Archive

Archive for January 8th, 2010

Business Website Design Top Tips

January 8th, 2010 No comments

Effective business website design can appear deceptively easy on the outside, but can have a massive impact on the end of results. If designed and marketed badly, your website will lose you potential customers and will get little to no traffic. Here we discuss mistakes that must be avoided at all costs on your website.

1. Use of poor title tags. When a website is built, you must use appropriate title tags to describe the page. You should also include some of the target keywords that people might search for This also allows search engines to index and crawl the pages more easily.

2. Putting lots of ads on your webpage. Don’t do this as it will not only alienate your visitors, but also distract them, prompting them to leave the website. Keep ads and flashing banners to a minimum and your customers will focus on the important parts of the page.

3. Don’t use complicated website navigation. Most websites put the buttons on the right, left or top of the page. Main navigation pages such as the contact us, about us, faq, home page, etc. are normally best on either the left or top of the page. Don’t try and impress visitors with whizzing-out menus. Keep it simple and your customers will stay on your site longer.

4. Dead links on webpages. When a visitor clicks on a “dead link”, they get an error message and get very frustrated. Make sure all the links on your website work correctly – and that they point to the right place. Remember that having dead links on your pages can also get you penalised in the earch engines.

5. Don’t use Macromedia Flash on your pages unless impossible. Flash does have a place on websites, but is mainly found in gaming or interactive sites where this cannot be done a different way. Consider using animated GIF’s for moving images instead, as most people can view these in a web browser. Another consideration is you could try using javascript or java which is more supported that flash. Flash can take too long and by the time it has, your visitor has left your website.

6. Lack of a Search Box on your website. For a website with many pages, it is extremely important to allow users to search the site without having to find pages by going through every link.

7. Using PDF file links on the website. Using PDF files can good in the case of putting your glossy company brochure online, but it is better to ideally put the pages in HTML web format. More people will see the information then, as if site visitors don’t have Adobe Reader installed, they will have to install it. In our experience, people usually click away instead of trying to download it. Keep the use of PDF’s to a minimum.

8. Visited web links don’t change colour. Make sure links already clicked by your visitor on the website change colour and show as visited. People surfing the web get used to a link changing colour once they have already clicked it so keep it familiar to them.

9. Keep text formatting nice and ‘clean’. Make sure you structure the layout of text on your website neatly and clearly. Use pictures to break up the text and keep text in nicely formatted paragraphs to make the page easy to read.

10. Don’t use very small fonts. The use of small fonts can put a strain on the eyes of anyone, but more so people with impaired vision. Remember also that blind people now read web pages with screen readers. Make sure your website is W3C compliant so that the latest screen reading technology can ‘read’ them.

Learn more about business website design. Stop by Digital Flair where you can find out all about how to make your business web design bring your company leads and sales.

Creating a Squeeze Page for PPC – What To Include

January 8th, 2010 No comments

Wondering what elements you need to include in a squeeze page these days when promoting with PPC (pay per click) services? Other than the usual things – the layout, the video, the headline, the content…there are certain elements that MUST be incorporated if you want to lower the risk of being banned by Google when creating a squeeze page.

First – the trust factor links. You will need to include a privacy policy, terms of service, about us, contact page and sitemap on your squeeze page. These can go at the bottom, top, or middle of the page. The good thing is that these links don’t only help Google; they also increase the chances of someone opting in on your site. People feel better when they feel like they can contact you if any issues arise.

The second element is a SITE. People used to create squeeze pages on mini-sites – a site with the squeeze and thank-you page only. Today, it is necessary to also have a website behind your squeeze page. One type of website you could use is a blog. Make sure to link to your blog from the squeeze page so that Google can see your site is not a one-page site, but has a real website behind it.

Third – search engine optimization, or SEO. Your pages all need to have title tags, meta keywords and meta descriptions that are very focused at one, two or three related keyword phrases. Additionally, you need to promote your squeeze page so that it ranks organically in the search engines. Include 15-20 pages of content on your site, and link each of those pages to your squeeze page using the keyword you want to rank it for. When your squeeze page ranks naturally in the search engines, your adwords quality score will rise and you will pay less per click.

How do you create a squeeze page for PPC? Include the elements listed above to increase your chances of success.

Learn more about how to create a squeeze page. Stop by http://createsqueezepage.com now!

Important Professional Website Design Tips

January 8th, 2010 No comments

If you are a business owner, especially a small business owner, then you should know exactly how much professional website design can add to your business. It can be an essential tool in drawing the attention of customers to your business.

A website can be an useful source of information for your potential and existing customers. Without a website, new customers will struggle to find you or your services. Hiring a professional website design company is an excellent investment for any business.

Designing a website yourself or in-house in a company can work, but in general, those that are built this way are ineffective. The main reason is that the website designer will not have the skills to design the website with the search engines in mind so that it gets found.

When building a professional business website, one of the key things your website design company should look for is to ensure that your site is search engine friendly, meaning that the search engines can index it and the website appears in the search engine results when people search.

The goal is not trick a search engine with some kind of cheat or scam. The goal is to help guide a search engine to your site when a user types in a certain keyword or phrase. Any professional website design company should be familiar with the techniques used, such as using titles and meta tags.

A professional website design should be designed and have content written around strong keywords. This will help improve your site rankings in the search engines and get it noticed. Text content should be written to include keywords relating to your business which will help the search engines.

A website design company should we aware of the importance of search engine optimization when they build your website or content for the site. A professional website design company doing this in addition to the usual search engine optimisation techniques should all help to drive traffic to your website.

Having a contact page helps build trust with consumers. So a basic list of names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses should the bare minimum a professional website design company could get away with.

More and more websites are choosing to include live chat and instant messaging on their website. This has been shown to increase sales conversions over time, as people can speak in real time to a representative.

If you are looking for a professional website design that works for your business, visit www.digitalflair.co.uk to find advice and more on professional web design and how the difference it can make.

Website Promotion: Tips To Getting The Best

January 8th, 2010 No comments

One of the things that you need to do when you start an online business is get a website. However, you can’t leave the website stagnant of the Internet and hope to get any kind of good results. You need to have some kind of website promotion backing you up. Now this website promotion is like everything else in the business world and the more you know the better quality product you will get.

So, the most intelligent and savvy business owner will look into what they need from the best business-to-business directory they can find on the Internet. One of the first things you’ll want to look for here is good customer support. Now while many companies that are involved in website promotion will supply you with an e-mail address for contact purposes, you’ll also want to make sure that you get a phone number that you can dial to talk to somebody about any questions you have concerning website promotion.

Customer Support

Getting this kind of customer support is essential but there are other things that you will need as well. For example, it’s a good idea to take a look at the website of the business directory that you are considering to see how many people are actually using the service. Word of mouth even travels on the Internet and the more people and companies you see using a business directory, the more successful and efficient that particular service is. It’s important to be aware of the fact that you need website promotion for an Internet-based business just as much as you needed it print promotion when the brick-and-mortar store was the only way to do business.

Keyword Analysis

These business-to-business directories have been compared to a form of Internet yellow pages and when you find a place that can supply you with other services beyond exposure for your business it’s all the better. For example when he can find a place that deals in website promotion and keyword analysis at the same time you’ve effectively killed two birds with one stone.

Finally, it’s also a good idea if you can find a place has a good ranking on the Internet to start with because of course that will afford your company more exposure. You can check a company’s Google ranking by simply searching the company name.

Bill Dean knows all about getting the best in website promotion. He tell his clients that they should look at a business directory to get the traffic they want.

Site Flipping

January 8th, 2010 No comments

Flipping websites

Flipping websites is something any new guy can do. But before you start you better be taking a pledge that – you will be selling your site – if you are getting profit. That better be the only aim of yours from now on – if you are thinking of flipping websites.

From now on, don’t create sites for keeping it with you – you should create sites planning to sell them for the best price. The better the site and the domain name, the better will be the profit that you’ll be seeing from them. There is no need of keeping sites for long. But it will have advantage when selling – if the site is with traffic. But there is no use of getting traffic and all, if your aim is to flip sites.

I’m not completely against – getting traffic to online websites before flipping it. But you ought do these things on a rapid manner.

Your aim ought be to produce more and more online websites. This way, you’ll see money coming in your pockets pretty fast. And using this money, you can make these things done by others. Yes, you can employ professionals who are experienced in making online websites. You can employ separate professionals for writing content, designing the pages, driving traffic etc. And when you do things this way, you’ll be able to produce more online websites per month or even per week.

Again, as a website flipper, never create sites to keep it with you. Create sites to sell off for profits. If you register good domain names, then the profit that you’ll be making after selling the sites would be much higher. Some buyers give more preference over the domain name rather than the content or design of the site. So, keep these things in mind. If you start flipping sites, you’ll surely be making some easy money online. And one more thing, don’t start hiring workers now, do that only after you make some money by flipping your first 10-20 sites. By then you’ll be having money to hire them and pay what they ask. Don’t hire cheap workers – hire those that are qualified to do those works. Again, don’t spend any money out of your pockets. First of all, earn some money by working on your own. Then using the profit that you got, hire workers and earn more.

Want to find out more about WordPress Unplugged, then visit Randy’s site on how to choose the best WordPress Information WordPress Unplugged

Choosing the Perfect House Shutters

January 8th, 2010 No comments

Most shutters, whether interior or exterior, are designed to look like they’re made out of wood. This is due to the fact that wood shutters are the most popular kind of house shutters since their wooden appearance is very attractive. Unfortunately, since the shutters are sometimes exposed to the elements, especially when they’re on the outside, the wood begins to deteriorate and the shutters become difficult to maintain.

That’s why most times faux wooden shutters are the better pick over the real thing. Technology has advanced so much that faux wood can be made to look almost exactly like real wood, that the average person wont be able to tell the difference. Interior shutters and blinds are also available in faux wood, which allows people to have shutters and blinds in damp environments that they couldn’t otherwise fit with wooden shutters and blinds.

Additionally, the price for faux wood shutters is often less than shutters made out of real wood. If you are intent on getting shutters made out of real wood, basswood is the consensus best choice as it does not have a problem with warping and it withstands the elements better than other types of wood.

Another thing you should consider when it comes to getting shutters for your house are fiberglass house shutters. However they’re more costly than wood shutters, but the cost is easily offset by how much more durable they are and require less maintenance than wood shutters. That’s why top of the line shutters are commonly made of fiberglass since they don’t rot or warp and need minimal maintenance. Regardless of the style you’re looking for, most shutters can be found in fiberglass and most times are accompanied by a 10-year+ warranty.

When you think of exterior shutters, you might also think of vinyl. Good exterior vinyl shutters work well because of their durability and their ease of maintenance. When you put exterior shutters on your house, you want something that is going to be able to stand up to the elements. Wood is not really a good choice because it warps and cracks leaving the shutters to need constant cleaning and maintaining. With vinyl shutters you not only have something that you can install and forget about, but you also have one of the least expensive materials as well.

Are you looking to learn about cafe shutters and other types of shutters? If you are, please take a look at my website House Shutters Ideas where you can learn more.

Ralf Kunstmann’s Artwork

January 8th, 2010 No comments

This Nature, Traditional and Photo Illustrator, Ralf Kunstmann is one of-a-kind in his fields. Looking through his ever-growing artistic online portfolio, you can see where Ralf stands out from some of the other illustrators.

Born and raised in Nuremburg, Germany, he broke out into the freelance world in 1991, to pursue the design dream. He is now a member of the Association of Art in Erlangen and a member of the German Designers Alliance.

He has developed his skills in photorealism, airbrushing mix-techniques and painting fine colour shades. Perfecting them as a freelancer through years of experience.

He also understands that these methods and ways of working do not end here. Someone, somewhere will produce a better way of developing these skills and you always have to keep up with them and abreast of industry trends

In 2003, Ralf had a change of direction using Abstract art, as he was working solely with a putty knife. This is considered to be highly popular area and understood well by art lovers.

Now, Ralf has managed to develop a diverse form of photorealism, when he combines photography and painting together. These techniques can be quite tricky to master, as both types of skill must blend with one another or it just won’t look right. This needs direct attention to detail at all times when trying to create a design from these techniques.

Ralf will spend most of his time in front of the screen nowadays. He likes to stick to tight schedules, which he has mastered along with becoming a digital artist since 1998. But he knows that you need to master the art of painting, even though you have all these digital aids.

Clients from all over the world have had a Ralf Kunstmann design, including Audi, Hoerzu, Zentis, Stern, Messe Muenchen and many, many more.

See Ralf’s work along with other top great Illustrators and see our home page for excellent information on Illustration. Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service

On Page Optimization Strategy Revealed

January 8th, 2010 No comments

On page optimization really boils down to your keywords. The keyword is really what drives the search engine. Picking of the keyword is absolutely crucial. You need to get into the mind of your user and think, if I was a soccer fanatic, what would I be typing into the search engine to find whatever it is I want to serve up. Let’s say I want to serve up something about soccer drills because I’ve got a book I’m going to sell about soccer drills. On one page I’ve got here’s one free soccer drill and now that you’ve read this free soccer drill I want you to buy the book.

Let’s say I’m going to optimise this page for soccer drills. I’ve gone through the process of thinking, my book is about soccer drills and first thing you would do is some analysis. There are some different keyword research tools out there. One of the best ones to check out is you type into Google ‘free google keyword research tool’. You can put in a seed keyword. Google will then give a lot of other keywords that are related to this topic that we might look at optimising for at a later stage.

So our primary keyword, our seed keyword is soccer drills because we’ve got that soccer drills book. Soccer drills is what we were ranked, so we will put it into the title tag, that’s in your head tag information, in your html page then you would also put it into your meta description. You would also put it into your meta keywords, you might put it into your h1 tag (we’ll discuss this later). Then you want to sprinkle the keyword throughout the page. That’s really all on page optimisation is.

Simply put, what you’re doing is having it so when that spider follows the link and goes soccer drills. When it gets to this website you want there to be a congruency between what Google thinks the page is going to be about and then what the page is about. This spider will make an analysis based on the title tag, meta description, keywords, h1 tag and a few times throughout the page. Google will come here and scan the website and will say, this page is about soccer drills. The link that links to the website said it was about soccer drills, I got here and it had soccer drills all over the page.

This points to another important point. Whenever you are optimising for a web page, only optimise for one keyword. You don’t want to have too many keywords. We go to free google keyword tool and we put soccer drills in, and it might come up with other keywords. It’s ok to have ancillary keywords. Begin with soccer drill and you might have soccer drill training. The key is when you select you keywords you want to be selecting keywords that people are typing in. There is no point in optimising for a keyword that no one else is typing in.

People may say, I rank number one for mating habits of mosquitoes in Ethiopia. I could be number one for that very long phrase. If someone typed that in, I could put that into this page in the title tag, the description, the h1 tag, and put it throughout the page. I might come up number one, in fact there is a very good chance I could be number one for that, because no one else is going to optimise for that. Google’s trying to come up with the most relevant response for whatever someone types in. If I have a page that’s optimised for that, what are the chances of someone else optimising for that? Zero. But a number one listing for that means nothing, because who is going to be typing those keywords in? You should practice on page optimization for one keyword per page. On page optimization should be done for great keywords – with high search volumes and relevant to your content.

Find out more about SEO techniques. Visit www.theseomethod.com for your needs today.

How To Manage Your Working Day As A Freelancer

January 8th, 2010 No comments

As freelancers it is very important for us to acquire good management skills. A good management system is important for us, as it will over time be vital in helping us to find the time to spend with our family and friends. The profession you are in is irrelevant, because time management is sometime we can all benefit from.

Time management is something that many of us find very challenging and we often fail to overcome it efficiently day to day. Freelancers will be very familiar with the importance of this across all industries. Those of us who have been in a normal job environment know how much easier it is when the boss is dishing out the orders.

It becomes a challenge to manage your time with no boss over you day to day, especially when we have to handle the workload, answer the phones, do the paper work and marketing yourself. Client deadlines can also add the intense pressure to achieve balance.

If we take the time to be goal orientated, we many find a day to day runnings a lot easier. You may need a mentor to help you keep track of you targets, or maybe you might prefer to use a goals program, either way you will need some sort of performance tracker.

Many of us spend plenty of time each week simply browsing/finding and thinking about things which are actually taking us away from our goals. We often say we need more time, but in actual fact we need to learn to optimize our time. We need to make best use of the hours we already have in a working day.

A good way to be organised is to use some sort of CRM (Customer Relations Manager). This is a piece of software that stores any type of information, such as contacts, ideas, sales figures, invoices and much more. It is useful to keep your information stored in one secure place, even better if its online on a secured server with a backup utility.

If you are self employed a think its important to save every penny, then why not keep all of your information on your hard-drive or online, as oppose the printing it out and storing hard copies, which cost money. With USB pens and 200gb drives at such low prices, why not keep this precious information in a small space,which will give you more room to be creative elsewhere in your office.

Maximise your career by continually reviewing design jobs and find a variety of great opportunities by looking at other freelance jobs.

How Doing Keyword Research Will Increase Your PPC Advertising Profits

January 8th, 2010 No comments

PPC advertising without proper keyword research is an absolute waste of money and resources. You can easily do this kind of research which will get you well on your way to forming an efficient method for marketing.

Why is it most important? Because you want to know what people are typing when they search. Then knowing those keywords, you can put those exact words into the Text Ad for your Pay Per Click Campaign. You want those words in the Headline, then in the body of the ad, and if you can even have them in the URL itself, all the better! Bottom line ” You want to have those keywords all over your ad, and it will increase the likelihood of someone clicking on it. But it is much more than just that.

While it is important to know what keywords people are using to search, you have to be able to take that list and figure out which keywords will be the most effective in selling your product or service. As you do your research this list is sure to expand. However, once you develop a core list, you can create variations of this list using the new words as your big list grows. In order to build your keyword core list, you need to know where to start, know how to preform proper keyword research, and use some common sense.

Let’s use a person trying to sell cars as an example. Using Google Adwords you can determine how many searches were performed using the key words ‘cars’ or ‘used cars’ or ‘used cars for sale’ or even ‘used bmw for sale.’ In a real situation, the bigger your list of potential keywords, the better. However, for this example we are going to limit ourselves to 4.

Monthly, 151 million people search for ‘cars.’ That’s a lot! It must be the perfect word choice! This is false. You’ll waste so much time and money bidding on the rights to put ‘cars’ in your PPC ad, despite its popularity. What happened? The term is way too general, and have many contexts for searching for it. It won’t help a used car business much.

Were getting warmer now. It isnt an awful term & gets 550,000 searches a month, but still doesnt 100% meet what were doing. Why? Because we sell used BMW cars. Do you see where were going here? This is where common sense kicks in. We need to be looking for a list of keywords that we think are relevant to what were selling. Used BMW for sale.

Append this keyword with any city you can sell a car to, or even model numbers for your cars, and you’ll get better keywords like ‘Used 325 BMW for Sale in Los Angeles,’ which will get a lot more customer that will be interested!

Anthony Flores of www.attorneymarketingetwork.com is an authority in Attorney Marketing and Lawyer Marketing. Contact us with proven PPC and SEO results for attorney’s all across the country.

Categories: seo Tags: , , ,