So it happened. I hoped it would take longer but I knew it would come. It was a sad and frustrating day the other week that I have only now wanted to or have been able to write about it.
A little background to set up the scene: I work at a university, we have a rather large system that is built on MOSS. Which in of itself isn’t a major problem but still proves to be an interesting challenge.
One of those challenges is to create a development environment that is available anonymously (not logged in) to the developers only on the local network. Pretty common in the Apache world and should be fairly easy to setup on the MOSS system (or so I thought). Well it turns out that it’s not overly easy, and currently can’t be done so that it is limited to the local network. Something with how they have the firewalls setup or something.
In order for the developers to work we needed anonymous access turned on so that we could test our code as how the rest of the world would see it. Now this really isn’t an issue because only people who are working on the server know the URL. Google doesn’t know about it, Joe Plumber doesn’t know about it and you anonymous person doesn’t know about it. However the server admin thought that Google would index it right away, and was confused about it because another development environment was already being indexed by Google (another story for another time). After I reassured him that: 1. Google wouldn’t index unless it knew about it, 2. We can make sure that Google won’t index it, and 3. I couldn’t work unless anonymous access was turned on. After going back and forth a little, he decided that he wouldn’t turn it on unless he got approval from him supervisor (out for the day) or from my supervisor (also out for the day).
What it comes down to it a lack of knowledge on his part and a lack of respect for my position. I’m pretty much an expert in SEO and things related to search engines. I can tell you I knew next to nothing about Windows servers and IIS, which is why I trust the people who hold those positions to do their jobs and hope that they also realize what I do and trust me to do my job to the best of my ability.
December 12, 2008
On the 12th of November Google came out with a SEO starter guide. I thought since this will be my very first post about SEO that I would review what they had to say. They have 12 points that they make, most of which are common knowledge. This comes on the heels of Google’s Tricks and Treats webmaster event where they dispelled a few common myths about SEO and gave an idea about Google’s stance on SEO practices.
I’m going to take a look at this from the stance of building and designing websites for people (rather then robots), since that is what Google has always said.
So before I ramble on…
-
Create unique, accurate page titles
No problem here. It only makes sense to have unique, accurate page titles. Would you want a page title to say “Fish Market” when the page was really about coffee? I didn’t think so. As for the uniqueness of a title make sure you don’t have two pages with the same title. With the page title you are telling your users where they are with a quick glance.
-
Make use of the “description” meta tag
Well fancy that. Google telling us to use one of the meta tags. I know some people that are going to be a little upset about this one. Google makes it pretty clear how this helps users. They (sometimes) take the description meta tag and use it in the search results. Helpful? Maybe… Though it is another place to give a little bit more information about the page/site.
-
Improve the structure of your URLs
Google says to make your URLs make sense. That is to make your URLs have human readable words in them so that people can understand where they are. Not much to say here…
-
Make your site easier to navigate
Hrmm they suggest adding sitemaps and Sitemaps to your site to make it easy. That is one way of doing it, though having a good navigation on all your pages would seem like a better choice for your users. They do start to talk about that a little bit seem to rely on Sitemaps a little too much I think.
-
Offer quality content and services
Well Duh… “Users know good content when they see it…” I beg to differ. There are some places that users would not know good content if it walked up and slapped them in the face. But they did hit this one right on the head. Good content/services will bring users back.
-
Write better anchor text
Yup. No more “click here“. But alas people still do it.
-
Use heading tags appropriately
I think this section should really be about writing good markup. It would go far if Google started saying that good clean HTML meant something to them. Using markup how it was meant to be used should always be done.
-
Optimize your use of images
Ahh Google I love you. You used “alt” attribute and not “alt” tag. Good for you. Remember kids use your attributes wisely. Not only will they help people who can’t see images figure out what is they but they will also save lives!
-
Make effective use of robots.txt
Robots.txt is for robots and not users. There’s no other way to put it. Though in a round about way users use Google to to find your site and if you have a directory hidden then the users won’t see it in the search results. Err umm… yea I say we start a standard called humans.txt for use by humans… yea… that’s it.
-
Be aware of rel=”nofollow” for links
Again rel=”nofollow” is for robots. Unless you want to look at the source code of a site most people won’t even know its there. Also in this section they mention using CAPTCHAs for spam… NO! Damnit Google I thought you were better then that. W3C has been saying since 2005 (or longer) that CAPTCHAs are in-accessible. Bad Google bad bad bad…
-
Promote your website in the right ways
Not much to say here other then: Google can you give us examples of the wrong ways to promote our sites? I mean are there any?
-
Make use of free webmaster tools, Take advantage of web analytics services, Helpful resources for webmasters
“Oh hey there, I’m Google, I hope you enjoyed this guide of mine. I’m going to sell my products to you under the guise of an SEO guide. I make a lot of products that you should use. So I’m going to put ALL my links at the end of this SEO Guide so that you’ll click on them. YAY!” said Google over enthusiastically.
Well kids that’s pretty much it. I hoped you enjoyed my “review” of Google’s SEO Guide.
November 17, 2008
Dear Media Temple,
You’re trendy. You’re sleak and sometimes even sexy. And on the rare occasion your support is actually helpful. However for the past 2 weeks your support has sucked ass. Now I don’t mean just a little here and there. I mean big time. I even posted on Get Satisfaction because I wasn’t getting satisfaction with the service I was PAYING for, service that you claim is “Unrivaled”. You want “Unrivaled” support? Go check out USAA or Zappos.com. USAA has gotten some great awards under it’s belt. While Zappos has a rabid fan base of loyal customers. And when I say rabid I really mean it.
Sadly keeping your customers informed or even replying to support requests doesn’t seem to be on the top of your list. You claim that “In many ways you could say our main product is customer support. It’s what we work on the hardest. 90% of our staff is in some way dedicated to this process.” (source) I find this rather hard to believe as I have had a support ticket open since the Oct 15. It is now the 19th. And mind you this isn’t the first incident. I had another ticket open on Oct. 8th and wasn’t closed until the 13th. Quick turn around time there guys.
I’ve hosted with you for over a year now. I always thought you guys were pretty cool. Hosting the An Event Apart after parties. Being pretty cool to hang out with. But really taking 5 days to button up a ticket? That’s just shit. Before I even got a decent reply I had to post on Get Satisfaction. Way to take a pro-active approach to fixing client issues before I had no where else but to the public. I know how PR works. It seems you guys do also, because you were quick to give me 3 months credit on my account. But you pushed me a bit too far and gave me no recourse.
After that was settled, TWO DAYS later I once again had an issue. I hoped that I would get a quick reply seeing as how I was told my experience “is not the norm”. But alas… It appears that shitty service is the norm at Media Temple.
It really makes me wonder what other problems Media Temple has, since their “main product is customer support”.
I’m done with you. I’ve already moved my websites over to a server at Dreamhost.com. It was a pain in my ass to do that. I feel like billing you guys the 20 hours it took to complete. But I’d be happy just to get my money back.
I will never suggest, to anyone who asks about web hosting, that you guys are the way to go. I would though suggest if you want to feel like crap and get crappy customer support, that you guys are the best!
I feel dirty dealing with you,
Andrew Jaswa
October 19, 2008
