Determining Keywords
By Sharon Housley

Determining keywords is a critical step in web design. If your website and meta tags do not contain related keywords, web surfers will be unable to find your website when they conduct searches.

The formula is a little tricky - you will need to locate terms that are popular and relevant to your site. These terms may or may not be terms that *you* feel are relevant terms. The optimal terms in a site should be terms that a potential customer would use when searching for a website with your content. In order to achieve success your website should be optimized with terms and phrases that are descriptive, related to your content, and which receive a significant amount of searches. The caveat, of course, is that you want to find terms and phrases where there is little competition, so you quickly achieve high ranking in the important search engines.

Taking Advantage of Google’s Sandbox Effect
By Bradley James

Most new sites submitted to Google (at least within the last year or so) encounter a peculiar phenomenon known as the “sandbox effect” within about 2 weeks to one month after appearing in the index.

Sites may very well rank relatively high in the index at first if the keywords associated with the site are not highly saturated. After about 2 weeks to one month, however, the ranking of most new sites drop significantly. In fact, it is not uncommon for a new site to appear in the number one position for a specific keyword or phrase (typically similar or the same as the website title) up until this drop-off point. For the next 2 - 3 months, new websites are said to reside in the “sandbox,” an abstract realm where new, fledgling websites are kept aside from older, mature websites in the index.

Downloaded Firefox? Good. Now Put It to Work for You.
By Trevor Bauknight

So you’ve read the glowing press and you’re sick of the gaping security holes Internet Explorer opens into your personal computer and the personal data it manipulates. You’ve gone to Mozilla.org and you’ve downloaded the latest and greatest in Web browser technology. What next?
You could be content to use it just like you use any other browser. It’ll happily import all your Internet Explorer preferences, bookmarks, etc. and let you interact with them the way you always have. You can set Firefox as your default browser and it will pop up when you clïck a link in your e-mail.
You can do everything you can do with Internet Explorer except run ActiveX controls (this is a feature, not a bug!), so you’ll still need to use IE if you want to run Windows Update manually (though if you have Windows XP, we suggest turning on Automatic Updates and not fooling with manual updates anymore.)

WNW Design have recently launched the website for well-established manufacturer Badger Design – a company specialising in magnetic items. While they sell a wide range of refrigerator magnets, magnetic memo-boards and other related products, they also have some other useful pieces of potential advertising on offer.

Their Tax Disc holders can be customised in the same way as any of their products, and they have a range of styles including MagneTax.
Their selection of custom coasters and beer mats are also a popular way for companies to get their name and logo out into the world.

Another Look At Linking Technologies by Robert Scoble

I’ve taken another look at linking technologies (Microsoft’s failed Smart Tags in a beta of IE 6, Google’s Autolink, and now GreaseMonkey are examples).

I’ve changed my mind — somewhat. I’m now going to take a user-centric stance instead of a do’t-tread-on-my-content approach. I’m also admitting I was wrong in calling all linking technologies evil.

So, let’s throw out what I’ve written so far. Let’s, instead, attempt to get big companies like Microsoft to take as user-centric an approach as possible when building linking technologies.

5 Reasons Why Your Site
Needs to Publish a News Feed
By Tinu AbayomiPaul (c) 2004

It seems like everyone is talking about RSS Feeds. They’ve been around for years but the buzz is up about them as the technology continues to go mainstream. Some people are reportedly abandoning their browsers and viewing the web through their readers - but they hardly represent the general public yet.
So does your site need one?

This question is somewhat like asking if your site needs a newsletter. Sure, the sky won’t fall tomorrow if you don’t get one today, but once you realize the benefits of having a news feed for your site, and try it for yourself, you may become an addict like the rest of us.

By David Bell (c) 2005

Once you have established the keywords for which you should optimize your site for the search engines, it is time to figure out how you can get a high ranking in the search engines for those keywords. Should you create those everybody-hates-it-but-everybody-does-it doorway pages?
Well, yes and no. Doorway pages are great in theory but can be an administrative nightmare. Since each search engine uses a different algorithm to rank pages, you will need to create doorway pages for each keyword and for each search engine. Since the search engines frequently change their rankings, you’ll need to constantly change those doorway pages in order to ensure that they continue to obtain top rankings. Furthermore, if you are targeting a reasonably high number of keywords, you can easily bank on creating hundreds of such doorway pages. Can you imagine the sheer administrative difficulty in keeping track of all these pages? You’ll soon be spending more time on search engine optimization than on carrying on your normal business activities!

WNW Design has recently launched a new ecommerce site that sells a brand new product called the Holdsta™.

Holdsta™ is a safe, secure and yet discrete carry pouch designed to be worn under your normal garments, where you can store all your personal items and valuables.

Holdsta™ is ideal for bikers, snow sports enthusiasts, cyclists and horse riders (or any other sporting types for that matter!).

This is a brand new product and as such the launch of the site is also being complimented with a new advertising campaign aimed at creating and increasing consumer awareness of the product. This will include offline advertising in various magazines targeted at their main markets, including motorcycle magazines, etc. Press releases will also be sent out to increase awareness.