If your website is 'optimised' for Google by adding large numbers of keywords you want to be found for, then you might shortly have to change strategy.

That's because Google is changing it's famous search algorithm to penalise those who add keywords and exchange too many links "beyond what a normal person would expect" according to Matt Cutts, who heads Google's 'Spam team'.

A content strategy driven by what readers want, not what search engines want, is the direction that Google has been actively working toward rewarding, a not unreasonable goal.

If you're selecting topics based on what your audience would find helpful, you're probably doing content strategy right. If you're choosing what to write about based on the keywords you want to be found for, you may fall foul of the new Google changes.

Sitemorse's new Governisation product helps our clients manage web compliance and could warn users of potential problems ahead such as the Google change. Governisation - a blend of governance and optimisation - will check and warn about too-high word density or over-use of keywords.

We will be busy rolling out the Governisation product shortly, along with a website to better explain what it can do.

Those of you that have attended either, one of my familiarisation sessions about the new interface or training sessions run since the 15th December will know that we intended to improve the new Directory Map page by adding an expand and collapse capability at each domain and sub-domain level.

This is now live and improves the readability and usability of this page considerably.

The Directory Map shows you those directories and sub-directories that were "looked" at by this audit report.  Not all items were audited but it gives you an indication of which bits of your site we touched on in this audit.  That way you can identify those bits we DIDN'T touch so you can decide whether to use your Page Credits to run a specific audit on some of those bits we didn't touch.

Here's a screen shot of how it looks now

Click here for larger image of Directory Map

The Immediate figure shows the number of items in the specific directory.  The Total figure shows the number of items in the specific directory and all sub-directories beneath it.

And here it is expanded

Click here for larger image of Expanded Directory Map

Work is now complete on the new Interface to Sitemorse.  The final features and enhancements have been incorporated into the site and Beta testing is under-way.

I thought I'd cover some of the pages that are either new or have changed considerably from the existing system.

One new page that has been introduced is the Dashboard

As you can see it gives you access to the components of your subscription.

View larger image of the Dashboard

This puts all of the items you may need to access on one convenient page along with the latest info from the last 5 Monitors and last 5 Audits in the bottom right corner.  Giving you an at-a-glance status of your sites.

There is a new page linked to from the Inventory page (now linked to from the Summary page) which shows a list of all the pages with errors on them.  You can then select to see only the Pages with Function errors, or just Code Quality etc. by selecting the link in the left hand column.

View larger image of pages with errors screen

All the results from our auditing of PDFs found on a website are now reported together on the PDF page. The reporting is much clearer.

View a larger image of the PDF page

The Performance page now shows the results of the Average time to first byte and the Average download speed across All the requests made during the audit. It also shows the slowest items in graphical form.

The performance information about the Home Page has moved to the new "Landing Page" page accessible from the Summary page.

View a larger image of performance page

Just a quick update on more of the pages that are almost finished on the new Website design.  These are current views of the pages and are subject to minor changes before we go live.

The Website address page showing you the primary and Secondary sites in your account.  The new page currently looks like this:-

If you'd like to see a larger image of Your web addresses page please click here

Once you click on a web address  you then go to the page listing the audits that have been run on the site.  The new page currently looks like this:-

If you'd like to see a larger image of the View audits page please click here

When looking at the detail of an error and clicking on the URL you are presented with the Diagnostics page which details all of the errors on that page.  The Diagnostics new page currently looks like this:

If you'd like to see a larger image of the Page diagnostics page please click here

As always we'd really appreciate your feedback.  So please leave us feedback.

Things are moving on with the site redesign.

The "public" side of the site (i.e. the pages people can get to without a login) is almost finished now.  We haven't fixed the date of the switch-over but it is a matter of a few weeks away.  I will be arranging short training sessions to cover the changes once we have fixed the date.

Work on the report pages is going on apace and the new look and feel is, i think, a big improvement.  It's less cluttered with the important items on the screen and items of a lesser importance a click away on another screen.

Here's the new Accessibility "A" screen

View larger image of Accessibility screen shot

Just to give you more of a feel for what we are doing here's the Sitemorse Search screen

View a larger image of the search page

As always we'd really like to get some feedback from you on your thoughts about the new design.  So please click on the Comments link.

We're hoping to be able to get a demo version available for you to try out.  Watch this space for more info on that. 

Although we've made changes to the front-end of the website and regular tweaks to improve the back-end there hasn't been a major update to the site for many years.

We are in the process of a substantial refresh of the site.  The developers have been in purdah while the whole site gets a make over and our aim is to be in a position to launch the new site in early October

The front-end is being given a fresher, more professional look - positioning the company more clearly and describing what we are about and what benefits will accrue from using Sitemorse. 

View a larger screen shot of the Home Page as it stands today.

The back-end has looked fundamentally the same for a long time now.  That's been deliberate as we wanted people to be familiar with the service so they could easily find their way around and understand what we were telling them, thus maximising the benefits from the service.  That's a sensible approach but it does mean that you lag behind the technology and the design trends. 

We've been gradually introducing some of the new things we'll incorporate into the new site - such as the new traffic light score icons - that were easy to do, so that the change wont be completely a "Big Bang" approach.  The aim is to make the back-end fresher and clearer to use but still be familiar to existing users.

I'll have more images soon and will run regular blogs on the subject to keep you up to date.  I'd really appreciate any feedback and comments you have so I can feed these back to the design and development teams.

Here's what the new Summary page looks like as of today.

View a larger screen shot of the Summary Page as it stands today