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Blog Category: Rants


Meet the author:
Jill Olkoski

Jill has a MA in Clinical Psychology, a BS in Computer Science, and a BS in Mechanical Engineering.

She currently owns Aldebaran Web Design in Edmonds (near Seattle WA) and enjoys educating her clients on topics related to small business website design.

In Jill's previous life, she spent 17 years in the engineering and quality organizations of a Fortune 100 tech company.

 


Why Do Web Designers Disappear After Your Website is Done?

November 13th, 2012

Frequently I received phone calls and emails from small business owners who need updates done to their websites. I ask them what happened to their website’s original designer, and answer is always the same: “they disappeared, I tried to reach them but they won’t answer my email/phone calls and I need changes to my website”.

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Got Bad Online Reviews?

March 9th, 2011

I just received a phone call from a prospective client that was so unbelievable – well, I just had to write a blog article about it. This business owner wanted a website, because they (wrongly) believed, that somehow creating their own website would remove bad reviews their business had received online. They had no understanding of how the web worked and were absolutely furious.

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Did You Hear – White Pages Are Obsolete!

November 11th, 2010

Recently I had a prospective client who did appliance repair tell me that websites for small business owners are not needed, because when people need an appliance repaired, they always use their phone books. I told him I didn’t even have a phone book. He thought I was lying. Now I realize the white pages are not the yellow pages, but surely this article would have helped me win the debate: White Pages Face Last Call: Residential Phone Books’ Days Are Numbered

“Telephone companies argue that most consumers now check the Internet rather than flip through pages when they want to reach out and touch someone.”

I’d imagine the yellow pages will follow the same trend…

How Many People Use The Internet?

November 1st, 2010

As a follow-on to a little rant I did on small business owners who don’t want to embrace the web, I found some really good statistics about trends in internet usage for the United States. Just so I’m prepared for the next time someone asks me to make their phone ring with new customers.

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Don’t Bury Your Head In The Sand – Small Business Owners Must Embrace The Web

October 29th, 2010

I had two interactions with small business owners this week that really caused me to pause and wonder what year it was. Small business owners NEED an online presence – a website, and they need a nice professional one too.

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Google Map Spam – New Private Reporting Form

February 11th, 2009

Great news for those of you who have competitors who you think might be spaming Google Map listings (adding more than one listing for a single business): a representative of Google Maps has just emailed me with a new private form!

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10 Things Not To Say When You Are Interviewing A Web Designer

January 16th, 2009

I am frequently contacted by folks looking for small business web design. My business is hopping, so I can afford to be careful when selecting which clients. For those of you who are shopping for a web designer, I wanted to share with you the 10 most common non-technical things that will cause me to turn down a job – and things that just might help you avoid getting scammed by an unethical web designer. I know these items aren’t unique to the web design field. And if you run a small business – these may be very familiar!

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Blocking Certain Countries (India and Russia) From Viewing and Spamming My Website

January 8th, 2009

web-stat.jpg

Recently my beloved website traffic tracking company, Web-Stat, announced a new feature: Geo-Targeting. This nifty feature enables your website to automatically detect a visitor’s location and do neat things like showing a particular banner ad or other location-specific content. It also allows website owners to block all kinds of traffic to their websites by country, state, zipcode…and many other things. I thought, hmmm, why would someone want to block traffic? The answer: Spam Prevention!

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Google Map Spam – Multiple Listings By The Same Company

January 5th, 2009

Google Map Spam? What in the world could I be talking about? I’m sharing this with you because in doing some SEO work for a client I discovered this shameful practice of cheating Google Local / Google Maps listings. Very shameful and unethical. If you find a company that’s spamming Google Maps, use this private form to report it.

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What is a domain name worth?

November 2nd, 2008

How do you know what a domain name is actually worth? If you want to buy it, how do you know whether you’re paying too much for it? Tonight just for grins and giggles, I decided to see who owned Aldebaran.com – it redirected to another website, which meant to me that it wasn’t being used – so I figured I’d contact the owner and see if they wanted to sell it.

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