As you may know I’m not the biggest fan of Internet Explorer 6.0. It’s a very out dated browser that wreaks havoc on us web developers…meaning we still must continue to support it because a fair amount of users insist on using it.
This may all change soon.
I just received an email from Salesforce, a very well known Customer Relationship Management company, saying they will “de-support” IE6 (Internet Explorer 6) in the spring of 2010.
Why? The Salesforce team explained it well:
IE6 is less secure. Multiple security vulnerabilities in IE6 have been exploited over the years. The most recent attacks against Google, Yahoo, and other companies specifically targeted vulnerabilities easily accessible in IE6 but much more difficult to exploit in IE7 and IE8—leading the Microsoft Security Response Center to recommend that users of IE6 upgrade to a newer version of Internet Explorer.
IE6 is slow. Of all of our supported browsers, IE6 provides the slowest and least rewarding user experience for our customers.
IE6 is a “last generation” browser. IE6 was first released in August 2001. As an obsolete, non-standard platform, IE6 is a difficult browser on which to develop and support the rich internet applications our customers have come to expect.
No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google, not even Google.
If anyone tells you they can guarantee your site #1 placement on Google, they’re lying.
It is possible to get your site ranking higher in Google and even the #1 position, but there is no guarantee that it will happen. We are really at Google’s mercy.
Learn more about how to get your site ranked higher in Google, by following these 10 SEO steps.
I needed to rent some equipment and found West Coast Rental here in Alameda. I picked up the phone to get ready to call and couldn’t find the phone number anywhere on the homepage, not even in the footer.
No Phone Number Present on Homepage
I had to spend some time to search for the ‘Contact Us’ button and then found the phone number.
If you expect people to contact your organization, I’d highly recommend including your phone number on your homepage…and maybe on every page for that matter.
PS: After reviewing the site, they might not be able to help me anyway. I was looking for tool rental equipment, not party & event rentals. Oh well.
Michael Swartz, of MJS Web Solutions, was elected to the Alameda Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors.
I will serve a three-year term beginning January 1, 2010. As an Alameda Chamber of Commerce Board Director, I will:
Be an advocate for all of the business community
Serve on committees, task forces or special projects.
And consider him/herself a “trustee” of the Chamber and do his/her best to ensure that it is well maintained financially secure, growing and always operating in the best interest of the business community.
I’m very excited to represent the Alameda Chamber of Commerce and to continue to keep Alameda a business friendly community while maintaining its small town appeal.
MJS Web Solutions is a full service web design and development firm located in Alameda, California with a focus on internet marketing, search engine optimization and getting your website found.
While performing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services we’re told to not forget the long tail of the search. (I.E. The length of the keyword search). A lot of people don’t just search with one word.
Well it turns out the majority of us search using only one word and the percentages of clicks decrease as we add more keywords to our search.
Still Focus on The Long Tail Search
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t focus on the long tail search. You should. The long tail search is usually beneficial for creating conversions because people are using more descriptive and specific terms in their search.
Percentage of U.S. clicks by number of keywords
Subject
July 2009
August 2009
Month-over-month percent change
One word
23.51%
24.21%
3%
Two words
23.54%
23.71%
1%
Three words
21%
20.74%
-1%
Four words
14.02%
13.78%
-2%
Five words
8.10%
7.90%
-2%
Six words
4.35%
4.23%
-3%
Seven words
2.34%
2.27%
-3%
Eight or more words
3.22%
3.16%
-2%
Note: Data is based on four-week rolling periods (ending Aug. 1, 2009, and June 27, 2009) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users.
My graphic designer uses a Mac (I use a PC) and while he was switching between windows I noticed how simple it was. One click the windows tiled all over the desktop. I was told it’s called Expose for the Mac.
Windows has something similar, but nothing in comparison. It’s me using the Alt+Tab buttons. The Windows Flip in Vista is pointless.
Switcher for Vista
Searching around the internet, I found Switcher for Vista. It works great, just like Mac’s Expose. You can also setup unlimited number of shortcuts. The most important shortcut for me was launching the program. I could use a keyboard shortcut, but I wanted to use the scroll wheel button to tile the windows.
How to Use the Mouse Scroll Wheel Button to Launch Windows Switcher
In Switcher settings, go to Shortcuts link
Click the ‘Change’ button next to Mouse Shortcut
Select the shortcut in the left window
Use these settings:
Close and you’re done
Warning: You must click outside of any window otherwise the window will close.
All was great until I tried to open up a Word 2003 document. I couldn’t. The only way to open up the file was to drag the file onto the Word icon.
Turns out I was also unable to use my mouse to create or edit an email in Outlook 2003. The keyboard was my only friend. I’m using Word as my email editor and I kept getting the error message:
Do you want to save the changes to: PDFMCustom.dot
Putting two and two together, I realized it must have been the CS4 install. It was and it changed or messed with my Windows registry settings.
The Fix
I searched high and low on Google and found the answer on Adobe’s forum explaining the fix:
Google has announced – again – that they DO NOT use the keywords META tag in their keyword search.
The keywords META tag, if you don’t know, looks like this:
<meta name="keywords" content="bay area web design company, alameda web design, alameda web designer, internet marketing, web design, website design, web designer, web developer, alameda, san francisco, california, web hosting">
So, if you think you can just drop your desired keywords into this tag, forget it.
NOTE: Other search engines may use the Keywords META tag, but Google does not.
The MJS blog was created to share with others our successes, mistakes and experiences while on the internet. I hope we're able to provide some useful and meaningful advice in the process.
No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google, 
Michael Swartz, of MJS Web Solutions, was elected to the Alameda Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors.
I thought this was a very interesting statistic.
My graphic designer uses a Mac (I use a PC) and while he was switching between windows I noticed how simple it was. One click the windows tiled all over the desktop. I was told it’s called 
I just installed 
