December 1,
2004
In
This Issue:
1. Yahoo's SEO / WebDev Class
2. In the News - Google Expands Services
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - Using dark colors on a web site
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Yahoo's SEO / WebDev Class
Three cheers to the folks at Yahoo for making available some
excellent PowerPoint presentations that their staff used recently
at the WebmasterWorld Search Conference in Las Vegas. The PPT documents
are available as part of a Yahoo SearchBlog entry:
Yahoo
SearchBlog: Vegas Baby! (scroll to end of blog post)
"Search Friendly Design" by Tim Mayer -- this is an
excellent SEO/WebDev 101 primer covering things like site navigation,
database-driven
sites, the use of Flash, and much more.
"Search Engines and Webmasters" by Tim Mayer -- a basic
overview of Yahoo's current products and services, including some
stats
re: page views, users, etc., details about how Yahoo's web crawler
works, and a primer on the Yahoo Directory.
"Yahoo Local" by Ali Diab -- I grabbed this one since there's
been so much discussion of local search here in the newsletter.
It's a pretty basic overview of the service, with some info.
about how to get your business listed.
"Weblogs, Community, and Search" by Jeremy Zawodny
-- we've talked about blogs a couple times in the newsletter, but
if you're
still not sure what they are, this is a pretty basic overview
and also includes some search engine implications.
I haven't read the others, but what I've seen is quite good and
would recommend you take a look and download the ones that
interest you for your business purposes (or personal interests).
_________________
In The News
Google Expands Services
Google has been busy since we last wrote a newsletter. Witness
the announcement of "Google Scholar", a new service that
searches through scholarly literature including theses, abstracts,
and other research-type sources. We have a lot of scientists here
in the Tri-Cities area, so those of you reading the newsletter
-- go knock yourself out.
And then there's a News.com article this week reporting that
Google is working on a search tool for digital video. The article
describes
Google's plan as using the closed-captioned text as a way to "identify
themes, concepts, and relevant keywords" for video searching.
Google is reportedly recording TV shows, and also plans to use
the closed-captioning found on DVDs and other video sources. The
full article is interesting. Link is below.
Google Scholar
News.com: Striking Up Digital Video Search
_________________
More News Headlines
Here are a few news headlines worth your time to read.
These are just some of the headlines we've posted
to OWTweb.com in recent
days.
Holidays looking merry for web retailers
November 24, 2004 - Reuters
Firefox cutting into IE's lead
November 23, 2004 - News.com
As Firefox marks its 5 millionth download, a long-running survey
puts IE below 90 percent for the first time.
SEO and successful site architecture
November 22, 2004 - ClickZ.com
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
_________________
This Week's Q&A
Matt,
What do you know about the use of colors on web sites? We're
developing our company's site, and I want something that looks
professional,
but also cool -- not too corporate and stodgy, if you know
what I mean. The current plan is to use a black background for
our
site, but will this cause any problems on different monitors
or anything like that?
Thank you,
Steven
Hi Steven --
I believe the first consideration in choosing colors is that
your web site must match your offline branding. We use
a company's logo
to determine the color scheme for just about all of our
projects. If you don't have a logo, though, you have some more
freedom.
A black background is perfectly appropriate, in my opinion,
for certain kinds of businesses and sites. If you're
an aggressive company and your target market is younger, it
may fit perfectly.
We've used black backgrounds on radio station web sites,
for example, to great effect. But if your target user
is a different
person,
you may want to reconsider. Black backgrounds are seen
by some as the mark of an amateur design, and that's
not the
image
you
want to project. But again -- it just depends. I've seen
some gorgeous and professional business sites with a
black background.
Monitor issues won't generally be much of a problem in
this day and age, at least not where colors are concerned.
But
here's the one thing you should keep in mind: The human
eye is trained
to
read dark text on a light background, as in newspapers,
magazines, books, etc. If your site has light text
on a dark background,
it will be more difficult to read. If your site requires
a lot
of
reading, you risk losing traffic because the content
will be too difficult to read. So when choosing colors
for your
web
site, keep
your users in mind and put them ahead of your personal
tastes during the design phase.
(Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
The holiday shopping season is on, and I sure hope those of you
who sell widgets online are ready. All the predictions are for
the busiest online shopping season ever. But strangely, I've done
all my shopping so far in real stores and have yet to shop online.
Strange.
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
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