Google recently launched a secure version of google search. This blog post looks in a little more detail about what this means should they move to make secure search the default choice. Good news for users, bad news for webmasters.

This evening I spare a thought for our clients. In this atmosphere of frugality and prudence another thread of the rug under their feet is being tugged.

My day is increasingly spent in meetings and managing the minutiae of project and departmental needs. Amongst this juggling act, on occasion I have the opportunity to catch up on my arch nemesis ‘The Inbox’.  Today there was a particularly intriguing line item that had me both troubled and perplexed. My colleague, Tom Newman, had sent me a one liner:

“Google launch HTTPS. We need to talk”.

My somewhat dismissive response was immediately

“OK so they add an ‘s’ to the protocol definition. Err… WHO CARES?”

I will not bore you with the rest of this thread. But for the technically minded I’ll give you a précis of what Tom then patiently related to me.

The web page you are reading was delivered to your computer through a type of computer language.  The language used is defined by the first part of the web address. Ever wondered what the “http” bit of http://blog.wtg.co.uk stands for? It’s HyperText Transfer Protocol, computer scientists tend to swap the word ‘language’ for ‘protocol’ when they get computers talking to other computers (humans use language, animals communicate, and computers have protocols). The Hypertext bit is the a fancy word for ‘text with links in it’ (when Sir Tim Berners-Lee was busy inventing the internet, ‘Links’ were a new concept, ergo we got the word “Hypertext”). Thus HTTP describes what language your web browser will use to get the web page you are now viewing. When you request a page by clicking on a link, your browser usually lets the new web page you are visiting know where you’ve come from. This bit of information (the page address you were on before you clicked the link) is called ‘the referrer’ and although you never get to see it, it is tremendously useful to the web site you are visiting.

“Why?” I hear you ask. Well, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the hypothetical online retailer, richardsbetterbargains.com. Richard is new to the retail business and as he doesn’t have a high street presence how does he know what his customers are looking for? The realistic options for Richard are:

1. He could wait until he’s identified patterns from his sales orders. This could take months, plus, if an item is out of stock he won’t register the sale and so will never get a proper grasp on the demand for a particular item.
2. He could commission a market researcher to find out what people really want by standing in the street and asking them. Unfortunately the man in the street is there because he’s not sitting at home spending vast quantities of hard earned cash online. The man on the street is not Richards target audience, the man on the street is buying something else.
3. He could run a ‘referrers report’ that tells him which search engine his potential customers came from and what they were searching for. This is much more promising. Being the smart chap he is Richard could then stock more of widget X, thus increasing his sales many times over. Possibly he could even run a highly successful keywords campaign therfore generating the revenue that allows him to retire to the desert island paradise of his choice.

A referrers report is therefore a useful thing. Its usefulness is not just limited to online retail. Finding out where people have just come from or what they are looking for allows web designers the opportunity to optimise pages and navigation schemes to fulfil these user goals. Giving users what they are looking for can increase conversion, enhance usability or potentially improve that all important key metric for the resident webmaster.

So now we add the letter ‘s’.  Instead of http://www.google.com,  the URL of the worlds favourite search engine is now  https://www.google.com.  The mysterious ‘s’  stands for “Secure”. This means that as well as making sure that your page is encrypted (thus can’t be read by anyone else), it also blocks the useful referrer information. Suddenly all those lovely reports about where your site visitors come from and the search terms they use aren’t reliable or possibly even usable anymore.

So what happens to poor old richardsbetterbargains.com?

It is a stark choice, without a reliable referrers report poor old Richard doesn’t know what his customers are looking for anymore. Those stock lines that were previously flying off the shelves begin to stagnate and Richard is unable to replace them with in demand products. In desperation Richard turns to the market researchers who charge him a small fortune for ‘research of an unknown providence’. Sales continue to falter. Market opportunities are lost, by the time Richard is able to identify a successful product line from sales, those fickle customers have already moved on. Richardsbetterbargains.com eventually drifts away to .com heaven. Richard drifts back to designing interfaces to pay the mortgage on that pesky desert island paradise.

But WTG does a lot of work with central and local government. Why do they care if Google launches a secure search?… Good question.

When we’re designing an interface we use a user centred design approach. We want to know about the end user, who they are, what technology do they use, what websites do they visit, are there any groupings of users, why are they visiting the site, what are they looking for?   You can see where this is going. One of the first and most useful sources of data commonly available to us is a referrers report – specifically the search terms used by customers trying to obtain goods or services is particularly useful. This report is a gold mine. With some basic analysis it is possible to infer many nuggets that guide and inform the information architecture and content strategy of a website. But the beauty of the referrers report is that it is easy to obtain (straight  web logs) and there are many simple analysis tools available, i.e. it is a cheap, reliable (but not necessarily authoritative) source of information. Sure, the information can be obtained from other sources but there is a price tag associated.

This is why I spare a thought for our clients. In this time of budget cuts and tightened purse strings, efficiency through technological innovation is oft touted as the route to salvation. But if Google’s secure search takes off, how many cash strapped government departments are going to invest the time and money to find out where their customers come from and what they searched for?

If you are thinking about your web offering or if you want to know a bit more about what WTG can do for your organisation get in touch.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art of getting a website to work better with search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK. There are a number of Search engine optimisation (SEO) principles which we observe when designing and building websites. The following checklist describes some of these high level principles and techniques:

1. Provide good Content

First rule for any website is to provide good content. Sounds obvious, but many websites struggle because they have poorly written content. Provide frequently updated content that people want to read. Incoming links are key and if you can provide content that people will read and get something out of, there is a good chance they will link to that content.

2. Write good HTML markup

There is more to content than just the keywords. The markup and code underneath can make your content even more attractive to search engines and help your visitors find what they are looking for faster. The general rule of thumb is to use the appropriate tags for the different types of information:

Semantic markup
Semantic markup just means “adding meaning to your content with tags.” For example, instead of formatting a headline with the <b> tag to make it bold, use a heading tag like <h2>, typically browsers and search engines can recognize headings <h1> through <h6>, and usually they expect them to appear in a logical order.

Meta data
Meta tags have never been a guaranteed way to gain a top ranking on crawler-based search engines. Today, the most valuable feature they offer the web site owner is the ability to control to some degree how their web pages are described by some search engines.

Meta Description tags, this should be a short concise description describing what the Page is about. Meta keyword tags, should list 4 or 5 individual keywords related to the Page you have created.

Example:

<head>

<meta content=”SEO, search engines, browsing, optimisation” />

<meta content=”Everything you wanted to know about SEO, but were afraid to ask” />

<title>The truth about SEO</title>

</head>

It’s important to create your web site with keywords and key phrases in mind and to put them in place as you develop the pages and content.

Single keywords are much more commonly entered by web users, which make them more difficult to target effectively than multi-word key phrases. Unless the single keywords are highly unique, your best results will be achieved using key phrases.

Create meaningful links in the markup
Use keywords in links to give them meaning. This is also good practice for increasing accessibility, especially where assistive technologies such as screen readers are concerned:

Example:

• Not good: Read more.
• Better: Read more about search engine optimisation.

Use the ‘TITLE’ tag in links
The ‘TITLE’ attribute is used to describe links, tables, table rows and other structural HTML elements. They’re more versatile than the ALT attribute and many search engine ranking algorithms read the text in TITLE attributes as regular page content.

Example:

<a href=”http://www.wtg.co.uk” title=”WTG is a leading technology consultancy and solutions provider to the UK Public Sector”>WTG a leading technology consultancy</a>

Use the ‘ALT’ tag for images
Always use the alt tag for images; additionally, ensure images are named well. This improves SEO as well as accessibility.

Example:

• Not good: <img src=”some-image.gif />
• Better: <img src=”seo_strategy_diagram.jpg” alt=”This Diagram represent an overview of the components of and SEO strategy: Content, Code, Community” title=”SEO Strategy Diagram” />

3. Don’t try and fool search engines

Whatever you do, don’t try to trick your way into generating more traffic. Duplicate pages, hidden links and other less-than-honest techniques can get you seriously penalised and ruin any positive work you’ve done. Search engines are quite clever!

4. Use obvious URL’s

An obvious URL is a great URL. If a user can look at the Address bar (or a pasted link) and make an accurate guess about the content of the page before ever reaching it, then you’re half way there. These URLs get pasted, shared, emailed, written down, and yes, even recognised by the engines. Many people underestimate how important a good URL is. Dynamic page names are still very frequent and no keywords in the URL, is more a rule than an exception. Yes, it is possible to rank high even without keywords in the URL but all being equal, if you have keywords in the URL (the domain itself, or file names, which are part of the URL), this gives you additional advantage over your competitors.

5. Include sitemaps

Provide a website sitemap, and link to it from your homepage as well as all your other web pages. Sitemaps that link to your main pages will help search engines find your content, as well as being helpful to web site visitors. If your sitemap contains more than about one hundred links, though, break it logically into pages.

6. Submit your site to search engines

A good way to advance your SEO is to build links intelligently. For example, submitting your site to trusted directories such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. We encourage establishing links to authority websites and professional affiliations.

7. Start a blog

Search engines, Google especially, love blogs for the fresh content and highly-structured data. Beyond that, there’s no better way to join the conversations that are already taking place about your industry and/or company. Reading and commenting on other blogs can also increase your exposure and help you acquire new links.

8. Take advantage of social media

There are significant benefits from combining search engine optimisation and social media marketing tactics ranging from increased social network discovery via search to the ability to attract links for improved SEO. With any social media site you use, the first rule is, don’t spam! Be an active, contributing member of the site. The idea is to interact with potential customers, not annoy them.