No, it's not a SEO tool. Or at least that's not it's original intended use.

Google Alerts sends you up dates on any newly added resource that corresponds to your set keywords or keyword phrases

From their FAQ:
Google Alerts are emails automatically sent to you when there are new Google results for your search terms. We currently offer alerts with results from News, Web, Blogs, Video and Groups.

You can turn this to your SEO advantage by tracking new competitors or content related to your business. You can also use it to do research on your latest online project.

A great little tool!

Google Alerts Home page

The web is visual.

Sometimes the difference in making a sale is the way you present the product being sold.

But do you need flashy graphics? What if you don't have Photoshop?

No worries.

The graphics you choose for your e-commerce site needn't be flashy, blinky colour overdoses of frenetic motion.

Keep it simple. A small pop of colour, a simple border can make a the difference between "wow" and "ho hum". A small adjustment in juxtaposition, angel or scale can add a professional quality to your graphics.

Take these examples:
Before. This un-mounted, plain (but lovely) little note card could use a bump.

After. Simple, uncomplicated things any one with a suitable graphics programs.


Is this the best that you can get? No! Just let your imagination and the image composition guide you. Always take a step back and think of your potential customers. Will they appreciate your efforts?

Simple Graphics are not just for your e-commerce site.

A little graphic can spice up any section of your site. Just keep it simple and keep it in context!

Here is a little graphic I made (a compilation of other icons) for a future post!


One last tip. Try to keep your graphics size small (10kb or less) this will keep your overall page bandwidth size small so they download quickly!

Need a graphics tool? Try GIMP.
GIMP means Gnu Image Manipulation Program.
GIMP is a free program that functions much like Photoshop. Very powerful and good for the casual user!

That's all for now!
Chere

A member on a list I am on made a comment along the lines that "web site" dates a person. That is, if you are an old timer webbie and have been doing any kind of steady internet usage in the last 20 or so years, you would date yourself with the phrase "web site".

Oh really?

I didn't realize that the style had changed.

Here's an older article on the topic.

Hmmm.. well for me I like website, simply because it represents the organic, cohesiveness of web pages coming together to make a whole website. (Or something philosophical like that! )

So what do you prefer?

Well...after living for a year with the pale purple colour scheme I have decided to change to something a little darker, though still monotoned.

I love CSS for just such a time as this. Just uploading the new header image and editing a few lines int he CSS files and wallah! New look. It's like changing your shoes .

Chere

I cam across this article that I thought I would share with everyone.

Enjoy!
Chere

Internet Marketing Basics: What worked years ago still works today!
By: Jack Humphrey

Internet marketing can seem mystifying not only for beginners, but for moderately skilled internet marketers. With all the courses, forums, blogs, reports, seminars and teleconferences available to help people learn how to get traffic to their sites, it is one of the most overwhelmingly dense subjects on the internet.

Unfortunately, and this is perfectly true, most of the advice or "expert" tips are outdated or completely false. Since anyone can publish on the internet, you have a mixed bag of good information followed with much more bad information.

The mysticism of internet marketing is created largely by this glut of some good and mostly bad information. It makes the whole topic SEEM like rocket science when, in fact, much of what was true about internet marketing years ago is true today.

Read more here>>

Have you ever wondered what your most beloved Crayola crayon's RGB or hex value is?
Check out 120 Crayon's On The Web

So next time you have to tell your friendly neighbourhood designer what colour you really like, grab a box of crayons and do a little colour matching!

Chere

I just had to share!

It is a really cheeky look at adaptations to new technology!



And you techy types...don't laugh! You know you have those moments where you have to call someone to help you do your jobs !

Chere

While flying about the net today, looking fo something that at the time seemed important (it wasn't) I came across a word and used define: in my fav S/E to look it up. One thing led to another and I stumbled on Geeks.com.

They have Big Toys for big boys and girls and a little section called Tech Tips. It's got some gems of information on all techy tips and tricks to Pimp your PC (or MAC). Or like the below little gem of definitions and info to bring your Geek Quotient to a Level 8 (at least!)

Enjoy!


Tech Tip 31- A Gaming Graphics Glossary

By Jason Kohrs - 16.JUN.05

1. Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP)– AGP

is one type of interface for graphics cards whose days may be numbered, but presently is the most common type out there due to its years as the number one format. According to a previous Tech Tip, AGP is “a dedicated, point-to-point interface that connects a video card directly to the system’s memory and processor.” Developed by Intel in 1996, AGP graphics cards were the leaders for gaming graphics until the release of PCI Express.
2. Aliasing / Anti-Aliasing

This topic was covered in a previous Tech Tip related to digital cameras, and the concept is the same as it applies to gaming graphics. Aliasing is basically described as the tendency for a curved or diagonal line to appear jagged since they are composed of tiny squares, or pixels. Anti-aliasing remedies this jagged appearance through software, making images appear more smooth and natural. Video games may provide varying levels of anti-aliasing, and generally with higher levels of anti-aliasing, the overall performance of the game will be lower since more processing power is being dedicated to smoothing each image. For this reason, many graphics card reviews will show the effect on the frame rate of a game when run with different levels of anti-aliasing applied.
3. Anisotropic Filtering

The definition of the word anisotropic from m-w.com states “exhibiting properties with different values when measured in different directions.” This is a common filtering technique applied to video games that helps improve the perspective of the image shown. Like anti-aliasing, various levels are available, and the higher the level of anisotropic filtering, the lower the overall performance of the game. Reviews may also focus on the effect of various levels of this filtering when presenting the frame rates achieved on a certain graphics card.
4. Application Programming Interface (API)

A set of standard instruction that allow for video game programmers to work more efficiently by not having to recreate routine operations that may be common across many games. Some examples of APIs include Direct3D and OpenGL.
5. Artifact

An artifact is any unintentional and undesirable element found in the image of a video game. Artifacts may include a flickering effect, pixels colored incorrectly, image ghosting (where a previous image is still visible in later screens), blurring, or gaps in the processing of images. Artifacts may be caused by overclocking the system (especially the graphics processor), unstable or incorrect drivers, component overheating, and other hardware or software errors.
6. Bump Mapping

Bump mapping is a means of applying textures to give the 2D image on screen a more rough (or bumpy) 3D appearance. Lighting effects are used to create light and dark areas to simulate the surface of items like walls, rocks, etc.
7. Direct3D

Direct3D is an API, owned and developed by Microsoft for the creation of 3D games. It is used for manipulating and displaying three-dimensional objects. Direct3D provides programmers with a way to develop 3-D programs that can utilize whatever graphics acceleration device is installed in the machine. Virtually all 3-D accelerator cards for PCs support Direct3D.
8. DirectX

DirectX is the term given to a collection of common APIs, including Direct3D, which are owned and developed by Microsoft. Simply put, DirectX is a Windows technology that enables higher performance in graphics and sound when you're playing games or watching video on your PC.
9. Digital Video Interface (DVI)

DVI is an interface that allows for the transfer of a digital video signal from a computer to a display, which increases the image quality and performance over a comparable analog system. The white connection seen on the left-hand side of this graphics card’s back plate is a DVI connection. DVI is not only being used in computers, but as an interface for televisions to display high quality images from HDTV, DVD, and other digital sources. There are three levels to of DVI connectors: DVI-A (DVI Analog) - this is an analog ONLY DVI connector (you don't get the benefits of the digital signal - fortunately, you really don't see these anymore); DVI-D (DVI Digital) - this is a DVI connector that ONLY puts out a digital signal; DVI-I (DVI Digital OR Analog) - this is the most common connector. It can output a Digital signal or an Analog signal. When using a DVI connector with an analog monitor (either a DVI-A or DVI-I connector), you will usually need an DVI to VGA Adapter, Sometimes this is provided by the video card manufacturer, but often times it is not. When most card manufacturers ads refer to their cards having a "DVI connecter," they most often mean a DVI-I connector.

10. Frame Rate

The speed at which still images are generated on the screen in order to create the effect of full motion is referred to as the frame rate, which is measured in terms of frames per second (fps). While humans can generally only see 30 frames per second, many gaming benchmarks indicate that cards can provide performance far exceeding this value, and some may consider something around 60 fps the current minimum for acceptable performance. Adjusting many of the setting described in this Tech Tip will have an impact on the frame rate, and finding a balance of good performance and appearance in today’s games may take some work on anything but the best graphics cards.

Are you Compliant?

Your developer or designer should deliver to you a web site that is pleasing to look at and easy to use. That's what you pay for. Getting a pretty site with spotty functionality is like buying a used car simply because it was beautiful to look at. You'd never do that. You'd at least look under the hood to make sure it had an engine...right?

Your site might be nice visually, but if your designer/developer didn't code it correctly it will fail in some way on some browser. Pretty car, no engine. Having your site fail in a browser is not good business. Even if it's one browser. How many customers use that browser? If you are ignoring FireFox or Opera or text based browsers, that can be a lot. You need good code.

How do you code for so many variations?

Web Standards.

Too time consuming? Expensive?

Maybe.

An upgrade or luxury?

Shouldn't be.

This last week I had the fun task of debugging two sets of standards compliant issues. These were real, live E-Commerce sites.

Site A.

The first one was a product display issue. Scripting was being used to deliver an interactive scenario to the user. The script worked fine on several sites. It failed on this particular site. But more interesting is that it failed in one IE browser window and worked in another IE browser window on the same machine. It worked perfectly in FireFox.

Buggy.

I was stumped.

The issue wasn't with the script's code, but with the HTML output. Since the output wasn't "valid" for that browser, the script behaved erratically and failed to be interactive. Except if you count banging your head on the keyboard. The fix was a positioning change in the output CSS.

One word.

Sigh.

If the coder had known about (or taken into account) the issues with HTML behavior on the various platforms/browsers I wouldn't have gotten the migraine I had after reading pages and pages of code. If I had bothered to read through the HTML portion I might have saved myself the pain!

Lesson learned. And I did learned a lot.


Site B.

The second site wasn't so much a challenge, but it was a good refresher for why I learned to write hack free CSS from scratch. And it wasn't my baby to debug though I did participate, reading pages of code and testing controls.

Check your shopping carts in FireFox.

You cannot ignore FireFox as a browser. Google is pushing it hard. It's touted as more secure that IE, so people are flocking to it. It's incredibly picky about compliant code. You want to make sure your site, especially your cart, functions in FireFox.

The second site's cart script would not let me do things like click the "Add to Cart" button or the "Remember me" check box. Not to mention the layout was chewed. All because some one tried to hack the CSS .

The lady who owned that site said that they had known about the issue for months but her "webmaster" didn't know what to do about it. As a stop gap method they put up a little disclaimer for FireFox Users.. She said that she knew they were losing money. I don't know why she didn't hire someone to fix it. It took all of two hours max and the fix was a common issue. Go figure.

If you hired someone to design pages for you, ask them if the code is "Standards Compliant"?

If you're writing your own code and things aren't going so well, you can always ask Genesis One And One Developers for help. We're always looking for some challenging code. If not, a search in any of the reliable search engines (Ask.com, Google.com, Yahoo.com etc) will bring up a miraiad of helpful tutorials.

And yes, Genesis One is looking for a few good Clients. Clients who want both functionality and design. We don't think one should exist without the other on the web.

When I build pages for my clients there are some basic things that I will include. This is my "Value Added" that I give to all my clients.

Why?

I want them to be:

Happy
Successful
A Repeat Customer
Referral Inclined

So, I jump start their sites from the very beginning by walking them through what I call
FOUNDATION SEO (sm)

FOUNDATION SEO (sm) is designed to include all the bones or structures needed for successful ongoing Search Engine Marketing. I may recommend software, websites to help with research and the like. But most importantly I make sure they have a good understanding of how to go about SEO if they are going to DYI, what NOT to do when you're feeding your spiders and how to avoid being scammed later on.

So what are some features that I include:

1. How to chose your domain name. What's HOT, NOT and DANGEROUS!
2. Basic Keyword Research. What they are and should be. Where to go to find them and which ones to avoid.
3. Where to Use the Keywords. Area, Placement and Amount.
4. When and HOW to tweak.
5. Web Host Server Technicalities that can kill your Marketing. Yeah, you really do get what you pay for.


These are not magical solutions.

Search Engine Optimization is a process, not a one time thing. So there is no "once and for all" bullet. Instead, these methods will help steer you to better placement.

These are not obscure techniques.

If you are diligent, all this information is free on the net. It's just that most people don't know where to look. If they do find information sometimes they don't know whether it's good or bad. I've synthesized and filtered a lot of information and brought it all together as an Added Value to my very valuable clients.

More later

Really!!

You can have a beautiful website, fast and easy.

And Cheap.


Purchase a complete template from my Template Store. Some as low as $25.

Then let Genesis One customize it for you.

Add custom images
Add a custom logo
Add text
Edit buttons and links
Add or edit style sheets
Add custom javascripts or PHP scripts
Link in a custom blog, calendar, guestbook or forum
Link your e-store or shopping cart

Make your list of needs and wants then ask me what can be done.

I'll be happy to give you a free estimate or time and cost.

Contact me today! Let's get started!

In website coding there are two ways to link assets, resources or pages to each other:

Relative Linking structure
Example:
THIS IS A LINK
Absolute Linking structure.
Example:

../ (two periods and a slash).

this tells the browser to go up one folder level from its current position.

So lets say you have a file called poetry.html buried three folders down from your home page index.html (ROOT DIRECTORY). To link poetry.html to index.html

you would use

Home Page.

Happy filing!

You've made the decision to take your small business to the next level. Whether you intend to be more visible to local clients or to a global audience, the steps for getting there are much the same.

Initially you will need to

Begin gathering things -Content- to place on your site.
Develop a Budget for your website project.


Once you have a some content and a budget then you should begin to consider how your site should be delivered or built. With a close eye on budget you should evaluate both:

A designer and/or programmer
A template or Content Management System (CMS)


You may need a designer or programmer to help you develop a custom solution. Or you may simply want someone with the technical expertise that you lack. Your designer or programmer should take your project from Conceptualization Phase to Maintenance Phase and leave you with a functional, easy to maintain site. Pros: This site is built on your budget and is customized and unique to your business. Cons: This can be expensive and time intensive. Finding a reliable designer maybe difficult.

You may also consider using a template or a CMS as an alternative. A template is a pre-built site that you will customize as available and load your content into. A CMS can be a very custom solution or simply a templating engine that allows you to easily add and update content in specific areas of the site. Pros: A lower cost solution, often budget friendly. Cons: May violate your Companies branding efforts. The template maybe incomplete for all that your site requires. The template maybe uneditable. May require a high learning curve and more time on your part. Definitely requires some technical knowledge and or specialized software.

Before you make a decision shop around and explore your options. If your budget is very tight but your project is very large, a custom solution needn't be out of reach. Ask the design firm that your are considering, whether it would be possible to do the project in phases, where each phase leaves you with some portion of your project completely functioning and usable by your potential clients. You may also ask for s semi-custom solution or a price reduction with a contract for more work in the future. It never hurts to ask.

Now that you've determined which Site building solution you are using, it is time to spend some money.

If you are going the Do It Yourself route you will need to:

Register a domain name.
Secure hosting.


Your new site needs a name and a place to exist on the web. The name you chose should be relevant to your company and to the tasks you hope to accomplish online. The host you chose should offer the services you need, the newest equipment possible and the strongest reliability guarantee. There are always pitfalls. Be careful to read and understand your contracts and Liability statements from each company you intend on doing business with.

If you've hired a professional, they are now a part of your marketing team. They will help you decide what kind of domain name to use, evaluate your hosting needs and recommend a reliable hosting company.

You now have a name and a space on the web.

Launch your site.
Test your site.
Promote your site.


Again, if you've hired a professional team, these steps are taken care of. They will design, code and test the site. They will also help you with Optimizing the site for search engines. But most importantly they will make sure your site is usable to as many individuals as possible. If you did not hire a design team then of course all these tasks fall to you. Make sure your site works in all the popular browsers and Operating Systems you hope to capture a client base in. Watch out for glitches. There may or may not be many technical issues, but you need to be ready to handle them when they arise.

You will also need to promote your site, both on and off line. No one will visit the site if no one knows it's there. Site promotion takes time and can be a challenge or very expensive. Take your time to do as much research as possible, especially before paying money for a service. Again there are pitfalls. If you are not careful you could find your efforts leading to your site being banned from the major search engines. And that's a very bad thing.

After a successful launch you will need to:

Monitor your site daily.
Upgrade or Repair the site from time to time.
Continue your focused SEM strategies.


Site maintenance and SEM is ongoing for the life of your website. Successful sites are those constantly monitored. Server stats, traffic reports and user feedback are a must. Take time to plan these into the design of your site to help make your job easier.

I hope this was helpful to you.

Feel free to ask me any questions
info@genesisoneandone.com

A link is a path to a file or other type of resource on your web site or web server. When these files or resources are moved or delete and the link to them is not updated the link is said to be broken. A broken link causes the user to experience Link rot.

Like tooth decay is bad for your general health, link rot is bad for your web site and for your users.

In general link rot is very frustrating to the user as it means that instead of finding useful information, they usually receive your preset 404 Error.

Link rot is bad for you as it means eventually the Search engines will delete that file or resource link from their databases. Which in turn means fewer items linked to your site. Link rot may also make your web site look poorly maintained, which can cause a loss of credibilty among your users.

Take care to avoid linkrot.

1. Thoughtfully plan the naming schema for your folders, files and resources.
2. Never (or at least almost never) delete pages. Leave them as archives.
3. If you must move or rename a file make sure you use a server redirect.

A link is a path to a file or other type of resource on your web site or web server. When these files or resources are moved or delete and the link to them is not updated the link is said to be broken. A broken link causes the user to experience Link rot.

Like tooth decay is bad for your general health, link rot is bad for your web site and for your users.

In general link rot is very frustrating to the user as it means that instead of finding useful information, they usually receive your preset 404 Error.

Link rot is bad for you as it means eventually the Search engines will delete that file or resource link from their databases. Which in turn means fewer items linked to your site. Link rot may also make your web site look poorly maintained, which can cause a loss of credibilty among your users.

Take care to avoid linkrot.

1. Thoughtfully plan the naming schema for your folders, files and resources.
2. Never (or at least almost never) delete pages. Leave them as archives.
3. If you must move or rename a file make sure you use a server redirect.