ReadCopy

In the past I have tended to create webpages/sites in fairly static HTML, but I'm not looking at alternatives. I want to start to develop with 'include' files to make my developments easier to manage (header, footers, navigation etc all in one global file), also potentially CMS systems and I am also wanting to start to do stuff with MySQL, but which technology (PHP, SHTML or ASP.NET) do you advice me to use? All comments welcome. Thanks in advance.

I agree with charliesaidthat in that Realtime is becoming much more important, just do a popular daily search on Google and you should see content from Twitter that is just minutes old! News items are now been picked up quicker too. That said, Google is looking more at the content. The new Google search (codename “Caffeine”), has been tested, prodded and poked by many (including me), and I'm pleased to say (as a Copywriter) that there is much more emphasis on the words and phrases used on the page. Google also now prefers quicker loading pages which can mean using a lot less words on a page! The new Google will seem to prefer clearer writing, not as flowerly, typo's and grammar errors could effect results, and it's more sensitive to the use of keywords and key phrases (the old Google still allowed some level of spamming, the new Google doesn't!). As ever, my first suggestion is ALWAYS to write for your visitors, NEVER write webpages to try to capture search engine rankings alone, but don't forget those keywords, they are important.

Thanks all. nellyshark, not quiet sure what you're asking, but if you mean how do we write the great words that we do, for me it's all about personality. Once I get into the personality of the copy that I'm writing the words just seem to flow. Sometime we are given a fairy strict scope by clients, sometimes it's a bit wooly, and we have to feel our way through the work. We usually research our topic loads because unless we focus on one particular market sector we can't know everything about everything! I love the creative side, I love finding the right words and phrases that bring a piece of copy to life, but it's all back to that personality for me, it's the key :-)

Just wanted to say hello, and see what we can learn from each other. Mainly going to be taking part in any chats about SEO and Copywriting.