I was watching an actor’s demo reel recently, and the way they had cut it, the first frame had him making an odd face. Once the video had loaded and was streaming, the scene unfolded and the actor looked great.

Problem was, we were on a very slow connection, so the video took a long time to buffer. While we waited… we stared at this guy’s mug, his face twisted into an awkward pose. I’ll have a hard time remembering what that guy naturally looks like, now that his weird expression is burned into my brain.

So if you’re creating videos, pay special attention to the first frame. It may become the most memorable one.

A lot of SEO companies offer tempting promises: we’ll get your Web site on the first page of Google. To which you’re supposed to say, sounds awesome — sign me up!

But there’s more to that statement, and what they’re not telling you is critical. I’ll explain… but if you don’t know much about SEO, you might try this post for some background.

First off, Google results are based on the keywords a person searches for. If you search for “Los Angeles,” you get different results than if you search for “cats and dogs.” In fact, the results for “Los Angeles Web site consulting” are different than “Web site consulting Los Angeles.”

So the first problem with the claim above is that it’s incomplete. You’re going to get me on first in the results… for what keywords? Until we decide what keywords I’m targeting, you can’t guarantee anything.

Second problem: What you do matters, but so does what your competition is doing. You can optimize all day long, but if your competition is also optimizing, your rankings might not improve. Granted, smarter, more diligent SEO work can beat out haphazard SEO work. But these SEO companies aren’t promising to be smarter… they’re promising to get you on the first page — a vacant promise if the competition is using the same SEO techniques.

Third: who’s searching for those keywords? You can be first in a results list, but if no one is actually searching with that keyword string, it’s useless. Example: a local business organization recently was proudly telling me that they are “first in Google.” I chuckled a little, then asked what the keywords were. Business Referrals Los Angeles. Wow… that sounds pretty great. Even I was kinda impressed, cranky old bat that I am.

Until I ran a keyword frequency check to see how often that keyword phrase is searched. There are several services out there for this; I used the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. Surprise — there are so few searches for this phrase that that the result was “not enough data.” It’s the old tree falling in the forest scenario: you’re first on the list, but no one will ever know.

So be careful. As I’ve said before, some SEO companies are charging a lot to make fancy promises and deliver very little.

By now, we all know that static Web sites are boring, right? (Right?) And that search engines prefer sites that are updated more frequently. But all those content changes don’t just write themselves. So… how do you do it? How do you get your site updated more often, and with what?

First step: take a page from the magazines, and develop a content schedule. Look at your business year, and any thing that might affect your key customers… do you have sales at particular times? Include them in your schedule. Do you go to tradeshows? Launch new services? All of these things are fodder for new or revised content on your site. Make a calendar, or include this schedule on your electronic calendar and set reminders so that the work gets done.

Second, consider the repetition paradigm that many teachers use — tell ‘em what you’re going to teach, then teach it, then tell ‘em what you taught, then quiz them for knowledge. For example: our sale is coming, our sale is here, our sale was awesome, here’s what people are saying about our sale. If you don’t have a lot to talk about, it’s one way to vary the messages.

Third, share the responsibility. Assign everyone in your company (or everyone in your marketing department) to write one Web site message. Be sure the writing is quality, but don’t worry too much about differences in writing style. Instead, personalize your company by personalizing the messages: “Alice, our head of marketing, writes…” or “This just in from Carlos in Manufacturing…”

Fourth, think like a PR specialist when you look for news. Beyond your regularly scheduled content, you’ll find surprising and often unexpected things are newsworthy… and therefore worthy of including on your Web site. Be careful to keep the focus on your core business, but oftentimes your customers like to know that there’s a new employee, or that Jenny had her baby, or that you’ve just picked up a new client, or that the new heating system is saving 21% in utility costs.

Finally, integrate your social media strategy. Be sure that your messages are consistent, and synchronize them (announce the surprise sale at the same time). You can include your Twitter and Facebook feeds on your Web site, or go the other direction and include your blog or article posts on social media sites… or both.

It can be hard to get the content ball rolling, but once you get a system in place, it becomes a part of the way you do business, and you’ll be better off for it.

Business owners: your Web site might be talking behind your back. People naturally infer things from design, and the same holds true for your Web site.

Example 1: I was visiting a Web site recently for a company that is supposedly all about networking: connecting people with other people. But their Web site sends a very different message. There’s no personality on the site, and even finding contact information for the people in the company was a challenge. The design is outdated and the main point of their service is lost in hopeless clutter.

What does an old-fashioned, out-of-date Web site say for this company? Something like: We’ve gone out of business. Or maybe: We’re so far behind the times that none of this stuff matters to us.

Not good.

Example 2: Looking at the Web site for an event planning company. They’ve clearly used a pre-designed template and then plugged in some art and text. The Home Page has a black-and white photo that might be a party… or might be a speakeasy in the 1920s.The design is not exciting. The example photo is not exciting. Care to guess what the parties are like?

The subtext: We plan parties, but you might not want to attend them.

For smaller, lesser known businesses, the Web site is perhaps the first point of contact with new customers. These days, the first thing people do when they hear about a new business is look it up online. Whatever the core values of your company are, your Web site design and layout should support them. It’s hard to generate new business if your site is stabbing you in the back.

When I start an Information Architecture or User Experience project, there are some fundamental questions I ask myself (and the client). Getting good answers is crucial to moving forward.

• Who’s the primary audience?
• What’s the business goal (…or goals, in priority order)?
• What is currently working?
• What is not working (and why)?
• What is the tech environment or constraints? (for example, modern PCs or Macs, iPhones or other smartphones, touchscreens, kiosks)
• What is the competition doing?
• To evaluate their current systems, what metrics are they using (if any)?

Sometimes, my client has these answers already. Other times, it’s part of my job to get these answers, and then turn them into actionable IA and UX recommendations.

For my clients, I do a lot of little stuff for free. Sometimes the client notices, sometimes they don’t. For example, I was reviewing the old Web site for a new client today, and I noticed that the folks who built their old site never put in a “favicon.” (That’s the little icon that shows up in your browser next to the URL. See mine? It’s a letter B in a blue circle.)

So as I’m making a mental note to design them a favicon based on their company logo, I’m thinking: you’re getting this for free… and unless I explain it, you’ll probably never know that things like this are not automatic.

A good consultant anticipates their clients’ needs. A great consultant knows when to ask and when to just do. I hope I’m the latter; I certainly aspire for it.

Still, I’m more and more telling my clients about all these little things. Otherwise, later, they’ll find out about them the hard way… such as when a different consultant doesn’t do any of those little things.

Ok, need your opinions on this: do you mind waiting for heavy Web pages to load? It kinda drives me nuts (see Please Wait…Loading…), but maybe the rest of you don’t mind.

Today I was on M&Ms Web site, to vote for Orange as my favorite color (poor Eric K, he’s in last place right now…). Here’s the loading screen… after about a minute. Those numbered disks — not quite M&Ms — drop in from the top, stay there for a while, then fall away so the next numbers can fall in.

So… The animation is interesting for about ten seconds, then I’m bored and getting angrier by the minute. If I’m waiting for a game to load, or the daily crossword, maybe the wait is worth it. But really, M&Ms? You’re going to make me wait… to vote. (And to add my name to your junk email list.)

C’mon. Be better.

A client recently launched a new Web site that had been designed by a volunteer agency, but has asked me to stay involved to help with technical issues. The new site looks and works fine, except for some poor front-page communication, but under the surface…

The other guys put a different Google Analytics code into their page template. So that means when the new site launched, Google stopped tracking visits in the one stats account, and started tracking stats in the new account.

Now the client’s stats are split into two. If they want to know how many site visits there were in 2010, they’ll have to look at two separate reports and add the numbers. Likewise, if they want to do any before/after comparisons, they’ll have to export the data from two accounts and crunch their own numbers.

I spoke with the client and it’s not a big deal to them, which is good news. But it illustrates the kind of short-sighted thinking some designers have — trash everything and start over, even if we lose some good stuff in the process.

I wrote a message like the one below to one of my clients today, whose Web site is about to launch. I’ve written about SEO before (see my fledgling SEO category), but this seemed worth sharing. My contract with this client does not include any serious Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for the new site, except that all pages will be search engine friendly (which they are: descriptive page titles, use of valid HTML, friendly links and URLs).

…

Within a month of site launch, Google, Yahoo and other search crawlers will start to find the new site and index the content (except any private content, which they cannot get to). Based on the found content and each search engine’s own secret algorithms, the site will begin to be included in various searches… although it may land far down in the results, depending on what’s being searched for.

The most obvious search would be for [business name], and before long, I’d expect your site to be at or near the top of a results page for that search query.

But… you really want people to find your site when they’re searching for more abstract things, like “Orange County Business Park” or “Santa Ana Office Space” (for example). These are referred to in SEO as “keywords” (even though they’re really key phrases).

If these keywords are not found on your site, Google will not make the connection and therefore your site will not show up in the results for that search. So, when rewriting the Home Page text, I included some additional phrases in the text for SEO purposes.

It’s possible that the SEO-friendly setup will get you enough traffic to be happy. If not…

A serious SEO project would take a list of keywords and make sure that the site includes them in critical places, such as page titles, image placeholders, subject headings and meta tags. We would monitor your site’s rankings in various keyword searches and adjust the SEO strategy depending on how well the site is performing over time.

Since incoming links to your site matter, SEO specialists often work to request incoming links from related sites or the media. You can help. Try to include your Web address as a link wherever possible — in media articles, news releases, Chamber of Commerce listings, business directories, and so on. All those little incoming links add up to better SEO placement.

Increasingly, SEO specialists are also helping out with social media (Facebook and Twitter) and including social media in their strategies.

SEO is related to, and often confused with, Search Engine Marketing (paid ads on search results pages). With SEM, you can guarantee prominent placement on results pages. But you have to pay for that placement, and the cost depends on how competitive the keywords are. In my opinion, smart businesses use paid SEM only in specific niches or for specific campaigns.

There’s a lot more to it, but those are the basics.

A friend/colleague sent me email recently, asking about programs for creating Web site graphics. Basically, he’s working on a low-budget labor-of-love Web site and needs something better than MS Paint. Don’t we all?

Sure, the pros use Photoshop and Fireworks, but the cost is steep and the learning curve is steeper. So what’s a weekend Web warrior to do?

My response: