scent is not a subtle technique. In shopping malls and grocery stores, they pipe smells to the entrance doors to get you to associate sweet smells with shopping. In this way, people's perception of loss is reduced.

War propaganda is a great example of manipulative, effective evil. Pictures of children and babies are emotionally priming. Danger prompts an immediate response it makes the heart beat faster because your body can't tell the difference between a gun and a gun image before it reaches conscious processing. By using danger as an emotional prompt, people will pay more attention to your data without realizing it.

GoDaddy uses sex as an advertising technique. They show a pretty model with the logo is across her chest, even though her chest is covered. Total porn is not required for the sex technique to be effective. A nude image would be less effective because it would be too distracting. Pictures, logos etc are more effective if on the left, because of right-brain processing.

2) Hijacking the Hindbrain

Amy says know the brain, use the brain, fear, risk, reward competition scarcity social writing.

Use empathy, loss/rewards, competition and social wiring to your advantage when designing your web pages. For example, HURRY! Supplies limited. Act now. Don't be the last on your block. It's a very common techniques, but very manipulative and effective. Create empathy. It's easier than you think. When you see someone waving their arms, the neurons of the brain responsible for waving your own arms are firing, even while you're not physically doing the action. Same with words, images and photos and video - neurons respond as a mirror, so reading words or viewing an image will affect your brain.

Example: "YES! Add this to my order" is a big green button on GoDaddy.com. Another is "STOP, You've found a great domain!". Paco Underhill suggests messing things up a bit to prove that other customers have already bought. You can do this online.

The Walmart door greeter is there because research has shown that people buy more by interacting with store staff. On the Web - people use this all the time. Flickr says "Hola! Now you know how to speak Spanish!" and it also says "Hi - you've got 42 messages". Interaction creates incentive!

3) Tricks of Perception

You can be effective by tickling failures of human perception; of value, time, quantity, cost and desirability. For example, the "closing down sale" stores have when they're not closing down at all. Amy says if you compare a shopping mall layout to Amazon.com you'll see the layout is similar. You can't escape from the site easily. Links lead to more and more and more links. It's hard to get out. Even if you cancel your order, you get a page stating "Your order has been cancelled. Continue Shopping!". In Amazon, they don't show you what's in your cart unless you manually choose to view it. This is not an accident, Amazon does this to keep you shopping. The DealDotCom principal is also a good one - to get 1 product in 1 day at a 1 off discount price. The scarcity issue is effective as it creates desire.

4) Exploiting Patterns of Use

Brains are the ultimate creatures of habit, says Amy. If you make things familiar, they will act. So:

- make it big
- make it green
- make it easy to click

Use interrupt marketing, for example big buttons for add-on insurance in Internet banking. Upsell, give people a second chance to buy. Are you SURE you don't want to buy this cheap product?

5) Misleading Memory

Memory is extremely subjective but it always feels real. We can use affective change, backward framing, beginnings and endings. We often believe things we convince ourselves happened when we "know" they didn't. Use this knowledge in your site design and narrative. Appeal to the audience and create enjoyable memories and associations for them.

We know a lot about usability but with this knowledge comes power. Use it for good and not evil. You should take responsibility for this esoteric knowledge. Amy says, don't get too evil. Do it for the kids!

As most people who read this blog will know, Jill Whalen is a pioneer in search engine optimization. Nicknamed the First Lady of Search, Jill founded the site HighRankings.com in 1995.

In her presentation for Webstock, Jill diffused some of the most common SEO myths, including:

1) PPC ads will help organic rankings. Wrong.
2) PPC ads will hurt organic rankings. Wrong again!
3) you must have a keyword-rich domain. Nope.
4) you must have keyword-rich page URLs. No need.
5) heading tags are necessary (H1, H2 etc.). Not at all.
6) the keywords in your meta keywords tag need to be included in your page content. Jill says that it's actually better to use the keyword tag to include misspellings and other keyword varieties that you don't have in the visible text on your pages.
7) using keywords in comment tags will hurt your rankings.
8 ) page copy must be a certain # of words. Jill actually made up the 250 word limit a few years ago and it's stuck, but there is really no set limit to please search engines.
9) that you need to bold/italicize your target keywords within the page. No point.
10) that you must use a specific keyword density. No. Jill says that keyword density tools are ridiculous!
11) that you must optimize a page for a single keyword or phrase per page. Waste! Instead, try to optimize each page for 3-5 phrases that are related, so that your copy reads better than repeating one phrase over and over.
12) that you need to optimize for the long-tail searches. You don't generally need to optimize for these - engines will find them on their own.
13) duplicate content will get your site penalized. There is not a penalty as such, but engines will filter out duplicates in lieu of the original copy (or what they think is the original).
14) your HTML code must validate to W3C. Not true. Google doesn't even validate!
15) your navigation must be text links not images. Surprisingly, graphical navigation is fine as long as you use ALT tags.
16) you can't use Flash. It's fine to use Flash, as long as it is one element of your page, not a complete Flash site.
17) certain design techniques are black hat. Myth. For example, Javascript code is legitimate, not just used by black hats.
18) that Google's link: command is accurate. It's not a useful tool. Use Google Webmaster Tools or the Yahoo link command instead.
19) that reciprocal links won't count. From the right site, reciprocal links are fine, even very helpful.
20) that pages are ranked in PageRank order in search results. They're not. Google Toolbar PageRank is not accurate anyway so ignore it.
21) you must be in DMOZ or Yahoo Directory to get good GG rankings. It's just not true. Jill says the Yahoo Directory is not worth the money these days.
22) that you need to submit URLs to engines. Provided you have a link to your site, you will be indexed.
23) that you need a Google Sitemap. This is not needed for the average site. It won't change your site rank.
24) that you need to update your site frequently. Not necessary.
25) frequent spidering helps rankings. Not true!
26) that you need multiple sites. Won't help in the engines and creates more maintenance work.
27) that you need doorway pages. That's so 1995!
28) that a #1 ranking will always lead to more traffic/sales. The good rankings need to be for keywords and phrases that people are actually searching for.
29) that an SEO company can place pages in certain positions. Not possible, unless they're using PPC or sponsored spots.
30) that your rankings will tank if you stop paying the company. Rubbish!
31) that they have a "proprietary method" of SEO. They're lying.
32) that they have a "special relationship" with Google. They're still lying. Google has no relationships with organic SEO companies that Jill is aware of.
33) that they can increase your rankings without doing any on-page work. Run away!

So you should keep these myths top of mind when designing and SEOing your site.

It may be because I have an SEO bias, but I've watched four sessions from Webstock today so far and Jill's presentation was by far the best. It was concise but covered all the important aspects and it was delivered confidently. I even learned a few things. The audience clearly enjoyed it as they paid close attention and a few attendees approached Jill after the session to ask questions and say thanks, always a good sign. Great stuff!