China Watch Blog

China Watch Blog has learnt that there is a new White Paper which explains the finer points of Email Signature design.

A 38-page paper on good email signatures has been launched that will end a flood of bad corporate email branding, claim email signature experts Exclaimer.

They’ve created a top 10 list of failed email signature tips, to accompany the paper and help readers start spotting the pitfalls of signature design.

Use Plain Text, No Images

‘This is a double-edged sword’ explains Peter Jones, web trends researcher.

‘Some firms are right to keep it simple, but restricting it to plain text doesn’t just look amateur – it looks lazy.

‘More staid firms should use minimalist branding, just a small logo with one or two colors will look respectable but professional – without looking primitive.’

Exclude Email Addresses

‘This is a key function of the email signature – if your mail has been forwarded, any recipient will rely on its contact details to get in touch.

‘If the ‘From’ address is reduced to your name as it’s forwarded – kareng@greenorg.net to ‘Karen Green’ – having your full email address in a signature can be crucial’

Use an Internal Version

‘This is only wrong because it doesn’t go far enough: create one for new clients, one for replies, etc. – use different signatures to augment the message in any scenario.

‘A familiar contact won’t need full-on branding but he may still want some elements, like a fax number, that don’t belong on a reply – so use a simpler version for long-standing clients.

‘Even colleagues may need your signature – add your floor number, phone extension or job title. Adjusting your signature to suit the occasion goes well beyond internal mail.’

The tips are meant to dispel myths, Exclaimer argues, giving readers an understanding not just of the technology, but of their own needs – not misinformed rules.

All 10 can be found on their page Ten Myths About Email Signatures.

They’re inspired by Exclaimer’s white paper, How To Make Professional Email Signatures That Work, a 38-page guide to building and designing good signatures.

The guide includes research on the best aesthetics, the best coding methods, and the best strategies for any industry – from construction to tourism.

It references articles and journals on web marketing and email signatures, but also draws upon brand guidelines from some of the world’s largest companies.

Exclaimer’s CEO, Andrew Millington explained, ‘Why allocate so much time and money to business cards when I give out one a year but send fifty emails each day?

‘Every interaction, at least partly, occurs through email: by giving it the same brand presence I give my business cards, everyone gets that impact.

‘For ten years and for 35 million users, our software has meant less work, less effort, more time and more power – we wrote this paper to provide all that, in 38 pages.’

China Watch Blog presents the second part of a four part series on SEOs Facts and Myths, by Michael Bluejay.

Q5. Instead of focusing on building a quality site with good, useful information, should I try to find some “trick” to make my site rank well.

FACT: Focusing on tricks is a waste of time. Build a quality site and they will come. There is no magic bullet which will rocket you to the top of the Search engine results pages (SERPs). There is no way Google could rank eight billion web pages by using only one criterion. There are reportedly hundreds of different factors in Google’s ranking algorithm. Thus your chances of dominating the SERPs by making one specific change are slim.

There have been certain tricks that people have discovered over the years, but as soon as they exploited them the engines closed the loopholes. The engines aren’t stupid, and they’re not going to stand by while a bunch of webmasters try to game the system. Any trick you might be lucky enough to discover will have a short shelf life. It’s not a long-term strategy.

Q6. Is it a good idea to make my keywords invisible, such as by having white letters on a white background.

FACT: The engines are not stupid. But stupid tricks like invisible text can get your site penalized by some engines. Focusing on tricks is a waste of time.

Q7. Is it a good idea for trading links with any site which will link to

FACT: Trading links with anyone is silly. If you have standards in real life (and you should), then you should have standards on the web, too. Don’t associate with useless websites. Choose your friends carefully.

8. It is true that search engines can’t deal with framed sites, or they penalize framed sites.

FACT: Search engines can index framed sites just fine. They’re not stupid. There are a whole host of other reasons why you shouldn’t use frames, such as that users can’t bookmark or link to any page other than your home page, and when a search engine lists an inside page the visitor will arrive at that page without the surrounding frames. (Yes, you can force the frames with JavaScript, but that’s an extremely clumsy and awkward solution.)

China Watch Blog presents Michael Bluejay’s “Top 16 SEO Myths” in a four part series, which the Master describes as “Things you ‘know’ which aren’t so.

Question 1. Do I have to submit my site to a search engine for it to get listed?

FACT: Submission is unnecessary. A search engine will always find your site as long as some other site links to it. I never submit my sites to the search engines.

Q 2. Do I have to periodically re-submit my site to the search engines.

FACT: Resubmission is unnecessary. Once a site is in a search engine, it’s in for good (unless it resorts to trickery and gets banned). There is zero reason to keep submitting a site to a search engine. Resubmission is a waste of time. Anyone selling a resubmission service is a con artist.

Q 3. Does having Meta tags help my rankings.

FACT: META tags don’t affect your rankings. The search engines ignore META keyword and description tags for ranking purposes, for an obvious reason: Taking the webmasters’ word for what their site should rank well for would be a pretty stupid way for the engines to rank pages.

Q 4. Should I focus on getting great rankings rather than making sure my visitors become customers. After all, it’s not how many sales I make, it’s how many people walk through the door – or maybe even just how many people just see the door without walking in.

FACT: Ranking isn’t everything. Many webmasters are so focused on ranking that they forget the obvious: A good ranking doesn’t always mean more visitors, and more visitors doesn’t always mean more sales.

Finally, a top ranking on a highly-trafficked search term may be no better than decent rankings on a wide array of less popular terms. Success is not always measured by how high you get for one particular term.