Now, IE6 wasn’t a particularly great browser when it launched in 2001, and at this point it’s a positively awful one. It doesn’t fully support many of the best ways Web designers build sites and browser-based applications, and it’s prone to security issues. It doesn’t, for example, offer any protection against phishing scams, in which users are tricked into going to a malicious Web site.

Web developers would love to quit supporting it on their sites,. But that 17 percent usage rate is a problem. They have to spend time and resources tweaking their sites so they work with IE6, just because so many people are still using it…

[snip]

Web developers are starting to rebel, opting to no longer ensure that IE6 will work with their sites. And it’s not just small, out-of-the-way corners of the Web — YouTube recently began warning IE6 users that they need to upgrade if they want to continue using that wildly popular video-sharing site in a glitch-free manner.

I’m totally on board that bandwagon.

Black hat SEO = bad. Very bad.

Of course, I did what I could to strongly discourage him from believing that outrageous claim, informing him that nobody could legitimately make such a guarantee.  Over time, though, my views have changed.  I do believe that it is possible to rocket to the top of the Google SERPs practically overnight. But to do it, you must enter the shady world of black hat SEO. Among other things, that means link spam (probably pornographic in nature).  And keyword cramming and invisible text.  And doing sleazy back-end work with IP addresses.

As I say, such practices can and do succeed in delivering top rankings.  However, nobody really stops to consider Google.  That company–which is right now the only search engine that matters–employs the brightest minds on the planet and expends ridiculous resources specifically to hunt down sites engaging in these practices.  If you engage in black hat SEO, you run the very real risk of making yourself a target of Google.

If they find you–and given their size and reach, the odds are on their side–you will be delisted.  In other words, for the purposes of search engine marketing, you’re finished.  If you’re looking to get listed in Google, you’ll have to start over with an entirely different website and URL.

Yes, a different URL.  Oh, you were using www.awesomekeywordstring.com?  Too bad–that URL now bears the scarlet letter in the eyes of the Googlebot, so you’ll have to find a different address.

Oh, the actual name of your company was on the old site?  Well, that’s a much, much bigger problem, possibly one that can’t be overcome. See, Google now associates the name of your company with underhanded tactics, meaning that any future sites bearing your company name is likewise tainted, and will likely suffer the same fate.

Listen.  SEO is complicated, and it takes discipline and time to see results.  Even ethical SEO professionals with the best intentions can commit critical errors.  And I really, really don’t like the fact that one search engine wields such ridiculous power.  But that’s the situation we’re in right now, and trying to game Google is likely to end badly.

But by all means, go ahead and try.  Just recognize that you’re playing with fire.

I have a really snazzy car for sale.  It has a massive engine, four wheels, brakes, a steering wheel…but no instrument panel (i.e. no speedometer, tachometer, odometer or other gauges).  How much would you pay for it?

Then why would you pay thousands of dollars to build a website but be largely unable to determine that site’s performance in the future?

I rest my case.

Does a site have to be built in CSS?  Of course not.  Strictly speaking, you don’t have to do anything a specific way online (yet).  However, if you don’t take advantage of everything CSS has to offer, you’re almost certainly asking for trouble down the road.  Firstly, it’s broadly asserted that tableless CSS is the standard for building an SEO-friendly site.  I don’t know if that has necessarily been objectively proven, but a well-built site utilizing CSS removes a good deal of the formatting code and pushes it into an external stylesheet.  The result is lighter pages that are easier for the spider to read, as they don’t have to wade through as much code to get to the content.  In other words: for optimization purposes, a CSS-heavy site is not a bad way to go.

But more broadly, a site properly built with a good stylesheet is far easier to edit in the future.  As mentioned, I just spent two hours applying a variety of requested style changes to a client’s site.  It should have taken me, at most, half an hour.  The reason it took so long is that the site was a mishmash of external stylesheets, embedded styles, and content within individual table cells that could have easily been formatted with CSS had the designer actually had the training and expertise.  Instead, after already having paid to have the site built, the client will now be billed for more work that wouldn”t have been necessary had the site been built properly to start with.

So.  Are all tables bad?  Of course not.  Look closely at F Sharp’s site, and you’ll find a table.  Visit StanselJourney.com, and you’ll find another.  In some cases, I think designers try to lean a bit too heavily on CSS where tables would be perfectly acceptable.  Just use tables for what they were intended–to display tabular data, like numbers, product information or statistics.

When planning a new website, I don’t start with the content, although I consider it absolutely critical to the site’s chances for SEO success. I don’t start thinking about a layout, or color schemes, or really how it is going to look. In fact, I generally don’t even sit in front of a computer. I merely seek answers to two questions, in this order:

1. Who do I want to visit this website?
2. What do I want them to do when they get there?

As you will likely have surmised, #1 deals directly with search engine optimization–in particular, considering who I want to attract to my website.  Once I know that, I’ll be on the path to knowing what language to use to get them there via search.  Question #2 deals with usability, or what I want the user to do once they’ve arrived at the site.

These are separate matters, but there is an enormous amount of overlap between them, to the point that in some ways to discuss one is to address the other.  In fact, what some people believe to be SEO is really a matter of usability.

These two questions likely seem fairly elementary, but I believe they are a pretty good diagnostic on an organization’s clarity of thought.  What I find revealing, and in some cases astounding, is how many organizations don’t really have precise answers to these questions, even if they think they do.  Because if they did, they might not have the kinds of problems with their site content and structure that led them to contact me.

In fact, I believe the organizations that benefit the most from their sites understand a critical distinction: their websites are about them, but their websites aren’t for them.  Yes, their websites exist to promote their organization and its goals; but they understand that, broadly speaking, the end user isn’t exactly interested in their organization so much as what their organization can provide, be it some sort of product or service or some other solution to a problem.

So if you’re looking at putting together a website, before you start looking for design ideas or thinking about layouts and color schemes, ask yourself those two questions.  Challenge yourself to produce precise, explicit answers.  You might find that the questions aren’t easy, but they are simple–and that they force you to carefully consider what you are trying to accomplish online.

Microsoft Sites saw its average daily searcher penetration and share of search result pages in the U.S. continue to climb during the second week of Bing’s introduction. Microsoft Sites’ average daily penetration among U.S. searchers reached 16.7 percent during the work week of June 8-12, up 3 percentage points from the May 25-29 work week prior to Bing’s introduction. Microsoft’s share of search result pages in the U.S., a proxy for overall search intensity, increased to 12.1 percent during the period of June 8-12, also climbing 3 percentage points from the pre-introduction work week of May 25-29.

A few thoughts:

1. While it’s far, far too premature to start labeling Bing a Google slayer, I think it could pose a serious threat to Yahoo!.
2. Pursuant to #1: I think a Microsoft/Yahoo merger/acquisition just became that much more likely.
3. As one who uses a number of Google products, I’ve long been waiting for somebody to pose a serious threat to Google.
4. I never thought I would see the day that I would actually be cheering for Microsoft.

Retailers who scoffed at the web during the flush days of consumer spending are now diving head first into online initiatives, lured by that channel’s resilience in the downturn.

More resources are pouring into retailers’ Web operations, and brands from Juicy Couture to Louis Vuitton are at the forefront of digital measures to drive sales, whether through Facebook pages, Twitter feeds announcing new merchandise or online communities, according to speakers at the Reuters Global Luxury and Retail Summits.

The once overlooked Web has shot to the top of worldwide retailers’ priority lists as the recession has eroded sales at traditional brick-and-mortar stores.

While retail sales — excluding food, gasoline and motor vehicles — dropped 8 percent in the first quarter of this year, e-commerce sales were flat, according to Internet research firm comScore.

“In the past (retailers) considered this channel a minor channel, nice to have,” said Claudia D’Arpizio, a partner in Bain & Co’s Milan office. “They were already aware of the potential but they were just postponing because they had other priorities. Now it’s becoming a No. 1 priority.”

Glass half full: If you’re finally getting serious about your online presence, you’re not alone.   Glass half empty: If you’re finally getting serious about your online presence, you’re not alone.  Many, many companies are fighting for a piece of the Internet.  So how can you differentiate yourself?  A few suggestions:

• Start with your strengths.  Leverage existing customers.  Build an e-mail marketing strategy that meshes effectively with your website.  For web content, put together a few case studies to showcase success stories.
• Closely related to that first suggestion: Target a niche and work towards dominating it.  The ten-ton gorillas like the big retailers named in the link above will be going after big pieces of the action, particularly working to rank for major keywords and flooding the zone with marketing dollars by way of PPC campaigns and directory buys.  Your heavyweight competitors have bigger budgets, more manpower, and likely already have pretty commanding web presences.  So fly under their radar.  Try to do things they can’t or won’t do.  Is there a particular piece of the industry–even a really small one–that you already dominate, or in which you’re at least highly competitive?  Exploit it.
• Location, location, location: Are you looking to market exclusively or predominantly in a certain geographic area?  A geocentric SEO/PPC campaign is a lot easier–not to mention cheaper–to pull off.  Patience is still a virtue, of course, but you’re likely to see results a good deal faster.

Most of all, I think a word of caution is in order: Don’t expect your website to be the cure for all that ails you.  Your web presence is critical, but as the first web crash taught us, businesses without solid offline efforts in place had no hope of salvation from even the most aggressive online marketing campaigns.

That isn’t blog snark, either–I sincerely mean to say that an economic downturn can be a great time to start your own business.  A few reasons why:

• There’s a chance you’ll face less competition.  Yes, there might be less demand, but that also means there may be fewer providers of your particular product or service, meaning you’ll have to fight fewer people to be successful.
• Potential customers will be a bit more interested in seeking alternatives.  Companies and consumers looking to adjust to the realities of the recession may be a bit more willing to reconsider loyalties to existing vendors.  Low-cost providers will obviously have an edge here, but innovation will always be in style, and maybe a bit more now.
• History illustrates that past recessions–even really nasty ones–brought the world great companies.  A list is here.  More info here, including this quote:

Here’s what happens in bad times — disruption. Disruption means things change. And things often change quickly and dramatically. When things change, there are opportunities. And entrepreneurs seize opportunities — that’s what makes them entrepreneurs.

If you’ve ended up at this blog, you’re likely a businessperson looking for assistance with your website, trying to understand how to put your best foot forward online.  If you do understand that, you already understand one critical fact: The companies that survive this downturn are the companies that get serious about getting traction online. They understand the importance of search, and how the Internet is fundamentally changing how consumers behave, and how the buying process is becoming very altered.

There’s one thing about a recession that needs to be understood: Economic activity is still occurring.  There are still buyers and sellers.  Granted, there might not be as many as you would like, and maybe buyers aren’t paying the prices you would like to see…which, come to think of it, is likely true even in boom times.  But they’re there, and they can be found.  Best of all, in a very real sense, they’re trying to find you.

That’s one of the things F Sharp is here to help accomplish–make it as easy as possible for potential customers to beat a path to your virtual or literal doorstep.

So that’s my real intro post.  I do hope you’ll come back.

So, yes, the site is now live.  A bit ahead of schedule.  More than a few things need to be tidied up.  And a heavy redesign is already in the works.    But it’s live, and that’s what matters.

A proper intro post will be forthcoming.  Stay tuned!