Scott's Web Shop

A teacher took me to a class on using Camtasia Studio, a new to me screen recorder tool. Maybe it was the instructor, but it is dead simple to use. The teachers use it to develop online lessons  or  tutorials  videoed directly from their desktops.

I have been working with video for first time recently when SOSL asked me to to take their DVD of last year’s walk and upload bits of it to the website for this year’s walk. I found free software (FormatFactory) to first convert it to MP4 then another freebie (Avidemux 2.5 to edit it.

All worked well but the audio came out distorted.

Discovered I could use Camstasia for this. Converted to AVI then edited. Camstasia has an export setting for You Tube where I exported it. Piece a cake.

Camstasia is not cheap ($299, $179 with education discount – I’m using the 30 day free trial) so will look at Windows Media Encorder which is free.

BTW, I’m using Windows Live Writer for the first time to post this. Assuming it posts ok, this is a keeper. Easy to write, edit, insert hyperlinks.

Writes Matt Cutts in his blog. Keywords are still important in the description meta tag as those will show up in the search results, though apparently not used for rankings. A video on Matt’s blog explains further as does an entry in the Google Webmaster Central Blog. The is more clarification in the Q&Q and comments that follow there. One says leave the keyword meta tag out to save space and increase speed; another says leave it in for insurance and possibility other engines use it. Other thoughts?

I have been researching a plan of action for getting a client’s site found via Google. Lot’s of web marketing stuff out there on things like how to use keywords. What’s Web 2.0 for reams?

Watched a video yesterday by Matt Cutts who is head of Google’s Webspam team. He does a lot of videos on common sense ways to handle SEO.

Refreshingly clear and simple.

His main thesis on getting noticed by Google:  higher quality content =>higher number of sites linking to you and how important those sites are (”Pagerank = # of sites linking to you and how important those sites are”).

His counsel: write about what you’re passionate about. Write often, then you will write well, then you will have lots of high quality content, folk will turn to you…

Here’s link to Matt Cutt’s Blog. It’s on the video “White Hat SEO Tips For Bloggers”‘ from late August.

I’m continuing to learn as much piece meal or trial & error as in an organized read the manual manner.

After fiddling around with the last theme until I liked it I read an article Chris Price at A3Webtech wrote, SEO for CMS.  He said, “The simplest way to check a basic level of quality, as ever, is to go to the W3C online validator at http://validator.w3.org and check the website’s index page.”

So I checked. Lots of errors. Lots.

I tried out the themes I had uploaded at various times: same or similar results. Went to Cutline. No errors!  Well, after all the theme shifting I did pick up a couple of html errors, mostly in the footer that weren’t there – but they’re not design errors. I also discovered some of the plugins I was using were responsible. They were there regardless of theme.

I hear arguments pro and con about the importance of validating.  Such as, “The site of the big companies who sit on the validator boards don’t validate and they work well.”  So I keep this in mind so a to not become rigid on this. I like seeing validation as an indicator of quality though. What are your thoughts on validation?

Oh,  comments on this theme?

Thanks to Gizmo’s Freeware site, a real gem.  The Web Book is comprehensive, readable 330 page book that can be downloaded from the author’s site. Free for personal use, very inexpensive for commercial.

Starts from very basic information about the web and web hosting then covers HTML, CSS, PHP, MYSQL, CMS, SEO, the whole shooting match.

Suggestion: go to the preview, widen the left panel, and click on topics that interest you.

I’ve added a link to the web book on my Website Resources & Tools page.

This post is so Technorati can verify that this blog is real and I own it. Technorati is an internet search engine for searching blogs. Registering Scott’s Web Shop Blog with them will make it more visible on the web. Here’s the code: nvqcryhswk

Here’s link to Wikipedia article on Technorati:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technorati and, of course, link to Technorati:http://technorati.com. A place to learn a ton about blogs.

BTW, any time I run into a new tech term or want to understand a little more about something I run to Wikipedia.

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Regarding your site showing up on search engines: keeping it fresh – fresh new information.

One way to do that would to have a blog. Although it can be a separate stand alone blog, it might also be an information page that you update regularly.

If the latter – have links from the front page and where ever else appropriate.

I woke up thinking the first thing to write about in setting up a web site is deciding whether to use a content management system (CMS) or make your site from scratch using an html editor

Then realized that first is being clear about why to have a web site. What is it’s goal or goals.

In my case am building three sites. This blog, where my goal is to instruct, learn, and bring attention to my second site which will be primarily an ad for my web business. Both will have as secondary goals as a collection of resources.

The third site will be like an ad for my private practice where I introduce myself and the services I provide.

What are your goals for your site(s)?

Also, before deciding on how to build the site is deciding on where to have the site. That is, where to host it. Found a helpful discussion of these issues here. BTW, the link goes to one of my favorite resources for free software. Be warned: a great deal of time can be spent there.