Tropical Blogging

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 ranked this low but more importantly how easily correctable this is.”

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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 small site for a new client, and then to see, almost immediately, improvements in that site’s performance in the search engines. (more…)

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. (more…)

A page that’s about everything isn’t about anything. Read my explanation here.

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, to wit: You must blog regularly! Thanks, Zack, for the nudge. Okay, enough of that. Today I’m going to talk about crawlability and web design. I got to browsing the Unique ID blog and read Zack’s post “Straight From Google, The Four Biggest Search Rank Factors,” in which “crawlability” is listed as the very top, highest priority, most important search engine ranking ractor for a web site. This week I’ve also been following a discussion at the High Rankings forums about whether web designers have any SEO responsibility when designing a web site. (more…)

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 #66 in Google and #32 in Yahoo for that search. (more…)

1. A unique, custom title tag on every page in the site (more…)

Is there a sandbox or is there not? Is the question purely one of semantics? Let’s see what Googler Matt Cutts actually had to say: (more…)

My quick rundown: Title tag: Yes, this one’s a biggie. All indications are that the title of the page matters a lot to Google and the other SEs. Every page on a web site should have well-written title that accurately summarizes the page’s main focus. (more…)

What do web site development, search engine optimization and Hippocrates have in common? A line from the Hippocratic Oath comes to mind: First, do no harm. In a previous post, I touched on how the technological factors underlying a web site are important to the site’s search engine optimization. These factors aren’t important so much for their ability to rank a site highly, as they are for avoiding problems that can harm a site’s ranking. (more…)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is often referred to as if it is some single monolithic task. It’s not. SEO includes everything from the technical configuration of the server hosting a web site, to the site’s coding and structure, to the visible content on the pages, to the development of incoming links to the site from other sites. (more…)