SpiderServe Web Design

Choosing a web server is an important task that can impact the effectiveness of your website, so it is important that you are not solely price driven.

A server that continues to experience downtime, even if it has limited but regular downtime, can have a negative effect on your search rankings.

Search engines constantly send their spiders out to look for web pages, and if those spiders happen to try and access your website pages at a time when your webserver is experiencing downtime, you have lost out on getting your new content spidered, and if the spiders keep coming back and finding your website can’t be accessed, they will soon visit less often and could decide that your site no-longer exists and is not worth adding to their results.

An unreliable webserver can undermine all of your efforts on the internet, not just your search engine results.

Consider the effect of sending out an email marking shot offering a fantastic deal asking people to visit your website. If your webserver then experiences downtime just after the email has been sent out, not only will your email be ineffective, but your customers will be left wondering why you have sent an email inviting them to visit your website, when the website is not available.

It is easy to research the large companies out there – just Google any webhost name and add “review” after it, to find reviews of those companies. It may even be an good idea to consult a web professional or two to ask their advice. Be prepared to pay for the advice, especially as it may save you embarrassment.

Different people have different companies they love and hate, and ultimately the choice will be yours. So, if you have no idea about hosting or websites, don’t just blindly go ahead and buy hosting you think SOUNDS like a good deal. Talk to your web developer or consult a web professional to ensure that you are buying a good web server package that suits your requirements.

I’m taking time out from writing about web stuff today as I think it is important to take time on Armistice Day to take some time out from your own life and remember those that have given their lives in the name of freedom.

Armistice Day celebrates the end of World War 1 at 11am. It has become the day that we remember our fallen heroes ever since. I used to think it was about those volunteers that gave their live for the many during the World Wars, and I know many agree. But our armed forces have given lives and continue to suffer losses and those men and woman also deserve our respect and commemoration.

Many people say that those that go into the armed forces know what they are getting into, and it is their choice. While that is true, aren’t we glad that there are people willing to do that so we don’t have to? We have more knowledge today then ever before and yet people are still willing to join the armed forces knowing their government is capable of making catastophic decisions on their behalf.

Those men and woman who gave the ultimate sacrifice during the World Wars faced a real and obvious threat in Hitler and his minions. Today, our armed forces face still real, yet invisible threats from the Taliban and other terrorists who use deadly and cowardly means of fighting. Our troops deserve our respect.

Whether you agree or disagree with policies made by the government about the wars we have fought in and continue to fight in, our troops do their jobs without question in the belief they are doing work to make a better world.

I will consider it an honour to take 2 minutes out of my day at 11am today to remember those fallen heroes and those injured in the course of their ‘duty’ and I thank them all for their sacrifices and would like to make sure they know that their sacrifices will never be forgotten.

‘Never Forget…’

We all have to update our websites at one time or another, whether it is a full on server move, or a simple text change, but when is the best time to make those changes?

The bottom line is that no matter what your website offers, you make your changes at a time when it is least likely to cost you money.

If you run a B2B website, then the weekend is probably the best time to make large changes, while a B2C website would probably be in the small hours of the morning.

Before you make these kinds of decisions, you should consult your analytics program and guage when the best time is for your own website.

Small changes can be made any time, but if you value your site and your business cannot afford for any website downtime, you need to ensure your changes are handled effectively.

For example, for large and complex websites, I run a development site alongside the live website and all programming changes are tested on the development site before being transferred to the live site. This means bugs are fixed before going live and the downtime experienced on the real site is minimised. It then becomes easier to guage how long changes will take, and thus gives you an idea of when you can feasibly fit the updates into your work schedule.

If you cannot run a duplicate site as a development website, you need to factor in the possibility that the changes you make to your live website may break the site and will result in significantly more downtime than you envisaged.

So, in summary, small changes to the content of your site can really be done at anytime, but structural changes and feature additions should only be implemented when you can minimise the impact of your website’s downtime.

There is an ongoing debate about the use of Captcha images on website and whether they should be used.

The argument from those people against using Captcha images is that spam is not the fault of the genuine website user, so why should they be faced with what are often very hard to read images, just to be able to send an email via a website.

Obviously, the argument in favour of them is that they dramatically reduce spam.

So who’s responsibility should it be?
Personally, I have no problem with the use of Captcha images, but as a Webmaster I understand how much spam you can receive without implementing it.
But if I want people to use my website, shouldn’t it be down to me to ensure that measures put in place to combat things that don’t affect my customers don’t have any impact on my customers? For example, a Captcha code exists to make a webmaster’s life easier – it does not offer any advantage to my website user to complete a Captcha code.

I have tried to use a number of measures to combat spam, none of which have yet worked. But I do believe that us web developers should look beyond the Captcha code to try and find an effective spam deterrent that does not impact the users of our websites.

I would like to hear other’s opinions on this subject. Do you get frustrated with the Captcha codes and do they bother you?

It’s difficult to know what email addresses you should setup when starting your business, so take my advice and avoid using standard email addresses such as sales@ info@ enquiries@ etc.

If you start out using these email addresses, it will be difficult to change them at a later date as people will have these addresses in their address books – and can you be sure you will be able to contact all of your customers to let them know of a change of email address?

So what is so bad about these standard email addresses?

The bottom line is that spammers will guess the first part of the email address and append it to @yourdomainname.com. So, if you are using the standard info@ sales@ enquiries@ webmaster@ accounts@ etc your email address is really easy to guess, and you are likely to receive a deluge of spam.

The same is true of using names for email addresses. Using first names only could see you receiving more spam than using first.last@ or some other variation on that as it makes it harder for a spammer to guess the email addresses.

I would also recommend not having a catchall account – this will capture emails that are sent to non-existant email addresses on your domain. Ask yourself if you really need this? Surely that big order you have been working on will come to your personal email address? As long as your server is setup to bounce email sent to non-existant email addresses, senders will be notified that the email cannot be delivered, and so there is no chance of losing that order.

In a world with increasing spam, can your business afford not to ensure your email server is setup in the best way to combat time wasting spam?

One of my other passions aside from web development is acting.

I belong to the Blackmore Players although am contemplating finding a new group as now I am living in Colchester it’s a bit of a trek! However, I recently auditioned for the Blackmore Players panto for January 2010 and was left without a part. In light of the new roadworks at Witham on the A12 I saw this as a blessing!

Due to my height being only 5’3” and being of slim build, I tend to always audition for principle girl or one of the comedy duo – and over the last few years have had a good time in those parts!

However, a few nights ago I received an email from the Producer asking if I would step into the breech as the woman playing principle boy had pulled out. So last night I attended my first rehearsal playing a part I never thought I would get!

I am now looking forward to attending rehearsals as we do tend to have a rather fun time before taking it seriously for the actual performance!

If anyone is interested in coming along to any of out performances, have a look at the Blackmore Players website for ticket details.

Hits on your website are not everything.

I worked for a company where the goal I was given was a measurement of unique visitors per day but I disagreed with the goal.

I understand the reasoning – more hits means more potential customers right? Not necessarily. Targeted traffic is much better as those visitors are more likely to be interested in your product.

If you are a new business starting out, my advice is to concentrate on the longer tail keywords as you need to use your website to either provide sales or leads. Concentrating your time on targeting generic keywords may mean a lot of time is spent on promoting your website to an audience who are not likely to buy anything from you.

Let’s take an example of a ficticious used car dealer in Essex. Would the phrase “used cars” be worth chasing? Granted it will be a massive search term, but if someone in Cornwall was looking for a used car, are they going to drive all the way to Essex just because it tops the search engine? It would be very unlikely.
So, optimise for the longer tail phrases such as “used cars in Essex”, “used cars in Colchester”, “used cars in Chelmsford”, “used ford essex”.
Think about your customers and how they will search, and based on that information you should choose your keyphrases.

A used car dealer that get’s hits to their website from all over the UK loses a massive chunk of their visitors because they are not close enough to the car dealer in Essex. Therefore the number of website hits is misleading because they will not be able to convert a lot of those visitors to customers, and by ignoring the longtail phrases that are more likely to convert to customers, the used car dealer can be losing out on potential customers.

So, in summary, it is important to understand where your website hits are coming from and whether that traffic can be proffitable to you. If it isn’t, it’s time to consider if you are targeting the right keyphrases.

How do you decide what keywords you want to target? Do you even consider whether those phrases are used by your customers to find you?

As an example, I did some work for a caravan company selling new and used caravans. When I started, the phrase preowned caravan was all over the website as it was felt that it gave a better impression than used caravan. Traffic immediately rose when I changed the phrase to used caravan as people tend to use used rather than preowned.

Who is your customer?

The first thing to consider is who your customer base is. If you are a B2B company then your customers are more likely to use the same industry terminology that you do, while if you are a B2C company, your customers are more likely to use simple search terms and possibly even slang words.

What are your search terms?

The next thing you need to do is to create a list of the search terms you want to target and then use one of the many tools available to check which terms will generate the most traffic, and more importantly, the most targeted traffic. Once you know what terms you are targeting, you can write your content to reflect that.

By not researching your keywords, you could end up targeting phrases that are barely searched and so bring very little traffic. You also run the risk of losing focus when writing your content.

Now I don’t tend to look at my server logs too much – not unless something odd happens anyway.

Today I did have a look and came across a spider from gigablast.com – another real time search engine. I had a quick scout around, and I don’t think it will make any inroads into Google’s market share, but it does seem to bring back a few different results which is interesting.

I will be playing around with it over the next few weeks when I get a chance, as I think Google’s stranglehold on the internet is getting a little too tight. We need some real competition to ensure we as searchers get the results we want!

Give www.gigablast.com a go and let me know what you think of their results!