A few interesting bits & pieces have been doing the rounds recently. First the rumour, already going since May, that Google is thinking of offering a content management system to media companies that would combine editorial and advertising functionality in one platform: Beginning in 2013 Google started talks with some big publishers about offering software to help manage content and advertising in a holistic way, multiple sources said. This content management system would make it much easier for media companies – news websites et al – to combine management of various different features that are essential to their online business currently handled by different platforms: If and when the CMS becomes reality, the product would tie in to Google’s publisher-facing ad stack including its DoubleClick for Publishers ad-management tools and its yield management capabilities acquired via AdMeld, now housed within DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Other likely functions include integrated paywall support, commerce features, content recommendation links and plugins to ad sales-management tools. Obviously Google is not happy to just let news websites enjoy all the traffic they’re getting, especially that juicy ad revenue they’re earning off the back of that traffic. Google wants a share of that pie too, as its own monopolistic stranglehold on web search is insufficient to satisfy the eternal hunger for shareholder profit growth. Also, a Google-developed CMS would of course ensure that all content published through this CMS is perfectly indexable and understandable for Google, so that it can repurpose that content for its own benefit – such as in-SERP answers, ensuring users stay on Google’s own properties and give Google more user behaviour data and earn them more ad revenue. Thanks, Google! Too bad, Daily Mail! If I ran a content publishing website, I would be very hesitant to run it off of a Google-powered CMS. One of the key mantras of effective digital marketing is diversification – i.e. don’t put all your eggs in to one basket. By building a website on Google’s platform, you are essentially enslaving your entire business’s success to Google’s fickle whims. And with Google’s history of pulling the plug on popular services, this would be a very risky move indeed – aside even from the questionable decision to give Google full back-end access to your editorial content and advertising systems. Such a level of control could very easily be abused for the purposes of, say, a Filter Bubble. Google Domains News websites are only a small slice of the web nowadays – smaller and smaller as Google continues stealing their traffic – so a CMS focused on media companies would not suffice for Google’s quest to total World Wide Web domination. Enter Google Domains, a new domain registration service from Google currently in private beta. Google Domains is basically a domain registration service sprinkled with Google’s magic brand power fairy dust. It offers the same functionality as most registrars, including email, redirection, subdomains, etc. Of course all this will run on Google’s own computing infrastructure, ensuring you will have state of the art technology powering your web presence! As a side benefit, Google will get access to all four layers of your online presence. Small price to pay for such superb service, right? Google Domains will also connect to a number of content management systems to run your website on, including Shopify, Weebly, and Wix. Expect more platforms to be added to that list (maybe even Google’s own CMS?) as Google Domains grows in popularity and everyone wants to get on board the unstoppable Google World Wide Web Domination train. These are all just more small pieces of the big puzzle Google is building. Not content with being synonymous with online search, Google fully intends to become synonymous with the web in its entirety. Welcome to the future. Welcome to the Google-Shaped Web.

However, the reality of the matter is that there’s a great deal of difference in quality between web hosting providers. While many of the hosting packages most companies offer are similar in terms of specifications and pricing, the real differentiator is the service you get. It pays to do a little investigation before you select a hosting company. Moving from one hosting company to another can be a difficult and complicated process, so you want to select the right hosting provider from the start. The first thing you want to select on is the features and specifications you’ll require for your hosting package. Do justice to your ambition and don’t go for a cheap, simple package just because it’ll save you some money. Upgrading your package when your site becomes a success may be difficult, and often more elaborate packages aren’t outrageously expensive, so it’s a good idea to think big. Storage space, bandwidth, databases and email accounts should all be sufficiently spacious to accommodate your ambitions. Now that you’ve found a few hosting providers that offer the packages you’re interested in, you should see if they go the extra mile. Do they offer extra tools like pre-installed web statistics software? if you want to start a blog, do they offer support for blogging software like WordPress? Is their helpdesk reachable by phone? Don’t make it easy for yourself here but invest time and effort to read through their service offerings and ensure they overdeliver. This will leave you with a few companies that have the right goods. All of them will say they’re the best choice, but there’s only one type of opinion that really matters: that of their existing customers. There are several independent websites that gather reviews of hosting providers, and this is a valuable resource to further narrow down your decision. Do a Google-search on “hosting reviews” and you’ll find abundant resources to help you find opinions and reviews from real customers of your selection of hosting companies. Don’t let your guard down though, some savvy hosting marketeers will game these websites by inserting fake positive reviews that raise the score for their company. What you’re looking for are negative reviews. If a company has a lot of them, regardless of the number of positive reviews they might also get, it’s probably not a good idea to do business with them. But if they have only a few negative reviews, or if the negative feedback is from a while ago and lately mostly good things are being said, they might be the right hosting provider that’s got their business in order. Once you’ve selected the hosting company that you think best suits your needs and can deliver quality support, it should be an aspect of your website that’s invisible. If the services delivered by your hosting provider are a recurring source of trouble and worries, it’s time to consider moving to a different provider.

So you’re thinking of redoing your existing website, or perhaps you don’t have a site yet and want to set one up. One of the first questions that you’ll face is whether to build and maintain your website in-house, or to hire an external agency to do it for you. What approach works best depends on many factors. Do It Yourself Building a website yourself by hand is a pretty daunting task. You need a solid grasp of HTML, CSS and possibly JavaScript and other languages. Additionally you need to be familiar with the basic concepts of web design if you want your site to look at least vaguely professional. If you have the time and appropriate skills, building a website by hand is the cheapest and most flexible option. All you need is a good web host and off you go. Most of us however won’t have the necessary skills to build a functional and decent-looking website. Do It Yourself, Advantages: Cheap Total control over your site The sky’s the limit Do It Yourself, Disadvantages: Solid HTML and CSS skills are absolutely necessary It’ll consume a lot of your time Web Publishing / Content Management Systems With the abundance of user-friendly web publishing software available online these days it’s a tempting choice to use one of these and build a website yourself. Systems like WordPress, Squarespace and Wix make it look easy to design and build your own website in a matter of minutes. Many webhosting companies also offer easy-to-use web content management systems, but these often turn out to be very basic systems that won’t get you very far. The uncomfortable truth however is that everyone can build a website with these tools, but building a good website takes a lot of time and effort. Web publishing systems can help make it easier for you by providing design templates, easy layout options, and intuitive admin functions, but in the end you’ll still have to invest a lot of your time, and potentially money, to get the most out of it. Every easy-to-use web publishing systems has its limits and constraints, usually necessary to ensure it remains accessible to non-techie users. You’ll also be forced to work with the design elements the tool provides you with, which can mean your site looks similar to other websites out there. A way around this is to have a unique design made for you. This doesn’t have to be an expensive option – unique WordPress designs for example can be had for a few hundred dollars or less. Web Publishing, Advantages: Easy to set up Easy to use (mostly) Professional design templates are widely available With plugins you can add all kinds of functionality to many web publishing systems Web Publishing, Disadvantages: Not all systems are free to use A truly unique design will probably cost you money Each system has its limitations in terms of flexibility and functionality Getting to know your tool and building a good site will take time Hire an External Web Agency If your pockets are deep enough and/or your time limited, hiring an external agency to build your website for you is a viable option. But don’t just hire any agency – shop around and compare. Many agencies are barely more than a programmer and a salesman working out of someone’s basement, and they won’t be able to deliver proper long-term service and support. When looking for a web agency to outsource your website to, keep the following things in mind: Does the agency have an excellent website? For web agencies their own website should be a prime demonstration of their skills. It needs to be as good as they can make it. If you’re not blown away by their own site, they may not have the necessary capabilities to build a truly great website for you. Do they use a lot of technical jargon? Abundant use of web-speak may be a means of hiding their lack of expertise. You want an agency that speaks your language and can communicate their ideas to you in a straight-forward manner. Does their offer match their price? As in all industries with web agencies you often get what you pay for, but sometimes an agency might take advantage of a new client’s lack of online experience. Don’t commit to a website costing tens of thousands of dollars until you’re totally sure they’re the right people for the job. Do they offer good (and affordable) support? Building a website isn’t the end of the process, you’ll need proper support from the agency to keep the site up-to-date and error-free. Ensure that the support they deliver after the new website is live is part of the contract, and don’t let them charge huge maintenance fees either. If you’re paying more each year in maintenance cost than your website originally cost, you’re being ripped off. External Agency, Advantages: All the hard work is done for you A good agency can supplement your own ideas and come up with even better concepts Your website will be unique and (hopefully) effective External Agency, Disadvantages: It’s the most expensive option – by far You run the risk of being stuck with a mediocre agency and an under-performing website

Does your website exist to sell more products? Or does it exist to help your customers? Do you force the sales message down the throat of your visitors? Or do you guide them to solutions for their problems? A website that merely sells can help you make money. But a website that helps its users will help you become great. Amazon doesn’t sell books. Amazon helps people find interesting books. Google doesn’t sell advertising space. Google helps people find stuff on the internet. Users instantly recognize a website that merely sells. They might actually buy something from that site. But they’re unlikely to come back. They’ve been sold to. They haven’t been helped. SEOmoz has become one of the best-known search engine optimization companies in the world. They haven’t done that by selling SEO services. They’ve done it by helping webmasters and competing SEO professionals (!) become better at SEO. Seth Godin is a very successful author of marketing books. He didn’t become successful by selling books. He’s done so by helping his readers, in his books and through his blog. Don’t just sell to your customers. Help your customers, and they will reward you with their money and their loyalty.

I’ve spoken before about the importance of a well thought-out clickflow that guides your website’s visitors from page to page. This clickflow is the basis of turning visitors into customers. An internet user goes through several phases of information requirements in the process of searching for and purchasing a product online. There are many similar versions of this purchase-funnel model, and for this blog post I’ll stick with a simple one: Discovery, Consideration, Purchase: In the first discovery phase the user is typing generic terms in Google hoping to find websites that offer generic, high level information about the type of product she’s looking for. You’ll get visitors on your site in this phase by optimizing your product- and category-overview pages for this type of information. Include generic terms that users will search for and make sure the information on your website contains the right type of high level information about your products. Don’t get too technical here, detailed specifications are appropriate for the second phase. In the consideration phase you can present much more detailed information about your products. These webpages should be a level below the overview pages in your website’s navigation tree and here it’s important to be more specific. In this phase a user wants to see specifications and comparisons between products he’s found in the discovery phase. Ideally you’ll want a system that compares products based on defining features and functions.  You’ll also want to include statements that may persuade a user to choose for you as a vendor. You should mention your company’s and product’s unique selling points. In the third purchase phase you’ll want to repeat these persuasive arguments on your website so that a user is affirmed in her decision. It’s also important to make the purchase process as smooth and simple as possible so that a user doesn’t encounter any obstacles before completing the purchase. The order form needs to be clearly indicated and easy to use. Remember you should strive to help your customers instead of merely sell to them. There are many more aspects of your website that can help you turn more visitors into customers, but a solid clickflow and content optimized for the user’s purchasing process are the essential ingredients. Get these right and you’ll have a solid foundation to build on.

That’s why it’s a good idea to keep an eye on mobile developments and to prepare your website for mobile viewing. As more and more people buy web-enabled phones like the iPhone and G1, it’s more likely your website will be viewed on a visitor’s mobile device. Your standard website probably won’t function well on a mobile phone, so you need to make a special, mobile-ready version of your site. Google, MSN and Yahoo all have mobile versions of their sites, as do Amazon and Ebay. More and more companies are developing mobile versions of their websites, as they realize that’s where the future of web browsing is heading. There are a few considerations to keep in mind when developing a mobile version of your website: Mobile screens are much smaller. The average mobile resolution is 340×200 pixels (compared to 1024×768 and up for PC screens). This severely limits the amount of space you get to work with. Mobile data connections are slow and relatively expensive. Every byte of data sent to a mobile device can cost a mobile user money and makes your site slower to load. Keyboard functionality is limited on most mobile devices. While smartphones with full keyboards are becoming more common, most mobile phones don’t have a full keyboard and typing out words is often a somewhat laborious process. This means your mobile website has to conform to totally different parameters than your regular, PC-viewable website: Streamline your content to get to the point as quickly as possible. Eliminate marketing fluff from your copy and focus on the core issues. This keeps your content short and makes it easier to absorb through a mobile device. Minimize the use of graphics as much as you can. No graphics at all is optimal, though you may want to put a small corporate logo on your mobile site. Every image file means more data to be downloaded to the mobile device, which slows down the use of your mobile site and takes up valuable screen space. List your links below your content. Don’t put your links in fancy navigation trees, as mobile users probably won’t be able to navigate them adequately. Instead put relevant links to other pages on your mobile site below your content in an ordered list. Optimize the user experience to eliminate as much user input as possible. Don’t make mobile users fill in long forms (which should be avoided anyway). Don’t make them click on a link six times to get to the meat of your content. Mobile users are limited on time and effort, so you want to make using your site as easy and accessible as you can. There are several ways of implementing a mobile site. You can ask your website developer to create a separate mobile version that only users of mobile devices will see. If you use WordPress, you can install a plugin like MobilePress to make your blog mobile friendly. The W3 Consortium has a mobile web initiative that sets standards for mobile websites. And with a Google search you can easily find mobile website templates and services that make it very easy to create a solid mobile version of your website. Mobile is the future, and by making your website mobile ready now, you’ll be ahead of the curve.

Email allows you to engage with your website visitors in two-way conversations, enabling you to connect with your customers. Email marketing is a great way to enhance customer retention as well as cross-sell and up-sell your products and services. But you can’t just start harvesting email addresses and spam them at your whim. You need to develop a solid email marketing strategy based on your customers’ needs and requirements. In this article I will outline the basics of email marketing to help you get started. 1. BUILD YOUR LIST The most important aspect of your email marketing is the list of email addresses your messages are sent to. A good way to build your list is to have a sign-up form on your website that allows visitors to subscribe to your emails. You can also harvest emails from your online order process and contact forms, as long as you give users a clear way to opt-out – or better still, opt them out by default and make opt-in optional. There are varying levels of legislation for each country regarding opting your users in on your email lists, so be sure to do some research and find out what the requirements are where you’re based. It’s usually best to err on the safe side, as not only will this ensure your emails won’t be marked as spam, your users will appreciate it and you’ll have a greater level of engagement with your subscribers. 2. WRITE YOUR MESSAGE A good email starts with a great subject line. Users are bombarded with dozens, if not hundreds, of emails a day, and the first thing they see when your emails arrive is the subject line. This is the most important aspect of your email that determines whether or not a user will open the email and read it. Tips for good subject lines: Clarify the benefit: users have crowded inboxes so your email’s subject line needs to communicate a clear benefit. What will a subscriber get out of it if he opens and reads your email? Personalise: use the recipient’s name in the subject line, as this helps your email stand out and helps make a connection with the recipient. Ask a provocative question: Questions make recipients wonder and often encourage them to open your email. An example would be “Are you at risk of overpaying on your insurance?”. Avoid spam words: words like ‘cheap’, ‘free’, ‘instant’, and dozens more are often interpreted as signs of spam. Be mindful of character limitations: many email clients cut the subject line off at some point, either due to the user’s screen resolution or the program’s layout. Understand what part of the subject is seen by most of your recipients. Test, test, test: try out different subject lines with different formats and benefits, and never stop experimenting. Next is the actual content of the email. Needless to say this needs to match the subject line. If you make a promise in the subject that you don’t keep in the content, chances are most readers will either delete your message straight away, unsubscribe from your list, or report your email as spam. Too many spam reports and your email will never reach another inbox ever again, instead being redirected to your recipients’ junk mail folders and thus oblivion. It’s generally a good idea to write email content following the same guidelines as for website content: strong headlines, structured content, and clear calls-to-action. This means starting with a strong headline that describes the content accurately and challenges users to read it. Then you need to divide your content into short paragraphs that are easy to read – large blocks of text are unattractive and discourage readers. It’s also a good idea to emphasize key phrases in your text with bold and italics so that readers that quickly scan through it still catch the general idea. And finally you need to finish with a clear call-to-action. What do you want readers to do with what you’ve just told them? If you want them to visit your website and buy a product, tell them! If you want them to forward your email to their contacts, encourage them! Use buttons in combination with text links and get users to interact with your email. 3. FORMAT YOUR EMAIL A good subject line and strong content aren’t enough to get the most out of your emails. Your message needs to look good too. A plain text email will look boring no matter how good the content is. Nearly all email programs support HTML emails, which means you can write email messages the same way as you build web pages. However, there is one big difference: there are huge limitations on the HTML code you can use in emails. Every email program, from Outlook to Hotmail, from Gmail to Thunderbird, handles HTML differently. On top of that many advanced features used in webpages, such as CSS and JavaScript, won’t work at all in most email programs. This means you need to keep the HTML code as simple and straightforward as you can. A good rule of thumb is to avoid using any CSS and scripting languages, and stick to plain simple HTML code using tables to build your email’s layout. If you don’t have sufficient knowledge of HTML, there are literally thousands of email templates available for download online which you can use and adapt for your own emails. Of course you can also avoid the whole HTML hassle and just use plain text emails, as long as you understand that your emails will look unexciting and may not be as effective. 4. USE EMAIL MARKETING SOFTWARE So you’ve built a list of subscribers, written a good email and formatted it in an attractive layout, and you’re ready to send it out. You can use your own email address for this and manually send it – this is adequate for small lists. (Just make sure to use BCC so your readers don’t see the whole mailing list!) But if you want to get serious with email marketing, the best approach is to use professional email marketing software. Good email marketing software does most of the hard work for you: managing your subscriber lists, building good HTML emails, and reporting on the success of your email campaigns. There are hundreds of options available, usually in the form of online services, and for all different business sizes. So you don’t need to have a big budget to make use of good email marketing software. A good place to start is AWeber, a very popular online email marketing service provider that offers cheap rates for lists under 500 subscribers and has over a hundred ready-made HTML templates to choose from. 5. MEASURE AND IMPROVE Once you’ve sent out your first email campaign it’s important to analyse how it performed. Did you achieve what you hoped for? If not, why? Was the open rate low? You may need to work on better subject lines. Were there few clicks from the email to your website? Maybe you need better content or stronger calls-to-action, or maybe the HTML layout wasn’t right. With email marketing, as with your website, you’re never done testing and improving. There’s always a way to get more out of your marketing campaigns and increase user engagement. Never get complacent, but strive to continually improve your email marketing. 6. ENGAGE IN CONVERSATIONS Email started out as a two-way communication medium. Despite the rise of unsolicited bulk email, that core essence of email hasn’t changed. Don’t just send out your campaigns and turn a deaf ear to what your subscribers say, but engage with them. A good way to do this is to make sure that the reply-to address of your email campaigns is a valid email address. Yes, you may get a lot of mail delivery errors and out of office replies, but you will find that many users will reply to your email marketing campaign in various ways. This is not a bad thing – quite the contrary, it means that they took the time and effort to respond to your message. Engage with your readers in conversations, whether they’re complaining about your email or complimenting you. Not only can you get valuable feedback on your email marketing, you will also build customer loyalty this way as well as enhance your online reputation. Another method is to put polls, surveys, and contests in your emails. This increases user interaction with your emails and will allow you to gather valuable information from your customers. TO SUMMARIZE Email marketing is a powerful instrument that can bring strong value to your online marketing efforts. A well-run email campaign will ensure your customers keep coming back to your website. A badly run campaign however can have a detrimental effect on your reputation and might hurt your long-term prospects. So put the effort in and you’ll find the rewards will exceed your expectations.

Search engines are the motors that drive traffic to your website. Getting your site ranked highly in search engines is an important factor of success. The discipline that focuses on this is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short. In an effort to help beginning webmasters get underway with SEO Google has published a Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (PDF). It’s a very useful document that describes the basics of good SEO. Some of the topics in this guide have also been a part of previous blog posts here, such as: Page titles Site navigation Good content Headlines Using images Web Analytics Other topics in Google’s SEO Starter Guide include description tags, URL structure, anchor text, the robots.txt file, and more. It’s an excellent guide for both new and experienced webmasters that want a solid handle on how to build and maintain a successful website. Download Google’s SEO Starter Guide (PDF)

…and we all know where that road is headed. If I were a genuine conspiracy nutcase I’d have no problem believing that Google is a fully controlled subsidiary of the American intelligence apparatus. I mean, the things Google are up to are just so perfectly suited for full scale surveillance of every individual on earth, it would make even the most obedient and disinformed tabloid-reading cable news-watching civilian lemming wonder if Larry and Sergey aren’t secretly on the NSA’s payroll. Just look at the technologies Google is currently operating and/or developing. As the world’s most widely used internet search engine, Google already knows everything you type in to its search box and the websites you then choose to visit. As it crawls and indexes all these websites, it knows everything you read online. Combined with the way that ridiculous Google+ ‘social network’ is being shoved down your throat, Google knows who your friends and family are, what companies you are associated with and in what capacity, and a whole load of demographical information you probably didn’t know you were sharing with Google in the first place. Then of course take Gmail in to consideration; Google knows who you email and what you email about. And if you’re using Chrome as a browser (or even Firefox; Mozilla’s biggest donor is Google), even if you stay outside of Google’s enormous internet ecosystem – a nearly impossible task – Google can still look at everything you do online. Beyond the internet, Google is developing self-driving cars. Not because of any desire to improve road safety, mind you. No, with self-driving cars Google can make sure you spend your entire commute online, so you have more time to use its services and it can show you more ads. Of course as a side benefit of self-driving cars, Google will know everywhere you go. Not that it needs robot cars for this in the first place – that Android phone in your pocket is quite capable of informing Google about your whereabouts and your likely activities. As one of its ‘moonshot’ ideas Google is thinking about using balloons to provide internet access to developing countries. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Even when you look beyond the obvious profiteering motive of getting more people online and using Google so it can show ads to them too and mine all their personal data. Not that people in developing countries have that much disposable income to spend on stuff Google sells ads for, so you wonder why it wants to get those people online and harvest all that information…. Altruism, you say? Pfft, stop being such a tool. No, with internet balloons (which could very easily be equipped with cameras, negating the need for expensive spy satellites) everywhere over Africa, the Middle East, and South America the NSA Google can monitor what those pesky independently-minded revolutionaries – also known as ‘terrrrists‘ – are up to. Wouldn’t want anyone to think they could escape the grasp of western capitalist imperialism, would we? Am I in to batshit insanity territory now? Off my rockers with crazy conspiracy theories? Well, what if I told you that Google is looking in to putting microphones everywhere so it can “respond to your verbal queries” and “bring you the information you want”? Yes, because putting microphones in every building on every street is not at all the hallmark of a maniacally obsessed totalitarian surveillance state. As if those omnipresent CCTV cameras with facial recognition software weren’t bad enough. But it gets worse. Microphones that listen to your every spoken word are not enough – what if you’re thinking something that the NSA Google might want to arrest you for respond to? Well, Google has an answer to that too: embedded microchips in your brain. I’m not even joking. Google’s chief engineer is apparently really thinking about this scenario. Aside from the fairly obvious problems with a profit-driven company in a US legal jurisdiction given access to, quite literally, your thoughts, it gets even scarier when you know that with small electric currents you can influence your brain in very direct and powerful ways. In short, with embedded microchips Google can control what you think. (Of course with Google Glass, soon to move from those unwieldy glasses to much more elegant contact lenses, Google can pretty much control what you see in the first place. Mind control is surplus to requirement when you already control people’s visual reality.) For a truly comprehensive and entirely pervasive totalitarian surveillance state, it doesn’t get much better than that. Millions of obedient consumerist slaves, hotwired with microchips and contact lenses to Google’s Central Processing Unit, their every thought and action monitored and, if deemed undesirable, adjusted. Now the only thing Google needs to ensure total undisputed world domination is killer robots.

Earlier this month the highest EU court ruled that individuals have the ‘right to be forgotten’ in Google’s search results. This means that any member of the public can ask Google to remove specific webpages from its search results if those pages contain information that is ”inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant”. Of course this immediately led to outcries of censorship and luddism, especially from the usual Silicon Valley cultists that advocate transparency and believe privacy is an outdated concept. Except when it comes to their own secrets and privacy, of course. This commentary in The Guardian is one of the few pieces of constructive, balanced reporting on the whole kerfuffle. And this piece in The Register shows how a cooperative media is dancing along to Google’s PR song, resulting in dramatic misreporting of the actual facts. We need to keep in mind that what Silicon Valley wants to know about you (which is everything, everywhere, all the time) is not necessarily conducive to a free and open society. In the data-utopia envisioned by these Silicon Valley technology barons, we as the general public will be completely subject to the whims of the owners of that data. And the owners will be the internet giants like Google and Facebook and the advertisers they sell the data to. We as citizens will not own our own data. We will have precious little control over who sees our personal information, and how it will be used. In this post-Prism world, that should really frighten you. If it doesn’t, watch this talk: Now Google has begun to implement this Right to be Forgotten and has created a form that people can use to request webpages to be removed from European versions of Google. This form asks for a lot of information, including a copy of the photo ID of the person affected. More than that, Ektor Tsolodimos discovered [Dutch] that the form itself seems subject to its own censorship in Google’s search results: it contains the noindex robots meta tag, and there is no link to it from anywhere on the google.com domain. So, despite a crapload of very high authority links pointing to it (787 referring domains in Majestic SEO, and counting) Google will not show the form in its own search results, no matter how hard you try. How’s that for irony? I can’t help but get the sense that Google, in typical fashion, is behaving like a spoilt 5-year old brat and throwing a bit of a childish temper tantrum about the whole thing. Not that this has stopped people from submitting the form. To date Google reports it has already received thousands of requests, so the company’s infantile attempts at obscuring the form have obviously not had the desired result. Rumour has it that when Google starts removing content per the EU ruling, it will make a statement to that effect in the relevant search results, as it currently does for DMCA notices: This is, again, done in the name of full transparency. And this, too, reveals the depth of Google’s hypocrisy. For example, when Google removes a site as the result of a manual penalty, no such notice is given. Apparently Google feels its own forms of censorship are perfectly legitimate and not worth pointing out. Google’s Sergey Brin has said he’d rather forget the ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling, but I for one am rather pleased that the European courts are not slavishly following Google’s monopolistic hunger for more data, and is allowing European citizens to push back and protect their own privacy in increasing measures. Because if we don’t start to protect our own data, things are going to get a lot worse. Transparency is not the answer – it’s privacy that truly sets us free. Addendum 03 June 2014: What’s also interesting about this EU ruling, and hasn’t been highlighted anywhere in the media, is how it suggests that the EU courts see Google’s search results not as a publication of editorial content – a legal claim Google makes to protect its search results as a form of free speech – but as a gateway to information published online. This status of information gateway could theoretically put Google on a legislative par with internet service providers, and as such could subject the search engine to laws akin to net neutrality, as well as more restrictive antitrust legislation. Now there’s some interesting food for thought.

I’ve been neglecting this blog for a few months, which has been entirely unintentional. With the COVID-19 pandemic, our lives have all drastically changed and priorities have shifted. Blogging couldn’t have been further from my mind. But now things have settled into a new routine, and my creative itches have once again emerged. The problem was, I didn’t know what I should blog about. So recently I put out a feeler on Twitter to ask my followers what I should write about, and one reply in particular stood out: I thought that was an excellent suggestion and it really got me thinking. I’ve been crazy busy with work these past few months (I’m counting my blessings, I realise not everyone has been as lucky), and most of those projects have been for publishers. SEO for news is an area I’ve been fortunate enough to build a speciality in; first through a full-time job working for the Belfast Telegraph back in 2010, and then since I started my own consultancy business through a series of SEO consulting projects with major publishing organisations like News UK, FOX, Future Publishing, Investing.com, and many more. While I work with all sorts of companies, the publishing industry is the one I enjoy working with the most. So, as a speciality in SEO, news publishing is something I want to double down on. SEO for news publishers is an area I’m deeply excited about. While it shares the same foundational SEO best practices with every other niche, there are some areas of SEO that are unique to publishers. The news-specific elements of Google’s ecosystem are quite different from their regular search results, and this requires a different approach to optimisation. The SEO blogosphere is cluttered, with hundreds of websites regularly writing about all areas of SEO. Except when it comes to Google News. This is a speciality in SEO that is massively under-serviced in terms of content. There are a handful of good pieces out there, but these tend to focus on the very basics only – for example, on how to get a website into Google News – and there’s very little (if any) content out there that discusses some of the more advances concepts and challenges that news publishers face when it comes to maximising their search traffic. Which is odd, because SEO is so incredibly valuable for publishers. For most news websites, Google is by far the largest driver of traffic – primarily through Top Stories carousels, but increasingly also via Google Discover. This lack of useful and up-to-date information about SEO for publishers is hindering the media landscape. Publishers are struggling to attract readers and are missing opportunities to claim visibility in Google. This something I want to help change. Over the years I’ve learned a lot about how publishers can use SEO to boost their traffic. I’ve worked with development and product teams to improve websites for better crawling & indexing of news content, I’ve trained journalists and editors to optimise their content for improved visibility, and I’ve consulted on a range of projects aimed at integrating SEO practices into newsroom workflows. And I have learned new things from each and every project, and continue to learn every day. It’s time I started sharing this knowledge. But rather than just blog an occasional article and hope it reaches the people who might be able to use it, I’ve decided to take a different approach. The firehose of the SEO blogosphere is not conducive to publishing meaningful content on such a relatively narrow niche. So I’m going to be doing this via a newsletter. Inspired by great email newsletters from people like Aleyda Solis and Louis Grenier, I want to try and build a community around an email newsletter specifically about Google News. I’ve chosen the Substack platform for this, as it has all the bells & whistles I could possibly need – and it takes very little effort for me to set up and manage, so I can focus on the actual content. The first few topics I have in mind are around things like technical optimisation for articles, best practices for syndicated content, and integrating SEO into newsroom workflows. As time goes on I’ll try to cover as many different areas as possible, all around the overarching topic of maximising traffic to news publishers from various search sources. If this sounds interesting for you and want to read this content, you can sign up using the form below or directly on www.seoforgooglenews.com: The first issue was sent out on 18 November, and I hope many more will follow. If you sign up, I promise I will only use your email address to send you this newsletter – it will never be shared with anyone else in any capacity. Let me know what you think of this newsletter experiment in the comments below. Is it something you’ll sign up for? If not, why? Any and all feedback is welcome.

This is an excerpt (translated from Dutch) from an upcoming ebook I’m writing about building effective websites. The ebook is targeted mainly at small business owners with little to no experience with websites. You want a website because everybody has a website. But having a website is not a goal in itself. A website is a tool, an instrument to reach a goal. First you have to ask yourself, what do I want to accomplish with my website? Goal and Audience There are many possible goals for a website. If you have a brick-and-mortar business a website can be used to get  more people into your store. If you don’t have a store but you do sell something, a website can be your primary sales channel. If you’re a service provider your website can be a lead-generating tool. Or maybe you don’t have any commercial goal and your website is just a means of providing information. Whatever the goal, it’s important to think it through thoroughly. The goal of your site helps determine the concept, content, and functionality of your website. Note that you can’t separate the goal from your target audience. Know who you are building your website for. Understand the needs of your audience and ensure your website caters to them. If your website confuses your customers or gives them information they don’t need, it won’t be an effective website. Business Processes A website is not a separate entity. if you have a business, your website means more than having a 24/7 online ad. Your website can have an impact on nearly all of your business processes. It changes the way you interact with your customers and is a factor in nearly all interactions with your customers, suppliers and even your employees. So give some good thought about how you want to use your website in your overall business strategy. Think about how the website can have an impact on your marketing and your sales. How can your website help with post-sales support? Try writing down all the aspects of your business that will be impacted by your website. It’s OK if you don’t have all the answers – it’s enough at this stage to be aware of the many ways a website can influence the way you run your business. Budget When you’ve given this sufficient thought and have written down the various ways in which your website can help your business, it’s time to make an estimate of how much you are willing to spend on it. When you understand what a website can contribute to your business, you’ll have an idea of what a reasonable expense is. Nothing in the world is free, and a good website isn’t something that comes without some measure of cost attached to it. A website isn’t a static thing either, it requires constant maintenance, analysis, and updates. This must be a factor in your budget. Don’t budget too little for your website, but don’t overbudget either. Contrary to what some web development firms want you to believe, you don’t need to spend tens of thousands of dollars on an effective website. The budget you set for your site should be in balance with the scope of your site. Don’t worry about every little detail in the budget. Right now all you need to do is come up with a rough figure based on the benefits that you think you can achieve. Be conservative – a lot of things can be done cheaper than you’d think. But at the same time don’t be overconfident. Running an effective website will cost you money one way or another. To summarize: Determine the goal and target audience of your website. Be aware of the impact a website will have on your day to day business activities. Set a budget for your website, both initially and as a running expense.