well, it’s a triple-header this week with a spotlight on helpful web advice.

Flash Is For Famous People — Not New Businesses by Lucy Beer

this isn’t exactly cutting-edge advice, but there are still a great many people out there who either want flash because it’s flash, or because of the design control and multimedia advantage flash can have over traditional web design. the main problem with this is that flash has such limited searchability that, unless you’re already famous, you’re literally hiding from the people who might want to find something just like you based on criteria searches. using flash sparingly, embedded in a site using a more search-friendly framework is the way to go. beer breaks down the pros & cons for you!

Organic S-E-O Spelled Out by Erin Wiles

i get this question often, “what exactly is SEO and how does it work?” it’s simple really, despite what we’ve made it into, the web was invented as a simple wide-area-network indexing system, and it’s still based on searching for relevant text under hierarchical tags. SEO = search engine optimization, and what that means for you is, gearing the page titles and text on your web site to be as relevant as possible to people who might be searching for you. and organic SEO is just that–when the organic text you put on your web site is so geared to what you’re doing and what people might search on, the search engine can organically find it on your site and deliver your results to those searching for it. get a more in-depth explanation from wiles by clicking the link.

What’s Stopping Your Website Visitors from Buying?: FAQ Page Lessons from the Encyclopedia Man by Judy Dunn

after reading enough of her engaging articles, i’ll say it–i love judy dunn! she weaves in a good amount of prose with great advice. in the vein of building out your site with lots of information about you & how you work, she sets out 5 steps to improving your FAQ section to better target the people you’re trying to work with. getting inside their heads and gearing your questions toward solutions they’re looking for helps them really know you’re thinking of them. set aside some time to review your site and see if you can implement some of these suggestions.