using my head

What makes a good link from an SEO perspective?

mikocoffey — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:43:02 +0000

The external links that point to your site play an important role in where your site appears in the search engine results. You can think of it this way: every link from a relevant external site that points to your site counts as a ‘vote of confidence’ in Google’s eyes. In fact, it is agreed by search engine optimisation professionals that 4 out of the top 5 factors affecting your Google ranking are about external links. But when it comes to search engines, not all links are created equal. So what makes a good link from an SEO perspective? If you have partners or customers who are willing to link to you, how exactly is the best way for them to do it, in order to give you the maximum benefit?

Here’s my take on this, hopefully explained in a way that anyone (even non-techies) can understand. Let’s start from the worst moving up to the best…

DREADFUL: Image Link, no ALT tag, meaningless image name

Example:

SEO-usefulness: 0.5 (out of 5)

This link is not really doing you any favours. OK, it’s a link, but it’s not working very hard as far as SEO is concerned. Google – like all other search engines – cannot ’see’ images. So even though this link says SEOMoz, the words are part of an image. You can tell by trying to highlight it with your cursor: words that are images do not highlight as text. Therefore, Google can’t really tell what this is.

This image has no ALT tag, either. An ALT tag is a little bit of code that tells visually impaired people (and search engines) what the image is. So for a photo of a green apple, the ALT tag might say “green apple”. You can tell if an image has an ALT tag by hovering your mouse over an image. If there’s an ALT tag, the text will popup (some people call this ‘tooltips’).

Finally, the filename of this image has nothing to do with the website where it is pointing. The filename is “logo135b.jpg”. Unless someone goes onto Google and types “logo135b”, this is no help whatsoever. In fact, I encourage you to go to Google now and type logo135b in the search box. Does this give you any clues as to how image names can help with SEO?

POOR: Image Link, with ALT tag, meaningful image name

Example:

SEO-usefulness: 1 (out of 5)

I see this as the bare minimum when it comes to a link that is useful from an SEO perspective. Even though Google still can’t ’see’ the image, it can read the text in the ALT tag, and that text contains the brand name of the website it is pointing to (hover your mouse over the image to see). Furthermore, the filename of the image is “seomoz.png” – which also contains the brand name of the website it is pointing to. Luckily, in this case, the brand name and website URL have something to do with the services that the company offers. But if your company name is something like “Deep Blue” and you sell shoes, you’re not so lucky. There’s nothing in your brand or URL that tells Google – or human visitors – that deepblue.com sells shoes. So the usefulness of any links that mention the words “Deep Blue” are only helpful to you from a branding perspective. We’ll expand on this next…

FAIR: Image Link, keywords in ALT tag, keywords in image name

Example:

SEO-usefulness: 2 (out of 5)

If you simply must use an image link (for branding purposes/advertising), this is the way to do it. The ALT tag here is “search engine optimization resources” – and this contains keywords that people might use when searching on Google for such a site. The filename of the actual image itself is “search-engine-resources.jpg” – again, this contains keywords. Including keywords as part of the link is absolutely critical: Google sees this as saying “Hey, look over there on that site if you are interested in search engine optimization resources”. Naturally, this only works if the site you are pointing to actually contains search engine optimization resources. Google isn’t stupid.

You can further improve the usefulness of the image link by adding a text link directly under or next to it, something like the below…

MIDDLING: Text Link, keywords near the link text

Example:

SEOmoz.org – a good place to look for search engine optimization resources

… if you are interested in reading more about search engine optimization, you might look here.

SEO-usefulness: 2-3 (out of 5)

Now we’re getting somewhere. Google likes text, and text-based links. More importantly, remember that the success of Google is based on TRUST and RELEVANCE. So this is what Google uses when evaluating links. We’ll get to the TRUST part in a minute, but as for RELEVANCE, this is how it works: Google sees a link on a page, and if there’s nothing in the link itself to give clues about what the linked site is about, Google then looks at the text in the immediate vicinity to find out what the link is pointing to. It is common sense, really. The words around the link give context, and indicate that the link is relevant to that topic.

Now, ordinarily a link with a generic word like “here” (above) is a bit of a wasted opportunity. But luckily, this one has been partially rescued by putting some relevant keywords in the link title (hover your mouse over it to see). However, it’s still not as good as the link above it, and nowhere near as good as the following…

GOOD: Text Link, keywords in the link text

Example:

SEOmoz.org – a good place to look for search engine optimization resources

… if you are interested in reading more about search engine optimization, you might look at SEOmoz.

SEO-usefulness: 3 (out of 5)

Even better: use the keywords in the link text itself. This is a clear signpost to Google indicating that the linked site is all about the topic of search engine optimization. Equally importantly, it’s a clear signpost to site visitors that when they click on that link, they will find search engine optimization resources. This is almost as good as it gets in terms of relevance…

I say almost because relevance is not just about the words immediately in and around the link. What is on the rest of the page?

BETTER: Text Link, keywords in the link text, on a page about the relevant topic

Example:

As above, but in an article about SEO

SEO-usefulness: 4 (out of 5)

Naturally, if the rest of the page is about web design, and there’s a link to an SEO site stuck on, then this is not as good in terms of relevance as a link on a page/article purely dedicated to SEO. So if you think about my own blog (what you are reading right now), the links I have used as examples on this page are exactly what we are talking about: the text links above are a 4 out of 5 in SEO-usefulness for SEOmoz because this entire article is about SEO.

Think about how most links occur on static websites: more often than not, they are lumped into a page called “Useful Links” or something. Usually there is nothing on that page that gives any relevant info about those links. Now think about how most links occur on blogs: usually they are sprinkled throughout the text in an article about a relevant topic. With this in mind, is it any wonder why blog pages often appear high in search engine results*?

But wait, there’s more…

BEST: Text Link, keywords in the link text, on a page about the relevant topic, on a trusted site

Example:

As above, in an article about SEO, on a site trusted to be about SEO

SEO-usefulness: 5 (out of 5)

This is the Holy Grail of value when it comes to external links and SEO. Remember, I said we’d talk about TRUST later, so here we are. Google wants to give customers the best possible results, so it makes sense that a link from a trusted, relevant website is best. You would do the same: you’d trust a mechanic’s car recommendation more than you would trust a baker’s. At the beginning of this article, I said a link is like a vote of confidence, so a vote from a website that is well-established in its niche area is better than a vote from a site which isn’t.

If we look at the example of the SEOMoz links, if all other factors are equal, a link from my blog is not going to be nearly as valuable as a link from a site like Search Engine Watch. Search Engine Watch is all about SEO, it’s been online for many years, it has lots of relevant SEO links pointing to it, and it ranks high in search engines itself. In this sense, Google trusts Search Engine Watch more than it trusts me. Which is fine by me – I trust Search Engine Watch more, too!

So there we have it, the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to inbound links and search engines. Now you can make better use of adverts, partner links and hopefully make better links yourself, too.

* Search engines also like fresh content, rather than stale mouldy old pages… but that’s a whole other article!

Notes and videos from Squarespace demo / web app presentation

mikocoffey — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 17:28:05 +0000

Well, at the January NetTuesday I managed to build a pretty decent-looking website live, in 33 minutes. The lovely Amy from NetSquared has uploaded some video of the presentation, and the videos of the actual website build will be coming soon, I’m told. But in the meantime, you can have a look at the slides from my presentation about how web apps have fundamentally changed the web design industry and web project lifecycles. Some linkies for you:

- Web design before web applications (video)
- Web design after web applications (video)
- View the presentation (slides)

I was really thrilled to see the Meetup attendees gave me a 5 out of 5 rating for the presentation, and I hope they will find the info and tips to be useful. It’s a lot to cover in an hour (both theory & practice), so the slides may be a very broad generalisation, but I do think the concept holds true: making websites today bears little resemblance to the way we used to build them even just a few years ago.

I think the really interesting thing to me is how I now tend to input content first, and do design second. This is completely the opposite of how we used to do things. But it’s a great tip when working with content management systems like WordPress or Squarespace, because it means you can create a design that you know will work with the type of content you have. So often we as designers would mock up something that looked beautiful with a couple of paragraphs of ‘lorem ipsum’, only to find that the design didn’t work so well with loads of text and several photos, which is what the client needed to have on the page. If you’re a designer, give it a try on your next project.

Websites that defy the Reality Triangle: Good, Fast AND Cheap

mikocoffey — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:25:46 +0000

Next Tuesday I will be speaking about how you can create professional-looking websites quickly, at low cost and with high quality. Sounds impossible? Not anymore. The latest breed of web-based applications and tools have totally revolutionised the web industry, and next week I will be sharing my experience of working with these tools.

I will also do a live demo of Squarespace, showing just how easy and quickly you can put together a great little website. In fact, I am hoping to be able to create a full website within the 55minute session, so I’m setting myself a big target! If you are in London next Tuesday and want to see how it’s done, learn more about to the tools out there, hear my tips and pitfalls to avoid, then pop on over to NetSquared and sign up. Everyone is welcome so please do stop by!

New year, new portfolio

mikocoffey — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:34:38 +0000

What better way to make a fresh start in the new year than to freshen up my website. I have been so busy with clients that I haven’t had a chance to do it in a while, but I set aside the afternoon today and created a new Portfolio page to highlight some of my web design projects. Although design is not the only thing that I do, it’s one of the things I seem to be doing a lot of lately, and it’s nice to group everything all into one place. Creating the page made me realise that I designed, built and launched 12 websites in 2009, which averages out to around 1 per month. I reckon that’s pretty good going for a one-woman band, especially as I also had plenty of other non-design projects and photography work in the mix.

Funny how the changing of the calendar makes you take stock of life and reflect on how things are going. It’s good to have some kind of external force urging us to do so, because it’s not something us humans tend to do enough. I think it’s best summed up in the words of the immortal John Hughes, who sadly left us in 2009:

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” - Ferris Beuller

A sweet new site for charity

mikocoffey — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 17:35:39 +0000

Today marks the launch of my latest Squarespace website: a charity website for the Confectioner’s Benevolvent Fund (aka Sweet Charity). As they are a small UK charity, the challenge on this project was to create a great looking and functioning site on a tight budget, complete with multiple author/editor roles, embedded Flash and an event calendar. The fun part was using their brand name and industry in a creative way to form part of the design. The result of this is the bag of sweets that pours onto the pages, with different types and formations of sweets representing the different page contents conceptually. The client loves the concept so much that they will be using it on their offline marketing material, which makes us both happy.

We’ll be working together in 2010 incorporating the new look into their e-mail newsletters, and I will also be advising them on how they can use some of the latest gen online tools and web apps to streamline their internal workflow, allowing staff more time to focus on the important things: fundraising and helping people who need their assistance. It’s within organisations like Sweet Charity that I feel these web apps stand to make the biggest difference: they are free or low-cost, quick to implement and learn, and they can replace manual or time-consuming activities, usually without impacting on other internal technologies. In a busy charity, there’s never enough time to do things, so anything that can save time or make people’s jobs easier is a godsend. And there’s nothing I enjoy more than making people’s work lives a little nicer.

New WordPress theme: CapitalBlue

mikocoffey — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:27:46 +0000

I have just finished customising a lovely clean, simple and easy-to-read WordPress theme for a new client, Capital Fire and Security. I like the clean lines and the way the blue and white make the photos really pop off the page. This project was another collaboration with the rather wonderful Katrina Dixon a.k.a. The Marketing Lady, who is a real pleasure to work with. Although this was primarily a design & build project for me, I thought I would help out the client with a few SEO tips during the training session. WordPress has a few good SEO features built-in (or via plugins), but the best SEO always boils down to content, content, content.

I think both the client and Katrina were pleased with the results, and I can already see that they are using the blog on their site well, filling it with really useful news articles relevant to their clients. So I can finally stop bugfixing and working around crazy IE6 hacks just in time for Christmas. Hooray!

I’m featured in the Blogger’s Handbook Vol 1

mikocoffey — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:32:23 +0000

Woohoo – how exciting. Those nice people over at Imagine Publishing have put together a nifty guide called the Blogger’s Handbook, which covers all the major blogging platforms, advice on setting up and designing blogs, and info about how to make blogging work for you. And yours truly is featured on page 114 in their feature on Squarespace.

It sure is nice to be recognised out of the millions of bloggers/designer-developers out there. And speaking of Squarespace, I have set up a showcase of my Squarespace projects, so hop on over to UsingMyHead on Squarespace if you fancy learning a bit more.

Making Lightroom’s photo galleries a bit more exciting

mikocoffey — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:22:33 +0000

When a photographer colleague of mine approached me to help him create a new website to showcase his work, I was quite excited, because the project allowed me to exercise a little creative thinking on how he could easily create photo galleries that didn’t look like the bog standard stuff you usually see these days.

I like to tailor the job to the client, and make something that slots right into his or her workflow, rather than forcing poeple onto a particular tool or platform regardless of whether it’s right for them. So, because he was already using Adobe Lightroom to process his images, it seemed like a good idea to base the website on the galleries that come built into Lightroom. But they are a bit boring and pretty limited in terms of customisation. And the client wanted a really individual website that visually represented what his photography was all about: edgy, modern imagery.

The final solution was for me to build a custom HTML framework that houses embedded versions of the Lightroom galleries. This means that the client gets all the visual appeal of a bespoke site, with all the ease of exporting and uploading galleries directly from Lightroom. He didn’t have to learn anything new, and he gets to take advantage of a tool already built into his normal working environment. It’s great to be able to work in this way, and I look forward to other projects where I can help people save time or make their workflow a little simpler. That’s what gives me the greatest satisfaction in life. I don’t think of this kind of project as a ‘design’ job: to me it’s all about helping people. Check out the results here.

WordPress or Squarespace: the pros & cons of each

mikocoffey — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:42:48 +0000

Recently clients & enquirers have been asking about which platform is better – WordPress or Squarespace – so I thought it might be helpful to post a comparison here. This is based on my own experience in using, designing for and administering websites and blogs on both platforms: your mileage may vary. But here’s how I see it…

NOTE: All comparisons and info below relate to Wordpress.org, which is the installed version that you download and install on your own hosting. I am not including Wordpress.com in this comparison, which is the hosted version of WordPress that you sign up / subscribe to. This comparison is for professionals and small businesses, and I don’t feel that WordPress.com is the right choice for this purpose.

Similarities between WordPress & Squarespace

There are a number of similar characteristics and functions of the two products; here’s a few of the most relevant ones. Both:

Can be used for creating and managing blogs or a variety of different types of website
Are cost-effective, starting at a few pounds per month for hosting/subscription
Allow you to use your own domain name (instead of something like http://yourdomain.wordpress.com )
Allow non-technical people to update the website text/content without much training
Offer a lot of visual design flexibility, in which an experienced designer/developer (like me) can create polished, professional websites quickly ; however, there are some design limitations with both systems
Use template-based designs that can be easily changed, customised or tweaked in future without affecting the content
Have a number of search-engine-friendly elements built into the way the pages/sites are structured
Offer the ability to have multiple authors/editors with different levels of editing permission
Have the capability to use/embed Flash, video or other media within the site
Have their own quirks – things that don’t quite make sense – but are easily worked around once you figure it out

So what are the main differences?

About Squarespace

Squarespace is a full-featured hosted content management system (CMS) designed for websites and blogs. Users pay a monthly subscription fee to Squarespace in return for hosting the site and access to the content management system. You don’t download anything and you don’t need to find hosting: as soon as you sign up online, you can get started working on your site.

Squarespace Pros:

The subscription fee includes full technical support from Squarespace. Response times have been quick in the past: anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours.
Cost effective: the lower level subscription rates are comparable to the cost of standard web hosting, with a lot more included.
Very intuitive content management system: incredibly user-friendly (the best I have seen at this price point). It is clear that Squarespace developers focus a lot on usability.
Offers scope for additional functionality (eg custom forms, private client pages) through built-in features & modules that are easy to set up, usually even by non-technical people. These modules are supported by Squarespace’s tech support in case of any problems.
Basic website statistics are built-in, and conveniently accessed through the same login used for editing the site.
All the infrastructure is managed by Squarespace. This means future product upgrades are applied automatically by Squarespace, so you don’t need to install anything or worry about whether you are using the latest version (you always are).
Everything’s in one place: if something goes wrong, you know it’s Squarespace. With WordPress, you sometimes can’t easily tell whether it’s a WordPress problem or a problem with your hosting provider, making troubleshooting take longer.

Squarespace Cons:

As a fully-hosted solution, you cannot shop around for better hosting deals: you are tied in to Squarespace’s hosting and prices.
Some added features are only available through higher monthly fee subscription packages.
Some features cannot be easily customised without a designer/developer’s help (custom coding).
The statistics that come built into Squarespace are not as detailed as those from Google Analytics or other web analytics tools (note: you can install Google Analytics or other on Squarespace).
Squarespace is not a huge company with thousands of developers, so product improvements and enhancements are not released as often as with bigger CMS products, nor as often as new plugins for WordPress become available.

About WordPress

WordPress is an open source blogging platform that can be adapted for use as both a standard website CMS and/or blog. You need a suitable hosting provider and a downloaded version of WordPress to get started. Once this is installed, you login to your WordPress admin panel to work on the site.

WordPress Pros:

WordPress is available free of charge, without having to pay a license fee or subscription, so the only cost related to purchase is the cost of web hosting. This means you can shop around for the best hosting deal, or move hosts in future should you choose to.
WordPress is one of the world’s most-used and well-supported blog CMS platforms; it has an active support community and a development roadmap, with frequent upgrades that constantly improve functionality and security. Out of all the open source blog CMS platforms, it’s the one I recommend most.
A huge range of 3rd party plugins is available to expand the functionality of WordPress. The variety of plugins available is far greater than the variety of modules available for expanding Squarespace. Plugins include website analytics/ statistics through Google Analytics (just one example).
The fact that it is open source (rather than commercial) appeals to some clients from an ethical perspective. This means that you are free to use the product without many restrictions of commercial software, and are supporting the open source ideology.

WordPress Cons:

The fact that it is open source (rather than commercial) is a barrier/turn-off to some clients. They want the assurances that come with a commercial organisation developing and taking responsibility for the product. They want to be able to hold someone accountable, and be able to contact someone whose job it is to respond, in case of any problem.
Although WordPress is a popular platform, it is reliant on the pool of open-source developers for all product improvements and bug-fixes, who do this free of charge, primarily in their free time. Therefore, it can sometimes take a while for bugs to be fixed.
The user interface for administering and editing is a bit less intuitive than Squarespace, and not as user-friendly.
Most added features are only available as 3rd-party plugins or widgets: this means they are not supported by WordPress, and can sometimes cause compatibility issues when the WordPress platform is upgraded. And sometimes they are just plain rubbish, as there is no quality-control process. Anyone can develop and release a plugin/widget, so there’s a high chaff-to-wheat ratio.
Because WordPress is an installed application, someone must manually upgrade the product whenever a new version is released. Failure to upgrade can cause security risks, but upgrading can create compatibility issues (see above).

So which is better?

There is no right or wrong answer: the best tool will depend on your own preference, and whether you have someone you can trust to help design/develop/administer/train on that particular platform. Because as easy as they both are to use, it can really help to have someone who knows what they are doing to work with you, at least in the beginning.

Featured in Web Designer mag this month

mikocoffey — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:00:46 +0000

Web Designer Magazine

I was thrilled and honoured to find that one of my client websites is featured in Web Designer magazine this month. The Festinho website is listed as number 4 in their top 24 fave Squarespace websites, which is rather nice. The Festinho site has been a collaboration between myself and Raz at Auralmassage, so we are both chuffed to bits to find that our fellow web geeks think the site is pretty special. Pop on down to you local newsagents and pick up issue 162 if you want to see for yourself (we’re on page 70). Yay!