Oudam Em is a web entrepreneur who has been making a living online since 1996. He owns and operates over 70 websites and is using this site to share tips, tools and articles related to SEO and internet marketing.
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is one of the most highly talked about topics between Webmasters and marketers. It is probably also the single topic that more webmasters obsess over than any other (in terms of their website anyway!). However, while SEO can be an excellent resource for targeted traffic, all website owners should concentrate their efforts on more than trying to squeeze one more percent out of keyword density, or beg one more PR5 link from an authoritative site. As well as sapping energy, causing breakdowns in family relationships, and being responsible for the onset of male pattern baldness it also causes us to lose sight of our ultimate goal.
You Mean There’s More To Online Life Than SEO?
The ultimate goal for the vast majority of websites is to either make money or promote a service that makes money. How the site goes about it is entirely up to the Webmaster. Whether you choose to make money through affiliate links, PPC advertising, product sales, dropshipping, or any other method the single most important aspect of your website is your visitor. Visitors are those people that you attempt to attract to your site and they are the ones that will essentially make you some cash.
Don’t Forget The Real People
The biggest problem with concentrating on SEO is that while the search engine spiders might be difficult to please they are a walk in the park, a piece of cake, and an absolute breeze when compared to real-life, living, breathing, walking, talking visitors. Search engines rely on mathematical algorithms to determine the quality of your site whereas the visitor relies solely on personal opinion. The next time you’re attempting to inject 2 or 3 more instances of key phrases like “California Mesothelioma lawyer attorney” into your content try to remember that some poor soul might actually have to try and make sense of what you’re writing.
We read the newspaper, we watch television, and we listen to the radio, but we experience the Web; this is what makes ‘The Website’ one of the most powerful marketing tools available to today’s marketing executives. Unfortunately conventional wisdom has stifled the ‘experience factor’ on most website presentations.
Traditional circulation based advertising biases and pitch-mandated direct mail practices from metric-minded agencies have limited businesses’ ability to take advantage of the Web’s capacity to provide a more active, creative, and penetrating sensory experience aimed at furthering marketing objectives.
As consumers of information we all filter what our mind considers irrelevant. When we go to a website we quickly recognize where banner and text advertisements have been placed and proceed to ignore them for the rest of our visit. Even television ads are becoming increasingly less effective, even as their cost increases. Yet people will watch and even look forward to creative, entertaining advertisements that capture our imagination and inform our ability to make better decisions about what we buy and who we buy from.
Does Anybody Really Know What Works?
It is easy to rely on after-the-fact number crunching and projected head-numbing statistics to justify how marketing campaigns are constructed rather than on the less predictable but more relevant elements of psychology and human nature. But do numbers really tell the true story, or are they just protect-your-butt justification designed to ease everyone’s mind when it comes time to commit to a budget?
Ever wonder why some marketing tactics work for some businesses but not others? Maybe you heard about a business that paints their company website’s URL on the top of their delivery trucks and increased online sales by 25% in a single quarter. However, when you try the same tactic, your sales remain flat.
The reason most marketing tactics fail is that they are not part of a comprehensive marketing strategy. A comprehensive marketing strategy helps you to choose which tactics will work for your business and keep the sales coming in like clockwork no matter what the economy.
Defining Marketing Strategy
Imagine you are on a hunting trip. You find yourself standing in the middle of a field with your rifle in your hand. Without a marketing strategy, you’ll be shooting at every leaf that the wind picks up.
Your marketing strategy will help you to decide whether you should be shooting at rabbits or elephants. Not only will your marketing strategy help you to define your target, it will help you hit that target when you raise your rifle to your shoulder and take aim.
Taking web standards into account when designing a website may not be a primary concern for many site owners, but when it comes to finding an extra edge to improve their business, they are more than willing to do anything required to increase revenues. Let’s see how complying with Web standards can help a business website.
What are the Standards?
On the Web, the main standards are the languages used when creating websites. The most wide-spread ones are HTML, XHTML and CSS. HTML or XHTML are used to create the backbone of websites - the structure. (The difference between HTML and XHTML is that XHTML was formed from XML and is forward compatible.) CSS, in turn, is used to style, format and position the structure and content.
What is Web Standards Compliance?
Put simply, web standards compliance is using web languages correctly. This involves using HTML tags properly and the way they were and are intended to be used. For instance, one of the most common felonies against the web standards is using table tags for layout, while the correct usage is to use them only for tabular data (information to be put in tables).
Benefits of Standards Compliance
Creating quality, standards compliant code has a number of benefits:
* website forward compatibility
* increased site download speed
* browser compatibility
* easier site maintenance
* broader target audience
How Can This Help Business?
Perhaps every entrepreneur is asking himself right now, “And where is the monëy here?†Probably every benefit can either increase revenues or save expenses. Let’s look at them in detail.
Site Forward Compatibility
Web standards, such as XHTML and CSS, are designed to work forever. They will also be supported for an almost unlÃmited period of time. Designing a site according to web standards will ensure the website backbone will not need to be redone any time soon, which reduces the amount of work on the site and the expenses of the site owner.
Increased Download Speed
When using XHTML for content and structure and CSS for styling and formating, page size is reduced when compared to a page, designed with tables for layout. For instance, a site with a relatively small number of images is 50% smaller than a table-based website. Because users enjoy fast-loading websites (they start leaving after eight (8) seconds beyond clicking on a link), they will be more likely to become a clients of a web standards compliant website.
Browser Compatibility
A web standards compliant site is displayed correctly (and looks the same) in all standards compliant browsers. Adjusting the site to suit a less helpful browser (Internet Explorer, for instance) is much easier with CSS than with tables. This saves enormous amounts of time for a web designer.
Easier Site Maintenance
When separating content and styling with XHTML and CSS, it is much easier to edit any of those, because they are located in different files. Should one need to adjust the look of the main page heading (
), he/she will just need to change a line or two in a style sheet to change the appearance of all headings on the website. Editing content is easier as well, because no styling and formatting is in the way and it is easy to spot the content in clean and semantically correct code markup.
Broader Target Audience
Furthermore, web standards are used not only on computers, but also by PDAs (hand held devices, palm computers), phones and other devices. A site, adhering to web standards, will be displayed correctly either without editing or will require very little work to be displayed correctly on a platform other than a computer. Such easy availability will make the company site easily accessible for a wider range of potential customers, increasing the chances of business success as well.
So What To Do?
Naturally, there may be several choices for a business site owner:
* do nothing and wait till something more noticeable becomes obvious about the web standards.
* wait, research the topic, get more proof and then redesign with web standards and visitors in mind.
* redesign the site right now, either with the help of an in-house web designer or a professional, specialized company.
Any of the choices above solely depend on the situation of the business site. Most probably, making a site web standards compliant will be most beneficial to starting or young websites, which will reduce the amount of work needed in the future. Mature websites can consider adjusting their websites to improve the quality of their visitor experience. Those, whose sites are barely important can live as they are, provided the site works. Thus, it all depends on the site owner and the situation the business is in.
About The Author
The article is contributed by Yuri Filimonov, a usability consultant for MyNeatSite. MyNeatSite specializes in improving overall website usability.
Oudam Em is a web entrepreneur who has been making a living online since 1996. He owns and operates over 70 websites and is using this site to share tips, tools and articles related to SEO and internet marketing.
December 5th, 2006 by 
that SEO guy
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