We believe that knowledge is power and everybody deserves it! Thus, we are planning to start a series of mini-tutorials touching on the basics of different web development / consulting topics such as search engines, copywriting, designing, current trends, latest technologies and many others.

We intend to make this tutorial a short-read (less than 10 minutes) because we understand that time is very precious. At the end of every tutorial, we will include a few points to ponder or an action list to make this tutorial practical. We hope through these tutorials, we can empower you with knowledge and practicality about web technologies.

We will do our best to publish this mini-tutorial every other business day. Starting tomorrow, we will start posting the first tutorial on Search Engine Optimization. Meanwhile, if you have other topics that you are interested in, please post us a comment and we will attempt to accomodate it.

SEOmoz.org has published Search Engine Ranking Factors V.2.

This document represents the collective wisdom of 37 leaders in the world of organic search engine optimization. Together, they have voted on the various factors that are estimated to comprise Google’s ranking algorithm (the method by which the search engine orders results).

In reviewing each factor and looking through the standard deviation and mean weights for each factor, the following are the 5 factors that many agreed to play important parts in search engine optimization:

1. Keyword Use in Title Tag
The keywords you use in the title tag speaks BIG to what your site is all about.

2. Anchor Text of Inbound Link
Inbound links to your site from other external sites will certainly contribute to your search engine ranking. On top of that, the texts that these external sites use to link to your sites will tell what your site is all about.

3. Global Link Popularity of Site
While this is controversial, many seem to put this factor as highly importance. The more better / great sites linking to your site, the better your website will show in the search engine results.

4. Age of Site
It is not about when you have purchased the domain of your site but it is about when did your site get indexed by Google the first time. Like wine, the older the better is your site.

5. Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure
This refers to the number of internal links pointing to the target page. More internal links pointing to the target page, the higher the importance the target page is.

Many more factors are still listed in the document. Therefore, it is a good idea to often evaluate your website.

Remember to always check the keywords that you want your site to relate to. Evaluate the importance of these keywords and grade them based on the factors stated in the document.

CNN.com published an article by AP. It says that new computers, iPods, USB media sticks, digital photo frames, and other digital devices can be pre-infected by viruses. Yes, you are reading it right - NEW computers.

Some of these viruses are harmless and some are very harmful. It can just be a program that sends spam emails from your computer to a program that steals your sensitive information (username and password) and email it without you knowing!

So, what can I do? The following are 3 (hopefully) useful steps:

1. DETOXICATE YOUR COMPUTER! Install anti-virus program, update it, and run it. Found a virus? Delete it. This (at least) cleans your computer before you using it. Install anti-spyware and anti-spam program for added protection.

2. GUARD YOUR COMPUTER! Virus spreads only through an executed program? Not really. My pastor had his computer infected with a virus without running any program. The virus travelled to his computer from his USB stick.

He plugged his USB stick to an infected computer, transferred the file from the USB to the computer hard disk, plugged it out, and plugged it in back to his computer. ~voila, the virus had entered his computer.

How? Apparently, a USB stick comes with auto-run / detection program which when it runs in an infected computer, the virus from the infected computer is copied into the USB. So, when a clean computer auto-runs / detects the infected USB stick, the virus from the USB enters into the computer.

Many of us certainly take this for granted as we sometimes use the auto-run features (open folder? copy pictures? play audio? menus). So, use your anti-virus program to scan anything that connects to your computer (USB stick, emails, P2P, any kind of attachment).

3. CLOSE ALL UNNECESSARY COMPUTER DOORS! Doors?! Since when a computer has doors? Yes, it has doors! But, technically, we call them “ports”. When you do a file-sharing in a network, your computer opens up the file-sharing “door”. When you send emails, you open up the SMTP “door”. Like a house, opened doors / windows are target for thieves to enter. So, close all the doors that your computer does not use. If you do not do file-sharing often, close it - uninstall the program and disable the service! Update your computers, they help to close any broken door. Finally, use firewall!

To conclude, I will use a metaphor. If you are given a new working airport (the place where you will fly by riding an airplane ~duh), what will you do to make your airport a safe and clean environment for everybody? Do this the same with your new digital device!

Hubspot, a well-known internet marketing consultant, has created a robust tool that will grade your website on the basis of SEO. Besides basing all the grades on on-page and off-page SEOs (such as headings, meta datas, image alt, and others), the tool also provides report based on blogs and social mediaspheres which definitely play a very important part in today’s Internet market.

To top that of, the report allows you to compare how your website ranks with your other competitors.

So enough of my babbling, we would like to present to you: Website Grader - an SEO tool by Hubspot.

The power of JavaScript and DOM Scripting has certainly made the behavior of a web very much dynamic and easy to implement.

One of the examples that benefit from this technology is in creating an alternating color rows table (so called striped table). Alternating color rows are very helpful in differentiating each row in a table. Therefore, it certainly helps in the presentation of your information in a table.

With a little bit of JavaScript, you can easily create one or more striped tables by simply embedding a class into your table tag.

Please see our example on alternating color rows table and its brief tutorial.

With the fast evolving demands from consumers, industries (especially the web consulting industries) are now faced with greater challenges. Therefore, collaboration is now much more needed compared to competition.

We have bombarded with so much individualism that we think competition is better than collaboration. For instance, if there is an airplane manufacturer seeking for a company that can build one of its parts, and the company realizes that it is the only company that can supply this part to the manufacturer. Competition will say to the company, “why don’t we sell this part at a higher price since we are the only supplier that can produce this part?”.

Doing this indeed will generate an immediate increase in profit but it will not benefit the company in the long run. Competition indicates that one party wins and the other loses (in this case, the winning party is the company - the losing party the manufacturer has to pay higher cost for the parts). However, if it is a collaboration, both parties win (in this case, the company will sell its parts to the manufacturer at the right price). This might bring more benefits to the company in a long run - the manufacturer will be happy with the price and a long-term relationship with the company will be extended even more.

Therefore, in this competitive environment, I think it is good for us to sit back and re-think our business model. Have we been a collaborator or a competitor with our client? Have we been doing our best to meet their budget, deadline, needs, and qualities?

“Our clients success is indeed our success”