To my recollection, I’ve never made mention on this blog of a specific Website as an example of being truly great. While no one has elected me as the design judge of the Internet, nor will any great people likely take notice of this post, I am compelled to call out a Website that I’ve been captivated by for some time and that serves as a great example of the principles that we here at RisingLine advocate every day.

No, it’s not RisingLine.com (although I have to admit I think quite highly of that design), and before I continue I should disclose that I have absolutely no ulterior motive in praising the site I’m about to mention . . . no referral fees, or kickbacks of any kind.

So enough with the rambling, MediaTemple.net is the site to which I am directing my compliments. The first thing a visitor to their site will notice is that graphic design is extremely powerful but not overpowering. . . minimalist, detail oriented, clean, modern, just plain classy. It does what a graphic design is supposed to—provide a professional backdrop to the content of the site which beams credibility without distracting from the message.

I have to assume by the continued proliferation of shabbily designed sites on the Web that many don’t realize just how important design is. As we like mention, over and over, research has shown that a shockingly high percentage of people make a judgment call about the credibility of a company within seconds of visiting a Website based primarily on the graphic design (see the Stanford Web Credibility Research site for more insight on this topic). While my high school history teacher did not find it amusing when I offered to turn in a picture instead of the assigned 1,000 word essay, it really is true that a picture (or for our purposes a design) is worth a 1,000 words of credibility, and all that communicated in the blink of an eye.

A very common misconception is that an effective design is one that has a lot of swirls, colors, moving things and flashy graphics. While those types of sites might be appropriate in some instances (although I can’t think of any of the top of my head) professional Websites have a demanding purpose to concisely communicate value propositions and persuade their prospects to buy. Much Web design we see out there does more to distract from those goals than reach them. Media Temple offers us a great example of a well refined goal-oriented design that delivers their message with just a touch of panache.

Even the best graphic design is of no real use without concise messaging, clear communication flow and easy to understand navigation. These disciplines are collectively known as usability and are achieved exceptionally well by Media Temple. What’s even more impressive in this accomplishment is that the unique value of Media Temple’s hosting solutions are considerably more challenging to communicate than their competitors because they really are unique. Media Temple provides virtualized hosting accounts that are spread across a grid of resources as compared to the typical shared hosting company that sticks customers on a server in their farm to fight with the other squatters for finite resources. Based on my experience using their product, Media Temple’s solutions live up to the grand impression they make on their Website.

While I’m not going to get into the details, the usability of their client-side administration panel and knowledge base impresses me even more than their front end. I recently spent some time in Media Temple’s Grid-Service environment testing the CMS platform we develop on (coincidentally their hosting platform provided the most consistent high performance of any of the many shared hosting environments we’ve tested in) and I had a hard time tearing myself away from their administration panel when our project was complete.

Hats off to Media Temple for their great achievement and many kudos for providing us all a great example of what the Web should look like.

I read recently that there are over 800 billion documents on the Internet. Now there was no documentation to this statement, definition of what an internet document is, and the number seems high to me given the Wikipedia stats for Google….who knows the real answer. Regardless of the exact number, no one is going to argue that there are a lot of pages on the Internet and a lot more being added, so many that the probability of any certain page being visited by an individual diminishes daily. This fact brings up a good question for each of us who are stakeholders in a website to ask ourselves—with all the choices out there why would anyone visit our site?

Well funny you should ask, because the answer to that question has occupied me in the past on this blog:

• SEO is Free | The truth about Search Engine Optimization
• SEO is Free Part II
• Top 25 Backlink Sources

For my grand finale of SEO posts (is that applause that I hear?) I’m going to share some secret insight…well, it’s not really secret but it’s the type of insight that I’m always tempted not to share because I want to keep the real good stuff for myself. So, being in this altruistic moment, here are the top 7 strategies from the gurus on how to bring attention to your site. I’ve hand picked the single strategies that I thought were the absolute best, but each one of these links takes you to a whole article or site that is golden with advice.

1. This is the most important tip. Build your web site around a blog that you keep active and updated with relevant and valuable information. Why you might ask? Because such blogs get noticed much more than the same content updated on a static web site. See Why Blogs Rank High In Search Engines by Fredrik Wacka. This tip is really is a prerequisite for the rest.
2. Write about stuff that people (your target audience to be exact) will want to read and share. As I highlighted on this past SEO post, SEO is really all about maintaining quality content. See How to get traffic for your blog by Seth Godin
3. Establish your site as a trusted authority for your target audience. And market your content. See
   Search Engine Success Through Article Marketing at the flyte blog.
4. Understand the fundamentals of SEO and hone the technical details of your site to accommodate. See
   SEOmoz | Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization by Rand Fishkin
5. Attract people who will link to your site and concentrate on creating interest. See Generating
   Buzz with Link Baiting and Viral Campaigns by David Wallace
6. Embrace the Social Media . . . create a site that is more relevant, more easily linked to, and openly shared within your social web communities. See 5 rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO) by Rohit Bhargava.
7. Make your web site a platform for launching viral marketing. What is viral marketing? It’s any method that encourages others to pass on your marketing method to others. See The Six Simple
   Principles of Viral Marketing by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

So there you go, you just read the document that turned the Internet count to 800 billion and one. It’s not too late to start the transformation of your site from that old-school stale brochure to a vibrant broadcasting and interactive
blog based site that will keep you site in the thin quality segment as the internet continues to explode. As always, I encourage you to comment or share other fundamental strategies that should be included in ones short list.