No one likes getting bad online reviews. A bad review can ruin a whole day. This particular business owner was angry, really angry, and no matter how many times I told them that if I made a website for them, it would do absolutely nothing about their bad reviews on Yelp, they simply refused to believe me. I tried several times to explain that one website can’t change another website. They told me I was wrong. Then they got angry, and started ranting about reporting people to the FBI and million dollar lawsuits… and that’s when I told him I couldn’t help and hung up.

So what is a small business owner to do if they receive bad reviews online? Well, having your own website is a good idea, not because it can replace the reviews, but if it appears in the search reviews above the bad review websites, people might click on it and not read the bad reviews. This is developing a website with the “look over here not over there” philosophy. But the bad reviews are still there, just a small mouse  click away.

What the business owner really should do is two-fold:

1. Make changes to the business. Take a deep breath and read the bad reviews and see if there are any business improvements that can be made to prevent them from happening again. No one likes criticism, but often there are things you can do to make happier customers, or perhaps to at least making a client unhappy. If out of 10 reviews, 9 folks think you’re awful, it might be time to do some soul searching. If you are able to identify any of the people, reach out to them, see what you can do to change their opinion of their experience with your business. I have known customers to change their online reviews after receiving corrective action from a business owner.

2. Get good reviews. I got this awful review once from a person who wasn’t a client, but was a scam artist who tried to take advantage of my client and I wrote a blog article. The fellow was really angry, and so created a fake bad review of my business. I simply contacted several of my clients, asked them to write a review, and lo and behold, after a month or two, his fake review had been pushed down lower. Of course, this assumes you have clients that like the work you do, and are willing to write a positive honest review. If you don’t, then go back to step 1.

Before I wrote this article, I looked up the business  of the person who called me online, and sure enough, there were a considerable number of detailed, really bad reviews. What I also found, was a review written by the owner,  threatening customers with bad consequences if they wrote more bad reviews. This is the worst possible move on the business owner’s part, because no one wants to do business with a person who is willing to threaten their clients or appear hostile online.

So if you get bad online reviews, take a deep breath, take a few days. Really consider if there is anything you could do to improve your business or change the reviewer’s mind. Ask clients to write reviews for you to help push the bad review down the list. And if you don’t have a website, consider one, but realize it won’t rid the internet of bad online reviews. If only it did

“Telephone companies argue that most consumers now check the Internet rather than flip through pages when they want to reach out and touch someone.”

I’d imagine the yellow pages will follow the same trend…

According to the Internet World Stats website:

United States Internet Usage: In 2010  was 77.3% of the population and is continuing to rise.

Washington State Internet Usage (where I am): In 2010 was 85.7% of the population.

So if you don’t have a website, or if you are reluctant to use email to communicate with your prospective clients – you are missing out a LOT of people, and the number of people without internet access is growing smaller and smaller each year.

I had two interactions with small business owners this week that really caused me to pause and wonder what year it was.

My first interaction was with a fellow who did some kind of home appliance repair. He emailed me looking for free advice and wanted me to “make his phone ring”. He said he had a website but that his business was bad, and that he had spent over $1500 on advertising for his website. He was very frustrated.

So I looked at his website, and, well, it was awful. Now I say this not as a graphic designer who calls websites that aren’t all fancy and colorful ugly. I say this because it was unprofessional, and as a consumer, I wouldn’t have hired him because of the quality of his website might reflect the quality of his work. It’s pointless to spend money on driving traffic to a really poor quality website, because people won’t convert to customers.

I told him this, and suggested that rather than throwing money away on advertising, he should consider a less expensive redesign.

He then got very angry, and said that he built his own website in 10 minutes – and that he did not want a new website, he just wanted me to “make his phone ring.” He told me that no one uses the web to find appliance repairmen. No one! I told him that I would, as we don’t even have the phone book in the house. He told me that I was an idiot and our communication ended.

Another interaction I had was from an actual client of mine who, on the (good) advice of a friend, got a website for her small business. But after a year, the client decided that she no longer wanted to use email to communicate, and asked me to remove all email information from the website. Having a website with no email contact info, or no contact form, is just ignoring how most people use websites. The friend had already fought this battle and lost, so I didn’t even try. Eventually when it comes time to renew her domain registration or hosting, her website will be pulled down, because all this communication from her hosting company is done – yes, you guessed it – by email.

Apparently  there are plenty of small business owners out there who are burying their heads in the sand. They are refusing to embrace the current state of technology and for whatever reason, don’t seem to truly be interested in seeing the world as it is, in looking through the eyes of potential customers trying to find a solution to their problem.

Sure, I’m biased because I do small  business web design. But I’m also a consumer and I look for everything I need on the web – from a little magnet to put on the dishwasher to tell when it’s clean to a home gym.

So yes, this is a little bit of a rant because I don’t like being called an idiot by someone who emailed me looking for free advice – or spending time building a website just to have it be doomed because a business owner refuses to use email. I guess the good news for any of you reading this, is that there is plenty of opportunity for small businesses to do well – and to use the web to their advantage – because not all small business owners are willing to walk in the shoes of their customers.

Why would you need a private form? Well, their current/old method of reporting Google Map Spam was a public forum, so if you reported a company for suspicious Google Map activity, the company could find out you reported them and give you some grief. This happened to me recently and it wasn’t pleasant.

I emailed the Google Map support person with my situation, and she assured me it would be fixed soon.

And this morning she emailed me the new totally private Google Map Spam Reporting Form.

There’s also a new general form if you need Google Map Help.

This means if you see your competition abusing Google Maps by entering multiple listings for their business, you can report them to Google privately, without fear of retaliation. You can also get help with your own Google Map problems in private. Many thanks to Google for listening to the issues of their Map users and responding so quickly.

Thank you Google!

(Due to offensive comments received, comments have been disabled on this article. Some people don’t like it when they’re caught cheating I guess)

1. Insulting the Web Design Profession

“I know web design is really simple. I could do it easily myself but I’m just too busy.”

When you’re interviewing someone, it’s best not to start off by insulting what they do for a living.  If you wouldn’t say this to your brain surgeon, then don’t say it to anyone you’re hiring, no matter what the job is. Yes, I know web designers aren’t brain surgeons, but we’re human and it hurts our feelings and makes us a little angry, which is not the mindset you want them in when we’re giving you an estimate.

2. Looking for Free Services

“I don’t have any money to pay for this but…”

For professional web designers, this  isn’t a hobby, this is our full-time business. We use this income to pay mortgages, put food on the table and pay for medical expenses, just like you. If you can’t afford the services, best not to waste time. If you want a free website, find a high school student or one of the many online website builder tools. Many web developers post their prices on their websites, so be sure to review that to make sure it fits within your budget.

3. Too Much Personal Information

“I’ve been diagnosed with xxx and xxx and have …”

The people who start off a conversation by telling me way too much personal information always seem to follow it by #2, looking for free services. If it’s not relevant to your web design, keep it to yourself. Of course, once you’ve become friendly with the designer and have a relationship, sharing personal stuff is fine. Just not on the first date.

4. Procrastinators – Hurry Up And Wait

“I’ve been thinking about getting a website for x years, and I need it done within the next 24 hours.”

Many people want a website designed overnight, even though they’ve had plenty of time to actually start it much sooner. This results in heaping enormous pressure on the web designer to hurry, hurry, hurry. I’ve found that these folks, probably due to an inherent procrastinating nature, will actually be very slow to develop the website. Once they make the initial payment, the pressure is released, and they de-prioritize working on the website. Sometimes, they end up abandoning the project altogether.

5. Bragging About Ignorance

“I know absolutely nothing about the internet or computers”

While honesty is great, there’s no need to tell prospective web designers how much you don’t know. You’re setting yourself up to be taken advantage of. If you don’t understand what the web designer says, ask questions, but there’s no need to expound on how much you don’t know.

6. Out of Your League

“Can you build me a website like Craigslist or eBay or Facebook?”

Seriously, I get folks who ask me this. They have no idea how complex these kinds of websites are, and they think they can just find someone to duplicate Craigslist or eBay or Facebook, and they’ll be rich. I realize I’m just ranting now, but this post is in the Rants category for a reason. The lesson is, take a little bit of time to honestly gauge the scope of your project and the capabilities and portfolio of the web developer under consideration.

7. Technical Mumbo Jumbo

“I know all about PHP, MySQL, CGI, Ruby on Rails…”

Just because you’ve heard of an acronym, doesn’t mean you know how to program in that language or utilize that application. Don’t throw out a bunch of words and claim to know what they do unless you really do. The unethical web developer will know that you don’t know what the words mean, and this sets you up for getting scammed. Probably the same goes for auto mechanics.

8. Bid Requests With No Information

“I need a website for my business. Can you give me a quote?”

If you want an estimate, you need to give a web designer details about what your website will do, how many pages it will have, etc. You can’t simply say to a real estate agent, “I want a house, what will it cost?” The answer will be, “well, it depends on location, features, square footage, rooms, etc.” It’s the same with web design. Come prepared with some idea of what you need, an outline of what pages you need and what features you want will be very helpful. Look at the websites of your competitors to see what they have, take notes, and then you will be in a good position to get an estimate that will be accurate.

9. You’re Just One of Many

“I’m sending this same proposal to many other web designers.”

I’ve actually gotten requests for proposals where I could see the other web design firms that were cc’d on the email. It went right into my trash. While it’s great to shop around, try to be a little more sensitive and saavy – there’s really no need to tell folks you’re shopping around, we know that – and you want web developers to put forth their best efforts on your proposal right? So no need to let them know that you’ve send the same form-letter email to other firms – just hurts your chances I think.

10. I Need This Website To Save My Business and Make Me Rich

“I’ve been working on selling this great idea for 19 years and been unsuccessful. I’m sure that all I need is a website to make me rich overnight”.

If you’ve been trying to sell something for a long, long time and not been able to do it, it’s doubtful that a website will help. It’s really hard to sell things online, and some ideas just are not good ideas. Some businesses are so poorly run, having a website won’t help. Unethical web developers will take your money, regardless of the prospects of your success – so really try to be realistic about what a website can, and can’t do so you don’t end up wasting money and being disappointed.

Summary

So when you’re out shopping for a web designer, keep these 10 items in mind. You’re looking for someone with whom you can develop a long-term relationship, and it’s important to get started out on the right foot. Be prepared and know what you need. You want to treat the web designer with professional courtesy, and always, always, check references by contacting the business owners listed in their portfolio before hiring them. I think web development is a lot like being a car mechanic – magic things happen under the hood – and the best way to avoid getting scammed and finding a web designer you will be happy with for the long term is to keep these things in mind. And also, keep in mind that this article is a little bit of a rant – venting some frustrating while trying to help folks out there who are shopping for a web developer understand what goes on in the mind of a web developer. I’m sure some folks will not like this post – hopefully most will be able to appreciate the honesty and desire to help folks from getting scammed.

Recently my beloved website traffic tracking company, Web-Stat, announced a new feature: Geo-Targeting. This nifty feature enables your website to automatically detect a visitor’s location and do neat things like showing a particular banner ad or other location-specific content. It also  allows website owners to block all kinds of traffic to their websites by country, state, zipcode…and many other things. I thought, hmmm, why would someone want to block traffic? The answer: Spam Prevention!

There are two criteria that you should meet before you think about doing this. First, your business should have a defined region. There may be certain countries that you are 100% sure you don’t have clients in, or maybe don’t want clients in. Secondly, you get lots of spam from those same certain countries.

I meet both of these criteria. The vast majority of my clients are in North America. I’ve got one in Latin America, one in the UAE, had one in France…but in general, they’re in North America. And I routinely get lots of spam from two countries in particular: India and Russia. Spam costs me money because it takes me time to read and delete messages from these folks, and it’s also just plain annoying.

Take this example of an email I got yesterday afternoon from “Abubakar” with an email address of  “abu@cattechnologies.com”:

“Hello,I have visited your web site but i found some of drawbacks i.e:  1)your website has low Back links.  2)your keyword rankings are very low.  If you assist me to introduce our SEO services.Ihope you get more sales for your current website. I will be waiting for your reply…  Thanks & Regards,  Abu.”

First off, I hate spam. And I detest spam that actually tries to frighten me or actually insults me in order to get my business. I’ve worked very hard on my own website’s search engine rankings, and this particular spam just sent me over the top. When I looked in my Web-Stat account, sure enough, the person who filled out my contact form was from India. And then I remembered seeing the Web-Stat notice that they had a new Geo Targeting feature!

Now, I get spam from India and Russia all the time. In fact, if you look at my website statistics, 3% of my website traffic comes from India. And I get solicitations several times a week asking me to outsource my work to India, join in a back-linking scam, give them SEO work, etc. The only people who call me on the phone, asking me to outsource, are people from India. I confess I’ve been annoyed by this incessant badgering -  all from people in one particular country.

Russian folks seem to love to spam my blog. I don’t know why.  But they just do. Most of the time Akismet catches the spam, but some get through. They have all these funky Russian characters in the comments. Again, I have to read them, and delete them, wasting my time.

I did a bit of quick research and learned that Russia was the third worst spammer country behind the US and China. Looking at the Click Fraud Index by Click Forensics, Russia also scores quite high, with India being medium. TrendMicro.com has Russia at #2 and India at #7 for worst spamming countries. So my personal experiences aren’t that much out of line with what’s going on out there in spammers and fraud world.

So today, I’ve decided to take Web-Stat up on it’s offer and block my countries of choice: India and Russia. Sure I’ll give up some of my traffic, and also give up the possibility of having a Indian or Russian client, but I think it’ a good trade-off to make to avoid the wasted time and aggravation. I’ll let you know how it goes!

First, a quick lesson in Google Maps. In order to get your small business listed in Google Maps, which is an excellent thing to do, you have to register your business and enter things like an address, a phone number, and a website address, as well as other information about your business. It is a directory of local businesses, linked to regular Google searches. When someone does a search for something, like “website design seattle” in Google, you will often see a section at the top of the organic listings that shows a map and a list of businesses. These businesses are from Google Maps.

Now, I often look at “website design seattle” because those are my keywords. I’ve watched my own position in the Google Maps listing move around. For a time, I was ranked #1, and was happy.

One day, I was doing some research for a client, and discovered that a competing company had developed multiple websites with duplicate content  (this is called “doorway” pages). Someone then registered all these “fake” companies in Google Maps. I looked up the web design company to see who does this sort of thing because I was curious. I refer people to other website design companies, and if another company is trying to cheat the search engines, I don’t refer folks to them. I made a mental note of the company name.

Later, when I Googled “website design seattle”, as I am prone to do, the name of this very company came up, one once, but TWICE in the Google Local listings. Here’s what it looks like:

See the listings for A. and B. ? See how the phone number is identical? I’ve blurred out the company name and all but the last two digits of the phone to protect their privacy, but the domain and phone are  identical. In order to add a duplicate listing, they’ve created a subdomain, “website.theirdomain.com”, and added it as if it were another unique business to Google Maps. Also notice the generic names of the business “Seattle Website Design Firm” and “Seattle Website Design” – note, this is not the name of the company, but rather the keywords. It’s interesting to note that this seems to be a common practice as C. has “Website Design and Web Design Company” as the name of the business, when it’s clearly not. Is it the reason they’re ranked ahead of me? Perhaps, perhaps not.

Now, I like Google Maps, and often use it with my iPhone. I wanted to find out what the official rules were regarding how businesses got ranked. Admittedly I was much happier when I was number one, and wanted to know how to get back there, but I also wanted to know why and how other companies were cheating the system. Remember I used to be a Quality Director for Motorola – and I think it’s important to follow good rules that are set up to benefit everyone.

Here’s the official answer to “How does Google Maps rank business listings?“. Here’s what it says:

All Google search results are based primarily on relevance, and Google Maps listings are no different. Google Maps ranks business listings based on their relevance to the search terms entered, along with geographic distance (where indicated) and other factors. Sometimes our search technology decides that a business that’s farther away from your location is more likely to have what you’re looking for than a business that’s closer.

Google Maps and the Local Business Center are a free service, so there’s no way to request or pay for a better ranking. We also can’t provide additional details about our ranking algorithm. We do our best to keep the details of the algorithm confidential in order to make the ranking system as fair as possible for everyone.

“…as fair as possible”…that sounds good. So Google wants it to be a fair system, that’s great.  Fairness is their product, after all – we use Google because it represents the most relevant search results, which money can’t buy and cheating can’t get.  In theory.

Next I went in search of help. I found the “Google Maps Help Group for Business Owners To Report Spam on Google Maps“. The instructions say that if you’ve found Google Maps Spam, to reply to the thread with the relevant information and they’ll address it. (UPDATE, I do NOT recommend using this forum because your reporting is public – and in the end, I got harassed. Use this new private form instead to report Google Map Spam)

So I did. I subscribed to the thread and posted a message about what I’d found. And I waited. And I started getting other folks complaints – around 3 a day were coming in – after a few days I unsubscribed. There are tons of folks complaining about Google Map Spam and honestly I have no idea whether these complaints are ever resolved. So far, mine hasn’t been, but I’ll keep Googling “website design seattle” and see if the duplicate listings for the same company disappear or not.  It will also be interesting to see if the business names get changed from keywords, to the actual business names. I believe in Google’s desire for fairness – let’s see what happens over time.

UPDATE: Read what happened next.

Tonight just for grins and giggles, I decided to see who owned Aldebaran.com – it redirected to another website, which meant to me that it wasn’t being used – so I figured I’d contact the owner and see if they wanted to sell it.

You can find out who owns a domain by using a domain name lookup tool. I looked up Aldebaran.com and emailed the owner who was listed. I simply asked if he was interested in selling the domain.

To my utter astonishment, he said he’d sell it for $50,000, that’s fifty-thousand dollars! Or he’d generously lease it to me for $400/month. I don’t know what the point of leasing a domain name would be – what a search engine optimization nightmare. But let’s get back to his price tag of $50,000: How do you know what a domain name is worth?

There are many free domain name appraisal tools out there on the web. One such tool is SwiftAppraisal.com. It said Aldebaran.com was worth under $100. It’s interesting to use one of these free tools to see what questions they ask to determine the worth. Things like number of words (fewer is better), whether the domain name is associated with the business/product, whether it was easy to spell/remember. Aldebaran.com failed all of these tests. So why would this fellow ask $50,000 for a worthless domain?

What is “Aldebaran” anyway? It’s a star; the brightest star in the constellation of Taurus. It has nothing to do with web design, or any other business for that matter. You can’t sell a star.

Needless to say, I turned down this ridiculous offer.

But what if I had somehow trademarked “Aldebaran”. Then I would call a trademark attorney and see if this guy was guilty of cybersquatting. I don’t know if I trademarked “Aldebaran Web Design” if that would be good enough, but it’s something to keep in mind.

In general, to avoid all of these headaches – I advise my clients, whenever possible, to get domain names directly from registrars that are available. You can use domain name checking tools to see if a particular domain name is available. If it’s available, it’s only $10 per year. What a bargin!

Now remember, I’m a web designer. And that what I’d be looking for was a link from a website that was about…oh, I dunno, website design. Remember that search engines evaluate links in context, meaning the content that surrounds the link to your site matters in how much this link will be counted towards getting your website ranked for your keywords. You want links from pages that have your keywords in them. This is link building 101. You want links from pages whose main topic matches your website’s keywords. Here’s the email I received:

Link Exchange Request for Discount-pet-superstore.com PR 1+

Dear Webmaster,

First of all let me introduce myself – I am,Rokshar Link Manager

I handle online marketing for my client http://www.discount-pet-superstore.com

To increase the link popularity of my client’s site , we are now looking for triangular Link swapping with some good quality sites. You are already aware that Triangular Link swapping is much more popular and beneficial than Reciprocal Link exchange . This way both the sites gets the benefited . I would request you to place my client’s link at your site.

Please add my links on minimum Page Rank 1+ (otherwise it will not acceptable by my client) and use the following code for linking to us

Here are details of my site :

Url : http://www.discount-pet-superstore.com
Title : Discount Pet SuperStore
Des : Buy PetSafe Wireless Dog Fence, Dog Doors, Dog Crates, PetSafe Electric Dog Fences, Pet Containment Fencing, and Discount Pet Supplies

Or you can simply use the following Linking code:
a href=”http://www.discount-pet-superstore.com” Discount Pet SuperStore /a Buy PetSafe Wireless Dog Fence, Dog Doors, Dog Crates, PetSafe Electric Dog Fences, Pet Containment Fencing, and Discount Pet Supplies

Your link will be added within 12 hours at
dogfence-shopping.com (PR3)
OR
horses-shiatsu.com Within 12 hours.

Please forward me your linking details along with confirmation where my link have been added by you .

Hoping an early and positive response from your side.

Have a nice day ahead

Bsest Regards
Rokshar
Rokshar.anjum@gmail.com

Let’s dissect this request:

1. Website Conflicts With My Values: First and foremost – I believe that electronic dog fences are completely inhumane.

2. It’s a form letter: Meaning to me that this person probably didn’t even visit my website, otherwise it would be “Dear Jill”. Call me crazy, but I just don’t respond to form letters. I think they’re spam and treat them as such.

3. Triangular Link Swapping Is “Black Hat”: This means that whenever you try something that tries to fool search engines, it’s bad news. This is just like reciprocal link swapping, which is better than nothing, but not good as one-way links. The best links are those that folks give you because your content is worthwhile, not because “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”. Google is smarter than you may think.

4. No value to my website or my visitors. As previously mentioned, having a link to my website from a dog fence website or a shiatsu for horses website is of absolutely no value to me or the people who might be on my website. You should add links to your website because your customers will find the information useful. Other people will add links to you because they find your website information useful.

Bottom line: If you are going to hire a company to perform link building for your new website, find out HOW they plan to do this. If they are going to send out terribly written cookie cutter emails to random website owners – take your money elsewhere. Real quality link building is much more than hiring someone to send out spam on your behalf.

I recently had to make a change to my website maintenance services because I was simply unable to keep up with the demand for changes to websites that I didn’t design myself. There apparently are many, many website designers out there who are willing to create a website for customers, but have no intention of maintaining it over the long haul. I get regular calls from folks – so many in fact that I typically no longer can handle these small change requests – primarily because I’m committed to making sure I can take care of my own clients.

I changed my website maintenance offerings because I wanted to make sure there was adequate time in my work schedule to promptly (usually in 1 week) respond to maintenance requests from my clients. This is important to me because website code is easily changed, especially by the person who wrote the code in the first place – and service after sale is critical to customer satisfaction.

But I guess there are many less responsible web designers out there, who have figured out that doing website maintenance is less lucrative than doing new website design. Well, this is true. At least short term. I believe to build a successful long term business, you need to make customers happy. If they call you for changes and you tell them it will take you 3 months to do them, they won’t be quite as happy.

This is what happened recently. A fellow had his website designed by someone who was also doing the web hosting. (Note, this is one of those things I strongly recommend against – separate your web hosting company from your web designer). The web designer went on vacation, the website went down…and that was it. Phone calls went unreturned and the site stayed down for not days, but weeks.

The fellow then went on to tell me he moved his website to another web design/hosting firm. Now he wants to make some changes to his site, but this website company is telling him it will take 3 months to do these changes. Which sent him ballistic and looking for yet another web designer.

So this prospective client was spending today frantically calling web designers and unlike other companies, I answer my phone myself. I listened and told him what I services I offer and sympathized with his situation.

When you’re shopping for a web designer – look for someone who will not only do your initial website design, but who will support your website over time.

Small businesses undergo change and small business websites should change with them. Make sure your web designer supports their work AFTER your initial website work is finished – or you may wind up in a similar to this fellow – desperately calling one web designer after another looking for someone who will make changes to his existing website.

When you’re looking in a web designer’s portfolio, don’t just rely on the images they provide. Click in the URL (web address) of the websites they claim to have designed. (If you find a lot of broken links, this is not a good sign). Take a good look at the URL, it’s at the very top of your browser and begins with “http://”.

First, let me explain what these three things are and how to tell them apart.

1. Domains: These look like “http://www.yourbusiness.com” or “http://yourbusiness.com”. Domains are registered and owned by YOU, the small business owner.

2. SubDomains: These look like “http://www.yourbusiness.yourwebdesigner.com”. Once someone buys a domain, they can make all the subdomains they want, for free. Sometimes web designers will create subdomains for their clients – but they are not owned by the business owner – they are owned by the web designer. You as a small business owner have no rights to a subdomain on some else’s website.

3. Directory: These look like: “http://www.yourwebdesigner.com/yourbusiness/”. These are simply directories that the web designer has created to put your files in.

You want to see a web design portfolio where everyone has their own domain name, like #1 above. This is the only professional, and in my opinion, ethical way, to do website design for other people. Since domain registrations are so inexpensive ($10 per year), and hosting is also inexpensive ($10 per month) there is just no reason why a small business owner couldn’t afford to get their own domain name and their website files living right on that domain.

Why do some web designers use subdomains and directories? Laziness? Ignorance? For profit? Since it costs them nothing to create a subdomain or directory, maybe they’re charging folks for “web hosting”. Maybe they don’t know search engines work. Either way, this practice is NOT in the best interests of the small business owner who wants a website that will perform well over time in search engines. Let’s talk about that next…

How important is search engine traffic to small business websites? Super duper critical. Google knows the difference between domains and directories. In order to rank well, you want to have all of your content be just about your business, not mixed in with who knows how many other small businesses on who knows how many other directories. Domain age is another factor in ranking, and the sooner you get your own domain the better. Eventually, if you’re a serious business, you’ll get your own domain, and all that time you’ve spent living on someone else’s domain won’t count.

Don’t you want control over your own website? I can’t even begin to count how many people contact me with “my website designer has disappeared” stories. Over and over again. The only way to have complete control over your website, is to own your own domain.

And the same goes for web hosting: You will also want to control your website hosting (read this article on how to select a website hosting company) and I don’t recommend that you let your website designer do your website hosting. These are really very different skills – and you can get very good website hosting for very low rates ($10 per month). Would you let your housing contractor own the land that your home is built on? Of course not. Don’t do the same with your website.

Be Independent! By following this advice, your website designer can disappear, and your small business website will be just fine. You just need to find another person to make modifications, but your website will remain up and running in the meantime, and no one will be able to steal your website files or your domain name.

Take Home Message: When shopping for a web designer, look at their portfolio. Visit the websites they claim to have designed. Look at the URL and make sure the business owns their own domain (not a sub-domain of the designer, not a sub-directory of the designer’s site). Pick a web designer who is ethical and responsible enough to allow the small business owner maximum control of their website. In the end, if that web designer disappears, you’ll be glad you did.

But how often do you notice whether the little padlock in the upper right hand corner of your browser is actually there? This article serves as a reminder to always, always, always check.

I went to a website recently that asked me some personal information, namely, my social security number. This request surprised me, especially given the nature of what I was trying to accomplish. So I looked at the website, and here’s a screenshot of what I saw (note, I’ve tried to hide the identity of the actual website, that’s why some parts are blurry):

Notice the nice “Welcome to our secure online loan application” and the Verisign secure seal? But look again. There’s no padlock icon in the upper right hand corner of the browser. And the website is not secure at all, because the URL is “http” and not “https”. If it’s not “https”, it’s NOT secure.

Needless to say, I wasn’t going to put in my social security number.

But I did some investigation, because I’m curious and quality minded. I thought, well, maybe the web designer just forgot to put the “s” in the URL. So I typed it in. Here’s what I got:

This is a warning from my browser telling me that the SSL certificate belongs to “secure1.valueweb.com” and that it doesn’t match the website that I’m on. Not looking good.

I try another tactic. I click on the Verisign seal. Here’s what I get:

When you click on these security seals, you are checking back with the company that issued the seal to see if indeed it matches the website that you’re on. In this case, I was on a mortgage site in Washington, and the seal belonged to a software company in California.

I clicked on the “Report Seal Misuse”, emailed the webmaster, and emailed the mortgage company. While I never heard back from Verisign or the webmaster, the mortgage company did contact me. Hopefully they’ll get it fixed soon.

So there’s a big lesson here. If you hire someone to build a website and you need a SSL installed, verify for yourself that it’s working. If it’s done correctly you should see a little padlock in the upper right hand corner of your browser. The URL should be “https”. You should get no browser warnings. And if you click on the SSL seal, it should match the website perfectly.

Without these things, consumer confidence will disappear, like mine did, and your customers will leave, just like I did.

Be careful out there!

I recently had a good friend ask me to figure out why her friend’s website was not coming up in Google. After a quick review, the answer was obvious: the site had no text content, it was 100% flash. It also had zero backlinks. There was no reason why Google would rank this site, in fact, it wasn’t even in the Google index at all. It had a splash page, and played the same music on all pages. Which leads me to a familiar theme that keeps running in my head: who should you select to design your website: an Artist or an Engineer?

Ok, so I’m biased because I’m an engineer. Not just someone who calls themselves an engineer, but a real one with an engineering degree. I’ve created concepts, designs, prototypes, tests, and finally production quality products. Engineers might not be the most aesthetically driven sort of folks, but they sure do care about how things work. And websites are not just static pictures that you look at like a painting. They are dynamic. They are part of a living, breathing organic network called the Internet.

Now I agree that websites should be pleasing to look at, after all it’s a visual medium for the most part. They should also be easy for people to use. But the purpose of the internet is the sharing of information.

I typically design websites for small business owners. Not artists, musicians, entertainers or media companies. Small business owners are not in the entertainment industry. Their websites have one main purpose: to get more paying customers. They do this by communicating information about their products and services in a compelling and clear manner.

Artists create art to convey messages, stir emotions and inspire us. They are experts at creating beautiful things. But, they are not driven to create things that DO something. Websites must do many tasks. They need to capture your attention, lead you to perform certain behaviors (like checkout out a shopping cart or filling out a contact form). They must run and get content from a database and serve it to your visitors at lightening fast speeds. They must process credit cards securely. They allow you to create virtual communities by utilizing blogs or forums. They are very, very busy, and anything but static.

And they must be designed in such a way that other people can find them. Do you want your website to be a piece of art that hangs in a museum that no one knows the address of? Or do you want your website to be available to the entire world? Focusing exclusively on what your website looks like, and constructing it entirely of images or Flash, makes your website appear to search engines like a blank page.

Remember what “HTML” stands for? Hyper TEXT Markup Language. TEXT, TEXT, TEXT…it’s about written words. This is how search engines “see” the content on your website. They can’t “see” images, they can’t “see” Flash movies…but boy can they read text!

See how many times this is mentioned on the Google Webmaster Guidelines:

Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.

Note they said text links, not images.

Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images.

Again…Google is telling you to use text, not images.

If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.

And again…the more plain, regular, standard text, the better.

Still not convinced? Read this article from Google on “Working with Flash, images and other non-text files“. Here’s the very first few sentences (the bold is added by me):

In general, search engines are text based. This means that in order to be crawled and indexed, your content needs to be in text format. This doesn’t mean that you can’t include images, Flash files, videos, and other rich media content on your site; it just means that any content you embed in these files should also be available in text format or it won’t be accessible to search engines.

Why then, given this clearly stated rule, do some web designers still create websites who have literally no content in text? Why do they make websites that are 100% flash, like the one my friend asked me to review?

Perhaps they simply don’t understand how the internet works and have never cared to learn. They are artists at heart and like to make eye candy. Or maybe they know and simply don’t care about whether or not their website customers EVER get any traffic.

Either way, as I’m sure you can tell by now, this annoys me to no end. How someone can call themselves a web designer and take people’s money and then give a 100% flash website that is completely invisible to search engines, not to mention people with visual impairments who rely on text readers, is simply beyond me.

So before you hire your website designer, figure out whether they’re more like an artist, or like an engineer. Do they focus on appearance to the exclusion of functionality? Are they knowledgeable about even the most basic search engine principles? Ask them, and look at the sites in their portfolio. Is there more to it that just shallow surface flashiness? Do their websites WORK for their clients?

Use this handy tool to check out their portfolio – it will show you how a website looks to a Search Engine

1. Enter the exact website address of the page you want to view. (eg. www.iwebtool.com)
2. Enter keywords you want to search for.
3. Click the “Show Me Search Engine Spider View” button.
The results will be displayed the the box below.

Powered by iWEBTOOL

Look at what’s in the window above. (If it’s not working, you may have to come back later and try it, the iwebtool.com site that provides this tool is very busy!) What you see is exactly how the page looks to search engine spiders as they crawl over your website. If your website has no or little visible text in this box, then you need to add content that is text…simple as that.

ADDENDUM: To Folks With Flash Sites Who Are Paying For Clicks

For some reason, I’ve been recently contacted by several folks who have 100% Flash websites who are looking for Google AdWords (Pay-Per-Click) consulting. I sent them this article in the hopes that they will understand that while I’m more than happy to help them with AdWords, I also feel that ethically I should tell them about how poorly their websites are performing in Search Engines.

There’s absolutely no reason that people should have to pay for all of their website traffic – search engines like Google are continually trying to find websites that are relevant to what people are searching for. Why have a website that’s designed to be invisible to Google and then turn around and pay Google for traffic? It just doesn’t make sense to me.

So if you have a website that’s Flash, and you’re thinking about Google AdWords or another Pay-Per-Click service, please take a moment to learn/read about Search Engine Optimization – I think it will be well worth your time and possibly enable you to ween yourself off of Pay-Per-Click and attract some free traffic that your competition, who doesn’t have a Flash website, has been getting.