I run across websites daily that not only make it difficult for visitors to contact them, but in many cases they actually seem to be discouraging their customers from reaching out via phone or email.

Perhaps they’re just too busy, or they hate answering phones, or they really have no time to deal with these interruptions.

Whatever your reason, if you’d like to avoid interaction with your Web visitors as much as possible, I’ve put together this web designers checklist of the Top 10 ways you can avoid visitor engagement, with a bonus tip at the end for no extra charge.

#1 – No Phone Number in Header
If you don’t want to encourage phone calls, then don’t put your phone number in the header of your website, and you especially don’t want to use a highly visible contrasting font or piece of art. Doing this will force customers dig deeper to reach you, eliminating many of your intrusions right off the bat.

#2 – No Contact Primary Menu Item
If you have a “contact” tab or link on your primary navigation, you could ve perceived as “encouraging” contacts, giving the misimpression that you astuall want people to contact you. Instead, put a far smaller and less visible link somewhere. Burying the link in an accordion style “About Us” submenu item is extremely effective.

#3 – No invitational text to contact you
As you write text for your website, don’t use phrases with actual calls to action such as “drop us a line” or “send us an e-mail” and especially not “call us right now”.

Using words like that will just encourage people to engage you in conversations about your product or service, especially if you were make them more visible through use of different sized font or color.

#4 – No “Contact” call to action
Some websites will utilize an actual “call to action” graphic, or even an actual contact form, which is visible on every page of the website. This ensures that no matter what page anyone lands on, instant contact to you is just a single click away. Avoid this high visibility method of engaging your visitors at all costs if customer avoidance is your goal.

#5 – No phone on contact page
You can avoid phone calls almost altogether by simply not putting your phone number on your contact page and just using a form instead.

That will make it clear that your company does not want phone calls of any kind, and most consumers will not likely dig deeper, unless they’re really mad.

A bonus strategy here is to not include a physical address either, which cuts down on your snail mail and angry walk-in surprises.

#6 – No email address on contact page
if all you have is your message and a form, with no e-mail address showing that you can tightly manage all of your contacts and do with them as you wish, and at your leisure.

If you’ve got a form in place, then be sure that you are not gathering contact information electronically into a database.

Collecting the information of your web visitors who fill out forms would only lead to the burden of having to utilize your mailing list, which could spiral into an ugly scenario building customer loyalty and communication.

#7 – No Contact Link in Footer
if you do remove the contact information from the primary navigation, then it’s considered courteous to put one in the footer of your site. That’s always the first place I look when I see a company that isn’t exactly “reaching out” to me on their website.

If you want discouracge users so they will just go away instead of digging deeper, this is a good place to do it. Make sure you do not include a contact link in your footer.

#8 – No contact link on site map
I’m talking about the visitor navigation site map, usually something like sitemap.html. This page is usually designed for ease of navigation for the user, and to some degree it also helps for the search spiders.

When I run across a company that has no visible phone number in their header, no primary contact page, and no contact link in the footer, I go to the static site map that is usually found in the footer.

When I see no link to contact information there either, I generally give up, unless I’m really determined.

#9 – No use of the word “contact” in text on site
if you were to use graphics for the words “contact us” and be sure not to even put ALT tags on it, then you could remove the risk of a search engine being able to find your contact page.

Also be sure you don’t use “contact” in your title tag, description tag, or meta keyword tags. You could even use a single image for the entire page so there would be no phone number, and no physical or e-mail address that might be findable by a search engine.

This will make the entire page practically invisible, and is far cheaper than going to a Flash designed contact page.

#10 – No “Contact” page at all
I’m seeing this more and more, and occasionally it’s due to the web designer that decided to bury the address and phone number at the bottom of an “About Us” page.

Sometimes though, it might be a webtrepreneur that just can’t get a good ROI with a contact page who actually do want to avoid communication. Leaving it out completely is a pretty sure way to never be bothered by those pesky site visitors.

Bonus Tip – Register your domain name anonymously
If you really are trying to hide, then by all means, don’t be an idiot; spring for the extra few dollars to register your domain name anonymously.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had to go to a WhoIs look up to see who someone might be that owns a domain I’m investigating. Just as often as not, that person is either too stupid or too cheap to register anonymously, and I’m able to determine how to reach them via phone or e-mail.

Print out this list of tips and use it as you look at your own website.

Are you really doing everything you can to hide from your customers?

Can you use some of these strategies to make your life easier?

If this has helped, please leave me a comment here with all the extra time I’ve saved you by not having to answer phone calls and e-mails.

On my blog, the Blog Rush widget is showing links to those that do not have the widget installed, and I believe I’ve figured out why.

On the home page of blog Rush today, they address some of the issues people have been discussing in the blogosphere, and while they don’t address my issue specifically, they did say this:

While we’ve been busy optimizing our network, we were using some public RSS feeds to balance out activity so no widget would have any empty space.

Since I chose to put my blog in “technology” as opposed to “marketing”, I can only assume that the brand new service has very few (if any) technology blogs available yet. Admittedly, this is a guess, but I believe it’s a valid explanation. Otherwise, as I said in my other post, there would be no point.

In the meantime I’m continuing to use it, and you can see it in action over on the right side. I’m unable to think of a single reason why using Blog Rush is not perfectly fine, so I am continuing my affiliation for the time being. I continue to remain a skeptic of anything that seems too easy, but I’m certainly not stupid, and this seems like a good idea

In the best case scenario, you get relevant inbound links from related blogs that drive traffic and interested visitors. (Any search engine ranking benefit that Google may assign you for the thing that links is purely accidental and unintentional

Try out Blog Rush for yourself… In the worst-case scenario, you provide links to other blogs that are relevant to your own subject matter, giving your visitors more information and a better user experience.

With Blog Rush, you can easily give links to other people right on your blog, and you might get absolutely nothing in return. Wow, this is going to catch on like wildfire, isn’t it?

To be fair, I suspect (hope) it’s just a bug in the program that allows me to link to people that have signed up but are not playing fair… It must be, right? Otherwise, why would anyone need or want to use this thing?

If you’re involved in the Internet marketing world at all, it would have been hard to miss last week’s rollout of Blog Rush. I must have received ten different e-mail notices and invitations, some from some very well-respected marketers, and someone told me it was even mentioned on Shoemoney’s show.

Blog Rush is a method of displaying post titles with links from other associated subject matter blogs throughout the blogosphere on your blog, and they in turn do the same for you..

Participants get links on related blogs, sending visitors back and forth (and maybe even passing some PR?). Every time a new page refreshes, there are links to different associated blogs.

The really nice thing is that Blog Rush actually provides post-level links, and not just blog homepage links, so you’re getting very targeted keyword specific links right your deepest pages from other relevant blogs.

Is this a “linking scheme” as defined by Google? I don’t really think so because you’re actually providing links to other relevant sites and posts that may benefit your readers. The idea seemed sound to me, so I signed up.

Because I frequently write about more than just search marketing, I chose to add my blog to the “technology category”. Since my single most popular blog post last month was “How to reprogram your Comcast remote to skip commercials“on your DVR, this made the most sense to me.

At first I tried to place it in the page of specific posts, instead of using the widget, but had a couple of problems, so I went with the widget method instead, and it works fine.

You can (CURRENTLY) see the widget in action in the right sidebar of my blog, but here is a static image in case it’s gone by the time you read this -

The fact is, following those links in the widget do indeed take me to other relevant blog posts, but of the dozen or so links I just tested from my own blog, only one of the pages had the widget installed on their site. What’s that all about?

If you can add your blog to the network and get it displayed on some people’s sites without having the box appear on your own site, and then where’s the incentive to use it at all?

I would hope (expect, demand etc.) that there is going to be some mechanism in place to ensure that the only blogs appearing in the wake it are those which have the widget appearing on their blogs. Maybe that mechanism is alread in place, and just not functioning?

For now, I’ll leave the widget in place, and keep an eye on my logs to see if it brings me any traffic, but otherwise, what’s the story here, Blog Rush? (Referral link)

At Danny Sullivan’s SMX Advanced Expo, I ran across a magazine I had never heard of before. It’s called “Website Magazine”, and it is actually a physical publication in addition to having an online digital version.

I’ve finally gotten around to reading the issues that I picked up at the show, and I have to tell you it’s really great.

The cover of the May 2007 issue is what first caught my interest, with articles about personalization in search, and “SEO Building Blocks”.
Our industry doesn’t have enough physical publications, and without printing something from a website it’s hard for me to have something to read on hand that is industry related and educational. This one’s a winner.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am an affiliate of theirs now, but for a limited time, Website Magazine is offering a free subscription, so why not check it out?

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to automatically create your own theme for WordPress without having to know CSS, or PHP?

Have you ever had to look through dozens or hundreds of themes to find one that you like? Then when you finally decide on something, of course you have to make multiple edits or changes to the CSS, and it’s not exactly a painless process, is it? Wouldn’t it be cool if there was an automatic theme generator?

With just a few choices to make, you could make your own customized WordPress theme, with either two or three columns, and see the changes take place right before your eyes, while the editing menu remains open on the left side of the screen.

Of course, like the nearly all the best things for WordPress, it would have to be totally free too, but what if there was more than one option? That’s right, two different free products vying for your attention.

Check out the Free WordPress theme generator

Then tweak it even further with Canvas

I began working on my brand-new search engine marketing website for Search Commander in 2006. It was always a lower priority than anything else I had to do, so all I did was 301 redirect Searchcommander.com to my old domain, pdxtc.com, and I assumed I would get back to it someday.

About a month ago, I woke up to a dead monitor, and when I purchased a new one, I had a chance to see what people were viewing when they went to my old website. , and I was appalled. I couldn’t believe all the wasted space, and how old, tired and out of date it looked.

I realized I needed to get off the stick, and with the help or two programmers, completed the new Search Commander site, and have integrated that look into not only my website, but also here, in my WordPress blog, and even into my Joomla installation as well, at search marketing for rookies.

I had been meaning to roll it out for a long time now, and day after day, I would find something else I needed to fix. Finally, I’ve decided to take Guy Kawasaki’s advice from his 2006 Webmaster world.

He said one of his mantras was “Don’t worry, be crappy”. Although that sounds bad, his point was that if you strive for perfection before release of a product or service then you’ll never get it out there. After all, what if Microsoft had waited for Windows to be perfect?  We’d still be waiting!  Well, I don’t think my new site is crappy, and I’m glad it’s finally out there.

Feed Commander is a tool I’ve developed to take the mystery out of adding RSS feeds to web pages. If you can copy and paste, you can use it, and it’s free. Veteran web designers may not need it, but for rookies, it makes things pretty simple.

It’s no secret that adding RSS feeds to your website (in moderation) can help your search rankings. Having more relevant content is always a good thing, and I’ve been recommending that people do this for years.

Last summer, I met a woman that was unable to find an easy solution for adding RSS feeds to various type of websites. Sometimes they’re hosted on Windows servers, sometimes they’re hosted in Unix boxes, and sometimes she didn’t know what they were hosted on. All she wanted, was to be able to easily add an RSS feed to any type of webpage.

He had purchased one piece of software that worked on many servers but would not work on Windows. He had purchased another piece of software that was supposed to work on Windows but did not, so he ended up adding the RSS feeds with JavaScript. What he didn’t realize was that Java was invisible to the search engines, so he wasn’t having the desired effect of adding more content to his webpages.

He was not the first person I had heard this from, and had experienced some of the same frustration myself. All I wanted was a way to easily add RSS feeds to any website, no matter what, so I set out to find a solution.

It took a lot longer than I wanted it to, but the product is finally been rolledout, and I’m calling it Feed Commander. You can easily add RSS feeds to any website, whether it’s Windows, UNIX, or any other platform. You can even generate your code in Java if you choose to, adding content for your visitors that the search engines won’t even see.

It’s completely free to use, either privately or commercially, and use of the script does provide a backlink to Feed Commander. By request, I’ve added a Professional version that will remove the backlink, and I’ve kept that quite reasonably priced. There’s also a server version for running on your own co-located servers.

If you haven’t already developed your own solution for adding RSS feeds to Windows, UNIX or any type of hosted website, then please try out Feed Commander, and let me know how you like it.

Many web designers have already come up with solutions that they like for running RSS feeds on various types of websites. But for those of you that haven’t, please try out Feed Commander

I know a lot about the Internet, search engines and web hosting, but I don’t have an artistic bone in my body.

When it comes to artwork, I’ve always worked with graphic designers who are talented, but usually fairly spendy… until now. I’ve recently stumbled across an incredible talent, who is so affordable that I had to share.

Her Name is Rachel Butts, and she came highly recommended by her father, Internet marketer Rick Butts. She had some very good samples on her Website, so I decided to give her a try, and was I glad I did.

Rachel’s online ordering system has a cool project management feature built right in. Using that, I was able to go to from my initial concept written description to “live and online” in under 72 hours.

Since she is currently running a half price special, I was only charged $25 for a website banner. Even at her regular prices, the value is amazing, and I’ve already hired her for another job.

With the plethora of template driven content management systems like WordPress and Joomla, frequently all that is needed for a website to look really good is a free template with a nicely done custom header graphic.

If you need any custom design or graphics work, you simply have to check out Rachel Butts, the Banner Queen – and please tell her that Scott sent ya’!

Last night I was a customer of fandango.com for the first and last time. My kids were out of school at noon the day that Spiderman three opened, so how could I deny their pleas?

If you are running a business,  can your server handle the capacity? if you’re a publisher, would simple a mention of your website on Digg.com or a well placed press release bring your server to its knees? You would think that a business like fandango.comcould come close, but what a disaster it was.

Their website was okay, but it was pretty initially.  Because I was determined to make a purchase though, I was able to find what I wanted.
Finding tickets at a theater near me was my purpose, but I had to scroll to find the showtimes. Reading or adding fan reviews was given much more prominence than any “buy tickets now” call to action. So while I wasn’t impressed with their usability, the real problems started I tried to check out.

Apparently, nobody told fandango.com that there may be a bit of pre-interest in this movie. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that upon addition of my credit card information it took over five minutes each time,  merely just to time out and give a Windows Explorer error.  Nearly a full half hour was wasted with failed attempts.

Obviously, the servers were busy, but I phoned 800 Fandango anyway because by this time I wanted to be sure that my credit card was not being charged each time.

After talking with the support person, she confirmed that my card had not been charged and that the servers are so busy it would be better to just purchased by phone. “Great” I said, “can you help me”? at that point, she explained that they had an automated phone system, and she would connect.

The phone system did mediocre job recognizing my voice commands, although read the theaters and times at an excruciatingly slow rate. By now I’m into this time-saving feature nearly 45 minutes, so I continued through the program trying to purchase my selection.

Once I ultimately was able to get the system to understand that I wanted the 1:10 p.m. showing at a Portland division Street theater, I got the equivalent of a verbal hourglass for nearly 5 more minutes. At that point, the computer woman’s voice came back and told me that she was unable to access the system at this time please try again later, and went silent.

Naturally, the logical thing was just to try the website again right? By now, my wife is involved my kids are involved, and I have too much time invested to quit, so my wife decided to give it a try.

After she failed twice, I suggested that perhaps her best bet was to create an account first, then to add some memorized credit card information, and then to reattempt the purchase. In my mind, this would accomplish three separate tasks individually, and we may have a better shot at completing our transaction.

While I cooked dinner, she got the account created and even credit card account entry completed, I believe, but was still not able to complete the purchase transaction, so we had dinner.

Over the course of the evening, my wife tried 13 or 14 separate times on the laptop while sewing and watching TV, and ultimately, it actually worked, and we got our confirmation number,  so we are going, but that’s not the point. Your site visitors shouldn’t have to work to get what they want for any reason.
When is the last time you’ve gone to your website and looked at it from a visitor’s point of view? Have you completed your checkout or bid/quote process and looked with a critical eye at each step along the way? Are there messages or text that could be personalized to improve the process for your Web shoppers?

What actions or path do you intend for visitors to take when they reach your website? Go to your own website, and take that path, while awaiting it all the way through to the end, including your “thank you” page, and even any error pages. Is this what you want your customers to see?

Yipee,  in Spiderman 3 in two hours!

Stompernet is one of the most expensive programs on the Web, but it is also one of the best.

I’ve been a member all of 2007, and I continue to shell out my money month after month, never ceasing to be amazed at the rich flow of information both from faculty and from other members.

Some actually call it a scam, while trying to hawk and various other products or programs, but I defy anyone to find a larger or more comprehensive resource of experts on the web.

The best and brightest Internet marketers in the world ( many whom have come out of retirement) make up the faculty at Stompernet, and cover every facet of search engine optimization and Internet marketing.

Beginning tomorrow, Stompernet is having a limited opening again, and if you want to learn more about it, you can check it out here at my affiliate link.

There is also now a limited one dollar trial for Stomper

From a site visitor perspective, of course it should look professional, and be functional and easy to use, but what about for the administrator or site owner that needs to maintain it? What would make it perfect for them?

Host anywhere
In their case, the perfect website would not be dependent on where it’s hosted, nor would it be dependent on a certain web designer to be able to easily add or change content.

Easy to Edit
A perfect website would be accessible by the site owner from any computer in the world, to add and edit content as they wish without having to own expensive software, or have a computer science degree.

Scalable
A perfect website would be able grow with a business, and be able to incorporate things later that may not be needed in the beginning, like a shopping cart, a forum, live chat, contact forms, surveys, audio, video, or anything else the site owner may desire.

A perfect website would be built with the search engines in mind, knowing that their future may depend on it.

Search Engine Friendly
In keeping with the search engine friendly best practices, every time a new page is added, a unique and page specific title tag would be automatically generated.

The description tag too, would be completely unique, and automatically come from the first 150 characters of text on the new content page.

Since a header tag and keyword tags are a part of every good webpage found in the search engines, those two items would also be automatically generated with no extra effort given by the page author unless they wanted to.

In a perfect world, content could even be added to this site using RSS feeds that come from other subject relevant websites. Naturally, any new content created on this perfect website would automatically generate its own RSS feed, for users to subscribe to and other websites to display on their sites.

Automatic Notification
What if every time a new page were created, an XML site map could be automatically generated and zipped, then Google were to be pinged to come get it, how cool would that be?

At the same time Google were to get pinged, what if dozens of news services too, could be automatically notified new content had been added to the website so that they could come visit and index it immediately.

Content and Design Separated
The perfect website would also use CSS, and keep the content completely separate from the design. This would allow for easy backup, and even more important, allow for easy design changes, done literally within seconds.

Open Source
Of course a perfect website wouldn’t cost a fortune either. In fact, if it were perfect, then it would be free, and even supported by a community of thousands of designers and developers.

WordPress
Until now, this wish list of things that a perfect website should have just wasn’t realistic. While all these things might take place individually with the proper systems in place and a lot of effort, there really hasn’t been an all-in-one solution that could please nearly everyone.

Now, however, with the recent upgrade of WordPress 2.1 and the built in ability to use a static page for your homepage, there’s no reason to keep dreaming.

Word press software is free, and if you’re a do it yourself type, a WordPress tutorial program is available from Sherman Hu, one of the top WordPress authorities in the world.

The tutorials are excellent (that’s why I’m an affiliate), and can take you start to finish, through installation and customization, as well as the code modifications for search engine friendliness. If you’re not a do it yourself type, then that’s why I’m here.

WordPress really isn’t just blog software anymore…it’s how you make the perfect website!

Upgrading WordPress is an important part of your security, yet many people put it off because it can be intimidating, even though they have step by step WordPress upgrade instructions.
Well I’m here to tell you that it’s not that hard, and to prove it, I’ve made a short video tutorial available here – How to Upgrade Your WordPress

Don’t make the mistake of skipping a WordPress update. If you do it every time a new version is available, you can actually save yourself a lot of time and frustration…