cloudUtah Blog

I have notices a problem lately. I have been blogging so much about random stuff, the keywords Google indexes are all out of whack. I’m going to blog about what we do.

Requirements Gathering: Customers come to me with all kinds of needs and problems. One of the favorite parts of my job is to sort through them all and come up with the best solution(s).

Graphic Design: I do some of the basic stuff inhouse, but if there is a total redesign of something requiring a lot of creativity I have a list of graphic designers I work with. They all have their own unique talents and price points, so it’s important to match the graphic designer with the project.

Fixing or upgrading Ecommerce: Lots of people can add products and do routine stuff for their online store, but when the software or look needs an upgrade they call me. Lots of times it’s just not working the way it needs to. I usually upgrade the versions, install some additional modules, and sometimes get into the templates and change the look and the way products etc. are displayed.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): People want their websites to come up on searches, and there is a whole lot to this. I blogged about basic SEO a few weeks back here,

http://www.cloudutah.com/blog/15-ways-to-optimize-for-search-engines-some-seo-basics/

But lots of people need SEO for their stores, Drupal or Joomla pages etc. There are lots of modules and methods to accomplishing this. BTW, Drupal is one of the easiest to do SEO with. Enabling plain text links, making a sitemap, a custom description and a whole bunch of other stuff is important if you use a Content Management System.

Making websites: There are lots of different kinds of websites. We can take a template and customize it, or just make something from scratch. As mentioned before we can make something in a CMS, or code in HTML, PHP etc. We make all the different kinds of websites except those written in ASP. PHP is our scripting language of choice.

Javascript: Java is pretty much dead, so Javascript is the default client side scripting language of the WWW. We use it to do all kinds of effects within the browser without sending anything to and from the server.

PHP: We do lots of functionality in our sites, so if we have to do something specific PHP usually comes into play.

Facebook and Google AdWords ads: Facebook is great because you can pin down a specific demographic. AdWords can also be a good way to get paid traffic. When you sign up lots of hosting companies will give you a certificate for $50 or $75 worth of free AdWords, as well as free Yahoo and Bing advertising.

Fixing problems: Everyone has problems with their stuff. I also fix a lot of problems created by other IT professionals.

Domains and Hosting: We register domains, and get you set up on hosting.

Blogs: I can set up an awesome Wordpress blog like this one.

MySQL databases: We are great at storing and retrieving all your data from a database. Most dynamic websites use databases to store one kind of data or another.

Security certificates: We make it possible to transmit sensitive data safely.

I probably left some stuff out. Let me know.

I have had multiple clients tell me they heard keywords aren’t that effective anymore. I want to go over why this is true, and why this is false.

Meta information defined means information about information. The Meta tags reside in the head area of a webpage out of view of the public. Search engines get to see all the Meta information including meta keywords and meta description. The thing is any webmaster can type all the keywords he wants in the Meta fields of their website, so the search engines largely ignore the information therein. It’s worth it to put in some Meta Keywords and a Meta Description because it’s so easy, but barely worth it.

When I suggest clients get a list of keywords for their website I am suggesting something totally different. I want them to get a list of words they think a user of their website will search for. Those words are then peppered in the website as they use them naturally in sentences. The density of these keywords should be 5 to 20%. The most important ones should be toward the top of the page. Search engines give heavy weight to this kind of keyword.  They actually index text from websites and match the search queries with the text from a website.

Search keywords are so important Google has a special section dedicated to them in Google Webmaster Tools called Keywords. Google will give you a list of the keywords they associate with your site. If these keywords are undesirable (as some of my most recent ones e.g. coffee and BP were), then you might have to do some rewriting of your website. This is what SEO is all about, giving the users of your website the most relevant content possible.

By the way, lots of websites have very little text. This is a huge mistake.

I am always looking for ways to save time and get the best results in web development. That’s why I love lists like the following. It will give you the names of great programs for creating the web, a link to them, screenshots, and a short description of what they do. Trust me, there are some great tools on the list. I use or have used at least half of them. I especially like Favicon and Kuler.

http://www.webdesignish.com/best-web-design-tools-for-creating-a-complete-website.html

Lots of people want to learn Photoshop better so they sign up for a class. Why not learn by doing tutorials that you know will turn out awesome. Here is a list of 35 great Photoshop tutorials,

http://smashinghub.com/fresh-and-useful-photoshop-tutorials.htm

There are so many awesome tools around the web that work great. Most people have no idea they exist. Here are a few I like.

1. Notepad++: This is like Notepad on steroids. If you get a bunch of HTML, Javascript, CSS or any kind of programming and you want it to be easily viewable, open it with Notepad++. The app changes the colors of the text to make it easier to sort out what is going on. http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

2. Xenu: Xenu test your website for broken links saving you the time it takes to individually test the link yourself. http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

3. Feng GUI: Need to know how to position things on your site to draw attention where you want it? Feng GUI will tell you exactly where your customers are looking for effective design. http://www.feng-gui.com/

4. Browser Shots: I once had a designer ask me how I test websites in different browsers. If you really want to test all browsers, and all versions you will need a tool like Browser Shots. They will give you screenshots of your site. You can input browser size, flash, Javascript and a bunch of different browser versions. http://browsershots.org/

5. ColorJack: Do you need to get a set of great colors that go together. Go to http://www.colorjack.com/ and get some matches to any color. http://www.colorjack.com/

I have to talk about the future of computing. Forget all about Microsoft vs. Macintosh. Most of us, including gamers, want a nice fast computer in front of us to handle all our browsing, word processing, and run all our applications. The thing is, applications run just as well from afar as they do right in front of us. Whats more, it’s easier to share stuff if all the stuff is in one central location. Don’t have the latest version of Microsoft Office to open the latest extension type? Thats ok, you can just pull stuff up from the web. Compatibility issues posed by different operating systems can mostly go away.

What am I talking about? Cloud computing. Cloud computing is where you install all your applications on a server somewhere, and access them through the internet. Nothing has to be installed on your computer except a browser, and we all have browsers.

The truth is web applications are getting very good. They can do almost everything traditional apps can do, they just need to be developed more. Google Apps is an example of this. It lacks a little development, but has all the potential of Microsoft Word, and it’s easier to share docs and not write over each others revisions.

I am bringing all this up because Ubuntu Server Edition is now offering cloud computing. All applications can be developed on a server, and everything is open source. If you don’t want to buy your own servers, you can rent as much as you want from Amazon via Amazon’s Elastic Computing (EC2). As your company grows you can rent more capacity or downsize as needed. If you want to transfer everything to your own servers that’s easy too. Everything is open source and transferrable.

People, as internet speeds increase, this gets easier and easier to do. The sky is the limit with the possibilities. In the future why drag your laptop around with you? Just pull your chair up to a small PC anywhere and log into all your stuff. I’m talking about something the size of a screen, or built into a restaurant table.

I know my future is in developing this stuff. I’m so excited I might install a version of Ubuntu Server on a PC lying around, and play around with it. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Here are links to Ubuntu Cloud and Amazon Cloud,

http://www.ubuntu.com/cloud

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/

P.S. Did I mention you can choose either a Windows or a Linux Machine with Amazon. Linux is about 8.5 cents per hour and Windows is 12 cents per hour.

I heard about a study last December that found advertisers that appeal to the emotions of their customers get better results from their advertising campaigns. This year every single ad I see tries to appeal to your emotions in some way. The reason is advertisers want results from their campaigns, and they are getting them by connecting on more than a logical way.

The trend is toward a new kind of marketing called Viral Marketing. The idea is no one cares about your company or your product. People want to be entertained, be moved, they want to watch a mini movie and not an advertisement for some product. If you can give them what they want, you can also get them to take a look at what you are offering and maybe some brand loyalty.

Viral marketing also means your contact information is secondary. Often it only shows up at the end, and not very prominently. You don’t need to barrage your target market with a WWW address and phone number. If they want to check you out, they are smart enough to find it at the end of the mini movie.

I was recently talking to a graphic designer and she said don’t focus so much on your target market. Everyone is very similar, and they like the same things. Delicious chocolates, sexual images, the pool on a warm summer day, a spring time walk etc.

The lesson is to focus on something that is appealing to the eye in creating advertisements, webpages, any sort of communication to your clients. Don’t clutter the message with too much information. Make the user of the information feel good, then tell them what you want them to know in a simple way. A big fantastical scene and a couple of sentences usually work just great.