Many websites are turning into collections of regurgitation; material and sell sheets taken off other websites, reworded and posted again. While it is true that there are only so many ways that we can describe the selling points of a laser printer, a collective white noise is creeping into the webscape. Web pages on certain subject matters are blurring; not only in the message they communicate, but in the style and words chosen, until the tone sounds like Ferris Bueller’s history teacher, calling role (anyone? anyone?).
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Glenn's Desk, Web Content

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Nature.com is reporting on a study by Canadian researcher Gitte Lindgaard of Carleton University that visitors to a webpage can make up their minds about the quality of the page within just 50 milliseconds.” From the article: “We all know that first impressions count, but this study shows that the brain can make flash judgments almost as fast as the eye can take in the information. The discovery came as a surprise to some experts. “My colleagues believed it would be impossible to really see anything in less than 500 milliseconds,” says Gitte Lindgaard of Carleton University in Ottawa, who has published the research in the journal Behaviour and Information Technology. Instead they found that impressions were made in the first 50 milliseconds of viewing.

Glenn's Desk

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Don Winslow, writer of several novels and soon to have two movies base on his work ( one of them with Robert De Niro as a staring role), asked me to create his web presence.

His main concern is not sales (he’s already a best seller with his novel (Power of the Dog)), nor does he really feel that a Web Presence is required for his fan base. What Don Winslow is mostly concerned with is another writer, whose name is also Don Winslow.

The trouble begins when a college or book store would like Mr. Winslow to come out to their campus, or place of business, and give a talk. Then they search the Internet to find out more about Mr. Winslow, and find another Winslow, who writes erotica, and not very good erotica. It is the type that would offend most people, and even if not offended, it does put them off inviting him to their school.

While Mr. Winslow and myself have no problem with rights to free speech or even making a living writing what many people find to be entertaining, he would prefer to not have to face an interrogation every time he goes on a book tour.

So the challenge here is not only getting to the Top Ten, but also insuring that for the Top 20, the other writer’s listing is not present. Since I’m not a “Black Hat” this takes some diligence in the persuasion of the web bots.

Don Winslow has several novels on the shelves and continues to be an active novelist, so this helps a great deal. What I find most effective in cases like this is Blog entries, forum comments and other passive marketing techniques, which continue to bring Don Winslow into the eyes of readers, along with the titles of his books. It is not necessary to create “links” to his web site in these entries every time, nor is it necessary when creating links, to link directly to his web site. Linking to Wikipedia, Amazon.com, BN.com, or articles written about Don Winslow and the novel I’m commenting on, are even more effective, because it builds a base of preference. Which is my bottom line goal. When someone searches for Don Winslow, I want to search engines to prefer to show Don Winslow the Novelist and author of Winter of Frankie Machine, rather than Don Winslow author of slave girls in rome.

Glenn's Desk, Internet Marketing

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While there is really no substitute for content on a website to insure indexing and possitioning on search engines, my recent experience using the Google Site Maps has been eye opening. Google’s Site Map is an XML file listing all the pages on your website which Google should index for search result listings. You can rean about my latest experience, and more about the Google Sitemaps in this artilce I wrote for the Search Engine blog.

Glenn's Desk

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by Glenn Hefley

Often we read or hear about the importance of Key Words for our web sites. SEO’s and Web Marketing ‘Specialists’ write a lot of articles and push this need down our throats every time we talk to them. Its the talisman of success on the web.

Are they wrong?

Not really, but where they often fail is in giving us the whole story.

Let’s say that we are selling car accessories, just as an example I happen to have done some recent research on. Our car accessories however don’t cover a wide area of the category. We sell car covers, floor mats, dash covers, and other items that protect our car. This is our focus.

Car Accessories however is a huge category and the search report on Overture tells us that 110,320 searches were done for that combination in June of 2006.
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Glenn's Desk, Glenn's Work, Search Engines, Web Content

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