Blogs

Search engine optimization is an important element to your online marketing strategy whether you are in San Diego or Timbuktu. It far more than just Google rankings, it is an in-depth set of tactics and techniques that are employed to help you effectively target the ideal market group for your website.

Did you know?
Research shows that nearly 80% of potential Web customers use search engines to find relevant content.

SEO is also a very cost-effective way to ensure your website can be easily found through search engines. Finding your companies to fill a need on the Web has all but replaced the yellow pages from San Diego to Maine. It involves identifying relevant keywords, determining their popularity and competition among search engines, then finally narrowing down the list to focus on the most effective targeted terms to create keyword-rich content for search engines.

The focus for search marketing and optimization should be on terms related to your products and services, but you should also look at what your competition is targeting. This combination of research will support our team (and you the client) in generating the most effective targeted keywords to increase relevant page click views on your site.

One thing to keep in mind when devising a search engine optimization strategy is that, while content is the driving force behind search engine rankings, it isn't the only thing. The architecture, content and layout of your website all work hand in hand to ensure a positive user experience, which can in turn increase your rankings based on the frequency of visits.

At SantexGroup, we offer advanced Search Engine Optimization for San Diego on a wide variety of levels to fit your company's needs. Whether you have a specific keyword 9or phrase) in mind, or if you need help creating a complete strategy, we can help. If you're looking for an effective San Diego Search Engine Optimization plan, you will find exactly what you need with our services. To further enhance your online marketing strategy, we also specialize in search engine marketing (SEM), pay-per-click marketing (PPC), social media, and email marketing.

It's true that online marketing and search engine optimization takes a significant amount of time and effort to execute, but it's truly an investment with potentially huge returns if done professionally and ethically.

Santex Group has developed Version 2.x for the Drupal Hidden Author module that allows users with the proper permissions to post comments and nodes without revealing their name. This is better than just hiding it with CSS or creating a new template... blah blah blah...

This upgrade was designed by Fernando García of Santex Group and the new approach assigns a given node or comment to "Anonymous", or another title of your choice.

Is specialization in the Web/Internet industry a good thing? Should we encourage or discourage what I am seeing as a convergence to everyone “trying” to do everything, while at the same there are more and more technologies to worry about?

Analogy

I'll start off everything by saying experts in certain industries are not always an expert in every aspect of said industry. Let's be sure we are on the same level with this simple analogy;

• A stock car racer with 15 years experience may not be the best person to paint a car
• A used car salesman with 30 years of experience may not be the best person to repair the same car he just sold
• An auto repair technician with 10 years experience may not be the best person to race a car in the left-turn-circuit
• An automobile aerodynamic engineer that graduated from UC San Diego may not be the best person to give you a driving test

The Focus

There are dozens (if not hundreds) of technologies used in the Wide Web World (I know that is out of order, it’s on purpose). These technologies range from simple HTML with shameful font and marquee tags to highly specialized database backed coding platforms with complex IDEs used to code the core platform (like JAVA & its Spring Framework). Which of these are really the best and which should be avoided? I guess the decision between A-B-C… in the WWW is like choosing a car for most people. Some like them old and simple and others prefer them new and complex.

Options

With so many options available today let’s take a look at the Wide Web World technologies according to Wikipedia.org.

Programmin Languages for the Web with their CMS & Framework Options

Main Discussion Points

As shown above there are many platforms, frameworks, CMS, MVCs and languages that Web sites can be built upon. We all have our preference and certainly we all have ones we avoid like the plague as well.
The questions are...;

• Why do you prefer your choice over someone else's?
• Which really is the best?
• Why is that the best?

The answers to those questions above are what I am really interested in hearing at this point.
Here are my answers to those so you know where I am coming from.

• I prefer my choices because I am most familiar with them and they have not let me down yet.
• I am a Visual Basic or PHP person.
• The rest of the stuff just seems like fluff or is too specialized.

Certainly staying on top of the latest version of PHP, MySQL and other packages allows for quicker, efficient, secure and robust development. It can also cause a problem: backwards compatibility.

This brings me to a situation we had sometime ago, a client approached to re-develop their site in Drupal (which is no problem for us), the only constraint was that their current server is running MySQL 4.1, and like I mentioned I'm trying to keep up with the latest and newest version, so naturally we're running 5.1.

While in reality this would not be an issue, I've had so many sour experiences with missing PHP extensions, different Apache versions, even different Linux distributions.

So how to resolve this MySQL dilemma? My first option was to install another instance of MySQL and add another port and socket, sounds easy enough. Wrong, it is a very tedious and confusing process (well at least for me), lack of proper documentation, endless number of packages, not to mention fiddling on a dev server while developers are working and testing and/or clients reviewing, etc, etc.

And that's when I found MySQL Sandbox, as they describe it "MySQL Sandbox is a tool that installs one or more MySQL servers within seconds, easily, securely, and with full control."

All you need to do is download MySQL Sandbox, install, download the version of MySQL you need (version 3 till whatever is out now), run MySQL sandbox with the version of MySQL you want and viola! You have a separate instance of MySQL. You can connect just by changing the port number and socket to the version of MySQL you want to run (e.g if the version is 4.1.22 your port will be 4122).

The setup is very seamless, you must have Python installed, and then add the MySQL Sandbox start script to your Linux startup so it loads back up in case your server takes a fall in the middle of the night.

The only issue I've found so far is that it keeps the created Databases on RAM/VRAM so once you reboot your server your MySQL Sandbox DB's disappear. So it should not be used for production purposes, I believe with some work you can probably set up the Sandbox for production, although I would not recommend it.

Feel free to comment or ask questions via our contact form.

Drupal is one of the top OpenSource CMS tools on the www today. It was recently awarded the Overall 2007 Open Source CMS Award at the PacktPub Contest.

Drupal is written in PHP and requires a MySQL database, both of which are available OpenSource, just as Drupal is. Drupal's basic installation can be easily turned into many types of web pages - from simple blogs to large online communities.

Drupal includes features to enable content management systems, blogs, forums, taxonomies, organic groups, newsletters, picture galleries, and more.

Digg, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr...all of these social networks can be a little overwhelming. However, they are great tools for increasing your business' presence on the 'net. In today's world, to say that Internet presence is essential for success is an understatement. So how can you use social media in San Diego and beyond to better your business?

The first step in learning how to use social media, is to understand it. At its most basic level, social media refers to Internet-based tools used for sharing and discussing information. From a business point of view, social media is user-generated content, or consumer-generated media.

Essentially, social media is any and everything that involves social interaction on the Web. Mark Hopkins of Mashable.com, the largest blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Networking news, accurately defines social media as a "collection of platforms for interaction and networking". All of the sites and networks out there are vehicles that can be used to spread your message. When someone posts on someone else's "wall" on Facebook, that is considered social media. When a blogger publishes a new post and someone leaves a comment, that is considered social media. When you update your Twitter account to let your followers know about the latest news at your company, you are using social media to your advantage.

By sending messages and interacting with consumers through social media, you can reach a wider audience, boost search engine rankings and improve your overall image. A great way to open the social media door is to start a blog. Blog about the latest news in your company, a new product, or even about your (amusing) day in the office. If your company is travel related, you could talk about local events or give useful travel tips. The goal is to provide your readers with information they can use and information that is interesting. Most of all, remember to be real and be personable - people can spot a product push ten miles away.

Other social networks, such as Facebook, should be used in a similar way to a blog. Provide consumers with knowledge about your product, impart interesting and useful information on your field of expertise, let people know about special offers or events and be available through comments and posts if anyone has a question. Keep in mind that social networks can also be used to connect with other people and businesses in related fields.

It really is that simple, albeit often time-consuming. Just get out into the Web playing field, sign up for a few accounts and start talking to people. The trick is to stay updated with all your blogs, Twitter updates and Myspace bulletins. Don't just post once and never return. Once you join, you are a member of a community that will only work if people participate. As with everything in life, you will only be as successful as the effort you put in.

Most importantly we believe that a strong social media plan will significantly increase your site's search engine optimization which brings you more site potentially more visitors and more business.

We at Santex and Digital Telepathy are proud to congratulate the Dishizzle Team on their successful Website launch! The new Website was created to provide food, dish, and restaurant reviews in San Diego. It is built primarily for Foodies and helps them to answer that one enduring simple question... what to eat?

As a premier Drupal Web Development firm in San Diego, Santex has established a reputation as the preferred partner for companies seeking new websites built on a CMS or framework. Santex is prepared to handle Drupal-based web development services of any complexity or size for clients in San Diego and worldwide. Being the onshore hand of SantexGroup allows us to communicate with clients and manage their projects while still providing a significant cost savings for customers with our offshore team in Argentina (SantexAmerica). Since both teams work under the same ownership and CMMI management model, we provide the best of both worlds.

For over 10 years now, we have provided a strong team of highly skilled web developers and designers. Our Internet services and solutions have been used to complete hundreds of projects for our internal and outsourced clients in different categories, including Drupal and other popular content management systems and frameworks. Santex web developers have built a large knowledgebase on our Wiki that enables us to deliver and develop your solution to the Web within budget.

We are proud to announce that we recently took on the building of a new version of the http://www.OceanoPalace.com website in Drupal 6. The previous site was antiquated and offered limited control to the site owner when it came to updates and management. The new content management system, built on the Drupal 6 framework, provided a solution to every one of the client's requests.

Other sites that we have recently developed using Drupal include the innovative food and dish review site http://www.Dishizzle.com, the information-sharing network http://www.IdeaEncore.com and a Bar and Drink Mix site for a popular International Vodka brand.

We are proud to brand ourselves as an active Drupal Web Development firm in San Diego and are looking forward to continued success with many other clients using this framework. With a constantly evolving set of skills, the future looks bright and we are always prepared to embrace new ideas we discover along the way.

Over the last two years we have become more and more immersed into the Drupal Open Source CMS and Framework. Almost daily we find new tools, modules, and Web sites that support our teams in San Diego, CA and Cordoba, Argentina in creating more dynamic and functional products for our clients. Today I want to share some of these with you.

Great Blog from Lullabot
MySQL Database Import and Migration Tool for Drupal

We are proud to announce that the new version of the www.OceanoPalace.com website is live in Drupal 6 and built right here in San Diego. The previous site was antiquated and offered limited control to the site administrator's when it came to updates. The new site has a great CMS built in Drupal and allows for a wide variety of page and content management.