March 11th, 2010
AdWords is a Pay per Click (PPC) based online advertising system. These paid listings appear in “Sponsored Links” sections found beside and sometimes above the organic search results on Google’s search results pages.
On the other hand organic results are dependent upon the search engines and their algorithms. Search Engines bots crawl your website and after evaluating it add your content to their index and rank it compared to the rest of the results they have. When a user submits a search query to Google, it will then retrieve their records and list according to what they think is the best match to entered search query/search phrase.
There is on ongoing question on the issue of which method is more beneficial and helpful. Below is the comparison of organic SEO vs. Google AdWards. (For additional information you may also check one of our earlier blogs – SEO vs. AdWords (1)).
Competition
Adwords is less competitive than SEO. It’s usually far easier to get your keywords to the top position in Adwords than it is by using SEO techniques. Some will argue that you just buy yourself to the top of the Adwords lists with expensive clicks. But this is an arguable issue since one can get to the top with some sensible bid prices and good Adwords management.
Ongoing Maintenance
Though opinions differ on this, AdWords seems to require more ongoing continued effort to maintain the top spot for your keywords than SEO does. In fact SEO requires significantly more work initially as once you have a top position, quality links tend to find you themselves. One the other hand to keep your AdWords campaigns performing well you should be checking them every day.
Tags: Pay per click, PPC, SEO
Posted in SEO | No Comments »
March 9th, 2010
1. Headings
Headings are an excellent way for separating your content into manageable sections. They are an excellent tool for making the post more scan-able. They create white space which makes it easier for readers to scan through the post and identify which bullet or which heading they would like to learn more about, rather than digging through twenty paragraphs of solid text.
2. Margins
A margin is the white space around a particular element in a web design. CSS Margins are a great way to control this space to your advantage. When working with margins, there are a few things that should be kept in mind:
• Consistency
Keep your margins consistent throughout your layout. The more consistent the spacing, the more professional and organized your website will look. When thinking of margins, think of both vertical and horizontal separation, as both have an effect on the overall web design.
• Not Too Much
Don’t make your margins too large. Too much separation may make a website feel disconnected. Also keep in mind that there are only a certain amount of pixels that can fit on a screen, so don’t waste too much screen real estate on margins (unless of course the context of the site calls for such margins).
• Not Too Little
It looks shoddy to have a text pressed up against a picture, sidebar, header, navigation bar, or any other element of a web design. Keep these spaced out to give your readers room to breathe.
Tags: Web Design
Posted in Web Design | No Comments »
March 4th, 2010
Search Engine optimization or SEO is the method of setting up your website so that it ranks well for particular keywords within the organic search results of major search engines, including Google, Yahoo, MSN and Bing. Contrasting with paid search marketing, which requires you to pay for every click sent to your website from a search engine, traffic sent to your site from a search engine’s organic results is free.
In the early good days of SEO the process of gaining top ranking for keywords was much easier than it is today. In those days search engine algorithms were easy to crack. All you had to do was to include the keyword you desired to rank for in the title tag of your web page and that keyword throughout the content of your page, and chances were you would rank within the top ten results of your favorite search engine. Over the years search-engine algorithms have become increasingly complex.
In 1996 or so search engines became a very popular tool for all sorts of information. Long before Google and Yahoo became popular, search engines like AltaVista and InfoSeek were pioneers at providing search results to users within a fraction of a second. As the World Wide Web grew at a remarkable pace, the popularity of AltaVista and InfoSeek started to wane. Other search engines came and went but no company has had more of an impact on search engine marketing than Google.
Tags: search engine optimization, SEO
Posted in SEO | No Comments »
March 3rd, 2010
If you have a website then you already have an Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy , and know the benefits that a well optimized website can bring.
If not, then here are 5 reasons you necessitate to consider an SEO strategy for your company website
1. People search for information in different ways, and the words you would use to find your products or services, might not be the same words that your visitors would use.
2. Your web site should be in the top ten results of the most popular search engines, as most people only trust the first few results on the Search Engine Results Pages, if not your target audience may never hear of your website or company.
3. By optimizing your website, and ensuring that each page is relevant, and what a visitor would expect to find, you can increase the likelihood of people visiting your website.
4. If you want to increase conversions, you’ll want to have significant content that people will want to read. A well optimized site will attract visitors and keep them interested.
5. By generating new sales and profit, you can help to increase your market share, and so become more of an authority in your industry, which will help offline sales and brand awareness as well.
Tags: search engine optimization, SEO
Posted in SEO | No Comments »
March 2nd, 2010
Many people use the Internet to be informed about products or services that they are in need of. A website is a source of information for those who may be researching online before buying. Having a website is a good business practice as it will provide you with the power to contact thousands of potential customers through this increasingly dominant marketing channel. With your own website your business has great opportunities to become a member of global marketing medium. A website will enlarge your marketing investment, by leveraging the versatile and dynamic marketing channel which is the internet.
There are four main points your website will help you cover;
Creativity
Your website allows you to be more creative in how you present your information/products and /or services compared to print marketing.
Point of Contact
Your site is always live. If a potential customer has heard about you but can’t find your business card, they may turn to the Internet to try and set your contact information. If your website is e-commerce enabled then your products are ready and waiting to be sold.
Expansion
Your website opens a way to a larger market of prospective clients. It is possible to increase your local client base if your website is available for them to research your service.
Competitiveness
If you are quite a small company, your site turns out to be a virtual shop window enabling you to compete on much more equal terms with much larger companies.
Posted in Web Design | No Comments »
February 19th, 2010
As an important part in advertising a business, the process of website design can be really challenging to the webmaster or designer engaging in it. There are certain things that a web design specialist must not overindulge. Doing more than what is needed may bring negative returns and create a business loss.
1. Don’t use too many colors in the website
Keep the website’s color scheme limited to a couple of colors and keep it consistent across the website unless you want to denote a major section.
2. Don’t have more than a few words in italics, bold or in capitals
All these are ways to draw attention to text, but they make text harder to read. It’s OK if it refers to particular words but if you’re making everything the same, it loses its impact.
3. Don’t use <h5> and <h6> tags
These tags make the text smaller than the browsers default size and make it bold, which results in text that is really hard to read.
4. Do use the ‘alt’ tag
Alternate text is used by text only browsers. Do put meaningful information in ‘alt’ tag as text only browsers are used by the blind to surf the web. The alternative text will also help you with the search engines.
5. Do end the URLs with a forward slash in your links
By adding the forward slash you remove a step that otherwise the web server and browser would have to take; removing this extra step can give you a speed boost.
6. Do make the images that look like buttons act like buttons
In order not to confuse your visitors you must not create graphics that look like buttons but that aren’t in fact buttons.
Tags: Web Design, website design
Posted in Web Design | No Comments »
February 19th, 2010
1. Let your site pages be found naturally by the crawler. Good linking and navigation will serve your SEO much better than relying only on an XML Sitemap.
2. Links (especially deep links) from a high PageRank site are golden. High PR indicates high trust, thus the back links will carry more weight.
3. See if your hosting company provides “Sticky” forwarding when moving to a new domain. This allows temporary forwarding to your new domain from the old, retaining the new URL in the address bar so that users can gradually get used to the new URL.
4. Understand social marketing. It is part of SEO. The more you understand about sites like Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook, etc., the better you will be able to compete in searches.
5. Videos that show up in Google blended search results don’t just come from YouTube. Be sure to submit your videos to other quality video websites like Metacafe, AOL, MSN and Yahoo to name a few.
6. Surround video content on your web pages with keyword rich text. The search engines look at surrounding content in order to define the usefulness of the video for the query.
7. Use the words “picture” or “image” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches are for a keyword plus one of those words.
8. Check your server headers. Search for “check server header” to find free online tools for this. You want to be sure your URLs report a “301 Moved Permanently” or “200 OK” status for redirects. If the status shows anything else, check to be sure your URLs are set up properly and used consistently throughout your site.
Tags: SEO
Posted in SEO | No Comments »
February 18th, 2010
Google’s Caffeine update hasn’t been revealed yet and no one knows which search engine optimization techniques will remain relevant in the near future. However, before you start experimenting with “Caffeine-ready SEO” strategies, there are some things that you can do to increase the chances that your website will get good rankings in Google search results:
• Remove all spam elements from your web pages
Anything that might be considered as spam will have a negative effect on the position of your web pages sooner or later. This includes text of nearly the same color as the background, cloaking and fully automated linking systems.
• Check your website design and the navigation structure
Your website should have a professional look and feel. The navigation should be intuitive and your web pages should be easily crawl-able by search engine spiders.
• Get links from social bookmark websites
Social bookmark links also play a role in Google’s current algorithm and that role might increase.
• Check your links
You shouldn’t link to websites that look like spammers. It’s better to focus on several quality links instead of numerous low quality links.
Tags: search engine optimization, SEO
Posted in SEO | No Comments »
February 18th, 2010
A creative web designer creates design layouts for websites. He/she uses web technologies and development software to add images and design elements to sites. As a rule ,creative web designers work on many different client projects at once, so they must be well organized as well as deadline driven.
Creative web design specialists are responsible for all of the visual parts of websites. They choose and work with the colors, images, sounds, photography, animation, and type of style for each website they produce. A creative web designer selects design components that best amplify the message of each website’s words.
Creative web designers work with website writers to compose and lay out images to accompany the written text. A senior creative web designer may be in charge of a team of junior designers as well as writers. These types of web designers are often familiar with web text strategies such as search engine optimization (SEO), in which keywords are used within web copy to help drive more potential customers to the website.
In other cases a senior web designer works with a copywriter and both report to a creative director. Typically the senior designer and copywriter each manage a team of juniors in the agency’s creative department. Advertising agency jobs for a creative web design specialist are usually full time. Alternatively, a web designer may have his or her own design business at home and work on freelance projects for different clients that may include ad agencies.
In addition to designing websites for many different kinds of businesses, a creative web designer may create logos for new businesses. Most creative web designers work directly with clients. They usually communicate with them by email and telephone as well as in face to face project meetings. A web designer must always strive to meet project deadlines; this means being extremely organized and keeping careful track of multiple client projects at once.
Tags: search engine optimization, SEO, Web Design
Posted in Web Design | No Comments »
February 17th, 2010
The sitemap is aimed at helping visitors and search engine spiders to find information on the website. Today’s trend of web design is placing the sitemap in the footer area instead of creating a separate sitemap page. Placing a sitemap in the footer helps to enhance the website’s usability. Usability is foremost in importance in website design. Providing a site map in the footer, no matter how small, improves usability.
Placing site map in the footer of the website has the following benefits:
Increases page clicks and visit duration
Online readers don’t read everything on the page. They scroll and scan to decide whether to stay on the website and leave. The footer of your website is probably the last place they look at before exiting. Placing a sitemap in the footer may attract the attention of readers and increase page clicks and views.
Makes sure your visitors are not missing out
Sometimes the visitors might be too lazy to click on the sitemap link. Having a sitemap in the footer ensures your visitors are aware of what pages are available at the website with just a glance.
Promotes important pages
You don’t really have to use the footer to list out everything. You can use it as an alternative location to promote important links.
Saves readers’ time
Footer sitemap allows users to quickly jump from page to page. Also, by placing the sitemap in the footer rather than a separate page, you save the visitors a click.
Enhances layout design
Don’t know what to put in the footer? Perhaps a sitemap can fill up the page and make your website look bigger.
Tags: Web Design, website design
Posted in Web Design | No Comments »
