RareSeven Design is currently undergoing a site overhaul with a new improved site design. Some of the same elements will remain in place, but with new navigation and new content. We strive to achieve the highest in customer support so we listen to our clients suggestions and wish to create an easier navigating site for all clients and potential clients.
Look for this new site overhaul with new features including online payments and online customer support ticket system.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Site Overhaul
Support Ticket System
RareSeven Design is working on offering a new online based Support Ticket system to better serve our clients. This will allow clients to post tickets online and keep track of those tickets. This also allows for a more rapid response and better Customer Support overall.
Look for this new service to offered in the near future along with a new site design.
Search Engine Optimization
RareSeven Design is proud to offer Search Engine Optimization. Due to severing connections and partnership with Peak Positions we have decided to offer Search Engine Optimization through RareSeven Design directly. Whether your looking for Global Search Engine Optimization or Local Search Engine Optimization give RareSeven Design a call. We offer Website Design and now Search Engine Optimization on a local, national and global level. Contact RareSeven Design for not only Web Design but now also local search engine optimization, national search engine optimization and global search engine optimization.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
SEO Compatible
What does it mean to be SEO Compatible? This can mean several different things. I am going to explain what I consider SEO compatible to be in the following bullet points.
• 100% W3C Code Compliant w/ NO exceptions
This basically means that you cannot have any coding errors when using the industry standards from W3C. At this point you might be asking yourself "Well how do I find out if I am compliant?" That's easy... you visit this address http://validator.w3.org/. Plug in the URL address of the page that you want to check and click Validate. it will tell you based on the Document Type encoded at the top of your page whether or not you are compliant with the standards. 9 times out of 10 you will not be compliant. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Most the time you are able to fix these coding "issues" without affecting the look, feel and performance of your website. If you can't fix them yourself then it would be best to contact a web design specialist such as RareSeven Design and they can help you with this.
• Being able to edit every single aspect of your page to make it custom
Right now you might be asking yourself what do you mean by "every aspect"? This means that if you want to change the title of your page in the <title> tag then you need to be able to. You also need to be able to customize the ENTIRE <head> tag. Most software and companies consider themselves to be SEO friendly or compatible because you are able to edit the description and keywords. This is only part of the formula that it takes to become SEO compatible. Description and keywords are important, but there are also other aspects that need to be looked at and edited also to help make your site stand out. You also want to be able to edit all images, text, navigation, etc. without having to consult or pay someone $100/hr to edit it for you. These are things that you should be able to edit on your own with a little training or experience.
• CMS tools
While CMS (Content Management Systems) are getting better, they still quite frankly suck when it comes to SEO friendly. You usually end up with a url reading something similar to: index.php?sessionid=2384asdfjklxczv//af'2q40[54j[zvxz/xva'. Get the hint? If you yourself can't understand what page you are going to be looking at how in the world do you expect the search engine to understand it. You URL names need to be specific, relevant and relatively short in length. Lengthy URL names can also confuse the search engine, having one such as short-small-mini-tiny-designer-tight-pink-fitted-dress-business-shirts.html can also be problematic. Not only are you confusing the search engine, but you also are not making any sense.
• Clean Code
Doesn't this fall under code compliant? Yes and no. By this I mean that you can have a 100% code compliant page but have it be sloppy. Sloppy code = sloppy website. Your code needs to be readable, organized, short and concise. Anything that you are able to embed into an external file such as a JavaScript file or a style sheet, needs to be put there. The less code for a search engine to "scan" the better off you are going to be. It's just less work for the search engine to have to "crawl" through.
• Unique
This might seem pretty simple, but lets face it sometimes we can't think of something on our own so "borrow" it. Having your own unique text, pictures and related media is a key essential to being SEO compatible. If you create a site that looks different, but carries the same text and images as another 20 sites why should the search engine prefer your site? You need to have unique and professionally backed text and images. If you have to borrow bits and pieces but you need to reference where you got that information. The best thing to do is to compile your own unique text that is different from all your competitors.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Black Hat Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This is a very tough topic for certain companies and people. Black Hat SEO is defined as breaking search engine rules and regulations or unethical content either visual or non-visual for search engine spiders and search engine users.
What does this mean exactly?
In reality black hat seo is a very thin line to walk and some companies push the envelope to the edge and sometimes go overboard just to see what they are able to get away with. Some things to avoid are keyword stuffing, invisible text, tiny text, excessive keyword spam of image alt tags, doorway pages, mirrored sites and other topics. I am going to break down each one of these below into a better definition.
Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is pretty obvious. A perfect example of keyword stuffing is the following:
Our company began with a vision of providing floral consumers with fresh Thank You Flowers with the quality and value they deserve for their hard earned money. Thank You Flowers and holiday plants are often over priced and of poor quality, resulting in disappointed customers who only buy Thank You Flowers if time constraints force them to. At ****** we make the process of order Thank You Flowers an enjoyable experience for both the Thank You Flowers customer and the Thank You Flowers gift recipient. We want to ensure that the Thank You Flowers customer gets fair value for his or her money, and that family member, party, or recipient of our Thank You Flowers has the opportunity to enjoy them for as long as possible.
I am not going to show the company name, but this is something I came across when lookin to send flowers to someone as a thank you. These sentences don't even make sense and the user cannot read and understand what the paragraph is even saying. What happened is they did a find and replace for the word "flower" and replaced it with thank you flower. Just poor optimization tactics been implemented.
Invisible Text
This is one of the hardest things to define. It might seem easy because something is either visible or invisible...right? Wrong ... well sort of wrong, let me explain here. Placing white text on a white background is obviously a huge no no as the user can't see it unless they try to highlight it with their mouse. Now if you make a user click a "Read More" button to read more text that appears on the same page just under the read more is that text defined as invisible or visible? Now you see where in lies the issue. This is a tough topic, but if it doesn't seem ethical...then it probably isn't and you shouldn't do it.
Tiny Text
This is also another hard topic. What is defined as tiny? I write on college ruled paper and only take up half the line (vertically) and others call it tiny but to me that is what I normally write because I have better than 20-20 vision so to me it's easy to read. The main thing to take away from this topic is if you can't personally read it without trouble, then it's too small and it borderline blackhat.
Excessive Keyword Spamming Image Alt Tags
This is the easiest of topics to define. If you have an image of lets say a black dress shirt. An appropriate alt tag might be "Brand Name ~ Black Dress Shirt". Making alt tags of the following are for sure black hat: "Order your Brand Name Black Dress Shirt Today. We have specials on black dress shirts. Get your Brand Name Black Dress Shirts today from ABC Company and get free black dress shirt shipping." You get the idea yet? Use common sense and if when you hover over an image with your mouse the text covers the entire screen you have definately gone overboard and are crossing into black hat seo territory.
Doorway Pages and Mirrored Site
These are also easy topics to discuss. A doorway page is simply a page that is usually "Black Hat Optimized" and it ranks in the search engines, but when a user tries to visit the page it redirects them to another page. Thus why it is called a doorway page. A mirroed Site is simply another site that is a copy of your main site in order to get more links back to your main site and hopefully more top 10 rankings. Both of these topics are 100% black hat seo with no if ands or buts.
These are just some of the Black Hat SEO topics that are of great discussion. Now do these Black Hat SEO tactics work? Yes they work, but they only work until you get caught. Once your caught using such tactics you can kiss your rankings goodbye for quite some time if not permanately. It is very hard to come back from being banned to getting back into the top 10. If it seems unethical or if you were a user and would not like visiting the page then it probably isn't appropriate for the web. Put yourself in the shoes of the end-user and then decide how you are going to optimize.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
