Congratulations to all the finalists and of course the winners.  We would especially like to congratulate three of our agency partners, Phases Design Studios, HotPress Web and Zenman Productions for making the list.  It is such an honor to be recognized in this elite group.

Of other interest, 8 out of the 10 finalists in our category were digital marketing agencies providing a variety of services including web development and online marketing.  We are very proud to be part of such a successful group of piers in a dynamic and fast growing industry.

We know SEO and we’ve seen and analyzed the technical aspects of hundreds of websites. We have also seen enough strange things that we’ve learned a little about usability, too. Website usability is a professional specialty all its own, and we certainly don’t claim to be the experts, here are a few very basic usability suggestions we’d like to share:

• Make it easy for people to contact you and make it totally obvious how they can do so. Making contact is the first step to making a sale, so you must remove any obstacles from the process.
  • Put your contact form on all pages of your site. The side bar is a good place for a short contact form.
  • Put your phone number on all pages of your website and put it in a prominent place. Don’t make people look around for your phone number.
• Don’t let your website forms discourage people. Instead, trust your sales folk to deepen relationships, nurture prospects and close sales.
  • Make your web forms absolutely simple. A first name and either a phone number or an email address are really all you need to establish contact with a prospect, send them a newsletter or deliver sales materials. Yes, it’s often useful to have more info, but consider whether it’s worth the cost of losing a prospective customer before you require it.
  • The usability experts at Marketing Experiments tell us that requiring a captcha in order to submit a form often causes abandonment, so avoid that feature on your forms pages.
• Make your font readable. It doesn’t matter what your pages say if they are unreadable to your customers or prospective customers.
  • Not everyone knows how to increase the font size in their browser, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to buy diamond rings or schedule plastic surgery or get an estimate for a new roof.
  • Almost 13% of the US is already over age 65.  Another 11% are in the 55-64 age group. You may have eagle eyes, but they definitely do not. If you want your web pages to appeal to this 24% of the population, use fonts of at least 12 pixels.

If you can follow the 3 simple guidelines above, you’ll be off to a good start. And if you’d like to delve more deeply into website usability and testing, give seOverflow a call at (303) 905 1504. We can recommend some experts that we’ve been working with who can really help you out.

As an example, we recently had a developer come to us at the initial stage of website redesign for our optimization expertise. She had a wireframe of what she and her customer envisioned for his new site. We were able to guide the site structure to show the Search Engines which pages were the most important; we suggested new pages to include on the site based on our keyword research; and we advised that certain pages be dropped from the design for various reasons. These changes will make the overall website optimization much  more effective as we move forward.

If we hadn’t become involved at the first stages of the design process, the overall optimization would be weaker and changes requiring additional time and expense would likely need to be made later.

Here’s a great article from SEOMoz that can help you explain to your clients the importance of incorporating SEO into web design from the ground up: Reversing the SEO Process-The Chocolate Cookie Mistake.

Have you been to Digg lately? If you visited any of the stories there, you may have noticed that they just added a new “Related Stories” section. These links show up immediately after the main headline and description on each story page, which you can see from the screenshot to the left.

As of right now, the stories being pulled by Digg are a bit hit-and-miss. Some of the stories are very related to the main story on the page, but others are way off. Some of the related stories links even go back as far as 2-3 years ago. In some cases this could be helpful, but usually information that dated won’t be very relevant anymore.

This is a really cool idea though, once Digg gets the kinks worked out. I would love to see a variety of sources pop up for whatever story I’m interested in. For example,  the hot topic right now is Mike Shanahan being fired from the Denver Broncos. Being a Broncos fan, I want to know anything and everything.

seOverflow is constantly working towards making it easier for our clients to work with us and achieve consistently excellent results through outsourcing search engine optimization. If you have any feedback for us on what would make working with seOverflow easier, please let is know via a comment on this post or via email or phone call.

While everyone with a little bit of SEO knowledge knows that links are an extremely important part of the overall optimization process, not everyone knows (or wants to get into!) the nuts and bolts of putting together a great link building campaign. It requires time. It requires effort. It requires patience. And often it requires coffee.

Armed with the right knowledge and willingness to spend some dedicated hours in front of the computer, a novice can hone his or her link building skills in due time. Let’s look at a just a few (of many) things that anyone can do to get started on a successful link building campaign.

· Submit your website to quality directories. These may be free directories or paid directories. Make sure to avoid spammy directories and link farms- sites with WAY too many links that really won’t benefit your website that much. Frankly, they are a waste of your valuable time. Don’t be afraid to spend money on the Yahoo Directory, and get listed in DMOZ- this one is free!

· Submit your blog to blog directories. You do have an on-site blog, right? If not, make one! Blogs have proven capable of ranking for terms just as much as, and in some cases higher than, a page on the main part of your website. Getting your active blog listed in blog directories means more links showing love to your blog, which you can then turn into love for your entire website.

· Make a video! I know, I know- this sounds like a lot of work and you don’t think it’s worth it or you don’t have time. I am here to tell you that it IS worth it and you DO have time. When your video shows up with an embedded screen shot on the first page of Google for the keyword you tagged it with, you will come around to my way of thinking. Speaking of tags- use them! Titling and tagging your video with the appropriate keywords is the only way people will find your video! Sounds simple enough, but you’d be surprised how many people do not do this.

While I can’t “give away the link building farm”, I hope these few tidbits are helpful as you think about your own link building activities. Now go get that espresso and get to work!

We love your feedback on this blog! Check back soon for more SEO insight from the seOverflow crew.

1. Keep us up to date with developments in your business and/or industry as they happen.

Especially during the link building phase this is imperative. We are a creative bunch and can find a way to leverage even boring developments in your industry or your company. As your SEO partner we want to be the SEO ‘extension’ of your company- so keep us in the loop!

2. Give us feedback on how leads/sales from your website are performing.

Sometimes conversion tracking doesn’t tell us the whole story especially if call tracking isn’t in place. Take some time to give us some feedback about how the SEO work is affecting your bottom line.

3. Read the SEO report every month and come up with questions for us.

We put a good deal of time into sending comprehensive reports every month to each of our clients. We also offer them time each month to review the report on the phone with us. To get the most out of this process be sure and read carefully through the report and come up with a list of questions. By the way, our report review time is an excellent chance to take care of #1 and #2 above.

4. Pay your bills on time.

Ok this one is kind of obvious, but a well paid and well fed SEO is a better SEO! Set up automatic checks from your bank, or wait a couple of weeks for our new credit card solution

5. Trust our judgment and listen to our advice, you hired us after all

We know you’re a smart client (you did hire us after all right?) and you probably read about SEO and try to learn some on your own which is great! Feel free to ask us questions, but don’t forget to listen to our advice. We recommend things for a reason and do have quite a bit of experience in this area.

6. Don’t overwrite our work on your website.

Again, another obvious one, but if you change the content or titles, etc. we just optimized, then your site won’t be optimized any more. Please coordinate with us when editing any main content or pages which have been optimized. And always back up!

7. Log into and view your analytics regularly.

Your analytics data is current and available 24 hours per day. Make a habit of logging in and checking out what is happening with your site. While we check in regularly, you may notice trends that will help you help us and give you a better understanding of your site visitors.

8. Respond to our questions and requests in a timely manner.

From time to time we may have some questions and/or requests for you. Please try and get back to us in a timely manner so we can stay on schedule and get you the best results as quickly as possible.

9. Work together with us as a team.

Let’s be honest. Even though you have hired us to be your SEO team, you and your team will have work to do as part of your SEO project. Let’s work together as a team and get the best results for you as fast as we can.

10. Send us your referrals!

If you like working with us, tell your friends! We’ll love you for it. Just make sure they read this post first!

We’d love to hear your feedback on our 10 Commandments To Be An Awesome SEO client. Next time we’ll write about the 10 Commandments for an SEO company to follow !