1. Find a good medium for support whenever you get stuck.  We all have those moments were we can’t figure out a bug or the client has some off the wall request that doesn’t even seem possible.  At first I must admit I was very weary of forums or support communities but, it’s grown on me.  My favorite is webmasterworld.com they have tremendous support with everything from seo tips, to zen-cart help.  Whenever I get really stuck I’ll just submit a question to webmasterworld and within a day or two usually get the answer.

2. Create a code library.  Everybody knows starting from scratch on a project is never fun.  Whatever platform or framework you work on your bound to do the same thing hundreds of times and wouldn’t it be easier to just have a library you could pull from.  Spend the extra time to create a general template that can be used again and again.  What I’ll usually do is figure out what I use on every project regardless of what it is and have some code to support that.  For example, I have a general form set up script (html , jquery, and PHP).  I also have a general site template that I start off of in almost every project.  I’ve noticed this saves a tremendous amount of time in nearly every project and is an absolute must have.

3. When are you most productive? Perhaps the easiest on the list but often overlooked is trying to figure out when you’re most productive.  Everybody is different, some are night owls, and some are early risers.  During your least productive times try to save the easier tasks for that time or try to save things you do on a daily basis for that time.  For example, I’ve found I personally work the best in the morning.  I try to schedule all my calls, meetings, etc for in the afternoon when I’m not feeling at my best and do the harder programming or development in the morning.

4. Be honest.  How can being honest and upfront save you time you ask, you’d be surprised. I’m always intrigued to see what people will say and how they react when the question “How long will it take?” is posed.  Time and time again it seems that we underestimate how long things actually take.   For every task, no matter how big or how small, you need to have access to the site, look at what needs to be done, think about how you’ll do it, test it, send the email that it’s complete and then there almost always is that time you spend updating what you did because either the client changed their mind, didn’t describe the task right, or you just didn’t check your work.  This whole process is never taken into account, I always cringe when I hear someone say “oh it will take you 5 minutes” when in fact it takes you five minutes to start up your computer and look at the email.  Time management is perhaps one of the hardest things to grasp, but if you really sit down and think about how long each individual step will take, you can greatly cut down on spending an hour on a task you originally said would only take 5 minutes.

5. Install a web server.  This is an absolute must have for every developer.  Being able to test PHP/MySQL on the fly is a huge time saver.  Thanks to companies like xampp and wampp this is possible.  There are many out there but perhaps my favorite is wampp for windows and xampp for mac.  Could you imagine having to save files then upload them to a server every time you want to make a change, what a nightmare.  I’ve saved hours upon hours using wampp and is something I use every day.

6. Be organized.  This is something that over time you’re almost forced to do or realize.  I must admit I used to be one of the least organized people you would ever come across but it has gotten better and still can get better.  What happens when a client asks you to make a text change in the flash, and because your not organized you have an old version of it.  Now you have to spend hours of coding for a simple change because you weren’t organized.   This is just one instance that has happened to me, but I’m sure there are much worse cases.  Everyone has their own way of handling things and getting organized, but here’s a couple tips to get started.  For every project, I’ll create a folder for the project inside of that folder there will be a docs folder, design (psd/png, ai), dates (everyday I label a new folder with the date and put it in here), flash,  and a backup folder.   I’ll have active clients on the desktop in a folder and I’ll have the archived or inactive clients in one master folder.  Of course everyone has their own way of doing things you just have to find what you are comfortable with.

7. Firefox extensions.  We all use and love firefox right? (please don’t tell me your using internet explorer) Well one of the many advantages to firefox is the extensions. There are hundreds of them and you can even create your own.  By far, my favorite firefox extension is the web developer toolbar.  This is something I use day in and day out, and have saved tons of time using.  It has tons of little tools and tips you can use, but my favorites are the ruler, viewing the style information, resize your window to a specific dimension, and editing css and html right on the page.  Here’s you can find great firefox extensions article.

8. Familiarize yourself with other applications than just the standard text editors.  Believe it or not, I’ve come across some developers who have never even opened up photoshop or fireworks.  In nearly every project I’ve ever been involved in there comes a time when the designer missed a button, forgot to add something or the client wants a few words modified on the text inside the button.  Rather than ship it back to the designer wait for them to do it just open up photoshop and do it yourself.  I know there’s a fine line between designing a whole site and just editing some text on a button, but in the end if you familiarize yourself with photoshop or fireworks or other applications you can speed up the entire project and have more time to be out on the beach.

9. Blogs, news and social networks.  Some studies have shown that in an average work day users spend an hour to two hours on blogs, news sites, or social networking sites.  So really that means you’re only working about a 6 or 7 hour day, or in turn trying to make up for that lost time by staying at the office a few extra hours.  I’m not saying don’t go on blogs or social networks and sometimes they are a good break away from the daily activities.  But really try to figure out where your time is spent in the day.  If you find yourself constantly staying late than look at what you’re doing in the morning and during the day.  Are you always reading the latest post on five different blogs, updating twitter, or seeing that your ex girlfriend just got married.  Well then you’re more than likely on the computer for 10-12 hours a day.

10. Speak Up.  Now this one is definitely the hardest one for me to do and I know I need to do it more often.  But if you feel there’s an area in your company were you can speed up the project for not only you but everyone else involved speak up.  There may be a point in the project that always takes the longest or never gets completely finished before passing it to the next step.  You’ll find that if you speak up and provide constructive comments than people are willing to listen.  One thing that never works is constantly complaining, and then expect the complaining to lead to change.  People don’t respond well to complaining but are always willing to listen to constructive advice and any new ideas you may have.

Gary Howell

In addition to design, I have always been interested in what other cities have to offer creatively. Surprisingly enough, not all design methods and trends are the same from one location to another. In order to be more versatile, you have to gain hands on experience in these locations in order to truly understand them. I decided to sign up for Phoenix Design Week to see what the latest developments have made their way to the Desert. Since I had never been to Phoenix, I figured it would be a great way to explore the city, get to know the local design community, and attend a couple of interesting sessions.

I have to admit, as much as I know about design, there is always more to learn. I was particularly interested in the Agency Panel Meeting, in which the representatives discussed comparisons between a “traditional” design/advertising agency vs. the evolution of new, smaller shops. From my own understanding, I had previously anticipated that it was only a matter of time before people realized that traditional agencies lag in understanding the digital medium. Not to discredit the presenters; in fact, they helped to further establish my thought on traditional and digital advertising.

The opening session of the conference included a discussion on the “state of the valley” what role Design should have in the future evolution of Phoenix. It was pretty interesting to see how eager people were willing to get involved in the local scene, offer unique ideas, and to make sure that the process got underway instead of falling by the waste side. In fact, before the session concluded, there were meet up sessions created which, as we all know, is the best way to begin any creative feat.

Shortly after the initial session, I went straight to the long awaited panel meeting consisting of D. Stan Fields III of www.mcmurry.com, Roger Hurni of www.offmadisonave.com and John Johnson www.tunnelbravo.com. As I said before, I had anticipated the growth of print advertising to grow exponentially smaller than digital media, and was pleasantly surprised to hear that same sentiment in this presentation. They understood the gap between traditional agencies and new digital agencies and it was a breath of fresh air that these guys openly discussed the problems that the industry is facing.

Is Print dead? According to Stan and Roger, yes.

Though I was elated to hear their opinions (especially in congruence with mine), there was one issue I had trouble digesting in this presentation. Because digital agencies are somewhat “new” they made it sound that it was very difficult, if not impossible, to get your foot in the door in order to collaborate with larger agencies. I couldn’t help but feel as if a lot of people in the audience wondered if they would ever have the chance to work with a larger agency. Despite the doubtful tone, I would respond with: the answer is YES! It will take time, effort, and your best work, but you can succeed. I can only hope that members of the audience feel that way as well.

Other sessions included Robert Hoekman, Stephanie Sullivan, some amazing motion graphics designers, and many more. Indeed, it was a great opportunity for the Phoenix Design community (and some “outsiders” such as myself) to meet that many top speakers and to learn many new perspectives.

And finally, of course, everyone was waiting for the evening party at the Clarendon Hotel; a great rooftop venue with amazing views. I met a lot of interesting people, ranging from print designers from Poland (no, print is not dead yet), Australia, and France (to name a few). All in all, it was great to see that design and design talent is alive and well in Phoenix and I hope to be back, whether for fun or collaboration on future projects.

*Oh, and for those people who still doubt that twitter is a waste of time: ask the happy people whom I bought drinks for at the party. I tweeted that I would buy the first 10 people who followed me a drink at the bar. Hello to those new friends!

Edwin Lap

I enjoy learning about any emerging technologies and am always trying to find ways to improve myself not only in the web development world, but the business side as well.  I attended Adobe MAX last year (in San Francisco) and was very excited to see all the new things adobe has been working on and really just learning as much as I can.

Flash on the iPhone?  Well sort of.  The big buzz that everybody seemed to want to know was if Flash will finally be released on the iPhone.  Well they did showcase Flash running on the iPhone (in iPhone applications) but seeing Flash in a browser wasn’t quite there yet. It is interesting that they also mention Adobe Flash and iPhone last year on Adobe MAX 2008 in San Francisco but it looks that there was no progress in that direction

First up was the keynote, which is always fun because they introduce new technologies and showcase some new products.  Of course the big talk was Flash on the iPhone but a couple other innovative items of topic were Flash 10.1, ColdFusion 9, AIR 2, and Augmented Reality.  Perhaps the biggest surprise was John Mayer (yes that’s right the singer) who showcased his Interactive Augmented Reality music video.  He did a very impressive job explaining the technology and had a great sense of humor as well.

After the keynote everybody went to classes and labs.  Last year I enjoyed the sessions much more than the labs mainly because I found them more inspiring and useful in everyday situations. Probably my favorite of the entire conference was the Augmented Reality class.  I went into it really knowing very little and came out feeling like I could develop something myself.  Jesse Freeman, Rich Tretola and James Alliban showcased some of their work which was very impressive.  Everything from creating music, going into space and fighting monsters. I felt it was extremely helpful they talked about how you can start, how they started, and were it’s going.

One of my favorite parts about the conference was the fact they have a sneak peeks session were Adobe showcases what they have been working on. Everything from the newest Flex and AIR Additions, to their newest projects such as browser labs and Adobe ROME.

An extremely impressive project Adobe has been working on is “browser labs”.  With so many different browsers and so many different versions testing is a nightmare for front end developers.  Well the project is still in beta (and free for now) it still boasts many features.  Unlike the typically browser compatibility service Adobe browser labs lets you view many different browsers with the click of a button, no waiting around wondering when you’ll see results.  I definitely do my far share of front-end development so I was extremely excited to see this new service.  This is without a doubt the most impressive browser compatibility service I’ve seen to date.  The only downfall is that they only have around 7 browsers you can test in, but it is in beta and they plan to add more in the future.

Another item Adobe has been working on is an application that bridges the gap between developers and designers.  Often times designers will just hand over the PSD’s to developers with very little communication on how they envisioned items to work and function.  Flash Catalyst (it was in beta on Adobe MAX 2008) hopes to bridge that gap making it easy for designers to showcase how the site should work with everything from roll-overs, drop downs, transitions and other functionality.  I must say I was very impressed with how easy it is to use and absolutely no code necessary whatsoever.  The only caveat is that it is mostly designed for Flex, SIR and Flash developers, but can still be used in the prototyping phase of the project.

Perhaps the favorite among everybody at the conference is the “Max Bash” which is their annual party.  This year it was held at ESPIN Zone.  It was very impressive, open bar, free food, free games and a band.  It’s amazing how well they can accommodate thousands of people.  The party was incredible and I was able to talk to some of the biggest people at Adobe including Ted Patrick and Ben Forta to name a few.

I came away from the conference feeling very confident about the industry where it’s going and how we all can help contribute to it. More importantly I felt very inspired by many of the speakers and presentations and was glad to see how much I knew and how much I can know.

Gary Howell

What is it:

Perl Fancy Captcha is a remake of PHP Ajax Fancy jQuery plugin that helps you protect your web pages from spammers and bots. We are introducing you to a new, intuitive way of completing “verify humanity” tasks. In order to do that you are asked to drag and drop specified item into a circle.

Perl Fancy Captcha’s security level is medium, with the emphasis on nice looking and user friendly qualities while still offering reasonable protection from unwanted “guests”. Basic design and its elements are easy to change and customize (take a look at file structure for more information).
If you have any ideas, comment or just want to say hello, please do - any feedback, ideas and support will be greatly appreciated.

Update for September 2009:

• reduced size,
• easier integration,
• easy translate,
• few common problems fixed.

File structure:

-captcha
–imgs
–captcha.css
–jquery.captcha.js
–captcha.cgi
–iepngfix.htc
-latest-jquery
-latest-jquery-ui
-example.html
-readme.txt

How it works:

It calls captcha.cgi file and gets a random number. Perl file just generates simple number and put it in session. When AJAX got that number it creates items based on that number. Lets imagine that we have array of “pencil”, “scissors”, “clock”, “heart”, “note”, so if number 3 is returned it will take “heart” and look for item-heart.png file in /imgs directory.

How to install:

1. As usual, copy /captcha folder somewhere in your hosting.
2. If you don’t have latest jquery and jquery.ui integrated already, copy these two folders.
3. Edit page where you want to put captcha and insert:

1. <!-- Begin of captcha -->
2. <div class="ajax-fc-container"></div>
3. <!-- End of captcha -->

Put this in header of your page

1. <script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">
2. $(function() {
3. $(".ajax-fc-container").captcha({formId: "myForm"});
4. });
5. </script>


Default Options:


1. borderColor: "",
2. captchaDir: "captcha",
3. url: "captcha/captcha.cgi",
4. formId: "myForm",
5. text: "Verify that you are a human,
drag scissors into the circle.”,
6. items: Array(”pencil”, “scissors”, “clock”, “heart”, “note”)


Dependencies:

• ui.core.js
• ui.draggable.js
• ui.droppable.js

Download:

Please note, if you downloaded files to your computer it won’t work properly unless you start it through web server since it uses AJAX requests.

• Click here to download Perl source code! (68kb)

Links:

• Perl and Ajax Fancy Captcha
• PHP and Ajax Fancy Captcha
• WordPress and Ajax Fancy Captcha
• jQuery plugin page
• Home Page

Staying up to date:

If you like Perl Ajax Fancy Captcha, please subscribe to RSS and you will receive latest info.

If you’re tired of your buddies saying “Go home you’ve never seen a naked woman before” or “When will you lose your virginity already” this post is just right for you.

Tutorial “SQL stands 4 -> Sex Query Language” will help you to regain your confidence and SQL knowledge!

Many of you will say “Who needs girls when I have SQL” and offer strong argumentation like “Has your girl ever helped you join five tables, order them by date, and then insert into another table?” NO! But SQL did!

But then you should ask yourself “Has SQL ever made a breakfast for me and brought it to bed, or when has SQL surprised me, after a hard day, in sexy underwear?”

Don’t be modest, own  both a woman and an SQL and have best of both worlds.

My 5 favorite sexy queries:

1. Deleting Duplicate Records

You were in the club having a good time and picking up girls. By the end of the night you end up with 20 phone numbers. Unfortunately, you got wasted and you haven’t noticed that you entered the one number 5 times and now you want to get rid of those duplicates.

First query won’t work in MYSQL, because MySQL doesn’t allow referring to a table that’s targeted for update in a FROM clause, but it is fine with oracle.


DELETE FROM chicks
WHERE id not in (SELECT id from chicks group by phone) - just group by field that has duplicated values, it this case that’s phone.

MySQL Version:

DELETE FROM chicks
WHERE id not in ( SELECT id from ( SELECT id from chicks group by phone) as id )


2. Deleting Referential Integrity Violations

E.g. Some girls are associated with addresses that do not exist.

TABLE GIRLS
-id INT
-name VARCHAR
-address_id INT [ foreign key ]
-hair_color VARCHAR
-breast_size SET( ‘1′, ‘2′, ‘3′ , ‘4′, ‘5′)
-ex_boys INT

TABLE GIRL_ADDRESS
-address_id INT
-address_info VARCHAR
-phone VARCHAR

DELETE from girls WHERE address_id not in (SELECT address_id from address)


3. Using Case


SELECT name,ex_boys,
case when ex_boys < 2 then ‘NUN’
when ex_boys > 10 then ‘Jenna Jameson’
else ‘OK’
end as status
from girls


4. Deleting with Nested Query

Let’s say we have two new tables, Clubs and Club_accidents. There are girls that work in clubs as waitresses, so in girls table we have new field club_id.


Table Clubs
-club_id
-club_name
-club_address

Table Club_accidents
-club_id
-accident_desc

Now, you don’t need girls that have too much problems in their clubs, so for example you want to delete girls who have more than three accidents in three clubs.


DELETE from girls where club_id in (select club_id from club_accidents group by club_id having count(*) >= 3)


5. Creating View and Concatenating Column Values

Finally, let’s say you are making cocktail party every month, and you are the type of guy who likes blond girls and big breasts :), and you are tired of writing same query every time you want to get top 10 girls with blond hair with breast size more then three.


CREATE View best_10_blond_girls as
SELECT concat(`name`,' has breast size = ', breast _size) as girls, hotness
from girls
WHERE hair_color like blond and breast _size > 3
ORDER BY hotness desc
LIMIT 10


The best way to test if this tutorial helped you is to go to a first club, talk with the girls, and if you get number instead of slap, and if your query works, then you are the man my son.

Adding fonts fits really well in our concept of making CSS Creme something more than just a good CSS gallery. New resources like various tutorials for Photoshop and Illustrator, inspirations and now fonts coupled with, in my opinion, better profiles and latest industry news should make CSSCreme.com even more useful to all those who are passionate about web design and who see themselves as part of that community.

Go check it out if you find time and let us know what you think.

- Having good on-site SEO might not be enough reach top rankings by itself but having that aspect of SEO neglected will most definitely bring penalty and hamper your other efforts to achieve good rankings. To make extreme example, pages that have no title or try to rank for “Web Design” and page title is something like “Pet Food” really won’t do that well.

- While on-site SEO is relatively less important for broad and very competitive keywords, when it comes to long tails its importance raises dramatically. Having carefully chosen title for certain inner page that has good content and a lot of inbound links and you just might see page getting top rankings if overall domain trust is high.

On-site SEO is integral part of your overall SEO strategy and you should never allow yourself to neglect it – sooner or later you’ll pay the price if you do. With that in mind let us begin with…

Title

If there is one thing that has general consensus in SEO community it’s the importance of Title Tag. In famous article published by SEOmoz practically all panelists (really important names in SEO industry and people who know what they talk about at least when it comes to SEO) agreed about its exceptional importance. So what’s the catch with titles?

Before anything else, each title needs to be unique. Duplicate titles (similar to duplicate content) are very bad thing. It may seem daunting to have unique title for each page on big website but it’s the only way to go.

Second, title can’t be too long. Ideally 65 to maybe 70 characters including spaces and no longer – it may vary but anything longer than that and part of your title gets cut off and replaced with “…” most likely and that’s something that you definitely don‘t want to happen if you can help it. Of course, you can have title longer but in that case I would always go with placing most important phrases in those 65 characters.

Length limitation of the title tag brings us to next issue with titles – it needs to have keyword phrases.

Short digression before I continue. Keyword research is of paramount importance for any successful SEO effort. To put it simply, all that you do will be based on proper research and choice of phrases you will try to rank for. So whatever you do don’t be lazy doing your research. Invest as much time as you need to do it properly first time around, it is time well spent. In the long run it’s well worth the effort simply because you will waste much more time and resources if you base your SEO campaign on poorly and hastily chosen keywords instead of doing good and detailed research.

Ok back to titles and keywords. As I said keyword(s) need to be in title if you want that page to rank for them. Choose them carefully and don’t be afraid to go with long tail keywords if they are important and relevant. In fact, on-site optimization affect rankings of long tails much more than it does for broad, competitive keywords. Include as many keywords as you can as long as they remain relevant to content of the page minding the before mentioned length limitation of course. Try to have your brand mentioned– add in the end of each title you make your website or brand name. To separate logical parts of your title, like product names and categories of products use some divider: I use mostly hyphen “-”

One more very important thing about titles and keyword – from pure SEO your keyword, or most important keyword you intend to have in title, should be at the very beginning, first word of title if possible. Although there are some disagreements about it, having phrase you’re trying to rank for at the beginning of page title has high correlation with doing well in SERPs.

Short recap:

• make titles unique
• keep it short if at all possible
• carefully choose KWs in title and keep them relevant and accurate to page content
• your keyword should be the beginning of title

Meta Description

Next on page factor that can influence your rankings is meta description tag. Unlike title which is one of the most important on page SEO factors description has considerably smaller importance but it still shouldn’t be neglected. Writing good, precise description is especially important for click-through rate.
Similar to titles description for each page should be unique, containing phrases relevant to page content. Try to keep description precise and accurate and you can, in a way, consider description tag to be elaboration of page title – it doesn’t suffer from title length limitations so you can describe page content in more detail.
Important thing is to note that search engines do not necessarily always use meta description for snippets in search engine result pages.

Overall description won’t dramatically influence your rankings but good description will affect CTR so at least some attention should be devoted to writing good descriptions.

Meta Keywords

Meta keywords tag is least important of three and you can assume that that for better part it’s ignored by search engines. Despite being rather insignificant meta KWs shouldn’t be completely ignored or better to say you shouldn’t have 100 KWs in meta tag that don’t even appear on page. Keep it up to 10 keywords and make sure than, when you’re bothering with it, those phrases relate to page content.

H Tags

Having keywords in H tags used to have a significant impact on rankings but seems it’s considered less and less important as time passes. In short, put keywords in H tags when you can but affect on rankings will most likely be small. It’s fairly easy to find pages that utilize no H tags at all and still rank very well. H1 has biggest impact and having keyword from title repeated in H1 used to be considered good practice but it simply lost its significance lately.

This might be a good place to mention something important when considering keywords and on page elements like H and meta tags. It’s the concept on “over optimized” websites. If you title, meta description, H tags, alt text, basically all of your on page elements that impact rankings in one way or another, are too well aligned you might have a problem there. It might sound like a paradox, but such pages or whole websites simply appear too optimized and artificial in a way. If you add too well aligned anchor texts all that together might incur you a ranking penalty. It’s important to keep that in mind and not overdo with optimization.

Alt attribute of image element or “alt tag”

Regarding alternative text for images there are few things to consider. Accessibility wise, it is really very important to use it properly. In case you are interested in what exactly is proper use of alt attribute for images you can read more about it here.

From SEO point of view using good, descriptive alternative text has its own benefits as Matt Cutts explains. Note the typical confusion about using “alt tag” phrase – many people (including myself) simply say alt tag instead of alt attribute which would be correct.

When it comes to rankings using alt tag for image that has desirable KW is in no way bad thing. If your image is in fact a link then alt tag has function of an anchor text – and as we all know anchor text is very important thing.

In case that it’s not a link alt tag will not help page rankings a lot by itself but it is very important for Image search. Ranking highly for image search is good by itself simply because it can be decent source of traffic and if you add Universal Search to the equation is becomes clear that spending some time writing alt tags is time well spent.

In short – use alt tags and place KWs in them if it’s possible and makes sense, if not just describe image, after all img alt attribute should be description of an image.

Page URL and canonical issues

There has been a lot of debate about how much keywords in page URL (and in domain name for that matter) influence rankings and advantages of static vs. dynamic links. Now first to make one thing clear: Google can and does crawl dynamic URLs. Whole notion that they can’t be crawled simply isn’t true. Problem is not in the link being dynamic by itself – problem occurs when links are too long (no matter static or dynamic) and if link has too many parameters that Goggle might consider rather useless.

Basically having keyword in URL is an advantage – not something that will have major impact on your rankings but it is still an advantage. Besides, some rankings boost it will provide, having nice static URL with keyword in it increases CTR by basically saying “this page is about what you searched for” together with title and description which is enhanced by search term being bolded in URL. Additional benefit is that when someone links your page using URL, which becomes an anchor text at that point, it will at least have keyword in it.

So, keep your URLs reasonably short, rewrite them if you know what are you doing and add KW in URL if possible.

When it comes to ranking and picking a domain name – exact match brings advantage. So if you can get testwebsite.com it will help you rank for “test website” being an exact match.

Another important issue that revolves around URLs is concept of canonical URL. What it comes down to is that, for example, www.testsite.com and testsite.com/index.html are different as far as search engines are concerned despite the fact that they have same content. Canonical URL is the version of URL that is most important and it is considered to have the greatest authority compared to other variants by search engines.
Having one variant showing all the time is especially important for linking. Having backlinks for different variants of your home page, for example, is not a good thing. To avoid it one of the best things you can do is add a rule to htaccess that redirects all possible page URL variants to the one you have chosen – I’d pick www.testsite.com/ for my canonical format. Another thing to do is to keep your internal links consistent and always link to certain page using same pattern with www and trailing slash in my example.

Internal Link Structure

Internal Link Structure is one of the most important aspects of on-site SEO and at the same time one of the most complex issues. With all honesty, it would take whole post dedicated to it to be even close to explaining basics. So instead of trying to explain such a broad and complex subject as a whole I’ll focus on the effect that internal links have on rankings of specific pages.

Internal link popularity of a specific page is very important and significantly affects its rankings compared to some other on-site SEO factors. Basic rule is that the more popular certain page is within website’s internal link structure better it ranks. This is particularly important for long tail keywords. Linking certain page from home page and some other popular pages on your website that pass a lot of link juice, especially if you can get proper anchor text for those internal links, will boost rankings for long tails a lot. Certain pages might get top rankings despite lacking backlinks if enough inbound links point to it. This is really good because it can help you get some important pages, for example certain product page on your ecommerce website or some article which you’d really like to receive more attention, that may be buried deep within the site to front rows by simply linking to them.

Before I sign out I’d like to make something clear. Weights given to different factor are, at the time of writing, more or less accurate but that doesn’t mean things are set in stone and that they won’t change. In fact you can rely on the fact that some factors will influence SERPs more or less as time passes with search engines constantly working in improving and changing their algorithms.

Another thing I’d like to point out is that at least two important things were not included in list: introduction of rel=”canonical” and changes to how nofollow works. Reason behind decision not to write about them is pretty simple – both of these, at the time of writing, deserve a separate post so trying to squeeze them into this post would simply be too much. For those interested to learn more about these changes Dave Naylor has interesting post about canonical tag and affiliates and SEOmoz dedicated one Whiteboard Friday to dealing with nofollow changes.

Think that’s about it. I hope you’ll find this post useful and all comments are welcome as always.

Every background is free, lightweight and optimized for mostly used 1024 resolution but we were thinking about all of you with big screens so have no fear our Twitter layouts are going to look the same on 1280px or wide screen.

• Web Design Beach Twitter background

background d8d3b6
text 333333
links 0084b4
sidebar d8d3b6
sidebar border c9b48a

• Zen Birds Twitter background

background c8cdd1
text 266188
links d55158
sidebar f5e6e4
sidebar border d99084

• Rock Pirates Twitter background

background 161d23
text 1c5486
links 0b3258
sidebar c8dbeb
sidebar border 5e7e9b

• Old School Psycho Twitter background

background 0e0f11
text 333333
links 275d5d
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Web Design Beach and Cofa Media are pleased to announce their acquisition of CAD Website Design. The purchase will allow these companies to work with more small business clients and achieve their online business development goals even with a limited budget.

“CAD Website Design will allow us to develop beautiful and user-friendly websites for small to medium sized business,” said Edwin Lap of Cofa Media. “Having a small budget shouldn’t mean living with an unattractive or poorly designed website. Now we can cater to all types of business, from the typical mom-and-pop-shop up to large corporations.”

CAD Website Design was founded by Jeff Phillips seven years ago. The company comes with a solid reputation in the Internet industry and well-deserved top rankings in both Google and Yahoo! search engines.

“We’re glad we were finally able to buy CAD Website Design and I hope we’ll be able to improve the already good reputation and visibility of this company,” said Nikola Mitic of Web Design Beach. “I also hope the new company will improve the work we do and the synergy will have mutual benefits.”

For additional information about website design visit www.webdesignbeach.com, and for more information about online business development visit www.cofamedia.com.

About Web Design Beach:

This website design company is unlike others because they understand how to take their clients’ desires, offer their professional opinions and combine the two to create a website that reaches out to the current market and expands it to surpass any goals. Web Design Beach offers web design, eCommerce solutions, web development, custom logo design and SEO services.

About Cofa Media:

Cofa Media can take any website to the next level, from the concept to the website development and design. Their services build a bridge between beauty and basics with conceptual branding, functionality, design, interactive features and dynamic art. Their online business development services have a proven track record of success with both small and large businesses in all industries, from the medical field to the action sports industry.

Joking aside, we decided to go to An Event Apart from May 4th till May 5th, 2009 in Bell Harbor Conference Center this year (Seattle - Washington State). I had pretty high expectations from it and I can safely say I wasn’t disappointed which isn’t really surprising considering that An Event Apart is organized by Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer.

First day was dedicated mostly to website redesign, usability and content.

First speaker was Jeffrey Zeldman with “A Site Redesign” session that was focused on how to approach a new website design especially in regards of preserving brand that was partly built on existing design. He emphasized listening to client and being aware of content while creating design as fundamental to achieving good results. Part of his presentation I especially liked was about blog redesign and how to make content much more readable and better looking.

After Zeldman it was Eric Meyer’s turn. The master of CSS presented nice tricks that he was using for aneventapart website and browser computability problems that they had.

Personally I liked Web Form Design in Action session by Luke Wroblewski. He showed us lots of tricks about forms, how to position labels for different purposes and how to reduce time for form completition. What Luke didn’t mention was implementation of “evil” captcha in forms and how to make them more user friendly.

I would also like to mention Jared Spool and his “Revealing Design Treasures from The Amazon” session. Jared presented ideas and experiments inside Amazon and secrets that every designer should know about. He present lots of A/B testing results and whole evolution of Amazon during the last 10 years. Jared also revealed some parts of Amazon’s business model and explained how they can have lower prices of Apple products then apple.com.

Comments of Opening Night Party I would like to keep for myself

Second day of the conference was little more theoretical and started with Brett Welch and an idea that is behind web design and development. Brett analyzed the challenges faced by web designers and developers with client’s requests being more and more advanced and demanding.

“Change the World” by Scott Thomas revealed Scott’s experience in Obama’s campaign and approach that they had. It was really interesting to hear how they managed to engage community and coordinate big teams.

With “The Wisdom of Communities” Derek Powazek shared his experience and some practical tips and tricks how to create positive participation on your site and how to deal with negative vibrations and spammers.

All in all An Event Apart is conference that you should visit if you get a chance. I heard some really great and interesting presentations and met a lot of interesting people from the industry. Went back home really feeling that time was in Seattle was well spent.