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Web
Tip #10: Here are some easy key stroke combinations that will speed up almost any work you do on your PC (sorry Mac users). Most of these can be used in any program too. I suggest you give each a try in a number of your favorite programs to see their affects. If you use them a few times, you'll easily remember them and save tons of time:
As of today 10/21/05, we are in the middle of Google changing something major in their search results, dubbed 'Jagger'. Our intelligence agencies tell us there is a lot of increased chatter in the webmaster and SEO communities. In fact, people are going berserk right now trying to figure out what Google is up to. But I can understand their reactions. Since these changes started happening, the results you get when using Google are drastically different than the results you would have gotten with the same search a week ago. This has a lot of site owners up in arms because all their hard SEO work is no longer yielding them good search rankings, which in turn has decreased their site visits, which of course results in less sales. For many keyword phrases across many industries that were ranked in the top 10 are now finding their rankings in the 300+ range. If your business depends on traffic from search engines, and now all your keywords are appearing on page 20 of the results instead of page 1 or 2, you are in trouble. Keep in mind that when some drop in rankings, others naturally move up, so some site owners are feeling like they hit the lottery. But things are still in flux, so it may be too early yet to know if cries or smiles are in order. The last two Google Updates were called 'Bourbon' and 'Florida'. Whenever Google makes major changes to its algorithm, it's called an Update, and each update is given a name. Why does Google change its algorithm? So they can continually give the end-user the best, most accurate and appropriate results to their queries. After all, that's what their job is and that's how Google got so popular in the first place, they gave the best results. They also do this to keep search engine specialists, optimizers and professionals from "gaming" the system. As long as Google and other engines keep changing the underlining code of their search, it becomes very difficult to manipulate the rankings in your favor. Often times, Google Updates take a few weeks to a month for all the changes to take affect. So the results you are seeing today may be different than what you'll get 2 weeks from now. That's good news for site owners who have seen their site vanish from Google searches in the last few days. Google’s
Matt Cutts, one of the first engineers on the search engine’s
advertising Here's a few threads that have been discussing 'Jagger':
By far, the best advice I can give you regarding Jagger is to be patient and wait till all the dust settles. If you have noticed your site's rankings drop over the last week, don't despair yet, they may bounce back even better than before. Or they may rank even worse, it is simply too early to tell.
I found a few new Web tools for your search engine optimization work:
Web Design - A Web Color TutorialI divide Web design into three parts: appearance, usability and organization. In this edition of The Net Gazette we are going to examine one aspect of appearance, color.
It's important to realize that different colors invoke different emotions, are associated with specific concepts and say different things. For instance, green often times is associated with freshness or money, which is fairly obvious if you think about it. But every color does this, and some of the emotions and concepts are more subtle. For example, white means pure, easy, or goodness and purple can be associated with royalty or sophistication. The emotions and concepts that you associate with specific colors may differ from other people's, but there are themes that run throughout each color. Here are some:
A major goal of marketers is to invoke emotion in their audience. We know that if we can cause some kind of an emotional reaction in the people we are marketing to and communicating with, then we have a better chance of compelling them to the action of buying from us. The battle between logic and emotion that rages in each of is usually won by emotion every time. By choosing the colors of our websites and online media with deliberate care, we are purposfully trying to invoke a specific emotional response that will increase sales. So pick your colors carefully. To further our discussion on colors, let us now look at some color definitions:
Primary Colors: Red, Yellow, Blue. These 3 colors are the base colors for every other color on the color wheel. This is why they're called primary.When you mix two primaries together, you get a secondary color. Secondary Colors: Orange, Green, Purple. These 3 colors are what you get when you mix the primary colors together. Tertiary Colors: These colors are made by mixing one primary color and one secondary color together. RGB Color: Color based upon light. Computer monitors and televisions use RGB. RGB stands for Red, Green, Blue, which are the 3 primaries (with green replacing yellow). By combining these 3 colors, any other color can be produced. This color method is only used with light sources; it does not apply to printing. CMYK
Color: Color method based upon pigments. CMYK
stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black (its what the K stands
for). Using these 4 colors, most other colors can be achieved. Pantone (PMS) Color: Another printing color method. PMS stands for Pantone Matching System, and is a large list of specially mixed colors made by the Pantone Corporation. Keep in mind that since website visitors all have different platforms, different monitors, different settings for their screen resolutions and so forth, the color you want may not always be rendered the exact same way on your site visitors' monitors. That's why there are "Web Safe" colors that have a much higher likelihood to look the exact same regardless of the user's computer, monitor or settings. A list of these colors can be found here: http://www.tashian.com/htmlguide/websafe.html Keep in mind however, that the sophistication of technology today allows for Web designers to be able to stray form the "Web Safe" colors more and more. So don't be overly concerned if you choose to use colors other than from the safe list.
Web Programming - Get Javascript Off Your Pages
Go to http://www.bestshowticketslasvegas.com/ and try to view its source by right mouse clicking. You'll notice a Javascript alert pop-up that says "This page has been protected". Now go to 'View > Source' on your file menu at the top of your browser and open it's source code that way. Scroll to the bottom of the html and look for the third to last line of code that reads: <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript1.2" SRC="http://www.bestshowticketslasvegas.com/jscript/no-copy.js" TYPE='text/javascript'></SCRIPT> It is important for all of us to clean up our Web page code. Clean code yields better search engine rankings, allows for faster downloads, and facilitates future edits, especially for other people. What I am doing in the above example is calling the Javascript which is being stored in a separate file on the Web server. This is a very basic fundamental of computer programming, a pointer. By placing the code in another file, when the browser gets to the line above in the html when it is is parsing your page, it is pointed to the separate file for further instructions, carries out those instructions, then returns to parsing the the html document. When you request a Web page using your browser, it reads the html file being called from the top to the bottom. When the browser comes across a line of code like the one above, it searches for the file named http://www.bestshowticketslasvegas.com/jscript/no-copy.js and takes whatever content and functions the script produces, and puts them in the Web page that is being rendered. Then it returns to reading the rest of the html code in the original requested Web page file. To see what the Javascript is doing, go to http://www.bestshowticketslasvegas.com/jscript/no-copy.js and open the file yourself. So whenever you have a Javascript, any Javascript, go ahead and try creating it and saving it in its own unique file, putting a .js at the end of the file name when naming it, and inserting the line of code above (replacing the file name above with your own new file name of course) in your html page where the Javascript was supposed to go and viola, you now have a much cleaner html page. Till
next time, - Jason
To learn more about these subjects or if you have a need for e-marketing, design or programming services, please visit www.oakwebworks.com.
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