There’s no such licensing and training required to be a Web site developer or a Search Engine Optimization expert. Anyone can setup a Web site and call themselves one.  I’m not advocating a law like there is for doctor’s, but sometimes it should would be nice! That would stop “so-called” experts from saying things that are factually wrong:

For example, one company features a service for $199/mo which lists the following service as one of the services they include: Meta tag adjustment  (this service was even spelled wrong on their site).  Meta tag adjustment is a waste of time. Don’t believe Curvine — believe Google – here’s what they say “Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking…we still don’t use the description meta tag in our ranking.”

Another “expert” offers to automatically submit your Web site to 300+ search engines for only $25! What a steal, right? The problem is that there are only 3 major search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo — which gets data from Bing) which make up 95.5% of the US search engine market.  The next two providers ( Ask & AOL) get data from Google and Bing. So it is a complete waste of time and money to submit your site to anyone other than Google and Bing. In fact, both of those services will likely to find your site on their own, as long as it is linked from another site that it knows about. So you’ll likely don’t even need to do anything, much less spend $25.

Save your money! Be careful when spending money on Search Engine Optimization.

Should you do it?

In a word, no.

Here are some reasons:

• The gold standard for advice in my field is advice that is self-evident. Have you ever signed up to “opt-in” to getting unsolicited email from unknown companies? Do you know anyone who has? Does it seem at all likely that anyone would sign up to receive such email knowingly? The answer to all of these questions is almost always no. So these lists must have been constructed without people’s informed consent. Now when you send an email to someone who isn’t expecting it, what will at least some people do with it? They will mark it as spam, which will have negative consequences (see below). It is self-evident that “opt-in” lists for sale can’t really exist.
• The next best thing in advice in the Web site development field is advice that comes from people or organizations that goes against their profit interest. For example, if Curvine said “don’t hire a Web site developer” that should mean a lot — as we are Web site developers and it would be in our interest to tell you to hire us. In this case, large companies that help small businesses send out emails all say the same thing:
  • MailChimp: Is purchasing or renting an email list against the law, or unethical? Not necessarily. But it’s definitely a waste of money, and will more than likely get you reported for spamming (not to mention it’s a violation of the MailChimp terms of use)
  • Constant Contact: you cannot use purchased email addresses with Constant Contact.  Constant Contact has a very strict permission-only policy, and it is a violation of our policy to use such lists with our service.
  • iContact: Purchased lists may not be used within the iContact system, regardless of the source or permission status.

I won’t even go into all of the reasons purchasing or renting email lists are a bad idea, as the evidence above is so convincing. Don’t buy email lists!

The decision to use PayPal or another payment processor is an important decision with pros and cons. When you only accept PayPal and your customer is redirected to PayPal’s site to make the purchase, it has a tendency to make you look small. There’s nothing wrong with PayPal and there’s nothing on their site that gives this impression. But since only very small businesses offer PayPal as the only option (usually to save money), just using PayPal on your site as the only option can group you in with those very small merchants. That might make your customer question the quality of your product or whether it will be delivered as they expected.

On the other hand, accepting credit cards using a payment processing gateway such as Authorize.net happens behind the scenes. That means that your customer stays on your site and sees no other brand but yours. It costs more (there are monthly fees that range between $40 and $60 per month) but often the extra credibility pays off. This is the approach we usually recommend to businesses and organizations.

There are ways to use both of these approaches. PayPal offers a service called “Website Payments Pro” which is similar to the payment processing gateway solution mentioned above. It uses PayPal behind the scenes and so the user never sees it. And you can often use PayPal as a secondary option in addition to a payment processing gateway. In that case, you get the best of both worlds, the credibility benefit of accepting credit cards through a gateway and the benefit of offering your customers a choice to use PayPal if they want.

To us, this isn’t a surprise — we’ve been advising clients to avoid Flash for most of this year. Even before this announcement, Flash sites didn’t work on Apple’s handheld devices. A few months ago, Microsoft announced that Flash wouldn’t work on future Microsoft tablets. And many Android devices that supported Flash didn’t have enough processing power to handle the sites well.

Flash will live on in certain PC-only Web sites and as a standalone program.  Though, the era of Flash on Web sites is over.

• When I start my business, people will start using my Web site without me having to do anything.
• There are some easy special things I can do to my Web site to attract a lot of new customers.
• I want to start the next Facebook, Twitter, Craigslist or eBay.

Do I need a mobile version of my Web site?

In many cases, no. Most Web sites work just fine on mobile devices with no alteration. Mobile devices using Apple iOS or Android use browsers based on Webkit, which also powers Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari browser. There are exceptions: sites that use Flash will not work properly on many handheld devices.

When do I need a special Mobile version of your site?

In short, when you expect a sizable percentage of traffic from mobile visitors. Some examples would be restaurants, news sites and movie theaters. Businesses that expect visitors to purchase items from their site using a mobile device will need to do more — they will need to create a mobile shopping experience. But it is important to be realistic –few businesses at this time should expect a large number of mobile purchases.

Do I need an app?

Most smart phones allow users to install applications or apps for short.  Apps make access to your business easier for your customers, but installing a program on their device may take extra time and space on their phone. To determine whether you need an app, pretend you are a customer — would you want to install this app on your phone? It may help to interview potential customers.

- Is your Web host ready? We recently reviewed a client’s Web hosting documentation and discovered this gem: “If for whatever reason your sites increased traffic causes problems for the server it may be necessary for the support department to ‘throttle’ your site … or possible (sic) even disable it.” Yikes. I wouldn’t want that to happen on the day of my national debut. Make sure your Web hosting is an environment which will be ready to handle all of that traffic. Check in with your Web hosting company and be sure you are on a Web hosting plan that can accommodate your needs.
- Have you tested? There are various tools available for simulating large numbers of simultaneous users — they are called Web site load testing tools. None of these are perfect, but they should give you a general idea of what you can handle. Make sure this testing any actions necessary to improve things are completed before the big day.
- Have an estimate. Although your business has never had national exposure before, you have had more limited attention. Try to make some educated guesses based on your previous experience. A local ad campaign, which reaches 2,000 people, netted 10 orders in 1 day. A national campaign, which reaches 200,000 people might net 1,000 in one day. It isn’t important that these numbers are 100% accurate — even if they aren’t, they will give you an estimate to plan for.

Good luck on your big day!

It is important to know the facts about mobile browser usage in the real world. Perception does’t match the reality of today’s mobile environment:

- Even though almost all questions we get about mobile browsers involve the iPhone, most smart phones sold today aren’t actually iPhones. According to tech firm, Canalys, the top operating system on smart phones in Quarter 3 of last year was actually Google’s Android operating system with 44% market share. Apple’s iPhone is almost tied for 2nd place with RIM’s Blackberry, both at rough 25%. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile was far behind at 3% (though, they released a new version in quarter 4 which probably increased market share).

- Even though almost every one is asking about them, mobile phones make up a very small amount of web traffic on corporate Web sites. 2-3% of traffic is normal. While it is growing, that small number makes mobile not a huge concern for most business owners. There are exceptions: news, sports and information get more traffic from phones. But lawyers, doctors, product retailers and most other sites will stay in the 2-3% range for a while longer.

- Most Web sites automatically work on mobile phones without changes. That’s because Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone Web Browsers use “webkit,” which is the basis for Apple’s Safari Web Browser and Google’s Chrome Web Browser. For the most part, things that work on those browsers work on the phones too. There is one major exception: Adobe’s Flash — which is used for animations and videos — doesn’t work on the iPhone and some Android phones. The Android issue will be resolved over time as phones get upgraded or replaced, the iPhone issue is the result of a squabble between Apple and Adobe and doesn’t look set to change anytime soon. So for videos and animations to work on the iPhone, they have to be recoded.

We hope that helps. What other mobile questions do you have?

Outsourcing might be a cheaper route, but not if those savings are eaten up by timeline and cost overruns to fix mistakes made by overseas workers due to a lower skill levels or miscommunication.

At Curvine, most of our work is done in our office or with local designers & programmers who we can meet face to face. We have experimented with using folks from out of the country on specific projects. While the hourly rate is lower, the work takes longer both in terms of time to completion and billable hours. There are language barriers and quality of work issues which have to be solved. It isn’t that you can’t solve these problems (in fact, we have had one longterm HTML producer who has been the exception to this rule), it is just that it isn’t automatic and some or most of the cost savings is lost to these issues.

When do you think outsourcing to a foreign country is right? When is it not right?

Keywords are the building blocks of every search engine. If you cannot find a relevant search from what you have typed in the Google Search Bar, try eliminating the articles conjunctions and verbs. Focus on the main words that make up your search. Paraphrasing may also help. Instead of typing “who wrote Huck Finn”, try “Huck Finn author”.

Using the word “OR” such as Harry Potter or Edward Cullens will make Google look for pages with either or both words in it. Using the word “AND” will result in web pages having both words accordingly. Proper wording will yield better results. In some cases maybe you have misspelled the word. Although a search engine will try its best to look for your inquiry, writing correct words will again yield better results and will not waste time and effort.

Punctuation also helps too. Enclosing your search in quotation marks will make the engine look for searches with the exact phrase you have enclosed in it. Putting a “:” such as in the case of Stephen King : Amazon will make Google look for Stephen King only in the Amazon website. In this example putting a ”:” lets you search a query in a specific website. Putting a “-” sign before a word means that you want to exclude the term from your search. Lastly, putting an “*” after a word will make it act as a placeholder and you are allowing Google to place there whatever words it matches with it.

When it comes to using your search engine more effectively: wording and punctuation are key. Search engines are very powerful tools. When used correctly you are assured to find only the most relevant information that you seek.

Jay Gardella is a technical researcher and innovator living in the mid-west. Gardella works as a representative for Clear Wireless and in his spare time he loves spending time with his friends and family.