I was reading a comment at Gaywebmastering and it struck me, at how things seem to always be in conflict within our industry, and the Internet in General. More specifically, in regards to designers and search engine optimization of pages. And frankly, I think it comes down to the simple fact that most of us aren’t interested in quality anymore.

I am not talking about the web designer, or the SEO expert either. Though I’ll say that quality is certainly not becoming a high selling point anymore, but quick & cheap is. Still, I think the real experts who design websites, who practice good SEO tactics, still have ethics, still have a standard they maintain. The problem really isn’t them, but US.  You and Me, the webmaster who pays for those services.

As the webmaster, the owner of the site, it is our standards that are being lowered. I mean look at the amount of traffic leaks on pay site tours? On our own free sites too, or affiliate sites. We are nothing but a leaky sieve in most cases, and I think that really comes down to two things.

1. Lack of Pride
2. Greed

Lloyd over at Gaywebmastering has an excellent article on ‘Tours & Traffic Leaks‘ that should be read, more than once. (read it here.) While there, you might want to read the article on ‘Join Pages‘ as well.

However, my rant is that we need to stop this ‘right out of the box‘ approach we are rushing headlong into. When it comes to design, I don’t think we are taking a solid approach to it. We tell the designer, hey it is adult, so lots of naked pictures, mention videos, mention this or that, and suddenly we have a jumbled up tour image, that gets sliced into little squares for easier uploading.

There is no SEO done whatsoever, because after all it is only a tour.  Then we want the pages we use to host galleries, to host our free sites, to be matching. We don’t even stop to realize that what we are really asking, is that the designer also become our marketing guru.

Each page is a selling tool, but we forget that, or we go overboard.

I do my own design. Now, I am not a photoshop expert, nor am I a fireworks expert either. I still can’t quite the handle on layers in images, in animating images, or rounded corners even. Still I think I do okay, because I know what I want my pages to say, to sell. I haven’t truly met a designer who could think as warped as I do, plus I am the King of Cheap. I hate paying out money, and then waiting.

And that too becomes an issue. We insist on quick turn arounds for our outsourced work, without realizing that quality isn’t fast. It takes a lot of tinkering, if you want it right. Still we want a rush job, and then what do we do when we get the design?

We rip it apart, to add our SEO to it.  (see post ‘Just Add Some Text‘) We find this image now has a white space, or is out of alignment, and we bitch like hell at the designer, but is it truly their fault? Or is it ours?

If you go surf every pay site out there, how many are truly different in their tours? I mean how many sites do you surf, before you find one that is laid out totally differently than all the rest? I am not talking color scheme here, but actual layout.  Odds are it’ll be a lot of sites before you come across one that stands out, and have you ever wondered why?

Because we don’t want to wait.

Part of this urge to rush is greed. We all think that as soon as our so called ‘unique‘ designed site is up, we are going to have the cash rolling in. Then when it doesn’t happen that way, we start scratching our heads, wondering why not. We look at the design, and don’t see that it not really any different than every other site out there. We look for errors in the mechanical aspects of the design, not at the concept at all.

Mistake #????

We then get the bright idea that well we haven’t SEO the pages yet, so we start in, ripping apart the design to add text. Images now are off kilter, but hey, we’ll just resize them or remove them. More money we spent, being wasted.

We repeat text, ad nausea, or try to alter the color scheme without thinking of how the text will display on the new colors, or how the images will even look. We add all sorts of shapes and sizes, add long text description, all hoping that the SE’s will love our dedication to text.

Mistake #????

In the end, we wind up tossing the design, or firing our SEO expert. We go find another designer, another SEO expert, and begin the entire fruitless gesture all over again. We have learned nothing, because we simply want to make that quick buck now, and we want it done fast. After all, we all know how so many drive Porches after the first month or two.  Right?

Mistake #????

Designer’s bitch because their work was cut up and altered, from the SEO stuff. SEO pro’s bitch at how the stupid designer didn’t leave any room for headers or paragraphs of descriptive text, when the fact is, we didn’t tell them too. See, we placed the order, but being in such a rush, we forget to impart to those doing the job, what it is we want. Or if we do, we make it so damn general, that there is no way for a designer to accomplish the task.

We need to know what our sites will hold. Will there be thumbnails? What size, and will they be all uniformed shaped or a mix? What about Header Tags? How many on a gallery page, on a directory page? What about Video Pages? Will we use screen caps to go with the video players? How about descriptions of the videos, the images?

Information pages » we gonna have any? If so, what kind of information will they have?

Tour pages » Are they all going to be the same? How many? Will they have different sized images, text compartments?

See, it isn’t just about saying to a designer, I want a unique site, with lots of pretty boys, it is about what each page is going to market. We get a template for a tour, when we should maybe have five templates for the tour, one for the directory pages, one for gallery pages, one for video on demand pages, one for… you get the idea.

Now that isn’t cheap either, which is perhaps one reason why we don’t do ask for it, why we aren’t specific enough in our order. Designers can take some blame too, because they don’t ask the right questions of us. Still, we are the one’s paying the money, it is up to us to make sure they do KNOW what we want.

We don’t even think of SEO when we are ordering our design. We have this insane concept that it can simply be added later on, but that is again, simply laziness. It is also looking for things on the cheap.

Mistake #????

Bottom line, we no longer have any pride in our own products. We want to make a killing, where a killing just doesn’t happen. I read one of those marketing guru books, on how he made $100K in less than a month. Impressive, until you read the one little paragraph, where he mentioned that the list he used to get all that traffic from, took him nearly FIVE YEARS TO COMPILE.    Yeah, 100K in a month, but it took him Five Years to get the names to make it in.

Making a success of your enterprise, takes time. Once you get used to that idea, then you have to also realize, it takes work too. You can’t just knock up a quality product over night, and you can’t just use the same tired concept over and over again. It takes time to think of new approaches, to research on how to accomplish those tasks, and then to implement them. And even then, it might not work out, so back to the drawing board you have to go.

Most of us simply walk away or we blame the Designer, SEO expert. Fact is, it is our site, our product. Either we have pride in it or not. If we do, then how about we take our time, and find the right solution, instead of just what is easiest, or fastest?

Posted on October 9th, 2007 by Gaystoryman
Filed under: Blowing Off Steam