In order to index and rank your website, search engines such as google usually use programs called “bots” or “spiders” to crawl the internet and read the code of all of the websites it runs across. A search engine spider uses the links throughout a website to find all of the pages in that website, as well as find external websites that a particular page might link to, and it does this by reading the code of your website. This entire process is automated, and most search engines use their own unique algorithm’s to determine the importance of keywords found throughout the code of your website.

Because of the complexities of these Search Engine Algorithms, it is very important to maximize the ability of a search engine bot to read the code and important keywords in your website. So if you ever plan to have your website search engine optimized now or in the future, there are several things you might want to know about what your website design SHOULDN’T contain.

Here is a list of the top design sacrifices you may have to make in order to improve your search engine rankings with google:

1. Menu links: Everyone wants a pretty menu because that’s the eye catcher that gets people to navigate through your pages. So its best to have flashy buttons and crazy fonts all over your navigation menu right? WRONG! If you want search engines to be able to easily index all of the pages of your website, its best to have a simple plain text and CSS menu using one of the 5 acceptable web fonts. Now there are work arounds such as putting a text only menu in the footer of each page so that a bot can access those pages, however the higher up the keywords are on a page, the more importance they have, so its always good for your search engine rankings if you can settle for a plain text menu.

2. Flash: Flash is  my arch nemesis. Not all of my clients want to be in the top 3 on Google, however most of them do at least want to appear in Google somewhere. If your entire website is created in flash, or if you have a flash intro page with one of those tacky “SKIP INTRO” buttons that everyone digs for, you can just forget it. Even if you do get your website indexed by Google and other search engines, your rankings will be severely crippled by your flash. Google and other search engine’s can’t read the content of a flash website, so it has no idea what search terms are related to your business. Best bet, stay away from flash unless its a small flash graphic, or some sort of useful flash tool such as a photo gallery.

3. Home Page Content: Most people would argue that your home page is your most important page. Its where you grab your viewer’s attention, and most studies say you only have a few seconds to do so. Google and other search engines agree! So if your home page is nothing but an image with no text, search engines don’t know what keywords are associated with your website until they start digging around in the rest of your pages. Make sure you have text on your homepage, and even if there isn’t much of it, make sure write it with lots of keywords related to your business.

4. Link Text: How many times do you see a link that says “click here” for whatever information? Happens all the time. This may help keep your text nice and clean looking, but have you ever considered linking some important keywords to other areas of your website? Search engines take the text in your website links into consideration when indexing your site, so instead of  “click here for tips on  website design”, why not try something like “Read our Tips on Website Design page”? You may think its a goofy and not so pretty way to link to a page on your website, but Google loves it.

Now if you’re like me, you like the pretty things in life, and sometimes these things come at a cost. Work with your website designer to find a happy medium between great website design and search engine friendliness. It can and has been done as long as you are willing to make some sacrifices.

1. Read it later: this add-on lets you… well… read it later. Its a bookmarking tool that lets you save a page in a list so you can read it at your convenience and then take it off your  list when you are done. Its much more efficient than regular bookmarking, and if you are an avid web browser, you NEED this add-on!

2. ColorZilla: lets you use a dropper tool from your browser to find out the RGB and hex color of any color on a web page. Really great for designers of any kind, but especially web designers!

3. MeasureIt: lets you measure a space in your browser window in pixels. Really great for finding out the size of a web page or image. Perfect for web designers and programmers.

4. FireFTP: a fully featured FTP client built into your firefox browser. Stores all of your FTP accounts for easy access through your web browser. I can’t say enough about how great FireFTP is!

5. Download Statusbar: instead of getting a pop up window for every download, they all appear in your status bar. Makes downloading files a lot cleaner, and its fully customizable, so you can tell it where to save all of your files, what data to show, etc.

6. Drag & Drop.io: if you haven’t used drop.io yet, you need to check it out! Its a file sharing service that is free up to 100 MB. You upload your files, it gives you a special link to send to your client or whoever you are sharing files with, and they can easily download your files from this link. It has a ton of other features as well such as password protection, chat, etc. This add-on lets you automatically create a drop from within your browser.

7. Google Toolbar for Firefox: need I say more. All of google’s stuff right at your fingertips. Highly customizable as well.

8. FoxyProxy: for anyone who wants to browse the internet anonymously, or browse from a different location (i.e. for location restricted web content).

9. Google Analytics Watcher: If you’re obsessed with the SEO of your website, this lets you constantly track the google analytics reports of your website straight from your browser!

10. Screengrab: Great for web designers who want to show off their portfolio. Not all web pages fit in the browser vertically, but this add-on allows you to save the entire page as an image.

There are thousands of add-ons out there for firefox, so I encourage everyone to browse through Firefox add-ons site here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

You may find some great productivity, social networking, blogging, and general browsing tools that you never knew existed.

What is the scam?

A Canadian company called Domain Registry of America is well known in the web world for the deceptive fake invoices they mail to domain owners in an attempt to get the domain registrant to transfer the domain to their registrar for an extremely high price. Often the cost of the domain registration is many times higher than what the registrant is currently paying for a domain registration, however a lot of people have been tricked into thinking this is simply a renewal notice that they must pay in order to keep their domain.

Once the registrant pays Domain Registry of America, the company attempts to transfer the domain to their service, and if you fall for it you are locked into an exorbitant rate with this company. If you pay the fee and realize its a scam, they will often charge a “service” fee and will refuse to refund your money in full.  I have seen scam invoices from this company for $25 and some for over $100 to renew one domain when the going rate is only around $9 – $15.

More recently, DRoA has started sending out email scams as well to the same end thus adding to the problem, and despite several lawsuits and fines from the FTC, they keep going.

So what do you need to know?

1. Make sure you know who your domain is registered through and how you will receive renewal notices from this company. In my company’s case, all renewal notices come through email from WBK Hosting, a name my clients are familiar with.

2. If you do receive any renewal notices or invoices that you don’t recognize via email or mail, make sure you read it carefully and contact your current registrar directly if you have any doubts.

3. If you get a renewal notice months in advance of the actual expiration date of your domain, look at it with an eye of suspicion. Most domain registrars and hosting companies send renewal notices around 30-45 days before the domain is set to expire, not 6 months before.

How did they get my information?

Your domain’s WHOIS information is publicly available to anyone who knows where to look unless your registrar offers a private registration service (which can often cost extra). DRoA most likely maintains their own database of domain owner information based on public WHOIS records. You can see what your own domain WHOIS information is by searching your domain name at http://whois.net.

What does it look like?

This is a sample of what the letter looks like. Note the fine print that “this is not a bill” and you are “switching to their service”.

A word to the wise, always read carefully and make sure you ask your web designer or hosting company to verify your domain registrar before you shell out your money if something looks suspicious.

Because of that last set of folks, I have been privy to a few proposals from other local website design companies, mostly because they want me to quote based on what the original website was supposed to contain.

It doesn’t happen often, but I have definitely been shocked by a few of the “features” some companies include and charge for. You wouldn’t believe the “bells and whistles” people don’t know they are paying for!

Here’s a list of the top “features” you should never pay for on a website. Prepare for a rant.

1. One of the worst “special features” I ever saw someone charge for was an email link. Yes, a simple href=mailto:whatever@email.com link. This company was charging $25 per email link in the website. Talk about ripping off your unsuspecting clients. Who charges extra for that?

2. I have often seen companies charge upwards of $4500 for an installed content management system and then never give their clients access to the system. The point of the system is so that the client can update the website themselves, so if you see this on a quote and you didn’t ask for it, make sure they take it off because you’re getting ripped off.

3. Maintenance fees. What? The only recurring fees you should EVER pay for a website are hosting and domain registration. Most of my clients update their website 1-4 times per year. I charge them per update for whatever time it takes to make that update, however I have seen companies charge $150 per month for “website maintenance”. What are they maintaining? Do they sit there and watch it 24/7 to make sure its still there? Come on…

4. Ok so this isn’t necessarily a “feature”, but I have seen designers charge a flat rate for a website no matter how large or small. The individual I’m thinking of charged $1000 for every website he did. $500 upfront and $500 at the end. 1 page or 100 pages, it didn’t matter…. $1000. I think I’m more saddened that he had clients who fell for it. If you’re not getting an itemized quote showing exactly what everything costs on your website, either get more information, or move on!

The point is, the average Joe doesn’t know anything about websites, which is perfectly fine. However if this is you, PLEASE make sure your website design company isn’t trying to take advantage of you by making you pay $25 for an email link. Get several quotes for starters, and ask questions. Any respectable website geek will be happy to help you understand what you are getting for your money.

Most of the time you can come to a happy medium, but sometimes you just have to give in and do what the client's wallet wants or risk not getting paid for your work. I definitely have several websites I have completed that I feel are not worthy of my portfolio because my client butchered a really good design with crazy web crap. So here's a fun little list of the top 10 things I HATE to put in a website.

1. Animated Gifs. These were cool in 1992 on a personal geocities website... not in 2010 on a professionally designed business website. I would rather fire myself from a job than have 60 dancing bananas all over a website I designed.

... kill me now...

2. Scrolling marquee text. People hate to read, so why would you want to force them to read MOVING TEXT!! So counterproductive....
Websites by Kristen does not condone the use of scrolling marquee's. Make it stop!!!!

3. Large font size... I'm sorry, but most people can read 12-14 point font. Just because you are blind and can't read your own website doesn't mean the rest of the world can't. That's why they make accessibility tools in your browser.

Your body text font should not be this big! If you think it should, get some glasses!

4. Blinking text... it reminds me of a 1982 car commercial. Just don't do it.
Blinky blinky blinky!!

5. Scrolling iFrames... With the advent of CSS, these should have died long ago.

6. HTML table borders... once again CSS people, CSS.

7. Animated backgrounds... No. Just no.

8. Mouse trails. If you're not annoyed with this by now...

9. Visible hit counters. You can make them invisible now... so why not do so!

10. BACKGROUND MUSIC! Not everyone likes your taste in music, and even if they do, they don't want to be forced to listen to it while viewing your website. I hope the horrible MIDI song playing will force you to agree.
width="2" height="0">

By now, I hope you have seen the light and will not force your web designer to implement any of these "features". Why use a betamax when there's blue ray?

“Hi, my website has been live for four days, why am I not having to replace my front door because people are beating it down wanting to buy my product? Why have I not had to install six additional phone lines to accommodate all of my new business from the website? Where are all of my new customers? I thought my new website would solve all of my problems!”

I have gotten a lot of new website jobs from people hoping a website will save their business, or at least keep it afloat until the market turns around, and I have to say, this may not be the best approach for several reasons:

1. It can take months to get your website on top of search engines for keywords related to your product or business, and this is if you have the money to pay for search engine optimization of your website. This service is normally not included in basic website design, and can often cost more than it did to build your website in the first place. In the long run, SEO is usually highly beneficial for any website (especially e-commerce websites), however if you are looking for a website to miraculously save your business in the next few weeks by people searching for it through google… its not going to happen.

2. Check your demographic. If you are selling walkers, canes, and dentures, chances are you are not going to save your failing business by putting your company on the web. The age group of people who would be looking for your services might be way out of  line with the typical age group that goes to the internet to search for local businesses and services. Its possible people aren’t finding your website because they are 90 years old and think a mouse is a small creature who eats cheese.

3. Is your product a luxury or custom item that costs the same as my mortgage? If so, that’s often the first thing people cut out when they are on a budget, even if its a pretty high budget. The fear produced by a down economy keeps people from purchasing products that are high end luxury goods. If someone needs a new quilt in a down economy, they are more likely to go to a department store and buy a brand name comforter on sale than purchase a custom quilt hand sewn with gold thread by angels.

4. Don’t put all of your advertising eggs in one basket. If your website is the ONLY way you are advertising your business, you will be sorely disappointed by the response you get. When a website is new, you need to find ways to drive traffic to it and to keep that traffic coming back. Try offering online coupons for your business. People will keep visiting your website if you offer monthly coupons that can only be found on the web. Always put your web address on all of your print material as well, including business cards, letterhead, mailers, print advertisement, etc. Your website isn’t going to help you if its just sitting on the internet where no one can find it.

5. Don’t be lazy! I think as a result of those “sit at home and make money” infomercials, people seem to think that they can start a business, put it on the web, sit back and watch the dough roll in. This is a MAJOR fallacy. Starting a new business of any kind, or even trying to save a failing business takes A LOT of hard work and motivation. So please, do not start an online business  if you think your website or web designer is going to sit there and do all the work for you.

6. Sometimes what you think is great… isn’t so great. You may think you have a one of a kind, no one’s ever thought if it, best in the world product, but let me tell you right now, its been done before in some form or another. Either way, your product could be successful if you take the right approach. On the other hand, there are plenty of products and ideas out there that should have been swept under the rug long ago. Let’s face it… if you are getting traffic to your website and no one is buying, maybe people just don’t like your product and its time to think of a new idea.

This being said, a website is a great way to get your business name out there given time and patience. If you have a budget to search engine optimize your website, I would highly recommend it. If you don’t, I recommend using print materials and print advertisements to drive traffic to your website. There are also many free advertising resources that you can use to drive people to your business. Try adding your website to free business directories such as superpages.com and google local business directory. Both are totally free and can help you get business through the door.

Also try to keep your costs down, you can always add to your website later, so don’t spend your website budget all at once. Spend some of it, see what’s working and what isn’t, and use the rest to make changes or additions and tweaks to your website as you start to figure things out.

Just remember, its your job to make your website work for your business. Only you know all of the ins and outs of your business, who your clientele are, what you need to sell and at what price, etc. If you do a little business analysis and marketing planning before you jump in to creating a website for your business, and have the patience to let your website grow and develop over time, you should be ready to roll!

The best way to curb email spam is to prevent it in the first place. Many people have no idea how their email address gets on a spammer’s list, so if you are armed with a little knowledge, you may be able to stay one step ahead of the rest of humanity.

For starters, spammers collect your email address from all sorts of places on the internet. Do you ever post on forums or message boards? Do you have your website address posted on your website? Do you have your email address on your blog?

Spammers use programs that are called bots to crawl the internet looking through web pages for text in a standard email format (whatever@whatever). Once a bot finds what it thinks is an email address, it stores that email in a database which spam will be sent from later… and that’s how it happens most of the time. So here’s some tips on how to prevent it:

1. Set up a “spam only” email address through hotmail, gmail, yahoo email or one of the other free email servies, and use this email address for signing up for services online, posting to forums and message boards, anywhere on the internet that they ask you for an email address. Only give your primary email address to people you know directly and avoid putting it anywhere on the internet. This way all the spam will go to your special spam email that you never have to check.

2. Avoid posting your actual email address on your personal or business website. Instead use a contact form for people to get in touch with you by email. This way, spammers cannot get your business or personal email from your website, but your clients can still contact you through the email form.

3. Some emails that people consider “spam” are actually legitimate emails from a company or service that you may have inadvertently signed up for because you didn’t read a privacy policy, or you didn’t uncheck the “receive newsletter” box before you submitted your email address on their website. If you are getting several emails from the same website or company, check the bottom of the email for an unsubscribe link. You may be able to stop a good portion of the emails you get from legitimate companies by unsubscribing from their email lists. Just make sure the emails are legitimate newsletters or advertisements from a website you are familiar with before you hit the unsubscribe link.

4. Use an email client instead of webmail. Most email clients have built in spam and junk filters, so most of the time you will never have to be bothered by the spam that does get through. I recommend thunderbird as a free email client from mozilla. It has many great features, including a smart junk mail filter. It figures out which emails are junk based on the emails that you mark as spam when you first start using the software.

5. Do not reply to a spam message. This lets the spammer know that you have a legitimate working email address. You may also want to avoid using an autoresponder on your email account if you are getting a lot of spam, as it will send an autoreponse that you are away from the office to spammers as well as legitimate emailers, telling the spammers that your email address is working.

I doubt we will ever be able to completely stop spam from coming into our in-boxes once it has started, but these tips can help you prevent future spammers from getting a hold of your email address, and cut down on the current amount of spam you are getting.

Very neat, and most of the scenes are free. The only drawback is an advertisement at the end of your movie. Additionally you can pay for a premium version that is void of ads.

Some of the extra features of the website allow you to choose male or female characters, change character race, select ambient music or a soundtrack, choose from several different languages and dialects. You can change camera angles, scenes, and much more.

This would be a really great tool for people looking to do an online animated presentation for their website or business, especially with the premium service they offer.

Happy Surfing!

Because a large part of my client base is made up of start-up businesses and individuals looking to get their product out there, I get a lot of questions from people regarding how to set up their business. You’re thinking “But wait, that has nothing to do with websites.” I know it doesn’t, but I get calls like this on a weekly basis, mostly because they don’t know who else to ask or where to turn.

I have successfully managed my own business for five years now, and I have done so without paying a dime for any sort of business management software. So here’s a list of my favorite FREE programs that can aid you in successfully running your business… and believe me I’ve tried them all:

1. Quickbooks Simple Start – Yes, I said Quickbooks. There is a free version of Quickbooks software called Simple Start. Its purpose is to help you manage your books while you are small, hoping you will grow and need to get the not-so-free version. Simple Start lets you do invoicing, set up customer accounts, track expenses, just about everything you need to get started. It does not allow you to hook into your bank account, print checks, etc., however I’ve used Simple Start for 5 years and have never needed any of those features just because of the nature of my business.

Try it here: http://quickbooks.intuit.com/product/accounting-software/free-accounting-software.jsp

2. Task Coach – If you need task/project management software, this is a great one. It lets you set up main tasks and sub-tasks. You can track the time you spend on them, mark them complete, sort tasks by order of importance, and much more. I use this software every day to keep track of the time I spend on all of my website design projects. There is also an iPhone application that lets you track your tasks while on the go and then sync with your computer.

Try it here: http://www.taskcoach.org/

3. Thunderbird – Now I know Microsoft Outlook Express (or whatever they’re calling it now) comes free on PC’s running Windows, however I’m not a fan. Its difficult to navigate, its buggy, and the biggest complaint I get from my clients is that it doesn’t let you organize your email addresses very well. I use Thunderbird for my email client, its from Mozilla (the people that make Firefox), you can download a ton of plugins and add-ons to make your life easier and to help you manage your emails in a way that suits you, you can keep your email addresses separate, and create separate folders for different clients if you like to keep things organized. Its my favorite email client of all the ones I’ve tried.

Try it here: http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/

4. Lightning – Lightning is a calendar plugin for thunderbird. It adds a full calendar right into your Thunderbird email client. It lets you color code events such as meetings, appointments, birthdays, holidays, etc. Its very easy to use, and its built right into your email client so you don’t have to run two different applications for your email and calendar.

Try it here: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/

5. Open Office – Now everyone knows one of the first pieces of software you need to buy when you start a business is Microsoft Office right? Not anymore. Open Office is a bundle of programs that work just like the Microsoft Office programs (Word, Excel, Access, Powerpoint). It allows you to open and/or save as Microsoft Office document formats which means you won’t have any compatibility issues with people who are using Microsoft Office.

Try it here: http://www.openoffice.org/

This list should get you started with most of the major software you will need to get your business started. Always remember, before you dish out your money, use Google to search for free alternatives. You would be surprised at what is out there!

P.S. Websites By Kristen is in no way affiliated with the companies or software mentioned above and is not responsible for any issues you have if you choose to use any of these products. Use at your own risk!

So here’s my top things to know about Do-It-Yourself website services:

1. Do-It-Yourself website services offer templated designs 99.9% of the time. I know this because I’ve had people hire me to try to modify their “template” into a custom design. Most of the time, you have a few templates to choose from, you can pop your logo into the header, add your menu text and your body text, and that’s about it. There’s usually no ability built into the system to add custom code and design. If you want this ability without hiring someone to custom design a standard website for you… get a blog.

2. These services are, well, services. They usually charge a monthly or yearly fee to allow you to have the website through their company. It may be beneficial for you to get a quote for a custom website, and then compare the one time cost of that to the monthly payments you will be making through the Do-It-Yourself service. If you could have bought a custom website for the price of a year’s worth of monthly payments on a do-it-yourself service, you might want to go custom.

3. It is just about impossible most of the time to convert your do-it-yourself website into a “standard” website. If it was this easy to build a website through a service and then transfer it over to flat files, the companies who offer this service would never make any money. So if you think you may want to convert your website into a custom website in the future or add any advanced functionality such as ecommerce, you will probably need to have an entirely new website created if you are moving away from a do-it-yourself service.

4. Many of these services offer domain registrations as part of their package deals. Be careful when registering your domain through these services, as you may have difficulty if you ever need to transfer it to a new registrar. These services do not offer DNS management services for their domain registrations most of the time, once again because they don’t want you moving your website away from their service.

5. When signing up for a service like this, you always need to keep in mind how you are representing your company. Like it or not, do-it-yourself web templates look like templates. People will be able to tell that you did not pay to have a custom website created by a professional and more likely than not you will end up having to have an entirely new website built in the future to improve the integrity of your business on the web.

6. If your reason for wanting a do-it-yourself web service is so that you can update your website yourself, there are many less costly alternatives out there for you. You can get a standard hosting account and domain registration for around $60 per year, have a wordpress blog installed and custom templated to your liking for a one time fee, and you have a website similar to a do-it-yourselfer, but with a custom template and for a much lower cost.

7. For every service, there is an equally good script that will do the same thing or more for no ongoing cost. If you are looking at hosted do-it-yourself ecommerce services, keep in mind there are many ecommerce solutions that do not require you to pay a monthly maintenance fee just to have a shopping cart. Many of these ecommerce services are charging up to $300 per month for a basic shopping cart. For this money you could easily get a shopping cart script installed on your web server and never have to pay a monthly fee for it. This frees up more cash for you to spend on necessary services for your company’s website  such as hosting and credit card processing services.

No matter what you choose to do, please educate yourself on the service you are planning to use. Think about what you will need to do with your website in the future and what flexibility you will need. Most services offer a basic brochure website, and any advanced features beyond that are off limits (other than maybe a paypal buy button).

When push comes to shove, you get what you pay for. If you want a quality custom and professional website, you will most likely not get this through a templated do-it-yourself service and you will be calling me in a year anyway to re-do your website from scratch. So my suggestion is, unless you have very minimal requirements for your website, save your money and pay a professional.