I recently had a good friend ask me to figure out why her friend’s website was not coming up in Google. After a quick review, the answer was obvious: the site had no text content, it was 100% flash. It also had zero backlinks. There was no reason why Google would rank this site, in fact, it wasn’t even in the Google index at all. It had a splash page, and played the same music on all pages. Which leads me to a familiar theme that keeps running in my head: who should you select to design your website: an Artist or an Engineer?

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I’ve just had yet another Aplus.net customer service problem. I’ll keep sharing these so that folks who are thinking of using Aplus.net for their website hosting will consider other companies like DreamHost.com. If you are shopping for a website hosting company, please read this article on how to select a GOOD website hosting company.

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Thinking of selecting Aplus.net as your hosting company? Please think again. As a website designer, I have to deal with many different hosting companies. Often, I have to contact them for support while working on a client’s website. If you’ve read my other posts, you know I only recommend DreamHost as a website hosting company. And I decided to start collecting my experiences with with other companies, like Aplus.net, so you can see how frustrating it can be. Here’s today’s installment: Jill, Aplus.net, and getting a spellchecker.

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I’ve just had a particularly frustrating experience with the hosting company, 1&1, and wanted to share, or perhaps vent. I’m allowed to vent in my own blog right? And if on the lucky chance that someone is shopping for a website hosting company and is considering 1&1 (aka 1and1), I may spare them and their website designer many frustrating phone calls, wasted time and wasted money.

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Beware of Pay-Per-Click Advertising on Citysearch!

After spending many months focusing on getting good organic search engine rankings for my own website, I decided to get some experience with pay-per-click advertising for two reasons. First I wanted to see if it would increase my own site’s traffic. Secondly, I wanted to be able to recommend a pay-per-click strategy for my clients. I decided to start with well known Citysearch. (Update: I now am confident in recommending Google AdWords for those clients who need pay-per-click traffic - but you must actively manage the ad campaign. If you want help managing a Google AdWords campaign, click here.)

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