July 6,
2005
In This Issue:
1. Web Design: Starbursts and Simplicity
2. In the News - GoLexa, MSN LinkDomain command
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - Help for old sites
5. Wrapping It Up
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Web Design: Starbursts and Simplicity
Two really good design-related pieces worth your
time:
Josh Lehman: "How
to Defeat an Old Enemy"
If you're a designer, you'll recognize this:
"...as a designer fresh out of school working
on one of my first 'real-world' projects, I was
met with a request from the client that would
cause any new designer to cringe, contort, crawl
under his desk and pray for mercy from on high.
I was informed that I must place prominently within
my piece of high-brow design art a ubiquitous
symbol representing all that is ugly and distasteful
in the design realm: a starburst."
Great read about how to use the starburst (or
any other gaddawful piece of clipart) effectively
in professional design. (Note to business owners
who are not designers: Please don't ask your designer
to put gaddawful clip art into an otherwise professional
design.)
And secondly,
Design Observer: The
Obvious, Shunned by So Many, Is Successfully Avoided
Once Again
Note to designers: Stop trying to make everything
complicated. As the piece asks, "Does anyone
devote as much energy to avoiding simple, sensible
solutions as the modern graphic designer?"
It's a good read with good examples where the
obvious design solution was ignored because it
was too ... obvious.
_________________
In The News
GoLexa Search Tool
Here's one to add to your search toolbox. GoLexa
acts like a regular search engine, but the search
results are filled with helpful SEO and webmaster
tools. Run a search, and you'll see all kinds
of small boxes surrounding each page listed. Tools
range from a link popularity checker to WHOIS
results to various Google tools including how
the page ranks in various data centers. Lots of
stuff to play with.
GoLexa
Checking inbound links with MSN Search
Like other search engines, you can use MSN Search
to see what inbound links any page on your web
site has. (Note: Don't bother using Google for
this, it's useless.) All you do is type Link:
and then the URL of a page to see what links that
page has. But MSN Search also goes one step further.
You can use the LinkDomain: command to see all
pages that link to an entire domain. For example,
here's how to see all pages that link to owtweb.com:
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=linkdomain%3Awww.owtweb.com&srch_type=0&FORM=QBRE
Just change the domain to yours and you're set.
_________________
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.
Vague
online privacy policies are harming e-commerce,
new survey reports
June 30, 2005 - Internet Retailer
A new survey shows that 67% of Internet users
have decided not to register at a web site or
shop online because they found the privacy policy
too complicated or unclear.
Search
engine submission services are a scam
June 29, 2005 - Search Engine Guide
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
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This Week's Q&A
Hi Matt,
I see a lot of questions in your newsletter from
people with new businesses or new web sites and
they need help getting started on the right foot,
so to speak. But we're an "old" company
with an existing web site and we're finally recognizing
the need for having people be able to find us
in Google. Our web site has been online for about
4 years now. I won't ask for a free review of
our web site, so how about a generic question
like this -- what's the first thing or the best
thing an older web site can do to get better rankings
in Google?
Thank you,
Brian
Hi Brian -- good email, thanks for writing. I
bet there are a lot of folks reading this in your
position, so hopefully this will be helpful.
I think the first thing to do is to identify what
you think the problem is with your search engine
visibility. is it a crawling or ranking problem?
In other words, is the problem that you're not
getting enough pages crawled? Or are your pages
getting crawled, but they're just not ranking
well?
There are a number of reason why either problem
would occur, so ask yourself these questions:
Is your web site designed to be as search-engine
friendly as possible? Are you keeping the content
updated and fresh as often as you can? Do you
have a good supply of incoming links from related,
quality web sites? These are all key factors in
how well your pages rank. You might check the
"Articles"
section of our web site for more information
about each question I just posed and how to make
sure your site does what it needs to do.
In the end, though, whether you have an old or
new site, I really think the first and best thing
you can do is CONTENT. It's all about content.
Content is the straw that stirs the drink. When
you have good content on your site, you should
have more sites linking to your good content.
When you update your site regularly with good
content, you should be able to get SE spiders
to crawl your site more often. Good content can
help improve almost all of the elements of a successful
web site. So if you're not writing regular newsletters
or articles that would interest your customers,
that's the first thing I'd suggest. It's a big
commitment, but if you make the commitment and
do it right, there are real benefits to be had.
(Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
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Wrapping it Up
Hope business is treating you well -- remember
to send in questions for the newsletter. I'm about
out of Q&A material!
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
The OWT Newsletter is a weekly service
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