How to get rid of unwanted Web site pages

If you have a lot of out-dated content on your site then you are one of thousands of companies with the same problem. You probably want to delete the content but stop, search and think about how that strategy will affect your page rank.

For those companies that have ecommerce, your ecommerce software may have the option to keep the product page online but update the contents of that page to remove the option to purchase the product. Below, I’ll walk through the different options you have to handle out of date content but the latter option above is probably the best strategy.

Delete the pages

At first you would think this is the obvious answer. Who cares if a page is deleted, right? It’s just 50 pages out of the 20,000 pages I have on my site… But when you delete one page or a thousand, this confuses the search engine spiders and the rank your site holds in search engines can be affected for the worse.

Bottom line – deleting pages is the worst strategy you can do to your Web site. There are other options that will affect your search engine ranking less.

Redirect the pages

There are multiple strategies to handle out-of-date content. One is to redirect the page, and there are multiple redirect options (404, 301 error pages, etc.). Google Webmaster has a nice description of each option. But you must be careful on which redirect you choose – one may affect your page view more than the others and each search engine has different ‘rules’ you must complete in order to redirect the page(s) successfully.

For example, for a 301 redirect (this option is used if a site is moved to a new domain, people access one page via different URLs or if two Web sites merged), Google requires the user to submit a request to remove the cache via its public URL removal tool or through its Webmaster Tools URL removal tool. You can also wait until Google recrawls your site but this could take up to 6 months depending on the popularity of your site.

Bottom line – use redirects sparingly. Search engines, such as Google, have said that a mass redirect sends a warning to search engines and may result with a downgraded SER.

Replace old content with updated content

Another option is to replace the old content and replacing with new content. The positive aspect for this strategy is no articles are deleted, but the negative aspect for this strategy is the content is still changed. Deleting the content on an article is just as bad as deleting the entire article – it confuses the search engine and will result in a decreased SER. The same problem will result if a page’s Title or meta description is changed.

Another option is to add new content – like an updated message – above the old content. Adding content is preferred by search engines instead of deleting content. A short sentence can tell the Internet user about the current state of the content on that page, and over time the page views for that particular page will decrease.

Bottom line – Updating an older page is the best thing you can do to promote new content status, and adding a short message above the existing content is a tactic to carry out this strategy.

How the Software Development Lifecycle Relates to Website Redesigns

The general model for the software development lifecycle (SDLC) follows the same processes as a website redesign. As businesses embark on a website redesign, they can take tips from successful software development models in order to maximize the efficiency of their business processes. In both software development and website redesign, it the relationship between the roles, needs, and expectations  of the “team members”—ie.  the customers (stakeholders), the development team, design team, and the project management team–which can make or break the success of the project.

Both SDLC and website redesigns follow this general process:

Requirements gathering

Discussion with business owners/stakeholders on the desired functionality of the site along with big picture goals of what the site should be able to accomplish for the business. Sometimes, business owners will put forth a requirements doc that a project manager will craft into a scope document as a project plan for the team to follow.

Design

The designers work up wireframes. This is the first time architecture and site usability is addressed. In site redesigns, designers have to be in touch with the requirements document to know the desired “look and feel” of the site.

Implementation

This is where the developers get to code the site/software. In some iterative, development models testing works concurrently with implementation to  address issues as they arise before they become bigger, expensive problems.

Testing

Front end and back end testing is performed on other developers, customers, team members for bugs or other functionality issues and to QA the site/software for launch. Bug tracking software is good to keep track of all bug progress

Deployment (Launch)

The site is released to the customer. Maintenance issues are still tracked in bug tracking software, and training for the customers occur at this phase so they know how the front end works.

Audits

This is the area that most models fall apart, in my opinion. There is no on-going quality assurance about site functionality or analysis of overall impact of the project on the business.

• QA: Make sure that all the above elements remain intact for the life of the project. For example, six months after a redesign, ensure that the site’s design remains intact without too many additions and that proper code is maintained. If not, education is necessary at the customer level.

• Analysis: Analyze the impact of the project on the company in terms of time, resources, financial investment, and overall client satisfaction. Use project management software to identify where the project fell behind and target more training or resources toward that part of the project.

This is the first time I have ever thought about comparing  the software development lifecycle with website redesigns. I think traditional models do not account for the importance of the roles involved with the project and how each team interacts with one another. These processes take for granted that developers are effective at communicating with clients and that clients understand their needs well enough to communicate them to developers. In addition, many traditional models do not take a look at the project after it is completed and take note of where the challenges were and what can be done to address the needs and communicate learning from one team to the next.

Related Articles:

Does Your Business Have Online Intelligence?

Google Cares about Usability

The advent of Google Caffeine indicates to me that Google is now “favoring” sites in search engines that practice good usability techniques. I have said time and time again that Google’s mission to make the world’s information accessible to people would begin to reflect in their algorithms, benefitting those who make their sites focused on the user. Accessibility and user centered design is, by no means, a requirement online. However, with Google’s new caffeine program, which favors sites with good load time, it is clear that Google is embarking on the “new rules” of website design.  And these rules favor usability.

Here is an article by Chris Silver Smith that succinctly makes the connection between Google, usability, and the new rules of SEO. Here is a great quote:

“I’ve known a lot of top corporations which are involved in very sophisticated paid search marketing and search engine optimization, but few of them are also including usability testing and user-centered design considerations when performing a site redesign. Google has tried to make the importance of user-experience abundantly clear by actually going public with their adoption of page load times in determining search result rankings, but many companies are still not connecting the dots. (Without Usability, You’re not Doing Advanced SEO).”

Related Articles:

• SEO May Be Eclipsed by User-Centered Design, naturalsearchblog.com

Does Your Business Have Online Intelligence?

I just read a great article that answers the question, “What is The Real Value of Web Analytics?” The answer is “intelligence.” Gaining a better understanding of how the project impacted the business and documenting this information to apply to future online projects is, in essence, online intelligence.

“Yes, web analytics can identify a host of issues with usability, marketing, technology, information architecture, etc., and fixing these things leads to improvement in volume of visits, exposure to new visitors, increased conversion rates, increased revenue, increased profits, and on and on. These are wonderful, almost magical things. But they all completely pale in comparison to what small improvements in operational efficiency can mean to an organization. In simple terms, it is stupendous to know what your business needs to do next, but it is so much more important to take notes when your company tries (and sometimes struggles) to get it done.”  (Evan LaPointe)

Before operational efficiency can be enhanced, it’s important to have a person or team of persons who are documenting the changes and the effects the changes have had on the site, the property, the company as a whole. Web analytics are only one area to document. What about the effects on advertising, audience marketing, and usability? Every new online project, especially site redesigns, will have an impact on the company one way or another. Isn’t it wise to take notes and not repeat the same mistakes the next time?

I’ve seen talented people walk out the door and take with them whatever intelligence they gleaned from past projects. Documentation is the only way to ensure that learning stays within the company and can be passed down the generations. Therefore, I believe that every online company would benefit from an Online Business Analyst.  They might be the only glue that adheres one project to the next spreading their knowledge from team to team. By the way, I’m happy to forward my resume if there are any takers…

Semantic Search

Can an algorithm (or thousands of them) ever be able to mimic the complexity of human motivation? That is the gist of semantic search, which search engine companies like Google attempt to perfect. Semantic search is the idea that a searcher types “apple” into the Google search box, and based on history of searches, synonyms of the keyword, and keyword matching, the Google algorithms will “know” whether I meant the apple the fruit or Apple the company.

I read a blog post recently how Google is partnering with a semantic search engine company called Oingo, which has made great strides toward improving semantic search results. According to Oingo, “By searching on meanings, instead of just words, our search eliminates this “randomness” of results.” Oingo uses synonyms and alternative suggestions to help direct the searcher toward relevant content.

Semantic search is ingenious. It combines linguistics, cognitive psychology, philosophy, and computer engineering. I think it’s a fascinating attempt to create a “humanized” search mechanism without being human. I also think it will never be possible to perfect this science. Humans can barely understand and predict human motivation let alone using that limited knowledge to program an algorithm to do it for them. We shall see how long it will take semantic search engineers to realize that humans are innately unable to step outside their own brains, not semantically, psychologically, programmatically, or even metaphysically.

Applying Feng Shui to Website Design

The principles of Feng Shui can teach usability specialists a thing or two (or three) about harmonious website design. Typically, I rant on and on about conforming websites to the way in which people perceive information online. Today, I will rant about how we can use the principles of Feng Shui to create a harmonious balance of energy in the design and development of a website enabling visitors to have a better user experience.

Here is a summary of the three principles of Feng Shui and ways in which we can use these principles to enhance websites.

• Chi-means energy. It moves around us and determines whether we are feeling good or bad. Keeping the chi flowing around a site at a regular pace (not too fast*) can be accomplished through development and design.
• Development: The flow of a website should be circular using links that take your visitor to other locations around the site. The visitor should never feel trapped or like they have to hit the back button.
• Design: Use rounded elements in your design to avoid too many harsh 90 angles formed by elements such as top and left navigation bars, stacked images, and vertical lists of content. Integrate rounded elements such as graceful swirl patterns in the background, images with rounded edges (which can be accomplished in Photoshop), or even rounded fonts.

*Note that chaotic placement of objects or a lot of moving objects simultaneously can get the chi moving too quickly. Static elements as well as some angles can slow the chi to a good pace.

The 5 Elements-A collective term that describes the colors, textures, and shapes around us. The 5 elements can help designers choose color palates to complement a harmonious website. These colors should ideally be used in balance around the website to create a sense of yin and yang, dark and light.

1. Fire-red, orange, purple
2. Earth-brown, yellow
3. Metal-white, metallic
4. Water-black, blue
5. Wood-green, teal

The Bagua-Describes the location of objects around us, which help balance the 9 important areas of our lives:

1. Power/Wealth/Abundance
2. Fame/Future/Reputation
3. Love/Relationships/Marriage
4. Creativity/Children/Legacy
5. Compassion/Travel/Helpful People
6. Self/Career/Work
7. Knowledge/Wisdom/Harmony
8. Family/Health/Community
9. Well-Being/Balance

In the web world, these correspond to your one-stop categories or channels. (ie. The areas of your site that focus on certain topics). Power/Wealth/Abundance might be your “advertise with us” section. Fame/Future/Reputation could be your “in the news” or press release section. Love/Relationships/Marriage could be the “about us” page or the “related resources” links, etc…

It might take many years, but I think traditional theories of web design, development, and usability will integrate the tenets of Feng Shui eventually. The ideas of keeping energy in harmony are similar to many of design and usability best practices in which there site content is presented purposefully and clutter free. If only our lives outside the website could be so well in balance.

Designing a Usable Website for an Aging Population

Why Design for Seniors?
I read an interesting article today about web usability and aging and the increased need of websites to adapt to the needs of the growing senior population. Designing a website effectively means making sure that the site is designed in a user-friendly way. If a visitor cannot use your site for its intended purpose, than you will lose that potential customer. Seniors are a growing demographic and adapting your website to the way in which this population perceives information just might provide a rewarding ROI. Plus, if you take the time to design your site for the most sensory challenged visitors, you will, inherently be optimizing for everyone. According to the article, “research has demonstrated that improving the usability of systems for elderly, limited cognition, or visually impaired populations allow the public, as a whole, to benefit from improved usability “ (Chadwick-Dias, McNulty, and Tullis, 2003).

How do we create a senior-accessible site?
Here are the areas in which seniors have sensory impairment: Reduced visual ability, Hearing loss, Psychomotor impairments, Loss of fine motor control, Attentional factors, Learning and memory impairments. There are design/usability elements that can be implemented to help the visitor compensate for these impairments.

1. Reduced visual ability-Consider your font size. According to usability.gov, 33% of the seniors in a study found 8-9 point font size too small with an additional 22% finding 10-point text too small. Jakob Nielsen, usability guru, recommends using at least 12 point font. Erring on the side of larger font will not only help your senior population but will also help prevent eye strain in your younger populations. Performing some basic usability testing on a handful of your audience is always a recommended approach.

2. Hearing Loss-Ensure that all videos or podcasts on your site have the highest quality sound possible. MP3 is the  standard format for podcasts. Use the minimum bit rate that provide good results.
Here are some suggested settings:

• 48 – 56k Mono – sermons, audio books, talk radio
• 64k+ Stereo – music, music & talk combinations
• 128k Stereo – good quality music

Make sure you save it with a .mp3 file extension. For more information on podcasts, see Podcasting News

3. Psychomotor impairments/loss of fine motor control- can slow the visitors ability to think clearly and move fluidly. As a result, it may be more difficult for seniors to click on links, which can be either hard to see or hard to line up with the mouse. Make sure that links are clearly demarcated with a blue or another contrasting color than the rest of your text. In addition, make sure that images on your site are linkable in case it is easier for the visitor to click on the image rather than lining up the mouse cursor on a link. Products listed in an ecommerce feature should always click to the description page, for example. The fewer “wasted” clicks that your visitor makes, the more likely they will have a positive experience on your site and return in the future.

4. Attentional Factors-All people (as well as search engines) have a short attention spans online. The two click rule of the early nineties suggested that a user will take up to two clicks to find desired information before they abandon the site. This finding holds true today. Search engines will also abandon your site if their spidering is made harder by broken links, badly formatted code, extraneous code, etc….Therefore, you can improve the attention spent on your site by making your navigation simple and the “noise” on your site minimal. Reduce your usage of Flash and moving elements. Don’t include pop ups, pop unders, peel backs, or shifting ads, which can distract visitors and take away from their goal of finding content on your site. The more distractions your site has, the harder the visitor will have to work (cognitively) to find the information they need. NIHseniorhealth.gov is a well optimized senior site.

5. Learning and Memory impairments-Similar to the solution to attentional factors, keep your site simple with easy to use navigation and sub navigation. Ensure your site search is working optimally so visitors can find what they are looking for in as few steps as possible. (AKA information foraging). Make sure you have colors that distinguish between links that have been clicked on already and links that haven’t been clicked on. Finally, make sure you use elements like breadcrumbs which can guide the visitor through the site and let him or her know which pages they went to before. Breadcrumbs help visitors re-trace their steps on a website.

These are just a few ways in which you can make your site accessible to a greater number of people. The more people that can successfully use your site, the better the user experience, and the more likely that a visitor will become a customer.  Making your site accessible to everyone is not only financially beneficial, but, most importantly, it is the right thing to do.

Social Media is just a fad

Yep, you are right Social Media is a fad. It will disappear just like Pet Rocks, flagpole sitting, Garbage Pail Kids, and well you get the idea. Soon something else will take the place of Social Media, much like it is taking over search and other areas of the web.

How are people finding the information they need today? Are they finding it in places like Google, Yahoo, or another search engine? I would say that the search engines still have a pretty strong hold on this, for now. Though Social Media isn’t far behind. Let me give you an example. A few months back I was looking for an e-commerce/shopping cart option that was easy to use and also SEO friendly. I spent a few moments digging into Search Engine Land, just to come up empty, like a glass on a hot summers day. I turned to my Twitter followers and asked the question, and I continued to search on my favorite search engine. Within minutes I was getting all kinds of suggests to look up. Some of these weren’t even on the first few pages of results page. Read more

Subdomain Strategy for Maximum SEO Performance

Performing an audit of all of the subdomains used on your website is the first step toward developing a domain name strategy for optimal ranking for your brand in search engines.

Why is a domain name audit important?

I came across a blog post today which provided some excellent reasons why keeping track of all of your subdomains can be crucial to your seo strategy. Having multiple subdomains attached to your brand can dilute your seo power and even lower your ranking.

For example, if you develop a new subdomain every time you launch a new online product, such as a blog, (www.domain-blog.com), the link “juice” for this new subdomain has to be built from scratch in the search engines. That subdomain for your blog is its own island, and it’s not providing any assistance to your core domain (your core website). However, if instead of developing a subdomain for your blog, you instead created a section for it (www.domain.com/blog), your site will benefit from the link juice going to that new site section.

How to Take an Audit of your existing subdomains

The best way to start to audit all of the subdomains lurking on your site is to perform a manual search, clicking around to every area of your site (header links, footer links, subscription forms, online products) and documenting any subdomains. In addition, you can perform Google searches to help ensure that you have covered all the subdomains by typing in  site:http://domain.com –inurl:www.

What can you do?

After you have performed your subdomain audit, it is now to time to strategize.  Make sure that all of the subdomains are active and relevant. For example, if one of your subdomains is pointing to a trade show site that is two years old, it might be a good idea to 301 redirect that url to a related page on your core site (maybe an event listing page). That will give your core site more power in search engines and also provide relevant information to visitors who click on that link. It’s better to redirect a visitor to updated information than have them go to an outdated show site. They might think your content is stale and can hurt your brand’s reputation and deter that visitor from coming back to your core site.

Also, if you are in the process of redesigning your website, and you are using a staging server, make sure that the staging server’s domain name (beta.domain.com, for example) is not being indexed by search  engine spiders. Not only can that hurt your search engine power, but it can also reveal your redesigned site before you are ready.

Where can you go for help?

If you would like help performing your domain name audit, WBC is happy to help you gather your subdomains and develop a strategy that can help you maximize your position in search engines.

Further reading:  If you are interested in the topic of subdomain auditing, I strongly recommend you read this blog post for more information.

Reducing Web site load time

A large and self-described Web performance company (marketing jargon at its best) Gomez, is emphasizing reduced Web site load time in recent 2010 webinars and white papers. Gomez links page loading time with increased exits, decreased ROI and referrals. As a small business owner, this should be a primary concern of your e-commerce business.

The Gomez Peak Time Internet Usage Study conducted by Equation Research on 1500 consumers (February 2010) confirms the negative impact of poor performance: At peak traffic times, more than 75% of online consumers left for a competitor’s site rather than suffer delays 88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience Almost half expressed a less positive perception of the company overall after a single bad experience More than a third told others about their disappointing experience

An important objective to remember when creating or updating an e-commerce Web site is to make sure your pages load quickly. There are many ways to do this but one way is to limit the amount of content on each page (how many articles or graphics appear) and to optimize your images to be the smallest possible but at the best quality.

Why is load time important? A few reasons are listed in the table on the left. Taken from a February 2010 white paper from Gomez, the table shows why Web site users leave or don’t return to a site. Another reason is Google’s Caffeine algorithm. As of early 2010, Google Caffeine ranks sites based on new content created on a site’s load time. If you’re interested to see what your site’s load time is use Compuware. Compuware, a computer performance optimization company, publishes a free tool to decipher how fast your Web site loads. You can measure your Web site’s load performance by research from Gomez, Compuware and Google’s caffeine algorithm.

According to a 2008 study by Jupiter Research entitled, “Retail Web Site Performance: Consumer Reaction to a Poor Online Shopping Experience” 47 percent of consumers expect page load times of 2 seconds or less. If you’re Web site takes more than five seconds (ten seconds and you’re in big trouble) then it’s time to optimize your Web site.

Reduce image load time

If you’re a small business and have thousands of images already on your site you’re probably thinking there’s no way to optimize your Web site. While it will take some man hours, employ a current employer, a younger niece/nephew or even your 21 year old son/daughter to resize the photos. The most recent versions of Photoshop offer a batch-resize option where you can resize images within a folder on your desktop [ see Photoshop CS4 batch resize options here; instructions for image batch-resizing for PS3 ].

Reduce overral page load time

Using third party applications on a Web site increases load time too. If you’re site has a third party RSS feed from your Facebook Fan Page or includes a third-party RSS feed, these softwares can hurt your load time if these third parties have developing problems. For example, Facebook often is slow or * gasp * goes down sometimes. When these problems occur on a third party site, it increases your load time exponentially. Save yourself the trouble and refrane from using third party applications. Like I said above, not using third party applications can only help you.

Leave a comment with better tips on how to resize images in bundles below.

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