Now put on your tinfoil hats folks, because I smell the start of a conspiracy theory of Insider Ranking…

On 5-16-2007 webmasters started posting about removal of credit for reciprocal link accumulation on real estate websites.

On or about 6-6-2007, The SMX diaries Interview with Matt Cutts revealed the discussion about the reciprocal linking penalty against real estate sites and the thread going on at Real Estate Webmasters about this.

On 6-11-2007, this posting was made on seomoz about how to handle a Google Penalty, and an example from the world of Real Estate.

On 6-14-2007, Vanessa Fox announced that she was leaving Google Webmaster Central, and it was also reported on SEOMoz and on Matt Cutts blog on 6-14-2007 as well.

On 6-26-2007 additional postings have been made concerning how it looks to be hit by Google’s Real Estate Reciprocal Link Penalty.

Does anyone know where Vanessa is going when she leaves Google webmaster Central?

Anybody???

The answer is Zillow.com

Anyone want to tell me what Zillow.com is?

Anybody???

From the title and description…

Zillow - Real Estate Valuations, Homes for Sale, Free Real Estate Information

Zillow provides free real estate information including homes for sale, comparable homes, historical sales, home valuation tools and more. Whether you’re a first-time homebuyer, selling a home, agent, broker, buyer of investment property or real estate professional - Get Your Edge in Real Estate at Zillow.com.

Did Vanessa give a 1 month notice then help pave the way to make sure that the new real estate venture turned out profitable by damaging the ranking of competing real estate websites?

Google Sued in Domainer Lawsuit–Vulcan Golf v. Google - This is a new lawsuit in which Google is being sued for allegedly violating trademarks by allowing “typo” domain squatters to monetize with AdSense. A Typosquatter is a group that will register mis-spelled versions of popular domains like;

techorati.com
youtuve.com
gogle.com

I am sure if you type these in, you will be presented with a website. I am not going to glorify their exsistence with a link here….

I have to say that I agree there is a problem with AdSense and I also wrote an article quite some time back asking if Google AdSense was perpetuating Click Fraud with their AdSense for Domains program.

I would like to welcome the newest member of our team… “Big D”. Big D joins us from Huntington, WV where he was working doing web development for another company doing their Intra net. Big D brings a host of skill sets to our team including;

Photoshop 5.0 / 5.5 / 6.0 / 7.0 / CS / CS2 / CS3
Adobe ImageReady 7.0 / CS2
Adobe Premiere 6 / 6.5 / Pro 2.0
Adobe After Effects 5.5 / 6.0 / 7.0
Adobe Illustrator
ASP (Active Server Pages)

PHP
Advanced CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) Layout Design
HTML coding
Macromedia Flash 5 / 8 Professional
Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 / Adobe Dreamweaver CS3
Install & configure CGI & Perl Scripts

Real Producer Plus & Windows Media Encoder
Experience with Web Streaming Windows Media, QuickTime, & Real Technologies
Video Editing & Motion Graphic Creation Experience on Adobe Premiere / After Effects

Big D is originally from Sri Lanka. We feel that he is an excellent addition to our team here in Kentucky, but we have to work on his favorite sports teams because he doesn’t bleed blue just yet….

Website Pricing
Every day, we receive about 5 web development quotation requests. Every day, we work to put together a quotation based on value of service using a cost per hour model without giving our potential client sticker shock. We take a great deal of items into consideration when preparing a quotation including the laundry list of features and amenities requested for a website.

Template Design
First and foremost is the quoted cost for the custom template design. The actual look and feel of your website is key to insuring your customer/visitor has the best possible browsing experience. The core of your site will be designed and laid out using best practices with emphasis on SEO to present your business to the visitor in a manner that reflects your professional image and brand. Equally important is usability. The easier it is for the visitor to use your website, the greater the chance of converting them into a customer and increasing the chances of repeat business. The process for designing a custom web template includes;

• Research into a particular field.
• Phone consultation.
• Current trends and color analysis.
• Graphical compositions produced in Photoshop or Fireworks.
• Possible Flash development.
• Providing 2 concepts for customer review and possible revisions.
• Template splicing of approved template for load time optimization and usability.
• CSS/XHTML production in standards-compliant fashion.
• Additional bell-and-whistle functionality to meet client requirements.
• Unique CSS/XHTML adaptation/integration to web based platform of choice.

The entire template design process can take anywhere from 40 to 60 hours not including consultation time or potential revisions.

We also take into account the current market cost per hour for professional graphic design. Based on our research, we have set our own pricing at $120.00 per hour.

We have also done extensive research online and have consulted with other designers to arrive at our pricing model for professional graphic design as it applies to web development. One such source is a blog entry posted at http://www.pearsonified.com/2006/06/how_much_should_a_design_cost.php and designing custom templates for blogs is currently somewhere between $1800.00 to $5000.00.

Another article from Ezine.com located at http://ezinearticles.com/?Standard-Rates-For-Graphic-Design&id=429015 states that custom graphic design can get up as high as $160.00 per hour with 3-D design costing upwards of $250.00 per hour.

Based on the time needed to design the template, our standard cost per hour, and a survey of other pricing models, we have priced our custom template design at $2,900.00.

Database Development
Web development consists of more than just graphic design. There is often a need to produce dynamically generated content or a need to interact with site visitors using blogs, forums, polls surveys, etc. Often, our clients need the ability to populate and manage a secure online shopping cart while selling their goods or services. While we have modular applications to handle most of our clients needs, we often find the need to develop custom programming to achieve the desired functionality for our clients. Once again, we employ an hourly pricing model and have arrived at a rate of $120.00 per hour for all PHP and MySQL programming.

Rough Web Design Pricing
Often, we are asked to “shoot” someone a rough price for design/development of their site based on x criteria. The information below is to be used only as a guideline before making an inquiry for quotation and should not be used for actual quotation purposes. The pricing below does not reflect custom features, real estate management, etc.

Custom Template Design
Starts at $2,900.00

Business Informational Site with Custom Template Design and PHP/MySQL based CMS
$3,500.00 to $10,000.00+

Business E-Commerce Site with Custom Template Design and PHP/MySQL based Shopping Cart
$5,500.00 to $10,000.00+

Business E-Commerce Site with Custom Template Design and PHP/MySQL CMS with Secure Shopping Cart
$6,500.00 to $10,000.00+

If you are still reading this article and would like us to quote a solid, professional website backed with exemplerary customer service, then please contact us or submit a quotation request. We would be happy to submit a quotation to you within 24 hours.

For those of you who do not know what a googlebomb is, it is the practice of creating many links to 1 website with the same anchor text in an effort to cause that website to rise to the top of the serps for the given search term. That is the short definition. An extended definition is if the page being linked to is not relevant to the anchor text used to describe the link, then it is a googlebomb.

Google has made a recent announcement concerning difusing the googlebamb by making changes in their algorithym, and Matt cutts has discussed it at his blog.

Webproworld visitors are speculating that this can not be done automatically as it will nullify any benefit of being dug or promoted through any other form of online social networking sites. Some of the argument is if a buzz is created on the vast social networking web, than a large amounts of links could be created to the source in just a matter of a few days. Given the fact that a product or article was crafted well enough to warrant creating such a buzz, would it be fair for Google to kill the increase in percieved popularity.

What I think a lot of webmasters are missing is the word “relevancy”. If the anchor text pointing to a website about cars is “boats”, then the incoming links could potentially be ruled as irrelevant.

Another indicator of googlebombing is a quick massive increase in the number of inbound links with the same anchor text in the link. This brings another problem to the surface and that is the number of inbound links generated in 1 day back to popular GNU General Public License freeware type programs like PHPBB, Mambo, Joomla, RSStatic and the like. Currently, phpbb shows over 2 million incoming links. Joomla shows over 240,000. Mamboserver shows 65,000 links.

Granted, most of the links to these programs and the creators of these programs will be relevant to the context of the site, the sheer number of links generated in a single day could easily trip a new googlebomb filter.

How about website designers that provide free scripting or that create free templates for webmasters that can be downloaded from any free template website? These designers request that a link back to their website remain intact as a condition of use of the free template. The link back to the designer that provided the free template is not much different than putting a logo on a box. If someone wants more boxes, then they know where to go get them. It also serves as a vehicle to help drive additional sales for someone who may want more than a free template look and feel.

I can understand difusing the googlebomb, but please be careful and make sure a lot of innocent folks don’t get hurt in the process.

We are currently working on a development project for Imax Insurance and we are providing template design, content management, hosting, and template integration for a component provided by Ipipeline.

We initially quoted doing the development of the financial feeds they wanted, but Imax was convinced by a viscious sales person at Ipipeline that they were the only ones who could provide the content they needed.

We modified our quotation accordingly to just take the services provided by Ipipeline, wrap templates around it, and we would not be responsible for its (ipipeline)Â function or modifications.

The product is called AnnuityPipe Suite and cost Imax $1,295.00 for the license, and an additional $275 per month.

The sales person promised Tom Thomas (Imax) the moon and that this Anuitypipe suite could and would perform all of the functions he needed.

Quitely, in the background, we are putting together web templates, getting signed acceptance of the template design, and have uploaded our seo friendly content management system, and have done the integration necessary for the third party application.

Here is where the problem starts. Tom Thomas has discovered that the Annuitypipe will not display an annuity calculator, nor will it display the top 5 annuities in a feed on the website. Tom is now withholding payment untill we fix the flaw in the third party application that we had nothing to do with. We can not make him understand that we only quoted time to learn how to implement the system and not that we were going to make modifications or guarantee its performance.

What we have discovered is that the sales person that promised him the moon is no longer employed with IPipeline and Ipipeline will not honor the promises made by their long gone salesperson. Tom’s only recourse now is to try to beat us into submission so that we will fix his bad business decision.

Fortunately, our contract reads that all litigation will be handled in Hopkins County, so he will have to come here when we sue him for payment

I am currently turning down websites like this, and I would caution all developers to seriously scrutinize any potential projects that come together like this one.

Job Description:
Seeking an experienced PHP / MySQL developer and Web 2.0 designer that can embrace our existing applications and take on full responsibility of technical and creative development. Ideal candidates have at least two years of professional development experience using PHP / MySQL along with solid HTML / CSS construction capabilities. You must be very organized, be able to work autonomously, honest and reliable. This is full-time position in a creative, upbeat work environment located in Madisonville, KY. This position is responsible for the maintenance and continued development of our suite of websites and interaction with our customers.

How to apply or learn more:
For Consideration, Email us or reply to this blog entry with your contact information.

Key responsibilities include:
-Developing, deploying and maintaining the web site infrastructures, including hardware, software, policies and procedures;
-Utilizing web authoring and publishing tools;
-Performing and coordinating site management to ensure high availability and consistency of site appearance and functionality; and
-Resolving system and software problems to ensure system integrity.
-Direct customer interaction.
-Effective eye catching design of customer applications/websites.
-Any and All other duties as assigned.

Basic Requirements:
-2+ years professional experience
-Languages: Strong working knowledge of PHP, MySQL, HTML/CSS, JavaScript
-Knowledge in Red Hat Linux, FreeBSD & Apache
-Experience in developing scalable web apps
-Life cycle development & change control
-Ability to determine & doc requirements
-Web page layout construction (CSS driven w/ template schemas)
-Security on web-based apps
-Positive work ethic absolutely required
-Must be willing to re-locate to Madisonville, KY.
Â
Desired Skills:
Flash, Branding, Marketing, Web 2.0

Non-Tech Skills:
Oral & Written Communication, Tech Documentation, Intrapersonal skills

Benefits:
Health Insurance, Paid Vacation, Company Sponsored Simple IRA

Old Testament wrath-of-God type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling. Fourty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria.

Well, it might not be as bad as it was for the Ghost Busters, but there are a lot of folks panacking about the loss of Page Rank.

PR for several prominent websites has dropped to 0 overnight and it has webmasters running for cover as blood seeps from walls. There is a lot of talk about it over at webmasterworld and Matt Cutts mentions a PR update himself over at his blog.

My site was one of the affected, but I am going to ride this out with cautious optimism.

It is often written that one of the best tools for search engine optimization is to keep posting fresh relevant content in your blog, but how much crap is generated on the web because of this school of thought?

Dont post something just to try to generate the most link worthy or digg worthy snippet of useless information, post stories or thoughts that readers can actually use. How many blogs out there are carying the story of Google Ad Words supporting terrorist activities?

Simple re-posting of content from other sites serves noone. Discussion of current topics, though, encourages feedback and gleens insight into the issue.

Our goal with our blog is to keep visitors informed of our activities, educate visitors on areas where we can shed some light, and possibly encourage community involvement. We would like to solicit feedback from our visitors to find out what we could do better to serve their web development needs.

In a recent newsletter from WebProNews I read the following question concerning Google Radio Ads;

One particular hurdle the company will have to address is measuring traffic. Clicks, page views, and unique visitors all offer a particularly reasonable method of quantification when it comes to tracking advertising metrics.

The question remains, however, what analytical method Google will choose to implement for radio, as the aforementioned measurements are unique to the Internet.

So as Google takes to the airwaves, it seems we are left with more questions than answers about how Audio Ads will take shape.

Having placed a few radio ads for other businesses that we own including our web design business, I can tell you that radio is sticky in the minds of the consumers, but is very hard to track. One solution offered by a print media company that also applied to radio advertising was for the company selling the advertising to buy a bunch of toll free numbers and assign 1 number to each advertiser. Using the unique identifying toll free number assigned to each advertiser, it is possible to retrieve a call rate and an area of where the calls are coming from.

This information can be used to hone the radio advertisement to improve “Call Throughs” and also used to improve stickiness in geo targeted areas.

Also, using unique landing pages for the radio ads would help to track the conversions from listener to visitor, then internal metrics can track transformations from visitor to buyer. A simple url of yoursite.com/radio should do the trick.