VolveMedia hears a lot of complaints about spam. Adding rules to email clients that filter based on geographic location, header info, content featuring specifics words or phrases and other routine spam fighting techniques are all good and go a long way. However, the best tool we found to use to help fight spam is make sure your websites have the following two things in place:

1. An inline contact form. This eliminates the need to have an actual email address displayed on the site and can also be setup to prevent spam before any spam attempts hit your mail box.
2. Use ASCII to represent characters. For instance, by using ASCII to render email addresses you basically eliminate most bots and spam software from reading email addresses. Here’s how it’s done:
pass an email address like admin@volvemedia.com into a filter like one found at http://fantomaster.com/fantomasSuite/mailShield/famshieldsv-e.cgi and you get ASCII code to place in the HTML code instead of regular text.
try it out for yourself.

Today comes word from Google that it’s dev team has launched some pretty major advancements to its Google Docs app. It’s gotten some pretty dramatic redesign of its document editor as well as updates to group chat, real-time collaboration and other updates that mimic a lot of functionality previously only found in Google Wave.

We at VolveMedia maintain and collaborate on documentation with our clients using Google Docs so this news today comes as a welcomed update. As a collaboration tool, Google Docs really now is second to none.

Matt Cutts of Google recently announced that site speed was now a major ranking factor. In the past it was well understood that two sites being equal, Google would rank the faster site higher. However, now it appears that Google weighs site speed even more importantly.

Google offers a plugin for FireFox and FireBug to assist developers in testing and optimizing sites for speed. The plugin contains detailed descriptions, reporting and how-to’s for helping out. Yahoo also has a FireFox plugin called YSlow. We at VolveMedia recommend and heavily rely on both to assist us in making sure our clients’ websites are as fast as they can possibly be. Ranking highly in search engines is important but so is making visitors’ experiences on our clients’ sites as trouble-free and stress-free as possible.

Ask your web designer or web development company what steps they are doing to ensure your site is as speedy and bug free as possible.

At this point there really is no argument for not using Facebook for advertising and product or service promotions. In addition to being the biggest social networking based website it is one of the most visited website in the world. If you don’t have a personal or business page on Facebook yet put one up now.

In addition to getting free exposure for your website or business, having a Facebook profile can help with reputation management and search engine optimization.

The web is inundated with companies who lure prospective clients in with catchy sales pitches like “Simply the fastest & easiest way to set-up a website” and “Easy, Secure, Simple & Fast”. We’ve seen a number of clients come to VolveMedia asking for assistance on websites they have had setup using these types of dedicated internet hosting and web design companies that offer WordPress based solutions.

Overwhelmingly, we see similar complaints about these types of “premium hosting services”:

• - Setup and payment were easy but company X offers no real support or custom solutions
• - Picking and implementing a theme for our WordPress site was easy but we can’t switch themes or make basic changes to site layout without something breaking
• - Hosting is included in our monthly bill but Company X won’t let us transfer our domain or host our site ourselves without a massive penalty
• - Company X charges a lot extra for normal stuff like email or ftp access, and getting custom changes done takes forever and is really expensive

Here’s a couple of tips to help you when choosing an ideal web hosting or web design company:

1. 1. Host or make sure YOU own and control your own domain name. Don’t let anyone else register or hold your domain name.
2. 2. Make sure your site is hosted with a reputable and good hosting company like GoDaddy, HostGator, RackSpace, etc. Doing so will alleviate many potential headaches with site downtime and maintenance.
3. 3. Always find out exactly (and get it in writing) how long custom work and emergency maintenance will take. If there’s an emergency or something that needs to be changed or added immediately on your website that you cannot do yourself in the WordPress admin, you’ll need to know that your web design company can accommodate your request without delay.

And as always, if you don’t have a personal rep to assist you or have your emails or calls returned within 12 hours then find another web design or web hosting company.

With the emergence of a new class of mobile devices that companies like Apple and HP have ushered in there has never been a more appropriate time to discuss Adobe Flash and it’s future.

Devices that use the Android OS and iPhone OS don’t have Flash support. Why? Well some of the reason is political and commercial but ultimately Flash is a closed, not open, standard and at times a bit of a resource hog.

Many websites today use Flash for delivering ads, videos, interactions, animations and games. With roughly 30%+ of internet users using mobile devices to browse web paves by 2013, what are websites to do about the over half of those devices that will not be Flash capable?

HTML 5 to the rescue! More developers and websites are turning to the newest standard in HTML. By this time next year all relevant browsers will support HTML 5. While most online games you play will likely stay in the Flash format for the forseable future, just about everything else will move to HTML: ads, interactions, video, etc.

VolveMedia doesn’t typically use Flash for anything else other than some animations and game development. We are a fully compliant HTML 5 development company. We cannot stress the importance of minimizing Flash. Your current and future visitors will thank you.

Like many in my profession, I got in line early to pick up my new Apple iPad. Anyone else who is serious about web development should be extremely curious about Apple’s new device and the potentials it has.

It is estimated that by 2013 nearly 40% of all web traffic will be from mobile devices. Devices like Apple’s iPad, Microsoft’s Courier and HP’s Slate will comprise a large percentage.

The apps that will be developed and sold for these devices mark a new trend in web navigation. Many will be turning to an app to find what they need online instead of using Google. While apps will never replace Google they do represent another marketing forum and way to gain customers.

We at VolveMedia already have a number of clients who have expressed a keen interest in potentially marketing their products and services through apps.

If you are a designer or developer, now is the time to look at apps and especially the Apple iPad.

How important is Google AdWords for your online business? To put it plainly, it’s crucial to its success.

Don’t plan on using Google Adwords? Fine! But using Google Adwords is essential to gauge how your site will perform once it reaches the top of search results for those keywords you want to rank well for. How do you do that?

Simple, really! Gather your list of keywords you have built your site around or simply just want to test and do a small campaign in Google Adwords. A budget of anywhere from $10 to $50 a day should be sufficient enough to gauge how your website will do for your keywords. Run the campaign for roughly a week and you will have some good analytics to use to gauge the kind of traffic and conversions you should get on a typical basis.

While running your Google Adwords campaign, you’ll see your website in the ad spaces in Google (the top and on the right side) for searches that are returned by those seeking information on the keywords you are testing. The analytics you will get by running a modest campaign is invaluable as it will show you impressions, hits and give you a really good estimate of just how competitive the keywords are that you are using.

Utilizing Google Adwords in this fashion will save you potentially a lot of valuable time, resources and money. If a keyword you are thinking about optimizing or promoting for doesn’t end up doing well for you in your Google Adword campaign, you can dump it and test something else.

Recently, a client’s website was taken offline by the hosting company they were using to host their site. The client’s credit card had expired and they never received notification from the hosting company to update their info.

As a result, the client’s site was down for nearly a day before they could resolve the issue. The following day many of the client’s targeted keywords plummeted in Google. Of the roughly 15 keywords we monitoring and promote for this client, 10 of them fell 3 or more places in Google and Yahoo.

Rankings continued to fall or stay lower than average for a few days before most (not all) rebounded within the week or two.

Moral of the story is that it is crucial to the success of your online website to make sure you don’t have outages. Always keep track of your billing information and make sure your hosting company informs you anytime your website is down for any reason. Most reputable hosting companies have a guaranteed uptime of 99.8%+ and will notify you immediately of any site problems.

This will be quick and dirty. Page Rank, named after one of the founders of Google Larry Page, is a measure of authority. It’s the result of a calculation Google performs on all sites to assess it’s overall importance.

What does it mean to the normal, average person? Absolutely nothing! I have numerous clients who are often very concerned about Page Rank and consistently ask why their site’s PR is high or why it is low.

Page Rank is really not that important but is a good gauge to make sure a website is on the right track. If the PR for a website that gets heavy traffic or has numerous back links is 0 or n/a then I know that something might be wrong or that it hasn’t been indexed properly by Google.

We at VolveMedia are experts in link building and SEO. We know that some types of websites max out at a PR of 2 and getting any higher is not needed or contrary to the site’s goals.

Higher PR is not always better. PR is more like a Google pat on the back for telling you that you are on the right track or that you are doing what you should be doing.