Analytics is a current hot topic among website owners.  Analytics provides measures or metrics to allow a website owner to evaluate the performance of their website.  When visitors move around the Internet they leave very detailed footprints.  With the right software you can analyze these footprints and understand better where the visitors have gone and what they did.

An immediate problem is that there is too much data on where visitors traveled to.  How can you ensure you use your time well on this potentially huge analysis?  A related problem is that analytics only produces data on visitors who arrive at your website.  Those who almost arrived but did not enter the website are not recorded.  This article will discuss the most effective way of using your time to spot problems with your website.

Website Problems Imply Website Goals

If you are concerned with problems, one immediate requirement is that you have set some goals for the website to achieve.  Without clear goals, you really cannot have problems, except of the most obvious kind.  Once you have set goals, then you know what you should be looking for.  If you have an e-commerce site, the following might be typical goals.

• The number of visitors
• The number of visitors who check out information on products and.
• The number of visitors who buy a product online

Analytics has an important role to play in identifying problems, but some effort should go to more fundamental ways of spotting problems.  These can particularly affect those potential visitors who almost arrived at the website.  We will quickly explore the necessary efforts to spot such non-visitors and after that discuss what then is best covered using analytics.

Website Problems The Website Owner Sees

Some website problems should be immediately apparent to the website owner and need correcting as a high priority.  If you have such problems then there is no need for tools to highlight these.  Examples are hardly needed but slow loading websites is one frequent problem.  Remember others have less interest in your website than you do, so their tolerance is very much less than that of the website owner.

Website Problems The Website Owner Does Not See

There may be some obvious website problems that the website owner is not aware of.  Usually these can be identified by asking colleagues or friends to check out the website.  The most frequent causes for such problems are either different browsers and/or different devices.  Many potentially important visitors may be using Blackberries and the smaller screen may produce an unsatisfactory experience.  The majority of potential visitors will still be using Internet Explorer and the visual experience may be very different from what is seen in other browsers.  If such problems exist, they need to be addressed with urgency.

Website Problems Google Sees

A high proportion of visitors to many websites will come via a a keyword search, most often done with Google.  If the Google search engine has a problem with the site then this may severely limit the visibility of the website in keyword searches.  The best way to check for Google search engine problems is to check out the site in the Google Webmaster Tools website.   With a verified website, a large amount of data on potential problems the website may have is provided.  Again such problems should be corrected with urgency.

Website Problems Visitors Encounter

If the necessary efforts have been put into the three previous topics, then at least we know there are no obvious barriers to visitors arriving at the website.  Will their  experience on the website be one they find satisfying?  You can of course ask typical visitors that question.  It could be done by having a sample group of visitors take part in a usability test and ask for their reactions.  Or you could have a small survey form on the website and encourage visitors to comment.  The problem with such methods is that people may not respond at all or may not be willing to give a critical reaction.  What they say is not necessarily what they do.

This is where analytics can swing into action.  The minute they put their ‘foot’ in the door, visitors start leaving electronic footprints.  The website raw logs will show a great deal about what visitors do and there are programs such as Funnel Web Analyzer (free) or Sawmill that can produce analyses of such visitor log data.

Analytics Software goes beyond this through the use of cookies or by having tracking variables on particular link choices within the site.  In this way, what they do can be identified with great precision.

Analytics Software choices

Given the richness and complexity of potential analytics data, it is not surprising that the software can command significant outlays.  Four choices that have good reviews are:

• Omniture (especially with the Salesforce Automation)
• Clickstream Analysis
• Webtrends or
• OnTarget™ from FutureNow

Google Analytics is favored by many since it is free.

All operate in similar ways and can answer some key questions:

• How do visitors arrive
• What do they do on the website
• How do they leave

Problems may surface at any point in their journey through the website and some key measures help to pinpoint these problems.

Analytics – Key measures

The following measures are particularly important and even more so if reviewed on a regular basis over time.  Are things moving in the right direction?

Visitor traffic

The number of visitors arriving at any specific web page.  Web pages that do not receive much traffic may represent potential problems.

Top entry pages

A list of the top entry pages shows you where visitors are arriving at your site. Are these what you expected?  Are some obvious entry pages under-represented.

Bounce Rate

Bounce Rate measures visitors who come to a particular web page and then leave without looking at any other pages. This is a key indicator of whether that web page is engaging their attention.  Some web pages may be much better at others in avoiding bounces.

Path Analysis

The path typical visitors take through the website is important.  Are there indications.that preferred actions are being frustrated?  Are they following the intended ‘sales funnel’ as they move through the steps of awareness/interest/desire/action?

Top exit pages

How are visitors leaving the website and does this indicate how this might be improved.  Might there be additional opportunities to sell other products in a final thank-you web page?

Low clicks on Calls to Action buttons

This is a particularly important dimension.  Split A/B testing can be done to compare different placements and styles of buttons.  This is one of the most important areas to explore.  One should be looking for continual improvement here.

High Drop-Out Rate

For an e-commerce website, if visitors are abandoning their shopping carts without completing their transaction, then again this is an important problem to crack.

Poor Return On Investment for particular marketing approaches

This can be particularly important for PPC advertising.  Do particular ads and the associated landing pages produce higher conversions to more profitable sales than other combinations?  The integration of Google Analytics and Adwords is particularly effective here in identifying the strong and weak performers.

Conclusion

Most high-tech devices perform best when results can be measured.  Analytics provides the instruments whereby a website can be tuned for optimal performance.  Analytics of course can highlight problems but thereafter it can be part of a continuous improvement process.  The outcome will give a return many times the cost and effort involved.

Introduction

The question of when it is best to publish a blog post has been asked many times.  It has been answered by some very fine bloggers.  In this article perhaps surprisingly we will not answer the question.  The reason is that there is no answer that will always be right.  The Internet changes at an explosive speed and the answers that may have been correct two years ago may not be correct now.  In this article we will explore some of the current issues that influence the best time to publish a blog post.

Of course that assumes that the blog post is worthy of being published.  You may like to consider the ten questions that John Welsh posed to anyone considering publishing a blog post.

• Do you have the space and time to reflect deeply on your post?
• Is your post easy to read or daunting to a first time reader?
• Are all those words or even sentences necessary?
• What combination of typography makes it easier to read?
• What will the post actually look like when published?
• Are you the only person in the world with perfect spelling?
• Does this post need to be published right now?
• Have you thought of the implication of every word you have written?
• Do you know how to publish a post using your blog’s timer?
• Do you see your post as a one-off or part of that week’s schedule?

Clearly if your blog post is put together with the deep consideration implied in that list of ten questions, then you certainly would want to publish it at the right time.

Some Expert Answers On When To Post

In 2006, Lorelle VanFossen of WordPress fame wrote her views on the Best Time and Day to Post on Your Blog.  Her preferred timing was to post it in the third or first week of the month early in the week on a Monday or Tuesday before 8AM EST (1300 GMT).  She added two updates to the post in 2007 and 2008 but did not change that view.

More recently, Darren Rowse of Problogger.net has written on some Timing Considerations re When to Publish Blog Posts. He posts from Australia but he also supports that 8AM EST time as better than others with Tuesday and Wednesday being his preferred days.   Both posts are certainly worth reading as a background to the discussion here.

When Will Your Readers Be Expecting That Blog Post?

Clearly a blog post is not created like one might construct a fine sculpture.  The sculpture will stand there to eternity for whoever chooses to pass by.  A blog post on the other hand is intended for a certain audience of readers.  Hopefully they visit from time to time because they like the quality of what they are seeing.

On this view, it is not the timing of any single blog post that counts but rather the cycle on which blog posts appear.  Seth Godin expressed the following viewpoint on this question of how often blog posts should appear:

When I look at my work, I think I’m in sync with my readers – one blog post a day feels right, while ten (which some bloggers pull off) wouldn’t work for us.

When Will The Spiders Be Looking For That Blog Post?

Most bloggers hope that their blog posts will become visible to the search engines so that many visitors will find the blog posts by doing keyword searches.  This imposes a certain minimum frequency of posting blog posts so that the search engine spiders will crawl the blog fairly frequently.  By having a fairly regular cycle of posting blog posts, the search engine spiders’ interest should be maintained.

When Will You Be Ready To Write That Blog Post?

Worthwhile blog posts do demand some effort and skill.  If you are going to establish a certain cycle of posting blog posts, then you must have sufficient topics to blog about.  Leo Babauta has some worthwhile advice on How To Generate Great Content Week After Week.  He has the following 10 basic suggestions:

• Keep an idea list.
• Reflect on your life often.
• Write from the heart.
• Answer reader questions.
• Look for inspiration.
• Write when inspired.
• Get others to contribute.
• Take breaks to recharge.
• Don’t be afraid to write short posts.
• Repurpose old content.

If you can generate great content on a regular basis, then you maximize your chance that your readers will subscribe to your RSS news feed and be aware when new posts are published.

Publishing Blog Posts Is Not Like Publishing A Magazine

The discussion up to this point seems to assume that your eager audience is waiting for your latest blog post.  Just like the latest issue of your favorite magazine appearing on the bookstall shelf, the blog post is suddenly there to be grabbed.  The magazine always appears on Mondays so you look out for it.  The blog post usually appears on a Wednesday so you look out for it.  Clearly this is not really what happens.

This you might say is the tipping point of this article.  Most of what has been written and discussed to this point takes no account of the time dimension as it applies on the Internet.  Blog posts once written are there essentially for ever.  The timing of their posting may affect only slightly what happens in the early days.  Thereafter they take their place in the great blogosphere as catalogued by Google.

The other important factor is that the Internet is international.  Blog readers may be anywhere around the world.  That means that they are living their lives in different time zones.  You may publish your web post mid-morning for you and some of your readers are asleep.  How should this be factored into the equation?

Rss News Feeds To The Rescue

For the moment we can ignore those who find your blog posts through search engines.  Google now is incredibly fast in indexing blog posts, sometimes within an hour or two (although surprisingly it may take a day or two for them to appear in Google BlogSearch).  However anyone arriving at your blog post via search is unaffected by when you chose to publish the blog post.

Let us assume for the moment that Twitter does not exist.  Thinking back say two years, the only readers that should have influenced your thinking on when to publish your blog post were those who had subscribed to your RSS News Feed.  They might have bookmarked this as was possible with Live Bookmarks in their Firefox browser, or the equivalent in some other browser.  Or they might have subscribed via some News Feed aggregator such as Google Reader or Bloglines.

By either route, within an hour or so, there would be an indication that your blog had a new post.  When they spotted that indication would of course depend on how frequently they were able to check, given the other competing claims on their time.

This probable delay in seeing that a RSS News Feed has been updated and the fact that readers may live in a number of time zones certainly weakens the importance of the precise time a blog post is published.  Apart from avoiding weekends and public holidays, there is really little importance in the precise time you publish your post.

Of course the new phenomenon now is Twitter and all the other social media where you can show your status, such as Facebook or LinkedIn.  Does the immediacy of these new channels make the post publishing time more important?

How Does Twitter Affect When You Publish That Blog Post?

In the pre-Twitter world, word-of-mouth had a very muted existence.  Bloggers might always reblog some important post or friends could exchange their RSS News Feeds within websites such as FriendFeed.  However these communications and discussions would take place almost independently of the original blog posting time.  Social media such as Digg or Reddit helped people to share their likes and dislikes but again original blog posting time was not important.

In this Twitter world, perhaps the rules have changed.  You can now automatically inform Twitter that a new blog post has been published. WordPress has a plugin that does exactly this.  However most of the movers and shakers on Twitter have large numbers of followers.  They are often following large numbers of people as well.  In consequence what is happening at this precise moment is almost all that can be ‘on the radar screen’.  There is very little history.  Even if you use some interface like Tweetdeck, your ability to see any volume of past activity is extremely limited.

Ideally you have some followers who pay more particular attention to your output and will Retweet your Tweet about your blog post. If the post is sufficiently ‘buzz-worthy’ then others may pick up the Retweets and Retweet again.  Unfortunately if you happen to Tweet your blog post when no one is around, then it may be like dropping a pebble down a very deep well.  You won’t even hear the echo.

Given that, it is not surprising to see what Pete Dimaio says on The Life and Times of A Twitter Link.

Twitter is a fast moving world and what you say can easily be missed by your loyal followers.  But just how fast moving are your followers’ twitter streams?  Thanks to the URL shortening service bit.ly we now know the answer is just a brief five minutes.

A series of three tests  were done promoting various funny videos or articles.  What we found was surprising; nearly all traffic to those links was within five minutes of the tweet.  After that… nothing.

In other words, if you hope to get extra exposure for your blog posts by having your friends Retweet your posts, you should assume that it all must happen very fast after the blog post goes live.

The Bottom Line

Possible answers to our question, When Should You Publish That Blog Post?, are therefore:

If you are not using Twitter in any way, then it is probably not very important when you publish your blog posts.  Avoid weekends and public holidays, make your posts good and make them regularly and the RSS News Feed process will ensure they get the attention they deserve.

If you are using Twitter, then you can try to get the world’s attention at the moment your blog post goes live.  Given time zones, this probably means that you should focus on the time zone that represents your primary market place.  For example if you blog from Vancouver in the Pacific Time Zone, you might still target the Eastern Time Zone which represents the heaviest population concentration in North America.

The best time of day may then be determined by looking at the time pattern of regular visitors to your blog.  For many business blogs that may well be from 08:00 to 10:00 EST.  Again good content and regular postings are the most important factor and weekends and public holidays are to be avoided

Since these suggested answers are somewhat controversial, why not give your views either for or against in the comments.  Perhaps we will all be able to nail down the right answer.

In an earlier post we described How To Write Engaging Blog Posts.  What wasn’t covered was how long that blog post should be.  There is no single right answer to that question but we will suggest what you should take into account as you write your own blog posts.

What the Experts Have Said

Luckily a good deal has been written by some very expert bloggers to help us in deciding how long our blog posts should be.  One of the most skilled bloggers is Darren Rowse, who writes the Problogger blog.  Almost exactly three years ago, he discussed Post Length – How Long Should a Blog Post Be? He noted then that it had been debated by bloggers hotly over the years and a number of factors had to be considered.

• Reader Attention Span – average blog readers stay 96 seconds per blog
• Search Engine visibility – a page of at least 250 words is probably a reasonable length.
• Quantity of Posts – More posts are better for generating readership with RSS and in Search Engines even if they are short posts
• Topic/Genre – The type of post that you’re writing will often determine it’s length. Reviews are generally longer.
• Comprehensive -  write enough to comprehensively cover your topic and then stop

Those factors are still very good advice.

Twenty Steps had data from the Technorati Top 100 blogs.  This showed that half of all these blogs have an average of less than 250 words per post. The author felt this made sense because people find it a lot harder to concentrate on reading off a monitor than they do from the printed page.  It was pointed out that others feel that 500 words should really be the minimum.

A Copyblogger post on How Long Your Blog Posts Should Be suggested that blog posts could be longer than the somewhat industry accepted standard of 250-600 words provided they were giving detailed advice or were telling a story.  Shorter posts could be appropriate to give factual information such as stock market reports that could provide links to other information sources.

Advantages and disadvantages of different lengths

Summarizing the advice that was given two or three years ago, we have the following picture:

For the right audience, if you are giving advice or telling a story, then the length should be what it needs to be even if that takes 2,500 words or more.

For most audiences and most topics a mid-length blog post is probably more appropriate.  That would put it in the 500 – 1,000 range.

For human audiences, very short posts only work if they are giving very intensive information that can be covered in few words or if they are listing the links to other information sources.

If the main aim is to be search engine visible in order to create traffic for AdSense adds, then short posts may again be acceptable.  They should ideally be about 300 words long in order to give adequate content for search engine optimization.

That analysis was true a few years back.  Has anything changed since then to suggest modified advice is more appropriate.

Enter Twitter

As anyone who spends some time on the Internet knows, the big factor that is changing  people’s habits on the Web is Twitter.  Since May 2008, many bloggers are spending an increasing proportion of their online time on Twitter.

At that time, the UK Guardian noted that Real-time micro-blogging is gaining in popularity.

It noted a problem in identifying the true traffic to Twitter, since measurement companies like Hitwise tend to rely on browser-based metrics to see where samples of people are going. Twitter can be accessed or receive inputs with only a mobile phone.  In addition, many of the systems that are built around Twitter use web pages to interface directly to the Twitter database.

At that time, Twitter did not respond to a request asking how many active users there were and how many tweets they sent each day; but it’s a safe guess that both were in the millions. TwitDir, a Twitter directory, suggested there were 1.05 million Twitter users, up from 518,000 in October 2007.

Since then it would seem that the rapid rate of growth of Twitter users has continued.

The typical tweet on Twitter is less than the 140 characters and spaces that are allowed.  It is not unreasonable to assume that many people are becoming very accustomed to reading and writing these incredibly short status reports.

Very Short Stories

An interesting reflection of this greater comfort level with short items is described by Zoe Siskos on the Social Media Group blog. (This title’s just six words long.)

By way of illustration she mentions a blog post on Wired that covered Very Short Stories.  Wired had asked various authors to write a story in just six words. Wired wrote that Hemingway’s best work was a story that was just that length (For sale: baby shoes, never worn.)  With that ultimate standard in mind, she goes on to say:

I wonder if people who use Twitter frequently have learned to be more concise in their regular, daily communications. Perhaps people who enjoy Twitter are already concise communicators. Perhaps being concise isn’t the main point at all; instead, it’s making sure that we are communicating effectively by using each word to its fullest potential.

That is the key here.  The Internet is great for supporting conversations and communication.  Perhaps the message is that blog posts should be slightly shorter than in the past and should be encouraging dialogue.

Encouraging Dialogues Not Monologues

Dialogues are inherently more effective than monologues.  Having very long posts may occasionally be appropriate to fully and effectively explain some difficult concept.  However it may often be doing more to flatter the author’s ego rather than creating an effective channel of communication with the audience.

In this Twitter-sensitive world, which encourages concise communication and more interaction,  blog posts should be shorter than they used to be.  Perhaps 500 words should now typically be the target with some hooks included to stimulate comments.

A recent example that follows this formula is the Daily SEO Tip website. It should be mentioned that an additional inducement (hook) for comments at this website is that commenters receive a link to their blog and a link to the most recent blog post they wish to have featured.  The result is a blog that has a series of relatively short posts, each with a large number of comments. That is probably a goal for all bloggers to shoot for.

There are more and more bloggers all the time and usually they want to do it well.  What characterizes a good blog post?  It is not as easy a question as you might think.  Here we will explore what is involved.

The single blog post

Any exploration of the quality of a blog post must start with the content.  Just imagine the blog post printed out on a sheet of paper.  It probably will not appeal to everyone.  What counts is its intended audience.  How does this blog post appeal to a typical reader from the target audience?  Unless this much simpler replica of the blog post works for this reader, it is unlikely to be effective when it goes live on the Web.

Considering this replica, we can understand that the headings and layout of the page and the images, if any, will all be important in determining the reader’s liking for or dislike of the blog post.  The copywriter’s skills are important here in crafting appealing content.  So it must work at this level but there are other factors involved once it goes live online.

Search engine visibility

The most important factor after the essential content on the blog post page is whether those target readers ever get to see it.  Some readers of course will be loyal blog subscribers who eagerly await every new post.  The majority will happen on the blog post by chance, most often when they are looking for web pages on a particular topic.  Their search will often be done using keywords in their favorite search engine: for many that will be Google.  Therefore it is important that blog posts are visible in such relevant keyword searches.

One blessing here is the blog structure works particularly well in leveraging the blog post content for good search engine visibility.  Going beyond what appears in the body of the blog posts, it is also important to maximize the effectiveness of what appears in the head of the blog post — what might be called the blog post’s metadata.  The Title and Description are particularly important here.  If using WordPress it is important to use a plug-in like the All In One SEO Pack to be able to optimize the content of the title and of the description.

This important topic is not the main subject here, so for further reading on this you may wish to study one of the following:

• Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (PDF file download)
• SEO Basics – a knol by Aaron Wall
• Writing Memorable Search Visible Blog Posts – The Other Bloke’s Blog
• 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic – SEOmoz
• 15 Tips on Improving Search Engine Visibility – louisgray.com

Blogging objectives

Up to this point, we have stated that body content and search engine visibility must be right.  What more must be considered in our attempt to create highly effective blog posts.  To answer that, we must back up and pin down exactly what our objectives may be.

In some cases, the aim is to develop the best possible revenues from advertising through say Google Adsense ads.  Such blogs are often labeled as MFA (Made for Adsense) blogs.  In this case, we have almost done all that is required.  The blog post has been crafted so that as many people will come via search engines and there is a certain appeal to the page.  It is now up to Google to serve up ads that will draw the clicks of these target readers.  Provided Google does that well, they and you will be satisfied

In a sense there is a disconnect here.  The only objective for the blog posts is to get the visitor’s eyes looking at the page.  Now Google must serve up ads which will attract those eyes and encourage those clicks.  There is a delicate balance here.  The blog page must be sufficiently appealing to get the reader’s interest but then readers should find the Adsense ads more attractive than other places that might be accessed from the blog post.

Some MFA blogs are particularly weak in content, but do draw the traffic.  In this sense, they achieve their objective provided enough visitors click on the Adsense ads.  Other blogs have more challenging objectives than this and we will examine those next.

Blogs that convert prospects to purchasers  – Captology

Some blogs have other objectives than merely to maximize AdSense revenue.  For example they might display advertisements for products and services for which the blog acts as an affiliate.  Here the objective of the blog page is to convert someone who has an interest in the product (Prospect) into someone who wishes to actively make a purchase.

In a sense the blog page must persuade the prospect to take an action.  This is a field that has been extensively studied by the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab.    They use the word Captology to describe what is involved:

Captology is the study of computers as persuasive technologies. This includes the design, research, and analysis of interactive computing products created for the purpose of changing people’s attitudes or behaviors.

Part of this of course stems from the credibility that the blog establishes and here again Stanford has provided guidelines for Web credibility.   This is very much an evolving field and a slide show presentation by BJ Fogg outlines how their thinking has developed.

Engagement – the ultimate blog objective

As described to this point, it would seem that the blog post only attempts to influence the visitor.  Beyond that, the most effective use of a blog comes from  acknowledging that the Internet is for dialogs rather than one-sided monologues.  If visitors become involved in dialogs then this is the ultimate demonstration of engagement.  In other words the blog encourages them to become fully involved in the interaction.

Perhaps one good measure of engagement is the number of comments that the blog posts attract.  Engagement implies involvement.  For that, the blog post must encourage a strong wish to connect in the visitor.  Part of that comes about by highlighting the people who are involved in the blog, as BJ Fogg emphasizes.  Additionally the copy-writing must be strong so as to elicit an emotional wish to get involved.

This opens up a whole new realm of factors to consider.  An introduction to all this can be found in a recent post on Affective Feedback.  If true engagement is one of your objectives then this is an area you should be exploring.

At its best, the blog author(s) and its visitors, many of whom will comment from time to time, develop a strong sense of community.  At that point, the blog is clearly capable of fulfilling whatever goals one might wish to set.

He’s making a list

And checking it twice;

Gonna find out

Who’s naughty and nice

Santa Claus has come and gone.  However that list making he gets involved in seems to be infectious.  Making a list seems to be the rule rather than the exception as we move from 2008 into 2009.

As people look to the future and remember the past, they so often end up preparing a list.   That can either be of things past that they remember with affection or awe, or it may be of the future with things that will delight them.

Some of them are really quite long.  For example here is a bunch of Top 100 websites found in a Google search.

• Guardian UK – 100 top sites for the year ahead
• Top 100 downloads of free software & freeware for Windows XP & Vista
• Top 100 Franchises
• Healthcare 100 – Ranking the world’s top blogs and bloggers in health and medicine
• 100 Top Wine Blogs
• 100 Desi Topsites – Ranking Best Indian Pakistani Websites
• Top 100 Products of 2008 from ReadWriteWeb
• Top 100 Influential Online Marketers List

They are not even the longest lists you find.  One of the most impressive that has just appeared is

• Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2008 prepared by Tamar Weinberg.

That has almost 300 items and there are some very fine marketing posts included.

Given that one of my websites is included in Tamar’s list, it may appear churlish of me to question why so many of these long lists are produced.  Each requires a great deal of skill and effort to put together and that alone deserves recognition.  Nevertheless it is always worth questioning why things are done in a particular way, because occasionally the answer suggests an improvement.

In this case I assume that people produce these lists for the same reason that they climb Mount Everest.  It is a personal challenge and the view from the top is impressive.  The sense of achievement of such a long list producer must be immense.  Of course with modern software assembling a list of 100 URL references can be almost a piece of cake.  Nevertheless the author with a sense of pride will rigorously evaluate the collection to select only the sheep and avoid the goats.

So we can relate to the sense of satisfaction of the Top 100 list creator.  If others find the list intriguing, they may even comment on the list and thus the creator gets useful back links.  That is all good for the list creators.  What is in it for the rest of us?  Even if your blog  post or website is included in the list, will anyone ever bother to view it.  There are only so many hours in the day and we all have too little time to do all the things we should be doing.

Perhaps the long lists are more like those society columns where someone knowledgeable on the social scene and well connected writes a column listing all the notable people who attended.  Merely appearing on the list brings its own reward and bragging rights.  You get a sense that this is important from the comments that often appear attached to such long lists.  Some are from those appearing on the lists who are thanking the author for naming them.  Others are from others who thought they should have been on the list and for some inexplicable reason were not included.

This discussion should not be seen as denigrating the entries on such lists.  The quality of the list depends critically on who put the list together.  To be included, the author needs to be visible to the list creator and must have created a post or web page that compares well with other candidate items for the list.  However in a list of 100 items, the only person who is likely to make a fuss about whether their post is in or out is the author of the individual post.

The list takes on a much more incisive nature if the items appear in some order of merit.  Being third on a ranked list clearly confers much greater bragging rights than being 93rd.  However doing an effective ranking of 100 items takes much more effort than assembling the 100 items in the first place.  Most such rankings will depend on some simple combination of factors, some of which are sometimes very arguable.  In such a situation it is hardly worth the effort of debating whether one’s ranking should have been higher.

Thankfully the usefulness of these long lists erodes rapidly, just like those society columns.  The world moves on and we all live to fight another day.

The sole exception to this erosion is the long-term visibility of such lists in the search engine databases.  Years later you can still check, if you wish, that your website appeared in some Top 100 listing in 2004.  Such is fame.  Of course Google cares about those links so all may not be lost.  The weight to be attached to any link that appears on a page with 100 others is clearly miniscule.  However if you appear on enough Top 100 lists, who knows how valuable that may be?

The bottom line on all this is probably to treat these Top 100 listings exactly like those society columns.  Here today and gone tomorrow.  It is much better to put your efforts into something that deserves a whole blog post to itself. … even if that is your only 15 minutes of fame.

As we move from 2008 into 2009, everyone seems to  be getting into the forecasting business.  If you wait a little, you can even get to review some of the other forecasts that people have already made.  In search marketing, many seem to be suggesting little change.  For example Steve Rubel has the following three points in his post on Reading Tea Leaves for 2009.

• We’re growing comfortable with social networks
• Blogging may be making a comeback
• The recession drove consumers to shop online

There is nothing particularly eye-shaking there.  Many others are equally bland.  However buried among them is an important change in my opinion.  Let us look at what David Berkowitz highlights in his 2009 Search Trends To Keep An Eye On.

• Holistic — In Every Sense
• Search Fragmentation
• New Models for SEO
• Your Car Engine’s Your Search Engine

He is right that the first three are major factors but these have been slowly evolving over the months and even years.  The really important one is the last.   By this he is implying that Mobile Search is the coming thing.

Stephanie Hobbs describes it in a different way in Local Searches Set to Flip to Mobile Phone.

Given the continuing growth in the smart phone market, mobile phones are poised to become the first source people turn to when searching for local business information. Until widespread adoption of smart phones occurs, though, there will be a gap that smart businesses will seek to fill.  …   Presently, two-thirds (64%) of Americans say they generally turn to online resources for local search, while 33% turn to print, and 3% go to their phones. However, mobile phone users outnumber computer users by 39 million. And the market for mobile search is growing faster than expected.

I too believe that 2009 will be the year of mobile search.  Although to an extent it will run independently and in parallel with regular desktop search, you can expect some strong interactions down the road.  To accommodate mobile search, it is not just a question of ensuring your regular website can be seen on a smart phone.  Pierre Far has an excellent account about the 8 Steps for Making Your Site Mobile Friendly.

Let me tell you this: most sites, mine included, suck when viewed on a mobile phone. It’s a horrible experience, and given the astonishing rise in mobile use, you and I, the people who build websites, better get our act together.

Another useful resource in making your site mobile friendly is SEO Principle.   It is a most worthwhile blog written by Nadir Garouche that talks about the intersection of mobile and search.  He spends a great deal of time on mobile search and is very familiar with mobile search engines so his site is a place to watch for developments.   For example he was one of the first to publish the T-Mobile G1′s browser user agent which meant that websites can deliver suitable content to such devices.

One major initiative here is the Open Handset Alliance which is promoted and supported by Google.   This is a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies, which has developed Android: the first complete, open, and free mobile platform. To help developers get started developing new applications, the Alliance offers the Android Software Development Kit. There is a great deal of effort being put in and we can expect to see major results in what can be done with a smart phone in the very near future.

Just as Google’s Universal Search is combining the results of searches from a whole series of different channels (regular web search, videos, images, news, etc.), we can expect that mobile search may well be a further source to add to this mix.  If being truly visible to the search engines means being found in whatever type of search is being done, then your mobile website is a key priority.

As a footnote there may well be another development that has major impact during 2009.  Google already has all the data on how visitors move around websites and how long they spend on different web pages.  The visitor behavior can well be an indicator of the value of the website.  Someone immediately leaving a website after a few seconds clearly found little relevance there.  Although there has been interest in using social media data such as votes in Digg or StumbleUpon as indicators of relevance, these are subject to easy manipulation.  Visitor behavior is less likely to give false signals.

One person who has pushed these ideas strongly is David Leonhardt with his Sticky SEO concept. He believes that this will be an important element in the Google search algorithms, if it is not already being included.  That means it is important to create sticky websites where people move around because they find what they are looking for.

Even if 2009 is not the year you create your own mobile website in support of your regular website, then at least make sure that your online properties are sticky so that people wish to visit and to stay.  Best wishes for a great year.

Although it is difficult to get data on the relative sizes of the mobile web versus the Internet as people access it from their desktop PCs, it seems likely that the mobile web will outstrip the regular Internet, if it has  not done so already.  The relative costs of a smart phone or mobile device is a strong inducement and it is extremely handy to be able to stay in touch when you are on the go.  In some parts of the world the mobile web will be the only way individuals can be online.  The arguments are even stronger for the under 30 crowd, which some have labeled the digital natives.

An indicator of the rapid growth can be seen in the news from Opera which is seeing explosive growth in the use of Opera Mini, a browser specifically for mobile devices with their smaller screens.  They suggest that Opera Mini is the quick, easy and secure way to get any Web page you want.

Number of Users
In September 2008, Opera Mini was used by approximately 19 million users, a 10.1% month-on-month increase from August 2008 and more than 341% compared to September 2007

If a business depends on sales or leads from the Internet, then it certainly should not neglect its visibility on the mobile web and how it will appear to visitors.  This is particularly true for local search, where people may well use their smart phone as an aid in finding stores or service providers close to them.  The importance of this sector should be obvious, but it is certainly confirmed by the efforts being put in by the major search engines.

Local Search

Microsoft and Google are the ones making the running here.  Indeed Search On The Go is a slogan that has been adopted by Microsoft.

Shop and search on the go
We’ve just released the latest updates to our browser-based mobile search at m.live.com. One of our major efforts was to bring the power of product search to the convenience of a mobile phone. Think about how much time people spend shopping in brick-and-mortar stores — without the ability to do the product research they’re accustomed to from their PCs.  We took the great product search features from Live Search and made them easy to use on your mobile phone.

Google is not to be outdone here and has brought out some major innovations for mobile devices.   You can upgrade your mobile device with free Google products, such as Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube and other Google products almost whatever the make.  You can even identify the location where you happen to be.   As an indicator of things to come, it is also possible to get a street view with your Nokia S60.

This will be made much more powerful when voice technology is added.  GOOG-411 is currently available for free from Google as an indicator of things to come.  Microsoft offers TellMe which is an equally attractive option.

Clearly this online space cannot be neglected.  The launch of the iPhone prompts many to say that Mobile Local Search Has Finally Arrived.

This should all serve to drag mobile search out of the early adopter phase where it has been stuck for years. Through this, mobile search volume should increase; advertiser interest will follow; and more pervasive ad networks and mobile marketing firms will develop.

An Effective Mobile Web Presence

All websites will be seen to a greater or lesser extent on the mobile web.  One indicator of how they appear can be obtained by using the Opera browser and using its Small Screen option.  This may suggest that the user will have a satisfying experience or may indicate major viewing problems.  However even if the view seems satisfactory, the result should be treated with a great deal of caution.  Opera has some very sophisticated software to optimize the appearance.  One cannot be sure that all of the multiplicity of mobile devices being used by the population at large will be equally effective.

The issues involved in developing an effective mobile web presence are complex.  An excellent review of the issues in doing this is covered in an article by Opera on Designing pages to work on all devices, and small mobile ones in particular.

In considering choices here, a document from the World Wide Web Consortium is useful: it is titled Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0. That includes the following:

One Web
The recommendations in this document are intended to improve the experience of the Web on mobile devices. While the recommendations are not specifically addressed at the desktop browsing experience, it must be understood that they are made in the context of wishing to work towards “One Web”.  One Web means making, as far as is reasonable, the same information and services available to users irrespective of the device they are using. However, it does not mean that exactly the same information is available in exactly the same representation across all devices.

One might assume that this implies the same website should be viewable in all devices.  If so, to modify how the pages are displayed, a process for mobile device detection is needed.

Mobile Device Detection

Chris Mills has a good article on how to serve the right content to mobile devices.  He discusses four topics that may come into play.

• Browser sniffing
• Creating a separate site for mobile browsers
• Media types
• Media queries

The bottom line on all this is that there are no easy solutions.  Cameron Moll brings a similar viewpoint in his post on tips and techniques for mobile web design.

I believe the most robust solution is to consider a separate site for mobile browsers.  Just a small example will illustrate the thinking involved.  Here is the Google mobile search page.

Even though their desktop search page is incredibly simple and has lasted through the years, they did not attempt to reproduce it on the mobile web.

Web pages often are not well designed from a usability point of view even at the desktop level.  With the much smaller screen real estate available on a mobile device screen, the way to interact with the web page should be reconsidered from scratch.  In this way the best possible user experience can be delivered to any visitor, thus  avoiding frustration and difficult scrolling or keyboarding.

Developing a separate mobile web presence has many advantages.  Not least it can be designed to accommodate as many as possible of the mobile devices in use. It does require extra effort to maintain two separate web presences.  However the mobile website is a very much reduced version of the full desktop website and should not present too many difficulties.

The key disadvantage is that the mobile version is not necessarily easily linked to its desktop equivalent.  For example this would require that favorites on the mobile device would somehow be accessible on the desktop PC and vice versa.  Since Sync-ing even contacts and appointments from desktops to Blackberries or iPhones is a challenge, Sync-ing favorites seems unlikely to be implemented.

Linking the Mobile Website with the Desktop equivalent

Perhaps the best solution on this Sync-ing question is to develop a strong brand presence.  If a search for the brand on either the desktop PC or the mobile device highlights the same online presence, then this is the most powerful way of linking the two online worlds.  After all as search technology develops to include speech technology, this will become the prime input method for the mobile device.  Just as Google’s Chrome browser is pushing people towards search rather than using URLs, the voice enabled mobile device will be moving in the same direction.

Conclusion

The mobile web offers huge potential to online businesses.  The question therefore is not whether to have a mobile website but rather how quickly.  Choosing a very simple website structure and design will achieve most of the benefits and provide a robust solution.

.. put your right footer out, right footer in and you shake it all about.

Wrong context I’m afraid.  Nor are we talking about cement shoes.  The topic is something you see on 99.99% of web pages and which rarely gets respect.  We’re talking about the humble web page footer.  It’s a carry-over from the printed page in books, where every page might carry a similar block of text at the bottom, mostly to remind you where you are in the book.

When dealing with the Internet, it’s always unwise to just go with your preconceptions that you developed when dealing with printed pages.  Even with a large screen every part of a web page real estate is important.  How can one best use every part to the maximum effect?  How can the footer best use the space it is allocated?

In considering that, you must always consider the question from two points of view. The first and most important is how your website visitor will view the page.  The second is how a search engine robot will view the page and how that will translate into more visitors to your website.  Very often the two may be equivalent but not always.

Matthew Inman offered 19 gorgeous Website footers to help put your best foot forward.  They range from the most minimal:

to others that are fairly large and quite stunning.

These footers also have a limited number of links and so should not create any problems with search engines.

Tamar Weinberg earlier this year raised a question that is often discussed, Does Google Penalize Too Many Footer Links? That is a continuing discussion, because so many SEO consultants have the simple view that creating hundreds of links is the easy way to get prominent rankings in Google keyword search results.  Too many repetitions of the same keywords can certainly turn off human visitors, so the simple approach was to put this all in the footer, where it was less likely to be seen.  If you also put it in a very tiny font, then it might not even be noticed by the human visitor.

The search engines are of course trying to produce relevant pages for human readers.  One would hope that they might take the same view about pages that are stuffed with keywords as the human reader would.  Since footers appear on every webpage, then this would reduce the relevance for human visitors and again by the same logic for search engines.  The number of such links is likely to be less of a problem for the search engines than for the human visitors.

Ann Smarty had some useful advice along these lines, which probably represents the majority view:

• make your website footer relevant and useful;
• don’t add too many elements to the footer – it should be clean and concise;
• focus on people (SEO value of the footer is too insignificant anyway);
• follow the common fashion: people want to see common elements at these common places.

Boiling all this down, the best advice would seem to be to devise a footer that works well for the human visitors.  The footer is something that will not be seen by many visitors unless they are enthusiastic enough to scroll all the way down the page.  If they do so, it is probably because they want to be sure not to miss important information on the website.  My own recommendation therefore is to design the footer to work particularly for the more enthusiastic visitors to the webpage.

The best way to determine how to proceed is to test how well different footers work.  However the trend seems to be towards giving much more information rather than less.  Just look at the footer from one very successful blogger, Darren Rowse with his Problogger footer.

This footer is almost a partial site map to the Problogger website.  It clearly helps to create a sticky website where visitors will wander around rather than leaving.  Although the links may not themselves do much directly for search engine ranking, their effect in holding visitors on the site may well show the site to be one which is relevant when keyword searchers visit.

To summarize, these larger footers, which sometimes fill the full screen if working at 1024px x 768px, are intended to meet the needs of those enthusiastic visitors who want to do some more visiting on the website.  However if as some suspect, Google is now incorporating visitor behavior in their algorithms, this would be a further reason for creating these fact-filled footers.