The Big O Foundation

We are honored to have been chosen to create a website for The Big O Foundation and have designated the foundation's website as our 2022 Nonprofit Award winner. Honoring the life of Owen “Big O” Skelley, the mission of The Big O Foundation is to serve and support children, teenagers and their families that are facing mental health challenges. Owen was a young man full of life, love, and generosity. His love of sports especially baseball and football were very important and rewarding to him. He was always striving to get better and a dedicated team player. He could always pick someone up when they were feeling down regardless of the situation or mood he was in. Improving and building up others was his highest priority. One of the fundraiser events The Big O Foundation holds is the Owen Skelley Memorial Golf Tournament. If you'd like to learn more about The Big O Foundation, please visit the foundation's website at https://thebigofoundation.org.  

Original post here: The Big O Foundation

Malware & SPAM Tips

Malware is Everywhere

We originally wrote this back in 2017. Since then the level of SPAM coming at you from every direction has increased. We thought it was time to revisit this topic and remind you to be vigilant in your effort to avoid these attacks on your inbox and privacy.

MALWARE & SPAM TIPS

We've all experienced a jump in the amount of SPAM emails recently. Along with the increased amount - the tactics have become more ruthless. It's something everyone is affected by and it can have malicious intent, or be more benign but regardless, it's ALL a big pain in the ass. Especially for businesses.

Unsubscribing

Many times an unsolicited email will have an "Unsubscribe Link". Score right?! Well, maybe but it might just turn out to be a touchdown for the other team. Take our word for it, those almost never work. As soon as you click it, you're alerting the Spammer they have reached an active email address. It encourages the sender to throw more junk your way. Don't waste your time with Unsubscribe Links.

Address Removal Services

Well, what about using one of those Address Removal Services? There are a bunch of those, all offering to remove your email address from spammer lists - for a fee of course. Turns out, these Unsubscribe Services are just as bad if not worse than the spammers they claim to help get rid of. They are cons; some even claim to be consumer protection agencies. They hit you two ways. First, they extort money from you, then instead of removing you from any spammer's list - they collect your email address and any other personal information you have given them and use it to spam you all over again. The truth of the matter is that once you start getting spam emails (and you almost certainly will) it's impossible to remove yourself from the clutches of these creeps. About the best you can hope for is to set up some email filters to help deal with it.

You May Be Spamming

Did you know you could be sending out spam yourself and not even know it! Usually, it happens like this: you get an email with a link to a suspicious site. You are on top of your game and know that you shouldn't click on the link but the email came from your friend and you trust them, right? Wrong! Once you click on the link a bot is downloaded to your computer. Now the spammers will use the bot to send email to your friends to try and get them to click on the same link you did. Eventually, they build a network of bots they can use for bad things like denial of service attacks or sending out massive amounts of spam. Installing a good anti-virus program can protect you from bots. Want to check your computer for malicious code or viruses? We recommend Malware Bytes. They offer a free version and it works!

Rules To Live By Online

1. Never click on an attachment in an email unless you are 100% sure it's from a trusted source AND even then proceed with caution. Hover over the link and look in the status bar to see where the link will take you. This is a good way to "look before you leap".
2. Never, ever buy anything from an unsolicited email. Never! Don't you do it!
3. Install and use a good anti-virus program. There are many free programs that do an excellent job of protecting you. Find one and use it!

SPAM is costly ($6.28 at WalMart for the canned version - back in 2017 it was $1.98). Trying to pin down an accurate cost of SPAM is tough but most estimates put the cost in tens of millions of dollars. (we think the true cost is much higher than that). According to the IBM Threat Intelligence Index 2022, The volume of malware increased 3,000% Q3 2019 and Q4 2020. If you have a SPAM problem and would like some additional information or help to resolve it, please use our Contact Form - we'd love to hear from you. Unfortunately, Malware and SPAM are here to stay and something we all have to deal with. Follow our Malware and SPAM Tips and stick to common sense online "rule of the road", learn how to set up filters in your email client to delete SPAM and remain vigilant. If it makes you feel any better, buy a can of SPAM and fry it up. It's actually not too bad.

Original post here: Malware & SPAM Tips

Should Web Design and SEO Be Mutually Exclusive?

Why Do So Many Web Designers Neglect Technical SEO?

The web design community has been quick to embrace the benefits of having an awesome website, and we’ve seen a lot of innovation over the years with design software and techniques. But when it comes to the topic of SEO, the landscape has evolved so quickly over the last decade that many web design professionals are either unaware of the fundamentals or, worse, don’t care.

Web Design and SEO

In the past, SEO and design were two distinct disciplines that were largely mutually exclusive. While today the two go hand-in-hand. This isn’t to say web design is no longer necessary; far from it. As our world has expanded and digital media has become mainstream, companies have begun to see the need to create websites that are visually engaging and have functionality beyond simple navigation. There are many reasons why SEO and design are intertwined today. The most obvious reason is that web design is critical to the success of your website. As a matter of fact, web design and SEO are so closely related that you can’t have one without the other. So what does that mean? It means that when you create a website for your business, you should use design principles that are SEO-friendly. This includes things like using appropriate tags, keeping page load times as fast as possible, and optimizing images and video. There’s no arguing the fact that SEO is the most important factor for driving organic traffic. But as web designers begin to dabble in web development, they may find themselves neglecting many of the technical SEO aspects of the web. Technical SEO is a very important aspect of website design that often gets overlooked. It is the foundation upon which you build a site and helps determine the site’s overall ranking. The lack of attention to technical SEO can have a negative impact on the success of a website. I've reviewed a lot of websites and am always surprised when I do a basic site audit and find so many basic technical SEO elements not used correctly or missing entirely. To me this seems like a disservice to a client. How can you do good SEO without taking basic design into account? In an ideal world, a company’s website would be the best possible representation of its brand. In reality, this is rarely the case. In fact, most sites don’t even rank in the top 5 for anything. Let’s take a look at what technical SEO elements a web page needs to have in order to rank well in search results. In my opinion these should be mandatory and it's disappointing to see so many web design firms omit or ignore them altogether. The elements we think are important are based on our real-world research and testing - not on what someone wrote in an article somewhere. 1. Title Tag: Title tags are what you see when you click on a title in a browser. They are an important element of the link between the searcher and your web page. It is highly recommended that you use a keyword-phrase in the title tag. This helps to make your web page more relevant to potential visitors. 2. Meta Description: Each page needs a meta description that describes the content of the page with an optimal length between 70 and 320 characters. This should summarize the page and "sell the page". The meta description is what you see when you perform a search.   3. Header Tags: Header tags are used to structure a document and provide information to users about the document's structure. Each page should have only ONE H1 tag. Header tags should follow the correct heirarchy order (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6). Search engines will give more weight to web pages that have clearly defined headings, which help to improve search results. Headings also play a critical role when it comes to screen readers for someone who is visually impaired. 3. Keyword Consistency: Keyword/keyword-phrases should be distributed across important HTML tags like the Title, Description, Header tags, and page content. 4. HTML Structure: HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language, and is what creates a web page. HTML is also used to create forms, videos, and other documents. A web page's HTML should be clean, simple, and organized. It should follow best practices and be easy to read. 5. Alt Tags: Alt attributes are an often overlooked and simple way to signal to Search Engines what an image is about, and help it rank in image search results. Alt tags are used in place of images for web pages that cannot load any images. These tags are also used by screen readers. 6. Schema.org: Schema.org is a type of structured data markup that describes the content on your web page and is used by search engines to understand your content. 7. Content: Content is the information that you want to share on your web page. It could be text, audio, or video. Having good keyword-rich content helps reinforce your page authority to search engines. Ideally you want your content to have a mixture of text & images and contain around 1,000 words. 8. XML Sitemap: You may already be familiar with the concept of a sitemap. A sitemap is a list of pages on your site that outline the content and links within the website. When you make changes to your site, you can easily add these pages to the sitemap. The sitemap is crucial to a successful website. Google and other search engines use this information to determine what your website offers. 9. Linking: Internal linking of web pages is important and often overlooked. Not just using a menu - interlinking pages by the use of anchor tags can boost page rank. All of these technical SEO elements should be used correctly on every page of a website. Unfortunately in a lot of cases, that's not true. Here are some of the errors I see frequently: 1. Title tag too short or too long. 60 characters is optimum. 2. Title tag doesn't include the main keyword/keyword-phrase. 3. Meta description missing. 4. Meta description doesn't include keyword/keyword-phrases. 5. H1 tag missing. 6. Multiple H1 tags. 7. Keyword/keyword-phrase not included in header tags 8. Header tags out of order. 9. Header tags not used. 10. Alt tags not used. Good web design and SEO can live together in perfect harmony. It doesn’t matter how good your website looks if no one can find it. Search engines such as Google and Bing make decisions about where to rank websites based on various factors. Your website’s content and the structure of your website pages are often among the most important ones. However, a combination of both is best! It may seem redundant, but consider SEO as a part of the project, not an afterthought. Think about the keywords and phrases you want to rank for, how users will find your content, and what types of content they might want to find. A well-designed site that offers useful information, easy navigation, and an easy-to-read layout will make it easier for visitors to find what they’re looking for and keep them on the site longer. A well-optimized website that ranks well for keywords in search results is sure to bring traffic and revenue to your business! We incorporate proven technical SEO elements during our website design phase on sites we develop at Team 218 Web Services. If you have questions about Web Design and SEO or anything covered in this post, send us a message and we'll be happy to help you out.

Original post here: Should Web Design and SEO Be Mutually Exclusive?