St. Petersburg Web Design Blog

Archive for the ‘Client News’ Category

I’ve never written about a discussion on LinkedIn.com before, but this one is a whopper.  It’s all about if you had to choose between a candidate that had one years experience but was very intelligent or between someone with average intelligence and 10 years experience which would you choose.  On the surface this discussion about intelligence vs experience on LinkedIn, but a lot of comments that some of the HR people people have made in this discussion in a Project Managers group are stirring up some controversy.  Personally I find the discussion quite enlightening. Others have too, it has over 190 comments and growing ion just over a week (that’s a lot for LinkedIn).  The overwhelming majority of which ware pretty thoughtful contributions. Some have evidently found themselves embarrassed by the secrets they’ve leaked and deleted their comments.  I’m not sure why though, they seemed honest and well thought out.  Other have left the HR dirty laundry out there in the air, believing their nothing wrong with their opinions.  And their probably right.  Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

This conversation is social networking at it finest.  Lots of people talking about a very real issue that effects almost everyone one in the world. And everyone there is doing so in a way that’s positive, enlightening and contributory.  It’s amazing.

Here’s some of the things I’ve learned about my fellow Project Managers: Read the rest of this entry »

In addition to Web Design, I also perform data services for the small to medium businesses of Florida. One problem I run into quite often is the lack of local businesses that provide networking services. These businesses were suffering for it too.

The following  scenario is why we launched Florida Networking Services:

Your small business lands that big government contract. Now you have to expand fast. 50+ inspectors in the field, 12 new data entry personnel and several new customer service reps. All of them need to access the same data base repeatedly throughout the day. There’s some overwhelming data requirements when it comes to security, maintenance, and daily transfer of data. You’ve call and hire Dream Designs (Data Services unit) and that burden is lifted. you’ll just get someone from the phone book or the internet to take care of your network, and have existing staff help set up all these new computers for the field and the new office right?

Read the rest of this entry »

Every now and then it’s a great idea to follow up on a web site’s progress.  Even if the client wants nothing more than a economical small web site placed up and can’t afford to purchase any marketing for the web site.  Today we’ll following up on a company, Pateco, that just wanted a basic web site and had absolutely no budget for marketing the web site.  That’s ok, because we always throw in our Basic SEO package for free with every full site web design package.

The Basic SEO package is quite extensive.  It won’t get you to the top of the Google pile for very competitive key phrases like “Health Supplements” , but it will help separate you and help you out-compete the other web sites that haven’t done any on page SEO.  Our Basic SEO is basically a full site run, professional on page SEO effort.  This is more extensive (at least at Dream Designs it is) than you think.  The process is partially secret but here’s the things we do that we can publish:

Read the rest of this entry »

When talking about Search Engines with clients, trainees and others, it’s good to speak the same language.  Here’s a growing list of SEO terms and their definitions.  All you other Search Engine Marketers out there . . . Please contribute by commenting below.

• SEO
  • Search Engine Optimization:  The science/art of ranking well in the organic portion of a Search engines results page.
• IBL
  • InBound Link: A link to your web site from another web site (usually).  We could write a whole article about what makes a good IBL and a what makes a bad IBL and maybe we will, but not in this post…
  • A link can be considered an IBL if it comes from your own site if it’s written in an “absolute” versus “relative” manner.  This means the path, if absolute,  would begin with “http://”.
• SE
  • Search Engine
• SERP
  • Search Engine Results Page
• Key phrase (aka keyphrase)
  • A phrase typed into a search engines search box. It’s also called a search term. a search term may be only one word though, a phrase has to be more than one word.
• Purchase related key phrase
  • A key phrase with one or more of the words in it:
    • buy
    • store
    • price
    • purchase
    • or other synonyms for the above
• Bing:  The latest Search engine from Microsoft.
• Double Up:  When two pages from one site are listed one after another in a SERP.  The second is usually indented.  Yahoo pioneered the SERP double up.

This guy makes some great points about competing in the local search market. Remember, it is a competition, not an automatic thing. You’re not going to be automatically listed #1 on Google for Florida Web Design just because you submitted your web site to Google and you are actually in Florida. On a smaller scale it’s the same for St. Petersburg Web Design. just because you are in St. Petersburg and you tell Google doesn’t mean that the national companies aren’t fighting hard for your spot.

He doesn’t really give away a lot of tips but he does highlight the challenges that most small businesses don’t understand.

This video helps explain what a firewall is. (By request)

A two way firewall is absolutely necessary.

Zonelabs has the best on in the business and it’s free.