October
19, 2005
In This Issue:
1. Upgrade Your Site - Don't Click Here
2. In the News - Google update, Cutts interview
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - Stock photo sites?
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Upgrade Your Site - Don't Click Here
There are a lot of things that separate a professional
web site from an amateur one. Many of these are
little things -- the devil, as they say, is in
the details. When you're getting paid to build
web sites, you better sweat the small stuff because
that's where you make a bad site good, or a good
site great.
So here's one of my pet peeves, and one thing
you can do with your own web sites to make them
just a tiny bit more professional: avoid, at all
costs, using the phrase "click here"
when linking. Instead, use descriptive anchor
text as your link. Let's see if I can diagram
this in email....
DON'T: To learn about ACME Red Widgets, [link]click
here.[/link]
DO: [link]ACME Red Widgets.[/link]
There are a lot of good reasons for this. For
starters, it's more user-friendly -- your link
text should explain exactly what the user will
find after clicking the link. The phrase "click
here" tells the user nothing about the destination.
Secondly, it's also more SEO-friendly. Descriptive
anchor text provides just a little bit of "food"
for search engine crawlers as they go around the
web. The "DO" example above tells the
crawler that the page it's about to visit is about
red widgets; the DON'T doesn't tell the crawler
anything at all.
It's just a little thing, but it's a step toward
making your web site more professional. I have
a couple other similar "little things"
in mind for future newsletters, so stay tuned
and maybe this can become part of a series on
improving your sites.
_________________
In The News
Google Updating
Webmasters and site owners have been all aflutter
the past week or so because it appears some are
seeing considerable changes with Google lately.
Everyone has a theory on what the changes are,
but no one outside Google knows. A ran a quick
check this week on some of our clients whose rankings
we monitor, and was pleased to see they're all
either holding positions steady, or doing better
than our last check. Still, Google's Matt Cutts
does say in a recent blog post that some updates
are in progress.
Matt Cutts: More
info. on updates
And speaking of Matt Cutts, you may want to read
Aaron Wall's recent interview of Cutts, which
asks a lot of questions you might ask someone
who works at Google. Like, how does a webmaster
avoid having a site that gets penalized undeservedly
when Google updates its algorithm?
"Make a great site, and try to make sure
that site is recognized and thus earns organic
links. To be safe, pick a stranger and ask them
whether the site is great--sometimes you'll be
surprised."
Aaron Wall: Interview
of Matt Cutts
_________________
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.
Corporate
blogging takes off
October 17, 2005 - InternetNews.com
Companies are using blogs for both internal and
external communications, to improve customer relations
and improve business processes, according to a
survey released on Monday.
The
SEO and the blacksmith
October 17, 2005 - ClickZ.com
Content is king. If you create great content,
if you earn the respect of your peers so they
acknowledge you as an authority and link to you,
if users find your content sticky enough, you're
probably doing the right things to get that top
ranking.
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
_________________
This Week's Q&A
Hi Matt,
I'm working on a web site for a friend, and need
to find some good photos. It's for a small business,
but they don't have any real things that could
be used for web site imagery. What kind of resources
do you use for stock photography and things like
that? We don't have a lot of money to spend, of
course. Thanks for your help!
Karen
Hi Karen --
There are some really good sites on the web that
will let you search and purchase stock photos.
Most of them are pretty spendy -- like $60 to
$80 per photo, or more in some cases! One site
we use here at OWT is Photos.com
- the pictures are high quality, and their business
model is subscription-based, so you pay one fee
and download as many photos as you need. You can
pay for a month, three months, six months, etc.
One other alternative that's becoming popular
for smaller projects is istockphoto.com,
where pictures are submitted by photographers
around the world and you can buy them for between
$1 and $3 per photo. I've never used it, so I
can't speak from personal experience. But I have
seen it referenced recently as a good source of
low-cost images.
(Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
That's it for this week. I hope business is treating
you well. Please send in any questions we can
help with - the email address is above!
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
The OWT Newsletter is a weekly service
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