whatshesaid

I'm doing a complete rebuild of my site/business/approach to work at the moment, so I'm playing around with some design ideas. I'd be interested to know what you think of this...

'you' as in the website owner or 'you' as in the SEO bod? There's thousands of things a website owner can do to promote their site - we used to call it pr and marketing back in 'the old days'.

you could just wait and see what happens with this... http://nocookielaw.com/

They may not ask what anchor text they want you to use (which, I believe, is one of the ways that Google is learning to spot 'unnatural' links), but they will link to you, if you have something worth linking to. If people aren't linking to you of their own accord, then you've got a problem with your content. I'm sure there is more to SEO than just linkbuilding though - otherwise, an SEO's job may well be to find themselves another career before long.

Jason, as someone in the biz, what's your take on Penguin? I've picked up from various places that Google is essentially looking at *any* kind of link building tactic as problematic - especially keyword focused links. i.e. the only good link is one that someone has added independently, because they think your site is worth linking to. Is that just scaremongering?

Why not build it all in WordPress and just restrict access to the pages so he can't edit them?

Aaah yes, WordPress, because code is poetry - but is it art? For what it's worth, half of this thread was asking the wrong question about whether something was art or communication. Art *IS* communication - it's the way an artist communicates with the world. An artist could easily use the medium of web design for his art, just as they could use paint, or bricks, or marble, or a dead sheep, or a vase of urine. The item is not the art. Something can be good art or bad art and still be art. Equally, something could be incredibly well made, or incredibly poorly made, and not be art. Over the years I have seen a lot of paintings that wouldn't meet my criteria to be art - some of them were very pretty and would look lovely over your sofa, but they weren't art.

Oooh, you're having the 'but is it art' argument! I love this one. I have it all the time with people.

Hi folks, I am putting together a survey on web content - in fact I'm putting together two of them. One is aimed at lovely web designers and developers, like your good selves, and the other is aimed at those curious and capricious creatures - the client. The survey results should (hopefully) paint a picture of the role of content within the web design and development process. For instance, are clients becoming more interested in content? Are agencies using more specialist content providers than they used to? Are the amounts of copy/video/audio/photography on website changing? What CMS do companies use? That sort of thing. I've got a reasonable list of questions already. But, as I'm not a developer or designer, there will almost certainly be areas that I haven't thought of yet. As they say "I don't know what I don't know". Hence, I come to throw myself at the mercy of your throbbing pile of experience. So, what questions (or areas) should I ask about when it comes to content and web designers and developers? How does content affect your work? What sort of things would you love to find out from other companies about the way they handle and manage content? What do designers and developers know about content that no-one else seems to understand? And also, what sort of questions would you like me to ask in the client survey? Is there something about the way clients approach content that baffles/enrages/delights you? All suggestions are most welcome. And I will of course keep you updated about the survey, and let you know when it is launched. Thanks!

Yup, as Fran says, you own the copyright of any original piece of work you produce (unless you produce it as part of your employment, or sell it). You can put a copyright notice on it, so people can see who you are, but it won't give you any additional protection.

I was under the impression that Google was about to come down hard on any sort of link building strategies. I'd be very surprised if any 'free press release' site was around for very much longer. As BrightonMike says, you should only really be releasing news releases when you have something to say that is newsworthy. I started my career as a PR girl, back when we were still sending press releases by fax*, and for a while I owned the domain pressreleaseme.com with the intention of putting together a press release distribution site. But the economics of it didn't make sense (particularly not from a bootstrapping point of view). *when I were a lad it were all fields round here. edit: Oops, just noticed that this was an old(ish) thread, resurrected by our friendly financial services linkbuilder there. Should have ignored it - sorry.

oops, my bad. Mind you, you don't get much more like Mailchimp than Mailchimp.

I've worked with VA's for a few years - not for phone answering (although, I have considered it), but for other stuff, like helping with admin and invoicing; diary management and scheduling; and just for helping get some of the little things sorted out. When you work on your own, it can be invaluable to have somebody who's got your back, who knows what's going on, and who can act as a sounding board. And it's like a lot of things, the cost of paying someone to do the things I don't want to do is much less than the cost to me in having to do them myself.

Ask him what he wants the website for (presumably 'to sell things' in this case) Remind him that he is not his own customer (and that they might not think that it's boring) Suggest that he gives the boring theme a try for a few weeks/month to see if it gets the results he wants At least, that's what I'd say.

how about... Mailchimp?