Web Design Book - In at number 5

The Web Design Book blog has been named the 5th most dynamic website of the week, by ratings website Alexa, thanks to our recent appearance on the Digg.com homepage.

Alexa keeps track of how many people visit a website and ranks them by popularity.

Web Design Book’s popularity shot up this week from around 65,000 to just 8,916. That’s an increase of over 750%!!!

That means there were only 8,915 websites on the Internet which had more visitors than we did last week.

Not bad, when you consider how many millions of websites there are online and just how fierce the competition is (Google, Amazon, the BBC etc).

Rand at SEOmoz reminded me of a technique I have used to some success in the past. Predictive SEO.

Basically, pick a word or search term you think is going to be popular in the future and create a page to take advantage of all the searches which will take place.

For example, the winner of the Super Bowl, the winner of Pop Idol of the winner of the FA Cup.

One example is when a celebrity couple get together, create pages for their break up, having a baby or one of them caught en flagrante. Although how you could of predicited Hugh Grants social fopah is beyond me. (more…)

In most western counties, including the UK, USA and Australia, website owners are required, by law, to make sure disabled people can use their sites.

For example, blind people use special software called a screen reader, which reads the contents of a web page out to them. However, the software can only read a website that’s been well-coded (ideally using Web Standards).

British clothes shop River Island’s website is a stunning example of how NOT to do it.
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Choosing a domain name for your website can be tricky. However, as somebody with an embarrassing name (Rich Quick, get it?) myself all I can say is, think long and hard before you name children or websites:

1. A site called “Who Represents” where you can find the name of the agent that represents a celebrity. Their domain name - wait for it - is
   www.whorepresents.com
2. Experts Exchange, a knowledge base where programmers can exchange advice and views at
   www.expertsexchange.com
3. Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at
   www.penisland.net
4. Need a therapist? Try Therapist Finder at
   www.therapistfinder.com
5. Then of course, there’s the Italian Power Generator company:
   www.powergenitalia.com
6. And now, we have the Mole Station Native Nursery, based in New South Wales:
   www.molestationnursery.com
7. If you’re looking for computer software, there’s always
   www.ipanywhere.com
8. Welcome to the First Cumming Methodist Church. Their website is
   www.cummingfirst.com
9. Then, of course, there’s these brainless art designers, and their whacky website:
   www.speedofart.com
10. Want to holiday in Lake Tahoe? Try their brochure website at
    www.gotahoe.com

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One of my posts, How to fake a Web 2.0 logo, ended up on the homepage of Digg.com yesterday. Here’s the effect it had on the number of visitors who came here.

555 visitors one day, 47,501 the next. Impressive, huh?