Free Technology Newsletter - From The Desk of Alan K'necht
In this issue:
- Alan K'necht's perspective on the Canadian IT sector for the first half of 2004
- What's Happening at K'nechtology
Update on Search Engines - Helping Learning Village - Product Reviews
WordTracker - a staple of every search engine optimization specialist
Acrobat - Version 6
The first half of 2004
As we approach the first days of summer, I'm happy to report that the Canadian IT sector continues to pick up steam. More and more I'm see companies of all shapes and sizes starting to once again invest in new equipment (hardware) and both new and custom built software.
The big change, to no surprise, is that more and more new applications are using web browsers for their user interface. This is great news for the users, who only have to know how to use a single tool (the browser) to navigate to various corporate applications. This has also allowed software development teams to leverage their expertise in web site user interface development into building user interfaces for applications.
In response to this trend, I've written several columns on tthe opic of browsers for ComputerWorld. Here are the columns, if you're interested in reading more about this topic and the implications on software and web development:
What's Happening at K'nechtology?
It's been a long while in happening, but K'nechtology has finally redesigned its own web site. So if you haven't taken a look in a while click on over to K'nechtology. The site is built using the latest web development techniques of XHTML and CSS. Not familiar with these terms don't worry; let's just say they make maintaining a web site a lot easier. The only limitation of this technology is that the site doesn't look identical in all browsers and several graphical features don't appear in older browsers. The good news is that all content is available to all users regardless of which browser they use.
Google Update
Following up on my two special bulletins (from late 2003) about changes in the Google algorithm for ranking search engine results, the good news is that things have finally settled down. There's been some shake ups and occasionally bogus results are still appearing for certain key word phrases in Google. However, since early in the second quarter of 2004, results have been a lot more reliable.
The good news is that K'nechtology has been able to launch several new pages that all ranked in Google's the top 10 within days of their release. Does this mean we can do it for all phrases? No, nobody can, but it does indicate that we are slowly figuring out the nuances in the new algorithm.
We recently helped Learning Village an educational software review site who was negatively affected by the new algorithm. They were shifted from a page 1 ranking to high page 2 ranking which translated in a drop of approximately 30% in traffic. We were able to move them from position 13 (number 3 on page 2) to a steady position 8 with the occasional higher listing (now on the first page) for their key word phrase with only some minor adjustments to their home page. During the process other sections of the site underwent basic search engine optimization as well. Overall, these changes now generate 25% more traffic then the site received prior to Google's new algorithm last fall.
Product Reviews
WordTracker
Ever wonder how people like me seem to know which words people are searching on to help target web site content for those specific keywords and phrases. One of staples in every search engine optimization/position specialist's tool bag is WordTracker.
WordTracker is a highly useful tool that takes all the search phrases from several of the leading meta search engines (search engines that search other search engines and then rank the results) and then tabulates how frequently specific words or phrases are searched on and stores them in a database. Their database currently consists of over 350 million search terms.
It then provides a series of useful tools to help you find the most popular phrases that match your web site content and then ranks them by how often they are searched and how competitive they are (how many other pages are targeting that phrase) by search engine. You even get the ability to save your results by project. This is a great feature as it allows you to create projects for different sections/pages of your web site for on-going analysis.
WordTracker is a very cost effective tool sold on a time based subscription. You only pay for how much time you need with the smallest available unit being 1 day for £4.20 ($7.64 US). I use it so much that I signed up for a full year at £140.00 ($254.67 US). Users can also purchase weekly, monthly or quarterly subscriptions.
WordTracker offers a free trial of key word searches and competitive analysis (only for Altavista). Don't make your decision alone on the free trial as it only comes with a limited set of tools and is a lot slower to use then the full subscription version. I recommend that if you're interested, you evaluate the full range of features yourself by signing-up for a 1 day subscription. You can even have WordTracker e-mail the current top 500 search phrases for free, or simply go to WordTracker's home page and watch their ticker tape of top 50 searched words/phrases from today.
Adobe Acrobat
In 2003, Adobe released version 6 of Adobe Acrobat. Many of you will be familiar with the free Acrobat reader required to read large documents downloaded from web sites or for documents being sent to you.
What you may not be familiar with is the other end of the Acrobat software that creates these documents. Last year Adobe released Acrobat and Acrobat Professional to create Acrobat files. Both products have undergone our detailed testing and we love them both. Both are easy to use and come with better security then earlier versions of Acrobat. Another nice improvement in Version 6 is the ability to not only save your files directly to PDF from the application you're working in (i.e. Word, Excel, etc.), but to also open Acrobat and then open the file within acrobat. This gives you access to a slew of additional options that can be applied to the document.
So which one should you buy if your buy at all.
The answer is that it depends on what you plan on using it for. If all you want it for is locking up your document so the receiver can't change it, go with the regular version at $299 US. This version is great for sharing documents, locking invoices for e-mailing etc.
However if you want to go a little further and want to provide a mechanism for people to comment on your document without changing it and you need to have multiple people review documents and provide comments at the same time then Acrobat Professional is for you (list price $449.00 US).
Acrobat is available from your favourite software vendor
Closing Thoughts
For more information on any of the topics or products referenced, please feel free to contact K'nechtology Inc. directly. Just to remind you that my services and the services of K'nechtology Inc. are always available to help you with your technology strategies, search engine optimization, IT project management, Internet/web development needs and software reviews. Subscribe to future newsletters or find links to previous newsletters, columns and product reviews at news.knechtology.com
© K'nechtology Inc. June 2004 - Toronto, Ontario Canada
