Richmond Media

Hackers infect 570,000 computers. How about yours?

ddye — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 15:08:32 +0000

While on my first cup of coffee this morning, I saw this:

“For computer users, a few mouse clicks could mean the difference between staying online and losing Internet connections this summer.

Unknown to most of them, their problem began when international hackers ran an online advertising scam to take control of infected computers around the world.

In a highly unusual response, the FBI set up a safety net months ago using government computers to prevent Internet disruptions for those infected users. But that system is set to be shut down.”

Google: Stop Optimizing Websites So Much?

ddye — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 20:20:59 +0000

“Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, announced as a side note during his panel at SXSW that Google is releasing an algorithm update specifically to target sites over doing their SEO.

Matt Cutts said this is Google’s attempt to “level the playing field” between webmasters that build quality content versus webmasters who are just really aggressive SEOs.”

SOURCE

Well, as a web designer who knows his way around SEO, I find this amusing, and it’ll be fun seeing which, if any, sites are penalized. But in an era where most people have to choose whether they will allow Apple or Google to control their life (I chose Apple…) I admit that I do think that Google has done great things for websites in general.

In particular, I love the idea of Google Panda. Instead of leaving SEO to geeks who know nothing except metadata, finally we have guidelines based upon CONTENT instead of code. The very idea that it’s better to design a website that helps people find what they want quickly and get them there in a streamlined way is more important than metadata buried in page code.

I’m a believer that web design has been royally screwed up for a decade. Business sites now have to have the logo in a certain place, the navigation in a certain place, Home page content boxes, and so many other things that make modern websites all the same. While Google Panda won’t fix that (and will make those damned Home page boxes even MORE ubiquitous) at least Google is talking about actual site content for a change.

And for that (channeling Daniel Tosh) We Thank You.

Addressing Misconceptions From Potential Clients

ddye — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:24:06 +0000

In this post I’ll address some things I have heard, or been asked recently by potential clients. Although other web designers might give somewhat different answers, most of this is pretty common knowledge for web designers in general.

Can I use Facebook instead of a website?

Put simply, no, that would be crazy. And here are some reasons why:

Facebook is a social network, not a business network. While you can post specials and interact with clients and potential clients on Facebook, business should be done in a business setting. Use Facebook to start the conversation. Use your business website to finish it.
Most people use Facebook to keep in touch with family and friends. While some people might be interested in doing business on Facebook, many other people will not.
You do not own your Facebook page. If Facebook goes down, you go down with it. If Facebook cancels your account, or changes the rules, you suffer.
Facebook isn’t an effective way to be found in search engines. Google uses the existence of a Facebook page to raise the ranking of your business website, not the other way around.
Facebook business pages offer fewer features than personal pages. And if you try to use your personal page for business, Facebook can delete your account.
The most important reason; it’s not a professional way to do business. If you don’t have a business website, you will not be seen as committed to doing business.

And the opposite; I hate social media! Why should I use it on my site?

As someone who got into the social media game a bit late, I have had to learn it on the fly. And still our own social media isn’t what it should be. I could use the old excuse, “A house painter’s house always needs painting”, but people don’t usually drive by that house painter’s house to decide whether to give him a job or not…

Some of these statistics are listed elsewhere on this website, but here they are again. A lot of this is courtesy of Hubspot’s Marketing Grader:

Nearly 2/3 of US Internet users regularly use a social network
52% of 55-64 year old internet users have joined a social network
About 46% of daily internet users read more than one blog every day
Companies that blog get 55% more web traffic and 70% more leads than those that don’t
Companies that use Twitter average 2x more leads per month than those that do not
79% of US Twitter users are more likely to recommend the brands that they follow
More than 1/2 of active Twitter users follow companies, brands, or products on social networks

I know a guy who works at Radio Shack who can build my website for $800.00

Hey, good luck with that! Just because he builds it, that doesn’t mean that they will come. A few things that the guy at Radio Shack isn’t qualified to do:

Create good SEO – keyword density, meta data, submission to major search engines
Build an easy to use system to change your site content
Format your digital media (slideshows, videos, etc.)
Know what to watch in Google Analytics – time on site, individual page views, trends
Configure e-commerce
Build a navigation system that will guide site visitors through the most important pages of your site

I could have added at least ten more items to all of these lists. But I wanted to give you a taste of some things that I am asked about frequently. Hopefully it will give you a starting point for learning what a business site should be.

Control Your Own Logins!

ddye — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:25:34 +0000

Several times in the past year I have had to deal with new clients that came to us because they weren’t getting good service, or because their previous web design company didn’t know what they were doing. In several cases, we had to fight the previous web design company to get the site (and domain name) moved to a new server, get logins for web applications like Joomla and WordPress, and a bunch of other stuff.

Often, the web design company held the domain name and webhosting in their own account. One client in particular was only given partial access to their Joomla site, so I couldn’t back it up to migrate it, update plugins or add (and edit) users to give MYSELF full access. One company even changed the ftp login when they found out that they were losing the client!

There is an easy solution for this: control ALL of your own logins. It’s easy to let a company register your domain name or hosting, but you should take the time and do it yourself. NEVER let your web design company hold the registration to anything. If they need to access your hosting account (as they will), give them the login. But keep everything in your own name. That way, if your logins are ever changed, you can contact your hosting company and have them reset the login and send it to you.

Doing it yourself will take extra time, but it will be worth every second. Trust someone who has seen this happen multiple times, and has had to deal with it (and charge the client for our time).

Huge Headers and Page Content

ddye — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:22:10 +0000

There has been something of a dichotomy in web design lately. One school of thought says that people like really big headers, with sliders or slideshows. Another school of thought uses an older theory, that site visitors shouldn’t be made to scroll to see the site content.

VisitPhilly.com

VisitPhilly.com is one of the sites I always show to clients to illustrate the first school of thought. It has an absolutely gorgeous Home page, with an enormous slideshow.

I measured, and there are about 575 pixels of vertical space before the site visitor can see the page content. Even on my 1920×1080 monitor, in FireFox there are four side links hidden under the fold.

Halliburton.com

Halliburton.com is in my view, one of the most “corporate” looking sites out there. There are only 392 pixels from the top of the page to the bottom of the header. And since the buttons are at the bottom of the header, all of that is visible without scrolling.

On my 1920×1080 monitor, in FireFox I can see the entire page, down to the top of the footer.

VisitPhilly - Above the Fold

So, looking at the site in an arbitrarily chosen 640 pixel window (statistically, most people don’t view websites in full screen mode), VisitPhilly.com site visitors will see very little content other than the header and the three nav buttons at the top of the slideshow.

And since the site uses a lot of sidebar buttons, none of them are visible without scrolling.

Halliburton - Above the Fold

Halliburton.com though, allows a lot more content to be seen above a 640 pixel “fold”. You can see the entire header, all of the navigation, plus the most important articles.

So obviously, this is a much better example of keeping Home page content above the fold.

But neither site is terribly new, they’ve both been around for well over a year. So what will the trend be? In my opinion, I HATE sliders! They were really cool at first, until every WordPress template in the world included a huge slider. I don’t want to distract site visitors with arrow buttons to navigate through the sliders, I want them to focus on the content of the page.

I love design and great artwork as much as anyone, and I wouldn’t be called “conservative” by many people. But as far as web design for business, I believe that enormous sliders have become so commonplace that the “wow” factor is already starting to fade.

And if content is indeed king, shouldn’t that content be visible to people with lower screen resolutions?

Does SEO work for everybody?

ddye — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 01:50:10 +0000

I hate to be a buzz kill, but I say no, SEO doesn’t work for everybody. I’ve designed over 150 business websites with Richmond Media, and probably 100 of those had some sort of SEO package.

And no, some of those businesses are probably not good candidates for extensive search engine optimization.

Since I do a lot of work on the Hampton Roads and Richmond, Virginia markets, I do a fair amount of local business websites. I have built websites for timeshare companies, restaurants, hardware rentals, churches, nonprofit groups, HVAC contractors, financial advisors, national and local e-commerce, real estate companies, massage therapy, sports rentals, music stores, construction firms, landscaping companies and more. I am not bragging, just showing the scope of work I’ve done.

Does SEO work for all of them? I don’t really believe that it does, at least to the degree that it’s worth paying for a ton of SEO work. Don’t get me wrong, every site should have at least a basic SEO package. Google needs to see unique, well written page titles (the page’s title on the top of the browser window), meta descriptions (this is also what Google will display when it shows your site) and good keywords throughout the text on the pages. But as far as going all out with expensive SEO, I am not convinced that it will work perfectly for every business.

CASE STUDY 1: A local contractor had a budget site with very little SEO (now obsolete, of course…), built in 2007. He was getting around 60 visits a month, which is terrible. He spent over $6,000 on a brand new, state of the art site, a blog, an embedded promotional video and a full SEO package. Six months later, he’s getting around 150 visits per month. Why? What happened? He blogs regularly, the site is SEO’d within an inch of it’s life.

I can only conclude that for this particular industry, spending a lot of money on SEO is simply not worth it. Although part of my standard pitch is not to worry about Yellow Pages or newspaper ads, maybe they’re more important for that particular industry.

CASE STUDY 2: A large allergy practice paid us $4000 for an SEO package, including a new website. They are getting over 5,000 visits per month during allergy season, up from around 1,200. But a local financial advisor paid us $900 for an SEO upgrade (not including a new site). A year ago this month, they had 38 visits. This month they had 54. Absolutely horrible. Why? Maybe a business like that needs to go more outside of their website to promote visits TO their website. Now I must say that the traffic they DO get is beneficial to their business. But that $900 didn’t do much good in that regard.

Here’s the question; who should NOT invest a lot of money in SEO? I would say that businesses who used to do well with Yellow Pages ads for starters (and I know, there would be a LOT of exceptions here), like local appliance stores and repair businesses. If you’re a used car dealer who is not going to spend a lot of money on a database for people to see the cars you have in stock, don’t spend a ton of money on SEO. I have also found that businesses that use their website to show the expertise of their employees and don’t have physical products to sell don’t do much better with great SEO than they do with basic SEO.

So if you’re one of those businesses, what should you do about getting your website found? As I mentioned above, using unique, well written page titles, meta and good keywords throughout the text on the pages are essential, and not terrible expensive. Think of your site like a 24/7 brochure, where people can come to look at your expertise and your products and services. Put your web address on your business cards, on the side of your trucks, splash it on the walls of your business, and consider other forms of advertising to increase your traffic.

And definitely, if some web designer starts talking about guaranteeing a spot on the first page of Google, be very, VERY skeptical.

Questions To Ask A Web Designer

ddye — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:45:03 +0000

If you’re a small business, you are probably not an expert in web design. You know that you need a website, but what kind? How much should you spend? Are cheap template sites worth the money? How about cheap WordPress sites? Here are some things you should ask a potential web designer to see if he can build a successful website for you.

1. How many small business sites have you built? If you look at a relatively new web design company, their portfolio will likely include sites that wouldn’t be considered business websites, because they are building a body of work, and haven’t gotten much work in the business field. But experience is important, because a small business site has completely different requirements than a website for a band or a small charity. Find a designer who has been doing this for awhile, and knows small business.

2. Have you built websites for my particular industry? A restaurant site is relatively easy to get decent traffic for, while an HVAC website is a lot tougher. Restaurant sites (for example) are routinely used for people to find their location, menu, specials, etc., but an HVAC website (again, just an example) will usually have much lower traffic. It’s just the way the industry works. Some industries can use Google AdWords (basically an advertisement on certain Google results pages) and some industries would lose a lot of money by doing that. Knowing the difference, and how to build a site accordingly can save you a lot of money.

3. What do you know about search engine optimization (SEO)? This is a tricky question, because it’s an ever changing field. A few years ago, the title (on the top of the browser window) was so long that it routinely ran off of the page. But now, Google only “sees” approximately the first 160 characters. Meta keywords used to be important, but Google hasn’t used them in years. The best thing to do is to ask the designer to show you the Google Analytics numbers for some of his sites. If he doesn‘t have them, leave immediately!

4. Is your web design up to date? Like SEO, this changes with time. An older site will look narrow on a widescreen monitor, because it was built back when everybody was using the clunky old CRT monitors. Look for Flash on his websites. Flash doesn’t show up on smart phones, so ask him what happens when a smart phone sees the site? If he tries to give you a lame excuse, or says that smart phones don’t matter, leave immediately.

5. Do all of your websites look the same? This is easy to find out. Some designers are one trick ponies, and all of their sites are very similar. Watch out for a designer who always uses a gigantic slider or slideshow on every site, because this is definitely an industry related option. Make sure that all of the sites don’t have the same basic color scheme. Also, stay away from a designer that works in black a lot. While black is great for some industries, it is often a crutch, because it’s much easier to make a black website look good. Make sure that your designer is talented AND creates a variety of different designs.

6. Do you do content management? This is a bit of a trick question, because not all businesses NEED content management. A content management system (known as a “dynamic” site as opposed to the older “static” sites) is edited online, so the client can keep the site’s content up to date, add new pages, and interact more easily with his clients. The important thing is that a web designer needs to KNOW about these things. And a good web designer can do both “dynamic” and “static” websites.

There are a lot more relevant questions you should ask, but this is a pretty good start. The important thing is to make sure that the designer you choose is experienced, knows about your specific industry, and is up to date on modern SEO techniques. Well, all that, plus being a great designer…

If you have any questions, either comment, or CONTACT us.

QUIZ – How much do you know about SEO?

ddye — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 01:38:39 +0000

OK, you own a small business website and you keep hearing about search engine optimization. You know that it must be important, but what do you really know about it? Take the short quiz below and find out what’s good, what’s bad, and most of all, what you need to know about SEO.



SEO Quiz



	
	

	
						*
				
			When was the first documented use of the term Search Engine Optimization?			
						
						
						
						
							
					 1995 
				
							
					 1997 
				
							
					 2002 
				
							
					 2005 
				
									
	

	
						*
				
			Which search engine does NOT look at meta keywords in the page code?			Meta keywords are a category of keywords placed in the code of a web page, not key words used in the text in a web page.
						
						
						
						
						
							
					 Yahoo 
				
							
					 Bing 
				
							
					 Google 
				
									
	

	
						*
				
			Does the age of a website influence its ranking?			
						
						
						
						
							
					 Yes 
				
							
					 No 
				
									
	

	
						*
				
			What is an example of "black hat" SEO?			
						
						
						
						
							
					 Using a lot of images with little text 
				
							
					 Using a black background with white text 
				
							
					 Submitting to multiple search engines 
				
							
					 Using black text on a black background to stuff more keywords into a page 
				
									
	

	
						*
				
			Does Google use social media to rank websites?			
						
						
						
						
							
					 Yes 
				
							
					 No 
				
									
	

	
						*
				
			What is "Panda"?			
						
						
						
						
							
					 Using "cute" images to attract traffic 
				
							
					 A new SEO practice of getting people off of the Home page and into the site quickly 
				
							
					 A new way to cheat Google 
				
							
					 A way for Bing to rank websites 
				
									
	

	
						*
				
			Does changing your website content on a regular basis increase your ranking?			
						
						
						
						
							
					 Yes 
				
							
					 No 
				
									
	

	
						*
				
			Does using both "www" and non-"www" on my website help my ranking?			
						
						
						
						
							
					 Yes, it will help your ranking 
				
							
					 No, it will hurt your ranking 
				
									
	

	
						*
				
			I keep getting emails telling me that they can get me hundreds of backlinks? Is this for real?			


						
						
						
						
						
							
					 Yes, the more backlinks the better 
				
							
					 Backlinks don'tmake much difference to rankings 
				
							
					 Backlinks are obsolete 
				
							
					 Low traffic backlinks can hurt your ranking

What About Those Really CHEAP Websites?

ddye — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 14:46:12 +0000

If you’re a small business, you’ve seen the TV ads, you’ve gotten the emails. “Build your own premium website!!” “Free Trial!!” “Only $299!!” If you’re a small business owner with a tight budget (shocking, I know…) you WILL be tempted to spend as little as possible for your website. But is buying a cheap website like buying a cheap sweater that will look horrible once you’ve washed it a few times? You can buy a sweater for $10, but you can’t get that $10 back after two months…

We’ve been doing this for ten years, and Richmond Media websites cost between $1400.00 and $12,000.00. So what’s the difference between our websites (or any other company that does small business sites) and those cheap ones? Are the cheap ones any good at all? Can they do what you need a website to do?

First off, you need to realize that the cheap sites are built from templates. This means that they have the design basically in place, and you (or the web design company, depending on the type of site) will add your content to that pre designed website. Let’s take a quick look at what a small business website needs to do:

BE FOUND BY YOUR CUSTOMERS

There are a two ways to do this.

Promote your own website outside of the internet by posting your site address on your print ads, business cards, etc.
Use search engine optimization to increase your ranking by search engines.

You can certainly promote your website yourself, and this might be somewhat effective for a VERY small business that serves a very small area. But to really get traffic, you need what’s called search engine optimization. This requires keywords and phrases to be used both in your site’s page text AND inserted into the code in the site’s pages as “meta tags”. Many templates allow you to add your own meta tags, but how do you find the right ones to use? At Richmond Media, we’ve been doing this for a looooooooooooong time. Do you think you can do it as well as we can? If not, your website simply will not compete with a professionally designed website. And if your website can’t compete in the marketplace, what’s the point in having a website?

Remember, a website is basically a form of advertising. Would you shoot your own TV commercial? Produce your own radio spot? Would you trust yourself to do a great job buying time on radio and TV stations? What if you got an email claiming that you could get a TV spot for $299? What if the small print said that your TV spot would use the same sets as a bunch of other TV spots, and that you’d have to write and produce it yourself? How do you think that would work out?

Staying with the theme, “But wait! There’s MORE!!!!”

ENGAGE SITE VISITORS

As you build your website, you have to not only attract traffic, you have to give that traffic a good reason to stay there and see what you have to offer. The thing is that Google continually changes the rules for ranking websites, and you have to follow those rules, while at the same time, keeping your site interesting to site visitors.

The key is content and navigation. You need great content that will keep people on your site, and you need that content configured so that people can find it easily, and so that your Home page compels people to click the right buttons to find it.

Do you know what a “call to action” is? That’s a part of your Home page that compels people to click the links to go where you want them to go. If you own a restaurant, you want people to see your menus, a map to your location, your hours, and any specials you might be running. Do you know how to direct traffic to those pages? We do.

Do you know what Google Panda is? That’s the new algorithm Google uses to rank sites, built upon the following premises: People do not like to read a bunch of text, and people nowadays want to immediately see what they want, and they want to be able to easily find it. Unlike the way Google used to work, Google Panda is based upon getting people OFF of your Home page as quickly as possible, and into the interior pages of your website. Do you know how to do that? Does a template (of unknown age) allow for this?

That’s just scratching the surface, but I hope it gives you a decent comparison between cheap template websites and professionally built websites. So, if you can only afford a $10 sweater, should you buy that sweater, or find a way to get a better one that will last? Richmond Media (and a lot of other web design companies) sometimes let clients pay on time. Ask us, and maybe you can get a $50 sweater for a few months of $10 payments. Because that sweater will last a lot longer, look a lot better, and it will keep you warmer.

How to buy GoDaddy hosting

ddye — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:00:42 +0000

Richmond Media usually lets clients buy their own domain names and their own hosting accounts. That way, the client controls their own website with no billing from us, and no markup to the price. This is a video tutorial on how to get a GoDaddy account and get your own hosting server.

Other hosting companies have similar methods, so this will be helpful no matter who you choose to purchase hosting from. if you have any questions, ask them in a comment below, or contact Richmond Media.