Now Hiring: Web Developer/Programmer

Corporate Web Services is now accepting applications for a Web developer to join our highly motivated design team. This person will be an integral part of our web development efforts and will be responsible for creating custom Web-based solutions for our customers. Good communication skills are a must. We prefer a full-time position, but would consider part-time employment for a highly skilled individual. Compensation is based on experience.

Corporate Web Services is a leader in providing web development services on a national basis. As a developer with CWS, you'll have the opportunity to work in a fast-paced environment with opportunities for both personal and professional growth.

Applicants who meet the qualifications below should apply online at our website. This position is located in Rochester, MN.

Development

• Able to code, rigorously test and deploy Web applications.
• Pursues best practices and standards-based development
• Able to work with clients to effectively determine project requirements
• Familiar with standard Web development tools including Photoshop and Dreamweaver (additional software is always a plus)
• Understands basic relational database design concepts.
• Strong working knowledge of at least one of our standard development platforms, which include LAMP (php), ASP.NET and Ruby on Rails.
• Strong working knowledge of HTML and CSS

General

• Excellent communication skills
• Ability to work independently
• Ability to prioritize and balance simultaneous projects
• Attention to detail in all areas
• Desire to learn

Ask CWS: Should I buy links to my web site?

I have received a couple of questions about paid links and whether one should consider them. As you may know, inbound links are an important element in search engine optimization. However, the priority should be to have quality links to your web site and not just quantity.

The offers that I have seen claim to be from many web sites and websites that they own. To be honest, links from a lot of web sites can help only if the sites are truly different (content, design, and links) and are on different web servers.

Google even has guidelines about paid links and link schemes. One article states that:

"Examples of Link Schemes can include:

• Links intended to manipulate
  PageRank
• Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods
  on the web
• Excessive reciprocal links or excessive
  link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you.")
• Buying or selling links that pass
  PageRank"

Google and the other search engines have started to seriously focus on the issue. In cases where they have good reason to suspect links being bought and sold, both the selling and the buying web sites are usually dropped in rankings or have a penalty which downgrades the ranking. This may mean nothing to the big company that has 1000's of web sites, but most small companies have one site. To be dropped in the rankings for a domain means, transferring to a new domain, or reworking your links and that can be a long process.

Google does not forbid paid links. They have this to say about links for advertising:

"Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:

• Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the tag
• Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file"

I have read posts and emails that say there are ways to hide the paid links, and experts show that the search engines cannot see all of the paid links. Google has made it easy for just about anyone to report paid links. They have an anonymous form to point out a web site that someone suspects of buying or selling links. There are two way to do this:

1. Sign in to Google's webmaster console and use the authenticated spam report form, then include the word "paidlink" (all one word) in the text area of the spam report. If you use the authenticated form, you'll need to sign in with a Google Account, but your report will carry more weight.


2. Use the unauthenticated spam report form and make sure to include the word "paidlink" (all one word) in the text area of the spam report.

Paid links can help a web site move up in search engine rankings. A sudden increase in inbound links can looks suspicious to the search engines and hurt your ranking. In SEO there really are no set rules to abide by right now. The search engines all operate under slightly different guidelines and what they like and don't like can change more than daily. Most SEO experts frown upon doing something that is questionable now and could cause a drop in rankings later.

What does this mean for me and my web site? Well, some paid links can help your rankings, be very wary of getting a lot of paid links. If a company offers to have links on a number of "their" web sites for a fee, remember that a sudden increase of links from a couple of web sites may look suspicious to the search engines. Trading links are not the best way to go, but if you are doing your own SEO, it is the most cost effective and safest way to build links.

CrossLoop Unveils Helper Marketplace

Back in 2006, I informed you about a new piece of software called Crossloop. As you may recall, they specialize in connecting two computers together for remote management. For example, I could easily connect with my brother in Texas if he needed me to assist with installing software on his computer.

But what happens if my bother needs help and I'm too busy helping my sister, my parents, my brother-in-law, and my uncle? Don't laugh, it could happen!

Earlier this week, they added an interesting component to their business model called the "Helper Marketplace". The idea is that you can connect with other "tech savvy" individuals who are experienced and can help you solve a computer problem. So, when my brother runs into an issue, he can search for a "geek" to log onto his computer and assist him.

As a "techie", I have the option to register with them and get paid for assisting others. I might make a little money and you get your computer fixed... it's a win-win for everyone.

From a business perspective, I'm impressed by CrossLoop's innovation in this area. When I first wrote about them they barely had a concept, and as of today they have served 30 million desktop sharing minutes and received some excellent recognition - CNet's Download.com recognized them one of The 10 Best Downloads for 2007, Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal recommended them and InformationWeek recognized them as one of the Top Tech Sites for 2008. That's fantastic for a little start-up with a big idea.

Ask CWS: Should I register this domain?

Every few weeks, I'm asked a question about a domain name and if it should be registered and/or renewed from a particular vendor. Most recently, I received the following email which had been forwarded to me from a confused customer:

Dear COMPANY, Inc.,

We are Beijing Inveis Network Information Technology Co.,Ltd which is the domain name register center in China. We received a formal application from a company who is applying to register "COMPANYinc" as their domain names and Internet keyword on April 19th, 2008. Because this involved your company name or trade mark so we inform you in no time. If you considered these domain names and internet keyword are important to you and there was necessary to protect them by registering them first, contact us soon.

Kind Regards,

Kevin zhang
Tel:+86-10-82476192 ext.604
Fax:+86-10-62477798
Beijing Inveis Network Information Technology Co.,Ltd

While I do not believe this to be a complete scam, I do find it hard to believe that COMPANYinc.cn is in high demand. They are probably simply trying to persuade the owners of the popular .com domain name into purchasing the .cn domain (by creating a sense of urgency). On a side note, I also found it interesting that the company was not using a .cn domain name themselves, they preferred the .com domain name too.

I advised the customer that there are literally hundreds of domain name extensions available (for nearly every country) and that you can't possibly register them all. Nor would you want to, as the cost of doing this far outweighs the benefits.

To keep it simple, here are a few tips to remember when it comes to domain names:

1) Know who your domain is registered with and keep this information in a safe place.
2) Know who to call if you have questions about your domain.
3) Know when your domain renews. You will receive solicitations from other registrars as much as 6 months before it will expire. If the notification is not from the company listed in #1, ignore it.
4) Have one primary domain and do your best to get it listed with search engines. Avoid trying to market/promote several domains at once. If you do have several domains, use them for testing and measuring ad campaigns.
5) If you have multiple domains, consolidate them at one company to avoid confusion.
6) When in doubt, refer to #2.

Case Study: Mayo Medical Laboratories

Last summer, CWS worked with Mayo Medical Laboratories to redevelop the structure of MayoMedicalLaboratories.com, and we have continued to support the expansion of its offerings. We put a lot of effort into the architecture of this site's codebase, and recent statistics have shown that these efforts are paying off.

Overall traffic to the site has doubled, but even more interesting is a six-fold increase in traffic specifically referred by search engines over an eight-month period. More recently, we've worked to develop a system for public access to the catalog of medical tests offered by MML, and this tool is already drawing nearly half of the site's traffic.

Here are a few of the strategies employed to achieve these measurable results:

• Good separation of content and style. Most people know that a Web page is driven by some underlying code that's not usually displayed. But what's not always understood is that not all code serves the same function. Of course the actual text you see on a page is included, but a good portion of the code that's loaded into your Web browser is about style -- the way a page looks. When a search engine looks at the page, it doesn't care about style; content is king. In modern Web design, it's possible to almost completely separate style code from written content, but this practice isn't always followed well. When it is, the results can be dramatic. In addition to giving search engines a clearer picture of content, code separation can significantly reduce the time required to load pages and make changes far easier to implement. It also opens the possibility of repurposing content for alternative devices, like mobile or print versions, without duplicating the content.
• Appropriate use of structure. The third type of code that makes up a Web page represents its structure. Many types of structure can end up yielding the same visual result. Looking at a building from the outside, you might not know if its studs were made of wood, steel, or Styrofoam. But that doesn't make all three building materials equally sound. The same is true of Web pages; the underlying structure can have a big impact on accessibility and maintainability. It's also particularly helpful for allowing search engines to assign context to words. For example, human beings rely on visual cues like text size and color to identify headings and other important words on a page. Search engines (not to mention visually impaired human beings) can't do this, so they rely on the document's structure to determine what's important.
• Internationalization. When websites aim to attract a global audience, it's important to correctly encode and structure multilingual content. This improves performance with international search engines and also ensures that pages display consistently across a diverse range of platforms and browsers.

CWS believes in producing Web sites and applications that are focused on meeting business objectives and producing measurable results. Contact us for a risk-free assessment.

THIS IS A SOLICITATION

OK, it's not. I selected that title for this article because it is important to know these four words and look for them on all invoices you receive. Two years ago there was a Search Engine Optimization scam that people asked me about often. Today, I've had two customers send me emails asking if the "invoices" they have received are legitimate. Take this one for example:


Now one might say to themselves, "this looks an awful lot like a bill." However, if you read carefully you'll see the following mixed into the text:

THIS IS A SOLICITATION FOR THR ORDER OF GOODS OR SERVICES, OR BOTH, AND NOT A BILL INVOICE, OR STATEMENT OF ACCOUNT DUE. YOU ARE UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO MAKE ANY PAYMENTS ON ACCOUNT OF THIS OFFER UNLESS YOU ACCEPT THIS OFFER.

Well, that's nice of them to make their "flyer" look just like an invoice. The only reason they put that text in there is because it's what keeps them out of prison. I checked out their website, which had no phone number to contact them, and they are located in Nassau, Bahamas.

Apparently they don't have jails in the Bahamas... because that's where these guys deserve to be. Their legal disclaimer may make this type of activity legal, but it's far from morally correct.

Personal Touch From 1,000 Miles

As I mentioned back in February, my family is gearing up for the March for Babies walk on April 26th. We've been actively fundraising and spreading the word as best we can for a cause that is very close to our hearts.

This year, we decided to do something a little different and order t-shirts for everyone who joined "Team Carson". Since we were ordering a very small quantity and needed a quick turnaround, my wife decided to order them online from CustomInk.com. They had a cool web interface that allowed her to "build a design" online and send proofs back and forth with me. She ended up with a nice design (below) and placed the order.


This is where her "automated" online ordering experience turned personal. Within a few days, Kim received an email from Robin at CustomInk.

Hi Kim,

I noticed that you have designed shirts for an upcoming March for Babies charity event. We think it's terrific that you are participating in such a worthy cause! CustomInk would love to help you reach your fundraising goal by making a small donation to your team.

Could you please reply to this e-mail with the link to your individual sponsorship page, team page or an address to which we may send a check?

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Warm Regards,

Robin Matheson
CustomInk.com

In a matter of hours, we had received a donation from CustomInk via our online fundraising website. This small gesture was enough for me to become a raving fan of CustomInk.com for life. It's nice to know that other online companies have been able to connect with their customers in a personal way. Keep up the good work!