Copyright © 2010 I-COM International 2010-07-30T07:42:42+0100 2010-07-30T07:42:42+0100 http://www.i-com.net/blog/ Leading Manchester SEO, SEM and web design agency blog. http://www.i-com.net/blog/ http://i-com.net/images/icom-net.gif http://www.i-com.net/blog/ Leading Manchester SEO, SEM and web design agency blog. I-COM International blogmaster at i-com dot net I-COM International I-COM International en SEO, SEM, Web Design, Web Development 1440 http://www.i-com.net/blog/multilingual-website-design-and-seo-328/ In its simplest form, having content available on a page, in different languages, opens your website up to more traffic and to reach a larger audience. If you are reading this you may already have a website that needs to cater for different languages.Google reports that a survey revealed, 'users feel that having information in their own language was more important than a low price.' This may explain why Google is currently so focused on providing localised search results. A multi-regional or multilingual website is one that explicitly targets users in various regions. For companies that want to reach a global audience  by supplying content in multiple languages, it is important to get the infrastructure of your website correct so Google understands which pages to serve for which search engine results pages. The list below addresses the most important things to do when preparing a website to support content in other languages:Information Architecture of a Multi-lingual SiteGetting the information architecture of a website right is vital to users finding the information they require. It can become a tricky business for a multilingual website. As well as planning for users who are accessing the content from different regions and in different languages, the site design must take into account users who may land on a page geotargeted to the "wrong" location. In this case it must be clear to these users how to find the content in the right language, using internal links (or little flags) in order to direct them to the right place.ResearchGoogle warns webmasters that there might be administrative or legal issues when creating content in a different language or for a different country. Be warned that what you write in one language may have implications if written in another - and that different countries regulate businesses in different ways, so make sure you're operating within the laws of each country you target.GeotargetingGoogle looks at the following factors when considering the region of a website: Is the domain a ccTLD (Country-Code Top Level Domain) or gTLD (Generic Top Level Domain)? Country-level domains are  probably the best way to target different countries. Sub-domains are a good alternative, as are country-specific directories on your website. Google does not read locational Meta tags to determine where you are. They are generally not reliable enough. If your site contains a local address or phone number, links to other local websites and Google's Local Business Centre, Google may use these to help determine the country of origin. Google will also look at server location from the IP address, but does not rely on this alone as many businesses host their websites in different countries. URLsIt makes sense to consider using a URL structure that makes it easy to segment parts of the website for geotargeting. Google outlines the pros and cons of different URL structures on their Webmaster Central Blog.A webmaster should avoid using auto redirects based on IP targeting or browser settings as it may send the user away, especially if the content that is in their language is not clearly identifiable on the page. From the point of view of a search engine crawling the website, the crawler may not be able to view all versions. Duplicate ContentThis is not a problem as long as the content is for different users in different countries. For SEO purposes, there is no need to "hide" the duplicates by disallowing crawling. However, if you're providing the same content to the same users on different URLs it would make sense to choose a preferred version and to redirect via the rel="canonical" tag.Same SEO Rules ApplyApply all of the same SEO rules to your content for different languages that youve learned for your original content. There is no secret rule here and just because the language is different doesnt mean that the search engine or crawler is different. Search Engine Optimisation 2010-03-29 14:29:34 http://www.i-com.net/blog/multilingual-website-design-and-seo-328/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/xml-sitemaps-for-seo-309/ We get asked frequently about the value of XML sitemaps for SEO. Apparently many SEO firms are saying, as part of their sales pitches, that where a current SEO company hasn't created an automated sitemap they are damaging a company's potential for ranking. I say this is total and complete rubbish.The sitemaps feature in Webmaster Tools was created as a way to help sites identify all their pages to search engines and let search engines know when they add or modify content. They also enable search engines to flag errors in reaching specific pages. They have nothing to do with ranking - they merely serve to help with indexing, if your site needs a little help.Where a website has been built correctly so that all its pages can be easily found and crawled by search engines, then an XML sitemap is not strictly necessary. In fact, any good SEO firm should be able to ensure through good coding and well-designed information architecture that no client's website actually NEEDS an XML sitemap in order to get its pages indexed.Why (and when) you should still use XML sitemapsJust because an XML sitemap should be unnecessary for your site does not mean that having one isn't best practice for SEO. First, creating one is easy - there's a lot of places that will  generate one if you don't have an XML feed setup, and you can quickly generate and upload a new one each time you update your site.  If you want to avoid having to do this regularly, however, setting up an automated XML feed that updates itself everytime you update a page then your SEO company should have the skillset to get this done for you (or, if you have a separate developer, your SEO company should be able to advise them on how to do it). Normally, if your site has been built correctly, it shouldn't really take all that long.Second, should something go wrong - should you find pages are not being indexed - having an XML sitemap may enable you to find out quickly which pages are the problem and why the problem exists by looking at Webmaster Tools. Third, it does flag up to search engines the URL of every page of your site. This is useful particularly for large sites that have pages 4, 5, 6 or more levels deep as it may speed up the process of your deep content getting found. This is not to say it will speed up the crawling and indexing - but it may help, so why not try it and see.Finally, if you update your site daily, or several times a day, then having an automated XML sitemap can help search engines understand that they need to visit your website more frequently in order to ensure they have the most up-to-date information.So, yes, your SEO company should recommend an XML sitemap for you - at some point. However, if it's a question of what work to do first, if your pages are being found and there are other things that will deliver results more quickly, then don't worry if they wait because not having one won't harm you - and if they're doing everything else right, having one shouldn't make a difference. Search Engine Optimisation 2010-02-05 09:03:00 http://www.i-com.net/blog/xml-sitemaps-for-seo-309/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/seo-information-architecture-usability-303/ What is the relationship between Information Architecture (IA) and SEO?The Information Architecture definition, in terms of a website, can be defined as the organisation & structure of a web page. This is of paramount importance in SEO, as it allows for both a user of the website and a search engine robot to find information clearly, and in a set structure. Like puzzles? Then you'll love IA.The relationship between IA and SEO grows all the time, and the desire for clean, well-structured code and semantically optimised web pages is never going to be a negative for any webmaster or user of a website.  By doing this, you are helping Google's (or any search engine for that matter) spiders be able to crawl your web pages quickly and understand what each page is about with clear understanding of the meta data, h1 tag and content. Usability and Information ArchitectureGood architecture is responsible for making it easy to find information. You can do this most effectively by getting people to test how they use your website. Testing is important; in terms of SEO, you can't test how good your search engine rankings will be before they go live. Unless you sat a Google robot down and asked him how easy finding his/her way around the page was, then bought him a drink to encourage good rankings. However, usability is important in every aspect for a user of a website, and SEO has to consider the user as well. How Does Information Architecture relate to SEO?Web Page Code:The web is evolving at a very fast rate, becoming more competitive and diverse all the time. As a result, mistakes can be a frequent occurrence. Broken markup is an all too common problem for search engines; Google could feel that this is an area to focus on for marking a website down in the search engine.Therefore, always focus on clean code that can be easily crawled and understood.As content is the most important part of the SEO game then it is also worth keeping in mind that the content should be situated high in the source code for the page. Finally, remember that every image should contain an alt attribute that contains a keyword that describes the image (unless it's a placeholder image, in which case, use alt="")! For other media, like videos, the titles should contain keywords as well.Structure/Accessibility:This should be easily laid out in the back end and front end of a page for easy crawling by a search engine and, in turn, indexing of pages in the index. It is important to think about the user in this area: What do they expect when they come to the website? Have the pathways for them to get to this page been easily accessible? How easy is the information to access now? All questions that need answering and should be in the front of the architect's mind when creating the page. It is important to remain consistent in your navigation and structure; it can be difficult when you are trying to break norms of conventional navigation, but what must remain consistent is the structure of a web page for SEO.ContentSimply put, keep it engaging and simple! The content should remain high in the source code, like I said before, but the important thing to remember is that search engines give you a slap over the head and 1000 lines for every second word being a keyword. It also will be useless to people reading it. On-page links (Internal)Internal links are a great way to help a user navigate their way through the website, however, don't overdo it, and make sure that the link to a page has relevant anchor text. SummaryThink about the user and think about the crawler. IA has a place for every aspect of building a web site, from design to SEO so the relationship with it has never been closer when considering how competitive 'getting online' is. Fixing a code-heavy website is similar to a spring clean - get rid of the unnecessary, move what you can into include files and keep only the minimal amount of code with descriptive keywords throughout the content. The structure of the site and of each and every page should be clear so that it helps engage the user and makes it easy for them to navigate from page to page.Creating a well-coded website forms the basis of SEO, so you can then add all the right content to acquire all the right links. Search Engine Optimisation 2010-01-26 09:14:17 http://www.i-com.net/blog/seo-information-architecture-usability-303/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/show-everybody-online-seo-252/ Derek Powazek recently posted an article with the confrontational title "Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists" (http://powazek.com/posts/2090) claiming that anyone who has ever paid for SEO work has been conned. In the post, Powazek maintains that: the information you need to present a site well is available online most of this information is common sense a site is only as good or as bad as the idea behind it Perhaps most damningly, he declares that Search Engine Optimisation is not a legitimate form of marketing. If you have the best product in the world but package it in a way that would never attract any attention, and you display it at floor level in a shop that no one would ever visit, you're not doing yourself, your product or the world any favours. Good Search Engine Optimisation is about presenting a product, a service or an idea in an inclusive, user-friendly way to its target audience, creating a buzz, and putting it in front of key decision makers. In the offline world that means journalists and reviewers - people who will be able to assess your product and advise potential users about it. In the online world, this is Google. Simple Effective Organisation Search engine optimisation is not gaming Google. SEO consultants are not the car salesmen of the online world. Search engine optimisers are the people you turn to if you find that the Internet has overlooked your great idea. This is not usually because of a problem with the service or product your site provides, but because of previously-made bad marketing decisions. If it were common sense, there would be no online marketing industry at all (or a marketing industry, for that  matter). SEO consultants are not running an extortion scam; people turn to SEO and continue to use it because it provides results. While I agree that the key practises performed by SEO consultants should be common sense, perhaps it's only common sense to someone who regularly writes for an online audience and understands accessibility and usability on the Internet. Powazek's site has contentious articles that will attract user links, has masses of informative, usable content and links out to other aspects of the blogger's online presence. It also makes intelligent use of tags and has good structure and presentation. Take out these features his article would have 180 less comments. Good sites are accessible for all. Good sites provide useful information. Good sites deserve visitors. Search Engine Optimisation 2009-10-14 14:59:25 http://www.i-com.net/blog/show-everybody-online-seo-252/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/that-cheap-website-may-cost-more-than-you-think-202/ Small businesses looking for their first professionally designed and developed website do not usually have a internet marketing expert on staff - or a web developer - and very often don't really know what things should cost. They may have a rough idea based on what friends or business associates have paid for their sites or they may have a friend or relative who works in web design. When they start looking at web designers and web developers, the recommendations and the cost can vary massively depending on who they call. It's easy enough to find a web developer who will build a site for 500 with a CMS included. It's also pretty easy to find a web designer who will tell you that you need to spend 20,000. If it's your first website, and you only need a few pages and a basic content management system in case you want to add anything new to the site, 20,000 on a website may be a little high. But, at the other end, 500 may be a little low - and if you're being offered a website this cheap, there's one BIG question you should ask in order to avoid headaches later on: "Will I own the code to my website and the copyright or will you?" One of the ways that companies cut costs in order to design and build websites on the cheap is to sell small sites built on a proprietary CMS that is owned and maintained by the developer. you pay them to customise a design for you and build the initial pages and you pay them for the right to use their CMS and host your website on their server. While this is a cheap option, and many of these packages are search friendly and easy to use, it also means that if the relationship goes sour, or you decide to redesign or upgrade your site using a different company you won't be able to take anything with you - you'll have to start from scratch and rebuild everything. You may not even have access to your own data including customer lists and your database of products in order to easily move everything from the old platform to the new one. When you sign a contract for a new website, always make sure that you own the copyright and you own the code - even if it costs you a little more money. Paying 1,500 for a site now instead of 500 will save you a lot of time and money later. Imagine that over the first few years  you've built your small shop into a thriving e-commerce business selling hundreds of products. If your developer owns the content of your site then you may have to re-enter every product, image and detail back into  your new site by hand - not to mention finding a way of reclaiming your customer database and order history! Is it really worth your time and money later to spend less now? "I still don't have much to spend on a website, what should I do?" In an ideal situation, you should be willing to spend enough on your website to get a bespoke system designed for you that can be upgraded and improved as your business changes and as technology develops. If you don't have the budget for that, however, there's plenty of open source software on the market these days that is easily customisable, easy to use, fairly search engine friendly and will do the job you need it to do. Open source software is free, you can modify it however you like, and you don't have to worry about who owns the copyright. Two quite workable solutions are WordPress, if you want a brochure site with the ability to add new pages easily; and Magento, if you want an e-commerce site. Because of the nature of open source software, your developer should be able to work with these systems - or another similar system - without claiming that it's their software so you can't take it away with you elsewhere. Web Development 2009-06-11 10:59:17 http://www.i-com.net/blog/that-cheap-website-may-cost-more-than-you-think-202/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/benefits-of-using-open-source-platforms-versus-closed-proprietary-platforms-194/ Open-source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. It promises better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in. Until recently this was a radical idea to many business people. Many believed that open-source software was not necessarily "professional", that it was shoddily made and more prone to failure than closed software, but the foundation of the business case for open-source is its high reliability. The open-source model has a lot to offer the business world. It presents a method by which companies and individuals can collaborate on products that none of them could have developed alone. It offers the opportunity for rapid bug fixes and implements the changes that the user asks for to a specified schedule. The open-source model also means increased security; because code is in the public view it will be exposed to extreme scrutiny, with problems being found and fixed instead of being kept secret until the wrong person discovers them. In January 1999, attackers were able to plant a Trojan Horse version of the TCP/Wrappers tool on a well-known FTP site; since source code was available, the back door was quickly noticed and removed. Contrast this with a monolithic operating system like Windows 2000, which has tens of millions of lines of secret, bug-ridden code. Without access to the source code, customers are 100% reliant on the good will and competence of the Microsoft Corporation, a reputation for self-serving behaviour. And last but not least, it's a way that the little guys can get together and have a good chance at beating a monopoly. Of all these benefits, the most fundamental is increased reliability. If this concept still seems a little abstract, think about how closed sources made the Year 2000 problem worse, and how they may very well have killed your business. Open-source software is peer-reviewed software; it is more reliable than closed, proprietary software. Mature open-source code is as bulletproof as software gets. Here at I-COM we believe in these principles, and thus chose Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP (LAMP) as an underlying platform for our bespoke online applications. LAMP platforms give us the advantage of higher flexibility, scalability and interoperability with other systems over closed system platforms like .NET. We did our homework and went with mainstream web providers. The clear leader amongst web servers used by the million busiest websites is Apache with a 66% share. It has a 47% lead over its closest competitor, Microsoft-IIS, much greater than on the web as a whole. Server Share amongst the Million Busiest Sites, March 2009 PHP and MySQL database are business ready applications used by some big names like:Bell Canada and Montral Exchange www.bell.caFiat Group Automobiles SpA www.fiat.comin ticketing www.inticketing.comtagged www.tagged.comIBM Research & Development LabsMcAfee www.mcafee.comUnited Press International www.upi.comVirgin Mobile www.virginmobile.friStockphoto www.istockphoto.com *) Sources: www.zend.com/en/company/customers/, www.mysql.com/customers/ As a Project Manager, I had the opportunity to manage projects developed on LAMP, ASP and C# .NET. Due to problems with integration of legacy systems to .NET, which caused projects to overrun and incur extra costs, I became an open-source advocate. It is blindingly obvious to anybody with business sense that a project based on open-source platforms can be integrated and customized much more easily, which means that the main project concludes successfully prior to the project deadline. Project overruns not only cause extra costs to I-COM, but are damaging to our clients, as our products are seen as important marketing tools. Since I joined I-COM International Limited, I have been pushing forward open-source platforms by using LAMP. We have developed our own libraries of Object Oriented code, which enables us to build robust solutions for every client, and are building bespoke applications based on clients own business models, which prohibits us from reusing code. But as mentioned above, time spent on a project is reduced by using well-tested, underlying platforms which we can rely on. The other issue with closed proprietary code is, that users end up in a "locked-in" situation, as there may not be any support from proprietors after the product life cycle is over, and any further scaling or extension is not within original software scope. This is another benefit of the open-source applications, as the user is in control of the source as well, and can freely move around, maintaining it themselves in case the product support ceases for any reason. We have seen many businesses buying off-the-shelf products or online services, where they do now own the software, data or have to pay torturous premium charges for support. With the open-source application you can opt for your own support, or pay developers to support the product. IMHO the open-source software business model is fairer, friendlier and more ecological then the closed proprietary one. Web Development 2009-05-15 14:50:47 http://www.i-com.net/blog/benefits-of-using-open-source-platforms-versus-closed-proprietary-platforms-194/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/google-why-screw-up-with-indexing-and-not-admit-it-182/ Recently we've seen Google dropping the index page of a clients site while leaving nearly all the other web pages in the index. There were server errors previously (robots.txt not reachable) in Webmaster Tools but Google had been back spidering the site since the issue was corrected and accessed the home page but not indexed it. Others have reported seeing no reported errors in Google Webmaster Tools but yet still having their home pages go missing from the index. Then the client site suddenly went from having no home page in the index to jumping back into the index with PageRank appearing as normal. We've received no explanation and no understanding from Google as to why this had happened. Now I understand that there will always be technical issues with indexing (due to the size and nature of Google)  but wouldnt you think that Google would at least mention this issue somewhere or give some practical advice on what can be done to resolve this issue? Ive looked on Webmaster Central and nothing not a thing about this issue. Search Engine Optimisation 2009-04-15 10:10:14 http://www.i-com.net/blog/google-why-screw-up-with-indexing-and-not-admit-it-182/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/google-relcanonical-tag-allows-you-to-specify-one-url-158/ Google Webmaster Central put up a post yesterday announcing the launch of rel=canonical. If you have multiple versions of the same page due to session ID's, query strings or any other issue, you can now add a tag in the saying . This is great news for SEO consultants as it will save us time and effort. Read the whole post from Google at: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html Search Engine Optimisation 2009-02-13 08:17:13 http://www.i-com.net/blog/google-relcanonical-tag-allows-you-to-specify-one-url-158/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/wcag-20-finally-released-132/ The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the W3C has finally released the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, after years of haggling over the initial draft versions. The WCAG 2.0 Guidelines are meant to help web designers and web developers build websites that are accessible to everybody no matter what device they use to browse the web and no matter what level of skill. WCAG 2.0 had been contentious from  the start as WAI committee members haggled over the best way to outline their recommendations and define various terms of the document and most people felt that the original draft was unclear and hard to understand - especially as it had a document explaining the guidelines and the a document explaining the document that explained the guidelines - hardly accessible itself.The discussion got so heated at one stage that reknowned accessibility expert Joe Clark left the group and founded Web Samurai to create a separate set of recommendations to update WCAG 1.0.We've not had a chance to read through the new document yet, but we will as accessible web design is good practice and helps all users, not just users with disabilities. We shall no doubt be voicing our thoughts further on the new guidelines in the near future. Web Design 2008-12-12 12:13:11 http://www.i-com.net/blog/wcag-20-finally-released-132/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/uk-e-commerce-sites-affected-by-vat-reduction-124/ Yesterday's 2.5% decrease in VAT may have far reaching effects on e-commerce sites across the UK. With the reduction to 15% VAT effective on Monday, 1st December 2008, e-commerce websites will be scrambling to change their prices.For many e-commerce retailers this means editing every product across their sites individually in order to reflect the reduction in price so they can avoid customer complaints that they are taking advantage of the VAT reduction to boost profits without passing savings on to consumers. Internet 2008-11-25 16:01:11 http://www.i-com.net/blog/uk-e-commerce-sites-affected-by-vat-reduction-124/