Although it’s on a specialist search engine optimisation website, today’s article can be followed by the layman without too much brow-furrowing, and I think you’ll find it worthwhile. Are You Forcing Your Users to Superfluously Click? on SEOmoz looks at “clicks that cause me to grit my teeth and shake my fist”.

As a web user, you’ll agree with all of the examples, but you’ll probably also recognise one or two which your own website might be guilty of. “Click here to continue” prompts? Things that look like they’re clickable (but aren’t)? You know the sort of stuff. The article suggests you try to shorten the path to your goal, don’t force your users to do the work for you, and don’t promise your user one thing and deliver something else. Obvious really.

Here’s one for those of you who are already well into keyword optimizing: identifying the search terms you want to be found for, and getting them on your pages in the right places and quantities. Optimizing for Multiple Word Order Search Phrases on the terrific SEOmoz blog discusses whether you should optimise for “red widgets UK” or “UK red widgets” or any other combination of those words (assuming you sell red widgets in the UK!).

If all this sounds a bit like hard work, we’ll be covering these sorts of topics, and helping you personally, in the Business Marketing Online Insider Programme, starting in October 2008.