A List Apart – The Survey, 2008
Calling all designers, developers, information architects, project managers, writers, editors, marketers, and everyone else who makes websites. It is time once again to pool our information so as to begin sketching a true picture of the way our profession is practiced worldwide.
The second annual survey by A List Apart seeks information about the people behind the scenes: the folks who make a website “go” (that’s you). Last year nearly 33,000 respondents gave us a peek into what working in the world of web is like – from obvious findings (it’s a male-dominated field) to not-so-obvious extrapolations (compared to IT and other computer-related fields, web workers make squat!) all of which you can read, but please take this year’s survey first.
White Hat SEO: giving the hard answer
A Word About Our Clients
Everyone wants the easy way to get to the top of the search results list. Expecting good results and a strong return on investment are natural signs of a good business mind. How to turn a web site into an investment with a return is a little harder to grasp. If you are selling Angus, your primary goal is to promote the heck out of your best animals, expecting your web site to drive up demand and consequently get the pleasure of watching a bidding war go on for those animals when the sale happens. A few sell embryos and artificial insemination services- their end goal is to spur a prospective buyer to action- in this case, to call or otherwise contact the breeder and buy the embryos or A.I. service.
These are hard things to grasp because most of our clients are running a small business and will not see the concrete results of a web site, like a shopping cart where one can purchase products. (Side note: even for the few willing to pay for a shopping cart, it is may not be successful because their users still prefer a person-to-person transaction not a person-to-computer transaction…especially for live animals.)
Why are these things relevant to Search Engine Optimization? Because the reward of Search Engine Optimization is even less apparent. Black hat SEO marketers are useful for one thing- they introduce our clients to the idea and how it relates to their business (even if their end approach to SEO is wrong).
The Short Version on Black Hat Methods
Old techniques included keyword stuffing in Meta tags and white keywords on white backgrounds. It also includes the link farms, where pages were filled with links referring to other (sometimes legitimate) sites, but the other links didn’t add value when compared to the content on the site.
New techniques include spamming blogs in the comments by including a link to their web site and slapping their keywords into the comment post. Similar methods are used with trackbacks.
Weighing the Return on Investment
When our clients call us wanting to know what they can do in order to rank higher in the search engine results, the answers are never what they want to hear. To earn a higher legitimate ranking, it takes work. That means possibly rebuilding the back end of the site, where the main navigation is images instead of live text; fixing the layout by switching from tables to CSS; adding fresh, new and/or more content to the pages; making the site more accessible by giving up the ugly Flash-only intro page; using descriptive links to the other pages.
It all costs money. Determining a budget is where the conversation usually ends. When they go back to the black hat SEO marketing companies, they ask for more money than what our clients originally paid to have the site built. Often it’s double the cost of the original site build. When they ask how much it will cost to use our services for SEO, the worst case scenario is the cost of a complete site rebuild (think of the Gardiner Angus Ranch web site- it was a few thousand dollars). The best case scenario I have had recently was a couple of minor but necessary changes to the site, where the client was only charged the Content Update fee – $35 an hour, with 4 hours of work.
Blowing Smoke- Are we doing it too?
Although we run cattle web sites, although our customers are roughly 10 years behind in adopting web technologies, don’t write us off as irrelevant just yet. In a remarkable twist of fate, a better-known, well-respected company in the Web field has released a much-needed tutorial on SEO. Go ahead. It’s a free tutorial, compliments of Figleaf Software. I’ll wait.
Glad to see you’re back. See what I mean about unpleasant answers? Before even diving into the technical things one can do to improve the SEO on a site, Steve Drucker addresses the business aspect of SEO. What is your end goal? Why do you want SEO? These are the same questions people should be asking themselves when first building a web site, too. If they say, “I want SEO because so-and-so has it.” we have a good indication they don’t know why they think they need it.
Then, getting into the SEO part, he suggests “Fix your site” and “update your content.” How many people really look forward to hearing that? Probably only the folks who have been repeating themselves over and over again- legitimate SEO marketing companies, ad agencies providing SEO as an aspect of their marketing services, web developers and web designers. The important outcome is the acknowledgment from our clients is that SEO is not so easy as first believed. If they still choose to go with an outside company, that’s perfectly acceptable. At least at this stage I can feel relief, knowing they understand how to find quality services and a good company.
In Choosing a CMS
Deciding among the myriad of options available is no easy task. The choices range from premium paid CMS packages to open source, from blog-flavored to roll-your-own. I looked at Content Management Systems recommended by developers, designers, do-it-yourself hobbyists, and non-profit professionals. What follows is a not entirely coherent record of my thoughts and the testing process I went through.
Do we need a blog format, a wiki engine, or something else? How extensible is it? How easy is it to use? How hard is it to program? Update? Break?
Identify the customers’ needs and build from there. Ok, we have two types of clients: state associations [medium scale] and individual farms and ranches [small scale]. Small scale has less demands, so I started looking for something to fill the needs of the state associations. I took notes about most requested features and things used often. In no particular order, they looked like this:
Classified Ads, Member Lists, Search function, Gallery, Events Calendar, Newsletter and/or Board Minutes, custom designs, Form building.
Now what do we, as developers need? Our team needs:
- a meta site – one log in to handle all 240+ sites
- something extensible – multiple widgets, something to meet every demand
- learning curve levels – how much time is expected, to learn it?
- sample sites – who is using it now? How much power is behind their site?
- open source – must be free, must write clean code
Also: are there any bonuses or cons? Random thoughts? I can’t tell you how many articles I read. I did eventually narrow them down, though. The most popular choices I found in the arena of small to medium scale: WordPress, Movable Type, Joomla and Drupal. By learning curve level (for developers/designers), from easiest to most difficult:
- WordPress
- Expression Engine
- Movable Type
- Joomla [and Mambo]
- Drupal
- Django
- Ruby on Rails
WordPress
Like many hobbyist blogs, mine is powered by WordPress. Possibly the simplest free solution, it is easy to install, maintain, understand, and use. There are many resources available on how to customize or create a theme. No subversion, plug-ins are easy to install, some documentation, and the interface to write posts is simple and straightforward. Bonus: Low-level learning curve, since my co-worker and I already play with PHP. Cons: uploading and managing multiple files is awkward, if using the interface. I prefer to FTP, but I already know that won’t be an option for our customers.
Expression Engine
Closer to the functions needed, including a meta-site and membership managing. This is a premium paid service, so I expect more- why don’t they have a calendar of events? Something so often requested, yet I don’t see it available after a cursory glance of their plug ins, extensions, and modules. I have read other web designers who gush about Expression Engine, but I don’t like the closed-source philosophy.
Movable Type
Only became open source after I submitted a different CMS for approval. Urgh! At any rate, it appears the serious bloggers use Moveable Type. Seems straightforward in theming and code changes. Once the technical snag is solved for our small scale clients, I am leaning towards Moveable Type as a possible solution. Thoughts: the interface is excellent. The UI is designed to feel intuitive but not insulting – a rare blend of user experience that shows professional TLC.
Joomla/Mambo
The schism into two separate CMSes aside, both sites failed spectacularly. Both demo sites were down. Way to sell yourself to a potential audience. I don’t have the time or the patience to check back later. Who knows when I will have enough time set aside to test again?
Django
Too many roll-your-own options. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. Most of our problems are common enough and this solution would be overkill. Looks good for building Rich Internet Applications and complex forms, however.
Drupal
Yes, Drupal. It is a high learning curve compared to any of the blog-format CMSes, but it has the most potential. WordPress, Expression Engine and Moveable Type all offer solutions that would fix today’s problems, but not necessarily tomorrow’s. Drupal can grow with us. Call it something like future-proofing. We need a CMS that can be simple today and robust tomorrow. I have read the web designers’ perspectives and the developers’ view on Drupal, and this is the only CMS where the developers and designers are close to a middle ground.
Ruby on Rails
I watched a video of a developer building a cookbook application. It’s exciting to see an elegant, well-executed program. I just wonder how many of these videos were made by programmers who already understood Ruby. I like the idea of building Rich Internet Applications quickly and beautifully, but none of our web sites come close to a large-scale description. Besides, I am only 1 of 2 developers here. Aside from personnel constraints, we have time constraints. I wish I had time to learn Ruby on Rails and could develop our own branded CMS, but that just isn’t practical considering our lack of resources.
Conclusion
On the designer side, the end-all, be-all is Expression Engine. On the developer side, Ruby on Rails is the new poster child. Neither of these will work for our medium-scale clients, since we need flexibility in design and development. We don’t have the luxury of time to learn Ruby on Rails, but need something powerful enough so we can develop our own widgets. Expression Engine looks to constricting in that respect. Drupal looks as close to a happy medium as it gets.
CMS is not a dirty word
Content Management System. Actually, I suppose that’s a phrase. CMSes allow your users to log in and change their content as often as they wish. This powerful tool saves many businesses from employing lots of worker drones to update content via hand coding.
It also provides clients a level of freedom: to add, remove and change content at the slightest whim. Content Management Systems and dynamic sites are not new. Look at Facebook, Digg, Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube and countless other popular sites. They all have a constant stream of new content added every day. Do you think Flickr would be as popular as it is today, if it was a static site?
I can see it now: the talk by the water cooler as everybody raves about how exciting it is to mail in a photo and see it posted to the web site 2 1/2 weeks later. Yeah, right. Maybe back in 1993.
The biggest draw to working here are the possibilities. So many of our clients are unaware of the capabilities of the web. It can be translated into very powerful, useful services. To me, the chance to update one’s web site was one of the most obvious ones. If mySpace users are allowed to do it, why not our clients?
I’m researching the various CMSes as we speak. As we approach a break between busy seasons, I am scrambling to find the best solutions available to pitch to the team. Wish us luck- this is going to be the first big project since we implemented the new sale book work flow.
Welcome IDM majors!
It was a lot of fun to come see you. I can’t believe how quickly this major has exploded. My IDM Senior Seminar class had a whopping 20 students in it at the time. Imagine my surprise to find that same classroom packed full. How many are you? I stopped counting because it started to make me nervous.
If you are looking for the articles I wrote fresh out of college, take a look at On the Job. In particular, you may be interested in reading The IDM Major and Why it Worked for Me, Successful Proposal Letters and Jobs and Benefits. Questions? Feel free to contact me: tnguyen [at] angus journal [dot] com.
The sites I mentioned for jobs have seriously good companies looking for serious talent (that’s you):
Make sure you research your company thoroughly before applying. Knowing what you are getting yourself into is half the battle.
