I read an article about 10 days ago which was critical of Microsoft’s efforts to gain a toehold on the web that got me to thinking.  The premise of the article was that Microsoft has thrown huge sums of money into developing a web presence, but has so far failed.  Kevin Kelleher, the article’s author advances an argument that Microsoft should throw in the towel, and get out of the web business, because Microsoft obviously doesn’t do ‘it’ well.

My own vantage is one of an early and ardent admirer of Microsoft.  My Company, Paladin Consultants, LLC ,was one of the original Solution Providers (later renamed Microsoft Partners Network).  Over the past 20 years, we have  designed hundreds of custom software projects for many big name clients using Microsoft Sql Server database, Visual Basic,  .Net Projects in C#, and extensive application development using the Microsoft Office Products (including programmed routines in Word, Excel, and full blown small database system in Microsoft Access).  A few of the larger projects are detailed on our website.

Gates & Co. has changed the world through their innovations, and they are deserving of every nickle they have made.  Microsoft’s software products set a standard for quality, ease of use, and innovation that the rest of the industry used as a standard.  And for years we have been a strong supporter of Microsoft products.

But something happened in the mid ‘90’s - a number of things, actually, that changed the character of Microsoft, and of the playing field.

First, Microsoft seems to have lost its spirit of innovation.  Their execllent ideas like Windows, Visual Basic, SQL Server, and Office have only been marginally improved since the mid ‘90’s.  Their PR machine would, perhaps vehemently disagree with that assertion, but, aside from the cosmetics, and being easier to connect with those programs, the functionality has been little changed for the good of the user.  Their foray into the browser market is a case in point.  They built Internet Explorer into their Windows software to preclude competition from other browser manufacturers like Netscape.  They were sued by the U.S. Justice department  and by the E.U for anti competitive practices.  The corporate culture for some reason elected to compete in the market with anti-competitive practices, rather than innovation.  The Netscape browser was, unfortunately a casualty.

Second, the terrain of the battle shifted dramatically.  Although Bill Gates paid lip service to the concept that ‘ the future of the information business is the internet’, in practice his actions showed that he didn’t get it.  For instance, take a look at this snippet of text taken from a word document:

In an effort to make IE and Word indispensible, Microsoft allowed Word users to save their documents as HTML files.  The only problem was that in order for those files to render properly, the user was required to use IE.   Here’s a snippet of the HTML generated by Word.  Notice how the tags are largely proprietary, and not able to be interpreted by other browsers:

The larger thought is that the very gestalt of Internet is to have as open a system as possible.  The internet is home to many different operating systems, and APIs.  The nature of the beast is that all participants must be able to share those resources freely.  Microsoft’s view of the world, however, is that they want everybody to use their products, and will do anything they can to ‘tie’ as many people as possible to their paradigm.  In a real sense, thse two competing philosophies and business models are incompatible.  Another example of this is the Microsoft .Net platform.  We develop on .Net for clients, but invariably, there are open products that are available that do just as good a job, if not better, faster, cheaper, and easier to maintain.  The same can be said when comparing Windows Internet servers with Apache Linux servers.

So, when it comes to Internet products developed by Microsoft, by the time the product comes to market, there are already superior products available from their competitors.  VBScript vs Javascript, MSN vs Yahoo, Bing Vs Google, IE vs Firefox, Frontpage vs Dreamweaver and the list goes on.

Third, Microsoft has an extremely poor record of loyalty to its ‘partners’.  They have shown this again and again that when it becomes advantageous for MS to desert their partners, they will do so in a heartbeat.  The loyal army of Solution Providers were presented with a more and more expensive and onerous set of hoops to jump through that it became not a good business proposition for most of them.  In the beginning, Microsoft was a good source of referrals for many of us.  It was advantageous for them to establish themselves as the default platform.  But after a few years, those referrals invariably went to the ‘partners’ who sold the most Microsoft desktop products.  So, like their own internal innovation, relations with their ‘partners’ also fell prey to the drive to stoke consistent quarterly earnings growth.  Their relationship with RealPlayer is another example of this kind of ‘partner’ dissolution.  RealNetworks ended up suing Microsoft and winning $3/4 billion, in addition to the $600 million fine levied against Microsoft by the E.U. related to the RealNetworks suit.

I am concerned that as the desktop market matures along with the growth of Internet and cloud computing that Microsoft will continue to suffer reversals.  Of course, it is possible that the company will experience a resurgence in its innovation, but at this point it is difficult to see the theater that will make this likely.  Contrast this to the buzz that frequently comes from the new product machine at Apple. Growth in Internet based computing shows no signs whatever of slowing down.

Facebook and Twitter were innovative at the time, and helped businesses form a relationship with clients with a more personal approach, allowing a subtle transition from a purely passive approach to their prospective clients to a more pro-active and personal one.  A lot of folks missed the point of Twitter and Twitter and came late to the party.  The same can be said for the late adopters of Facebook, who didn’t understand their kids’ fascination with the social aspects of Facebook.  College kids live on facebook.  Andif you had any doubt about the centrality of Facebook to the zeitgheist of our society, one need look no further than Michaele and Tarek Salahi’s crashing the Whitehouse state dinner late last month.  Pictures of them and Obama and them and Biden were on their Facebook page before dawn.

I wish I had a nickle for everyone who commented on my embracing the Twitter idiom with a snide comment like, ‘What do I care what people had for breakfast.’  A lot of folks are missing the point of both of these social sites:  they provide a way to form quasi social relationships, and so called weak friendships.  Their point is that people are more apt to do business with people with whom they have some sort of connection.  If you’re looking for someone to re-do your kitchen, you’re much more likely to choose someone from your church, or even someone who is friendly with the butcher whom you lilke.  I am not a big Facebook user because it is too time intensive, but I have met quite a few friends, professional colleagues, and business partners on Twitter.

But Twitter is still a quasi passive platform, though the lines are blurry.  I do know that the easiest way to turn someone off on Twitter is to come onto him with a hard sell:  ‘I’ve made $15,000 this month on Twitter, and I can show you how to do it, too!!!!!’

But thee are now on the horizon two very important developments which promise to significantly enhance the power of using Twitter.

But first a small diversion.  Earlier this year, an enterprising your Australian named Chris Duell developed a site called Twitterhawk.  Now the idea of Twitterhawk is that the site sifts through the Twitterstream looking for key words that you set that occur near a geographic location that you specify.  So if you were a carpenter in Peoria, you might set up a search that looks for kitchen remodeling in Peoria.  Twitterhawk would return to you a list of those tweets,  And, for a few cents a tweet, Twitterhawk would send a series of rotating tweets to those whose tweets you designated as appropriate targets.

Back to those new Twitter innovations.  The first was the implemenjtation of lists on Twitter.  Now you can create lists of folks on Twitter that you follow.  And you can categorize them with common traits, for example software architects (like Paladin Consultants, LLC ), or economists, or photographers.  It helps you keep track of people, especially when you have lots of followers.  You can see the Twitterstreams of these lists, and even get an RSS feed of them.  Better still, in most cases everyone has access to virtually all of everybody else’s lists!

And where can you find and mine these lists?  Listorius is one of the first resources dedicated to managing the new feature.  Mashable also has a growing arsenal of Twitter Lists.  Unless I miss my guess, new sites dedicated to this new tool will be popping up like mushrooms after a spring rain!

The second innovation comes from a site called Listimonkey, a site designed by a very clever young Belgian expatriate named Xavier Damman, now living in the Bay Area.  He has also managed to secure a domain name in his own name!  Anyway, his wrinkle on Twitter is that if you send Listimonkey the name of a twitter list, a key word or phrase, and your email, Listimonkey will email you with a set periodicity the tweets from members of that list contain your key word or phrase!  Now, although there is some SEO juice and pride in having a large list, this is not necessary to work with Listimonkey.  In fact, you can use anybody’s public list!  (Most lists are public.)

Now think about that.  If you are a real estate agent in Chicago, you might watch somebody’s Chicago list for the key word ‘moving’.  If you were a photographer in Atlanta, you’d watch somebody’s Atlanta list for the keyword ‘wedding’ or ‘getting married’.  And, Listimonkey allows you to create as many of these list/keyword combinations as you like!  Very powerful, and a dimensional abstract improvment on Twitterhawk’s idea!

But Listimonkey is good not only for finding new customers and clients.  It’s great for finding out about new products, techniques, people, trends- wealth of information from one site that harnesses the communal information it mines from the Twitterstream!

I’m afraid Xavier’s innovation will spell bad news for Chris Duell and Twitterhawk.  It’s a shame, but the market marches on.  One can only wish Chris Duell luck, and hope that he has another great idea.  But with talent like he’s shown, I am sure that his next idea is right around the corner.

But getting back to Listimonkey, as those emails come rolling in from Listimonkey, it would be pretty easy for a good software developer to come up with a program which would parse those emails as they came in, and then tweet appropriate messages to the originators of those tweets mentioning the keyword(s).  Xavier has such a good idea, that I predict will soon overrun his mailserver.  But that will be an happy problem for him to solve!

Please leave a comment, so we know whether or not we are on target!  It helps us find out what our readers think.

It is the main job of anyone who is engaged in search engine optimization to make that website friendly and hospitable to search engines.  Help them do their job, and do not adopt the attitude that you can co-opt them.  Ig you push that envelope too far, the engines will penalize you by deducting points from your page, or, in extreme cases, by refusing to index your pages at all.

It’s important to understand that a search engine sees ONLY text.  It can’t understand pictures, or movies, or Flash files or any graphics.  Only words and text are indexed by the search engine.  It can see code, but disregards it.  And the text which it sees, the search engine will try to put that text into some intelligent context to help assign some meaning when it matches the text to a search.  Different search engines accomplish this task in slightly different ways, but the basics are the same.

The better search engines accept site maps.  These are XML files that show all of the indexable pages (or files) on a site, along with information about the files, such as creation date, most recent update date, and its position in the site hierarchy.  These files are very helpful to the search engine in evaluating the site, and, in fact, submission of one will frequently bring about a new reindexing of the site when it is submitted.

Search engines attach more weight to text at the beginning of a page.  Text which matches phrases found in the Title of the page is assigned an especially important ranking, and text which is further down the page is assigned a diminished importance.  Some engines lose patience as they get further and further down a page, and quit indexing after a certain point.  So a page with lots and lots of javascript code near the top of the page may be thumbing its nose at the search engine, and will possibly be rewarded with a low ranking because of that.  If you must use javascript in your pages, annex that code to a separate file, and reference that file in the HTML.

Strictly speaking, not all search sites are search engines.  Yahoo!, for instance, is a directory where sites are indexed by hand by a staff of people who categorize sites.

But in the search engine category, Google is the 800 pound gorilla.  It has nearly an 80% share of the global market today, though this has shrunk nearly 3% in the past year, as Yahoo!’s share has brown from 9% to 12%.  So, obviously, it makes a lot of sense to pay attention to what Google is doing.

Google has two forms of placements in their pages.  One is AdSense, a Pay-per-Click (PPC) program where subscribers pay for each phrase they wish to advertise under.  Those paid ads appear either on the top of the google page, or on the right of the page, depending on your chosen Google page format, when a user searches for a phrase that matches the one paid for.  Each time the advertiser’s ad appears, Google charges his account an amount varying on the placement premium the PPC client has agreed to pay.

The rest of the Google pages are printed the ‘free’ or organic search results.  The objective is to construct your web page such that your page ranks high in the organic search listing.  Now the actual formula Google (and the other search engines) use to determine which sites get a high ranking, and which do not is a highly guarded secret.  And it is ever changing, and varies from search engine to search engine.  If it were publicized, everyone would adjust their web pages to accommodate the formula, thus defeating the purpose of the formula.  Not only does the ranking formulae change constantly, but the demand for those key phrases is ever changing, as is the re-working of sites all jockeying for position in the competition for high visibility.

Most users tend to favor the organic search results.

So the takeaway from this article is that prime placement in the organic rankings is a very valuable asset, but it is fleeting and ever buffeted by changes in competition, formulaic changes in the search engines, and even with rank of other pages in the website.  Second, because of all of the diverse forces at play, the placement of a website in any given search listing will fluctuate according to ALL of those factors.  So it is not possible to control your site’s placement in a search result – you can only hope to influence it.  Having said that, it is clear that search engines bestow honors on sites that produce fresh, new content that is helpful to the consumer, and that is well organized with good links.

In many cases, developers have cookie cutter templates that create sites that can be put up in a matter of days.  The average developer can put up a credible site that looks good and that will satisfy their customers’ desires for a web presence rather cheaply and profitably.  And then he will move on to the next customer with his offer to build an inexpensive website.  They have fulfilled their part of the bargain.  And in the process have not only benefited from harvesting the low hanging fruit from the client, but have left the client with an (in many cases) appealing looking site that in many cases gets in the way of the client’s attaining what he really needed in the first place: an effective tool that will enhance his marketing presence on the web.  For years, web developers have included Flash files and fancy Javascript in websites that until recently were completely ignored by search engines.  But that is only one of the many SEO faux pas that have been commonplace practice by naive ‘drive by’ web developers.

A far better approach is to settle on the marketing (SEO) strategy first, and then make the web development process serve those marketing aims.  That way, menus can be designed intelligently, and in a way that conforms naturally to the objectives of the site.  The site as a whole can be planned and developed with an eye to leading the potential client on a journey that is a surrogate to having a conversation with the client.

This is the ONLY way that endeavors of this type make any sense.  The usual way is tantamount to firing a gun before aiming it.

I organized a white water rafting trip several years ago down the Lehigh River in Pennsylvania.  Because my group of friends all lived in NJ near New York City, I arranged for everyone to stay at a charming hotel in Pennsylvania, just over the border from NJ, with the idea of completing the journey early the next morning.  As it happened, staying at the Hotel that same evening was a ‘convention’ (about 25) of various practioners of the occult and paranormal.  There were palm readers, hypnotists, phrenologists, astrologers, and all manner of strangeness.  I played piano for everybody for a while in the parlor, and afterward, the two groups mingled and discussed affairs of the day, and their respective professions.  To a man the paramormal folks seemed to be obsessed with tearing down their peers, and trying to appear to be the unchallenged spokesman of their particular branch of the field. ‘She’s a fraud’, or ‘He hasn’t discovered anything in years’ or ‘I have a new discovery which has revolutionized the field of astrology’ were typical ‘confidential’ comments made to members of our group in private conversations.  We all laughed and compared notes the next day.

So it is with our profession.There are many who claim to have the keys to the kingdom.  Whether or not they do will only be determined in the future, and someone is always changing the locks.

So in the weeks ahead, I’ll be blogging a series of articles about common sense web marketing and SEO that has proved quite effective in the past.  But today’s take away is to begin with a comprehensive plan: what you are selling, how it will be sold and marketed, what platform you will use, and how easy it will be for you to adjust your message, product listing and how to market on each of the important search engines, and social media.  You won’t need fancy software to do this. For my clients I use Microsoft OneNote for the narrative portions and to flesh out the strategies, and Microsoft Excel to keep track of the metrics and benchmarks.

Although future correspondence suggested that he really wanted me to buy something from his site, I did look at the workmanship of his site and made some, what I thought, valuable suggestions.

His site was illustrative of several common errors in web development that will have an important negative effect on the quality, and effectiveness of the site.  I have changed his colors, and eliminated all traces of the name of his site from these illustrations.  I have no intent to embarrass the owner of the site, but thought the site a good example of several rookie errors in development.  Here are two images of his site, using the same css file.  Modern sites use css (cascading style sheets) to allow efficient manipulation of the site’s appearance and behavior.  One image is the rendering of the site in a recent version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (above).  The one below is a rendering of the site using the current version of Mozilla’s Firefox browser.

The difference between the two is striking, and would have been obvious to any developer who bothered to check the appearance of the website by viewing them through the commonly used browsers of today.  Obviously, this simple (and commonly accepted)  exercise was omitted in developing his site.  This was a serious design flaw, but not the most serious.  Current market stats suggest that IE has 66% of the market, with Firefox and Safari with another 30%.  While it is arguable that IE has twice the market share of the Mozilla browsers, what marketer in his right mind would ignore  nearly 1/3 of a potential market?

The title of the home page (which was a casualty of my image editing) was ‘Figurines’.  That was the only description on the site, despite the fact that nowhere on the site were figurines advertised for sale.  Thus the site owner was squandering his most precious opportunity to have his site properly indexed in the leading search engines.

The home page was more than 50% javascript – and that javascript code was concentrated at the beginning of the file.  Modern websites use javascript sparingly, relying more heavily on advanced css techniques.  What javascript remains should be annexed to a separate file which is referenced early in the html file.  Search engines attribute the greatest importance to the beginning of a page.  Lower portions of a pages are relegated less importance in the indexing process.  So, if the early part of a page is choked with javascript, most of the SEO love that Google could bestow on that page is wasted.

Finally, there is virtually NO CONTENT or MENU on the page.  Now remember this is his HOME PAGE!  Google and the other important search engines assign their highest criteria to the content of a page.  This page is loaded with images of stuff he wants to sell, but almost no text.  Bearing in mind that text is one of the few things that search engines see well, it is no surprise that this site is not ranking well with Google, or any other search engine.

There were other issues with the site, as well.  But to go into them here would make this article too long.  Suffice it to say that the issues uncoovered with this site in the brief review presented here suggest that the odds are long against this being a successful site.  Given the expectations of revenue to be derived from a site meant for business, it is always a good investment to make sure that the site has professional appearance, and professional quality performance.