Stefan Mischook
October 8, 2013
In the last year or so, Google has basically turned the whole SEO industry on its’ head: once coveted ‘techniques’ and strategies that permeated the SEO industry, actually went from being a benefit to websites to sometimes being the cause of their doom.
… Many, many highly ‘optimized’ sites got taken to the woodshed (and then behind the woodshed!) because of SEO!
Why did the vast majority of SEO fail?
In a nutshell: most SEO techniques gamed the system.
Rather than structuring websites (and their web marketing efforts) in a way that the Web wants, most SEO firms went the route of trying to exploit weaknesses in the search engines.
… Any system based on loopholes, will eventually get wrecked as those holes are filled. Common SEO practices suffered the same fate.
Not all sites got killed – why?
Some people realized a long time ago, that SEO practices and strategies based on loopholes, was not the way to go. A very few forward thinking web masters, adopted a long term view of SEO and web marketing practices and as such, the avoided the trashing and thrashing the others got.
… If you want to properly promote your site, you need to understand how to be forward thinking. That what’s I’ve always practiced at KillerSites and that’s why all our sites still rank well in the engines …. for well over a decade now.
If you have any questions, you can reach me at: stefan@killerSites.com
Stefan Mischook
killerSites.com
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October 8, 2013
Hi!
A lot of people still believe that a domain name has some sort of a great value in of itself – this is wrong, and so I keep writing about it.
Check out these domains:
– business.com
– wine.com
These two domains seems very valuable (like some piece of real estate by the sea) … and a couple of suckers have paid huge money for them. Why do I call the people who paid millions for these domains suckers? Because these domains will bring you no extra traffic, no more than any other domain … the following names are arguably just as valuable:
– TotallyMegaBusiness.com
– SuperTastyWine.com
When are domains ACTUALLY more valuable?
The only time to pay up for a domain, is when the underlying website (that sits on the domain) has a lot of traffic and/or makes good money. It’s kind of simple if you think about it!
Is there a difference in value between:
… etc. No difference really. Maybe .com domains are a touch/hair more valuable.
How to choose a good domain for your website?
That all said, it’s a good idea to choose a good domain – it can help. So what are the key factors of a good domain?
- Keep it short.
- Make sure it is easy to spell.
- If it can have some reference to what the site is about – that’s better, but not crucial.
Consider some of the biggest sites in the world:
- Google.com
- Yahoo.com
- Instagram.com
… Do any of these names tell you anything about the underlying website? No. But, they are easy to remember and spell.
Thanks!
Stefan Mischook
killerSites.com
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October 3, 2013
Hi,
Based on a recent forum post where someone with code skills (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) wanted to improve their design skills … and he was not talking about learning PhotoShop … actual design skills he was concerned about. My answer:
To begin with, look to design principles:
– alignment
– whitespace
– font use
– color use
If you have your page elements nicely lined up, don’t use more than two fonts on the page(!), keep your page colors properly matched (no clashing colors) and give the page a lot of breathing room (good use of whitespace) … that will go a long of making the website look good.
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September 22, 2013
Hi,
I get asked this every so often:
Is there a cheaper alternative to Dreamweaver CS6? What do professional web designers use?
… Of course there are cheaper alternatives. In fact, there are even FREE alternative that are extremely powerful, run on Windows and Mac and will allow you to build any kind of website you could imagine.
But before I suggest a couple of alternatives, I want to point out that many professional web designers and developers DON’T use fancy programs like Dreamweaver. Many actually prefer to use much simpler programs like for example, Notepad++.
Yes, with the simpler text editors like Notepad++, you have to know your HTML and CSS. But these days, you can’t hide behind programs like Dreamweaver anymore; web designers must understand the code and once you really get into web design, you will actually come to prefer wrangling the code manually than using Dreamweaver’s point-and-click tools.
… More than ever, web design is MUCH more about a deep understanding of code, browser behavior and usability, than it is about design.
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July 6, 2013
Hi,
We just finished updating the KillerSites Video Library with a new interface and new courses. You can check out the details here:
http://library.killersites.com/
Always Being Updated:
Are goal has always been to teach core web design techniques and technologies – things like:
- HTML
- CSS
- PHP
- JavaScript
- HTML5 and CSS3
… And much, much more. The idea is to train you in the things that you need to know to get a job as a web professional or to start a web design, web programming freelance career.
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June 29, 2013
Hi,
Rent seekers are people who look to skim and profit off of other peoples hard work by grabbing important assets and renting them out. This is actually the source of the economic problems around the world today – bankers, patent holders and other rent seekers, skimming off the real economy made up of entrepreneurs and employees.
… Rent seekers do not add to societies, they skim and steal, much like mafia thugs who collect protection money.
Don’t fall for domain name rent seekers.
The rent seeker leeches have now found their way into domain names, where these nefarious characters will buy up a bunch of domains (probably having paid $8.99 each) and then will try to rent them out to unaware entrepreneurs/startups at some ridiculous cost.
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June 21, 2013
Hi,
Before I get into the article, I would like to mention two things:
- We’ve updated and simplified the killervideostore.com website. In the article below, I talk about some lessons learned from website updates like this.
- We just released a new video training package, the Web Developer from Scratch
… If you’ve been thinking about learning professional level PHP and JavaScript … here you go!
Quick Lessons in e-commerce
Here are a few things to learn from my recent update to the Killervideostore.com website:
- If adding something to a page/site DOES NOT have any measurable impact, remove it.
- Remember that people tend to skim pages, so keep that in mind when structuring your UI.
- Seemingly small things can have a big impact on user behaviour and sales.
Remove the unnecessary:
I am always experimenting with different variations to the layouts of our pages – adding/removing buttons, adding a video, replacing link text to image buttons etc … The thing you should always strive for is simplicity – remove what is not needed. Buttons, videos and images that don’t do anything are actually distracting the user.
We recently added a video in our header, introducing the video store to anyone who cared to clicked on the video … very few did. In fact, only about 6% of bothered. Conclusion: waste of space. And so we removed the video.
Check out the old killervideostore header- with video in place:
.. Just click on the above thumbnail to see what it was like.
Now compare it to the new killervideostore header.
People Skim Pages:
When people come to a website, they skim the pages quickly … unless you catch their attention with something. So you need to remove clutter from the page to increase the chances that people will find what they are looking for.
Little Things can be Big Distractions!
I can’t overstate how important it is, that you make changes to your websites very cautiously … especially when you have something that is working.
Over and over again, I’ve been amazed at how even seemingly simple things, can have a huge impact on user behaviour. For example, we once turned our store pages from a light green to a dark green … and watched sales immediately drop 50%! We then reversed back to our old lighter green and sales jumped right back up.
I hope you found this useful.
Stefan Mischook
killerSites.com
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June 12, 2013
Hi,
Ok, maybe it’s not amazing, but it’s pretty good nonetheless!!
I want to announce that we just combined our two popular packages (Complete Web Designer and Complete Web Programmer) into one mega training package: Web Developer from Scratch.
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June 10, 2013
I’ll start with the conclusion: there will be plenty of web design and web programming jobs in the future. In fact, if you know the right stuff, there will be more work than you can handle!
You may have heard that big tech companies like Microsoft have been lobbying the US Congress on letting high tech trained foreign students stay in the US to work. The reason they want these people to stay, is not take jobs away from Americans, no …. it’s because there aren’t nearly enough Americans to take those jobs!
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May 22, 2013
Hi,
Let’s start with the conclusion: don’t ever consider renting a domain name from someone! This has got to be one of the stupidest (and nearly criminal) business ideas ever hatched on the Web.
What’s this about renting domain names?
I was almost floored recently when I got an email with the offer to rent a domain name from someone … like renting a commercial location in a mall, I suppose is the idea. The problem is, that despite what these scummy domain speculators would have you believe, the value of a domain is practically 100% in the work you do to BUILD up the value of a domain – there is very little value in the domain name itself.
What exactly are scummy domain name speculators?
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