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Your landing pages are a vital part of your overall online strategy. You have to keep in mind that not everyone enters your site on the homepage. Your landing pages need to speak to who you are as a company, quickly and concisely, and hopefully imparting your unique value proposition. If you are unfamiliar with what your unique selling proposition, or value proposition is, an article by Melissa Burton can give you some pointers.
A landing page is essentially any page that appears in the SERP for a search. Hopefully your page will reflect what has been searched for, and therefore, have something to offer the user.
Effective landing pages can be a key to your online success, if you do them properly. They should be clear, they should tell what your company or product are about, and they should sell your product. This sounds simple enough, until you realize that every page of your site has the potential to be a landing page. On the best sites, each page has a goal, or a topic (key phrases) that is specific to that particular page. You optimize for this topic, and your page is on it’s way to becoming a landing page for users who do a search related to the material on the page. This just reinforces what we’ve always said about great copy and well done on page efforts being the backbone of SEO. It comes full circle, when you get the idea that even your third tier page that you figure no one may ever see can be the page that draws a new customer to your site.
So, I’m sure this has you thinking you have a lot of work to do. What pages are the most important? What should you tackle first? Well, what product or service do you want folks to find out about the most? What drives your business? This should at least give you a jumping off point…

Looking around, I see so many reasons to be really grateful for technology industries taking hold right here in Northeast Ohio. Canton boasts of Stark Tech, one of the best places in the country to get some education and experience in Tech industries. We’ve been fortunate to hire several folks fresh out of their programs. Kent State has solid Web design and graphic design programs that turn out some really talented folks as well.

Turning Technologies, a company in the audience response industry, was recently featured on NPR, when they were doing a spot about how Northeast Ohio, and Youngstown in particular have become a mini-Silicon Valley. I was able to track down the organization behind this movement to create a technology center here in Ohio, and their projects are pretty exciting. The Northeast Ohio Incubator Collaborative “provides coordinated services to entrepreneurs desiring to start technology-oriented businesses in the 21 counties of NE Ohio”. This is such a great resource, and they’re doing their level best to bring talent into Northeast Ohio.

Northeast Ohio has been on the frontier of Web design and SEO from the very beginning. In 1994, PolySort began as a Web project (one of the very first websites, ever, in fact) to bring awareness to yet another technological industry, the polymer industry. In fact, Ohio is known as the “Polymer Valley”.
Cleveland SEO is a prime example of the multitude of talent in the area. This consortium of SEOs provides a vast array of SEO / SEM services, with many dedicated, talented leaders in the Search industry.

We’ve been doing our best to provide an avenue for young people to utilize and grow their talents through our TKG Institute. We’ve actually been fortunate to hire several developers as a direct result of this program. It’s intended for college students or people working to re-train and gain solid web development skills. I’m hopeful that some of the folks that pass through the program become valued employees not only of TKG, but the many other firms here in Northeast Ohio.

It is heartening to see how much really is going on here in our region. We have a lot to offer, and hopefully the talent will realize that, and decide to stay here, or come here, bringing even greater possibilities and opportunities.

I know I’ve talked about Web Accessibility in the past, when the Target lawsuit ended, but it is becoming a topic of conversation once again. According to an article on InternetRetailer.com, a couple of things are taking place. One is the fact that online retailers, afraid of a lawsuit are scrambling to find out what they need to do to get their sites up to speed with accessibility and usability for the disabled BEFORE someone decides to sue them. In this economy, I can see a couple things that are impacting the decision to do this:

1. No one likes to get sued. It’s expensive.
2. Nobody can afford to turn away paying customers in this climate, but updating a Web site that is not built for accessibility from the start can cost some cash.

James, our Development blogger, had some to say about this when it all started that can clarify just what the lawsuit was about, and how it is now impacting Web development.

The other thing that is happening is that folks who are blind and disabled are still encountering sites that they cannot access, and calling up attorneys for the National Federation of the Blind to complain and seek advice as to what steps should be taken to try and force retailers into making their sites more accessible.

Beyond being a best practice for Web developers and site owners to build accessible sites from the outset of the project, it is reasonable to assume that these folks are looking to spend some cash. According to the InternetRetailer.com article, there are 50 million blind and/or disabled folks with an annual income of $1 trillion and $220 billion in discretionary income. That’s a lot of dough up for grabs to the right retailers! If you take the time to think about it, the internet has been an enormous blessing and help to folks with disabilities. The ability to shop in the comfort and convenience of your own home has to be a huge weight lifted from people who might have a harder time getting around. The internet can bring nearly anything right to your door. To have basically, the world at your fingertips has to have eased the jobs of caretakers, as well as the disabled. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to need to purchase something on a site that is inaccessible to assistive technologies such as screen readers.

As a Web development company, it is our job to think about all the potential users of a particular site while it is still in the planning stages. As a salesman, my job is helping my clients put the Web to it’s best possible use. I would be remiss if I did not point out that there is a huge segment of the population that has money to spend, and that they will spend it with my clients, if I help them make sure that their site is accessible to as many users as possible. It only makes good business sense. More importantly, it’s the right thing to do. Unfortunately, it may take a lawsuit to talk a lot of folks into it. It’s a shame that people have to be forced or even legislated into doing what is best for all involved. To me, it only makes sense to make the lives of people with disabilities and those who care for them, easier.

So, I am wondering, if you are starting a Web project, either a new site or redesign, are you considering accessibility and usability for all your potential users, or is this post making you rethink your plans to include them? Let me know.. I’d love to hear your take on this subject!

Now that the election is over, I think it is reasonable to assume that the Fairness Doctrine, which we have been hearing so much about as far as right wing blogs and radio shows are concerned, could become an issue in the near future. President-Elect Obama has mentioned it numerous times, though he really should be grateful for the lack of it in many respects. It’s clear that what is supposed to be mainstream media trends left, and should perhaps be called out on that. On the other hand, conservative talk radio and bloggers are openly conservative. Attempting to use the Fairness Doctrine to stifle them is censorship, particularly when liberals could do the same thing, if there were a market for it. I should have listed this topic in my post about Obama that was really more of a political rant, but other issues were more pressing at the time. Have to bring it up now, as we may be staring this thing in the face.

For those who may be unfamiliar with the “Fairness Doctrine”, it was a policy of the FCC that attempted to ensure that both sides of controversial topics were presented by the media. It was in effect from 1949 to 1987, when it was finally dropped. Liberals want to bring it back as a way to combat successful right wing radio talk shows and blogs. Obviously, Web content was not an issue when it was in effect up to 1987, but do we really think that they will ignore the Web now? I doubt it, and so does the FCC Chairman, Robert McDowell. Web content could potentially be regulated, or uhhh…censored, that is. This could be disastrous on a number of levels that relate directly to your site and your SEO efforts.

First off, blogs are a great tool for marketing. Many blogs are devoted to one topic, and don’t show two sides of any argument. Admittedly, I never do. My goal is to share my opinion, and let others share theirs. If they reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, they won’t leave Web content out. Clearly, that’s a problem. Not only could bloggers and other Web site owners have to double the amount of content they provide, so as to “give the other point of view”, but this will seriously impact their SEO efforts. On page efforts will be affected – the efforts will be diluted (especially keyphrases), and searchers may be frustrated by results that provide the words they were looking for, but not the content they need.

Secondly,how far will this “Fairness Doctrine” go? Will SEOs be required to optimize for both view points, in an effort to make sure one side of an issue does not outrank the other in search results? How will this effect link building? The government getting too involved with the Web will eventually lead to rules and regulations, and taxes. The government is already trying to dictate how sites are built, with rules about accessibility. The Target corporation was sued in 2006 because it lacked accessibility to the blind. So Web Standards are now in place because of this finding. My take on the Target incidentally: if they are dumb enough to ignore a large market segment, so be it.

The Fairness Doctrine is censorship, plain and simple. People have choices now, there are many TV channels to choose from, plenty of radio stations, and millions of Web sites. If you don’t like what is being said in one place, look for something more in line with your thinking. The free exchange of ideas in an integral part of the Freedom of Speech and the web. I have a bad feeling about this one, folks. Thoughts, anyone? Be sure not to to keep ‘em “fair and balanced”!

What a great idea, removing all style from a site. To most of us with big egos, that love to see our logo and company look good, its really tough to see all that go away. Even though, we’re probably the only ones who really care about our own graphics.

We decided to participate in CSS Naked Day, a day to promote web standards. It’s not too late to participate if you, or your business are concerned about web standards. Follow this link to learn more about participating in CSS Naked Day.