We have made a little site that helps you improve your SEO ranking on your own site! Give it a go! www.metapig.com
Our little web forum is growning slowly and building speed. It’s interesting how these things work out – exponetial growth, but as always its so hard to get the initial members in the first place. Exponential growth systems are facinating, it works like this: A site that has say 100 members has 10 times the refereal power of a site that has 10 members. By that I mean a percentage of each member is likely to invite someone to join or tell other people about the site (or indeed link to the site). A site with 1000 members has 10 times the referal power of a site with 100 members. The more members you have, the more members you get. This is what makes sites like Facebook and MySpace so massive. Well our site has only a few members at the moment but every day there are a few more, lets see how things pan out.
I don’t know about you but I rely on skype to contact my clients. Recently skype went down for me and I was lost without it. You can check the status of the skype servers here
This is a tricky one and something I have been thinking about for quite some time. Having a high Alexa or Google rank can be a way of trying to quantify a web sites value, which is especially important if you are going to sell it or intend to sell advertising. The problem I have with it is that Alexa and Google rankings can be cheated.
I will give you an example how people do this. Supposing you and ten of your mates all have websites that you visit every day. You could do a deal that you promise to visit each others sites daily with the Alexa toolbar installed. The tool bar will report back to Alexa that there have been more visitors lately and your rank will go up. Because only a small percentage of people actually have to toolbar installed, Alexa have to base the figures that they present based on projections. For example, if only 1% of people use the Alexa toolbar, their final projections must be multiplied by 100. Its quite easy to see how just a few people can make a massive difference to a small websites results. There are even websites popping up now that automate this system for you. You install a bit of software which makes your site visit everyone else’s. In return, you and everyone gets a higher rank, and the software owners siphon off some of the visitors which they then sell for advertising.
Another thing to consider is that site demographics will also affect results. Visitors to websites about Alexa and Google rankings are more likely to be interested in such things and are therefore much more likely to have the Alexa toolbar installed on their system.
The same is true with Google, but I think things are a little more complex. The Google Page Rank system is based on inbound links which count as a vote in favour of a particular website. If you are lucky enough to already own a few high ranking websites it’s pretty easy to artificially boost a ranking on new site. You could in fact set up a website that has no value at all, and link a dozen or so very highly ranked sites to it which would result in another highly ranked site.
I believe most of these problems get ironed out when a site is truly massive. The top 100 websites in the Alexa rankings are all deservedly placed.
I think the truth of the matter is that it’s almost impossible to quantify a website’s “worth†using mathematics alone. Algorithms employed by the best search engines are extremely advanced but they are no where near perfect.
Just today I added a tags feature on Voodoochilli.net. Tags are a way of social networking allowing people to find out what’s popular. I found this project particularly interesting as it really does show what real people are posting on the site. Following a simple set of rules, the end result is really quite revealing.
Google is planning to release more data and tools to help combat click fraud on it Google Adsense program. Apparently members of Google Adsense will soon be able to scrutinise clicks from visitors to enable better detection of fraud. This will be a welcome upgrade after many people have criticised Google for not sharing such data. Google estimates that around 10% of all clicks are fraudulent, something it is working hard to improve on.
As someone that is always trying to improve my own skills, I find it important to read around the subject of web design and development. I have list below my three favourite web design and development books, all of which I would recommend.
3. Web Re-design 2.0 – Workflow that works by Kelly Goto and Emily Cotler
This book is written by two experienced web designers and its focus is project workflow. The book concentrates on site re-designs but the information within can just as well be applied to new projects. I brought this book as a way to better understand the workflow of my own projects and it has given me significant insight. It discusses project management, project scope, clients and pretty much everything to do with a web design project. My only small criticism about this book is that when mentioning software, the authors seem to concentrate mostly on the Macintosh. Read the rest of this entry »
Have a look at this classic clip from the 80s that shows the “Hi-tech†Commodore Amiga in action! It uses the all new “WIMP†(Windows,Images, Mouse and Pull-down menus) Looks a bit like early versions of windows.
We have just recently launched another website created for a solicitors based in Hereford. You can visit the site by clicking here. Our full portfolio can be seen here
I just found out today that one of the sites we designed last year has featured on the BBC news program “Clickâ€. It’s great to know the site is doing so well.
You can read more here and view the archived video here (Starts at 19 mins)
The Green and Easy website can be viewed here
