Web Design

Outrunning Competitors in the Search Engines

Have you heard the old story about the two guys who were trying to outrun a bear? One stopped to put on his running shoes. The other exclaimed “Are you an idiot? This is a BEAR that’s chasing us, putting on running shoes isn’t going to help you outrun him!”

The other guy paused and said “I don’t have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun YOU.”

The story is humorous, but presents a perspective I find valuable about web design in general and search engines in particular.

There’s always going to be some cool new tool, some effective new strategy, some more links that can be built, some wording that can be tweaked. I have to remember that the work I do doesn’t have to be perfect – it just has to be a little better than what my competitors are doing.

I suspect it’s the same for your business, and very often “a little better” or “a little more” can make a huge difference. A little better response to your ad. A little more foot traffic to your store. A little higher average sale.

When we apply this principle to search engine rankings, “a little better” – like moving from #2 in Google to #1 – can make a huge difference. The site that ranks #2 for any particular search query generally gets 12-21% of all the clicks for that search. Pretty decent, right?

But the site that ranks #1 – just “A LITTLE BETTER” than rank #2 – will typically get 42-56% of all the clicks. Wow! A ranking improvement of just one position could mean double the traffic to your site.

And site #1 may only be “a little better” than site #2 in the eyes of Google. Both sites might be the same age and might be well-optimized for the same keywords – but site #1 might have just one more good backlink than site #2, and that’s what made the difference.

What are you doing to outrun your competitors?

HTTrack Website Copier – EASY!

Way back in my March 6, 2010 Web Wise Column, I talked about “website mirroring software” such as HTTrack and cURL. Such software allows you to retrieve web pages and entire websites, whether or not you have access to logins or passwords.

HTTrack screenshot I’d never tried a couple of the tools I recommended – so today I figured I’d try HTTrack. There’s a local charity who’d been having a hard time with web hosting (they’re trying to rely on donations) and their site has actually been down much of the past week. So I figured downloading their site before things got any worse would be a good idea.

I was amazed at how easy HTTrack was to use!

Here’s how they describe it – from their website at http://www.httrack.com:

HTTrack is a free (GPL, libre/free software) and easy-to-use offline browser utility.

It allows you to download a World Wide Web site from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images, and other files from the server to your computer. HTTrack arranges the original site’s relative link-structure. Simply open a page of the “mirrored” website in your browser, and you can browse the site from link to link, as if you were viewing it online. HTTrack can also update an existing mirrored site, and resume interrupted downloads. HTTrack is fully configurable, and has an integrated help system.

It took about 5 minutes, start to finish. Honest.

Downloaded the software and opened it.

Created a folder to store the downloaded site on my computer (I used their suggestion of C:My Web Sites). Named this project. Typed in the URL I wanted to download. Didn’t tweak any of the other options – and hit NEXT.

That’s it! Once the files were downloaded I hit FINISH, and opened the file in EditPlus (an HTML editor I like.)

Now this site wasn’t real big – less than a dozen pages, with no video or any really large images – but I’ll certainly try this software again.

UPDATE: As of 2020, the site is still active but the last update is from 2017.

Intro to Web Design Blog

Hi there! Thanks for checking out the blog section of my website – which I’m starting today with a bit of trepidation. Are blogs a good idea? You betcha, most of the time. Will I be able to make regular posts? AH, that’s the issue.

I’m fortunate to be able to write a weekly column for the Columbia Daily Tribune newspaper called “Web Wise.” The first column appeared in August 2009 and so far the Tribune’s Business Editor seems inclined to let me keep writing!

So I DO have a way to share information and opinion. And I don’t have a great deal of time to write more – after all, I need to actually get some work done for my web design clients too!

So why the blog? A couple of reasons.

First – it’s good for my business and for my website. I’m subject to Google’s rules too, y’know. Relevant content, added regularly will make MY site rank higher. And I’m new enough to Columbia’s web design scene to have my work cut out for me there.

Second – I can’t say everything I want to in the newspaper column. There’s no way to add video or illustrations, for example. The column just isn’t suitable for offering short snippets of advice or info, either – I need to come up with about 700 to 900 words each week.

And I have opinions that should more prudently come from my own website than from another one.

So – how often I post and what exactly I say are still a bit nebulous – but I’m glad you’re here and I hope you find this section useful!