Phil Bucklet at 1918.me

Why You Should Stop Supporting IE6

January 2, 2009 by Phil Buckley 5 Comments

Now that Internet giant Google has started telling it’s users to stop using IE6 to access GMail, you should to. The only time anyone should be supporting IE6 anymore is when they are working on an intranet app that will only be accessed by the poor souls forced by corporate policy to use it.

Microsoft even sent out an update last February that “auto-updated” users to IE7. But, not everyone has those turned on, or installs them once they are downloaded.

Reason #1 is simple. IE6 is a terrible browser. It couldn’t be any more non-compliant if it had set out to be.

ie6 Reason #2: Usage has dropped to 20%. In 2005 usage of IE6 was over 80%. Firefox users now outnumber IE6 users.

Reason #3: If you continue to support IE6, people will continue to use it, which is bad, see reason #1.

Reason #4: When someone like Google stops supporting a browser, it’s a watershed moment for that browser. I understand part of the reason Google is doing this is to push Chrome, but the fact remains that hundreds of millions of people will be nudged to abandon IE6.

Reason #5: The other choices are far superior. Even users that want/need to stay with IE can upgrade to 7 and be much better off. Just the tabs in IE7 will be a productivity boost for most users.

Reason #6: No transparent png support.

Reason #7: The IE Developers Toolbar is sub-par. Trying to debug and fix IE problems are too much of a hassle now. Once tools like Firebug became available for Firefox, who would ever develop in IE?

Reason #8: Security. IE6 has so many holes in it it is still the #1 target of script kiddies and real hackers.

IE6 is the Chevy Chase of browsers. At one point in the past, popular, everybody liked it and it did a good job. Now, it’s outdated, nobody likes it and it just can’t do the job any longer. It’s time for IE6 to retire.

Google Updates PageRank On The Last Day Of The Year

January 1, 2009 by Phil Buckley Leave a Comment

If you don’t follow Matt Cutts on Twitter, you should, because you can get confirmation of Google Toolbar PR updates.

Google’s PageRank is not the big deal it once was, it is now just one piece of the puzzle, and they keep adding more pieces. With that in mind, it still gives you some insight into how Google views your site’s worthiness.

No change for 1918, still stuck at 3, but a complete overhaul of the site architecture, not to mention running WordPress should help bump it up by th etime the next update surfaces.

I did see an uptick for two of the McClatchy newspaper sites: Bellville News-Democrat and Charlotte Observer. I did some work with Charlotte, and hopefully we will continue to see them crawl out of the PR cellar.

I’ll Know It When I See It

December 28, 2008 by Phil Buckley 2 Comments

While looking through the stories my friend Robbie had shared via Google reader, Bring me a different rock caught my eye.

Robbie and I worked together for a couple of years at a big corporation that was sometimes often afflicted by the “wrong rock” type of thinking.

This is a game where you attempt to guess the requirements of a manager who cannot or will not communicate his or her goals, and the best attempts to do so resemble a series of frustrating discussions where you are told that your “rock” (product, schedule, process, proposal) is not correct and you should present a new “rock” in a short time frame. The problem is, the person who is rejecting your “rock” is unable or unwilling to describe what an appropriate rock looks like, feels like, tastes like.

It’s a terrible situation for everyone involved. No one in the chain ever gets to feel good about the work they’re doing because they never feel certain that they are working on the “right rock”.

That premise reminded me of a great post by Joel Spolsky from October, 2000 about functional specifications.

The moral of the story is that when you design your product in a human language, it only takes a few minutes to try thinking about several possibilities, revising, and improving your design. Nobody feels bad when they delete a paragraph in a word processor. But when you design your product in a programming language, it takes weeks to do iterative designs. What’s worse, a programmer who’s just spend 2 weeks writing some code is going to be quite attached to that code, no matter how wrong it is.

I have tried to do web design for two clients who fell into this bucket. “No, I don’t like that, but, I’ll know it when I see it”. I’ve since learned my lesson. I can’t imagine ever working with a “I’ll know it when I see it” client again, they drain you and in the end, they never seem to “see it”.

The ideal client is one who is an expert at his business, and allows you to be the expert at yours.

Losing A Customer and Screwing That Up Too

December 19, 2008 by Phil Buckley 4 Comments

I try to talk to clients about the new reality in business. Customers have more power than ever before.

You used to be able to treat your customers with disdain and it wasn’t really a big deal, because you had all the power. Now, the dynamic has switched 180 degrees.

When Finnegan was born we looked around for a pediatrician and settled on Schmidt & Catchings Family Practice in Cary, NC. The first appointment we had there went pretty well. Then each appointment got longer and longer. Finally we were waiting an hour before we would finally be seen. As bad as that is normally, with a squirmy 1 year old it should actually be criminal.

So finally we decided to leave the practice because of the horrendous waits and also the poor office staff in general. We had actually liked the woman who saw our baby, but the aggravation outweighed that.

So how did the business try to keep us as patients? They didn’t.

Did they ask how they could have done better? No.

What they did do, is tell us that before they could release our records to the new doctor, they would have to make photo copies of everything and mail it over (even though he is in the same medical complex). I was a little surprised since the doctor always had a laptop, and everything was stored electronically, but I figured they had their reasons.

A few weeks later we received a bill for $28.25 for photo copies.

The pediatrician was taking the opportunity of us leaving to stick us with one final bill. My wife thought $28.25 seemed a bit excessive for making some photo copies and sent them a long letter explaining that this was the type of crap that finally pushed us to find a new practice, and sent them a check for $10.

In another gigantic show of ignorance and hubris, they sent us another bill with the $10 credited. No letter in response, no call, no nothing.

Schmidt & Catchings has driven me to writing blog posts on how to screw up with a customer, and then keep screwing up even after they are no longer your customer! I thought this only happened with cell phone companies.

So what is Schmidt and Catchings getting out of this?

They have alienated a former customer, who used to be mostly neutral about their practice, and made me speak out as an opponent.
I have filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau
I have gone online and posted my story in dozens of forums where people ask for recommendations for pediatricians
I have told dozens of people this story, many of them with small children as well.
I have written a blog posting that will now live forever on the web
They may someday get an additional $18 from us.

So what Schmidt and Catchings has done is stopped thinking and fallen back to “this is how we always do it”.

When any business stops seeing it’s customers as people, they get in trouble, and I think that’s what happened in this case.

UPDATE:

I just checked their website to get their email address, I wanted to let them know that I had posted this. I guess I shouldn’t really be surprised that they don’t have anyway to contact the office via email – sheesh.

UPDATE:

I received their response to my complaint to the BBB, which included this piece of superb customer service…

The complaint about the fee for processing medical records. Mr. Buckley signed the request form, and just below his signature, very clearly, it states our policy and charges for processing medical records. This is a practice that is very common and not done only at Schmidt and Catchings.

First off, “very clearly” may be a bit of a stretch, but even better is the “everyone does it” defense!

Why Do You Share?

December 16, 2008 by Phil Buckley 2 Comments

I went to my first meetup meeting tonight. It was a Raleigh/Cary SEO group led by the fabulous Ashley Berman Hale.

I had no idea what to expect, except a lot of people. When I checked at 5pm, there were 26 people planning on attending – who knew there were so many search geeks around?

Ashley’s company (Triangle Direct Media) let her host the meetup in their confrence room, which was just barely big enough. The close contact actually turned out to be a nice plus, because no one could just sit in the corner, everyone seemed interested in the conversation.

But for me, there was a really interesting question from Vickie at the end of the formal part of the meetup, “Why do you do this for free?” It was a good question and made me think why I do so much SEO “stuff” for free.

I like to share information. I like to explain something to someone and see the lightbulb go on over their head.

I recently spent about 2 hours on an initial SEO overview for Triangle Residential Designs that was pretty detailed. It was a client I had worked with a little bit in the past, but wouldn’t consider Dave a “locked-in client” by any means. A couple of weeks passed before I heard back, but when he called he wanted to meet to go over what I had sent.

I know that traditional business models would have me send out vague pitches in hopes of luring the customer to buy my product, but I don’t think that is the way of the future. I got the idea in my head after reading one of Seth Godin‘s books that asked what would happen if your company had to survive like NPR, meaning, giving away your services for free, then asking your customers for a donation. The thought hit me like a thunderbolt. Would you treat your customers different? If you would, why aren’t you already treating them that way.

So that one small chapter made me re-think how I work, and why I share. I want my customers everyone I deal with to value me. If I only give when I’m paid, I can never be worth more than I charge. If I am useful to someone and don’t set a limit, my worth becomes almost limitless. I like that.

Top 5 Sources For SEO Education

December 3, 2008 by Phil Buckley Leave a Comment

I realized a few weeks ago that I have a number of sites that I really value for straight-to-the-point SEO information.

When I have a question that is slightly off and I feel like I need a little more confidence before I answer, I almost always turn to my first choice, SEOmoz. One of the best resources there is the comments! The whole knowledge base is worth the small monthly fee they were charging when I joined. I am also a huge fan of the Trifecta tool and the new Linkscape project.

Another site I seem to find myself at everyday is SearchEngineWatch. I feel like they do the best job of churning out useful posts and articles day after day after day.

SearchEngineLand is always a great place to get news. I would say that at least once a week I see something there that I haven’t found anyplace else.

I also find time to browse seobook every morning. Lots of good data and usually graphics to explain things different ways. Just an all around great SEO site.

Personally I libe SEO2.0. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I’m a big fan.

If You Gave Away Your Service For Free, Could You Thrive?

December 3, 2008 by Phil Buckley Leave a Comment

As weird as that sounds, it is indeed possible.

Think about National Public Radio (NPR). That’s what they do. You listen for free, then occasionally they say, “if you got some value from our programming, please contribute what you think it was worth.”

I recently used this with a small customer I started working with. I understand the risks that immediately come to mind… “What if they decide my efforts were worth nothing?”. Well, if that’s the case, then there is a bigger problem. This isn’t a stategy for a brand new customer you take on. You need to have a relationship estanlished.

Think about it this way, if you did run your business that way, would it change the way you do business? Would it alter the way you interact with your customers? Would you give customers better service?

If the answer is yes, then why aren’t you already giving them that level of service?

If you had all your clients over for Thanksgiving dinner, would you look forward to it as yet another opportunity to build on your relationship, or as a stress filled nightmare?

The Best 74 Minutes You’ll Spend Today

December 2, 2008 by Phil Buckley 1 Comment

I am a Seth Godin fan. After I watched his presentation video last week, I ran out and bought his latest book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us.

The video does a fantastic job outlining the major points in his book, and you get a patented Set Godin PowerPoint presentation at no additional cost. Beware, you will forever be bored to tears by any future PowerPoint presentation you’ll have to sit through.

I had this running in the corner of my screen, so I could keep working on other stuff simultaneously.

Watch it, really, it’s worth the investment of 74 minutes.

Atrocious Grammar, or, Why You Should Have Paid Attention in 8th Grade

December 2, 2008 by Phil Buckley Leave a Comment

I have a hard time remembering the difference between then and than also effect and affect. The fact that I can’t spell to save my life only makes it worse. I take solace in knowing I’m not the only one.

I have a couple small scraps of paper on my desk with usage of words I commonly screw up, and yes, I look at them almost every time I use that word.

Brian Clark at Copyblogger has a post about Five Grammatical Errors That Make You Look Dumb. He hits on one that I notice quite often, the dangling participle.

The dangling participle may be the most egregious of the most common writing mistakes. Not only will this error damage the flow of your writing, it can also make it impossible for someone to understand what you’re trying to say.

Check out these two examples from Tom Sant’s book Persuasive Business Proposals:

After rotting in the cellar for weeks, my brother brought up some oranges.

Uhh… keep your decomposing brother away from me!

Featuring plug-in circuit boards, we can strongly endorse this server’s flexibility and growth potential.

Hmmm… robotic copy written by people embedded with circuit boards. Makes sense.

The problem with both of the above is that the participial phrase that begins the sentence is not intended to modify what follows next in the sentence. However, readers mentally expect it to work that way, so your opening phrase should always modify what immediately follows. If it doesn’t, you’ve left the participle dangling, as well as your readers.

I often tell people to “just write” and stop worrying that it’s not perfect. The second part of the thought is always, “you can fix it up later”. That’s the important part. One thing your readers will let you know is when you have incorrect grammar!

Why Simple Websites Win

November 30, 2008 by Phil Buckley Leave a Comment

When you go to google.com, are you confused? No one gets to Google’s homepage and thinks, what am I suppose to do?

When you land on Yahoo’s home page, there’s significant confusion. There are a million different things all screaming for my attention.

Why does Google have approximately 70% of the search market while Yahoo has about 25%.

When you show someone your homepage, if they aren’t familiar with your business, do they “get it” within 8 seconds?

If a visitor only gives you 8 seconds, and may drop in on any one of your pages, can you convert them? If you keep it simple, you have a chance.

If you haven’t read Don’t Make Me Think, you should, it will help you make your site better.

Google’s Newest AdWords Tool

November 29, 2008 by Phil Buckley Leave a Comment

I finally got around to actually looking at what the Inside AdWords blog recently announced, the beta release of Google’s Search-based Keyword Tool.

Lots of helpful information in this new gizmo. This is something every PPC advertiser should take advantage of, and even if you’re not an AdWords advertiser, you can make use of it.

I think the two best features that I noticed so far are:

It shows the percentage of organic/natural and ppc traffic going to a page.
It shows bid prices and search volume estimates next to the keywords it suggests

SEO During an Economic Downturn

November 25, 2008 by Phil Buckley Leave a Comment

I’ve been talking with people lately who think that they don’t have the extra money right now to spend on search engine optimization. I don’t understand that thinking, unless it’s just code for, “I don’t have any money”.

As Forrester’s Kim Le Quoc and Jaap Favier succinctly stated in “How to Stimulate Consumer to Buy Online”:

“Creating preference with online buyers starts with search engine optimization (SEO). As search increases in complexity, marketing leaders need to move their teams toward advanced search marketing programs.”

Frank Watson replies:

Regardless of the economic situation, companies need to continue marketing their products. Otherwise, they will stop being a business eventually.

As has been reiterated in most articles, search is more measurable and may be a more successful means of spending limited advertising. As Chris suggests, a long-term play to improve organic listings is one option that can bring back long-term profits.

What many overlook in discussions about our economic downturn is that if people pull back on advertising now, the impact isn’t really seen until later. There’s a need to continue advertising and SEO is a solid way to spend part of that money.

UPDATE: I noticed Rand over at SEOmoz.com also blogging about this trend. He does a great job of hitting the top reasons this may be happening:

The Web Outperforms Other Sales Channel
When organizations look at the paths leading to sales and income (a critical analysis whenever budgets are under scrutiny), the web almost always comes out with one of two assessments. Either, it’s a leading sales channel (especially from an ROI perspective) or it’s deemed to be an area with the greatest opportunity for growth. In both scenarios, web marketing and, in correlation, SEO, takes center stage.
It’s the Right Time to Re-Tool
Established companies frequently use down cycles as a chance to focus attention inward and analyze themselves. Consequently, there’s a spike in website redesigns and SEO along with it.
Paid Search Drives Interest in SEO
Paid search spending is still reaching all-time highs, and when companies evaluate the cost and value, there’s a nagging little voice saying “70%+ of the clicks don’t even happen in the ads; use SEO.”
SEO is Losing its Stigma
Google is releasing SEO guides, Microsoft and Yahoo! both have in-house SEO departments and the “SEO is BS” crowd have lost a little of their swagger and a lot of their arguments. No surprise – solid evidence trumps wishful thinking, especially when times are tough.
Marketing Departments are in a Brainstorming Cycle
A high percentage of companies are asking the big questions – “how do we get new customers?” and “what avenues still offer opportunity?” Whenever that happens, SEO is bound to show up near the top of the “to be investigated” pile.
Search Traffic Will Be Relatively Unscathed by the Market
Sales might drop, conversion rates might falter a bit but raw search traffic isn’t going anywhere. A recession doesn’t mean that people stop searching the web, and with broadband adoption rates, Internet penetration and searches per users consistently rising, search is no fad – it’s here for the long haul.
Web Budgets are Being Re-Assesed
We’ve all seen the news about display advertising falling considerably – that can only happen when managers meet to discuss how to address budget concerns. Get 10 Internet marketing managers into rooms with their teams and at least 4 or 5 are bound to discuss SEO and how they can grab that “free” traffic.
Someone Finally Looked at the Web Analytics
It’s sad, but true. When a downturn arrives or panic sets in, someone, maybe the first someone in a long time, checks the web analytics to see where revenue is still coming in. Not surprisingly, search engine referrals with their exceptional targeting and intent-matching are ranking high on the list.

As is usually the case, I think Rand hit the nail on the head. SEO is more important in a down market than at any other time.

How to stand out when you use a corporate template

November 16, 2008 by Phil Buckley Leave a Comment

When we moved to North Carolina from Massachusetts, one of the first things we did was find a new insurance agent. I’ve always felt much more comfortable using a real live agent for insurance so I can have someone actually listen to me when bad things happen.

My wife found a great local State Farm guy, Tim Farless. He came over to our house after dinner a couple of times until all of our “stuff” was taken care of. We end up calling him about once a year for a question or a problem, and everyone in his office is great.

Then, this morning I saw he was also a member of the Holly Springs Chamber of Commerce. I followed the link to his website to check it out. It looked fine, probably like every other State Farm agent in America’s, but functional. Then I decided to see if it showed up in the search engines.

First try was in Google, searching for “holly springs insurance agent”. The results were not what I expected for such a specific search, his site did not show up in the first 100 results! Maybe I could do better by modifying the search a little to be “holly springs state farm insurance“. No better, still not in the first 100.

I decided to try the same queries on !Yahoo. Slightly better, “holly springs insurance agent” did show up on page 5 of the results. Finally I tried the same query at MSN, where it finally showed up on page 3.

So what can be done in a situation where your website is dictated by the corporation?

I would suggest that Tim take a couple of steps to free himself from the seach ghetto he’s currently in. First I would stop using my name as the domain that points to my State Farm page. I would use the default domain assigned by State Farm since I’m getting no real bang for my buck from that S.F. site. I would then repurpose the timfarless.com domain to be my local seach bait site.

What I mean by that is he could have a page entitled “Holly Springs Home Insurance”, and another “Holly Springs Car Insurance” and so forth. These pages would be keyword rich and would only have enough information on them that the visitor would say, “ah-ha, this is exactly what I was searching for”.

The “new and improved” timfarless.com would be a few very simple pages which would be optimized to rank at the top of searches, and every page would link off to the State Farm page where much of the “heavy lifting” is going to have to be done.

Why Small Businesses Can’t Ignore the Web

November 15, 2008 by Phil Buckley Leave a Comment

If you own a small business, you probably have a website that you either made yourself, or paid as little as you could for.

What that generally gets you is a site that may function, but was it worth even the small amount of cash you paid for it? What type of ROI are you seeing? How many customers are saying they found you on the web?

I visit sites everyday that I can hardly believe people take credit for. Sites with no title tag, sites with no text, sites with no links, sites with no way to contact the business. When I look at these sites I see the signs that normal business owners miss.

Does the homepage make me want to look deeper? Does the design make me think the company is professional or just a side business. Google research reports that people make a decision about your site in 8 seconds. Does your message hit your visitor in the first 8 seconds?

The world has changed in the past couple of years. People now use the web for normal everyday things while they are out and about. People will pull out their smart-phone and google “pizza” while their kid’s soccer game is finishing up. So, for example, if I live in Holly Springs, NC and run a pizza shop, it would make sense that someplace on my homepage (or at least site) I would have the words “Holly Springs Pizza”. Geo-local search is the wave of the future and all the major players are already gearing up for it, will your business be ready?

If your small business has not optimized your website for better search results, how much traffic and business are you missing?

Try putting your site’s web address through the excellent tool at seo-browser to see how Google, Yahoo, MSN and the other search engines see it, it will probably be a real eye opener.

Google Gives Out SEO Friendly Documentation

November 13, 2008 by Phil Buckley Leave a Comment

At the Official Google Webmaster Blog Brandon Falls has linked to a 22 page PDF that is what Google considers SEO best practices.

Our Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide covers around a dozen common areas that webmasters might consider optimizing. We felt that these areas (like improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and more) would apply to webmasters of all experience levels and sites of all sizes and types.

I would suggest anyone interested in being a Google friendly site should read it.

Are Realtor Sites the Worst Optimized Sites on the Web?

October 18, 2008 by Phil Buckley Leave a Comment

I’m not sure what causes it, but realtor sites are usually terrible, and almost always have zero thought put into SEO. Which is surprising since I can’t hink of many categories that rely more on search.

People now use the web to search for real estate and realtors in astonishing numbers. Nobody travels downtown, walks into a realtor’s office, starts looking through his books, then climbs into his car to go visit a handful of houses.

What made me think about this was a recent redesign of a realtor’s site that my wife used to work for. She is a top realtor in her market. Sells a lot of houses, builders like her, clients like her, but her site is not as good as it could be. Move beyond the actual functionality of the site to the SEO aspects.

The homepage talks about the realtor, but few people will search for her by name. It would be better to have that information on an “about me” type of page.

The title tag starts with “Raleigh Real Estate” but then she never really targets that phrase.

Her money page, the listings, isn’t highlighted in any way on the homepage.

She has some pretty good features, but none of them are highlighted for the casual visitor.

If I type “Raleigh Real Estate” into Google, her site doesn’t appear on the first 5 pages of results. Actually, I can’t imagine anyone looking for a general term like “Raleigh Real Estate” would progress beyond the first page of results.

This is a common problem. In my experience, realtors will spend thousands and thousands on newspaper ads, but will skimp on their online effort because they don’t see any results from their online efforts – a classic catch-22.

First off, she doesn’t actually target Raleigh as her main area, yet has decided to make it the first word in all of her sites pages.

Just a small dose of basic search engine optimization could cure almost all of the problems. And for the most part, it’s a one time fix since their product doesn’t really change all that much.

Data Collection helps you understand what works and what doesn’t

October 13, 2008 by Phil Buckley Leave a Comment

A week or two ago I started collecting various data once a day for the main McClatchy markets.

It’s a collection of data that is publicly available, but wasn’t all in one place for us, now it is.

I can add to it pretty easily, and it’s still being tweaked, but it’s nice to have one spot where all of the sites I am suppose to help can be seen at once.

Avoiding Keyword Cannibalization

October 9, 2008 by Phil Buckley Leave a Comment

While working with The Charlotte Observer last week, I ran into a problem I hadn’t given much thought to for our newspaper sites – Keyword Cannibalization.

I had asked SEOmoz about the best way to structure the title tags for the hundreds (if not thousands) of section fronts for our markets.

One of the things he mentioned was avoiding keyword cannibalization. For example, many of our existing sites they have a homepage title like: “Newspaper.com | News, Sports, Weather, Jobs, Classifieds”

The problem with that is for the actual sections that contain “jobs” or “weather”. The keywords have been at the very least diluted, and at the worst cannibalized.

So, for CharlotteObserver.com, we went with a very generic title on the homepage of: “Charlotte Observer | Charlotte, NC – North Carolina’s Local News Leader”

The idea is that if someone is searching for “charlotte jobs”, we want them to find the jobs section, not the homepage.