Category: Web Design

Website design tips and tricks

New SEO Tactics Seem Spammy

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Web site SEO tactics have changed in the past 3-5 years. Tactics of getting their sites up front and high traffic that seem to be less than, well let’s say “Honorable”.
I was looking to see why some of my posts have no traffic. I was searching for tips to keep myself fresh and ran into endless posts on the first few pages of my search that were just appalling compared to ethics codes of web design. Such as those annoying popups that people have on their sites that seem to come up when you are trying to leave the site. The popups that say “Wait don’t go just yet” and then offer some pointless coupon to a product that you no longer trust because it seems the site is using some sort of intelligent software that tracks your mouse and is scheduled to come up when you try to close a tab or hit the back button. Well that is in fact what they are doing. So um, yeah, I don’t trust those types of sites and instantly close the tab/page. and you should too.

Weird redefinition of common items. AKA Double Talkin Jive
Infographic – Sounds like a great word that has scales and graphs. Right? nope. Just means Relevant picture that gives the readers a visual of your page.
Responsive site – Means the site changes shapes and size as you use a different display dimension.

Content increases page navigation
Slide shows – The site is designed for images to be seen and the first page is titled “700 top funniest pictures on the internet”. You give it a go and the page loads slow as mud because of all of the Ads populating and the image is the first image leading to a joke. now you have to click the “next” button” which in theory should take you to another page so you can see the rest of the page. Nope just loads the same image with more pre-joke garbage and another 5 minutes of ads loading. Five clicks later you see the joke yet there is still a “next” button, for the next joke. Nope. I am now thoroughly frustrated and will not be back. and wish I could submit your site to a list of sites to be blocked, so I can help prevent people from wasting their time.
No one wants to click through a slide show to eventually get what they came for.

Calling their site a blog when it it’s more of an internet infomercial
Get a link to a site and it is presented to you as a blog but turns out to just be a website selling you get rich quick material, but written in a manor that seems makes you “feel like the writer is just like you”. The writer is not. The writer is just skilled at writing that way.

Hacked accounts spamming social sites
Those links you click that steal your passwords, were created to gather up popular accounts and confirmed accounts and spam links to the followers. Those accounts will stay hacked for weeks, months and sometimes forever. The garbage they post will be to get traffic to junk websites.
Reddit is notorious for having people with multiple accounts upvoting (click the “agree with” button) their own content and then downvoting (disapproval button) all other content submitted with in the same time frame so their content is seen the most.

Click bait
Titles for clicks- Content lacks. “Three guys meet a dragon you won’t believe what happens next”. “Man finds kitten, you won’t believe what happens next”.
How about some content and a title that doesn’t tell me what I will or won’t believe next.

Using apps that “consolidate your work effort” such as contact email blasts and such. Dude that is spam.

Using the pop-ups that say “wait don’t leave until you hear about this”. Dude that is a pop up. stop it. Stop trying to make that a thing. That just makes people leave faster and never come back.

What’s with the new pages looking like MSN 1998 ? No defined lines, just one table in the center of the page.

Will build website for money to buy project car

Posted onAuthorTruXterLeave a comment

I’m wanting to start a new project car.
Since I don’t ever build cars from money, this project car will be entirely bought and built using money I make from building websites for people.

Been building websites since 1998. And have built countless sites for cash.
Now willing to build a site and have that cash actually used for something I want.
Cheap sites,complex sites. All are welcome.
Tell me what you need and give me a deadline I’ll bid you a price that will likely not get matched.

So help me build this car and I’ll post pictures of the progress.

Comment below and I will contact you.
All comments are moderated so no information will be public on this post.

What is bad website design?

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A few things about website design that people do not know right away about how you should not design your websites. Things that make search engines shun you like the twitching weirdo that no one wants to look at. You must never, ever try and trick the system. and you must always use effort, not shortcuts. There are no shortcuts to webdesign. Tidy is not a shortcut. Here are things you do not do.
Useless pages
Leaving default Template pages in the open to be crawled by web crawlers

1. Cras eleifend consectetur
2. Curabitur sollicitudin ornare
3. Nam ac auctor ipson tellus non risus placerat adipiscing etc…
Copy another website
Even if that website is gone, you can not copy your competitor.
Look at last sentence of first Paragraph
Look at first sentence of first paragraph  while you’re there, go ahead and read the Next paragraph on that page and compare it to the second to the last paragraph here

Now, scroll down in this link to just below the second video. Takes a moment to load.

No telling who had it first. but I am sure betting it isn’t the sloppy site’s idea first. you know, the one with the Latin default template text on it.

 Listing:
Do not post your website on one of this “get listed in a bazillion search engines” becaus ethat is garbage.  Those sites harm your Search engine indexing.

Is Search Engine Optimization Dead?

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Latest news buzz in webdesign world “Is Search Engine Optimization Dead?”.
Short answer:
NO.

Long Answer:
Still no but a few things have changed and a few things have been stopped. You now get penalized for using tactics like Google Sniper. Google bombing, keyword plugging, etc etc. Truth is, that never was Search engine optimization. that was ghetto style pyramid scheme junk.
The team at Google has removed most scams you can pull on Google and just left the actual optimization part in there.
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? Well let’s look at a book store as an example. Imagine if you have a bunch of great books. An entire book store full of books. Now picture yourself opening this new book store. you came up with this cool idea of hiding all of the book in the ceiling tile, and the signs you purchased were inside out, upside down, and behind the building and just say “Dave’s” on them. What is Dave’s? Why is the sign not where everyone expects it to be? Why is it backward? why is it upside down? For that one guy who rolls his car in traffic trying to read the sign in his rear view mirror? It’s not great forethought. Now a person walks in.. Where the heck is everything? Why aren’t these people listed anywhere? they aren’t in a phone book, they aren’t in a news paper… What the heck is this place? When they figure out it’s a book store, where is everything? and why isn’t it in order? Everything is just chunked about in the ceiling area.
Search engine optimization is so you can fix those issues on the internet. Optimize your website for search engines. Pretty simply stated.
Google is leading the way to fixing it so scammers can’t just jump ahead of people with decent content, well organize easily navigated websites. sites with titles that match the content. Page titles that match that page’s content and a small “card catalog” type section built just for search engines so they know what the main items are that you want people to focus on when they hit hat page, the stuff that the page is about. This is called “Keywords”. Some people believe that keywords are dead. They are far from dead. The people that say that “Keywords are useless”, are people who use heavy searched words that are totally unrepresentative of their content. These people just want traffic to their page, they are of no help to society and are scammers.
Meta tags matter.
Meta tags are fairly simple to understand. These are the important ones.
Title: tells people the name of your page
Description : tells people what your page is about.
Keywords: words associated to your content that people will search for that is relative to your page.

Why would you use meta tags?
This is for search engines. Google needs to display the title of the page in the results. So title is important. Description, well all search engines put a small two or three sentence snippet in the search results, it’d be nice if the person doing the search knows what might be there before he/she clicks. Keywords, when they search for a specific item by one word, Search engines will search for sites with that word in it’s keywords and then highlight it in the search results. If it’s not in your keywords and in your actual content, then your site most likely will not show up in the results.
No you do not want to show up in every single search for every single item on the internet. You want to show up for items related to your content. You are most likely to please the reader that way, and your items will move faster.

What Google has done
Google has stopped people from plugging their meta tags with unrelated items and made Search Engine Optimization exactly what it is. Optimizing your website for better search results and they penalize anyone who is scamming the system. This could mean anything from  bumping them down in importance, all the way to kicking them out of search engines.
This will help you in all search engines, and help your content be better found by people who actually want your items. If you are set to bring anyone and everyone to your website, you are less likely to bring the people who actually want your items. If you focus on your items and products, then you will receive traffic from people who are looking for your products or services.

The better your SEO is done, and the better your content is, the higher a priority you will become for your items.

The Importance of Alexa Ranking For SEO

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Alexa.com is a web information company. A site to get detailed traffic information about other websites on the internet. To me, this is the most important ranking system on the internet.

How Alexa works

Alexa judges your site’s traffic and locates other sites with the same traffic, then measures the length of time that the user spend on your time and how deep they go into your website, The rank is given at that point. as your traffic increases, you are now placed into a better category, and sometimes, you are the worst in that category, so your rank can suddenly look worse. as you level out, your rank will level out. If you finally hit a a solid rank, now is the time to make your articles worth reading longer, and your interior pages worth navigating to.

What good is Alexa?

Alexa tells you what you are worth on a local and worldwide scale. If you desire advertisements on your website, then a good rank in Alexa is helpful in getting affiliates to purchase space on your website. The better your score, the higher the value.

How do you get a better Alexa score?

Traffic. You need traffic. You need lots of people knowing that you have great content and are a great resource for specific information. You don’t need to be Wikipedia, but being Snopes.com wouldn’t hurt. You have to get better rank. You need to be found in search engines for everything your website is about, so that all of your content is easily found under the right category. Your target area is under 100,000 worldwide. and this is very hard to achieve. My Alexa rank is not quite close enough to that but after a good long time, It will be. I plan to be here a while doing this.

Simply put, you can look at the effectiveness of your search engine optimization and content value.

Fun With Google Sniper

Posted onAuthorTruXter

I pointlessly blocked Google sniper from advertising through adsense on my website.

Why you ask? Why did I block Google Sniper Websites from advertising on my website?

Because I don’t like them. They are a straight up scam.

They talk about scamming an advertising affiliate. and I don’t like swindlers.
They make a thousand websites offering a review of their junk, and then just sell you the junk.
I blocked Google SNiper from advertising on my website for just in case Google Adsense ever allows their scum on their advertsing network. Just in case Google gets bought out by some other swindling company and decides to let garbage like Google Sniper into their system.

For now….. Google Sniper can not advertise on Google, because Google protects their Customers. So no seeing that trash in Adwords.

Is Google SNiper Real ?

Google Sniper Is trash


Do you see how they flood Google? they bought all of those domains and just barely maintain the. If they were real, tehy would have one domain and it would be worth going to.

Google Sniper makes Search engine optimization look bad.

If you want to get your website seen, Don’t use Google Sniper. They will just get you banned from Google and leave you selling their garbage.
Here.. this will help YOUR current website 1000 times better than Google sniper. and it’s totally free. Webmaster tips.

[poll id=”10″]

Read More on Google Sniper Reviews…. Real ones

Joomla Bluestork Built in Virus

Posted onAuthorTruXter

Found in the error.php file

You can either replace the error page with another, or delete all on the text within the php file with text from a safe error.php file

What happened you say?
My website got shut down by my webhost. They told me there was a virus on on of my websites and told me to upload a safe copy of the website..
Well I don’t have a copy of my website. They have a copy of my website.
but. I couldn’t do anything. SO I downloaded the whole website via FTP. and decided to locate the joomla files the webhost said may be compromised.
To be certain, I downloaded a fresh copy of Joomla, and a fresh copy of blue stork and checked for a virus.
Yep. Sure enough.
The Error page has a virus in it.
I started with a simple scan with EMsisoft Emergency kit
Then moved to virscan.org single virus scanner that uses multiple scanners, to scan one device and shows you what they all find. They don’t all typically agree with each other, so it’s like getting a 2nd 3rd,4th etc opinion all at one time.

Here is the resulting page

I then ran to virustotal website and performed a very similar scan. and got somewhat similar results.
The results
Admin theme Bluestork
The scary part, is Bluestork has been the default admin theme for Joomla for quite a long time.

It seems there is either a new virus definition going around that is much better defines, or is flawed, or bluestork people really have something to fix.

Either way, it might be in the best interest for Joomla to strip the bluestork theme out of the default themse.

I myself have stripped the error page to no text with in it at all.

Sorry about the Downtime

Posted onAuthorTruXter

My website was compromised through n exploit in Flash Gallery.

Sorry about any downtime, and sorry that you could not access the information you searched for.
I took time off for my birthday so I never saw this happen. I got notice that the site was down, so I had to go back and rebuild.

I hope you have an easy time searching for what you need.

Again, sorry about the down time.

Low Cost Unlimited Website Host

Posted onAuthorTruXter

The webhost I use has been offering 2 years of website hosting for under $100. Through windows I call [[Unlimited Website Host]]. When you click that link, scroll to the bottom of the page. Prices are at the bottom.

When most webhosts charge you $140 (or close to give or take) a year, you must know that you are saving quite a penny by at least giving this place a try. They are fast. The email is imap or pop, your choice.
They are not saying hos much longer this deal will last but they did recently announce another deal. Typically that would mean all past deals would phase out soon. Though the new deal sounds great, I am not sure if my code will allow half off of the new deal. So you could land at paying slightly more than what I can get you.

I have been with this company for , coming up on 5 years now.  I am very pleased with their service and the quality of their operations. Customer service is easy to speak with and very quick at getting problems solved.

You will get unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage, unlimited emails,unlimited ftp users. Anything I can think of, is unlimited.

 

I hope you give their [[Low cost Website Host]] a try and respond below about your experience with the company. Two years for less than $100, It’s worth a shot.

 

Yes I do get paid when you click the Powweb links on my website. And yes I do use Powweb’s service and I recommend it, to family, to friends, to anyone who wants to know what a good webhost is. I even got the company I work for on Powweb. I even have a few co-workwers on Powweb.

WordPress 3.3 Makes Changes

Posted onAuthorTruXter

The New WordPress 3.3 has made some changes
Lots of changes. It looks as if the folks from WordPress have brought the top toolbar we just recently got, and added it to the side left menu we always had. This look a bit sleeker.
I am quite please with wordpress 3.3 , Even though I had a tiny panic attack and a bad hiccup on the update.

New Media Feature

New Media Feature

There is an updated media feature that allows you to drag and drop the files you are uploading, instead of searching all around your computer for them. I really wasn’t too bothered with the browse button.

The single media icon now launches the uploader
for all file types, and the new drag and drop
interface makes uploading a breeze.

I See the latest wordpress update also changed, the spot that you select image thumbnail sizes from when you are placing pictures on your website. Nothing big enough for me to need to take a screenshot for. you will see the option in your menu when you get around to it.
They added a “View Post” in the toolbar at the top of the screen that they nearly stripped for the menu on the left. In doing that, they removed the option to click your site’s name at the top of the page, to take you to your home page.

After that…. Meh.. nice. looks great. bit large and slow… but ok.
wordpress updated. We are now using wordpress 3.3. Plenty of nice looking features… ok two.. maybe three, bu they aren’t super useful, they kinda just force you to look for stuff.