| Below are snippets from articles from the "News" section
of www.RichsWebDesign.com of this past month. If the article seems
interesting enough, feel free to read the entire article at http://www.RichsWebDesign.com/news.shtml.
AUGUST Search Engine News From
www.searchengine-news.com
Google Even Though Google Now Indexes Flash, Here's Why You Still Shouldn't Use it - As discussed last month, Google significantly improved their ability to crawl Flash. Once that news got out, we immediately began hearing from SEOs saying that their company's web designer is eager to convert their site over to Flash—now that it's Google friendly n' all.
Wait!...not so fast. We've been testing over the past month, and Google still doesn't index Flash nearly as well as you might think. Converting your web site over to a Flash design could be a huge SEO disaster. Most Flash sites are created as one big file. That means every page within the Flash site has the same URL. People will be able to link to your homepage, but not to any of your internal pages. By using Flash, you've effectively chopped your link building efforts off at the knees.
Former Google Engineers Launch Rival Cuil Search Engine - A team of former Google engineers is taking on their old boss with a new search engine designed to rank pages based more on the quality and depth of the content on the page, and less on the links those pages have pointing to them. It's called Cuil (pronounced 'cool').
MSN - Live.com - Last year, Microsoft adCenter added a quality-based ranking component to their ads, similar to Google AdWords' Quality Score. Microsoft recently announced they've now rolled this feature out to advertisers in the UK and Canada.
ASK - Slow month at Ask...nothing new to report.
YAHOO! - Wanna Build Your Own Search Engine? Let Yahoo Show You How! - Yahoo knows that Google clearly dominates the search market, controlling more than 75% of the US market alone. One big reason Google has gotten such a foothold is because they face very little competition. With entrance costs into the search business running in the hundreds of millions, it's no surprise that only three companies (Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft) can really afford to compete.
Yahoo has finally discontinued their famous Overture Keyword Tool. Long considered the definitive standard in free keyword tools by online marketers everywhere, the Overture Keyword Tool provided Yahoo with enormous amounts of free publicity and mindshare among those looking to promote their businesses online. Why they would want to get rid of it remains a mystery. Once it became clear that Yahoo was dropping the ball, WordTracker made the smart move to launch their own free keyword tool, which performed the same function as the Yahoo tool.
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| Site Strength Indicator (SSI) - 
This extremely useful tool will give you a snapshot of just how powerful a site is in the eyes of the search engines.
Not only can you use it to quickly determine if you can compete against another site, but you can also use it to analyze your own site's ranking power. (You MAY need to sign in using my ID: rich@richswebdesign.com & PW: "electric")
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"10 Key Things to Look for in a Good Web Designer" 
The pace of business today is positively supersonic. There doesn't seem to be enough time for anything anymore, and businesses of all sizes are working harder and faster all the time.
It's important to work smarter, too. And that means when you have to choose an important vendor for an essential service, you need to slow down and make a deliberate, careful decision. This is particularly important when you are getting ready to put your company's face on the World Wide Web in a new or newly-refurbished web site.
Before listing the ten key things to look for in a good web designer, let's define a few terms. Even though you may encounter variants on the name – like web developer, web artist, webmaster and so forth - we're talking about an individual who, alone or with some assistance, is going to "get you up and running." This means more than simple design.
1) Experience
You will need someone with all the techniques, tools and tricks that will help you prepare your web site and accomplish your online goals. You should confirm that the candidate knows the entire alphabet soup of protocols, web markup languages and coding utilities: HTML, XML, CSS, PHP and so on. Ask all prospects for a portfolio, ask if they can "hand code," find out how many years of experience each has, etc. |
2) Customer Service Orientation
As important as experience is a mindset and attitude of making customer service a priority. If a designer/developer is too busy to answer e-mails or phone calls, will they be able to keep the production schedule? Ask for references, and make a point of actually calling them. Ask the prospect's previous clients if the web developer was responsive, on time and effective. |
3) Original copy and Graphics
Creating professional and 100% original web graphics separates the adults from the kids every time. Most anyone can do some "quick and dirty" copy writing and slap it on a page with some pictures and hyperlinks. On the other hand, a talented and veteran designer will demonstrate knowledge of page layout, have a way with color and know how to place elements on a page for best appearance and web site performance. Take a good look at a number of the sites each prospect has built, and make sure no one is using "templates" or "starter pages" that come with some software programs or are available (even free) on the Internet. |
4) Creativity
You need to decide right away (before you even start talking to designers) just how much the designer you find will be involved in the conceptual process. Your designer may need to help you with some of the "big picture" questions, such as marketing, web copy writing (for search engines) and how to generate traffic. You want someone creative, but not a "diva" who won't follow instructions or work with your ideas to bring them to fruition. |
5) Marketing Experience
The easiest way to find out if your prospective web designers are good at marketing web sites is to view their site and their portfolio. That you are considering selecting them to design your site is a good first indicator that their designs convert. You'll further want to ensure that you can find what you're looking for on their site quickly and easily and that you can do the same on some of the sites in their portfolio. |
6) Cost
Pricing for a professional web site of 10-15 pages with the standard features runs all the way from $500 to $5000. It may be that your idea is so complicated that you might have to pay for an estimate. For a full picture of all the costs involved in the project, ask for all the costs to be broken out individually - domain name and hosting, graphic design work, marketing fees and web development matters. |
7) Job Timeline
After you ask the developers how long the process will take, make a point of asking references if the project was, in fact, completed on time. A basic web site may take as little as a week, while more involved and technically challenging sites could take a month or more. You need to know what the real-world turnaround time is for the specific people you are considering. |
8) Communication Skills
Don't hire anyone who insists on speaking to you in "computer-ese" or won't explain unknown terminology. You have to communicate with this person about things that are important to your very survival, so you need to be clear at all times. If you cannot establish a good working relationship, it won't matter if you have Leonardo Da Vinci working on your code, it just won't work out. |
9) Full Service
There may be one or two things that your designer/developer cannot do, but for the most part you should be able to find a reasonably-priced professional who can handle just about everything. If the designer needs help installing a particularly complicated shopping cart, or your site requires some heavy database programming, it is reasonable to expect that your designer might need some assistance. All of this should be spelled out in the pricing, of course (see #6, above), and you shouldn't be surprised by anything your designer is telling you. If you are, you overlooked something in this list! |
10) Availability
Are these prospects full-time web professionals? Or are they moonlighting from some other job, even a completely unrelated one? It may be that a part-time web designer who's working at McDonald's really can do a great job for you, but will he/she be available to meet with you during normal business hours? No matter what decision you make - full-time pro, part-timer or student - you must be able to get hold of your designer. |
Explanation of Your Weekly "SE Rankings Report"
Quite a few clients of Rich's Web Design have asked me, "What
does my weekly ranking chart mean?" "You send it every
Monday, but I never can understand it." Here is the best
explanation: 
The VERY first thing I look at are the two sections
"Moved Up" & "Moved Down" 1
. This week, 2 of the phrases "moved up" in the rankings
and 4 "moved down". If any of these phrases were "dropped"
or "added" then the numbers would show directly below.
The "Visibility Score" and the "Visibility
Percent" 2 are calculations
based on points given to higher ranking phrases and the overall
total. A position of 1 = 30 pts., 2 = 29 pts ... A ranking of
30 = 1 point, etc. I would NOT worry
about these numbers! The actual rankings 3
are the meat of the chart. This shows the actual rankings for
your individual phrases / words for this day for each of the 4
major search engines. If your phrase went UP from last weeks report,
then a green up arrow  will
show. For example, the two phrases above, "Kernersville Accounting"
for both AOL & Google, went up this week. 11
means that it is NOW #1 and moved up by 1 place. If your phrase
went DOWN, then a red 
will show. For example, this site went down on Yahoo for "Kernersville
Accountant". 6
3 means that this week it ranks #6; It moved "down"
3 places. Last week it was #3. CONCLUSION - As you know, these phrases are
constantly changing in the rankings. Some UP ... some DOWN. Even
if a phrase shows "dropped" ,
chances are good that next week, it will be added 
back in. If your site consistently"drops" in rankings,
or many words are "dropped"
and are not added
the next week, then we need to work on your site. CALL
ME!! Chances are good that we need either FRESH content or MORE
incoming links
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Have
a Great August!
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