Hello Readers!

It's a packed edition this time around, so be sure to check it out all the way to the end so you don't miss anything.

The debate has gone on between designers for years - can you make clickable links any color you want, or should they stay the default blue color? Our first article by Jamie Kiley addresses that very issue. Read on to find out why she believes you should leave your links in their "natural" state (and there is a very good reason!). If you have any other Web design questions, go ahead and ask her. She's one of our resident experts and she's taking questions. Send your questions to jackie@devwebpro.com.

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Shari Thurow and Jim Novo also join us to offer tips on Australian search engines and getting visitors to buy from your site. They're also taking reader questions so be sure to get yours in early to avoid the rush!

Paranoid about your site visitors peeking at your HTML code? Check out what Michael Southon has to say on the topic, and find out if it's really possible to keep your HTML secrets hidden away.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, just click my picture to send me an email.

Read and enjoy!

Leave Those Links Blue!
By Jamie Kiley

Don't mess with those links! When you're designing your site, you should leave your text links in their natural state--blue and underlined.

We all want to be creative and not do the bland, expected, normal thing. We want to change our links to red, green, yellow, even black--anything but blue. And we have the urge to take off those underlines.

Resist the temptation. It's hard. But there's a good reason to leave them alone. From the earliest days of the web, text links have been blue. People intuitively recognize that blue, underlined text is a link. They know they can click on it.

The combination of blue and underlines means "If I click on this, it goes somewhere". We're conditioned to recognize those distinguishing characteristics. We're like Pavlov's dogs--we see the link and instantly know what it means. There's no time wasted in trying to figure out whether or not that particular word or phrase is clickable...
Click here to read the full article

Traffic Analysis - Getting Visitors To Buy
By Jim Novo

If you have any questions about traffic analysis, either prompted by this article or your own experiences, send them here: Traffic Analysis

Question:
I'm not getting the traffic I would like. Can you tell me what I need to do?

Jim's answer:
For advice on "getting" traffic, you might check with one of the SEO experts (Ask The Experts). But perhaps the real issue is the traffic you are getting at your site (www.petbaskets.net) is not buying. That I can help with! I have two comments: it would help if you focused the visitor and romanced your products.

Focus:
If you want to sell pet baskets, focus on that and do it the best it can be done. If you want to sell pet toys, do that on another web site or make it less prominent on the current site. It seems to me you have more information and pages on single toys than you have on baskets, which means people looking for baskets can easily get confused and go elsewhere.
Click here to read the full article

SEO Corner - Australian / New Zealand Google
By Shari Thurow

Our SEO professional Shari Thurow continues to answer your questions on the mysteries of search engines. Got a question for Shari? Send it here: SEO Corner.

Question:
Can you tell me how I can submit to Google and Anzwer Australia / New Zealand? I rank number 4 in the World search but don't even show in Australian searches. Is it because I have .com and not .com.au?

Shari's Answer:
Google does have a submission form available for Australia / New Zealand sites. The URL for that is: http://www.google.com.au/addurl.html But it really doesn't matter whether or not you submit your site to this Add URL form or the U.S.-based Add URL form. Google works the same way for all English-speaking sites. Eventually, your site will be added to the .com.au version of Google. It will take a little time, that's all.

Since quality link development is very important for being listed well in Google, I always begin my submission campaigns with the major directories. Reason? Because it is the fastest way to get high quality, legitimate link popularity to a site.
Click here to read the full article

Is Someone Stealing Your Source Code?
By Michael Southon

That's a question that worries many people on the Internet. And some people go to great lengths to hide their source code.

There are several reasons you might want to conceal the source code of your web pages:

1) if you have web pages that rank highly in the search engines, you don't want people to see your meta tags
2) you don't want people copying your web page design or java scripts
3) you want to protect your website from email harvesters and other spam utilities

But can you hide your source code?
Click here to read the full article

Site Review - Solstice Technologies, Inc.
In case you missed the last issue, DevWebPro is doing a brand new peer review! The site is called Solstice Technologies, Inc. (http://www.solstice-inc.com/). Visit the site, jot down your thoughts, and send them in to jackie@devwebpro.com. I'll showcase the best of them in an upcoming issue of DevWebPro and give your Web site a little plug, too (please include your URL!). The top reviews will get a special mention.

If you tried to visit the site but the Java applet crashed your browser, give it another try. They're working on it...

Get those reviews in by May 14th. That's the week I'll publish the results.