A common trick from mid-90s web development was to add a tag like: <meta name=”keywords” content=”keywords, my, site”/>. Known as the “meta keywords” or just simply “keywords” it was often heavily loaded with terms customers would be searching for, and the theory was that the more you had, the better your ranking on Google. The belief was that Google and other search engines used this tag to get an idea about your site’s content, and so it was common for people to build sites with hundreds of different keywords. Many sites would even use their competitors name to drive traffic to their site, sometimes causing angry responses when discovered.
People who work in web development have known for quite some time that the effectiveness of this practice has diminished over the last several years, especially with Google. We’ve found that there is more weight given to the use of a keyword within a page, the page’s title, a link to the site containing the term, the proximity of that word to other search terms and any highlighting of the term by bold or italicized type.Basically, great content drives results better than behind-the-scenes trickery, which leads the SEO set to fall back on the common phrase “Content is King.” The theory applies broadly to a company’s message, with the general idea being that despite anyone’s best efforts to trick the search engines into loving your website, your energies are probably better spent creating quality material for it. Not only are you likely to create better search results and more relevant (if not greater numbers of) hits, but you’ll see better sales when you give your visitorsaccurate information about your company and the products you provide. Recall that the reason we build websites is to sell products and services, not just create arbitrary hits.
Of course webmasters, who regularly promote themselves on their ability to get a website highly ranked on a search engine, and getting to the top of Google for a specific search term is most client’s top request. While a lot of promises are made, the reality is that Google’s famous algorithm changes regularly and web developers need to keep up to date with the latest techniques in garnering attention from the almighty Google. The games we used to play with keywords, meta tags, and hidden strings of text are less effective today than they once were, and some of those techniques can actually make your rank worse. In fact today, in a rare official statement about how their algorithm works, Matt Cutts from Google explains that they don’t use the meta keywords at all. Basically, they were too prone to abuse, and since the actual content of a website is what people are looking for anyway, it makes sense to use only human readable text to shape results.
For the small business website that means careful copywriting, carefully choosing the title of each page, and selecting key text to put in bold or italics. More than anything else, Google’s picture of your website is going to be formed by the text on the page more than any other element of the design. Photos, videos and graphics are absolutely necessary to entice the human user once they’re on the site, but for now at least, Google sees your website in text-only mode.
Wordle's Visualisation of this Post
So one should be aware of the picture Google is getting of your website from the text you provide. If you’re visual like I am, you can use a tool like Wordle to get a feel for how your website looks to a search engine, in terms of keyword density, which is another metric SEO gurus like to argue about. You want to make sure that what you’re writing accurately reflects the message that you are trying to send. You want to verify that your writing reflects all the services that you offer, and make sure there isn’t too much overlap between the pages within your site. At the same time you need to be mindful that your copy is most of all there to entice individual human readers to buy your products. Converting Google searches to hits is just the first step, our ultimate goal is to turn hits into sales; so remember that a jumbled mess of keywords may make it to the top of Yahoo, but users will quickly bounce off your home page when they can’t find what they’re looking for. So don’t get carried away or swear off pronouns for the sake of keyword loading to pump up the density, as it turns off users, and creating a suspiciously high keyword density might even turn off the search bots.
Remember that to improve search ranking, we strive to improve the breadth and depth of information on each of our pages, so its more important to highlight key text, and write concise, relevant titles, and not rely on tricks like we used to do with meta tags and keyword loading. Essentially we’re trying to create a website that is a wealth of information about the business, product, or service that it’s dedicated to. Which means we’re not really gaming search rank on Google so much as Google is teaching us to build high-quality websites full of relevant information.
Map of the Southern Cross Cable
When your nation is an island in the South Pacific, the logistics of international communications are as complicated as they are critical to living and conducting business. First off, let me dispel a myth: we’re not connected by satellite, we’re connected by a cable. While high speed satellite communications are in the works for places like Tonga and Vanuatu, it is still faster to handle the internet traffic of four million New Zealanders and 2.5 million visitors by undersea cable. New Zealand’s primary connection is a submarine cable system called The Southern Cross Network. It’s not actually one cable, but a loop of cables that goes through Australia, Fiji, Hawaii, Oregon, and back to Australia via California, Hawaii and New Zealand. The theory is that if one segment of the network goes down, due to an earthquake, storm or some other incident, traffic can be routed the other way around. Physically, submarine cable is smaller in diameter than your average coffee cup, but building and financing thousands of miles cable laying across the open ocean is the work of governments and Tier 1 ISPs, so it’s important to keep their investment in mind when you consider how this connection scheme effects retail pricing of internet connectivity for the end user.
Historically, government owned Telecom New Zealand has been the only player in New Zealand telecommunications. In 1990 Telecom was privatized and a sizable portion was bought by overseas investors, notably Ameritech (now known as AT&T) and Bell Atlantic (now known as Verizon). The privatization also allowed for the entrance of another player into the New Zealand telecommunications market, namely national and foreign-backed New Zealand upstart Clear Communications, which was subsequently merged into Australian firm Telstra, and is now known in New Zealand as TelstraClear. Skip ahead twenty years and a lot of regulatory changes and you’ll find that most people in New Zealand are still connected one way or another through Telecom, though often through a reseller of some sort. Still, the market is opening up with the advent of high-speed wireless communications and expansion of cable TV networks. For many people, wireless 3G service is sufficient for their browsing needs, and is their only internet connection. In some areas, TelstraClear is expanding cable television service, and offering broadband over that system.
While the market is less more open than it was pre-1990, there remains a premium on international traffic which must travel through the Southern Cross link. As such, some retail pricing schemes in New Zealand charge a different rate for international traffic. This is of particular importance to those of us who work in the web design and development space, as it is advantageous to put websites targeted at New Zealanders on networks on the New Zealand side of the Southern Cross, as I don’t want my user be charged extra to access my site. This illustrates a minor glitch in the freedom of the NZ internet market, as users aren’t generally aware of where their data is coming from. While a .nz domain name is a solid indicator that a website is targeted at NZ users, it does not mean that the site is hosted in New Zealand.
A Screenshot of Flagfox for Firefox
To determine that, you’d need to use a plugin such as FlagFox or do a trace route on a site to determine it’s physical location. While it’s a great idea for anyone on such a broadband plan to do so, I don’t see the practice becoming widespread, especially since a website can be created from multiple hosts, or change hosts, or have mirrors around the world, which might back each other up as usage changes. Since ISPs aren’t able to reliably encourage national data use like you might be able to with telephone service, many providers simply charge a monthly fee for broadband including all traffic national and international, limited by total traffic. Right now there are no unlimited (uncapped) broadband packages on offer. A typical internet pack might offer 40GB per month on a full speed ADSL2+ connection for $60 per month. Other plans may have you paying for each megabyte, with varying rates for overseas traffic. The University of Canterbury, for example, has a rate scheme that varies depending on the time of day and whether you’re accessing national or international data.
Those of us from North America might find the lack of an unlimited internet plan and universities that charge students to use the internet in the library as rather shocking, but a Kiwi traveling in the United States or Canada might be equally surprised to learn that free wifi is ubiquitous in most cities. Some New Zealand coffee shops offer scratch-off cards with a passcode for an hour of free internet, while their North American counterparts often leave their wifi running day and night, freely available to anyone in range of the access point.
What this means for the immigrant is that internet service is going to cost more in New Zealand than you’re used to back home. For the tourist it means that you’ll be paying extra for internet in your hotel room, or plugging coins into a machine at an internet cafe. You also may want to check if your mobile device is unlocked, or can be unlocked, so you can use it on a prepay data plan during your visit. For the webmaster it means you’ll have to think about where you choose host sites and the location of your audience, so that they may access your site as cheaply as possible. To the web designer it means that it’s probably a good idea for your website to be serving a mobile version of your website branded to match the standard site, as more people are getting information about your business through smart phones and similar devices since using your notebook by roaming onto public wifi may cost more per month than a getting a data plan for your phone.
Essentially, bandwidth in North America is like tap water; it’s so cheap, it’s not worth the effort of charging for it – in New Zealand, that is definitely not the case.
One thing that any expatriate will tell you is that neither your immigration status, nor the most concerted efforts to assimilate can change the fact that you give away your heritage as soon as you open your mouth. In a country with four million people and two million tourists each year, it’s hard to give the impression that you call Christchurch home.
Canadian flag on a backpack
Since most Kiwis are very polite by American standards (they don’t shoot at you when you wander onto their front lawn), conversation often starts by asking how long you’ll be in New Zealand and if you’re enjoying yourself. Soon though, everyone wants to know where you’ve come from. The subject can be a difficult one to approach anywhere in the world, and Kiwis are notably careful when asking, which is where we’ve noticed an interesting trend: people usually go with “Canada” as their first guess. Of course, we take no offence, in fact given recent political history, it can be taken as more of a compliment. Stitching a maple leaf to your backpack is a time honored tradition for recent high school graduates heading to Europe for a summer, and many blue-staters have considered, if only for a moment, moving to the land of Gretzky. But since the US is around ten times more populous than Canada, it makes one wonder whether Canadians just get out more or if asking a Canadian if they’re from The States would ruffle a few goose feathers.
America is huge, and there are a wide range of accents to guess at. Wisconsinites don’t sound like southerners, or like people from Boston or any other notable American dialect, so maybe a string of Wisconsin dont’cha’knows sounds more Canadian than anything else. I suppose the American accent could have been permanently associated with George Bush’s nonsensical idioms and bumblings, which is probably more the influence of Jon Stewart than anything else. I guess it could be that Kiwis just assume you’re from Canada unless you’re looking for a gun show or a restaurant serving 64-ounce slabs of corn-fed beef for under $10.
I think our best theory so far is that New Zealanders, who are often mistaken for Australians, feel a sense of solidarity with Canadians who get confused for Americans.
Whatever the explanation, I’ll take it as a compliment. Besides, Wisconsin is closer to Toronto than Los Angeles, New York or Houston, so it’s a reasonable guess.
It made headlines around the world when it was announced that our little island managed to catch Swine Flu in the first few weeks after it broke out in Mexico. I actually was in the States when it broke out there, and somehow it managed to make it’s way across the Pacific in just a few weeks. Apparently some students from Rangitoto College gave it a lift to Auckland by way of Los Angeles on the way home from a trip in Mexico.
I flew back to New Zealand shortly after the big outbreak and got to fill out a few extra forms on the flight in so that the Ministry of Health might track me down if anyone on the flight ends up with the flu. Not only did they ask where I would be staying and what seat I was in, but if I switched seats in flight.
Upon arrival in Auckland there were posters on the walls every few meters, and a chicane of volunteers with pamphlets of information on flu symptoms. I even spotted a few people with masks on, apparently to keep themselves from licking any doorknobs since you can’t really catch it from just breathing normally.
About a week after I got back to NZ, Julie and I caught a deal on some weekend tickets to Sydney directly out of Christchurch, which gave us an opportunity to see other countries were overreacting to the flu. This flight I didn’t see any masks – either Kiwis are a bit smarter, or they consider getting the flu another adventure. Arrival in Sydney was interesting. Again we had the posters and the leaflets, but the Aussies even directed you through maze of retractable people fencing that corralled us into view of a pair of Flir thermal imaging cameras, apparently to see if any of us had a fever.
Since that first week we haven’t heard much from the flu, at least not out of the international news. At one point I read that much of the world was waiting to see how the pandemic would hit the Southern Hemisphere, as most of the world’s population is getting a temporary reprieve from the flu, as immune systems seem to perform better during summertime.
New Zealanders are certainly feeling the impact. If not from the flu itself, then from the constant reminders about how not to get it. This might be most evident when I stop into the University of Canterbury to visit Julie. Literally every bulletin board has a poster about the flu, hand washing, or general hygiene. During finals week, before you walked into one of the exam rooms, there was a meter-and-a-half high billboard with a stop sign on it that told you in no uncertain terms about the procedure for skipping an exam if you (claim to) have the flu. They even have a website with updates and anything you’d ever want to know about swine flu, what to do about classes and no less than four different posters for you to download and print for display in your home, office, classroom or business.
Swine Flu Poster
Swine Flu Bulletin
Swine Flu with Coffee
Swine Flu wireless website
Swine Flu is not allowed in the library.
Swine Flu mega-sign.
Swine Flu at the bus station
Local television rolls public service advertisements throughout the evening which show you how to wash your hands. The library has a sign on every door, and again in each of the restrooms. Coffee shops have little signs posted near the register, and on some walls in the bus station there might be three identical posters within arms reach. Really there is nowhere you can go in Christchurch these days without being reminded of the eminent danger posed by the flu.
Regardless of all the posters, warnings and general chatter about it, I don’t actually know of anyone who has actually contracted the flu. There are some rumors on campus, but so far nobody that either Julie or I know has actually gotten the flu themselves. It know it seems crazy, but there’s a small part of me (the competitive part) that kinda wants to be the first one in the neighborhood to get it.
The latest report is that there have been 183 cases of H1N1 Influenza in Canterbury.
