Google announced yesterday that in the coming years the company will overhaul its search algorithm and results to incorporate “semantic search,” according to an article from the Wall Street Journal.
Many people instinctually use the words “search” and “search engine optimization” interchangeably. This isn’t wrong, necessarily, but it doesn’t allow for the wider range of meanings within the ever-expanding world of search.
These days, the race for the #1 spot on Google is tougher than the Tour de France. I’ve blogged in the past about the dangers of approaching SEO with the expectation of being #1, but that doesn’t mean companies aren’t any less hungry for a decent ranking.
In short, we may be witnessing the beginning of the end of the printed phone book. At the very least phone books are moving from the realm of the simply unnecessary to being perceived as actually wasteful and damaging. The demise of phone books may not be big news to anyone, but it’s an interesting time to think about your business and how well you have been adapting to the times:
On many occasions our clients say, “We want to be #1 in Google.”This is a worthy goal, but too general to result in success. It does however, lead to interesting follow-up questions, like “For which search terms do you wish to rank?”
As we enter our seventeenth year of designing and developing websites, there are very few clients that aren’t on at least their third generation websites.And with the average website needing a refresh after three years, our clients’ websites are accumulating lots of content. From an SEO perspective a lot of content can be good, from a user experience angle it can become a problem. To make it easier upgrading websites with a growing body of content, we engage our clients in a collaborative process we call “Website Triage.”
I love a surprise! Only just don’t give it to me on a web site development project. I feel pretty safe assuming my clients would agree with this. For those of you who are not web development professionals and find yourself running a web project, I thought it would be useful to dispel five mistaken assumptions about the web development process. Each of the next five posts will address one of these assumptions:
Well, almost. Regardless of the fact that we provide integrated services, often when a client comes to us for a website, they are not thinking about branding, yet it is often the issue that will make or break the website. Branding is often considered more of a consumer concern or maybe just an expensive “nice-to- have.” Of the six key components of a website development project — Content, Information Architecture, Search, Design, Interactivity and Programming — “content” is nearly always the chief area of focus, where the most time is expended and where differing opinions can affect outcomes and timing.
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