For the most part my clients do not run web businesses but use their websites as a brochure. Using that analogy, they look at producing a website and then leaving it alone. The problem with this is that search engines like new and updated content. When a webpage gets old Google and others tend to reduce its ranking.

Thus far, my clients have not chosen to incorporate blogs. I find this rather surprising because it is no more difficult than writing an email every once in a while. That said, this blog (and my website generally) is often neglected...

Ideally, a blog intended for SEO will feature content relevant to the search terms you want to rank well for. In an ideal world you write a blog for people however there is no shame in writing a blog for a search engine. This one is definitely written for the webrobots though I hope some people find it informative.

Having played with Blogger now for a while I'm tempted to go with Wordpress for future blogs. It provides you full control over the look of your webpage whereas Blogger inserts that silly line that you see at the top of this one...

Labels: Blogging and Search Engine Optimization

I like to check out the Sitepoint forum because there is an interesting mix of people at varying levels of knowledge and experience. I came across this rant on CSS.

CSS stands for "Cascading Style Sheets" and it is a very handy tool for providing a consistent look and feel to any website. The article talks about how HTML tables do the job of organizing content and makes the argument that CSS is an annoyance.

Personally, I like CSS and I find it very strange that this kind of article exists at all. There are a few drawbacks to using tables for your layout. A big one for me is search engine optimization. SEO relies on reading the content of your website. HTML tags, such as h2

Get your website noticed!

, provide a cue for search engines to follow the heading looking for relevant information and links. The problem with HTML tables is that they represent a lot of HTML code with very little relevance for the information they contain when the table is being used for formatting the webpage. For example, if you are formatting your webpage with tables you are probably using a lot of inline styles to size the boxes of the tables. This data does not help Google figure out what your website is about. Similarly, colspan and rowspan are frequently used in layout tables and I doubt Google knows what to do with them.

Thus, when a search engine reads your page it needs to read a lot of it in order to find the content. This would not be an issue is Google's webrobot read everything on your page. Chances are it doesn't. As a result if you want good rankings the data should not be hidden in a bunch of nested tables. At least that's my 2 cents.

In these tough economic times I ran across a local start-up company. I won't go into specifics but the company has a prototype device that is currently in use. The device is used by airlines and they love it. It saves them money as well as improving their flow of aircraft in an airport.

The company has a problem though. They need money. The airlines are eager to help but many airlines are flirting with bankruptcy and unable to provide financing. That said, they are eager for production devices. Unfortunately, the device is only in the prototype stage and it will require some money to design and produce high quality production units. Thus, the company is confident that they can sell product as soon as they can make it however at this time they need money to get to production.

In order to help the company out I had offered to update their website in exchange for equity. As it stands their website is four pages that are identical to their index (that is the page that you arrive at when you type their URL) and a contact page that gives a telephone extension. (Their phone number is given on the index page but it does not include the extension.)

I was more than a little surprised when the company president turned my offer down. He felt that he does not need more interest in the product. He needs investors.

I find it odd that we still live in world where many people do not really understand the Internet. It is as if people equate it with email and eBay. I like to think of the web as a tool for communicating whatever it is you want to communicate. You might ask: "What if nobody hears?" While there is certainly a lot of content out there the only way to ensure that nobody hears is to not get your message out.

If you saw a company that needed investment to get going, you like the people and the product would you invest if their website was... really lame? A good website could explain the business case and give investors confidence that their money is hard at work. A good website can also give investors a place to go for updates and news relevant to the business. A bad one just leaves people a phone number.

Truly I wish them luck.