Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) helps your website be recognised by the life-blood of the internet. Search engines, such as Google, Microsoft Bing and Yahoo index the content of your site to make it searchable by customers. Indexing allows your site to be ‘tuned’ to improve its ranking against similar sites, achieving a higher order in the search results of the targeted search engine. Statistics show that most customers rarely look beyond the first few pages of results, and it is generally accepted that a ‘1st page ranking’ is a necessity to maximise your presence on the internet.

The key driver behind SEO is to increase traffic to your site. The more people that can find your site, the more potential customers you will reach. Advertising also plays an important role. The wider your site is advertised, the better your customer base, and ultimately the higher your page ranking will be.

As search engines constantly modify the way they index websites, SEO is a continuously evolving service. As well as improving the volume and quality of traffic to your website we advocate the use of best ‘white-hat’ ['white-hat' practices refer to the use of non-abusive techniques to gain higher rankings. Some practices ('black-hat') are considered abusive by search engines, and the detection of these practices in use on your site could lead to your site being permanently blocked from results.] practices available.

This question raises its head from time to time, especially with older relatives. The answer has to be carefully crafted, I’ve discovered, to avoid an uncomfortable silence. Explaining “freelancing” to them can lead to miscomprehension, or glazed looks.
Searching the internet for help in dealing with similar situations led to this quote from Travis Chillemi on the formidable site webworkerdaily.com:

Them: What do you do?
Me: I am a web designer.
Them: Oh! My dentist also does web design. He/She is really good with Frontpage and stuff. He/She even has their own website. It has something to do with geocities…
Me: Yeah. I do dental work on the side, too. I even have my own drill and chair.
Them: Huh?

Maybe the answer should always try to reflect the knowledge of the person asking the question, if you are lucky enough to know it. For instance, “I help companies do the ‘eBay’ thing” has worked, along with “it’s like advertising, but on the internet”. But generally the old chestnut “I work with computers” is resorted to, with the inevitable “oh, can you fix my son’s computer, I think it’s got a virus…”.
But my favourite is: “I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to discuss that – you understand?”, then look around you nervously…

Flash [Adobe Flash™, previously known as Macromedia Flash™] is primarily an animation tool that can be used to produce stunning effects to supplement a website, or indeed generate an entire visual experience for a website. However, there has always been great debate on whether a Flash site is acceptable in terms of best practice. Certainly, adding effects to sites can provide interest and flair, but using animation for every element on the page may be too much. It depends on your business:- the cartoon style that Flash delivers will suit a childrens site, art portfolio, or funky design studio, but is probably not appropriate for a supermarket or government body. At the end of the day, best practice cannot tell us when to use Flash and when not to – each business must choose its website persona on its own merits and decide whether Flash, or any other technology can help realise that persona in the best way. At the end of the day look around at as many examples as possible before making your choice.

Well, jQuery is now on to version 1.3 and it seems to just keep getting better. It has risen to stardom amazingly quickly, none more so than its bundling by Microsoft into its latest Visual Studio offering. This is a telling sign indeed. Microsoft have tried for years to counter the emergent open source market with various offerings of JScript, J#, J++, F#, and about 5 others that have since faded into obscurity. So why should Microsoft adopt this open source library now? Haven’t they got something up their sleeve this time? Well the simple reality is that jQuery is just too damn good. There’s simply no room left for another contender and to Microsoft’s (small) credit, they’ve rolled over. Now, if only they would do the same on browser standards…….

Has Microsoft gone on holiday? It seems so. With their announcement last year of the inclusion of jQuery into the Visual Studio suite and now the imminent release of its latest Internet Explorer (v8). Why the shock? Well, it seems that early beta testing of the new browser is showing it may just have given in to the web standards it has been so sorely criticised for in the past. IE8 is priming up to give as faithful rendering as the current Firefox 3, generally accepted to be the epitome of web standards compliance. This cannot be emphasised enough as good news for all the beleaguered web developers out there who have spent endless days fixing cross-browser issues, primarily with IE.
Of course, the ever increasing market share that Firefox has taken from Microsoft may have something to do with it: recent figures showing a 20% share now going to Firefox[These figures are representative of one particular statistical review, and may not be representative of every web server. Some websites/industries can expect higher concentrations of certain browsers than others], compared with IE7’s “meagre” 46%! Still, that is a huge improvement from 3 years ago when IE held +83% market share.
Where does this leave cross-browser compatibility work – well, it’s going to be some time before the general population converts enough to warrant ignoring IE6+7, so the hard graft will have to be kept up for now. But it appears the end is in sight, at last.