Archive for January, 2009

From a client email inquiry earlier, advice was requested for how to evaluate their web design and specifically their sitemap URLs listed versus indexed by Google. Changes should not be alarming, especially when a custom integrated blog is included in the design. Here was the explanation for the benefit of readers.

Perhaps some of the previous URLs were archive files for the blog. That is duplicate content and not penalized but no reason for Google to index into their directory, so no worries about your overall ranking. Continue to post to the blog and I expect the PR to remain positive. I do caution, however, that PageRank fluctuations are no indication of how well your site will perform in search results. It is only one indicator of the value you provide.

The PR of my key pages “bounce” up or down year to year and recently down, yet traffic from Google continues to rise. Long term your traffic and certainly conversions despite the economy from month to month and year to year remains the key trend to analyze. Short term fluctuations should be studied for reference only unless something nose dives.

Strategy is a long term look at results whereas tactical tracking is day to day. My advice to all small business website owners is view your stats strategically. PageRank is not the cureall, and certainly losing sleep over one aspect of overall online success needs to be avoided. Changes in URLs indexed by Google are likewise normal, so be aware all site pages may not be indexed and don’t panic.

Here’s a link to a 2008 blog post on testing cross browser compatibility of your web design with links to the current version of 4 of the 5 major browsers including some advice and 2007 usage stats by browser for my site for all of 2007:

It’s good to know the setup of site visitors to know pages in your web design display well for the majority while 100% is the real goal. I can’t wait for IE6 to get below 10% as it continued to plunge in 2007 and 2008. This post is an update of IE6 based on visitor statistics for 2008. IE6 is at 22% of visitors now, and down from 42% a year earlier. You can download all 5 to test and remove desktop icons of ones you don’t use.

Forget Netscape. They’re defunct and no longer supported. However, be careful where you download. There are phishing sites (scams, virus trojans, spammers) that offer “downloads” that may be malicious and infect your pc. My advice is always going to the official sites as listed in the blog post linked above. They should be current.

A new browser from Google branded “Chrome” was introduced in September 2008. It has made gains yet not as well as I predicted at the time of the release. They made initial inroads for about a month then stalled. It had minor problems and resources to improve beyond the initial release though minimal have increased their share to 4% since last September. That is significant for a newly released browser brand.

My Sept 2008 review of Google Chrome includes a link to the Google Chrome download page.

For small business owners who contract to have their custom web design outsourced, my advice is requesting evidence of cross browser compatibility testing to the latest version of major browsers as a minimum.

The December podcast contest asking listeners to write 25 words or less about a favorite episode of the Small Business Website Mailbag podcast ended at midnight on December 31, 2008. With $500 and $250 prizes to be given away for design credits for web design, seo services, or matching graphic artwork, visitors may have had too much to do or writers block. Perhaps some doubted their writing skills thinking they couldn’t win and gave up before trying. Regardless, zero entrants were received which means no one won by writing in.

After considering a drawing of current clients, I came up with another method for picking a winner and decided how before looking at my email inbox for the last day of 2008. Both prizes would go to the last client who emailed me for any reason on December 31st. The last message received in 2008 was for a vacation rental web design in progress for www.AnOrlandoVacationVilla.com, and the email arrived at 1:04 p.m. local time.

Advanced options discussed outside the scope of the custom cms web design project will be done at no charge. Stay tuned to the web design advice podcast and future episodes. New contests may be announced.