Seminar 3: February 22nd 2007
Powerpoint presentations:Creating a perfect homepage
Taking control of your website content
Questions and Answers
from the Oxford Webgroup Seminar held on February 22nd 2007
Q. RSS feeds – what are they, are they effective?
A. Lots of designers still don't know what they are! RSS feeds allow content creators to share their content. Their primary application is to allow people using an application called an RSS aggregator to get the information which they've explicitly signed up to without having to surf the web to get it or deal with spam.
They're a good way for site owners to publish their information in a reusable way e.g. news, product lists. Don't create RSS feeds 'willy-nilly', use them in a target, user-defined way.
Q. Where can they be found?
A. Google has a feature to build your own home page and provides listings of lots of RSS feeds to choose from.
Q. Is a tagline different from a [marketing] strapline?
A. You can use a strapline as a tagline, but if a tagline starts morphing into flowery marketing speak, users will get switched off. A tagline should be short, very clear and to-the-point.
Q. How do you keep your presence on the web [search rankings]?
A. Content is important but equally important is the way in which it is used on the page and how the page is laid out. To be high in search engine rankings, you need to have a high number of incoming links from other sites.
Q. Can you create these links without the website owner's permission?
A. You can build relationships with non-competitive organisations to start building links. There are also a number of paid for directories where you can publish links to your site.
Q. What's your opinion of SEO software like WebPosition?
A. Such software has been around for a long time. It is generally not well regarded in forums for expert marketeers. I would recommend that you research such products carefully and see what opinions are. Submitting to search engines is generally a waste of time.
Google differentiates between automatic and manual submissions. Generally the search engine spiders of Google and other search engines are designed to be as human thinking as possible. Therefore keeping your SEO activity as human as possible is an effective way to increase visibility and improve rankings.
Q. How often should a site be submitted to search engines?
A. There is no reason to submit to search engines. Submitting may have little or no effect or even a negative effect. You should only consider submitting after a very significant site change or after going live for the first time with a new site. You could consider a search engine site map application which will submit a map of your site to Google and other search engines.
Q. Does changing the date that a page was published make a search engine think that the page has changed?
A. Google [and other search engines] will decide for itself when to spider a site. Telling it when content was last updated or how often it changes is meaningless. Making regular changes to the home page every month or so can have a dramatic effect on search rankings.
Q. You talked about not using drop down menus. I have about 25 pages on my site and would like to use a drop down menu to present a structured way to get to them.
A. You're talking about a context menu. Opinion is somewhat divided over the use of these. Generally using a drop down is not considered very accessible – difficult for users with disabilities and those using screen readers. It would be better to use major navigation to group your pages and then sub-navigation to broaden the options in each group. There's a myth that users should be able to get to every piece of information within three clicks. If navigation and structure is well thought out and presented, users will find what they need.
Q. I've been told that a hints and tips page is a good idea
A. An FAQs or hints and tips page is probably the second most effective page after the home page for achieving engine visibility.
Q. I often find that FAQs don't answer my question!
A. There's a golden rule for FAQs. They should all be real frequently asked questions. Don't list infrequently asked questions and don't make them up.
Q. I have a question about espionage. There are nasty individuals who use the names of my suppliers in their web page without their permission. My suppliers then come to me to complain. Is this the way that things are going?
A. No, that's really a legal rather than a marketing issue. If someone is doing that you should consider seeking legal advice. We've seen similar issues with targeted hate campaigns. Again, I would advise seeking legal advice.
