The dangers of design and copy pulling in opposite directions

In SEO there’s a temptation to look at page design and content as two enemies, each vying for superiority as the most influential part of a campaign. Should businesses invest in good web design at the expense of content management, or vice versa? In reality, both are tools for different jobs that can complement one another perfectly. Businesses need to understand the two elements of good SEO and content managements; getting consumers to a website and keeping them there.

Of course, if we’re talking in purely SEO related terms, say the magic words and key word rich content can drive consumers to your website. Whether your site’s an ugly and clumsy mess or stunning masterpiece is actually irrelevant; if you have good content in association with a well conducted SEO campaign, consumers will find you.

What then, is the role of design? Of course, W3C compliancy can help a web site’s SEO campaign by designating the site reputable and well built, but that won’t necessarily help encourage sales. Brands however, are something that we all love to consume, even if we don’t realise it. Whether it’s forming impressions of passers-by, buying clothes or phones and even choosing food - as human beings we consume with our eyes.

Most of us will instantly evaluate every page we view according to colour, style and layout and effective design has to construct a brand immediately to draw consumers in enough to give copy a chance extol the virtues of the business, therefore developing that brand. And if design and copy are at odds, customers will leave websites, repulsed by a disorganised package that isn’t polished.

This is something that Apple for example, really got hold of as a corporation. Complete compatibility amongst their products coupled with a stylish refinement of every aspect of the brand’s image has led to unstoppable successes in recent years. Arguably, Apple sold consumers the idea of their products first, rather than relying on the features and abilities of the products themselves.

But branding through design will only take consumers so far, the baton must be passed on to stimulating content for sales to be made. Engaging copy and more innovative techniques such as web video are essential at ensuring a brand stands up to closer scrutiny. Image and vogue are enough for some consumers to make a purchase, but the majority, though pleased with an image, will want information and product details before parting with hard earned cash.

This might seem like a dangerous SEO game for businesses to play. But remember - if content and design are working together, content will help draw traffic to a page, its design will hook consumers onto a brand and then on site copy is given the chance to win them over by selling the features of the product in question.

Can the Launch of Google Buzz Broaden the Horizons of Social Media Optimisation?

Google has recently launched its ‘Buzz’ social networking platform that it hopes will rival established giants such as Facebook and Twitter. We all know the magnitude of Google, so could its own network mean a new dawn for SEO? In a word - maybe. Not the most conclusive answer I know, but until a few technical issues are addressed it is hard to know if it will add anything of note to the industry.

Google Buzz will enable that crucial link-building though, including YouTube, and also allows users to connect feeds from Twitter and Flickr as well. Everything from images, videos, links, ‘Tweets’ and blog content can be sourced from these other applications quickly and easily. In this sense, search engine optimisation can be undertaken, as material will be indexed by Google.

As I noted in a previous blog regarding Google’s Social Search function, until the organisation secures some sort of link-up with Facebook then their social media aspirations are unlikely to prosper. This is widely-regarded as the web’s largest community network, and SEO organisations are becoming increasingly aware of the possibilities that it provides.

As with the Social Search, users will have to be logged into a Gmail account to participate with Buzz. While Gmail is the third most popular email service on the planet with an estimated 177 million users, it still lags behind Hotmail and Yahoo in popularity, which will naturally have an impact on the amount of traffic that Buzz will generate. But is likely that many individuals will sign up to a Gmail account if Buzz does ‘catch on’ in much the same way as Facebook and MySpace previously have.

What is unique about Google Buzz is that it offers a basic email function alongside the ability to consolidate social content in one place. This is a clear advantage over Facebook and ultimately Hotmail, and something that Google will look to build-on.

While it is unlikely that Buzz will dethrone Facebook in the near distant future, it is an important step in keeping all of the social networks on their toes and ensure that they keep creating new technologies and features that can be exploited to maximum effect by the SEO world.

Mixed media search isn’t a new thing, Google’s Universal Search has been around for ages, it’s just now that people are starting to realise that you need to incorporate more than just web based search into your SEO campaigns.

What does this mean?

It means that your brand needs to be incorporating more than just text based search into its SEO campaign. You should ensure that your brand performs in all the different strands of search results available today. These include, video, image, news, and more, including the newest; real time search.

Larry Cornett of Yahoo simply puts it this way: “Am I really being represented the way I want to be in every one of these search experiences?”

Video for SEO

Video is going to play a bigger and bigger role online. Why? Because it’s interactive, it can be interesting and informative as well as entertaining and fun all at the same time. And that’s what people want. Of course you must optimise your videos, otherwise they will get lost amongst the thousands of competing videos.

You can say a lot with video. You can have a video presenter on your homepage to introduce your company. This is great for visitors as it means they don’t have to read everything written on your site (though don’t remove the words - that’s all Google can consume at present) to understand what services your company provides.

Maybe you could have a video to demonstrate your products? This, again is very useful to your end user, they can see exactly what it is you are offering. They can see how your products work, and more importantly how they can benefit from what it is that you are providing.

Your videos must be optimised, or you’ll lose the benefit of having them in the first place. You will need to make sure that our videos appear in Google’s video search. This is important for your brand, as you want your videos to appear when someone searches for your brand. Make sure you choose an SEO company that has experience in video optimisation because there are subtle differences in the approach to video SEO.

Ensure Articles And Press Releases Gain Maximum Exposure With Good Headline Choice.

The headline is arguably the most important element in any form of copywriting, whether for an online audience, magazine or a newspaper. The reason why the headline is so important is that it helps the reader to decide, should I read this or shouldn’t I?

For search engine optimisation, consultants use varying techniques to ensure that their website’s appear in the top positions of search engine such as; Google, Yahoo and Bing. These techniques include article and press release writing and distribution. Not only does this generate back links and drive traffic to the website, but it also acts as a key brand building exercise.

However, to ensure that these articles and press releases are accessible to potential readers, SEO consultants need to place them in places with high levels of exposure and include headlines that will draw the reader in. They also need to think carefully about what the website’s customer is most likely to search for.

This is even more poignant due to the increasing use of social networking and bookmarking websites such as; Twitter, Facebook, Digg and Delicious.

Taking Twitter as an example; at just the push of a button users can spread a link to one of their articles or press releases to hundreds or even thousands of ‘followers,’ which can then be ‘re-tweeted’ numerous times. Essentially, the article or press release could eventually reach huge numbers of Twitter users.

Generally, Twitter users will include both the link to the post and the headline in their tweet. To stress the importance of the headline, in order for followers to re-tweet or even read the post it is essential that the headline draws them in and utilises popular key phrases.

Dan Zarrella from Copyblogger recently posted a blog, which included some of the most and least re-tweetable phrases. Here are some examples of how these could be included in a headline;

More likely to be re-tweeted-

• Take a look at this great new blog post about social media, please retweet!

Least likely to be re-tweeted-

• I’m really tired, going to bed, night!

As the web becomes more competitive than ever, it is really important that those practising search engine optimisation learn what Internet users are most likely to search for, optimising headlines is the first step towards gaining maximum exposure for articles and press releases.

I was going to write an article about optimising your Google Maps listing, but a recent video on WebProNews alerted me to something called hCard Microformats. This is something I’d never heard of before, and feeling a little daft for not knowing something I asked around the office, and it seems I wasn’t the only one living in ignorance.

So what is hCard Microformat?

Basically hCard Microformat is a way of coding contact information to make it accessible for other parsing tools to extract the information. In other words, with hCard microformatting your web browser can easily recognise and then extract this information to transfer into your address book, or even mobile telephone. How useful is that?

There is some evidence that Google recognises hCard microformatting when crawling websites, though this has never been confirmed. However, we do know that in 2007, Google Maps started to use the technology, to enable you to export a Google Maps search result to your address book.

Why use hCard Microformat?

There are many reasons why you should be using this technology. It increases usability, which should never be ignored. In my opinion, if it makes contacting a business or company easier for the end user then it should be used, regardless of whether it makes any difference to your Google listings.

But, it could make a difference to your Google Maps listing, inasmuch as an hCard can tell Google without any ambiguity that this address is the exact address of your business.

So, what code do I need?

Well, this is the tricky part. The code is quite complicated (well, for me anyhow…) which is why I am so grateful that someone much cleverer than me has built an hCard Creator. How easy is that? The one thing to remember is that hCards require the name property, so you will have to change things slightly.

I did it for Creare Communications:

<div id=”" class=”vcard”>
<a class=”url fn org” href=”http://www.crearecommunications.co.uk/”>Creare Communications</a>
<div class=”adr”>
<div class=”street-address”>16a Church Street</div>
<span class=”locality”>Lutterworth</span>,
<span class=”region”>Leicestershire</span>,
<span class=”postal-code”>LE17 4AT</span>
<span class=”country-name”>UK</span>
</div>
<div class=”tel”>0116 250 5455</div>
</div>

Creating this output:

Simples…

To make all this truly useful you can download Ooomph: A Microformats Toolkit from Mix Online.

This means that you don’t have to rely on the end user having add-ons installed on their browser. Follow the instructions for downloading the Source Code, and away you go.

For more information about hCard Microformatting visit microformats.org.