OmniSpear, Inc. is currently seeking creative individuals eager to join our team of talented web professionals. Working in a business-to-business environment, you will be responsible for creatively transforming internal and external concepts into workable designs.

To be considered you must submit samples of your work with your resume. This is a fulltime position at our Miamisburg, Ohio office (located near the I-75 Austin Pike Interchange). You must be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. Relocation will not be included.

Send all inquiries to careers AT omnispear.com

Requirements:

• 2 to 5 years of experience designing for web based platforms, interactive design, or similar
• Associates degree or higher in interactive design, multimedia design, or related field with applicable experience
• Excellent visual design skills, including an eye for typography, icon design, composition, and use of color
• Practical experience in development of HTML/CSS, JavaScript, graphics creation with Adobe Creative Suite
• Experience working in an agile environment
• Solid understanding of effective UI patterns and best practices
• Knowledge of design research and usability testing methods
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Responsibilities:

• 50% Designing websites and web based applications
• 50% Implementing designs in cooperation with developers
• Work closely with sales, engineering, and various stakeholders to design intuitive, and functional user experiences
• Translate concepts and ideas into workable designs
• Develop and maintain mockups, visual assets, wireframes, prototypes

Bonus:

• Development experience in PHP, Java, Ruby, etc
• Experience using source control such as Git

Perks:

• Insurance
• IRA Plan with matching
• Unlimited beverages
• Casual work environment

Company Description:

Founded in 2001, OmniSpear, Inc. services clients in Dayton, Cincinnati, and beyond. We focus on helping our clients improve their processes, infrastructure, and appearance through our extensive knowledge of technology. Joining OmniSpear means you will get to work in an open and agile environment that supports creativity and new ideas.

Chrome for Business is exactly like the consumer version of the Chrome browser but supports centralized management. With Chrome for Business, you can configure Chrome for your organization’s users, pre-install Chrome apps and extensions, and apply the 100+ management policies Chrome provides.

Chrome for Business allows you to manage your users’ Chrome experience on managed devices (via Windows Group Policy) or if they’re signed in to Chrome with their Google Apps account on any computer (managed or otherwise). Chrome for Business can be installed using either the MSI or having your users download Chrome to their computer. Once installed, you can manage your users through Windows Group Policies for managed devices or via the Admin panel for any device where the user signs in to Chrome with their Google Apps account.

https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/business/browser/admin/

Responsive web design guarantees a good user experience and allows costs reduction by avoiding the creation of multiple web or mobile pages. Here are some great examples:

Starbucks
When Starbucks marketers began to realize that many of their customers were accessing their website via mobile devices, they wasted no time in developing a responsive site. The website is now easy to navigate no matter how you access it and the sophisticated design perfectly embraces the Starbucks signature look.

Disney

Kids love Disney and parents love keeping their kids busy with smartphones and tablets. It only seems natural that a website dedicated to the entertainment of children and parents should be easily accessed on handheld devices. This site is great because the big pictures and video aren’t sacrificed when the page is scaled down.

Responsive Sausage Dog

Just for fun!

1. Under Optimizing Your Website

There are some simple things Google looks for on your site. Find out what your main goal is for your business, find your keywords and implement them in good content. Google will see that you may be useful for someone looking up those key words and rank you higher for them. Avoid a lot of flash, images with content you want read, or dynamic pages because Google can’t physically see them. Make sure your main content is in text so that a search engine robot can actually use it.

2. Over Optimizing Your Website

Now that you’ve found your keywords there are a few things to avoid. One of the biggest concerns is keyword stuffing. Your keywords should be in good content and fit with the page. If you’re putting every keyword you can find into every title, description, and alt tag you have on your page you’re doing more harm than good. Keep it short and direct.

3. Not Enough Incoming Links

The more links that lead to you from other websites the higher your rank will be; your keywords should come from good, relevant content as well as pages that already have a high rank. Many websites were hurt by Google’s new Panda Update because of keyword spamming, spammy link building strategies, and links from unnatural or irrelevant content. Avoid these practices like the plague.

4. No Longevity

The longer your content has been around, the longer your links have stayed alive, and the less your main page changes dramatically the better. Basically, don’t go around changing your title, href’s or alt tags every other day or any other major structure of your website and you’ll be golden. You wouldn’t change the underlying structure and direction of your house everyday; don’t do it on your website either.

5. Not Enough Fresh Content

Yes you shouldn’t make any major changes to your existing content, but you should have new and relevant content for Google to index. Google re-indexes your site regularly so you should try to add at least 1-2 fresh pieces of relevant content a week. The more fresh your site, the better. Most websites do this by creating a blog on their domain which is probably the easiest way to add content that people can share which of course makes more links back to you. This is what makes WordPress and other blogging platforms so great for SEO.

Original Author: Masters of SEO

1. May I see your portfolio?

They’re expecting this, and will usually be happy to provide you with examples of the sites they have designed for clients. Many will provide you with references, and you should check up on them. Ask long-term clients if they continue to be satisfied with their web design.

2. How long have you been in business?

Website design isn’t exactly an ancient art, but there are firms that have been around for a decade or more. While that’s not a guarantee of quality, competition is strong enough that web design firms that have been around for several years are probably doing things right.

3. Do you offer web hosting?

Many website design firms offer web hosting, and having your design firm provide hosting as well is something worth consideration. Sometimes package deals with both design and hosting are more cost effective. If a company does provide hosting, make sure their hosting packages meet your needs as far as tech support, number of email accounts, and general customer service.

4. What kind of tech support do you offer, and for how long?

Expect your designer to fix any coding or layout issues discovered within the first 90 days without charge. They will charge for additional coding or site development, however. After that initial period, find out what they offer in terms of maintenance and web development for the long term.

5. Can you develop a version of my site for mobile devices?

Mobile versions of sites are becoming more of an expected service now that so many people stay connected through smart phones and tablets. Find out if a mobile site is part of their basic design package, or if it costs extra.

6. Will I own the images, content, and code when you’re done?

You want to buy website design, not rent it. It is generally better to hire a firm that will build your site and deliver it to you as a complete package when it’s done, rather than one that locks you into an ongoing hosting contract that you may not want. When they’re done, you should own the domain name and hosting account. You should also have access to your hosting account, server, and back end administration. If you want to transfer to another host, your designer should provide you with both the design and programming code so you can do so.

7. What content management system do you use?

The content management system, or CMS, lets an administrator (you) update and manage your site without having to access source code. WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla are three popular ones. If a firm wants you to use their custom-made CMS, be aware that this can limit you in the future by making you dependent on the company to manage changes to your site.

8. Do your designs conform to W3C standards?

W3C standards are highly recommended industry standard practices, and your design firm should conform to these. Your designer should know how to test for browser compatibility, and should know how to check for errors and validate your site before it goes live.

9. Is SEO a consideration in the design process?

Search engine optimization (SEO) should be a consideration in every phase of web development. After all, even the most beautiful website isn’t worth much to you if nobody finds it. Even if you’re not starting out with a big SEO push, a site designed with SEO in mind will be easier to market down the line than one in which SEO is ignored during the design phase.

10. How do you price your services?

Not every company has the same web design needs, and budgets vary greatly. If you run a small nonprofit and are considering a website design firm that mostly designs for Fortune 500 companies, make sure they understand your particular needs as a small business. Most firms offer a handful of design packages based on budget and technical needs, so make sure you choose a firm that takes each individual client into account in terms of business size, budget, and industry.

Source: Resource Nation, 2012

1. The ETL Process:
Will be on the critical path of your project.
Can take 80% of your project time. This can mean you do not have enough time to build applications against the data.

2. Source data:
You are going to find hidden problems in the systems feeding the data warehouse.
You will often turn up the need for data not being captured by existing systems.
Data errors come in 4 ‘types’: Incomplete — Incorrect — Incomprehensible — Inconsistent.

3. Operational support:
Data warehouses are high-maintenance systems. Reorganisations, product introductions, new pricing schemes, new customers, changes in production systems, etc. are going to affect the warehouse.
Be prepared to support beginning users immediately and at any time especially when data is not yet central to business culture.

4. Technical:
Overhead can eat up great amounts of disk space.
“There’s all night / weekend to load the database” have been famous last words of many a warehouse developer.

5. Responsibility:
From day one, establish that warehousing is a joint user/builder project.
From day one, establish that maintaining data quality will be an ongoing joint user/builder responsibility.

6. Security:
End-user data access via your warehouse requires trade-offs with data security. You can’t apply your transaction-processing system mindset

7. Your business data consumers:
Will develop conflicting business rules.
Will understand the “same” word differently.
Will perform the “same” calculation differently.

8. Politics:
For reasons of politics or overwork the feeder system programmer often can take a while to give you access to the data. Establishing ownership & stewardship of data (quality) will require education and diplomacy.

9. Business Value:
If you provide a system that is fast and technically elegant but adds little value or has suspect data, you will probably lose your customer. The nature of data warehouse developments is often “I’ll know what I want when I see it.”Data warehousing best flourishes when done with an entrepreneurial orientation rather than with a reactive orientation. Traditional projects start with requirements and end with data. Data warehousing projects start with data and end with requirements. Feeder system owners will fear that implementing a data warehouse will limit the flexibility (or political power) that they have previously enjoyed in a single system environment. Ignore this at your peril.

10. Results (a nice problem to have)
After end users receive query and reporting tools and see the value of the data, requests for data-scientist-assisted reports may increase rather than decrease, contrary to your ROI forecast.

Originally authored by ‘The Enterprise Advocate blog’ by Alex Matthews 01/04/2012
http://www.enterprise-advocate.com/2012/04/top-10-tips-for-data-warehouse-developers/

SEO Myth 2 – Hidden links or keywords at the bottom of the page helps your website rank for that keyword
This is considered spamming by most search engines and will result in your website being penalized. If your website has hidden links or keywords, it’s a good idea to stop this and delete it from your website immediately.

SEO Myth 3 – Write content once and forget about it
Continually updating your pages with new content, removing any outdated information (such as old products you no longer stock or past events), shows a search engine spider that you regularly maintain your website and the content is fresh and up-to-date. This encourages the spiders to visit your website and index the new content. Stale content may signal to a search engine spider that the content is outdated or no longer relevant.

SEO Myth 4 – The more links you have coming to your website, the better
Inbound links are good, but the key message to take away from this is: quality is better than quantity. Having thousands of low quality links to your website will do nothing for your website ranking. In fact, your website may be penalized for having spammy links from low quality or ‘shady’ websites or directories, for example, gambling sites.
Focus on obtaining links from websites that are relevant to your business, industry or products and services.

SEO Myth 5 – SEO is a one time job
I wish it were that simple, but it’s unlikely that your website will rank on the first page of search engine results and stay there without any further optimization. Your competitors will be continually working to improve their ranking and it’s only natural that if they move up in search engine results, other websites will move down search engine results to accommodate this change.
If you wish to keep your website at the top of search engine results, you will need to continually optimize the website. For example, some search engine optimization activities your business could undertake include regular link building to quality websites, uploading fresh and unique content on a regular basis, fixing any broken links on the site, deleting out-of-date content, ensuring that your website loads quickly, or including an alt text for images.

If you would like help with search engine optimization for your business website, please feel free to contact us today.

Does your office need IT help? OmniSpear, Inc. provides both Managed Network Support as well as Web Development for the Dayton and Cincinnati area. Give us a call at 937-643-4037 or click here for a free estimate.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/top-4-strategic-seo-trends-to-watch-for-in-2013/60194/