4Elements, Amsterdam, Holland

Since I started my company, I’ve worked with many people from all across the world. Ten years ago, this would have been virtually impossible, or at least extremely expensive. My telephone bill would have gone through the roof. But today, with e-mail, instant messaging and Skype, it’s easy and affordable to communicate with people everywhere.

So now that distance and communication costs are no longer an issue, I’ve found that there is a new challenge: finding the right time to talk. With clients in many time zones, this sometimes takes a lot of calculating and planning. Fortunately, the web offers nice tools to manage this too. One of the prettiest I know is Time Zone Check. This site shows me a map of the world, with my own current local time. Then, when I point my mouse at the location of someone I would like to talk to, the map shows me what time it is in their part of the world. I can even search for cities by name if I don’t know the exact location.

The map also shows me where it is night and where it is day, the places in the world where they’re currently enjoying daylight savings, the abbreviations of the time zones and the time difference between those time zones and my own time zone.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a tricky business.  There are loads of tips and tricks written about what to do to score highly in search engines.  It’s also important to take a look at what NOT to do.

Google, the current top dog in search engines, advises:

Do Not Use Hidden Text - Sometimes it’s difficult to fit keyword-laden text into the home page. It might be tempting to add in some really small text that’s the same color as the background. I’ve had more than one client come up with this very idea for getting a bump in SEO.

Forget about it. Google WILL figure out what you’re doing. What happens to you then? Think excommunication. I’ve seen it happen to sites. One day they’re riding high in the search engines and the next day they’re nowhere to be found.

Do Not Use Doorway Pages - Doorway pages are made to do well in search engines. That’s their primary job. After that some doorway pages act as a portals to other sites. Still other doorway pages are built just to gain advertising revenue. They’re just big pages filled with ads.

While these pages may benefit the website owner, they do very little for the visitor who’s looking for information. And Google is all about providing good information. As a result, once these sites are discovered their rank goes way down.

Don’t Use Duplicate Content - I’ve heard of SEO companies that recommend website publishers get several domain names and put the same content on all of the sites. Then they make sure all the sites link to each other.  And just like that you’ve got great SEO scores. Wrong! Google is on the hunt for websites that that do this and penalizes them.
What’s the lesson here? There is no free lunch in terms of SEO. Website owners need to provide content relevant to their keywords in order to do well in search engines. Websites should be updated on a regular basis and the website code (HTML, JavaScript, etc.) should be error free. Be sure to use a lot of text as oppossed to images.

Here’s a quote directly from Google:

Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”

Your domain name is the first point of contact on the internet. It is a vital part of the address of your website and of your e-mail address. You’ll be using that domain name for a long time, so it’s crucial to spend some time deciding on the best name, to find out if that name is available and to register a few variations of that domain name. In this article, I will present some tips and suggestions about the steps involved.

Is your own name a good domain name?
It’s smart to select a domain name that is easy to remember and spell. Many people want to use their own name. That’s fine, no problem here. I’m not using my own name, but using a name that catches all elements we do, found on the internet as www.4elements.com.

A different approach is to select a domain name that describes your service, your product or something unique about your business. A dry cleaner in Manhattan, operated by the Jones Company, could use jonescompany.com. However, a domain name like drycleaningmanhattan.com is probably much better. This name is easy to remember and easy to tell others. And this name is likely to do very well in Google. It is a known fact people will often search for a combination of the service they need and a location, so having both dry cleaning and Manhattan in the domain name is a good strategy.

Variations and spelling
If your brand is world wide (or you have plans to go international), it’s a good idea to register some international variations from the start. So in addition to the .com version of the domain name, consider the .co.uk or .cn versions (for the UK and China respectively). These are just examples. You don’t have to start using them right away, but it does mean you will not see others running away with your domain name.

If it could be unclear how to spell your brand, business or domain name, it may be a good idea to register a few alternative spellings. For instance, the dry cleaner mentioned above should also register drycleaning-manhattan.com, drycleanermanhattan.com, and drycleanersmanhattan. By doing this, they can avoid these alternative spellings from being used by domain name squatters for all sorts of evil.

A brand name as domain name
You can register a domain name that has someone else’s brand name in it. But the rightful owner of that brand might object to your using it. He could start a legal procedure. Some examples of uses that would cause trouble are to use brand name A to link the website of competing brand B, or to use a domain name for brand C to start a web shop with products by C. You might say: C should have registered this domain name. But intellectual property laws will most likely prevail and C will probably win.

Domain name registration
Registering a domain name is easy and doesn’t take a lot of time. There are numerous internet providers and companies that specialize in this aspect of internet business. In most cases your domain name will have to be paid for in advance, for a period of 1 year. Often the costs for the domain name are part of your web hosting subscription.

I’d like to help you decide on a good domain name
If you’re thinking about a domain name for your site or business, you could consider hiring a consultant to help you. I’ve been involved in this in many projects and I’d like to offer my assistance. Just contact me if you’re interested in using my services.

In the last view days we made some changes to our website.

The front page:
The whole idea was to make it more clear what we offer and what the prices are.

DesignScan:
A new idea, more info will be released in the coming weeks.

SEO:
A service that we already offered to our clients. But now, by huge request, we offer it as an extra stand-alone service.

Blog:
A complete redesign of our blog and blog search page. Easy navigation and a clear design to improve the reading and interaction.