And, yet, here mine sits.

Part of it comes out of the fact that I loathe self-promotion. Yes, I’ve got a lot of cool projects that have been hitting the Internets lately, but I hate tooting my own horn. I hate it so much that I’ve entertained notions of trying to kill my business by ending all advertising (Yes, Yellow Pages, I’m looking in your general direction) and relying solely on word of mouth to generate business.

Ah, but I once again digress.

The really fun news making the rounds last week was that Mickey D’s increased their foot traffic by a whopping 33% via a FourSquare promotion. Word of this social media success spread faster than a bad cold until someone at ReadWriteWeb took a little time to think about things and point out that the emperor was not wearing clothes.

The thing that bothers me about the initial reaction to this bit of misinformation is that it reflects what we’re all looking for. We want that magic pill that instantly makes us insanely profitable. A lot of people point to social media success stories like this & the Old Spice campaign and that only creates unrealistic expectations. Facebook pages are created, tweets tweeted and nothing happens.

And then social media gets the blame.

I’m not doubting the benefit of promotions via social media, but it really is a long term investment. It’s not just about motivating potential customers by contests, coupons or the good old bait and switch upsell. It’s really about putting yourself out there and showing who you are and what you’ve got. It’s holding conversations and building relationships.

If you want to see a master at work, check out @CosmicKitchen on Twitter. Hands down, Kris (not a typo) does the best social media marketing of any business here in town. She’s not above a little shameless self-promotion, but she mixes it well with real conversations.

Of course, the fact that they have some of the best food in town doesn’t hurt (I could go for a Reuben right now).

Why?

Once customers come in your shop, would you send them down to the coffee shop (where all their friends hang out) just to sign up for your mailing list?

Heck no.

So, now that they’re on your website, why would you make it easy for them to go to Facebook where there are a thousand other distractions?

Once they visit your site, you’ve got their attention. Do something quick or you’ll lose it.

Before the list, here is the obligatory Picasso quote:

“Bad artists copy. Great artists steal.”
-Pablo Picasso

1. The Best Designs

   http://www.thebestdesigns.com/

   
   One of the oldest inspiration-type sites out there.

2. CSSRemix

   http://cssremix.com/

   
   Quick thumbnails that give a fairly good idea of what the pages look like. Nifty search feature as well.

3. CSSMania
   http://cssmania.com/
   
   Nice, big thumbnails and organized by topic.
4. Screenalicious

   http://www.screenalicious.com

   
   Good layout plus ratings.

5. One Page Love

   http://onepagelove.com/

   
   Interesting niche sort of gallery for one page websites.

6. Design Snack

   http://www.designsnack.com/

   
   Similar to screenalicious.

7. Design Shack – CSS Gallery
   http://designshack.co.uk/gallery/all/
   
   Can view by color and layout.

• Stuffing the description meta tag with so many keywords that it looks like jibberish
  Really, aren’t we past the days of this? Stuffing is the reason why the keyword meta tag is pretty much useless anymore, so why are we trying to destroy the description tag? Furthermore, this actually shows up in the search results for people to see. Do you really want to look like you have no command of the English language?
• Having two meta description tags
  Sloppy… Just sloppy.
• Building hidden link pages that are only linked to from other hidden link pages on other url’s
  It doesn’t technically violate Google’s guidelines, but it certainly isn’t in the spirit of keeping them. If you have a hidden link page on your site that looks like a mini link farm, I’d be expecting the Google Police to be taking away privileges or putting you in a time out.
• Pointless internal linking designed to influence page rank & not help visitors
  Multiple links at the bottom of pages that all point to the same pages… that’s a no-no.
• And here’s the big one: Targeting key-phrases that no human being will ever type into a search engine
  There are several keyphrase research tools out there, so there’s no excuse for this one except for someone to say, “Hey, look! You’re ranked #1 for ‘Wilmington, NC repair of Motor Vehicles” when most people are searching for, “Mechanic in Wilmington, NC”.

Here is a quote from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines:

Quality guidelines – basic principles

• Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”
  
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
  
• Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
• Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.
  

Now, all this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t build without search engines in mind. Man, that would be just goofy. However, it also doesn’t mean that you should be building your site for search engines at the expense of your visitors. Remember the rule of thumb above, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”