Hungerford Web Design

It’s a question which pops up sometimes, should I focus on content which is friendly to search engines or which would be really useful to my visitors? They don’t always match.

There are some practices which might be perfectly acceptable for a search engine but completely unusable by my visitors. Style is a prime example to put it into context. Google won’t really care how big my fonts are and in what colours (broadly speaking - most search engines care that I’m not trying to screw with the numbers by hiding content) my content is but my visually awae users will.

The other way around, I may use tables, images with text in them and my users may get an enhanced experience but the search engines will be unable to read and list some of that content, meaning that my search engine positioning could suffer for it.

Flash content was a real problem for a long time. Don’t get me wrong, Flash really isn’t “my thing”, I dislike using flashy, moving, whizzy stuff for a website design, which in my opinion is a book, not a cheap poster. That said, a lot of users like flash so I certainly don’t discount it as a medium - in its place. Now Flash content can be output via an SDK into html content with links and text readable by search engines which really plugs a gap. Great, a sort of happy middle-ground for all.

What about images? why can we not find a way of embedding the text used into the image itself?

This would be especcially useful for logos which incorporate the company name. Of course we can add alt text etc but I’m talking about something which is auto embedded at the creation stage, thereby more trustworthy. Image size would of course increase but I can see real benefits. MP3’s and Movie files have embedded tags which can be read, why not other file types, some image formats already store when and how the image was taken, SGML?

There are so many things that I wish I knew more about, to be able to influence them and develop them from creation to release. I do it with websites and applications but what about defining the code in the first place?  I simply follow the rules laid out by others to ensure that browsers and applications can process what I have written, to be someone who wrote the processes followed by others is a truly mammoth task.

I’ve digressed, which is nothing new.

There is almost always a play off between 100% SEO and 100% usability, bring into it that the site must look good and function well and you end up with a whole melting pot. The long and the short of it is that you need to decide what’s most important to you. For me it’s that the user has a good experience, search engines always come second.

Technorati Tags: Embedded, Fonts, Gap, Google, Image Formats, Image Size, Images, Incorporate, Incorporate Company, Logos, Long Time, Many Things, Movie Files, Moving, Mp3 Files, Mp3 Movie, Prime Example, Sdk, Search Engine Positioning, Search Engines, SEO, Text Images, Time Don

It’s started….according to the previous itteration of the Google Chrome user licence “any Content which you submit, post or display on or through” the browser is owned by Google.

Nice, that means I can now say that my blog is owned by Google :D, well one of the posts anyway.

Apparently it’s a boilerplate text which should have been modified but wasn’t. It’s been updated to reflect that users “retain copyright and any other rights” that they already hold on the content they submit or display using the browser.

Be careful what you agree to, it’s all part of Google’s plan to take over the world (insert evil laugh).

Technorati Tags: Blog, Boilerplate Text, Evil Laugh, Google

Google have launched their new open-source browser as a windows beta, you can download Google Chrome now.

It’s currently only available to Windows users, imports IE settings if you wish and allows a very configurable interface for your search.

I’ve included some initial screenshots:

 More to follow shortly:
Download link: Link1

Technorati Tags: Beta Download, Blog, Configurable Interface, Download Browser, Google, Google Browser, Hwd, New Windows, Open Source Browser, Screenshots Gallery, Windows Beta, Windows Download, Windows Users

The last post I made was a bit of comedy. I made it, submitted it to digg and then googled it.

Google Search

It was listed within a few minutes. In the post before the comedy one “Are you in it for the long haul” I said the indexing is getting quicker, I also believe that Matt Cutts said that in some cases, content is indexed within half an hour. I find it pretty incredible that Google has/is already:

a) Noticed i’ve made a change

b) Updated it’s index

c) Displaying the page in it’s results

Now I appreciate that this may not translate to it’s cache etc but it’s still a pretty decent feat considering how many sites are updating content at any one time and that in the grand scheme of things, my site is not important to Google.

It might warrant some more experimentation.

Technorati Tags: Comedy, Few Minutes, Google, Google Search, Grand Scheme Of Things, Half An Hour, Long Haul, Matt Cutts, Scheme Of Things, Warrant

Just a little “comedeh”

1. You are not an SEO just because you “are good with computers”
2. You are not an SEO just because you visited the googlehack site
3. You are not an SEO just because you have heard of SERPS
4. You are not an SEO just because you run a blog and mention SEO once in a while
5. You are not an SEO just because you look like Matt Cutts
6. You are not an SEO just because you know someone who works at Google
7. You are not an SEO just because you ………………

Please do continue to add to these, the funniest may get a prize.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Computers, Google, Matt Cutts, SEO, Serps

A common mis-conception is that SEO is a ‘fire and forget’ solution to increasing your rank and conversions. It’s common in the sense of the general public. Unfortunately, it’s very far from the truth and can require a lot of understanding on behalf of the person trying to get their head around it.

SEO is an iterative process. Whilst some search engines may publish their algorythms, many don’t. This means that it’s often a case of trying something to see what affect it has.

This dates back to times when your meta tags were deemed to be one of the most important factors of SEO (probably before SEO was even termed as a phrase). Making changes, watching for weeks or months to see what difference it made, then make more subtle changes in an effort to creep one step higher. Patience is key and that is as true today as it ever was.

I think that the time factors have probably reduced. As a test, I made a post containing a word that isn’t used too often, it was listed in google within a few hours, so it is possible to be able to assess the impact of changes quicker (albeit depending on the site and how often google/other search engines check it out).

The process of SEO also requires more thought than ever before, a set of requirements, a clear plan of changes to be made as well as a monitoring program are all key to success. This becomes more evident when dealing with the differences between what some search engines want and what others will penalize you for. Sometimes it’s a fine line which you have to balance to both get the rankings and keep them. I was reading a blog the other day (a female web developer - pink developer or something - let me know if you know the blog name as I forgot it), she was pee’d that at some point google had randomly decided that her site had failed to meet their “quality guidelines” but that icanhascheezburger.com was perfectly acceptable (a very funny site - particularly for geeks). HEr site was well written and with good content so I can see her frustration.

It just goes to show that even when you get it right - you can get it wrong without even knowing it. SEO can be a thankless task, more so when it doesn’t go exactly right. Ultimately, the people who make themselves a success at it, do so through many hours of constant trial and error. If you are just starting out, take your time, it won’t be a quick fix.

Technorati Tags: Array, Conversions, Female Web, Funny Site, Geeks, Google, Google Search, Important Factors, Iterative Process, Long Haul, Meta Tags, Monitoring Program, Other Search Engines, Patience, Pee, Phrase, Quality Guidelines, SEO, Subtle Changes, Time Factors, Truth, Web Developer

I unfortunately had to turn down a customer last week and politely decline the work they were offering. It’s an interesting socio-economic situation (with some big words to boot).

Theoretically, it could be argued that I have just declined an opportunity for my business to be more successful and could have left a negative impression on a prospective customer which could affect the business longer term. We have had to provide timescales in the past due to heavy workload and they have had time-based requirements that we couldn’t fulfill. In each of those situations in the past, they have greatly appreciated the honesty and awareness of our planning which has led (in some cases) to them coming back to us for other work in the future. This is however, the first time we have had to turn someone down for other reasons.

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Technorati Tags: Acme Inc, Backlinks, Building A House, Current Rankings, Distorted View, Economic Situation, First Steps, Foundations, Fundamental Steps, Honest Appraisal, Honesty, Local Company, Negative Impression, Pitfalls, Prospective Customer, Quotation, Search Engine Positioning, Serps, Stylesheet, Workload

It’s probably no secret (although it was news to me).

http://www.googlr.com

Yep - owned and operated by Google. Googlr is a common typo as the QWERTY keyboard has E and R next to each other. The traffic it received prompted Google to run exactly the same search engine from it.

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Technorati Tags: Amp, Brain, Fingers, Gl, Gogle, Googel, Googl, Google, Googlr, Googlw, Hurry, Letter E, Misspelling, Nb, Possibilities, Qwerty Keyboard, Search Engine, Spelling, Target, Traffic, Typical Result, Typo

Not heard of Browserank? You’re not alone, despite regularly trawling blogs, news sites and being a part of a number of focus groups it was news to me until a couple of weeks ago that Microsoft have invested heavily in improving both the exposure and code behind it’s Pagerank rival . In fact many people are unaware that Microsoft (who have introduced Browserank) have been offering a small suite of webmaster tools for Live for quite some time.

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Technorati Tags: Analytics, Array, Auctions, Auctions Ebay, Delve, Downside, Ebay, Focus Groups, Google, Graph, Marker, Microsoft, Microsoft Tools, News Sites, No Doubt, Pagerank, Paperwork, Quite Some Time, Rival, Search Users, Social Networking Sites, Success, Webmaster Tools

Well, in our article “That is so not Cuil” we showed how a bunch of ex-Google employees got together to produce “Cuil” which they believe shows the way forward for search engines. Then along came Yahoo who have released BOSS (Build you Own Search Engine) which allows 3rd party developers to build apon a Yahoo api and produce their own search engines. The Cuil developers spent a great deal of time, effort and money producing Cuil, so what did Sam Pullara do? Well in short, the answer is in the name:

http:/www.4hoursearch.com

It took him 4 hours to write it, 4 hours to go from 0 to 20 hits/second and 4 hours to get the domain name.

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Technorati Tags: Applications, Blog, Boss, Caption, Cuil, Demo, Domain Name, Google, Money, Party Developers, Running, Search Engine, Search Engines, Source Code, Speedy, Time Effort, Web Design, Yahoo, Yahoo Api, Yahoo Search, Yuil