Earlier today I posted about Abalone Designs, and pointed to an interesting article on the site. One of the statements really stuck in my mind: Your web site can be optimized for the most competitive keyword in the world […] and it will do absolutely nothing whatsoever for your business if your web site is not user-friendly. It reminded me of the first time I experienced ‘professional’ Search Engine Optimization.

At the time, I was quite familiar with copywriting, had written copy for a half dozen or so websites, but was not overly familiar with SEO. Since it was on someone else’s bill, the charity copy that I had provided was passed off to this individual to optimize. When it came back, it definitely took advantage of useful keywords, but the copy lacked any real flow, and everything seemed forced. If I were a customer looking at the site, I would have been turned off after reading the first page.

While Keyword Usage & Content Relevance are definitely important in establishing a high ranking in search engines, I’ve always thought that the website should still be easy to read. Professionals may tout all sorts of nonsense about keyword density optimization, linearization, and things like tokenization, filtration, and stemming, but if your target is the average joe, they would probably prefer you simply got to the point.

Relevant keywords should be carefully placed throughout the text, but not by sacrificing how your website reads. I would never try and describe my blog as ‘the best Web 2.0, Internet Technology and Internet trends blog in Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, and the surrounding Lower Mainland and Greater Vancouver suburbs blog.’ First, I’m not… but more importantly, who would want to read anything else I’ve written if that’s how I describe my blog?

If you choose to entrust your content to a professional, it’s important that the end result is something that satisfies your target customers as well as your search engine ranking. It’s definitely re-assuring to see a professional in the industry making a similar statement.

From their changing headers, all pics that were personally taken by individuals at Abalone Designs, to their offer of Free Web site Analysis, Abalone Designs is a different kind of company. In an effort to thwart corruption and scams, Courtney Heard started Abalone Designs in 2001, and the offer of free website analysis is her personal effort to give honest and professional advice on web development. Abalone’s services focus on web design and search engine optimization (SEO), but there are also free SEO articles and tools available for everyone to take advantage of.

From a recent SEO blog post:

SEO: Focus, Focus; Not Hocus, Pocus 

The most important aspect of any web site in any industry, anywhere in the world is user friendliness. There is no straying from this. Your web site can be optimized for the most competitive keyword in the world, it can rank number one across the board and you can even have your URL flashed across the posing torso of America’s Next Top Model on CNN and it will do absolutely nothing whatsoever for your business if your web site is not user-friendly.

Visitors need to come to your site and know immediately what it is about. You have literally just a few seconds to capture their attention. If they don’t see what they are looking for, quickly, they will leave.

Some tips to help you make sure your web site visitors stick around and understand what your web site is all about are as follows:

See the rest of the article here.

As I’ve mentioned before, there is no clear cut solution for increasing traffic to your site or your search engine ranking. Whether you simply take advantage of the tools and tips provided by Courtney Heard and the rest of the team at Abalone Designs or you call on them for their professional help, Abalone Designs is a great (Canadian) resource for your SEO needs.

It’s been mentioned several times on several different blogs, including here, that one of Google’s attempts to thwart - or responses to - Facebook’s open platform was to out open Facebook. More and more information about the platform continues to trickle out, but a fairly in-depth report was released yesterday on Techcrunch. I’ve adopted a kind of mantra: ‘If Michael Arrington said it, it must be true.’

One of the important points was made in the final paragraph:

It’s clear that the developers who arrived early to the Facebook Platform party won easy customers. Those that came later had to fight much harder. Developers found their new gold strike, and they will soon all be there, mining away.

Makes sense to get in early on this one.

There are all sorts of reasons that a company may need to move to a dedicated server. Companies focussed on web development, or web applications will of course need to have full control of their online environment, but there are advantages for small and medium enterprises to take advantage of these upgrades, too. As a company starts expanding, streamlining file storage, communications, and access to important files and folders becomes more important. Several different employees may need to access the same information, provide updates on numbers or appointments, and there may be remote workers or the need to continue to work from home. A server can also help reduce the requirements of individual computer systems as the work can be facilitated by the server, instead of the system’s processor. A post was recently made on Superb’s blog about making the choice to upgrade to a dedicated server, and there’s also a good article on Microsoft’s website that talks about making the decision. While there are definite advantages, make sure you are prepared for the maintenance and upkeep of the server (ie. patches, updates), or look into a company that can manage these aspects of your server for you.

Following up on the recently announced Facebook investment announcement - which doesn’t necessarily make Facebook worth $15 billion, Microsoft has now released that they’ve reached the 88 million units sold for their Vista operating system and posted their strongest Q1 in eight years. Despite being skeptical about Microsoft’s ability to monetize the Facebook deal, Paul Kedrosky had an interesting article on the great quarter Microsoft had and why Microsoft is a ‘buy.’

One idea that has become increasingly interesting is the ability of Microsoft to somehow parlay their Facebook partnership into a platform to push Silverlight. While I’ve discussed the release previously and been quite positive, the ability to convince users to adopt/install the plug-in and developers to create masterpieces on the platform will ultimately determine the fate of the release. An interesting Facebook app sponsored or supported by Facebook may be the perfect tool.