In search of the web truth

I chose Web Standards as my first subject to post because it still amazes me that so many websites today are missing the basic building blocks of a well built website.

First a little background to set the stage. Just over a year ago I made a sea-change by moving to a wonderful small beach community. I absolutely love it, but there is a downside. With no large enterprises based in the area, my client base is made up of small to medium businesses. Why is that a downside? First I’ll have to tell you what I do.

My previous role (pre sea-change) was Senior Optimisation & Reporting Analyst for a major Australian retailer. Before the major retailer, I was a Web Information Analyst for a major Australian bank. Working in larger enterprises allowed me to specialise. My roles within the large web development teams, focused on search engine optimisation (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM) and web analytics. Now (post sea-change) I am an Independent Search and Web Analytics Consultant. Again I focus on SEO, SEM and Web Analytics.

Now here is where it all goes wrong. When talking to a potential client, who has asked me to help them with SEO, I find that the website they are trying to optimise is missing all the basic building blocks of a well built website. The basic building blocks of web development are also the basic building blocks of SEO. This is where it gets tricky. How do you tell a potential client that their website is a very weak building block to now optimise for the likes of Google, Yahoo and Live? The sites have been developed for them by the local IT graduate that has an idea of HTML, web contact forms and an office network. Or, even worse, a friend that says they can build them a site for a really great price.

How do these small businesses know that they are getting a negative value website? The sites cost them to build and maintain. Not much but still it costs them. They can’t be found by searchers looking for their products, services, or simply their address. So, basically no positive value and it still cost them. So did they get a return on their investment? Most likely, not!

Where are the standards? Where is the certification seal that tells website owners and their users that a website has been built to a standard and is safe and secure? Sure we have standards from the World Wide Web Consortium, like WCAG, CSS and HTML or XHTML. Also there is a Certified Internet Web Professional program, which awards certification to those that pursue it. Great, who’s supposed to educate the small business operators that these standards exist and that developers should be certified?

Now instead of spending my time optimising my website for terms like SEO and SEM, I am optimising my site for website development and website design. What? Why? I’ll tell you why. I would rather sell a client a well built website, using an open source content management system (CMS) like Joomla, use a optimised for SEO template design and the train the business how to write for the web and what parts of their content impacts SEO, then tell them the website they paid there friend to do, needs to be completely trashed and started all over.