cabinfever 3R's {ruminations, rants, & raves}

Custom Site Design and CSS
Javascript Coding
Site Functionality & Usability Consulting
Custom Javascript Gallery Solution
Worked with Gbase In-house Development Team to Integrate Design and JS into existing ASP Framework.

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Bubby’s Website Re-design

Bryan — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:53:59 +0000

Site re-design for Bubby’s Pie Co.

Visit Bubby’s Website>>

What we did:

Built on Expression Engine
Custom Site Design and Development
Javascript Coding
Dynamic Content Stream for Blogging, Specials, Announcements, & Testimonials
Custom Guest Feedback Form
Flickr Gallery Feed Integration
Ecommerce with Paypal Integration

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Dr. Laura Cowlen Website

Bryan — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:45:30 +0000

Site build for Life Coach Dr. Laura Cowlen.

Visit Dr. Cowlen’s Website>>

What we did:

Built on Expression Engine
Custom Site Design and Development
Dynamic Content Stream for Blogging & Testimonials
Email Announcement Template to Match Site Design
Tri-fold Brochure & Business Cards

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Logan Levkoff Website

Bryan — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 22:28:47 +0000

Site build for sexologist and author Logan Levkoff.

Visit Logan’s Website>>

What we did:

Built on Expression Engine
Custom Site Design and Development.
Javascript Coding
Dynamic Content Stream for Multimedia Press Information, Book Reviews, & Testimonials.
Custom blogging component.
Integration of RSS Feed from Logan’s blog on the Huffington Post.
Content Migration from Movable Type blog.

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SEO Kabuki

Bryan — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 05:04:42 +0000

Dear Laura,

As far as SEO. It probably merits a phone conversation. But SEO can entail a number of different things both factual and fictional. We started to talk about it the other day on the phone with meta tags and domain redirects.

The most important thing we can do as a web dev company, as far as SEO, is to make sure you have a properly structured and valid site. Which it is. This makes the site completely crawl-able by any search engine.

Now beyond that, SEO becomes a little mystical . . .

First, and foremost, none of the major search engines provide information on the algorithms they use to determine search relevance. They don’t want anyone to game the system. Obviously, a user uses a search engine, like Google, because search results are relevant to the users search terms. If you searched and found a lot of ads and junk you wouldn’t use Google. This makes SEO speculative.

For instance,…
There is a debate about which is more SEO friendly, dashes (-) or underscores ( _ ) in urls. So for instance, is “everything-about-you” better than “everything_about_you”. The debate started from the idea that (-) are understood as a space and ( _ ) are understood as a character. So the logic is that search engines understand the phrase “everything_about_you” as “everything about you” more readily. Where as “everything_about_you” could be seen as “ever thin g_ab out_ you”. Okay makes sense. But, if you do a search “dashes vs underscores” you will find in the top four listings on the subject, two listings with a dashed url and two with underscore url …hmmm. And the debate rages on and on. There are a lot of SEO tips that fall into the same category. Bottom line, is no one really knows and is only speculating at best. Results achieved by SEO people beyond fixes for structural flaws in web sites are probably more “Westinghouse Effect” then anything else.

Personally, I think your time and money are best spent elsewhere rather then chasing the ghost in the machine.

If you are willing to put in the time there are some things you can do that can make a difference but take time and commitment. These truly do increase your relevance in the eyes of search engines.

Build links to your site. Find others that will add your link to their site as part of their blogroll or as part of content within their site. Don’t pay or get involved with linking schemes because your site could be blacklisted.

Blog, blog, blog. Honest, useful, & good content creates interest. For your field, things like how to’s and lists are highly sought after by users. You can also submit content to services like Digg, Reddit etc… for more exposure.

Start a Conversation. Visit other blogs and provide relevant comments and thoughts to posts. Most of these allow you to provide your web site address in which they make your site url linkable from your name. Don’t be overly self promoting with gratuitous linking. You will end up making users mad. Be a good community member.

Create more content. Places like Ehow, Squidoo, YouTube etc… give advice on subjects within your expertise.
Participate in groups and forums where your expertise is needed such as Linked In groups, MySpace, or Yahoo.

Build a following. Keep up with people on Twitter, respond back when users leave comments to your posts etc…

Give it time.

Bottom line, is there is no magic bullet.

BG

BTW If you don’t mind I might like to use this letter on our blog.

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The End of BlogRush

Bryan — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:32:42 +0000

When I checked my email this morning I found this letter from BlogRush (see below).

BlogRush was a blog widget that you could install onto your blog that would display feeds from other blogs within your chosen blog category. In return your blogs feeds were aggregated and displayed across the BlogRush network, potentially expanding your blog traffic and introducing your blog to a whole new group of readers.

It’s ashame to see this potentially useful service go down, this is probably just the beginning of a number of casualties we will witness in the current economy.

After careful consideration, we have decided to shutdown the BlogRush service. If you have the widget code on your blog you will need to remove it.

When BlogRush launched in late-2007 it spread like wildfire all over the Web. Thousands of bloggers were talking about it and the service exploded to become one of the fastest growing free services in the history of the Web. During the first year of the service it successfully served 3.4 Billion blog post headlines and the BlogRush widget could be found on blogs all over the world; even up until the moment we closed down the service.

BlogRush didn’t grow without its fair share of problems — from security issues to abusive users trying to ‘game’ the system to much lower click-rates than expected. We also had some problems with trying to fairly control the quality of the network, and in the process made many mistakes in deciding what blogs should stay or go. All of these issues, ultimately, limited the service’s full potential.

Our team worked very hard to try and build a service that would truly help bloggers of all sizes get free traffic to their blogs. This was our primary focus. Not once did we ever try to monetize the service with ads or anything else. BlogRush never made a single penny in revenue. We wanted to be able to help our users FIRST and then worry about monetizing the service later. Unfortunately, the service didn’t work out like we had hoped. (It happens.)

I want to say “Thank You” to all of the great bloggers that at least gave BlogRush a test to see if it would work for them. We sincerely appreciate you giving the service a try.

We have received several offers & inquiries about acquiring BlogRush, but we are choosing not to go that route. While many might think this is crazy, we truly feel it’s the ‘right’ thing to do for our users. Believe it or not, it’s not always about the money. In fact, BlogRush will have lost a small fortune when it’s all said and done, and it was by choice. There were many things we could have done to monetize the service but we wanted to make sure it was going to benefit our users first.

Last but not least I want to say that I hope the failure of this service doesn’t in any way discourage other entrepreneurs from coming up with crazy ideas at 4AM (like I did with this one) and from “going for it” to just try and see if something will work. Without trying there can be no success. And as we all know, ideas are worthless without action. The Web wouldn’t be what it is today without entrepreneurs trying all sorts of crazy ideas.

On behalf of the entire BlogRush team, we wish the best of luck to everyone with their own blogs, ideas, and crazy ventures.

Sincerely,

John Reese

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What Steps Is Your Business Taking in Tough Economic Times?

Bryan — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:39:49 +0000

Everywhere you turn economic news ranges from bad to truly depressing. What are you doing to help position your business to weather turbulent economic times?

As far as our business, we have a number of strategies that I believe will not only help us survive but prosper. These strategies I believe will not only make our company stronger in the short term but the will help position us for future growth.

Create Alliances

Currently, we are pursuing strategic partnerships with other business’. Strategic partnerships are a win, win situation. bhg wins because partnerships help us broaden our client pool, our partner wins because our services allow them to broaden their services (and revenues) without additional costs associated with those services.

Focus on Value

With the same service providers chasing fewer dollars, we believe value is going to be a critical determination in the current market, especially for small to medium sized business’. In the next few months, we are going to be launching services that will allow our clients to launch to the web faster, and for less dollars then before. Our focus is to help clients leverage existing Web 2.0 technologies which help us reduce development time and costs.

Focus on Costs

It’s inevitable in any business. Costs for doing business slowly creep. What seemed essential when cash was flowing through the door may not seem so essential now. We are taking the time to look at all our expenses and evaluating what is truly necessary and what can be replaced cheaper even sometimes free alternatives.

Re-invigorating Sales

We are a small design house and when big projects come in the door it’s all hands on deck. Essentially, we are all technicians (not necessarily sales technicians), the downside is sometimes sales get pushed to the side, when the focus is on a big project. It’s important to remember that sales always needs to be a primary focus of your organization. Set goals and develop strategies to meet these goals and finally, make sure you have accountability.

Re-emphasize Core Values

It’s never a bad time to take a look at your business model and return to basics. Re-focusing your business on the things that truly matter to you and understanding why clients should choose your products and services is a critical exercise in good or bad times. Revitalizing your mission will also help you evaluate and cut costs and help you determine an effective marketing approach that will help yield you the greatest benefit.

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