Lost in Translation

The following is an article I wrote for another publication a while back. I’d like to re-post it here to help those who follow this blog. I’ve edited it a bit to be specific to this audience.

I’ve been a professional web designer for 10 years now. In that time I’ve seen a lot of people do good things and bad things with their websites. And by bad things, I mean: waste time and money.

However, the web is still a valid place to do business and/or promote your business. It can be a nice source of income for you too. The challenge is that most people don’t know where to start. It doesn’t help that there is a lot of misinformation out there, including a lot of very old information.

No matter what you are selling, there are certain principles that apply.

So here are 12 tips and myth busters to help you on your journey as a business owner using the Internet.

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People build a lot of mystique into search engine rankings. They like to pretend that there is a big secret to how this works. There is only one secret: search engines don’t tell us all criteria they use to rank websites. They don’t reveal all of the details involved because they don’t want people gaming the system. (And people already try using what they do tell us.) Anyone claiming to know these secrets is either a liar or has committed a felony called industrial espionage. So you’ll want to avoid those people.

However, when search engines do share information, they tell us a great deal. For that part, there is no big secret. While there are a great many technical details that can go into making a site rank better in search engines, there are a few basics you should know about as a site owner. I’ve got 3 things you should know.

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Some people don’t have the time to work on improving their sites search engine rankings and attracting more customers, so they hire me.

Some people don’t have the money to hire me but have the time and want to do it themselves.

Assuming your website code is already optimized for search engines, I’ve got a few steps you can take to help draw traffic to your site. A lot of this information is Google-specific, since that is what I am most asked about. However, much of this can apply to other search engines too. Here are 10 things you can do to drive traffic to your site. (more…)

A while back I wrote an article on How to Stay on Google’s Good Side. That post addressed guidelines for your website to help placement in Google.

Next, how about some SEO-specific information?

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There is a lot of information and misinformation out there about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). There are companies and individuals claiming to be experts that give advice and do things for clients that will hurt more than help. And remember: there are also a lot of old websites out there. I’ve seen more new sites than I can count that parrot outdated information.

So rather than work from secondhand information, take it straight from the horse’s mouth.

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