goodmorningohmanishouldreallywritesomenewstuffforthiswebsite!!!

Some days I’m inspired to develop new things for this website.  Here’s a few things I did this morning:[1]

• Added a guest article
• Wrote a new plugin to handle the disclaimers on guest articles
• Added several features to the plugin that displays the related posts
• Edited the theme for this website
• Added a little search engine optimization magic to the site
• Added to and edited the “About” page
• Put together a database of the various WCAB district offices so that I can continue my series of posts providing photos, contact information, and driving directions to each office

1. Photo courtesy of lepiaf.geo

Permanent disability calculators only a workers' compensation nerd could love

And, really, what’s not to love about free permanent disability calculators?[1][2]

A few days ago I disparaged the MicroSoft and their new search engine, Bing.com.  Today I tried a search for “permanent disability calculator” on their site.  Guess who’s at the top?[3]

Search engine optimization, like fortune,  is a fickle creature.[4][5]

1. Photo courtesy of aWee
2. That’s a picture of an accounting sheet!
3. Hint: the website’s name rhymes with “PDRater“
4. This post has been brought to you by O Fortuna and the Rubaiyat.
5. Look at me, waxing all philosophical!

Wordpress

A friend of mine owns and operates a number of websites – all of which run on ASP/.NET/MS-SQL servers.  He knows what he’s talking about, but he’s fairly dismissive of WordPress, PHP, and MySQL.

All this time I’ve been raving about WordPress, telling him that you can basically do anything with it.  I’ve mentioned how easy it is to use, how easy it is to maintain, its open source, how many global corporations use WordPress to build their websites, how its the tool of choice for so many designers, and how huge the WordPress community is.

In the meantime, he’s referring to his millions of rows in his “real-SQL, MicroSoft SQL” database.  I believe he’s been stuck thinking of PHP and MySQL as “kiddie” stuff, just not ready for big time.

That is, he’s been dismissive of WordPress until about two months ago.  In the last two months other people (SEO consultants, professional designers) have been raving about WordPress to him too.

I think he’s finally coming around.

PDRater.com breaks another record!

I’m out of the office for one lousy day and what happens?  A record number of visitors to PDRater.com, that’s what.[1]  I suppose I should spend more time up at the Santa Rosa WCAB, eh?

On Wednesday February 18, 2009 this website had a record number of individual visitors.  On that day I  234 unique visitors.  [2]  In the grand scheme of things, this is a fairly low number of unique visitors to a website.

However, most people come to this website looking for information about California workers’ compensation, workers’ compensation resources, workers’ compensation calculators, and updates regarding recent workers’ compensation cases.  The vast majority of website visitors (I’m extrapolating from those who have signed up for free) are claims adjusters, law office staff, and applicant and defense attorneys.

This sort of website traffic is considered to be very “high quality” as in the number of people from my target demographic comprise the vast majority of those people who actually visit my site.

1. Photo courtesy of Ann Althouse.
2. The previous record of 180 visitors was set on August 23, 2008.

No Frames, Please

A little while ago I posted about How NOT to Build a Successful Website using Adobe Flash.  Long story short, Adobe Flash websites are extremely unfriendly to both website visitors and businesses who own the websites. [1]

The second worst way to create a website is to build it totally out of frames.  There are several workers’ compensation defense firms who have websites built out of frames – and they’re terrible.

In the early days of the internet frames were an easy way to enable navigation throughout a website.  Since then easy-to-use intelligent server-side languages[2] and client-side languages[3] have made building website navigation tools a breeze.  More importantly, these other technologies and techniques do everything frames do – only better.

Here are some of the problems with websites created using frames:

• Un-bookmark-able. Just as with Adobe Flash, users can’t bookmark specific pages within a website built using frames.  This means your website visitors can’t come back to visit that specific page and, more importantly, can’t send a meaningful link to their friends.
• Un-navigable.  Depending on how someone links to your frame based website, its very possible that they will link directly to an internal frame.  This means a website visitor getting to your website from a search engine might never see your website’s name or logo!
• Printing. Frame based websites don’t always interact properly with web browsers.  When you go to print, you might end up printing the wrong frame.  Make it easy for your clients to make a hard copy of the information they see on your website and don’t use frames.
• Search Engine Optimization.  Search engines are designed to be smart.  Even so, search engines still have trouble untangling a website made out of frames.  If people cannot reach your website by searching for exactly what you’re about, your website is a failure.

I know why there some web developers sell frame-based websites.  From a development standpoint, they’re very very easy to write.  Frames are little more than HTML, so they’re if you can create a Word document, you can create an frames-based website.  I suppose it would be relatively easy to also recyle parts of that website in a new website.  These websites are also deceptively good-looking.  When the web developer is showing you a frame based website, you’re going to see exactly what you expect.  The “danger” of a frame-based website, as indicated above, is that its so easy for it to be shown to your potential clients in the wrong way or out of context.

I think I also know why businesses invest in frame-based websites.   They require so little skill to create that a business can just have one of their file clerks or some high school kid build the website cheaply.  The website would be, for all intents and purposes, free.

A website is essentially the 21st century equivalent of a resume.  You’re using it to tell your clients about you before you ever get a chance to meet them.  These days everyone considers Google to be a verb.  If your potential clients are already looking for you through the internet, shouldn’t you try to put your best foot forward?  A cheap temporary website is fine … as long as its temporary.  As soon as you can afford to do so hire someone to put togther something better.

Website Development Tips:

• Never build a site out of frames.
• Other web technologies and techniques do everything frames do, only better.
• Think of your website as your business’s resume, since that’s what potential clients may see first.
• Think of your website like a business suit.  If it doesn’t look good on a first impression, a potential client may never even speak to you.

1. Original photo courtesy of eriwst
2. Such as PHP and MySQL.
3. Such as Javascript.

No Flash, please

There are many different ways to put together a website.  Flat HTML which does not interact with the users at all.  Javascript enabled pages which allow the user to interact with the webpage a little.  AJAX enabled pages which allow the user to interact with the web server and even other users.

The worst way imaginable for a website to be built is one entirely powered by Adobe Flash animation.  I know of at least one workers’ compensation defense firm that has an all Flash website – and I feel sorry for them.  Their clients probably never use their website.  They’re squandering one of their best marketing tools.

Here are just a few of the problems with Flash websites:

• Bandwidth. A picture of the word “website” is much much larger than the text “website.”  In a similar way, a Flash website is going to be much much larger than the same information presented in pure HTML.  The bigger your website, the longer it will take for it to load.
• Maintenance. The smallest change to the website needs to be handled by the original web developer.  If you “invest” in an all-Flash website, you’re basically hiring that web developer for life.  With traditional websites, you can hire any code monkey to adjust your website.
• Unnavigable. Flash websites do not work with the browser’s “Back” button.  If your users can’t navigate your website in a normal fashion, they will leave and never come back.
• Search Engine Optimization. Or, SEO, as it is known in the business.  If your website is basically a bunch of moving pictures, it can’t be indexed by a search engine, so it doesn’t know what your website is about, so it doesn’t know when to show it to people who are searching for exactly the kinds of things you are trying to sell.
• Repeat Business. If your website is meant to be something people look at once and never return to, I suppose its fine. The problem with a Flash website is that it will not allow users to bookmark or link to particular pages.  This means if your clients really love a particular page on your site they can’t e-mail the link to their co-workers!

I know why web developers sell Flash websites.  These websites show off how great you are at creating swooshing logos and nifty pages transitions.  And, if your client ever needs a little change, they have to come back to you or pay someone else to build them a website from scratch.[1]

I also know why businesses invest in Flash websites.  They want something stylish and unique.  In reality all truly successful website forgo snazzy animations for functional user friendly pages.  If Amazon, eBay, and Google don’t build their websites out of Flash, why should you?

This isn’t to say that Flash animation doesn’t have its place.  It think its great for product demos, presentations, and banner ads.  Its an excellent way to present information in a graphical format.  That said, you should never ever purchase a Flash website.

Website Development Tips:

• Never build a site out of Flash.
• Never use Flash to show words.
• If its good enough for Google, its good enough for you.
• Focus on what your customers want to see, not what you want to show them.
• Make it easy for your customers to tell people about you.

1. Heaven forbid you have a new hire or, you know, the law changes.

This other website proposed that I put up a link to their website here.  Incoming website links are one of the primary tools search engines use to rank web pages, which is why people are always offering link exchanges.  Google’s PageRank system ranks a website on a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 being the best.  Like the Richter scale for earthquakes, PageRank scores require exponentially more energy to reach the next level.

Bad Link Exchange Offer

These links to my site can be “high quality” because they are from a website that also deals with California workers’ compensation, nerdy technobabble, or random silliness.  Or, they can be “low quality” because they have nothing to do with what my site is about.

In order to find out whether they were offering a high quality linkback, I checked out their website.  On the right is a screenshot of their website.  It has nothing whatsoever to do with workers’ compensation.  The green circle is where they had the link to their “resources” page.  The green box at the top is the only part of their page that’s visible when you go to their page.

So, not only were they offering me a low quality link, but they were offering me a low quality link that no one would ever look for, let alone find.

While they were clearly making a terrible offer, the idea that they looked up my website in order to solicit a link was amusing.  My website’s gotten so big people want links from me!  Blog bigtime, baby!

Many people measure their success by their search engine ranking for their “target keywords.” I would wager that most people care about their Google ranking over other search engines. Most search engines alter the search results by placing paid advertisers at the top. Google does not sell search engine rankings. I would say this is one of the biggest reasons it’s considered the gold standard of search engines.

My own target keywords are “permanent disability calculator free.” I discovered a few days ago that this website is the top ranked Google result for these keywords!