By Nigel Wilkinson, MD WNW Design Ltd

When visiting potential clients for our web design services it often strikes me how they fall into two groups.  Those who have a plan of what they want the website to do and those who do not.  Many businesses seem to believe they need a website but with no clear strategy about how a website can benefit them. 

By Scott Buresh (c) 2006

When people refer to “organic SEO” (search engine optimization), they almost always use it as a blanket term to describe the unpaid, algorithm-driven results of any particular engine. However, a sophisticated search engine optimization company will often take the meaning of “organic” one step further. To such companies, the description of “organic SEO” is not limited to what shows up in the “natural” search engine results - it includes the methodologies used to achieve such rankings.

By Titus Hoskins (c) 2006

Three Ways To Index Your Site With Google Sitemaps [Difficult, Hard, And Easy]
Google has recently implemented a program where any webmaster can create a Sitemap of their Site and submit it for indexing by Google. It is a quick and easy way for you to keep your site constantly indexed and updated in Google.

The program is appropriately called Google Sitemaps.

In order for you to best use Sitemaps, you must have an XML generated file on your site that will transmit or send any updates, changes, and data to Google. XML (Extensible Markup Language) is everywhere these days, you have probably seen the orange XML logo on many web sites and its often associated with Blogging because Blogs use XML/RSS feeds to syndicate their content.

Leading ecommerce software provider Actinic have announced the beta launch of version 8 of their software.  New features include Best sellers listings, Related products, Mailing list generation and Improved tax reporting.  The full release is expected in August 2006.  The new version has incorporated a number of features to improve the software for both designers and merchants, especially in the cross-selling and marketing features.

WNW Design have used Actinic since V4 and have built over 30 ecommerce websites with Actinic software, the largest handling over 14,500 products, with a turnover in excess of £2m per annum.  The flexibilty, ease of use, friendly merchant interface and the built in search engine optimisation tools have made it a first choice for ecommerce websites.

Like most web developers, I’ve heard a lot about the importance of valid html recently. I’ve read about how it makes it easier for people with disabilities to access your site, how it’s more stable for browsers, and how it will make your site easier to be indexed by the search engines.

So when I set out to design my most recent site, I made sure that I validated each and every page of the site. But then I got to thinking – while it may make my site easier to index, does that mean that it will improve my search engine rankings? How many of the top sites have valid html?

After her popular Zero Dollars/30 Days blogging series, looks like Jennifer Laycock is starting another really interesting run of articles. We really enjoyed the former, so we’re hoping this new blog will be just as interesting. Here’s what Robert Clough at Search Engine Guide had to say:

“Over the last couple of months I’ve been asking Jennifer what she was planning for this year that would top her “Zero Dollars, a Little Talent and 30 Days” project from last year. With the impact that article series had, it’s a tough act to follow. That’s why I wasn’t sure that she would be able to come up something that could possibly be better. Well, she has a doozy planned.