When and where is it?

Wednesday 6th August in Radisson SAS Royal hotel in Glasgow. The day will start at 9.30am and finish about 2pm with lunch and refreshments provided.

The aim of the event is to introduce and explore website accessibility and usability issues. We aim to inform delegates and give them useful information they can take away and implement on their organisation's website.

Cost

The cost is £70 per person (book now as places are limited).

Speakers

• Jim Byrne - Accessible Web Design specialist
• Nigel Cunningham - Texthelp (Browsealoud)
• Colin Hamilton - University of Strathclyde
• Alan White - self employed Web Developer
• Mark Palmer User Vision - Focusing on the user experience
• David Sloan - Project Lead of the Digital Media Access Group

Most people know that as part of their website promotion strategy they should spend time getting other websites to link to their own - i.e., websites working in the same area that are already doing well in search engines.

The number and quality of links to a site is viewed as an important indicator for search engines of how useful your website is - and therefore how high your site should appear in search results.

Getting links is hard work

However getting reciprocal links is hard work, takes lots of time and because it has a high failure rate it can be a dispiriting process.

I'm not saying this isn't something you should do or that it isn't an important strategy - but I would recommend that you don't start by targeting individual websites. Instead, kick start your link building by aiming to get listed in website directories.

Directories are easier to get listed on

Directories are easier to get listed on - they tend to have a higher page rank* - and for many and all you need to do is fill in a form.

One major drawback is that they are not all free. So start with the one's that are and then consider how much of your promotion budget you want to spend on the one's that are not. For example, if you are not already in Yahoo - then - as this is an important directory be listed in - it may be worth paying their submission fee.

I did a quick search for directory listings and found the following links - some of which are compiled by commercial SEO companies (so proceed with caution).

Lists of free directories:

• Free Directories
• Directories
• Dirstats.com
• Seopedia.org
• Seocompany.ca

*Page rank: a system developed by the founders of Google to determine the importance of a web page relative to others in the same area - each page is given a number - with higher number given to more important pages.

What I'm reading

At the moment I'm reading, 'Killer Web Content' by Gerry McGovern. In my opinion, this one of the few 'must read' books when it comes to developing website content.

Mr McGovern starts with the assumption that, 'most content just gets in the way'; it's filler when it should be killer. His emphasis is on helping the reader to discover the difference between the two. From that - among other things - he develops the concept of 'care words'.

"Your customers have a small set of words that summarize what they care about. Find those words and you're half way to success."

Finding care words

The book provides techniques for finding out what these care words are for your customers - and then how to use these in the content you develop.

It is full of obvious but seemingly profound ideas like:

• Focus on how people search, not on how search engines work.
• Your content must deliver new knowledge. If it can be found on another website, why are you repeating it on yours?
• Your job is to drive action. 'Your information succeeds when you drive the action you intended to drive.'

Gerry McGovern packs a lot of useful ideas into what is quite a slim book. It's fairly easy to consume as it's well written - though it does require a lot of work to put his ideas into practice. For anyone serious about getting their website content sorted - I'd recommend it.

One of the main aims of your website should be to build trust and establish your credibility in the minds of your visitors. Very few people will buy into your service or purchase your products if you they are unsure if they can trust you.

In a 2004 study, Center for the Digital future unearthed the following statistics.

• Established media - are trusted by 74%
• Government websites - are trusted by 73%
• Individual websites - are trusted by 9%.

If you are not an established brand, or running a government website - you have a job to do to establish yourself as a credible source of the service or product you are offering.

Maria Veloso author of, 'Web Copy That Sells', says it succinctly:

"On the web, people buy from people they like and trust'

One route to establishing trust is to aim to build a long-term relationship with your potential customers/clients.

To do that you have to keep in touch with them. For example, you could use your website to capture visitors email addresses - so you can build a long-term relationship via a newsletter or tips sheet.

Gerry McGovern, author of Killer Web Content writes,

"Most of my clients spend and average of 12 months as subscribers to my newsletter before they make an initial contact"

"85% of my business results from subscribers to my newsletter"

If you already have a mailing list that you use to send out a newsletter, revisit your website and check whether you are guiding visitors directly to your signup or contact form - rather than concentration solely on selling your product or service.

If you don't already have systems in place to capture customers contact details - you'd better put that right straight away - because your future may depend on it.

What I'm reading

At the moment I'm reading 'The Luck Factor' by Richard Wiseman. This is a book that I would recommend to everyone - because I don't know anyone who doesn't want to have more luck. I'm a sucker for self help books - even if they do all basically say the same thing (that's for another time) - but this isn't an airy-fairy think positive and you will get what you want book. It purports to be,

'a scientifically proven way to understand, control and increase your luck'.

Yes - that's right - a scientifically proven method for being lucky! Heavens above - that doesn't sound right at all.

Through a series of experiments Professor Richard Wiseman shows what it is that makes some people lucky and others unlucky. And he does this in an entertaining and amusing way. As a former magician - and member of the London Magic Circle - he knows how to keep your attention and entertained while at the same time putting across his message.

If you want to find out how to be lucky in your personal and business life I recommend you buy this book.

What has Jim Byrne been working on lately?

Recently completed work includes:

Womens History Scotland Website

The website promotes study and research into the history of women working in Scotland or working on Scottish themes.

The brief was to keep the navigation and layout as simple and uncluttered as possible, while still providing access to a wide range of information and resources (nothing new there).

A notable feature of the site is the database of biographies of Scottish women relevant to the history curriculum in Scottish schools. This has been developed to make it easy to add to and modify entries in the future.

The biographies had to be created in line with Learning and Teaching Scotland's requirements. As they have an application on their website that links into the individual entries.

Features of the new site include:

• A way to upload the new editions of the Scottish Womens History newsletter.
• A page to display forthcoming events.
• The use of the accessible content management system QnECMS so that members of Scottish Womens history group could manage the websites themselves.