Good and Bad Viral marketing will be spread across the Internets.

SEO/Accessible Images

I noticed recently that some of my visitors are coming from Google image search and more impressively they find the image they desire and often are return visitors too.

If you never had a convincing argument to make your clients use appropriate naming conventions and alternate text attributes, you do now, SEO is an easier case to argue than accessibility.

Image Alt Attributes

The ALT attribute should describe the image so that a non visual user can interpret them, chances are the image reflects the content of the page anyway and therefore probably will contain the correct page keyword in the ALT attribute.

Image Naming Conventions

I forget what I was taught in graphic design, I also doubt WCAG covers the naming convention of image files for accessibility’s sake, but for easy file management I use a descriptive naming convention that explains what is happening the the image: cat-sat-on-mat.jpg, as the image supports the content of the page chances are it will also contain your web page keyword.

KISS (I meant the acronym)

KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) a lovely term obviously coined by some Yorkshire farmer talking about mud or beef or cheese – but annoying as this phrase is it works well. If your not that confident about your design skills or illustrator / photo-shopping then keeping things simple is the best way forward; simple typography; keep the amount of fonts down to increase neatness.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel on every project; most companies just want a website that will get their message across and achieve their main goals if they want you to reinvent the wheel they will pay well for the extra work. So layouts can be simple easy to use and dependable, top main navigation a sidebar for lower navigation and obvious content areas.

One of the most common comments I receive when I show potential clients some of my works is that its “really simple to use” and “obvious”. You don’t always have to use flashy graphics with gradients, shiny effects and buttons for links and most the time this is unnecessary as fundamentally the Internet is full of hyper linked web pages linked together by blue underlined links – this is web education 101 and what your mum, brother and grandad will know about how the Internet works.

Learn a CMS

If you want to make any company happy nowadays you will have to supply them with a means of controlling content without having to rely on a expensive web designer to change the coding every time they want to update the website.

A Content Management System will allow the client to log in add/edit/delete and manage the whole website from any PC with a Internet connection. This is a big step up from static HTML and probably looks very scary but this will really differentiates you as a designer to your potential client. I use WordPress, Shopify and Joomla and have found them invaluable tools.

Get a reseller account

Web hosting can be quite expensive for companies and often the idea of having to pay for hosting as well as your design services to smaller clients will put them off – if you can include web hosting for a year with your design / re-design then it may sway the deal. You can also reliably host your own company website and any extra projects you delve into.

Make industry contacts

Often you be asked questions by client that you do not know the answer to, the client doesn’t know how many different subcategories of web design they’re are and probably doesn’t know the difference between web design (design and front end) and web development (programming / back-end).

If you have a programmer / SEO/ designer / CMS expert / industry contact then you can say yes to their questions safe in the knowledge that you have the contacts to get the project completed and gain the clients trust with positive answers.

You are not lying to get the project, you are being hired to solve their web design needs and everybody in every industry outsources. I have lost count of the amount of times I have picked a industry contacts brain about their specialist subject and it has had a positive effect on my project. I have a handful of developers / designers that I can rely on and I know their rates of pay and how busy they are at all times.

Be competitive

I often challenge my peers to bets about marketing (how many diggs you’ll get), design competitions (logo design etc) and often lose dreadfully but its a great way to learn from one another and gauge how each other works and if you can work together on future projects.

Drop the dead donkey

If you try a side project that’s soaking up your valuable time and funds that isn’t working don’t be scared to drop it – I have just done this with a project I have invested in and now another great idea is getting that attention.

Drop the dead donkey

If the client is really indecisive, rude, overly demanding, wont pay a deposit, then don’t be scared to drop them – they will be more hassle than the projects worth. They are really nice companies and individuals out there looking for other nice professional people to perform services for them.

I cant believe the fantastic clients I often work with, really nice genuine people who are fair and respectful – I didn’t go freelance to work with anybody else.

Google Basics

If you run a normal search through Google and click “google search” Google will search for every word in your terms: and show pages relevant to your search. If you re-enter some search terms and click “im feeling lucky” Google will pull up the one website that it believes is most relevant to your search terms.

If you searched for “Web Design Blog”, the result that is returned will contain all the 3 search terms but not necessarily as a phrase or related in any way.

Google actually performs your search with the words you specify and in the order you have typed them. So to make a search more relevant you should always but the most important term first.

Google Special Characters

You can use special characters or operators to find results in a specific way. I will cover 6 special characters that will help you search more accurately.

Quoted phrases

If you put your search terms in quotes then Google will return results containing the exact quoted phrase in the order you have specified and containing each search term.

For Example if you search for “Anthony Brewitt” in quotes then the pages that are returned will show that exact phrase, not “Anthony had a dog called Brewitt”.

+ operator

If we want Google to search for a particular term we put the addition sign directly in front of the search term, this is usually used if there is a stop word like; the, I, and, Of etc. So if your search term was
“+the web design blog” Google will take the stop word “The” as part of the phrase. Note that there should not be any spaces between the operator and the search term.

- Operator

The exact opposite of the + operator. If you do not want a word to be in your search term then precede it with the minus operator, For example: “Book –by a.c grayling” . The pages returned from Google will not have the search term “by” within them.

~ Operator

This is called the tilde operator and is used to search for the word and synonyms of that word, a useful one for technical research. for example: “~ cat”. Just in case you didn’t know a synonym is a word that describes the identical or near identical to the original word. For instance Cat could return Feline or Pussy Cat.

OR operator

Use an uppercase “OR” between search terms and Google will return any of the search terms. Handy if you want all your search terms to be within your returned results. For example: “Web OR Design” will find pages that include either “Web” or “Design” or both terms, but not pages that contain neither search term.

.. Operator

A great way of searching Google for a price range. Say you want to search for a new Sony monitor and you have a budget of 100 – 400, you could set your price parameters using this operator. For example: “Sony Monitor 100..400″

Special Character Conclusion

I hope these special characters will improve your Google searching, I use them often as a lot of the time I agree to projects that will have one or two sections I am a little unsure of, thanks to these special characters I am confident I will find my solutions in Google quickly. Happy Googling.

Content is Queen

I read somewhere that “content is king” and for readers already engaged in your content that’s quite right, but for prospective readers not yet found, that’s wrong! The same article goes on to state that content isn’t king because for SEO there is a new heir to the throne and that content is actually now the queen. There’s a new king in town and he’s blue, underlined and will overthrow google if used properly.

Hyperlinks Reign

Hyperlinks are, in this humble web designers opinion, the most important weapon in our SEO arsenal, I like to think of them as the medieval trebuchet of SEO, that is they look like a weak bit of rope and wood but when they kick in their power overwhelms. Much like hyperlinks if we use them properly for SEO, once these simple targeted hyperlinks kick in you’ll be laughing.

Jolley Rum Case Study

I think this is easiest to explain using a case study so here’s the scenario:

You are making a website for a jewelers whom specialise and are interested in marketing mostly for Pirate Gold, they are called Jolley Rum Jewelers and their domain name is jolleyrumjewelers.com. You have designed them a great website and they have hired you to do a little SEO for them to get it off the ground.

Honest SEO

Firstly you should be honest and tell them that because it’s a new website it will take a little time for it to get indexed properly and to be able to compete with your competitors you will have to wait, but you can give them a boost for when the website is indexed.

Bad SEO Hyperlink

I used to do this and a lot of people still do, the name of the website is Jolley Rum Jewelers so obviously when I get people to link back to the website that will be the link text, so your hyperlink will look like this:


<a href="http://jolleyrumjewelers.com">Jolley Rum Jewelers</a>


This will help people find the keyword “Jolley Rum Jewelers” which is great because googly will point people in the right direction when they want to find “Jolley Rum Jewelers”. I have heard that adding the keywords to the title attribute will also help, so lets add that in there too:


<a href="http://jolleyrumjewelers.com" title="Jolley Rum Jewelers" >Jolley Rum Jewelers</a>


We have a perfectly good hyperlink with the name of the company in the link text and also their name in the title attribute to give a little boost too.

At this stage I would like to introduce a missing step that our designer should have taken and that is a simple process of contemplating what words people will input into Googly to find the Rum Jolleys Jewelers website. Do remember that googly try to find the most relevant content to your search terms, Here’s my best guess:

1. Jeweler
2. Pirate Gold

Users will not be searching for the website name, nor the jewelers name, users will be entering into Googly what they want and they want a jeweler, and they want Pirate Gold. Now lets have a look at the good hyperlink:

Good SEO Hyperlink

So we have properly identified the keywords that users will use to find the website and they are words that appear in the websites content. What we want to do is have Googly point to the jeweler’s via our chosen keywords. So the link text would want to be a keyword or two:


<a href="http://jolleyrumjewelers.com" >Jeweler</a>


Actually I would suggest sticking in as many of your chosen keywords as possible but still keeping it readable:


<a href="http://jolleyrumjewelers.com" >Jeweler's specialising in Pirate Gold</a>


I am not quite sure if this is completely true but I have heard that the link text on the left is more valuable than the link text on the right, so lets not take any chances and get our most valuable keyword “Pirate Gold” on the left most part of the link text:


<a href="http://jolleyrumjewelers.com" >Pirate Gold specialist Jeweler's</a>


Now we may as well add a helpful title attribute, one that describes to a non visual user the nature of the resource it points too, we can add your keywords as well:


<a href="http://jolleyrumjewelers.com" title="Visit Rum Jolleys , a Pirate Gold Specialist jeweler's" >Pirate Gold specialist Jeweler's</a>


Now spread the word

We finally have a good SEO hyperlink that is optimized for the website now all you have to do is get it out there. I would recommend that you try searching your keywords and see what websites rank the highest. If you can get your link on these websites that’s a great start.

I would also recommend searching your keyword plus the word “forum” and reply to some threads with an answer that just happens to have/need your link within it, even if you cannot get your link in a post most forums allow a signature at the bottom of each post and this could be your optimized hyperlink.

Also do the same in blogs, these are trickier and usually moderated comments will find your hyperlinks and stop you adding them. The best option here is to truly have an opinion on the subject and suggest that you have an article that could help the topic, this article in this case could be “How to tell Pirate Gold from Fools Gold” as the link text of your hyperlink.

Also blogs usually allow you to have your name as a hyperlink, why not stick a keyword in your name for instance “Pirate Tony” or “Tony Gold”, they all add up.

Hyperlinks for SEO Conclusion

Lastly the page you should be directing these links at should be very readable but contain your keywords a handful of times, more importantly they should have your title tag and your first heading of that page should be your chosen keywords. Otherwise all this effort is wasted.

The seo headache

I’m suffering a haemorrhage trying to decide whether SEO is sleazy, I have recently read a lot of articles and listened to a lot of podcasts on SEO and I have come up with my own conclusion that there’s a correct balance standing on a very fine line stuck in a real grey area:

A lot of web design purists, including Dave Shea, have commented on SEO as being sleazy and that hacking away to improve your website indexing should be avoided. The usual slant is that if you have good content that is updated often your pages will rank fine. It’s the old “content is king” attitude and I agree with them.

A lot of web designers use keyword heavy pages and spend a lot of time hacking away at their pages using SEO techniques to improve their rankings, the usual squawk from this lot is that high placement equals higher custom, I agree with them.

You see my problem?

I agree that good, clean, well written content is best from a readability point of view, but if nobody’s reading it because the engines aren’t indexing it well or finding and connecting any keywords to your posts then why bother writing content that nobody’s going to see!

But I cannot agree with letting the back streets of Amsterdam link to my website just to improve my ranking in a googly search engine. Seems kind of crazy; after all I don’t want people finding my website after typing in SEX, BLOW, DESIGN. I think those users will also be greatly disappointed when they arrive at DesignBit and find the post about creating a semantic web page and not the behind closed doors activities they desired.

Seo sleaze conclusion

The fine line, I believe, is when SEO starts to interfere with usability. If navigation starts to contain too many keywords the user will probably get lost and if the content has keywords like Mr T’s Jewellery collection then the page will be unreadable so you end up with a document that you can’t read, but that doesn’t matter because you couldn’t navigate to it anyway.

For a large community website, natural SEO using natural and readable website theme keywords in the hundreds of posts will of course have great results but that’s no good to the Average Joe small to medium enterprise that only has a few pages describing services and prices. So I do not see a problem with Joe optimising his content so googly can see his website a bit better. But if Joe decides to try and trick Googly with backdoor techniques then the company could be tarnished with a ban from the registrar.

I think SEO is still in its infancy and that it will remain there, googly algorithms will forever be changing and in turn so will the techniques of the SEO crazed designers. The Googly algorithms will change probably meaning the SEO zombies will have to change the way their site works to concur. The “content is king” web designer will not have to change their sites code every time googly throws a tantrum and for that very, very lazy reason I think I’ll fly with the Natural SEO bunch. Cheers Fellows!

Non Compete culture

Companies worldwide, and from my own personal experience especially in the UK, are very scared of giving away the smallest hint of what they actually do for their clients. Their perspective is often that any information they make available could be valuable to their competitors; they could get an edge over them if they knew their prices.

The Less Customers Know, The More We Can Charge

UK companies have a tendency to hide their prices and instead give an awkward quotation form for their services, even though they may supply competitive prices and a reliable service. If you picked up the phone they can probably give you a quote straight away.

Be Personable

There is an attitude that the less the client knows the more we can charge and to a great extent this is true. But these companies are missing a new wave of marketing, one that is transforming companies images and actually making business approachable and personal, even Microsoft, the brand tarnished with the evil corporation badge for so many years, has seen the error of its ways and is using blogging to become more personable.

Blog Marketing Gains Trust

The blog marketing scheme works by creating something that is mostly lost on online trading; trust. That website could be run by anyone with a few services to throw your way, you cannot actually judge what the company staff are actually like and there’s no way you can truly estimate the level of integrity the company has and how specialized they actually are.

These are all trust issues affecting paying customers choices every time they look at your website.

Be The Expert

The idea behind the blog marketing scheme is to blog well informed posts about your domain that hint at your greatness and experetise in the field, you may even gather a small readership interested in the same subject.

You will attract customers who are just browsing for the best price to service ratio and just happen to have a quick read of your blog. This prospective customer is reading about your expertise in the subject and with every word read is gaining trust in your company.

The customer see’s that there is also a real person behind the corporate identity, and they really know what there talking about. All a sudden the corporate identity of the company is fading and a new friendlier personal relationship is made between a supply and demand relationship.

Even Microsoft Blog

Yep its true, even Microsoft realises the importance of Blog Marketing and allows its employees to blog. The most famous being Microsoft’s all round tech good guy Robert Scoble. He has even blogged about personal tragedy in his life and even his dis-agreements he has on some of Microsofts policies. So if the big corporations are embracing the Blog Marketing scheme, shouldnt you?

Search Engines Love Blogs

Another great reason to blog is the word of mouth theory or more to the point word of Google. The more times your website mentions your keywords the higher ranking you will become for that term and thats how it should be as your website is obviously of high relevance. People may link to a article you have written on your blog giving important recipicoral links to increase your sites visability on the web, all this increases your chance of being on that magical first page of Google for your search terms.

Blog Marketing Conclusion

You may not get a massive readership like the big corporations but you can still earn a dedicated following which will bring extra custom, friendships and business contacts. Blogging gives your company an edge, and the personal touch that I described earlier can really change the feel of a company; from corporate to personal, even human. Thats worth an article a week!