Martin says... Don't Justify Align

I was recently asked by one of my WordPress clients to justify fully the text on their website rather than to align left. Justification (or full alignment or double justification) means that each line in your web page is the same length (except perhaps for the last line), with the text on those lines being spread out to meet a uniform line width and to align with both the left and right margins.

The html code (or attribute) to achieve this (for those of you who are interested) is align=”justify”.

I advised my client against justifying the text on their web page. I think that most website readers prefer to have their text set out in fairly narrow columns, and with the text aligned left. This makes it easier to read.

Justified Alignment is is actually non-standard for the web, and the W3C standards commitee state the following :

Of course, it’s up to you as a website owner to make the final decision on the text layout and other styles on your site, and don’t forget that text alignment has worked successfully for newspapers for many decades.

Why you shouldn’t align html justify is another great post from: DMJ Computer Services

The EU Cookie directive comes into force for UK-based websites on 25th May 2012. This directive came into force for some other countries in the EU a year ago, but the UK government gave website owners here an additional year to make their sites compliant, whilst at the same time hoping that the directive itself was clarified.

What does the EU Cookie Directive say?

Read the full EU Cookie Directive as published by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

What does the EU Cookie Directive mean in practical terms?

From 25th May, all websites must tell visitors if they employ non-essential cookies AND must get explicit permission from visitors to store those cookies on their computer. This clearly has implications for many thousands of website owners, given that the majority of websites use cookies.

The choice of how you deal with this directive is yours as website owners, but here are our thoughts :

• Implementing the directive is likely to adversely impact your website traffic, as more people will click away from your site rather than accept the cookies. This is irrational on the part of the visitor, because they are likely to be visiting many other websites that are operated outside the EU, or which don’t disclose their use of cookies, but nonetheless is likely to discourage some from entering your website;
• If you are using usage tracking systems, such as Google Analytics, your stats are in future likely to grossly under-report your real traffic. The reason for this is that website visitors that arrive at your site and don’t accept your cookies will not be tracked (that’s the whole point of the directive). Anecdotal evidence from other website owners suggests that your reported Google Analytics traffic might fall by as much as 80%-90%;
• The directive will put those that comply with it at a disadvantage to those who don’t… although they may avoid a fine!
• Most website owners will not implement the directive, either through ignorance, or defiance, or simply because they don’t know how to implement the changes (or think they will cost too much);
• A few website owners will have action taken against them;

Is your website affected by the new EU Cookie Directive?

Most websites use cookies. However, some cookie use is exempt from the directive, such as cookies that are used to provide a user function that would not be possible without the use of the cookies. For example, a shopping cart system would be expected to use cookies to store the contents of the cart while the visitor was shopping, and to ensure that when they went to checkout the contents of the cart were available.

However, the use of 3rd-party cookies such as those that track visitor usage of the site, are caught by the directive. This means, for example, that if your site uses Google Analytics, Adwords or Adsense code, the directive applies to you.

If you want to comply with the directive, what should you do?

Based on our current understanding, to properly comply with the directive, you need to either :

or

In any case, it might be prudent to involve your website developer or to get an independent audit of the cookies in use on your website. Implementing the changes on your website to comply with these directives might just take an hour or two to assess and complete.

We can do this for you

We are not happy that this directive is coming into force. It creates additional work for us which, unfortunately, has to be paid for by our clients. If our clients want us to audit their site for cookie usage, and subsequently to change the website to comply, then we will need to charge for this work.

Our expectation is for a typical cookie audit to cost no more than £20+vat, and making appropriate compliance changes to your website will cost in the region of £40+vat – £80+vat. For larger, or more complex sites, this may be higher, but we will always discuss the costs and implications with you first.

Here is an example of the EU Cookie Directive in action on one of our sites. Bear in mind that it’s not necessarily just a case of installing a plugin or other supplied code into your website. To do the job properly we think you need to :

• Ensure you have a prominent notification on every page of your website to let your visitors know that you store cookies on their computer;
• Give visitors the opportunity to understand which cookies you use and how you use them. We do this in the example site by pointing them to our privacy policy;
• Allow visitors to confirm that they are happy to accept your cookies… and make sure you only store the cookies if they have accepted them – this might mean adding a little extra code to ‘wrap around’ your cookie creation process;
• If your site allows login or commenting ability (and this process generates cookies), add a short bit of text at the login stage or above the comments area just to gently advise your visitors that this will generate a cookie;

How do I comply with the EU Cookie Directive? is another great post from: DMJ Computer Services

Official WordPress Logo

Have you recently updated WordPress and then noticed that your post area looks blank when you edit existing posts or pages?

I noticed this after going through the hassle of upgrading to WordPress 3.3.1, and manifests itself as white text being displayed on a white background when your post edit page loads. You might also find that switching between ‘Visual’ and ‘HTML’ modes doesn’t work either, and the wysiwyg icons don’t display.

Having looked through loads of forums and support groups, with various suggestions such as uploading the WordPress files again, clearing cache, and switching off plugins, I came across a random suggestion that has appeared to fix the ‘white text on white background’ problem for me.

Try installing the Use Google Libraries plugin, then clear your browser cache and try again. If this works for you then it suggest a problem with one of the WordPress libraries or files in your install, as the plugin will go off to Google’s libraries to get the files it needs instead. This could also improve the performance of your site too, as you will be making use of Google’s content delivery network and it’ll reduce the load on your server too.

WordPress post edit area is blank (displays white text on white background) is another great post from: DMJ Computer Services

Control your own domain

Bottin Cartographes have successfully brought a law suit against Google in France. Bottin claim that Google has been anti-competitive when offering their free Google Maps API service to businesses, and that this is not competitive with it’s own services. Of course, Google will appeal against this, and may well win, but it has potentially huge implications.

It can be really difficult for many conventional businesses to compete with companies that offer similar products and services free of charge. For businesses that have spent lots of time and money building a business, it can be frustrating to find that a large organisation comes along and gives the same, or very simliar products and services away at no charge. Some of the largest players (such as Google) can afford to build these services almost out of their slush funds, as a bit of a punt, without necessarily having a concrete business plan to show how much return on their investment can be expected. Indeed, Google even have what they call 20% time for their employees – allowing staff members to work on any business-related project of their choice for 20% of their working time.

As a consumer I think Google maps is a great application – so thank you google, but it is sad if it renders conventional businesses unviable as a result.

As a business owner, though, I know that I offer my clients a better, more professional and more thorough service than they can get from free Google Sites. I also believe that, as the saying goes, ‘all boats are lifted up in a flood’… making the market for my products and services larger than it was before they came along. In other words, owning a website is a more viable option than it was before for most people, and whilst they might look at a Google site as an initial option, they are more likely to come to me when they find that they want to do more with their web presence.

Perhaps Bottin Cartographes, and other organisations, should think like this too, and look for ways to capitalise on what must be a larger Worldwide market for business mapping services!

What’s your view? Is there a net benefit or a disadvantage to having companies like Google building the same services as you? Add your comments below…

Are Google helping or hindering your business? is another great post from: DMJ Computer Services

Facebook Update – Welcome pages no longer available

With incredible bad timing, Facebook have now removed the ability for users to direct visitors to a specific tab. This means that all ‘Fan Gate’ style welcome pages will stop working pretty soon. You may have noticed this already if you have switched to the new timeline view for your facebook account.

Although you will no longer be able to create welcome pages for your Facebook visitors, you’ll still be able to create additional tabs (or sub-pages) that you can direct visitors to, but you’ll need to signpost these links in your posts rather than having your visitors directed there automatically.

The DMJ Facebook Welcome page

Do you want to add a welcome page to Facebook, and perhaps one that displays in two different ways depending whether the visitor has already ‘liked’ you or not? You can even go one step further and add other tabs (Facebook terminology for navigational links in your Facebook sidebar). These can include html and javascript, so you could build some really slick functionality and design excellence into your pages.

This could add a little more professionalism to your Facebook business pages and, with an appropriate call-to-action, could encourage more people to like you.

Facebook Welcome page for Normandie Rentals

First of all you’ll need to create a welcome page for your Facebook.

There are a few Facebook apps you can use to do the job, but I’m going to demonstrate the one I used. Before we go too far, take a look at our own DMJ Computer Services and Vouchforthis welcome page on Facebook so you can see what you’re aiming for – why not ‘like us’ while you’re there?

Creating your Facebook Welcome page

I chose the Static HTML: iframe tabs app from a suggested list of 10 facebook apps for building custom pages to set up my custom welcome page. I did try a few of the other apps in the list, but this was the one that gave me the most flexibility, allowed me to add the javascript that the vouchforthis widget needs, and didn’t ask me to put a big advert for the developer on my page.

Here’s a link to the instructions for installing and configuring the app.

Displaying your testimonials on Facebook

The nice thing about this app is that you can create different welcome pages for fans and non-fans – so the non-fan welcome page could be set up to encourage the visitor to ‘like’ you, and the fan welcome page could contain some helpful hints and tips that you’re happy to give away to your fans.

Display your testimonials on your Facebook page

If you’re already a member of Vouchforthis, our revolutionary tool for displaying on your websites and blogs, you’ll know how useful it is to manage all your testimonials in a single place and then deploy them around the web. Now, using the Static HTML: iframe tabs app, you can also display your testimonial widget on your Facebook page. This is great, because you can show your Facebook visitors how credible you are BEFORE they find out more about you. Take a look at our detailed instructions for integrating your vouchforthis testimonials into your Facebook Welcome page.

Problems creating your Facebook Welcome page?

If you’re having problems adding your Facebook Welcome page, or if you can’t add your Vouchforthis widget to it, drop us a line. If it’s a quick fix we’ll see if we can help out. If it looks like it will take a bit longer…

Creating Facebook Welcome and other pages is another great post from: DMJ Computer Services

If you have been following the series you would already have read how to boost the search engine traffic to your blog, how to get other websites to link to yours, and telling friends, family and followers about it. Now it’s time to get other people to tell their networks about your blog.

Getting strangers to spread the word about my blog

Wouldn’t it be great if you could just post some content on your site and then get loads of people you don’t know to tell their friends about it? Well, it’s Social Media again!…

Do you use social sharing icons on your website posts? These are the icons that visitors can click to share your article with their own followers if they like it enough. If your content really is good, and it is relevant to other people (why would you post it otherwise?), then you should allow them to easily share it. If you don’t have these on your site, there are some decent plugins (search for something like ‘social sharing plugins’ if you use platforms such as WordPress, Joomla or Drupal). Ask your website designer if you’re having trouble.

Twitter is also useful here – if you tweet about something, and there is space left at the end of the the tweet, try adding something like ‘Pls RT’. A few kind souls will see it and might re-tweet it for you. There are a few things to bear in mind here, though – out of courtesy you should also extend the favour when you see one of their tweets (if you think it would be of interest to your followers), and you shouldn’t ask for everything to be re-tweeted. Here’s something radical..

If you’re actively tweeting your own interesting content, why not try re-tweeting a few Tweets that your own network have posted? You might find that they then come looking for your tweets… and re-tweet some of them!

Important — people that don’t know are only likely to share your content with their networks if there is a good reason for them to do it. As we have already discussed, this is more likely to happen if you do something for them first (such as liking or re-tweeting them). However, you will still need to make your content useful enough or interesting enough to others. So, spend time building great content! One great post is worth more than a dozen lame ones.

That’s the last of our short series helping you to get more blog visitors. Having got more visitors to read your blog, the next big challenge is getting more of them to interact with it – this means getting comments, and is the subject of a series of posts we’re working on right now…. and coming soon!

How do I get more people to read my blog? Step 4 – Getting strangers to spread the word is another great post from: DMJ Computer Services

If you have been following the series you would already have read how to boost the search engine traffic to your blog and how to get other websites to link to yours. Now it’s time to let other people know about your blog.

Telling your friends, fans and followers about your site

Use social media sites to link to your content – post updates on your Facebook page and on Linked In, and Tweet from time to time, making sure you always link the update back to your website (otherwise, your followers won’t be able to discover all the other great content on your site). You should usually include a call-to-action to tell them why they need to visit. Social media is great for this – it’s generally free and easy to use. By posting regular, interesting and relevant content you will gradually build up a following. Then, hopefully, some of your followers will start to take solid actions (downloading your stuff, sharing your content, buying your goods, subscribing to other services etc).

Also to do with social media – make sure you follow other people in industries that are of interest to you. Quite often you’ll be followed back as a result.

Join some Linked In groups – look for those that are related to your interests (personal and business), and start contributing discussions and comments. Whilst on this subject – why not try answering some of the questions that Linked In members post. You might just get a few people look at your website or blog if your answers are credible.

Have you tried building up a subscriber list and sending regular newsletters to your followers? I know that all the focus seems to be on social media these days, but a lot of people do still read the stuff that arrives in their inbox. In addition, newsletters allow you to engage personally with your followers, giving them a range of different articles, hints and news items to read and at a time to suit them (rather than relying on them spotting your tweet as it zips past).

Does your blog / site have a feed subscription link? This is the (generally) orange wireless icon – it might also say ‘RSS Feed’ – and allows your website visitors to subscribe to your blog updates. So, whenever you add a new blog post it will pop up in the feed reader that your visitor is using so that they are aware of it straight away. If you’re not already giving them this possibility, why not ask your web designer to add it for you? If you aren’t already using a feed reader yourself, then I recommend you take a look at igoogle.com. This will allow you to keep an eye on all of your favourite blog content (as well as what your competitors are writing about).

How do I get more people to read my blog? Step 3 – Tell friends, fans and followers about it is another great post from: DMJ Computer Services

If you have been following the series you would already have read how to boost the search engine traffic to your blog. Now it’s time to go to work on getting links from other websites.

Getting found from links on other websites

The search engine benefit that your site receives when other sites link to you should not be underestimated. This is especially true for sites that already have a good search engine reputation AND which are relevant to your content. This is how much of the search engine World finds out which sites are reputable – if the BBC website links to one of your posts, Google is likely to rank your website more highly as a result. If you really want to learn more, take a look at the Wiki definition of PageRank.

However, as well as the search engine benefit that inbound links offer, real visitors may click those links and visit your website too. So link building is really important for your website strategy. Here are a few ideas :

• Search for websites that have similar content to yours and ask for a link
• If you operate in a niche, try seeking out blogs and forums that talk about your content and then start posting your own comments. However building up a reputation will take time, so…
• Don’t make your comments too sales focused
• Do impart advice and answers to questions
• Do offer to help out (even if it means recommending somebody else or another website)
• Do make sure you include a link to your website – usually this is allowed as part of your signature
• Register on free, or low cost, niche sites – the ones that allow you to create a profile, add a bio, and, most importantly, link through to your own website. Some of these sites are very good and get a lot of traffic, so do ‘work’ them hard, add content that will appeal to the typical users of the site, and make sure you don’t skimp on the details you upload either. The content you add to the site could help your own SEO activity as well as making it more likely that real visitors will want to find out more by visiting your website
• Be wary of link exchanges – they generally don’t bring you any benefit and could end up diminishing your link value and sending people away from your site.

Tip : Use anchor text wisely – Anchor text is the visable, clickable text in a hyperlink. When adding links to your site, try to put something meaningful in the anchor text. Search engines use the anchor text to get a better idea of what is at the other end of the link and to understand what keywords your site is relevant for. So if your anchor text says ‘click here’ that really doesn’t say very much, but if it says ‘Book your next French holiday’ it gives a really big clue as to what your site is about. Real visitors will find it more useful too!

How do I get more people to read my blog? Step 2 – Get found from links on other websites is another great post from: DMJ Computer Services

I know my posts aren’t the most exciting to read but wondered if something can be done to make it easy for folks to comment or even follow my blog if they so wish. Any suggestions?

I am splitting this into separate posts because there are really two different problems that need resolving :

How do I get more people to read my blog posts? 

Then, once they have read the blog post….

How do I get people to comment on, and follow, my blog posts?

So, first things first…

How do I get more people to read my blog posts?

Pretty much all the people who arrive at your website do so because :

1. They found it via a search engine
2. They found a link to it on another website
3. You told them about it
4. Somebody else told them about it
5. You paid for them to find it

So it would seem reasonable that to increase your visitor numbers you need to address each of the above points to some degree. Let’s tackle each one in turn, but bear in mind that each of these points really merits a comprehensive article in it’s own right so only the basics are discussed here…

Getting found by search engines

With so many new websites being launched, it really is getting much harder to achieve good search engine positions for your site’s main key phrases. If you operate in a fairly exclusive niche then it might be slightly easier, but mostly it is hard, hard work without guarantee of success. Paying a search optimisation expert to help you do this may get you results, but you need to be fairly sure that your return on investment will outweight the costs before you commit, and if you do engage a professional -

• make sure that you can measure the improvement as you go
• don’t pay a large amount up front

There are things that you should be doing on your website yourself BEFORE asking a professional to get involved. I’m talking about the SEO ‘low hanging fruit’ here, the kind of good practice that should really be part of every page and every blog post that you create. There are no secrets here – just good common sense.

Some of the points that will help search engines find your site, and rank it more highly, are :

• Make your site easily navigable, and make sure all of the pages that you want to be found can be found by navigating around your site. Remember that search engines cannot ‘log in’ to your site, so if you put any of your great content behind a login / registration page… it cannot be found;
• Create a sitemap for search engines AND tell the search engines about it. This is not the same as your normal html sitemap to help visitors find their way around your site, but is generally an XML sitemap specifically built for search engines;
• Finding some good phrases that people really do search for and then planting them in your website. There are various keyword tools that will help you find reasonable keywords for your site, but make sure you don’t go for the highly competitive keywords – isn’t it better to be found on page 1 of Google for a term that is searched for 50 times a month, than to be found on page 20 for a term that is searched for a million times a month? Nobody will find you on page 20. Also, bear in mind that none of the keyword tools are completely accurate!
• Making sure each of your pages has a good page title that really explains what the page is about – this could include one or several of your keywords;
• Structuring the layout of your pages so they contain appropriate heading tags (these are the h1, h2, h3 etc html tags)
• Making sure that plenty of other websites link to yours. This is really important, but I’m going to leave this for my next post (see ‘Getting found from links on other websites’ coming soon)
• Fairly frequent updates to your website and blog content. Search engines appear to be giving frequency of update a little more priority these days. It makes sense for them to do this, as an active website is more likely to be ‘current’ and the business owner ‘at home’. If you were Google, would you really want to show searchers a web page that hadn’t changed for 5 years?

How do I get more people to read my blog? Step 1 – Get found by the search engines is another great post from: DMJ Computer Services

This is Referrer Spam

Have you checked your Google Analytics traffic sats recently and noticed a bit of traffic from some unlikely sources?

When checking your referrers (which sites have sent you traffic) have you spotted sites such as www.forex-ninjas.com and www.rock.to?

If so, then you have had some referrer spam. This traffic is no good at all to you, and isn’t actually the result of them visiting your site at all. Confused?

What is referrer spam?

When you add Google Analytics (or indeed any public facing analytics code) to your website you are placing a small script on your web pages. When someone visits your pages the script tells Google about the visit and Google then show it on your Analytics report.

However, as the script is visible in your page source (try navigating to your web page, then click ‘View Source’ in your web browser tools and find ‘analytics’) it can be used in a bad way too. Here’s what happens…

If I had a website whose traffic I wanted to artificially boost, I would copy the analytics code form your web page and paste it (along with the code from thousands of other websites) into my own web page. Then I would navigate to my web page. This would immediate execute all of the analytics code scripts in the page, making it appear to Google that I had visited each of these pages.

That’s rubbish, I hear you say. Why would I want to waste my time doing that?

What benefit does referrer spam have for the perpetrator?

Well. When you see these sites appear in your Google Analytics reports what do you do?

I have actually visited a few to see where my link appears on their site.

So, if I have visited their sites to have a look, then I’m sure that you have too. That’s what they are after – traffic, which delivers impressions for their advertisers, and which looks good to site owners if they have employed a rather shady web company to help build their traffic.

Can I do anything about it?

Google Analytics Profile Filter

I’m guessing that Google will eventually get on top of this and stop these referrals appearing in your analytics reports, but unfortunately as soon as one route is shut down another will open up.

You could play around with the filters on your analytics profile (excluding specific domains), but that’s probably a little too much effort – especially if you have multiple sites and lots of different spam referrers.

Is Referrer Spam a risk to me?

Probably not if you ignore it.

However, if the site was malicious in some way (for example, by automatically downloading something nasty to the computers of anyone who visited it), that might be different.

So, my recommendation is not to visit any of these sites at all – even if you have spam and virus protections running on your computer or built into your web browsers.

Can referrer spam represent real visits to my site too?

Yes. I have described a way that spammers can trick Google Analytics users into thinking that they have had a visit, but of course they can pay real visits to your site too. This may have the added complication if you display a list of referrers on your site – some people do, and this can give good search engine link juice to the spamming site!

Forex Ninjas in your Analytics? – You have Referrer Spam! is another great post from: DMJ Computer Services