DianeV
TopSEOs sounds like a lead gen site. Nothing wrong with that, but if it is what it appears to be, there's everything wrong with gaining leads based on others' articles, names and reputations (particularly without their knowledge or permission) and then handing them off to someone else.
Perhaps my company doesn’t fall into the Web "conversation" scenario because we don’t sell stuff that customers buy in volume. Nor stuff for which we’d set up a public support venue to enable clients to discuss their wants/issues/needs. If clients want to talk to us, we use email and the phone -- now there’s a conversation, and better yet for the fact that it’s private.There IS a need for private communications for many businesses. Imagine one of your clients wanting to discuss market trends with respect to his business ... online, where everyone can read it. Imagine posting your responses online.However, a public support "conversation" area does work where it’s needed, if it’s handled correctly and if the public uses it.Still, the use of the word "conversation" has always made me grit my teeth. It’s not as if omitting to provide a public discussion area means a company is out of communication with its customers. It just doesn’t work for all scenarios.
Yeah, I guess it’s good. But once again, we have search engines rather than the W3.org issuing their own tags. I spun it because it’s news (at least, to me) but ... isn’t this something you’d do with a 301 anyway?
Story: Legitimacy of guaranteed SEO
Or guaranteeing placement for keywords of little value.It’s all about honest marketing.
Yes. Note that, without a doctype, a page cannot be validated. Of course, you could validate your code by eye, but doing that with each page is sure to be time-consuming.
Will non-standard code affect search engine optimization? Probably not.There was a time a few years ago when many coded for "correct" display in Internet Explorer <b>only</b> on the concept that "IE is the most widely used browser". I always wondered what they said to their clients because it’s not an either/or thing, and stating that IE is the most widely used browser and so must be supported (which, of course, any client would agree with) leaves out the explanation that *all* browsers could easily be coded for. My best guess is that some coders, not realizing that IE had specific display bugs, would code for IE and then encounter problems with display in other modern browsers, and just couldn’t figure it out.But this is rather old news (except for some websites, which still pretty much work only in IE). Web Standards (with capitals) are about how pages display in browsers, and the Web Standards Project has been fighting since 1998 for browser makers to implement standards, so now we have major modern browsers *more or less* displaying things the same way, which is a relief for coders. (Would that browser makers would completely implement what was agreed upon with the W3C, though.)For us out here, I think the issue is in coding websites correctly so that, as browsers evolve, you’re not having to recode old errors. (Believe it or not, this is a pretty heated issue in some forums.) At any rate, the W3.org validators are excellent tools for validating code — however, they could be updated: throw one dynamic URL onto a page and you’ll get a long string of "errors" that aren’t really errors. But note Molly Holzschlag’s December 2008 post, W3C Validators in Jeopardy. Without the W3C validators, many of us would find our jobs more difficult.That said, I don’t see that using invalid code would completely mess up rankings unless you *really* messed it up and search engines couldn’t figure it out.I also don’t see that adhering to coding standards stifles one’s creativity. But I can see that being made to think "inside the box" (conform to the box) might — rather similar to designing along the lines of what you know will be easy to code. And I know that there are a number of CSS improvements that I could wish for.But, it’s your site. Go for it.
It’s a good article, Kim, and it helps to let people know what kinds of issues can arise — and how to plan for them ahead of time.
Good post, Kim. I’d say that anyone (or any company) that launches into developing a website without requirements (what will be included) in writing is probably asking for a longer, drawn out development process.At the very least, a requirements list (or list of what the website will consist of) gives you a starting chance at determining what issues there might be, what will need to be resolved, and the general scope of the project. Without this, you’re setting yourself to walk right into "scope creep".Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with expanding projects, but it’s important to know *when* it’s being expanded by new additions, as opposed to whether something is technically part of the original project.
Good question.This is a matter of caring for the client. They’ve hired you, a professional, to help them with their rankings, etc., so of course you want to help and to do the job they’ve hired you to do.However, where they don’t implement your suggestions (or there’s a time lag that impacts the efficacy of their results, their rankings, etc.), you can simply advise them that the choice is always theirs to make, but that you would not be doing your job if you didn’t advise them of _____.This can bring to their attention that they’re missing out on what they hired you for in the first place. And it positions you not as the guy who’s pestering them, but as the person who’s looking out for their interests -- and puts the the choice solidly in their court.Of course, at that point, you may learn that there are reasons why they’re not implementing the changes, or that there are no reasons, but you’ve done your due diligence, and they understand the ramifications. And, again, the choice is theirs.For all you know, they’ll show up months later, wanting to make the changes post haste.
Too true. I finally tracked down someone who owned (apparently) an online service, but he claimed that we did not need to communicate because it was "all explained on the website" -- so I found another way to do it and he lost probably thousands of dollars of income per year.
Of course, they’ll have to solve this little problem:http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080711/internet_regulation.html?.v=5
Story: SEO Plagiarism
Plagiarism aside (it’s happened to me, too), I recently found "web design" site that was nothing more than dozens of pages from various sections of our sites. The owner would not answer emails; he did not answer his phone, either.This is where the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is your friend. It allows you -- by email -- to file a DMCA complaint with the web host, who must, by law, comply by removing the copyright-infringing material from the server. There’s a great writeup here which, though lengthy, gives start-to-finish detail:http://www.pixel2life.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=20185Many web hosts, too, give the short version of what they want, for instance, http://order.1and1.com/xml/order/SubpoenaPolicyBottom line: write your email correctly, and the web host takes care of it FAST (probably in hours), without the need of lawyers, lawyers fees, or even paper sent by snail mail.The DMCA also allows for notifying domain registrars and even ICANN. Really, this is a law that protects web publishers.
Good article, Duane. I suppose it can be difficult to get the point across -- that if they want to communicate to the people they’re looking to communicate to, they’ve got to look at it from that vantage. They may be experts, but they’ll need to add something more to their expertise in order to get that done.
Story: Holy Mother of Linkbait
A very timely article for me. A Florida "web design company" has copied much of our site; in fact, there’s little on the site that wasn’t written by me.Sigh. Back to protecting our copyrighted works.
We’ve been doing energy conservation in Los Angeles for some time now. Summer’s coming, too, and it’ll be hot once again, so that means energy conservation in order to bypass any need for rolling blackouts.
Story: TOPSEO's - An Independent Authority?