London Web Design & SEO Services

Questions to Ask at Kick-Off Meetings

1.  Define purpose/vision for the site

• What is the purpose of the site?
• What are the goals of the site?

2.  Develop goals for the site

• How would you define a successful Web site for your organization? 
• What does success look like?  How will you know when you have been successful?
• How would you describe the site?
• From an organization’s viewpoint?
• From a user’s viewpoint?

3.  Define audiences & goals

• Who are the users of the site?  (Primary and secondary users)
• How would you describe the users?  (User characteristics, i.e., age, experience, education, etc.)
• Why will they come to the site?  (User needs, interests, and goals)
• When and where will users access the site?  (User environment and context)
• How will users access the site?  (User computer settings, i.e., connection speed, resolution, etc.)

4.  Conduct task analysis and prioritize tasks

• What will users do on the site?  (User tasks, content, features and functionality)
• Which tasks are critical to users’ success on the Web site?  (Criticality)
• Which tasks are most important to users?  (Importance)
• Which features of the site will users use the most?  (Frequency)
• Which features are prone to usability issues?  (Vulnerability)
• Which tasks are critical to the organization’s success on the Web site?
• How often will users frequent your Web site? 
• What will compel users to return to your Web site?

5.  Determine measurable usability objectives

• Which tasks should users be able to accomplish easily with few errors?  (Efficiency)
• Which tasks should users be able to finish quickly and efficiently?  (Effectiveness)
• What level of satisfaction should users have after using the site?  (Enjoyability) 

6.  Discuss expectations, requirements & preferences

• What is your vision of what the site should do? 
• Describe your initial view of the project.  What do you think the project should entail?
• What prompted the redesign?
• Who will be the key point of contact?
• Are there any restraints, mandates, or guidelines for the site? 
• Are there any sites you would like to model or a particular style that you prefer?
• What characteristics/attributes/attitude should the site convey to users? 

7.  Determine accessibility requirements and needs

• Is the site currently accessible?
• What type of accessibility testing has been done? 
• What types of accessibility tools are being used?
• Who is the key point of contact on accessibility issues?

8.  Identify available resources and training needs

• What level of resources is available for site updating and maintenance?
• Do you have content writers skilled in writing for the Web?  
• Are there graphic designers on staff?
• Who will be responsible for programming and maintaining the site?
• Who is in charge of site marketing and promotion?

9.  Discuss initial technology needs

• What are your hosting needs?
• Do you currently have a domain name or do you need a new one?
• Are you currently using a content management system?  If so, which one?
• Are you currently logging Web metrics?  If so, what metrics are you currently capturing? 
• Do you currently have a search engine?  If so, what type of search are you using? 

10.  Timeline and Project Plan

The alternative is to use multi-source sentence arrays. The way this works is that you start off by writing an original piece of content. Then, rewrite each sentence five times. Each time must be unique but say the same thing. From there, get a programmer (look for a Russian guy, says Rob) and have that person make each sentence a new variable. Randomly pick the first sentence, the script randomly then picks the second sentence and it keeps going through. Before you know it, six articles at 25 sentences each becomes 28 quintillion articles.

Benefits:

* Passes human review.
* A fraction of the cost of copywriters.
* Distribute articles across your micro-site network.
* Submit content to every article directly with embedded links.
* Offer the unique content to other sites in exchange for links.

Rob says this is a white hat technique because it’s used to create unique, valuable content.

Weblogs, Inc. - Apply to blog for one of their ninety plus blogs or submit your own topic idea.  They will pay you per post that you write and you must meet their minimum post requirements.

PayPerPost - Get paid as much as $500 or more a month writing articles and reviews of their sponsors on your blog.

Blogsvertise - Their advertisers pay you to mention and talk about their websites, products and services in your own blog.

Review Me - After your blog has been accepted in their network, they will pay you $20 to $200 per post that you write.

Smorty - Earn $6 to $100 dollars per post you write on your blog.  Amount paid for each post depends on the overall popularity and page rank of your blog.

SponsoredReviews - Write reviews for their advertisers’ products and services on your own blog.  They charge a 35% transaction fee for their services.

LoudLaunch - Blog about the advertisers campaign releases that meet your interests.  They pay once a month.

Blogitive - Get paid weekly via PayPal for posting stories that interest you.

BloggerWave - Select the advertiser opportunities that best suit your blog and write reviews on their products and services.

InBlogAds - Write about websites, products, services and companies on your blog and get paid for it.

BlogToProfit - Make $250 dollars or more by writing new posts on your blog.

Creative Weblogging - Write 7 to 10 posts per week for their network and they will pay you $225 per month.

WordFirm - Make money publishing books as a freelance writer from home.

451 Press - Write for a blog within their network and receive forty percent of all generated revenue.

Digital Journal - Network of bloggers that get paid to report on newsworthy articles through their blogs.

BlogBurner - Sign up for a free blog and get paid for writing new posts.  Your commissions are generated through Adsense clicks.

Squidoo - Earn money by writing your new blog, or choose to donate your earnings to charity.

About.com - Become a paid guide writing articles for About.com.  Compensation depends on the growth of your page views.

DayTipper - Earn $3 for every short tip you write and get published.

Helium - Earn a share of their advertising revenue by writing articles in their channels.

Dewitts Media - Get paid to write your own blog.  This site requires you have a minimum page rank of 3 to sign up.

BOTW Media - Make money writing a blog for their blogging network.

CreamAid - Get paid to submit blog posts in their directory.

BlogFeast - Generate revenue from pre-installed Google Adsense ads when you blog in their network.

Mashable - Mashable hires freelancers and new staff, offering one of the largest platforms for tech bloggers.

To Whom it May Concern,

There has been no spam, hidden text, cloaking on any of our sites since they where launched. But then there are two issues we have fixed lately (even before we got banned) on comfi.com, for which I now write a renclusion request.
1) We had duplicate content on several URLs that were typos of our brand name. About a month ago (10.01.2008) we made 301 redirects from www.cofy.com, www.cofi.com, www.co-fi.com to www.cofi.com (to get off the duplicate content issue as soon as we got aware of it). Now all the domains that had duplicate content are redirecting (different typo URLs) to www.comfi.com can be found only in supplemental results. Is there a problem with making 3 301 redirects at once?
2) We did had paid links bought long ago by a SEO we employed freelance, but after we heard about the revisited guidelines, we fired that SEO and we started to cancell the links. So 2 weeks ago we cancelled the last 8 paid links left at Text Link Ads (some of them are still listed, but we have allready cancelled them) and will never use services of that kind.

With respect to Google,
Sincerely yours
CEO of CoFi

Our site cofi.com no longer comes up for site: or for a search of the URL.
I send this request for reinclusion the next day right after I knew the site is no where to be found in Google’s SERPs, that was yesterday.

Hello Mr. Matt

The previous SEO guy did not used any hidden text, hidden links, or cloaking at none of the pages.
We have never used doorway pages that do a JavaScript redirect.
No automated software was ever used to get links.
What could be against Google’s guidelines was TLA links I’ve been cancelling from the first day at my work as a SEO. The previous SEO had some 60 of them, I’ve cancelled them all and still not all of them are gone and now I ask you for reinclusion in Google index.
As I’m the new SEO allready two weeks for now I promise that it’s not going to happen again. So the TLA links have been cancelled two weeks ago and there will be no more of those. I’ve started a hard-working campaing in writing articles about telecom, as I understand that should not violate the guidelines.

if you have a site in the top positions in an competitive sector you have to do some little seo efforts in order to not lose positions. as everybody around you is doing it. they all buy links, they all exchange links. sometimes really heavy, with not so nice methods.

The site has been submited to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other telecom expert sites.
http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=cofi.com
http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Shopping_and_Services/Communication_and_Information_Management/Telephone_Products_and_Services/

The sit
http://www.reviewcentre.com/
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2007/10/

I am desperate to find out why my site has been dumped as I will soon be in dire straights.

If only someone could tell me if I have done something wrong or what it is that I am being penalised for as I simply don’t know and can’t figure it out myself.

Please help.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/reinclusion-request-howto/#comment-723 organic Google problems have been solved through their AdWords ad reps

Home page crawl:
Googlebot last successfully accessed your home page on Feb 12, 2008.
Index status:
No pages from your site are currently included in Google’s index. Indexing can take time. You may find it helpful to review our information for webmasters and webmaster guidelines.

Thanks for this topic, Matt. 3 years have passed since this topic has been launched and still we have no clue what to do next.
I’m an owner of a bussines which heavily relies on online traffic, because we sell online services.

It took me about 40 hours to read all the comments, to find answers to my questions, but I admit that I have failed to find an answer. Similiar questions have been arising (cooment 2821,)
Our website was doing well for 6 years for high ranking keywords. Now, a day after the ban happened I’m trying to figure out what exactly it was. We had 40k visitors from Google per month and no idea what will it become, if there will be no positive answer for the reinclusion request.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/reinclusion-request-howto/#comment-6219

Great Au Pair Complains to Google

December 19, 2002

Recipient Information:
[Private]
Google, Inc.
2400 Bayshore Parkway
Mountain View, CA, 94043, USA

Sent via: fax
Re: Copyright Infringements by au pair web sites Read the rest of this entry »

Carrera is believed to be one of the most celebrated collections which was produced in tribute to motor racers. This series was created especially for people that realize how to drive fast. There are a lot of celebrated drivers today that wear chronographs of this amazing series and they are proud to honor the fame of persons who were good racers.
The unique timepiece called Carrera 360 is an opulent watch which was in a kind of respect to drivers legends. One of the most famous formula-1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya noticed that it is truly pleasant to represent such a unique model of chronographs. That racer took part in the presentation of fake Tag Heuer watches for the first time but he enjoyed it much.
The watch is proposed in limited edition of 500 and the most faithful chronograph enthusiast will have the chance to appreciate this fabulous timepiece on their hands. The renowned Carrera collection has been improving for a long period. The Carrera 360 is the newest and the most renowned model of that family. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most common preconceptions with SEO is that if you optimize a site for the benefit of Google then you will rank well with other search engines. However, the big three search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) all use different algorithms that demand different things. Google has a mixed bag but certainly leans towards inbound links whereas Yahoo loves keyword dense content sites. This leaves us with MSN, whose primary consideration when determining their search results seems to be heavily based on internal linking structure and inbound links. But these are far from the only SEO techniques you need to consider.

MSN The Meta Search Engine

MSN Search is a meta search engine. Whereas Google openly ignores your meta tags in the majority of cases MSN blatantly uses them to index your pages and discover your keywords. At the very least you need to include the “keywords”, “description”, and “title” meta tags. Your main keywords should be included in all of these with your primary keyword appearing first in the “keywords” meta tag. All tags must include the keywords you consider the most important to your site.

Also, because MSN uses the meta tags, you should be careful not to spam them with numerous instances of your keyword or the use of incorrect or inaccurate keywords. At present, meta spamming doesn’t seem to be an issue with the MSNbot but it is only a matter of time and when the change occurs you won’t receive any warning before your site is penalized.

Page Layout And Code

The coding of a page is always an issue with search engines and, therefore, should be important to you as well. If a crawler can’t crawl your site then you are unlikely to be indexed and you certainly won’t receive the high ranking you want. Keep the amount of HTML or any other programming language on your page down to an absolute minimum and ensure that page sizes are below 150KB at the very most.

Another slightly contentious issue is the use of tables. Again, this leads us back to a crawling problem. MSN does not condemn the use of tables on the whole. However, the MSNbot does not like to see tables within tables within tables. This can be a problem if you don’t use CSS and rely on tables to keep your page neat. Including another table in the layout of your page begins to make things look messy from the point of view of the MSNbot.

Keyword Density

Keyword density is an area of SEO that always causes arguments. No search engine openly publishes their requirements in this area but it is widely accepted that while Google has stringent rules in place that require minimal use of keywords both Yahoo and MSN have a much greater tolerance for higher levels. Google prefers only a 2% to 3% density while MSN and Yahoo allow 5% to 6%, possibly even a little higher.

Of course this raises the problem that optimizing for MSN may have you flagged as spam with Google. Fortunately, MSN and Yahoo, both take keyword stemming and keyword variants into account when doing their calculations. Use keyword plurals and stems, and try to ensure that you don’t go above the Google ideal of 2% for each of these variants. Also, it is absolutely imperative that your SEO writing does not prevent you from writing copy that is appealing to human visitors.

Website Infrastructure And SEO

Your website infrastructure is important to MSN. Many sites, my own included, have shown excellent results in MSN based on the internal text links and associated anchor text. Try to use the primary keyword for a page as its title and ensure that you use this keyword in all of your navigation bars on your site. This will have a very positive influence on the MSNbot.

Also, as with all search engines, MSN wants to be able to reach every page of your site quickly and easily. Text links are best for navigation and all pages should be reached within three clicks from your home page. If you use graphical navigation bars then you should consider either changing them to text links or including a sitemap that is one click away from your homepage.

Inbound Link Importance

Inbound links count as votes for your website. The more votes you get from sites the better, but moreover the more influential the sites that provide a link to you the greater your search engine results. In all honesty, MSN currently appear to favor the quantity of links over the quality but search engine algorithms are renowned for evolving so try to plan ahead and get relevant links from popular pages. The most important aspect of any individual inbound link is the anchor text. You must get webmasters to use your primary keyword for the page that the link points to as the anchor text.

MSN SEO Conclusion

MSN Search is gaining a little ground on its major competitor, Google. Microsoft is unlikely to sit back and be happy with only taking a small share of the market so optimizing for MSN in order to ensure that you get beneficial results from their search engine is a very good idea. It is possible to optimize pages and content for all of the major search engines if done properly and carefully.