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Today the Google Webmaster Team used Google Moderator links to a great set of Google questions as voted by webmasters today with good responses from the Google Webmaster Central team.

Example questions:

“What weight does the age of a site and the amount of time a domain is registered for have on it’s search placement?”

“Recently, you removed this suggestion: “Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!” from your guidelines. Is there any chance that you will be discounting these kinds of links for ranking value in future?”

“Can you explain how the use of sub-domains helps / hurts a sites ranking?”

“Will Webmaster Tools ever give us an option to “disassociate” from sites that link to us? This feature exists in Yahoo’s Site Explorer, but not Webmaster Tools.”

I preach it. Clients ignore it (well, sometimes)

I am posting this so I can refer people to this post when they call me… and I get around 7-10 calls daily for sites from people who want every bell and whistle they can think of on the site. From the start. Without any budget or forethought.

So this was a refreshing read about website simplicity and landing pages. Well worth the read. In the article they call out these six methods for web design that can drive away clutter and improve user experience.

1. Only what you need.
   The biggest aspect of simple web design is only showing what’s needed to make the sale, and nothing more.
2. Reduce clicks. The less clicks it takes for a customer to buy a product, the higher returns.
3. The “Grandma” rule. If your grandma (or any elderly person) can figure out how to buy a product for your site, odds are it’s put together pretty well.
4. Reduce the number of columns. Each time you add a column to a page, the content is pushed into a smaller and smaller space.
5. Give less options. There is an added stress put on web shoppers to make decisions.
6. Keep it clean. A clean design keeps visitors happy.

Examples are given that any smart retailer or merchant could follow for success.

During recent conversations and presentations, the topic of best practices for social media came up a few times. Most companies do not have formal policies for social media participation. Well, I just saw a new checklist collection published by the Blog Council:

This document is a draft series of checklists to help companies, their employees, and their agencies learn the appropriate and transparent ways to interact with blogs, bloggers, and the people who interact with them.

The council has published six checklists in their document. (more…)

I took note earlier of CEO David Friend and Customer Service Manager Len Pallazola of Carbonite as they did some pretty fancy damage control on a negative blog post about Carbonite on Vinnie Carpenter’s blog.

As you can see, these guys handled the situation - and took control of the room, leaving anyone willing to read more than the first few posts with a very positive sense that Carbonite has its act together. Mozy, on the other hand, did not participate in the discussion.

First, what’s at stake. As the discussion continued, Google ranked the blog higher and higher in the SERPs for search “carbonite vs. mozy” - not good for Carbonite.

In my opinion, this kind of damage control can only be done when the executives and customer support leaders of an organization stay totally on top of everything being said about their brand. They cannot address every little technical issue being said, but can watch for strongly worded negative posts and comments - to represent their brand and be sure there’s not just misunderstandings being spread around as facts. (more…)

Ian McAnerin had a great idea today at SMX to help us get through some of the most difficult parts of website translation. He’s called it a Symantec Expression Equivalency Document, which, in his words “rips the soul out of the marketing copy” while it’s being translated and then re-insert it later.

Creating a stripped-down version of emotional marketing text can serve as a vehicle for moving to a new destination language by freeing it from the burden of carrying nuance during translation.

Well written English marketing copy is often full of culturally-specific emotion, which is very difficult to translate.  Nuance that drives us to convert in our native language may not work after the perilous path of translation.  This is especially true with website translations from English to Asian languages, for example.

Ian pointed out the following process in his slides.

1. Bulletize the facts of the original copy

Stripping it down to its basic facts. Ian suggests that by removing the emotional component and stripping the “soul” from it - leaving a fact-oriented bullet list of things to discuss.

2. Use the stripped down version as your translation source

After you’ve created this fact-oriented English version, you will ask for it to be translated into your target language. You can use software or human translators for this part.

3. Re-Insert the Emotion using a native speaking-skilled writer

The last phase of the journey is when the fact-based document is handed to a native-speaker who understand the delicate emotional details for the target language. In this case, the person may not even know the original language the document started in.

4. (Sometimes) Re-translate the resulting copy to English

This is a round-trip approach that can be used for quality assurance of your translation efforts.  If you have the budget and the copy is important enough - it make sense.

Kristjan Mar Hauksson points out that doing a great job in translation shows ‘respect’ for the market, and that regional credibility will take a boost.

Search marketers who ignore international SEO are severely limiting their reach and abilities.  The above ideas show that even without a lot of knowledge about the destination language you can still prepare information for effective use around the world.

Mike Dorausch (aka @chiropractic) drives home the point of local reviews being a huge deal for local businesses on today’s USA today. I became friends with Mike at SMX Social Media and congratulate him on the exposure! Also mentioned in the article is my new friend Chris Winfield, who I met in Long Beach also. Nicely done, Chris!

In the article by Jefferson Graham, Mike points out:

…”Online reviews is how people find us,” Dorausch says. About 80% of his new business stems from customers finding online reviews about him and booking appointments, he says…

Yes, he does have signs in the office asking visitors to leave their Gmail address (you must have a Google account to leave reviews on Google’s local pages), but he won’t ask before working on your back.

Dorausch says he waits for patients to say how they enjoyed their visit. “That’s where the opportunity is to ask if they’d like to share that in a review,” he says. (He follows up with an e-mail with Web addresses for review sites.)

“I would think most businesses would not go wrong with that approach,” he says…..

I’m an advocate of proactive local reviews and getting your business listed. If you’re interested in local pay per click, check this article out.