BohnStudios

Sorry I thought I figured this out for you, but I'm out of time. I saw that you were using jsfiddle...don't know what that is. Here is the code that you can fiddle with and I believe you can find the solution in here by making an IE exception. GOOD LUCK! /* UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING, DO NOT CHANGE THE FOLLOWING RULES */ .easy-accordion h2{margin:0px 0 20px 0;padding:0;font-size:1.6em;} .easy-accordion{display:block;position:relative;overflow:hidden;padding:0;margin:0} .easy-accordion dt,.easy-accordion dd{margin:0;padding:0} .easy-accordion dt,.easy-accordion dd{position:absolute} .easy-accordion dt{margin-bottom:0;margin-left:0;z-index:5;/* Safari */ -webkit-transform: rotate(-90deg); /* Firefox */ -moz-transform: rotate(-90deg);-moz-transform-origin: 20px 0px; /* Internet Explorer */ filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.BasicImage(rotation=3);cursor:pointer;} .easy-accordion dd{z-index:1;opacity:0;overflow:hidden} .easy-accordion dd.active{opacity:1;} .easy-accordion dd.no-more-active{z-index:2;opacity:1} .easy-accordion dd.active{z-index:3} .easy-accordion dd.plus{z-index:4} .easy-accordion .slide-number{position:absolute;bottom:0;left:10px;font-weight:normal;font-size:1.1em;/* Safari */ -webkit-transform: rotate(90deg); /* Firefox */ -moz-transform: rotate(90deg); /* Internet Explorer */ filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.BasicImage(rotation=1);}

First off, I've built lots of websites for clients that have CMS....many different types: php, asp, off-the-shelf, open-source, custom, etc. Some situations it's great and a good fit, others it can lead to huge financial disaster for the business if they have invested a lot of money into developing professional content. For some cases you are right, but I do not believe that what you said is a rule of thumb by any means. For example, I write the content for many of my clients' websites - doing SEO for them. For many clients I work with, it would take them much longer for them to learn how to use, let's say Joomla, than it has for them to send me their "content." Keep in mind, this is for some types of businesses that I work for...not all. A pub that has new events every week on a calendar...then sure a CMS is great for that. Or, a company that has professional writers, then sure a CMS is great. I have seen som websites and SEO campaigns innocently screwed up because a "client" had direct control of their content. I have even seen people lose their jobs over it. It's really not cool when that happens. In one case I saw a client lose a search result that was generating tens of thousands of dollars for them - just because they heard that it was a good idea to type keywords over and over again and make it white text on a white background....just one example I could list dozens of similar CMS problems just from what I've seen. Another situation, the client deleted pages and named them differently without using 301 redirects....that one basically ended up costing the company over a million dollars in their marketing budget. Obviously, there are lots of different scenarios where CMS is good and where CMS is not so good. The point is that there is no rule of thumb and every "client" has different needs, budget, and business models. I'd also like to point out that most clients don't know anything about information architecture or how to make their information accessible. They usually know little about keyword tagging, alt tags, internal linking etc etc. They also commonly upload photos that are like 2mb when they only need to be 15kb optimized. So, if it is an important website where I am ultimately responsible anyways then what is the best call? I often have to go back and clean up the mess anyways. It's all relative to the type of business, the CMS you intend to use and the staff that the business has working for them. In cases where having a CMS is right for a client though, I think that Macromedia was on the right track over 10 years ago when they originally made "Contribute", an FTP based CMS. Similar technology has since come a long way since and as far as CMS goes, those types of programs are the only off-the-shelf programs that a person can actually sit down and start using right away. Joomla sucks, Drupal is even worse and although Wordpress is the easiest to use of the three "big dawgs" I think it still has a long way to go in terms of user-interface design. I'm just basing this on my opinion and experience. There is no one-size fits all. You don't give someone who is not a professional writer the ability to screw up a lucrative revenue stream - just like you don't give a 6 year kid the keys to a truck to go drive into a tree. It's all relative to each individual client, so I have to disagree with you.

You make some very good and logical points. However, from a competitive SEO standpoint, particularly for high volume keywords, there are some things I recommend taking into consideration... Phone numbers for businesses are included in Google Maps/Local/Places. Additionally, this is where your sitelinks can come into play. For example, having a "contact" page in your sitelinks is one way to achieve this...at least how Google seems to prefer. Also, if you put your phone number in all of your descriptions it is possible to get tagged for duplication in Google Webmaster Tools. Keep in mind that some of these things are relative to the keywords being typed by the user. Google also manipulates your descriptions based on the keywords being used. For example, if the user searches for "MusicCorp phone number" then Google will often manipulate the description anyways to include the number or Google will bring up the sitelinks and/or the Google Maps info for that specific business search. It can, and often does, grab text from the body of the page being listed. This is what Google Shopping Results were designed for. Search for "guitars" on Google.... A very competitive search phrase I might add. When I searched this keyword, "Guitars" from my location, there is not a single "regular" search result (that uses meta description) on the first page that has a price listed. However, on the "shopping results" you will see prices, but this is of course separate from meta descriptions we speak of. If you know the name of the business, then google places/maps listing for the business should appear and/or the sitelinks with their contact link. I absolutely agree with you that CTA's can and should be part of a business website and it is a more appropriate place for CTA, as I mentioned in "banners" being one of the appropriate places for a call-to-action...banners that can apply for 3rd party advertisers on a website, or, for the website owner's products/services.

Just in case you send emails to US businesses, here is an overview of the applicable laws: http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business

You can offer to guest-blog on other websites that get a lot of traffic. You write a little bit of content for them in exchange for a link back to your website...everybody wins.

You could check out Google Adsense. Banners at the top of the page usually have the highest click-through-rate.

Basecamp for your project management and Blinksale for your billing/invoicing. They integrate together. That's what I use and I have found that it is a good combo for small teams.

A CTA for a TV commercial - SURE...A CTA for a Meta Description - NO. I respectfully must disagree with you. The only scenario that I can think of where a CTA would be appropriate(and not hurt you with Google) is if that particular page was dedicated to a promotion that required an action from the user...even then "promotion" or a similar word would probably need to be in the keyword...that's all still a BIG maybe in my opinion and I would stay faaaarrrr away from call-to-actions in meta descriptions and keep those CTA's for banner ads, opt-in email marketing and TV commercials. SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY...click here, come and get it....you can't miss this deal! Do very much of that and you are going to flirt with being black-balled...in my opinion

Why not? It saves me time. More time to drink a pint after work is done. Proportionately, I don't think it's a lot for SEO on larger sites...fixing typos, improving internal links, improving a paragraph here and there. As far as I know, Google likes fresh, updated content that is improved over time. Are there any ways that updating 20 pages in one go could hurt my sites? Is it possible that Google could see the file mod times, for example if I "save all" at one time after I make my updates....that could look like automation (just pictured a robot-version of myself...ah how useful a Robo Ron would be...that would be one handsome machine if I might say lol). Any other possible down-sides that this could cause?

I agree 100% with rallport. I will add that if you have a page that shows up in search results for multiple keywords, Google can have different descriptions for the same page, depending on the keyword that is being searched.

I am in the US. I found this site ( webdesignerforum.co.uk ) when searching for "web design forum" from the US. It was #3 at the time. If there are not geographic identifiers (keywords, ie: London or USA or San Francisco etc) in the keywords being searched, then you should show up in English language search results for your English language content. I hope I understood your question correctly.

Webmaster Tools is highly recommended. Any pages that you want indexed in Google, you should put them in your sitemap.xml file and submit that through Google Webmaster Tools also. When you first submit your sitemap through GWT it will say how many url's you have submitted. Once they are indexed, Google will say within your GWT panel that they are indexed. Just in case, sitemaps.org is where you can check out info on sitemaps that Google prefers/accepts. The current url for Webmaster Tools is google.com/webmastertools

Your meta descriptions can change depending on the combination of keywords / phrases to find a particular page. If Google deems that text located in the middle of your page is better for that particular key word the page is showing up for, but is not in your meta description, then it can disregard your meta description and use that text within the body of your page. In other words, yes, Google can and will manipulate your descriptions if it thinks it will make their search results better for its users. There are likely several different ways this can happen...you're situation is just one. For example, if your page has a good click-through-rate (CTR) with the old meta description, and, when people click to your site, they spend a lot of time on that page, then it is very possible Google might not see a need to change it because according to the stats, the users are getting what they need.

Could you please explain what are lies? That's a big claim so I kindly ask you to back it up with solid information. Thanks!

Google Analytics is now in real time. I noticed it started working solid on my account since around February 2012.

I learned the other day that Google+ is just the basis for crazy star trek style glasses that Google is developing with social media, Google Maps and more integrated into one complete system. Couldn't they just make those hover boards like in Back to the Future?

You're welcome Ciwan! (and thanks for answering the ROI question Flame)

I will admit that using a CMS can be MUCH easier and less stressful than doing it the way I do it, and, in most circumstances (regardless of skill and experience), using a CMS might be better. It's just my personal preference and the main reason I prefer to do it manually is for the fastest possible loading speed for the end-user. There are ways to get the best of both worlds by using FTP-based, non-database CMS. I guess you could call me stubborn.

I respect that, however, I have found it faster to do it manually. Here's why... In an ideal work environment, I have already have a graphics program open on one screen for creating, optimizing / exporting my graphics and I have an editor (dreamweaver) and ftp program (separate from dw) on my other screen. I would get a third screen except that would make me feel self-consciously nerdy lol Let's say I am updating 20 pages on a website (I do a lot of SEO so this is common). It takes usually around 3-5 seconds for most CMS's that I have used to publish content after I hit the "save" button (or publish, whatever depending on the CMS). So for those 20 pages I can be spending almost 100 seconds just waiting for the system to publish when I hit the publish button. It also usually takes at least 3 seconds to load each page. So, already we are looking at 5 minutes all-together just to open and save pages after I make the edits. Keep in mind that I often make small edits such as adding an internal link here and there. So, in this update scenario, I can be spending almost as much time waiting for a CMS to load as I am making the actual updates. So you might ask, what would I do instead of using the CMS that is so much faster? Well, In many cases I can open all of the files at the same time in dreamweaver (about 3-5 seconds to open all of them). Then I make my edits which is assumed that the actual time would take at this stage in the updating would be the same as if I were using dw, notepad, cms, whatever. Then, I can upload all of the files at the same time in my ftp program and select to replace all files that are "newer" on my local machine compared to the server and whammo.....The opening the files and uploading takes me literally like 15 seconds (at the most) compared to 5 minutes that I would spend waiting for the average CMS (that I have used) to load...for updating 20 pages of content. Yes, it takes about a minute during the FTP on average to go through the cycle, but I can get a drink or check my email while that is happening. As for adding new pages, I use includes if it is a page high enough in the hierarchy to add to the nav bar(s). So, I have to add a link to one file...which does take about the same amount of time as it would in CMS I guess for creating a brand-new page. And, for updating wherever I am, I personally like to keep my work at work, but for emergencies, I usually have a laptop with me that have my site files synced.

I've done front-end development for 4 custom ASP CMS's (VBscript and C#) and about a dozen custom PHP/MySQL CMS's. I've also worked with Joomla, Drupal, Noah's Classifieds (had a robust CMS engine at one time but it's been a while) and some other lesser-known boxed CMS's back in the day. Lately, I have been looking into Expression Engine because I am a front-end developer with weak-to-moderate PHP and ASP skills. EE has caught my eye because I think I might be able to build a custom CRM system / browser-based business operating system with it despite my back-end weaknesses. I've also used non-database CMS's like Contribute, Simple CMS etc.

Nope, just the built-in browser checker and validator (since around 2002 - good 'ol macromedia). Also, the code find and replace comes in handy. I do admit the UI has way more than I need, but it is also really customizable nowadays. I also don't use dreamweaver for ftp so speed is a non-issue for me, in that regard. I don't use them, but I could imagine how the check-in / check-outs would be helpful on really large teams...that's assuming I understand how it actually works since I never used that functionality. Coda looks pretty cool and I noticed that it has subversion integration with it....I know some server-side developers that love that. I am a front-end/design/SEO "wimp" .

It works really well. In fact Adobe is on top of the game in this area (my opinion). You can also check for compliancy and check legacy versions of browsers back to to IE5. Also, Adobe's sample code is bullet-proof in terms of cross-browser display. The browser and compliancy checker is THE ONLY REASON that I use dreamweaver. That being said, I don't use other functionality like "dreamweaver sites" ...that stuff is a complete waste of time.

This might be controversial, but lately I have been wondering if I would be better off managing my sites with manual code instead of using wordpress. Why? I can update them faster manually and I have more control. Just clicking the update button on wordpress seems to take several seconds every time I do it, whereas saving a php file and updating a navigation include (to add a page) is faster for me. The pages load faster for the user when I do it manually. I'm thinking in terms of what is best for the end-user and search engines. Also, keep in mind that if you still need a cms there always non-database options that would give the would be best of both worlds. I would really appreciate your thoughts on this as there are several websites, that I'm thinking about rebuilding for the reasons mentioned above.

I sure wouldn't store my passwords on some site that costs 129 to build. As a developer, I wouldn't touch that project with a 10 meter pole.

This is what works for me... Anything that is working on a client's project is billable....whether it's coding, designing, looking for icons, acquiring stock imagery, etc. If you are doing work for someone, you should get paid for it, unless they didn't agree to pay you to do some work that was not in the project specifications. It's important to write clear contracts. COMMUNICATION with your client(s) is really important so there are no bad surprises - for you or them. That being said, I usually try to "hard-bid" projects for new customers because they have not worked with me before and it's reasonable to assume that they want to know what their costs are going to be for their budget. I still keep track of the time and I set a limit for my time...once again keeping communication clear/open always helps. After I do one or two "hard-bid" projects for a client, I usually switch them over to straight hourly billing. I can do this because by this point in time, they have usually been able to see the ROI on the work that I have done for them and there is a certain level of trust established...therefore they value my time and are happy to pay for it.