AdWord Express — not to be confused with Google’s AdWords Express — sent me a spam the other day touting their “exclusive top placement” service to put my site at the top of “ALL MAJOR SEARCH ENGINES.” They actually guarantee that my site will appear above all other sites on every search engine for my […]
...Keep reading »Links, Google and Advertising
One of my clients (who has a very successful and busy site) recently asked me about selling text links on his site. He had been approached by someone (apparently a link broker) who was wanting to place a collection of links in the footer, sitewide. My client was asking me about format and location, but […]
...Keep reading »The Web: The Rules Are Different Here
Tonight we’re enjoying our first fire of the season in our fireplace. It’s quite a cheery little blaze. The only thing is, since we live in south Florida, it’s really not cool enough yet for a fire. We had to open all the windows and turn on the ceiling fan to get the living room […]
...Keep reading »Search vs. Direct Navigation
So I have a client I’m developing a website for. The client has been great to work with, and we’ve made good progress on the new site. But there was a problem: The client kept complaining that he couldn’t reach his site — he was getting “not found” error messages. He told me that he […]
...Keep reading »A Face Lift in Cape Coral?
I received a well-written, but completely absurd, spam e-mail yesterday. It started out by saying: “I was looking at websites under the keyword face lift cape coral and came across your site tropicalwebworks.com. I see that you’re ranked #1 on page 18 in google. I am not sure if you are aware of why you’re […]
...Keep reading »Ebay and Linkbaiting
This month I, along with thousands of other eBay affiliates, have been busy little bees converting all of our eBay affiliate links to use the new eBay IDs and format, thanks to eBay’s announcement that they were leaving Commission Junction and taking their affiliate program in-house.
...Keep reading »Minor SEO Changes, Major SEO Effect on a Minor Site
It’s very satisfying to spend a great deal of time developing a new site from scratch for a client, taking pains to ensure that the site is search-engine friendly, and then to see that site do well in the search engines after launch. But it’s also surprisingly satisfying to spend a few hours optimizing a […]
...Keep reading »Ethics and Web Design – The Professional Responsibility of the Web Designer
Apparently I’m part of a small minority of web developers who believe that the developer has a level of professional responsibility toward the client, regardless of whether the client knows, understands, or requests same.
...Keep reading »Forums (or Fora, for you Latin geeks)
I recently subscribed to a satellite tv package when I upgraded my DSL account — and I instantly got hooked on that adorable Animal Planet show “Meerkat Manor.” Just in time for the season ending. 🙁 Then I started watching Orangutan Island, and while watching the 2nd episode I idly checked the whois for orangutanisland.com. […]
...Keep reading »Correcting Bad Information
The amount of misinformation out there on the web is almost enough to make a person crazy. I ran across a few statements today that were so baldly wrong that I have to correct them here.
...Keep reading »“Crawlability,” Web Design, and SEO
So I got a gentle tweak from Zack Katkin at Unique ID Web Design because I haven’t blogged in a while. I’ve been busy working on projects for clients, but I know that’s no excuse. I’m breaking the Golden Rule of Blogging, which I drill into my clients when they want to start a blog, […]
...Keep reading »A Search Engine Experiment
I noticed that my web site development site got a visit by someone who found it in a search for “hank hill quotations.” I haven’t put any effort at all into optimizing the site for that search term, so naturally I got curious and had to check it out. It turns out my site is […]
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