Web design, development and creative agencies will usually shy away from offering Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as a service. And for good reason, it’s a messy trade plagued with snake oil salesman selling over-hyped talismans. It can be difficult for an agency to even know where to start when helping out their clients with SEO. At Pelago we don’t offer SEO as one of our services, mostly because it’s difficult to manage expectations. We do, however, inform our clients that the sites we design and develop will perform well organically on Google because we implement many SEO-friendly practices. And our clients are usually overwhelmed with their results. Needless to say, we’ve learned a few things about SEO along the way. Mostly, we’ve learned that it isn’t that difficult.

When you break it down to its basic elements, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is three parts common sense and one part voodoo. The good news is that the practical common sense approach will accomplish 90% of your client’s organic SEO needs. Here are some basic tips on what your web design, development or creative agency can be doing to design and develop more search-friendly web sites, as well as some tips you can pass along to your clients on how to keep the organic SEO goodness going.

Don’t be lazy

Perhaps the most important factor in developing any web site is to be thorough and consistent with the HTML code. This means using semantic markup — even if it means having to go back to your CSS document and adding a style for it — throughout the site and always fill in the alt and title parameters with useful information. In addition, make sure your page titles are unique to each page and that the meta keywords and descriptions are, too. When we get lazy we start leaving these items blank, or we fill them with lazy, spur-of-the-moment words, or we just copy and paste irrelevant content. Try to think like your client and put something useful in these SEO-rich areas of the site. Even if deadlines are looming or you don’t quite get what your client’s business is all about, take the time to figure out what content would further improve your client’s online presence. When we get lazy, we focus only on what we know the client is going to see. Search engines, however, see a lot more than the client and their audience.

Start with SEO-worthy content

Designing and developing a good web site can become a difficult and morale-killing task if the copy isn’t any good. Not only will bad copy detract from the readability of the web site, it will hurt your client’s SEO efforts. When advising a client to write better content for their web site be sure to give them some basic SEO tips. We usually advise our clients to come up with a list of specific keywords that they want to show up for in Google. Then we ask them to write content and sprinkle those keywords throughout their writing. But most importantly they need to be honest and genuine, writing first to provide their readers with useful content and second to be search engine friendly. It’s pretty easy to tell when a web site has reversed these two priorities because you won’t make it through the first paragraph. I am convinced that Google’s mystical algorithm is able to identify copy that is honest and genuine and reward it higher search rankings.

Keep on keepin’ on

High ranking organic search results can not be gained overnight, nor in a week, nor in a few months for that matter. It may take at least a year to see any return on your web site development investment. In that meantime it helps if the client is continually generating content and adding it to the web site. This can be in the form of a blog or a content management system installed on the web site. Persistence and patience will pay off in the long run. Google seems to have figured this one out, too. They will reward a client’s web site if it sees the site has history and relevance. Establishing site relevance in the online realm is not a fly-by-night operation. It requires a long-term commitment. Nurturing and growing web site content over time is one of the most powerful tools for increasing a web site’s search engine ranking.

Dabble in voodoo

Like I said above, a well designed and developed web site will naturally rank high with search engines. But what about that other 10%? What about the voodoo being touted by SEO experts to get you on page one? We’ve dabbled in enough voodoo to tell you that some of it works and some of it doesn’t, and we’ve had a lot of success getting on page one of Google without resorting to voodoo. The general rule of thumb is that if it feels wrong, it probably is and Google will penalize you for it. For example, trying to hide keywords in the background and stealing meta tags from other sites are tactics that just aren’t ethical and misrepresent what your web site is actually about. The goal here isn’t to trick the search engines, it’s to lead them. We’ve worked with SEO experts in the past and have tried all of their tricks and the ones that always worked best were the ones that didn’t require us to compromise the integrity of the web site structure or its content. Google is only getting smarter and more able to distinguish a quality web site from one generated at an SEO farm.

Optimizing a web site to score well with search engines requires a lot of time and effort. It’s not like the latest diet fad or get-rich-quick scheme that promises results in only days. To the contrary, it takes months, even years, of updating and tweaking a web site for it to do well on search engines. The fact that more and more businesses are dumping money into pay-per-click ads on Google only reinforces how important time is as a factor in the whole search engine equation. They are paying top dollar for sponsored links on page one because it’s a cheaper investment than getting on page one organically. As web designers, developers and creatives, we have the opportunity to be at ground zero when designing and developing a web site, and to build a solid organic foundation from which our client’s SEO efforts can be far more easily obtained.

From the creative business and web consulting minds at Boston-based 829 studios comes a generous and uplifting review of Intervals online project management software:

Intervals’ numerous visual reporting features allow us to understand where the most hours are being spent (whether they’re in consulting, programming, design, or social media) with each client, how efficient our employees are, and where our clients could streamline their requests.

Click through to the blog post to read more about what 829 studios had to say about Intervals. And while you are at their site, check out some of the great work they do.

We have been putting the finishing touches on one of our most ambitious launches of the year. We’ve overhauled some core features to bring you better client and contact management and a more intuitive and accessible web-based project management experience. Keep reading below to find out what was included in this release and how these updates help you track time and manage tasks.

Additional Fields of Information and the Ability to Create Client Contacts

Each person can have multiple phone numbers, web sites, emails, social media profiles, and addresses. Prior to this launch clients could only have one contact and if you wanted that person to login they would have to be created again as a person (typically as an executive user). Associate multiple contacts with each client and decide whether or not each person has the ability to login.

Granular Access Controls for Executive User Level

One of our most requested features has been the ability to fine tune what the executive level user can and can’t do. Executive level users are typically given limited access to only their assigned projects. However, this has not always been restrictive enough for some who want to limit access even further. Now an executive’s access can be whittled down further to include or restrict a combination of commenting on tasks, viewing time data, viewing financial information and/or viewing invoices. For example, you might want clients to login make comments on tasks without viewing any time data or financial information. This feature allows you to customize the client login experience to your liking and comfort level.

Right-click to do anything and everything

The ability to right-click on a task in the task listing has always been a quick and easy method for updating tasks. Now we’ve added the right-click contextual menus to the person, project, client, and invoice listings. Adding payments to projects, creating client contacts, and updating invoices are now just a right-click away. We’ve layered in right-click functionality just about everywhere we could and we encourage you to use the right-click contextual menus to quickly update information. And if we’ve missed something, or there is functionality you’d find useful in these menus, just let us know.

Timers and Search Dock

We’ve moved the task timers, general timers and quick search to a dock at the bottom edge of your web browser. No more scrolling to the bottom of the page to start or stop a timer in the footer, it’s right there at the bottom of the browser window. The ability to expand and collapse task timers and general timers makes managing them a lot easier from the dock. In addition, we’ve expanded the quick task search to include project notes, documents, milestones, projects, people, clients and invoices.

Import Clients

The ability to import client data is just the first step in making it easier for you to import data you may have pulled from a previous time tracking or project management application, or from the Excel spreadsheets you may be using to keep track of your tasks and projects. The import functionality is extremely flexible in that it will help you map your existing data to the Intervals data format. And it’s very forgiving. If the data did not import properly or you need to redo the import for any reason, you can undo the import and start over. Although you can only import clients for now, we have import utilities in the works for projects, people, tasks and more.

Run Reports by Task

When it comes to running reports, we’ve always been advocates of presenting your data in a number of different formats. From pie chart graphs to tabulated data, from the smallest units of time tracked to aggregated summaries of time, our goal is to provide a robust set of reports and for you to manipulate to suit your needs best. Now we’ve gone and made our reports even more powerful by adding the ability to view each report by task. Find out not only which projects are taking up most of your time, but which tasks as well.

Fully Customize Your Own Theme

Looking for a way to make Intervals more your own visually? Use your CSS skills to customize the look and feel of your Intervals account and bring the interface more inline with the rest of your branding. No longer are you constrained to only the predefined themes. The advanced theme editor empowers you to apply your own CSS rules to any and every aspect of the Intervals interface. Of course, this feature is for advanced web developers only. If you end up making the page disappear, well, that’s your problem ;). The feature is available in the Settings & Defaults section within your account.

Official API Release

The API is now officially out of beta. From here on the API is ready for production use. It’s been battle-tested by our beta developers, whose feedback has been invaluable for putting on the finishing touches. Expect to see more functionality rolled out to the API as we continue to incorporate feedback.

» For more information, read the API documentation.

Additional Improvements

We realize we’ve just covered a lot of significant features but there are a few other notable updates we’d like to mention. In no particular order, here are a few other Intervals enhancements that are likely to make your project management experience even more enjoyable:

• The crosschart report has been extended to include manager as one of the axis options, allowing you to quickly assess how much time each project manager is managing, grouped by client, project, milestone and more.
• Added support for four Chinese locales
• Quickly move through milestones and tasks using “Previous” and “Next” links on the task and milestone detail pages. Paginated results are based on the last filter viewed and if you hover your mouse on the “Previous” or “Next” links additional information will become viewable.

Coming Soon: Mobile Version

Intervals is currently being adapted to a smaller, on-the-go, mobile version for use on any smartphone with a web browser. The mobile version wasn’t quite ready to go beta with this launch, but once we’re finished putting the finishing touches on it, the mobile version will be made available. It will include the ability to start, stop and apply timers and update tasks during meetings, in the field, or wherever else your business may take you. This web-based mobile beta version of Intervals will work on all smartphones OSes with modern web browsers, such as the iPhone OS, Windows Mobile, Android, and Maemo.

Anything new and relatively cool is going to be plagued with hype. Summer blockbusters, your favorite band, and most of all, Web 2.0. We can’t agree on the definition of Web 2.0 but we do all agree that it is an important milestone in the evolution of web-based technology. While us designers, developers and creatives have embraced Web 2.0 and have leaned into it with all of our talents and skills, what does corporate america think? What do the suits, chained to these corporate behemoths, think about adapting Web 2.0 technologies into their business?

At the SXSWi panel “What Does Corporate America Think of 2.0?” Andrew McAfee, a scientist from MIT, delivered some valuable insight in regards to introducing corporations to 2.0 technologies. This advice is also applicable to the small business. As web designers and developers we are often in a position where we have to convince the decision makers to adopt a new technology. Below are my notes, as well as my thoughts about this idea of bringing the enterprise up-to-date with what’s happening online.

2.0 is in a state of flux

The common denominator among anything calling itself 2.0 is this idea of transparency and constant flux that shows up in the development cycle and often carries through to the finished product. For example, the concept of social sharing has bled its way into many online tools. Small businesses are more nimble and more likely to adapt these newer technologies. Corporations, however, move much slower.

The corporate mindset is risk averse and conservative. The decision process is encumbered and results in executives being enamored with the status quo, predicating a natural preference for incumbent technologies. A great example of this is our own web-based time, task and project management software, Intervals. We developed Intervals for the small business knowing their agility would make them far more likely to drop the incumbent, and grossly overweight, Microsoft Project. And many small businesses have done just that, dropped Microsoft Project for a fresh and lighter weight alternative. Meanwhile, their larger corporate counterparts will cling to Microsoft Project for many reasons — too entrenched in historical data and overly dependent on Gantt charts, to name two.

And you can’t blame them, really. Corporations have been around longer than most small businesses and have had their share of failures with adopting over-hyped technologies in the past. As Andrew McAfee pointed out, these past negative experiences have left them skeptical and unimpressed by features and novelty. And that’s what many of these new Web 2.0 apps are, a feature. Twitter is a stream of chatty consciousness and Basecamp is an atypical to-do list. How are these tools going to help run corporations, much less, the small business?

In contrast, the agile nature of the small business will sometimes result in adopting 2.0 technologies too early. I’ve seen several small businesses hop from tool to tool, dropping the current web-based productivity app for whatever software has recently appeared on the scene and received a deluge of tweets announcing it’s revolutionary something-or-other.

The overall goal of adopting Web 2.0 technology into any size business is to find the sweet spot between the right set of features for long term productivity goals and enough stability and certainty to sway the decision makers, aka, the suits. Andrew McAfee listed some of the characteristics of these decision makers, which you will notice apply to most businesses. Decision makers, he said, are:

• Busy, uninterested in social revolution
• Hostile to auto-obsolescence
• Require ROI, justification of business decisions
• Convinced of their own uniqueness
• Aware of new tools and new approaches
• Aware of organizational dysfunction
• Pragmatic, swayed by theory, evidence, narratives, peers
• Afraid of being left behind

Talking about technology

Now that we understand how the corporate mindset walks, talks and thinks, how do we approach our clients when our web design and development projects take us in the direction of adopting new technologies? Whether it’s convincing them to communicate with your design and development team via web-based project management tools or presenting reasons why open source technologies fit their budget and requirements better than proprietary software, the way we talk to our clients should be the same.

The first rule in talking tech with your clients is to jettison the jargon. And yet this is what most designers and developers fail to do. We string together words like “solution,” “paradigm” and, my favorite, “revolutionary.” Find a common vernacular and stick to it. And don’t talk down to your clients. They will be discouraged by your condescension and less likely to like you.

Frame all of your conversations with practical applications. And even then make sure you are doing more than just show-and-tell with your clients. Andrew McAfee gave a brilliant example of how he demonstrated to his people that Google Scholar is far more efficient at finding research than MITs own library search. Had he just raved about how great Google Scholar is at digging up research, they would not have been as attentive. But he didn’t. He showed them instead and earned a captive audience as a result.

In this case, Google was the case study needed to sway the decision makers. Most clients, however, will want to see data and practical case studies that are closer to the core of their business. Google is big but the lessons we have to learn from them are not applicable to everyone. Start with more mainstream examples of how 2.0 technology will benefit your client. The more they are able to relate to the case study, the greater the chance they will be convinced.

Whenever we design and develop web sites and web-based applications for our clients we are helping them make decisions that will effect their business more in the long run than the short. While we may only work with them for a few months on their project, they must continue on for the next several years with what we’ve developed. Put your project planning in this perspective and you will be far more persuasive and successful with client projects.

Notes from the underground

Explore the links below to see what others at SXSWi had to say about this panel:

• Social Media B2b ~ SXSW: WHAT DOES CORPORATE AMERICA THINK OF 2.0
• Turbo Todd ~ What Does Corporate America Think of 2.0?
• Secondary Artifacts ~ what does corporate america think of 2.0?
• Andrew McAfee’s blog post about heading SXSWi

Intervals web-based time, task and project management software not only lets you determine how much you want to bill for your services per each project, it also let’s you define how that time is tracked into categories, what we call modules. Modules allow you to cross reference your time tracking data across client projects so you can know how your time is being tracked. Watch the video demo below to learn more.