Robert Lodi

(Is that good or bad? I think it’s good.)

When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was “Carry on, Mr. Bowditch” by Jean Lee Latham.*

It tells the story of Nathaniel Bowditch, who grew up in Salem, MA, in the late 1700s, in the time of tall ships and the spice trade. 

(spoilers follow)

At age 12, he became indentured at a local ship chandlery, and throughout his indenture, taught himself math, languages, physics, and more. He ended up writing a book about navigation, first published in 1802, that saved lives, revolutionized seafaring, and that the US Government still publishes and updates today. 

One chapter, early on in his indenture, has young Nat regretting being chained to this store for 9 years, when he wanted to be going to school and moving on with his life. 

A retired sea captain replies, “Only a weakling gives up when he’s becalmed! A strong man sails by ash breeze!”

When a ship is becalmed, the wind died down, sometimes the sailors break out their oars. They’ll row a boat ahead of the ship and tow her. Oars are made of ash, white ash, so when you get ahead by your own get up and go – that’s sailing by ash breeze.”

Nat straightened up “I like the sound of that,” he said.

So did I.

Years ago, when I was laid off from a large telecommunications company, I had decided that I was done with other people, who I’d never even met, deciding whether or not I had a job. 

So I went solo.

Running a business isn’t easy, at least, not for me. 

And I am very lucky – I work with great clients and great colleagues. And it’s not like I am the only one on the oars, either – I have and have had some amazing help. But it’s still a challenge, especially these past few years. 

But by sailing by ash breeze – I (we) am (are) getting it done – staying in business, getting new work, and looking ahead. 

And this month – January 2023 – marks 10 years since I got serious and incorporated as Rock Pixel Scissors, Inc. 

So – thank you. 

Thank you to my clients for trusting me with your work and your businesses, thank you to my friends and colleagues who help in ways both big and small. 

And here’s to another 10 years – or more – of website building and fixing and getting stuff done.

*Recently I was reminded of the Bowditch family which inspired me to dig out the book – I still have it! (thanks Jessica).

So I had to make a pie. My Pie Poll called for apple.

Though I am practically surrounded by cookbooks, my pie-making history has not been the best so I headed online.

When you put “pie” (or any search) into Google, a few things happen. 

First it checks domain names for your search term(s). So if there was a pie.com (if only), that would show up at the top of the list because the domain name scores high in search results.

Then it checks page titles. And meta descriptions. 

And page content, and h1, h2, etc. tags, and links, and image alt tags. And so on.

But to start – after the domain name, page titles and meta descriptions offer a lot of SEO impact and are both easy to edit. They are the low-hanging fruit to get your SEO started.

Overly simplified – here’s how they work.

Those blue links? Those are your page titles. The words under them? That’s the meta description. 

As you can see – the page titles and meta descriptions are directly related to enticing people to click through to your site. And make a pie.

I clicked the first one. And look – the page title also turns into the tab label. And the meta description is also repeated in the first paragraph, though you can also have separate page content and meta info.

And checking the code – you can see the title and description the way Google sees them.

Updating your page titles and meta descriptions with words that help make people want to click to your site can have a big impact in where your site and pages show up in search results. 

Knowing which words to use, of course, is another thing entirely, and I will talk about that more in part 2. But – you can certainly see how a title of “home page” would not be as clickable or searchable as a title like “easy and delicious holiday pies”.

PS. I gave up on pie and went with an easier/simpler apple galette. It was quite good! I should have got a picture. https://food52.com/recipes/81985-easy-apple-galette

It’s almost the end of the year (how??), and like everyone, I am trying to get a head start on my 2023 – stuff – and encouraging my clients to do the same.

As you plan your website needs for January and beyond, here are a few things to think about:

• Do you need a brand new website in 2023? 
• Will you need landing pages for a 2023 marketing campaign? 
• To avoid a last minute crisis, will your older site need to get fixed, updated, or rebuilt? 
• Do you just need to offload day-to-day web tasks?

If you have projects that you’d like to begin later in 2023 and need the money “spent” in 2022 – we can help with that. Or if you have projects that you need to budget for, for next year – let us know! We can provide estimates and specs and help make sure you’re in position to start the year strong. 

More urgently, if you have projects to wrap up before your holiday vacation (what is a vacation?), or internal goals to meet – let us know and we’ll work with you to get those done while there is still time in 2022.

*There seems to be no clear consensus on the origin of the idiom “get your ducks in a row” though many sources refer back to bowling, carnival games, or actual ducks.

https://grammarist.com/idiom/get-ones-ducks-in-a-row-and-have-ones-ducks-in-a-row/

In part 1, we talked a little about the importance of having smaller images on your website. Here in part 2, we talk briefly about how to do it.

There are two areas you may need to make smaller, and depending on your editor, you may see different numbers or terms.

1 – the image dimensions/area – how many pixels by how many pixels. For most websites, 2000px wide is more than enough for full-width banners or backgrounds, often smaller is ok for product photos or anything that isn’t full screen width.

2 – image resolution – often listed as pixels or dots per inch – dpi. 144 max if you are super concerned about some Apple hi-res screens, though for most sites 72dpi is still fine.

In your image editor, you can find an image size menu or button, and change the dimensions – width and height – and or the resolution – dpi – to numbers that fit your needs.

Then save it with a new name in a web friendly format – I still like JPG for photos and PNG for logos/line art – and replace the image on your site. (There are many other formats – but these two will get you started and are universal and easy to work with.)

Oh, and that 42mb file I mentioned? 

When resized to 72dpi and 2000px wide?

I got it down to 151kb. Which is 99.94% smaller (https://percentagecalculator.net 42000 to 151).

So if your site is running slow, take a look at some of the pictures on your site and see if they can be reduced in size.

And if images are an issue and you need a hand – let me know! We can go in and knock image sizes down, improve performance, and maybe even save you money on hosting.

Not long ago, a client asked me to take a look at their home page and see if I could figure out why it was loading slower.

I did, and, I did.

I found a 42mb photo (that is way big!) loaded into the top banner area. They had loaded in a photo from a stock photo site. At full resolution. While it had shrunk it to fit the box on the page, at actual size the image area was almost 20 square feet. Which is bigger than you need on a web site. 

Don’t do this, please.

Back in the 90s, when web was new and connections were slow, the emphasis for web people  was always on making our graphics as small as possible, because back then, downloading anything that was 42mb would have taken forever.

Then, modems got faster, cable internet was popular, and sites were using larger images and graphics – with no real issues. 

But that time has passed and we’ve come almost full circle back to the olden days. 

Mostly because of phones.

Websites need to load fast on phones, which have more limited connectivity and slower speeds (still fast historically, but not as fast as good wifi or hardwired). But, today customers expect the same speed and performance on their phones as they do on a laptop. Also, Google will penalize you for slower loading pages and impact where you show up in search results, especially on mobile devices.

And in addition to images, today’s websites load a lot more content, scripts, tracking, and other files than they did in the 90s.

So please make your images smaller. Don’t upload them directly from your phone, your stock photo site, or your camera. Because what else has happened is – hi-res images have become much higher res then even a few years ago. Which means even bigger files to manage.

In part two, we’ll talk about how.

Here at RPS, we wear many hats. I personally wear several on any given day.

And on any given project – our extended team is wearing even more.

• The Design hat.  
• Custom code hat.
• WordPress hat.
• Development hat.
• Maintenance hat.
• Client Service hat.
• Red Sox hat (maybe not this season…)
• SEO hat.
• The “Just make it work already please” hat.

I could go on. But today I am going to talk about one of the more common hats, and the hat that tends to kick off many new client relationships.

The Fixing hat.

It works like this – 

You have a website. Something isn’t working. You call or email or text me. I put on the hat. I fix the issue.

And there is much rejoicing.

It isn’t always that simple, but, sometimes a website problem that is causing you strife can be addressed fairly easily. This can lead to more site fixing, which can lead to faster, leaner, easier-to-manage websites for your team to update, which can lead to new content, which can lead to more leads and sales, which makes the bosses happy, and everyone gets a raise. (Cue further rejoicing.)

At RPS, every project doesn’t need to be a massive project. We’re happy to focus on smaller issues and make website things work better for you and your team. Contact us today to see how we can help solve small problems on your site (as well as any bigger problems you may have.)