October 27,
2004
In
This Issue:
1. Don't Forget the People
2. In the News - Google Desktop Search / Yahoo Mobile
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - New scheme to help rankings?
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Don't Forget the People
When your company is in the process of planning a new web site,
you may make a checklist of all the things the site has to have,
or has to do. Shopping cart with online ordering? Check. Expandable
product database? Check. Photo gallery showing some of our best
work? Check. Company history and mission statement? Check. Easy
way for customers to contact us? Check. Simple navigation and attractive
site design? Check.
You get all the pieces in place, all the plans and goals written
out, and you're ready to go. But you forgot one thing: The people
factor. Not your customers ... your staff.
Doug van Duyne has a great article in the current issue of Internet
Retailer magazine which talks about the need to make sure you
have the right people in place to serve your customers because,
at this
point in the web's development, he says "more people are starting
to care about things like value, convenience, and ease of use over
the novelty of the technology." That's a great point -- just
having the web site with the shopping cart and online ordering
doesn't cut it at this point. You have to provide a value proposition,
such as superior customer service, to separate your company from
the competition. Think about how Amazon grew into the monster it
is today: Not by selling books that people couldn't get elsewhere,
or even by having the lowest prices. They got where they are today
by pioneering online customer service. They didn't just have the
web site -- they had (and have) the people behind the site to make
it work.
Internet Retailer: How the right personnel with the right skills
make a web site rise above the pack
_________________
In The News
Google's Desktop Search
It's another step toward taking on Microsoft. Google recently
introduced a desktop search tool that helps you find files and
information buried on your computer's hard drive. It searches your
email, chat threads, web pages you've viewed (that are stored on
your computer), as well as Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
files, among other things. It's a small piece of software and it
runs only on Windows machines.
Google Desktop Search Client (Beta)
Yahoo Goes Mobile
Last time in this exact space I mentioned Google's new mobile
SMS offerings - search Google from your cell phone. Now
Yahoo is following
suit with a mobile search service that offers image searches
and local searches for all WAP devices, as well as regular
web search
for advanced phone and PDA users.
Yahoo! Mobile
_________________
More News Headlines
Here are a few news headlines worth your time to read.
These are just some of the headlines we've posted
to OWTweb.com in recent
days.
Local search: Still a long way to go
October 27, 2004 - WebProNews
Search online, buy offline: How to tell?
October 27, 2004 - Search Engine Watch
Retaining traffic after a web site redesign
October 21, 2004 - Search Engine Watch
Your site gets great traffic from search engines, and yet it
needs a new design. How can you freshen up a site without
risking a decline
in rankings and a loss of traffic from search engines?
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
_________________
This Week's Q&A
Dear Matt,
A company approached us to offer their services for web design
and search engine placement. One of the things they proposed
was a bit confusing. They said that would create a handful of
new web sites with unique domain names, and that each of these
sites would have content similar to our site and would also link
to our site. I've never heard of this kind of thing and don't
understand why it would help us.
Dan
Hi Dan --
This is what's often called creating "gateway" or "doorway" pages
(or sites). It's also called "search engine spam", and
if it helps you at all, it would only be in the short term. This
isn't a good idea for long-term search engine success.
The main theory this company is playing on is link popularity.
They create all these fake web sites with content that's
similar to yours, and then these sites link to you. There's five
new
inbound links to your site that you didn't have before. The
secondary theory
is that these new sites will also get ranked in search engines,
and the people that visit these sites will then get steered
to your real site. That's no guarantee, of course, because
it's
my belief that these kinds of fake sites are usually done
so poorly
that the user just goes right back to the search engine and
looks for some other site.
Ultimately, it's just another attempt to trick search engines,
and if it works at all, it won't last long. Better to focus
on long-term strategies.
(Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
Just a quick welcome to the new subscribers since our last issue
two weeks ago. Hope you enjoy the newsletter.
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
The OWT Newsletter is a weekly service offered free to anyone
interested in learning more about web development, search engine
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