inQbation

Jessica Mah, Indinero, My Hero

Blake — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:50:01 +0000

Once in a while you see a bright shooting star that streaks across the sky and puts you at awe. A true child prodigy.

Jessica started her first internet company at the age of 13, finished high school at the age of 15, and studied computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.

As Product Architect and CEO of Indinero.com, Jessica drives the development of Indinero’s product strategy, product development and design efforts. She designed Indinero for the typical small business owner, knowing that its usefulness and simplicity would change the way business owners look at money. Founders Jessica Mah and Andy Su built the core product over the Summer of 2009, and the company has since won grant awards from Lightspeed Venture Partners in the Summer of 2009, and from U.C. Berkeley’s CET Venture Lab in the Fall of 2009.

Prior to founding Indinero, Jessica was the founder and technical lead at internshipIN.com, which has since helped thousands of college students find their first internships. Jessica studied computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, where she and co-founder Andy Su built Indinero’s first prototype. Jessica has been mentioned in publications ranging from Inc. magazine to the Wall Street Journal, and has been featured on PBS to encourage students to pursue science and entrepreneurship.

Wishing her God’s speed

Why do websites look different on IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox

Blake — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 16:20:41 +0000

Have you ever noticed that your website looks different across different browsers such as:

Microsoft Internet Exploer (IE6)
IE7
IE8
Safari
Opera
Mozilla Firefox

The primary reason is standards. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Internet Society work to define, develop and promote standards. By having standards, independent designers and developers can create open source software and websites that will be compatibile across the internet. So, a website that is built to standards will look the same on my Mac as it will on your PC, for example. Indeed, it is because of standards that has enabled the Internet to grow as fast as it has over the past 15 years.

The reason why some websites don’t look the same is because the internet browsers, i.e., the programs we use to view and navigate websites are not all built strictly according to the same standards. Some companies, like Microsoft, build additional features and functionality into their browsers which may provide a richer user experience but this only works if web designers and developers create code according to Microsoft’s proprietary non-standards.

Safari, IE7 and Firefox tend to comply better with universal standards whereas IE6 tends to rub up against or caust problems with these universal standards. And now, with HTML5 and CSS3 on the way to final development, acceptance and proliferation then we can expect to see more incompatibilities with legacy browsers.

It is possible to make a website look the same on IE6 as it does on IE8, Firefox or Safari. However, in some cases, depending on the style or effect we are trying to create, it is a significant amount of additional work. We are not afraid of work, we simply want to make sure that our work adds value. So, if it takes 2 hours to create square corners on a button but 12 hours to create rounded corners on a button, we need to make sure the additional 10 hours of work is justified by the aesthetic value.

NOTE: the number of hours are theoretical, not actual.

We could take the easy way out and rely more on tables and JPGs instead of CSS, but that often compromises Section 508 accessibility, maintainability, server performance and load time. So, there are a lot of variables and constraints that we need to consider as we design for accessibility and cross-browser compliance.

In order to replicate the problem and create a screenshot of IE6 behavior (or misbehavior), we have to do the design in HTML/CSS and then run it through IE6. It could take several days of work simply to demonstrate the IE6 behavior. In addition, we cannot always anticipate every behavior (or misbehavior) of IE6. For this reason, we call the misbehaviors “glitches” and the solutions “hacks”.

In order to minimize unintended glitches and need for hacks, try to stick to W3C standards as well as techniques like a 960 grid, square corners, minimal background patterns and gradiants, etc. Designing according to these standards and methods produces more consistent results across a wider array of internet browsers.

Google’s May Day renders PageRank impotent

Blake — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 05:13:58 +0000

WASHINGTON, DC – SEO buzz seems to indicate that Google’s May Day algorithm change has negatively affected many websites that were gaming the system.

Well, if you were to poll about 100 search engine optimization (SEO) professionals at their next convention, most of them would have said (or continue to say) that inbound links, or backlinks, are the number one most important thing to getting found on Google. Moreover, those inbound links determine a site’s PageRank, or Google PR, which is an indicator of how relevant or significant a website is across the universe.

In my recent blog post on SEO Quotient, I presented some data that might indicate that just because you have a high SEO analysis score, which includes a strong PageRank and significant inbound links, that doesn’t mean you are going to rank well on Google – at least for now.

Case in point: WebsiteGrader vs. SEOmoz.

WebsiteGrader is a PR6 site with 704 inbound links (backlinks) according to Google and 34,921 inlinks according to Yahoo.

SEOmoz, on the other hand, is a PR8 site with 1,710 inbound links according to Google and a whopping 207,596 inlinks according to Yahoo.

But, if you look at Alexa, both sites are about neck and neck with Websitegrader (2,049) only slightly trailing SEOmoz (1,703). According to Compete, Websitegrader (PR6) smashes SEOmoz (PR8) with an estimated visitor count of 494,00 monthly visits to SEOmoz estimated 173,000 monthly visits.

But the real evidence is in the actual search results. Both websites, Websitegrader.com and SEOmoz.org represent “SEO analysis tools” that provide “free SEO reports” and “website analysis“. So, when you Google these search terms, you’ll see:

Websitegrader (PR6) ranks first page for:

SEO analysis tool
Website analysis tool
Website SEO tool
Free SEO report

SEOmoz (PR8) only ranks first page for:

SEO tools

So, how can a website in the same industry, optimized for the same keyword phrases, with a PR8, 1,710 inbound links according to Google and 207,596 inbound links according to Yahoo underperform a site with a fraction of the credibility?

Obviously, there are other factors at play.

One interesting note is that Websitegrader has 38,696 Twitter followers to SEOmoz 15,542. Moreover, Websitegrader has 15,542 Facebook fans (likes) compared to SEOmoz 3,023. Perhaps Google is paying more attention to social media than previous indicators like inbound links.

Food for thought.

Why Flash doesn’t work on Apple iPhone, iPad

Blake — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 13:52:52 +0000

Read the open letter from Steve Jobs on why Apple doesn’t allow Flash.

How to use Craigslist to discover Keywords

Blake — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 05:21:24 +0000

Washington, DC – If you’ve ever watched my video, “If you want to get found on Google,” then you will know that a good SEO strategy always starts with discovering your keywords using that language of your targeted audience.

I work with a lot of doctors and dentists, for example, and they tend to use these highly clinical medical terms. When they blog and write web content, it is always too high-level. The words that they often use does not match with the search terms that their targeted audience would most likely use in a Google search to find a new doctor or dentist in their area.

I have discovered that Craigslist is a brilliant method and tool for keyword discovery. It doesn’t work for all professions or services categories, but it certainly works for web design and SEO.

This is how you do it…

Step 1 : Go to Craigslist and click on a densely populated city like NYC.

Step 2: Enter a high level, broad term that describes your profession

Step 3: Select the pull-down that relates best to you

Step 4: Click seach and study the results

I did this recently for the following search criteria: Los Angeles Craigslist > WordPress > All Gigs. I discovered the language that people are using to find companies like mine:

WordPress knowledge
Graphic designer
WordPress tutor
Web Designer
Web Developer for WordPress
WordPress Site
WordPress – Portfolio
Code Geek
WordPress Designer
WordPress Guru
WordPress assistant
WordPress, CSS, PHP Expert
WordPress & Javascript Developer
Experienced WordPress plugin PHP developer
WordPress experts
WordPress Genius

The list goes on and on. See if you can find creative ways to listen to your targeted audience and discover the keywords that they use to describe you, your company and your services.

How to do online reputation management

Blake — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 01:15:37 +0000

Defending your reputation

WASHINGTON DC – SEO expert

Have you ever discovered an unflattering article about you, your company or your product? Perhaps it was legitimate and justified or maybe it was outright slander, libel and defamation. Regardless, maintaining an untarnished online reputation is just as important as maintaining a high credit score.

When inQbation™, a Washington DC based online marketing firm with SEO experts, defends a reptuation, we typically perform the following tasks:

Contact the editor of the website where the negative content lives and ask them to remove it.
If the information online is false, misleading, malicious, defamatory or otherwise slanderous, consider filing a Cease and Desist Order in the jurisdiction where the website is hosted.
Determine what keyword phrases are important to defend. It could be a person’s name, a company name, a brand name or a product.
Create as many social media profiles as you can on sites like:
1. Linkedin
2. Biznik
3. Twitter
4. Facebook
5. Crunchbase
6. Photo.net
7. Yelp
8. Amazon
9. Mugglespace
10. Bebo
Make sure those important keyword phrases are in the social media profile, preferably within the first and last name or in an prominent field.
Create a blog on as many instant free blogging platforms such as:
1. www.blogger.com
2. www.wordpress.com
3. www.thoughts.com
4. www.blog.com
5. www.livejournal.com
6. www.blogabond.com
7. www.edublogs.org
8. www.xanga.com
9. www.weebly.com
10. www.vox.com
Make sure you name your blog after the keyword that is important to you.
Make frequent blog posts that feature your keywords in the subject lines, tags, titles and throughout the article.
Gather a team of bloggers and webmaster. See if you could interest them in writing about you, your company or your product and ask them to link to your social media profiles and blogs using your keyword phrase in the anchor text or link text of these inbound backlinks. You can find them on various sites such as:
1. Craigslist.com
2. SEOQ.com
3. oDesk.com
4. FreelanceSwitch.com
5. Freelancer.com
6. iFreelance.com
7. Guru.com
8. elance.com
9. Bloggers.com
10. BlogWorldExpo.com
Reinforce these social media profiles, blogs and links posts with tweets and online bookmarks (Delicious.com).

Unless your keyword phrase is extraordinarily competitive, you should be able to own the first page of Google within about 4-6 weeks.

SEO Quotient buys BLVD status

Blake — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 05:36:42 +0000

WASHINGTON, DC – On its blog, SEO Quotient™ announced today that it acquired BLVDstatus.com along with the real-time web analytics code that tracks live web stats, keyword rankings reports, custom alerts and a white label solution for SEO professionals.

Best Government Websites: IT Dashboard

Blake — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 02:57:23 +0000

WASHINGTON DC, Website designer

The IT Dashboard is a website enabling federal agencies, industry, the general public and other stakeholders to view details of federal information technology investments. The purpose of the Dashboard is to provide information on the effectiveness of government IT programs and to support decisions regarding the investment and management of resources. The Dashboard is now being used by the Administration and Congress to make budget and policy decisions.

Best Government Websites: USAspending.gov

Blake — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 02:49:38 +0000

The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA) of 2006, full text of the Transparency Act ( ), required that the Office of Management and Budget establish a single searchable website, accessible to the public at no cost to access, to include for each Federal award: the name of the entity receiving the award; the amount of the award; information on the award including transaction type, funding agency, etc; the location of the entity receiving the award; a unique identifier of the entity receiving the award. USAspending.gov was first launched in December 2007 to fulfill these requirements.

Best Government Websites: Data.gov

Blake — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 02:45:31 +0000

WASHINGTON DC – Website designer

Data.gov is leading the way in democratizing public sector data and driving innovation. The data is being surfaced from many locations making the Government data stores available to researchers to perform their own analysis.