Seriously, if you’re going to auto-tweet a banal marketing message, at least use proper grammar and punctuation. Why are there quotation marks? Why do you use “U” instead of “You?” Why do you want to look like base incompetence is the standard at your corporation?

(Having eaten there, I can actually answer the third question…)

Red Widgets For Sale

We supply red widgets to businesses of all sizes, regardless of their CM292 status! Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam iaculis ornare urna, eget congue ligula tincidunt sit amet. Vivamus sit amet elit sed turpis tincidunt suscipit. Sed vestibulum risus quis urna faucibus luctus.

Red Widgets Are Good And Worth Buying

Red widgets can be had for less than you’d think! Lorem ipsum proin vestibulum, lorem euismod ullamcorper ultrices, est urna fermentum ipsum, eu faucibus velit nunc et tellus. Donec nibh elit, vestibulum nec dignissim nec, suscipit quis mi.

Red Widgets Are So Great

They really are the best kind of widgets and if you are serious about widgets, you need to get some! Lorum ipsum auris pharetra eleifend ipsum accumsan rutrum. Duis dapibus lorem in massa laoreet eu viverra lectus tincidunt. Morbi in tempor purus.

While this increases your raw keyword count and accompanying density, Google and the other search engines look at more than that when determining the quality of information presented.  Headers need to provide structure to your readers, to show them content that is sorted from most important to least important in regards to the page’s topic.  You should also look at headers as a way to place keywords relevant to your topic in the appropriate order.  A better example would go as follows:

Red Widgets For Sale

We supply red widgets to businesses of all sizes, regardless of their CM292 status! Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam iaculis ornare urna, eget congue ligula tincidunt sit amet. Vivamus sit amet elit sed turpis tincidunt suscipit. Sed vestibulum risus quis urna faucibus luctus.

What To Know Before You Buy Red Widgets

Red widgets can be had for less than you’d think! Lorem ipsum proin vestibulum, lorem euismod ullamcorper ultrices, est urna fermentum ipsum, eu faucibus velit nunc et tellus. Donec nibh elit, vestibulum nec dignissim nec, suscipit quis mi.

Red Widget Financing is Available

We make it possible for any business to buy red widgets with our financing options! Lorum ipsum auris pharetra eleifend ipsum accumsan rutrum. Duis dapibus lorem in massa laoreet eu viverra lectus tincidunt. Morbi in tempor purus.

Search engine spiders will see that this page provides authoritative text on the topic of buying red widgets, even as I’ve conveniently arranged them by their (completely theoretical) search volume that matches the (completely theoretical) order of relevance.  Of course, if a term like “red widget financing” had a massive amount of volume, it could well get its own page that would then be ordered by headers in the same fashion.

This goes back to a central point that’s frequently missed in discussions about SEO: the reader should come first.  What’s the point of getting someone to a page if they see just keyword-packed text with no thought applied to its flow? The more relevant information that you provide to your customers, the more likely they are to view your site as a resource, even if they don’t purchase on their first visit.

Google’s updated their design for search results quite nicely, taking a bit of what I like about Bing’s left-side menubar and making it more minimal and friendly. I found myself looking at the descriptions under the titles a bit more in this iteration, but that’s what an attorney would call purely anecdotal evidence, I’m sure.

Better go make sure your retail operation’s information is up to date in Google, because Google Maps is now including local businesses in their maps’ Street Views.  It looks to be a very dynamic system and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we saw it integrating Yelp! and the ever-popular-on-Twitter Foursquare.  Check it out on the Google Maps blog!

First of all, let’s talk about Data Devices International.  They’re a respected vendor of security products like degaussers, hard drive destroyers, hard drive erasers, etcetera.  They had Degausser.com redirecting to their main homepage and I sat down with them and came up with a strategy to maximize this URL by creating a resource for the data security business.  Hence, the new Degausser.com was born, offering information about degaussers, including how they work, different types of degaussers, and information about NSA-approved devices.

Then there’s Housewall.  They offer garage organization and storage solutions that let you get your garage back.  Working with the people at Blue Agate, we restructured the site with new URLs, better on-page content, metatags, and directory placement that led to a dramatic improvement in their performance, moving them up in the rankings in a highly-competitive field, particularly when it comes to localized search.  There’s still more work to be done by their team, but they’ve got a very solid foundation for improved rankings in the future.

These are just two examples of how we’ve helped smaller businesses get more traction out of their web presence.  Unfortunately, our three largest clients have us bound to confidentiality agreements, so we can’t go into details on those, but in the next few weeks, I’m going to try to make some posts that talk about how we’ve helped them without naming names.

1. The vast majority of clicks are going to bounce instantly.  Whether this is because these people are Digg addicts who open everything in a category or that you’re just not offering what they think they want, this is a hard fact.  With a toolbar at the top of your site that gives them access to the next shiny thing on the internet, you’re having to struggle with a short attention span and an urge to see what else is out there.
2. Short, on-message videos or funny pictures, charts, and graphs seem to work best.  Your 50-page PDF about office organizational systems is not what they’re looking for, but a comic strip about someone’s travails in their new office environment might be.
3. It’s completely possible for your site to get 50,000 or more visitors from Digg and not see a single conversion or even a click on an ad.  Unless you’re selling a cheap item that’s relevant to their interest like ThinkGeek or offering an mp3 or the like that they can download and enjoy instantly, the siren song of the toolbar and the “next” button is likely to be stronger than your own call to action.

Social media can drive traffic to your site and build brand impressions, but in an increasingly noisy space where thousands of companies just like yours are competing using the same methods, it takes a savvy mind to be able to profit from that traffic.

What are the three things that people are looking for when they’re visiting your brick and mortar operation’s website?

1. Your Address. They want to know where you are so they can come there and give you money.
2. Your Hours of Operation. They want to know when they can come to your business and give you money.
3. Your Phone Number. They want to be able to call you and get answers that may allow them to give you money or make reservations to give you money.

If these are not immediately viewable above the fold on your front page, then you’re going to lose business.

What are people not looking for when they visit your brick and mortar operation’s website?

1. Fancy splash screens. If they want to watch cartoons, there’s a whole network dedicated to them.
2. Music, unless you are a music store. Are you selling music? No? Then there should be no music on your website. If you are selling music, then make it optional.
3. PDFs. Restaurants, I’m talking to you and your menus. If you’re that worried about the formatting, offer it as an option, but there’s no reason I should have to fire up Adobe Reader to check to see if you’re offering clam chowder.
4. A link going to your MySpace page instead of any actual content. That this happens in 2009 when there’s any number of high-quality, free content management systems is galling.

Should your site be well-designed?  Of course.  Should it reflect your business’s overall aesthetic?  Undoubtably. Should your site make people work to get to the three things they want?  No.