The Dark Side of Facebook
Facebook is the current craze with just about everyone from little kiddies to grandmothers across the world. No one can dispute it’s popularity and ease of keeping all your friends informed by just one simple post, as opposed to a number of individual or cc’d e-mails. Posting photos and videos of your vacation, etc. are very easy. It would seem that Facebook is indeed a miraculous, “can’t live without” web application.
But, there is a dark side of Facebook that many people are unaware of. Many people who are new to Facebook and/or are not too web savvy can easily fall into a false illusion of security. After all, you’re just posting some innocent moments to share with your friends, right? At least that is what many people believe. What you might not know is that just about anyone can see a small portion or all of your Facebook posts even if they are not part of your “friends” list. Simply do a search on a name or e-mail address and you can easily find out just about anything about anyone you wish. Not sure of a name or e-mail address? Simply browse through someone you have added as a friend and view their friends list. Click on anyone of them and instantly get a preview of their world and private information. Some people have wisely gone into their account settings and blocked off most of their “wall” and other info, but there is still some information visible. On Facebook, you may run but you cannot hide…unless you shut down your Facebook account.
There have been a number of articles lately about online stalking and other crimes directly attributable to Facebook and other social networking sites like MySpace, etc. Some pretty scary stuff is going on out there in both the virtual world of the web and the REAL world. It would seem inconceivable that people would share personal and/or intimate details of their lives with total strangers but that is precisely what many are doing on their Facebook accounts. Perhaps the most foolhardy people are the ones who invite and accept anyone, trying to build a huge network of “friends” based solely on quantity not quality. I would be terrified to accept a friend invitation from someone unknown only to find out later that the person is a child predator or a serial murderer. Yet, some people don’t have a clue about who they are accepting (or inviting) into their circle of friends. That is a recipe for disaster.
Like anything else Facebook is what you make of it. If used responsibly and safely, it can be a great tool for business or keeping in touch with friends. Just be aware that whatever you are posting out there is just like standing on a podium and announcing it all to the whole world. Be careful and be safe!
Do-It-Yourself Websites?
Many people these days want a website that they can manage themselves, change or edit photos, etc. There are certainly some good content management systems (CMS) out there with some very powerful features that allow anyone to manage their own websites. However, like anything else, there is a learning curve. After all, you must learn to drive before you can get in a car and just tinker on down the road. It’s pretty scary when someone requests a website that they can “do themselves” yet they don’t even know how to log-in to their email account. The reality is that there is no such thing as a “do-it-itself website” which is what many people REALLY want.
Web design and development is a profession like anything else. Would I want a secretary dabbling in brain surgery during her lunch break, operating on me? How about the pilot of the next flight you’re on? would his gaming experience on Playstation 3, make you comfortable flying on a 747 that he’s piloting?
Yet, there are those people who are indeed willing to learn. Bottom line, if you have the inclination and desire to learn computer programs such as Word or Photoshop, you can probably get by managing your own website CMS and maybe even Dreamweaver or MS-Expressions. If you don’t know what HTML or uploading is, you’d probably be better off to leave the web design and maintenance to those with experience.
Social Networking and SEO Workout Program
Back in the mid 1990’s it was relatively easy to design a new website, submit it to Yahoo (the biggest search engine back then in pre-Google days) and come up in the first page or two of search query results. Fast forward to today and the rules of the game have changed substantially. No longer can you stuff pages with high popularity, non relative keywords or hide obscured text on a page to entice search engine bots. Remarkably, people still believe that stuffing the keywords meta-tag is still the way to guarantee top results in a search. The truth is that most of the major search engines now ignore the keyword meta-tag altogether.
So how does a new website compete in today’s ever evolving web world? The old standbys such as reciprocal links, blogs and pay-per-clicks are still effective. The new trend is interaction with social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter…just to name a few. The dilemma comes when one realizes that leveraging traffic through social networking is not difficult but it can be time consuming. How effective your social networking campaign can be hinges upon the content you are delivering and popularity. There is no doubt that time and effort can provide a great boost in terms of search engine optimization and visibility. In other words, the more you work on your garden, the more crop it will yield.
I still get calls quite often and people ask for a quick 10 minute fix to get their website higher in Google rankings. The simple truth is that 10 or even 30 minutes is not enough to guarantee results. The most effective results are obtained through periodic review and actions to drive traffic to your site. Just like that morning exercise ritual, proper website marketing takes some minimal pain for maximum gain.
Web Design for companies in Bangkok, Thailand
Alpine Web Media LLC . is now offering web design, search engine optimization (SEO) and website management to businesses in Bangkok, Thailand. We are currently working with a Thai company that manufactures custom designed fine furniture. The website will be available in both Thai and English languages, fully optimized for search engine visibility.
We are particularly interested in working with companies and organizations involved in Thai tourism. Thailand has some absolutely incredible tourist sites and we would like to offer our award winning web design and management services to assist in marketing and promotion of these wonderful resources to the world. If you’re a Thai business or tourist organization, contact us now. We can discuss your plans and goals in Thai or English and help get you started immediately.
Sawahdee khrap!
Web Page Keywords - The Rules Have Changed
Years ago, the keywords meta-tag embedded within a web page was everyone’s virtual ticket to a page one listing in Yahoo (long before Google was ever heard of), HotBot and other search engines of days gone by. It didn’t take long before everyone caught on to the trend of “keyword stuffing” which is basically adding non-relevant but highly searchable keywords into the meta-tags of a web page. The main purpose for doing this was to get people searching on popular keywords like “sex” or “Britney Spears” diverted to your website via a top ranking page in Yahoo.
Imagine how discouraging it would be for someone searching for “Britney Spears” to land on your page about house training aardvarks, etc., simply because of your deceptive keywords. As you can imagine, somewhere along the line the rules would have to change. There is a line in a Roger Water’s song that says “if you give the human race enough rope soon or later they’ll **** it all up”. How true. Then Google came along and said “Guess what? People have misused the keywords meta-tags so we’re simply going to ignore them from now on.” Ultimately, this would negate the effects of “keyword stuffing” and rightfully allow the search engines to index web pages based primarily on a given web page’s actual content.
In other words, if your page is about house training aardvarks that is exactly how you would be found in a search. Wave goodbye to Britney Spears! Thus, the death of the keywords meta-tag.
To this very day, the legend of the keywords meta-tag refuses to die. 8 out of 10 of my new clients always ask if we can “put some really big keywords” into every page, so that they’ll come up high in the search results. And yes, I have to explain all of this to them just as I have mentioned here, so maybe now, I can simply say “check it out on our blog” and hopefully some day the great keywords myth will be laid to rest.
However, legends die hard so I can only imagine that in the year 2050 there will be a couple people still hoping to do a bit of “keyword stuffing” for “Britney Spears favorite wheelchair”.
PayPal’s Not So Easy Credit Card Payments
You’ve probably noticed that many websites, etc. accept credit card payments via PayPal. Because PayPal is a relatively inexpensive payment gateway system, many beginner e-commerce shopping carts use them to get started. The problem is that accepting credit cards utilizing PayPal may not be as easy as you think.
If you already have a basic PayPal account and you try to make a credit card purchase on a website, you may be in for a nasty surprise. PayPal will use your bank account for funding and if you have a credit card listed as a backup, it will be grayed out, meaning that you will not be able to select the credit card for funding. PayPal wants to take the money out of your bank account, not your credit card.
The “dirty little secret” is that if you don’t use or have a PayPal account, the first time you make a purchase, you are allowed to use a credit card, one time only. PayPal makes you create an account and will later request that you add a checking account, etc. for funding future payments. The credit card will only be used as a backup in case your bank account is closed, etc.
You’re probably thinking, “well, I’ll just use another e-mail address the next time I make a credit card purchase with PayPal”. Yes, that will work and will create yet another PayPal account BUT if you attempt to use the same credit card, forget it. You will get a message from PayPal something along the lines of “this credit card is already being used by another PayPal account. For security reasons, you must use a different credit card”. So the bottom line is that in order to continue to make credit card payments using PayPal, you will need both a new e-mail address AND a new credit card that has not been used to make a PayPal purchase before.
For the above reasons, I am now recommending to all my clients that they spend the extra money for an Authorize.net or other payment gateway account. First, a buyer checking out at your shopping cart may not want to be forced into signing up for a PayPal account and second, if they make another purchase on a cart using PayPal and the same e-mail/credit card, there only option will be a withdrawal of funds from their bank account.
Buyers don’t want to be forced by PayPal to use their bank account rather than their credit card, especially if your cart prominently displays the credit card symbols. This could easily frustrate your customer resulting in a lost sale and a customer that may never return.
Search Engine Friendly Websites
Everyone wants there website to come up in position #1 on the first page of Google results. Is this a realistic expectation? Yes and no.
For the most part, depending on what the subject of your website is, you may have a tough time competing with already established websites to obtain that top ranking. Google and other search engines give preference to long established websites that are blessed with a healthy number of quality, inbound links. Also, a new website can take anywhere from a few months to a year to start showing results in the Google index. Google does this to make sure your website is a legitimate, viable resource rather than a fly by night website that is here today and gone tomorrow (their main intention being to leverage search engine results unethically).
That all sounds pretty grim for a company starting out with a brand new website. The good news is that there are some things you can do to promote and build up your website presence while waiting for Google to take notice.
Cheap Web Hosting
These days, everyone is trying to cut back and save money. If your website is the backbone of your business though, one thing you really can’t afford is “cheap web hosting”. You can find plenty of ads all over the web advertising cheap, inexpensive and even free web hosting but just like everything else, you get what you pay for. Here are a few things to consider:
- Cheap web hosting usually results in your website being down periodically, due to the increased server load. Not good for your visitors or the search engine bots trying to index your site.
- Slow page loading. Nobody wants to wait around for a website to load up. If it doesn’t load up within a few seconds, your visitors will go elsewhere. Again, search engine bots won’t wait around either. Cheap and free hosting often results in page load delays so beware.
- Many of the inexpensive web hosting providers are in a different country. If your business is in the USA, you really should not have your websites served out of India. Search engines take note of where your hosting is being served from and generate search results accordingly.
- Technical support can be difficult or impossible to find when things go wrong. With dirt cheap web hosting there may be no one to call when your website goes down or any way of contacting someone to help. Even if they do offer a phone option, it won’t help much if the person on the other end cannot understand or clearly speak your language.
As you can see, it really isn’t worth the gamble to trust your website to companies who promise cheap web hosting. Alpine Web Media provides both Windows and Linux web hosting based in the USA, with fast, reliable service.
Got Vermont Web Design & Web Hosting?
We’ve been in the website design business for 13 years now and boy, have things changed a lot since the early days! Back in the mid-1990’s, a new website could be built using a text editor and simple HTML and enjoy placement within Yahoo (the big search engine back in the pre-Google days) within just a few days. Because the web was relatively new, it wasn’t very difficult to come up on page one in Yahoo for most anything.
Believe it or not, I once had a client who quickly got first page results on Yahoo but was afraid of his own success and wanted out.
Free SEO Search Engine Optimization Tools
One of the first things you should do when planning your website is to do a bit of research. Analyzing keywords and putting together a strategic marketing plan is a crucial first step towards the construction of a search engine friendly website. SEO (or search engine optimization) is not all that difficult but does require an investment of time. Basically, the more you put into it, the better your results will be.