Several friends over at Facebook have commented and posted the link to the Cruzan Rum website. So I had to visit their site since it had been a couple of years.

Before I start my review I have to say that I do really love the design. It’s how the design was executed that I take major issue with.

The Bad aka “Why it should not be an all Flash website”

1. The site is Flash. That’s a huge problem. While there are “hidden” links they go nowhere. So it looks

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With the price of postage today I simply cannot understand why some companies feel the need to send out “annual website search engine listing” pretend invoices.

Web Listings Inc. mailed one to me earlier in the week for a domain name that I own. There’s no site there just the parked domain. I guess they just hope you really aren’t paying attention in order to get you to part with $65.00 of your money.

They state they’ll submit to 20 top search engines. There are only 3 top search engines.…

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First I will talk briefly about what not to do.

1. Do not submit to 1000′s of search engines. There are only 3 that count, Google, Yahoo and MSN. All other search engines get their information from the mentioned search engines.
2. Do not continually submit to them. It’s not necessary. Once you are in you are in. It won’t improve your position.
3. Do not use keyword spamming.

Now here is what to do.

1. Have great content and update it on a regular basis.
2. Add new features and pages.
3. Have great content.

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A big one, especially in Google’s mind, is having multiple websites with same content. Why do business waste time and money on having duplicate websites, but with different domain names? You should always focus on one domain versus scattering your effort, including the advertising budget.

There is nothing wrong with registering different versions of your domain name, and redirect one, but no more than two to the active domain. It is not necessary to have have hosting for a domain name. You can register as many as you want.

Another …

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I absolutely abhor SEO spamming techniques. It is unethical and does not work in the long term.

Recently a website that I have been working on (not my client but under a subcontract) had been contracted out to an SEO firm. When the files were returned the DOCTYPE was missing from all of the pages. When I contacted the firm as to why they had been removed they told me that they always remove anything that has nothing to do with improving SEO. Groan.

The DOCTYPE is just HTML, but …

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Register your domain name as long as you possibly can.

Use appropriate search terms in the œtitle tag of images to appropriately describe the photo or image. Example: The website is a hotel site. You could use the following in the alt tag: œHotel Meridien is a luxury 4-star hotel near Central Park in New York City”.

The œtitle tag in links. Example: <a href=”directions.html title=”To find directions to the Hotel Meridien from La Guardia and Kennedy Airports click here”>Directions</a>

As I previously mentioned the importance of using a more …

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By Jill Whalen

There are so many SEO/SEM firms cropping up that talk a good game but don’t deliver results. This is in part because there’s so much information that is freely available about search engine optimization. On the surface, SEO sounds easy “ and it really is “ once you’ve had a number of sites to experiment with. What’s even easier than SEO, however, is discussing SEO as if you know what you’re actually doing (when you don’t)!

Here are 10 signs to watch out for that may very …

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The moment to start planning the œwhen and how your website will be found is before one line of code is written, a design is created, or even before you select a domain name. It should never be an afterthought.

Let’s just say I have seen first hand very poorly executed websites that were home grown because of the œit won’t cost me anything if I do it myself to the œmy friend, kid, relative¦fill in the blank.. did it for me”. Then they wonder why one can find them, …

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You cannot just build a website and expect customers to find you. You do have to advertise. If you are only targeting local customers advertise in the local newspaper(s), join the Chamber of Commerce, send out a press release and use SEO to target geographical searches.

If you are seeking global customers then you need to spend the time and money on good SEO. If your products or service is fairly generic then using Google AdWord, PPC or other paid services may be necessary.

Having good incoming links also help. …

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