You have great content ideas and the motivation to create, but if your site isn't link-friendly, you might still be up the proverbial creek. Let me give a perfect example from one of my favorite bloggers - Andrew Goodman (from a blog entry called monetizing your site): ...
Footers are important. Usually, they are a repetition of the primary navigation and contain anything that is considered "the fine print," such as copyright information and privacy policies. With the rising popularity of standards based design, they also have become the home for buttons that show off standards compliance. While doing a ...
A friend of mine and a skilled developer, Marc-Antoine Ross from DevTaxi, did a great review of Web 2.0 forms and I think it's worth reading! So here it goes: I decided to review the registration forms from most of the sites that made it to the invaluable Web 2.0 Awards. Most of...
As a follow up to Matt's How to Hire a Good Web Developer article, I thought I would expand on the subject a little more and discuss common traits good web developers have. These are things I've noticed in working with or talking to web developers at all skill levels -- from someone who still uses Front Page all the way to Google emp...
I've been doing work on a website for one of our clients, and I noticed they followed a trend with their email address that I've seen a lot. They were getting lots of spam at their contact email address, i.e. [email protected], so they replaced it with [email protected] as a last ditch method to stop the avalanche of spam.While this works, it doesn't get to the root of the p...
SEO By the Sea posted about a few patents where various patents have been filed about how to recast a web page to make it viewable on small screens like pda's, cell phones, etc. It's an interesting read and I recommend that you check it out. What concerns me more than the fact that they're making the content of web sites usable ...
One of the biggest changes to homepages across the web, particularly with big brands, is the seemingly mandatory inclusion of the multiheader. Multiheaders allows multiple stories or features access to the primary visibility section of a homepage, and let visitors choose (through a click or hover) which featured piece they want to see. Let's take a walk through a few: ...
It's easy to dismiss or overlook accessibility when thinking of optimization, but like it or not, some eyes on the web can't actually see. One company has learned that the hard way, as blind web surfers are suing Target for having an inaccessible web site. The article on MSNBC has the following snippet:Danie...
SEO blogs have been preaching the same old spiel again and again: have good content on your site. It's no secret, yet for many businesses, it seems hard to implement. I thought I'd change the argument up a bit and put it in perspective the only way I know how: by using movies as an analogy. Good content is like a Pixar film. Pixar films fall into the "You Have to be a Jerk to Not ...
I've been watching Mystery Guest shop online a bit over the weekend (while drinking beer and observing manly NFL games) and I was surprised to see so many "web 2.0" features on the e-commerce sites she browsed. More interesting still were how the numerous breaks from convention appeared to enhance, rather than detract, from the buying experience. Traditionally...
Following up yesterday's article, How to Convince a Client their Site Doesn't Need Music, I decided to write a similar one about splash pages. Splash pages are the pages that the user sees before they actually get to a website; typically, they're flash and offer some kind of introductory animation. The user clicks "Skip Intro&qu...
I could have sworn that someone has already a great post or forum thread on this topic, but I can't seem to find it (no matter how advanced my operators). I'm sure Mr. Malicoat has it in his bookmarks, but since blog posts are one of my personal systems for public bookmarking, here goes. Eleven Guidelines to Successful URLs...
Unless you've been living under a rock for the past couple of years, you may have heard about Ruby on Rails. It's the latest greatest web development platform that has become immensely popula...
Recently I've started working with Rand on doing site analyses for our clients. He's taken me under his wing by walking me through a typical site analysis and telling me what to look for. Obviously, since Rand is the resident expert, it is easy for him to know what to look for and what to recommend to the client.Unfortunately, up until I started working for SEOmoz, I was accustomed to ...