Came across a randomly thought provoking Golf Magazine feature on “How to Hit All Feel, No Think Shots,” wherein the pro player, Stewart Cink, gives us shanking and slicing amateurs five tips to to get out of our head and into our groove on the golf course.

Here’s the take home message:

“Your goal should be to become a feel player, where your only swing thought is where you want the ball to go.”

What about “all feel, no think” web design?

Sounds a little like other mantras we’ve got in the industry…”intuitive information architecture”…”the right look and feel”…”the user is in control”…”don’t make me think”.  Or the KISS method we were taught in high school journalism class and still applies for building websites:  “keep it simple, stupid.”

Don’t you love websites that really just do one thing and do it well? That resist the illogical urge to (try to) be all things at all times to all parties?  That refuse to overthink it?  We do.

Here are five rather small but highly effective websites ENTERMEDIA has built in the last few years that, in their own unique way, were simple by design, rapidly assembled, and ROI-driven.   In other words:  all feel, no think, and straight down the fairway.

Julio’s Cafe - hours of operation, their menu, and a map.  Julio’s is always delicious (nice people, too).

Nano Whitman - a musician’s website:  turned out really cool, even though it’s just facts.

Ambiente Wine Importing Company, Inc. - a sophisticated web presence/sortable wine list/sales contact directory.  Done.

Austin Rent Fence - temporary fence supplies for construction jobs or special events in Austin.  Need a quote?

Friends Without Benefits - testing the viability of a startup business idea:  the pitch explained, the feedback requested.

Recently we were referred a potential client requesting us to review his website and provide a cost estimate for attaining first page ranking for two specific keyword phrase queries in Google’s natural search results.  We thought it might be instructive to publish our email reply back, as an opportunity to introduce our general philosophy on SEO.

Hi —–,

We really appreciate ———- referring you to us, but we are not a pure play SEO firm that will give you a ‘guarantee’ about where you will end up. Be wary of a web design company that would!  However, we do know a lot about SEO and would be happy to consult with you on how to do-it-yourself or make a plan of action towards that goal.  It’s really not that hard and we advise that it’s best to learn and direct SEO strategy on your own rather than spend up to $2-3K a month for these services.  Others may disagree.

There are several different components to an effective SEO strategy.  Please allow us to explain a few concepts, and forgive us if you are already familiar with the following.  As a baseline, you need to attend to some basic structural elements throughout your website:

• Well-designed, hierarchical information architecture
• XML site map submitted to Google
• Title tags
• H1s
• Alt tags (photos and links)
• Meta-description
• Meta keywords
• Keyword density
• SEO friendly URLs

Take care of all that and you’ll doing well.  You can also do a lot with press releases:

• You can use press release distribution services to send newsworthy events out on the wire online, allowing online publishers and aggregators like Yahoo, Google, etc, to pick up your press release and publish it on their site. Just as important, you get a permanent page on this press release distribution site that links back to you.
• A word of caution:  you should hold yourself to a high standard and make sure that whatever you do is actually newsworthy. Some SEO firms believe in ‘creating news’ to be able to send out press releases all the time, but this approach seems unsavory to us.

Try to generate good inbound links:

• Target listing sites, partner companies, directory listings, blogs, etc, anyone that has a website that it would make sense to have your company mentioned with a link back to your site.
• Build quality links every month that will be there permanently linking back to your site. The more links you have and the longer they’ve been there the higher your page rank will go.

Be a blogger:

• Frame yourself as an expert within your industry
• Each blog post acts as yet another way for you to promote your agenda (more qualified traffic to your website). Many times your audience might find you through a search query that you would never predict, which is why having quality articles and posts on your site that discuss your industry using your industry language is very important.
• Open up the outgoing RSS feed on your blog post. With quality blog posts on your site you create the opportunity and possibility for others to want to display your content on their site. When others do that it creates backlinks to your site, which is what you want!

As an advanced technique, try a desirable ‘widget’ or freebie of some sort.  Be creative:

• If you offered something to your clients that they could put on their site, such as a ‘[-----] Certified Professional’ seal of some sort you could give them a reason to put something on their site that links back to a page on your site that explains that ‘seal of approval’. These are all free links from extremely relevant websites.
• What I mean by relevant is that it’s better when a website has related content to what you do. Having a link from ESPN to your site would be nice, but it wouldn’t necessarily be that powerful in the eyes of Google.

We can absolutely assist you in all these pursuits–we do these services all the time for clients– but we cannot guarantee a ranking because a) we focus on sites, not search, and b) our approach is to teach our clients to understand SEO for themselves first because it should be a long term goal.  It’s not hard to learn or implement basic SEO tactics.  All it takes is time and consistent effort.  We do understand that sometimes time can run in short supply, so If you’re interested in a referral we can recommend a very proficient SEO and PPC firm here in town that can do it all for you, but again, we believe that no outside party can do SEO work as well as you can do it for yourself.

Hope this is helpful to you, —–, please let us know if you have any questions or would like to schedule a time to talk.

Did you realize over sixty percent of all federal income tax returns were completed using tax preparation software last year?  Fifty million Americans prepared their own tax returns…hard to imagine that all but the most ardent purists wouldn’t prefer the benefit of inexpensive tax software to help them crunch all those numbers, double-check their work and e-file with a click of a mouse.

We recommend Tax-Compare.com if you’re looking for information about tax preparation software.  Tax-Compare is a cool free tool for anyone to use when researching tax prep software features and pricing.  ENTERMEDIA was hired to design and develop this new Drupal site in time for the 2009 tax season.  It launched last month and is getting plenty of traffic already.  Here’s what Tax-Compare is all about, in its own words:

Tax-Compare.com was created to consolidate and organize information about the top providers of tax return preparation software and web based services so that you can make an “apples to apples” comparison of the different products and select the one that best fits your needs.

Here’s how it works:

If you do not enter any information about yourself on our website, the website will show you the least expensive options offered by the various vendors.  After you enter information, the website will determine the least expensive option offered by the various vendors that has the features required to handle your needs.

Of course, the “how it works” part was our job.  Lots of moving parts on this one, and a real communication challenge to ensure all the details agreed with each other. We’re very proud of how it turned out, and thankful for the opportunity.

Take note:  this is not your average comparison site. It looks great, it’s easy to use, and it’s deep with useful information.  Be sure to check it out, especially if you prepare and e-file your own tax return.

Nick Lewis was in charge of making it behave.  He shared how he was able to devise a crucial query solution in a recent blog post here.  Attawaytogo Nick…somebody get that guy a tax-credit!

Think you have an idea that’s the next Digg, Amazon, or Twitter, but don’t know how to get there from here?  Before you do anything else, call us. Then take solace and inspiration from a look back at those mega-sites in their formative days, courtesy of Ross Hill, who reminds us big websites start small.  Is there any other way?  Well, supposing you had millions upon millions in seed money lying around…you could start big and get even bigger.  In which case you should also contact ENTERMEDIA right now this very minute.

Digg cost $200 to build and launch, really?  Twitter was almost named FriendStalker?  Okay, not really.  Here’s the real story of Twitter’s very first steps.