OK, I know I said beginner. Actually, they said beginner, but this article goes very much in depth into SEO. I’ve beein applying different SEO techniques to my websites, websites I’ve done in the past, and just SEO for certain clients. I’ve been doing this for a bout two years now and even I learned some things from this article.
SEOmoz | Beginner’s: They go into the following topics. Trust me, it’s long but it’s a great read.

1. What is SEO?
2. How Search Engines Operate
3. How to Conduct Keyword Research
4. Critical Components of Optimizing a Site
5. Building a Traffic-Worthy Site
6. Growing a Site’s Popularity
7. Conclusion: Crafting an SEO Strategy

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I like how they put it, “SEO isn’t rocket science it’s more like magic”. I’m not saying that these steps should replace major SEO from experts. Well, maybe I am. If you’re started out from zero SEO I would suggest these tips to you. This way you would understand what SEO and why it is important. That way when you do get into the position (money-wise) where you do need an expert you’ll know what you’re paying for.
Search Engine Optimization Made Simple from WebDesign at About.com

1. Pick a Target Phrase
2. Analyze Your Competition
3. Write Your Page
4. Promote Your Page
5. Check Your Results and Tweak

Popularity: 3%

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Now I’m not sure how many of you bloggers and web developers out there have looked into email marketing. I personally find that the line between good email marketing and spam is a big gray blurry one so I tend to stay away from it. But for you guys who do use email consider plain text emails for the following reasons:

8 reasons why HTML emails will hurt your marketing efforts

1. Different email clients work differently
2. The problem with printing HTML emails
3. Connecting your users to the Internet when they don’t intend that
4. HTML emails load slower
5. Security problems with HTML emails
6. HTML emails are harder to forward
7. More variables to measure makes it more difficult to gauge your success
8. Do you want to maintain three lists?

One last pointer, from my personal experience, is that HTML emails may inadvertently be routed to the user’s spam folder.

Popularity: 2%

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Paypal’s website payments is perfect for small sites. You have a few products you want to sell so you don’t want to install a full blown shopping cart or anything. So we use Paypal a great solution but with a few limitations:
Dave writes:

The problem with Paypal buttons is that you are very limited in customisation options for your product. You’re provided with the option of up to two, yes two form fields within which you can store specifics about a product. So you could store, for instance, size of product in one field, and colour of product in another. But if you have more than two product options you’re basically screwed. Although there is an answer …Javascript. Using Javascript you can grab the Paypal button’s form as it’s being submitted, modify the form fields and then send it on it’s way.

Dave spells out every bit of code you need and the explanations. He even has links to the source code for these. It’s worth checking out. It’s an interesting idea that I haven’t seen done before.

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Dynamic Drive has done us all a huge favor. They have code for different CSS layouts: Fixed, Fluid, Two Column, Three Column and everything in between. Do enjoy.

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Interesting article from the Decentralized Information Group talking about an HTML group which is being developed, whose goals include reinventing HTML as we know it.

Any development of HTML needs to be in minor increments. We’ve seen the movement, or lack there-of, to XHTML. The browsers all worked the same so who really cared, right?
timbl writes:

Some things are clearer with hindsight of several years. It is necessary to evolve HTML incrementally. The attempt to get the world to switch to XML, including quotes around attribute values and slashes in empty tags and namespaces all at once didn’t work. The large HTML-generating public did not move, largely because the browsers didn’t complain.

A new HTML group is in the works:

The plan is to charter a completely new HTML group. Unlike the previous one, this one will be chartered to do incremental improvements to HTML, as also in parallel xHTML. It will have a different chair and staff contact. It will work on HTML and xHTML together. We have strong support for this group, from many people we have talked to, including browser makers.

XHTML2 is the way of the future.

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mbeltzner Writes:

Apparently, people loves them some Firefox. Within 24 hours of the official launch on Tuesday, there were over 2 million people using Firefox 2, and we were seeing a peak rate of more than 30 downloads per second from our website.

With Firefox being my favorite browser, I can see what all the buzz is about. If this pace keeps up they’ll beat the stats of IE7 with about 3 million in 48 hours. I guess they have it right, make a good browser and people will download. Just for histories sack let me remind you guys of how the stats have been in the past.

• Firefox 1.0 - 1 million downloads in 24 hours.
• Firefox 1.5 - 1.5 million downloads in 24 hours.
• Firefox 2.0 - 2 million downloads in 24 hours.

Do I sense a trend here? Regardless Firefox has gotten out to a strong start.

One thing to note, however, when comparing these stats to that of IE7 is that Firefox is multi platform and there is no Windows Genuine Advantage to hinder those running not-too-legal copies of Windows XP.

Popularity: 2%

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How long have you been waiting for this? A step by step tutorial on integrating Google Maps into your web application using Ajax. He starts out with an introduction to the Google Maps API. After this, he delves into more advanced techniques for adding dynamic markers, etc using ajax. Interesting article. By far, the simplest I’ve seen without making use of some already existing library.
John Ferguson Smarta Writes:

…we will discuss how you can easily implement dynamic interactive maps on your Java web application, using the Google Maps API for the web interface, and Ajax to provide real-time interaction with the server. This article is designed to give you a rapid introduction to both Google Maps and Ajax, and to let you get your own interactive maps up and running quickly and easily.

Popularity: 3%

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