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More changes to come on Facebook. This time, some actually seem to make sense.
However, there is one particular change which seems likely to upset users, advertisers and hence Facebook’s potential revenue.
Last week, almost below my radar, a small notification appeared which casually stated, amongst other text, that notifications would be vanishing in the New Year and that if you want to keep informed of application updates, you would need to ensure that the application had your email address.
My instant reaction was – that’s me out of visiting Facebook regularly then. Like many people, email is no longer the communication tool of choice. It has its place, but so do tweets, SMS, phone calls, IM, Skype and so on.
The email inboxes of far too many people are overladen with a surfeit of incoming messages, many for newsletters subscribed to moons ago that you always mean to read but never quite do, offers that you are sure you never wanted to receive, spam, forward chain letters from ‘friends’, and a host of other tosh.
These can often hide the important messages so people resort to other solutions to ensuring they don’t miss an important communication. If you need to talk to another business person, LinkedIn is a great way to ensure attention. If you need an answer instantly, you seek your respondent’s online status in Google Chat, jabber, Skype, IM – knowing before you hit send that they are present at the other end and will respond quickly.
SMS isn’t strictly reliable but in most cases will get a reasonably instant answer – if the message is delivered promptly, if the phone is on, if the recipient is checking their texts etc.
One wonders the logic behind Facebook’s decision. For many people, the notifications are the means to getting engaged in FB, telling them who has said what, posted a photo, commented in a discussion group and so on. It is also a means by which applications drive users to their page or app, relying on people power to encourage viral marketing.
This issue will no doubt cause untold discussion and heated debates shortly and on implementation. It isn’t that users hate change (of course they do!) but it takes away one of the primary mechanisms for users to know what others have been doing. It puts all the footslog and hard work back onto the users, instead of making it easy for them to engage and socialise.
It is a valuable lesson for any company to consider. When you plan changes to your website, are they for you or for the users’ benefit? Or both? Can you meet the target of satisfying your desire to make your life easier without making your users’ lives harder?
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It looks as though load time will be taken into account as a ranking factor in the next few months.
Slow page loads, eg content that buffers as your hosting company struggles to serve the pages, bloated code and so on, could all now affect your ranking in the search engines.
It has taken a long time for this to actually be mooted as “close to implementation” but it is a really obvious ranking factor. Users do not want pages served up as top results that take a long time to load. They want instant gratification.
This should come as a heads up to many. Website designers who do not strip unnecessary items out of code or who program inefficiently; hosting companies who do not have enough bandwidth available for their customers; traffic analysts who fail to equate high bounce rates with slow pages and advise their clients accordingly; and others.
Take a long hard look at your site. Try it on different connections, not just the fat pipe in your office – don’t try to be an imaginary user, go and be a real one. Visit the library or cybercafe and see how long your site takes to load. You could even consider digging out that old dial up modem and see how it works for all those who still live in a non-broadband world.
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Just done a free website review for a local business to give them some ideas of why their website is so appalling from an SEO point of view. It is actually usable, but it is not search engine friendly. Which is why, even though I knew they had a website, it took almost an hour to track it down.
I had thought of writing this as an April Fool’s article, but was sort of gazumped by the How to do Local Search article. So, at the risk of being hauled over the coals……
Over the years, as SEO and internet marketing have become huge (especially when you are deeply entrenched in the business), the mistakes made by website designers seem to have continued to plague anyone trying to promote a website.
The general scenario (and it hasn’t changed in 14 years) is:
1. Client approaches IM company. “I want you to get our website to number 1 on the search engines.”
2. SEO/IM company responds, “OK, what is your URL / website address?” (Looks up website address)
3. SEO/IM bod stares at the website in front of them, often in total disbelief. The conversation usually then goes in one of several different ways.
a) Who is your website designer? (Because I am going to kneecap them for creating THIS monstrosity for any business)
b) What is the primary objective that you want your website to achieve for you? (Because it really isn’t obvious from looking at it)
c) What are your main keywords and phrases that you would like to be found on? (Because I am struggling to work out exactly what you do.)
or, far too rarely, d) We would be more than happy to create a campaign for you and promote this website. When would be a good time for a meeting for you? Friday this week any good?
Website designers (not all by any means, but many) seem to delight in building websites that make the job of internet marketers doubly difficult. There are some very common, and after many years in the business, seemingly deliberate errors introduced by site designers that affect not only how the search engines perceive the site but also how other sites who may be potential link partners view your website.
The first mistake is page titles. So often, we see ‘homepage’ or ‘page 1′, 2, 3 etc throughout the site with not a keyword in sight. The search engines need keywords in page titles to compare the relevance of the text with the title, and also to help get a grip on what the page is about and hence include it in searches. The next mistake, and one which is still being hotly debated, is META tags. Should you or shouldn’t you include META tags, which and how long should they be? Whilst some feel that the META description tag should be omitted to allow google et al to create their own, others feel that METAs are still important. Try both on your site and see which brings the best results, but don’t just omit them for the sake or it, and definitely put the keywords tag in.
Next, lack of headings, H1 tags etc. Not only are these valuable for the search engines, but they help to clarify for your visitors what the next block of text is about and break up the page. No alt img tags – once again, we often see ‘image312.jpg’ or similar instead of “Woohoo Widget Company logo” or other descriptive, keyword rich text about the image. These are required on most commercial sites by law to assist visitors with disabilities, but are frequently left out, and the search engines do include them in the algorithms.
Lack of keywords in the visible text (or anywhere else for that matter). Whilst that flowery prose about the craftmanship and dedication your staff provide to customers may seem lovely, it is unlikely that any potential customer seeking to have their chimney cleaned (or any other product or service) is going to search on those words to find you. Brainstorm your keywords before ANY text goes on your website, and make sure that the primary and secondary keywords are included in all the right places.
Keywords hidden in Flash or images – it may look like a fabulous arty website, but if your keywords are lost inside Flash, Shockwave or images, then the search engines won’t find them.
Missing site map. A site map is not just essential to help your visitors navigate your site, but also helps the search engines.
There are further problems but these are the top few. Check your site and make sure your website designer hasn’t hindered your marketing efforts in any way.
