Ways to Optimize the site for Google:

admin    SEO Flash     Google, Optimize, Site, Ways

Ways to Optimize the site for Google:

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With a comprehensive optimization technique enforced on a website, the search engines will be able to index and crawl it in an effective way. Website optimization is basically bringing a website displayed in the first few search result for a particular keyword.

Basically there are two finest ways to optimizing a website for search engines and they are On-Page Optimization and Off-Page Optimization.

On-Page Optimization:

On-Page optimization method deals with fine tuning the webpage structure and content. This method can easily be performed since the webmaster can easily modify the web pages on the server. On-Page optimization can be achieved through many processes, let’s discuss some important processes.

Code Optimization:

It is very essential to keep the web page code simple and clean. A clean code can easily be read and understood by the web crawlers whereas it would take much time to crawl through a shabby code. The actual web page should consist of clean tags without the styles coming in the way.

Title Tag Optimization:

The Title tag is a very crucial component of a webpage. When search engines crawls the website, the Title tag is the first element to be crawled making it highly important. The Title tag should be short but descriptive and expressive in content. Meta tags are generally used to describe the page content and services provided in brief. There is a better chance for a website to show up in searches if good Meta tag’s are formulated.

Internal/External Link Optimization:

Optimizing on internal and external outbound links is very important. A website should possess a well structured internal link model with comprehensive anchor text. Avoid placing the entire link as the anchor text; instead, put some keyword targeted words or phrases.

Off-Page Optimization

Unlike On-Page optimization, this optimization techniques are not in the control of the web developer. These techniques refer to how the web perceives the website. Off-Page optimization can sometime be draggy and time consuming but they highly affect the search engine optimization. Moreover, Off-Page optimization is much more better than On-Page optimization. Let’s see some of the Processes, that comes under off-page optimization,

Widespread Keyword Research:

A vital part of search engine optimization is searching the correct and effective keywords. Keywords play an important role in searches, since web pages are targeted for specific keywords.

Use Search Engine Compatible Technology:

Some people will put a lot of funky features on their websites. This includes various CGI scripts, numerous frames, flash components, and even more dynamically created pages. The viewer may enjoy it, but the search engines do not like this as they don’t know how to crawl through it. So if you had a site with a lot of frames or flash components, search engines will have an extremely difficult time crawling through your website. Although your page may be indexed, the spider may not be able to crawl through the various links within the frames.

Update your Website Continuously:

Search engines tend to like active and well updated websites. Because the search engines are always looking for new information to index. Usually, web logs are very successful with search engines because content can be built quite easily.

There are hundreds of tools and techniques to optimize your website for search engines. Consulting with SEO experts and visiting the numerous SEO forums can also help you learn new tips and stay up to date with the latest news in the SEO world.For more details about the SEO logon to

10 Ways to Kill Your Site

admin    SEO Flash     Kill, Site, Ways

10 Ways to Kill Your Site

This post covers 10 common mistakes people make with their technical SEO.

1. Brand new website, completely flash

I had the privilege of explaining to someone recently that the 5k he had just spend on his new website recently was not money well spent. The whole site was one flash file, and had no text content, making it invisible to search engines. The sad part was that the site didn’t need flash – animation effects were limited to mouseovers on buttons, easily replicated using javascript.

Just because Google says they can read content within swf files doesn’t make it a good idea. If search engine rankings are important, make sure there is plenty of text content for spiders to find.

2. Forgetting to redirect old pages

When you replace that old Frontpage site with your swanky new CMS and completely change all URLs on the site, make sure you setup 301 redirects from the old pages to the new pages.

If you don’t, all the links you have naturally been accumulating will now be broken, meaning Google is likely to ignore them for ranking purposes, and webmasters are likely to remove them from their sites.

Anyone who has gone through the process of building links naturally will know how precious these are, so 301ing the old pages to the new pages is critical.

It takes only a few minutes to do, pay someone to do it if you have to.

3. A robots.txt blunder

Putting a bad line into your robots.txt file is a pretty fast way to axe your site from the search results. If you don’t know what robots.txt is all about, then perhaps it’s worth thinking twice about playing with it?

Google has a tool for checking your robots file, so take the time that any changes are done correctly.

4.No H1 headings

I hate this one so much. Who really knows if the H1 is weighted heavily or not in Google’s algorithm, but my gut feeling is that it is important. I so often see websites where the major heading on the page is not a H1, it’s a styled paragraph or simply a div.

CSS can be used to redefine the styles for existing page elements, such as H1 headings, so it just makes sense to use a H1 tag for your major heading.

5. Sitewide meta description

It’s really easy to stick a meta description into your website template and see it used on every page of your site. Unfortunately, this can axe your site from the search results pretty quickly. If you have a sitewide meta description, then all it takes is a more powerful site to steal your meta description and suddenly they will be ranking instead of you (your site will be lost in the duplicate content filter).

Take the time to use a unique meta description on every page, or leave it blank.

6. Splash pages

The splash page or flash intro page is essentially an empty page (as far as the search engines see it) with a single link to your homepage.

What this means is that your navigation structure is now one level deeper. The page that would have beena PR5 is now a PR4, and Google visits your “homepage” less often (because the splash page is actually the homepage).

If you really really must use a flash intro or splash page, do the right thing and add a little paragraph of text at the bottom for the search engines to see. Also place links to your other top-level pages, not just the homepage, so the link juice spreads around the site properly.

7. 404s with content

I have seen some interesting ways of rewriting URLs, and my favourite had to be the 404 method. Basically, every page returns a 404 header, and a custom 404 handler (a php script) was used to deliver the page content to the browser.

Unfortunately, Google ignores the content and just sees the 404 error, so this site had no show of appearing in search results.

This is uncommon, but it’s worth using a little extra caution when delivering a 404 to the browser. 404s can spell bad things for your site when you get them wrong.

8. Ads, ads, ads

While not strictly a technical issue, nothing screams “don’t link to me” like an affiliate thin content site crawling with Adsense. If you expect to do well in the search engines, you need links, and it’s not worth losing links for the sake of a few dollars a month in Adsense revenue.

Advertising is something that should be added to an established website with established traffic, it’s unlikely you will get rich from advertising revenue on a brand new domain with no links.

9. Black hat that doesn’t need to be black hat

Har har, I’ll write this paragraph of really crap content with some useful keywords and make it white on a white background so people can’t see it.

Thing is, it doesn’t take much more effort to create good content with useful keywords in it and make it visible to your users. People spend time creating dodgy doorway pages when they should be optimising their content pages. Adding crap hidden content to the homepage when they should be writing good sales copy.

Black hat tricks like this are an invitation for other webmasters to burn you (Google never finds out on it’s own). Before going ahead with a black hat scheme, look for white or grey hat alternatives first.

10. Multiple domains and dupe content

I once brought a site from top 60 rankings to top 20 by doing nothing other than removing 14 out of 15 versions of their homepage.
They had…
www.domain.co.nz
domain.co.nz
www.domain.co.nz/default.asp
www.domain.co.nz/default.asp?pageid=1
www.domain.com
www.otherdomain.co.nz
otherdomain.co.nz
secure.domain.co.nz
secure.domain.co.nz/default.asp
etc.

Each version of the homepage had a certain amount of link authority, and the version with the most power showed up in the search results. I redirected all that link power into the main page, and all of a sudden, the rankings jumped, having changed nothing else.

Is your site wasting precious link juice on duplicate versions of yoyur homepage?

Other

There are plenty of other ways to kill your website in the search engines, and I have deliberately skipped some of the obvious and less interesting ones. SEO is often less about doing things well and more about not doing things badly – Intresting SEO Articles

Seo Tips: 10 Most Important Inbound Links You Must Have To Your Site

admin    SEO Video     Important, Inbound, Links, Most, Must, Site, Tips

Seo Tips: 10 Most Important Inbound Links You Must Have To Your Site

One important search engine optimization strategy you shouldn’t overlook is your inbound linking strategy. An inbound link is a hyperlink to your site from another web site. The most reliable strategy in search engine optimization over the years is that sites with a number of varied high quality backlinks outrank their competition in the search engine results pages.

Why are these links to your site important? They can can…

– bring potential customers to your site when they click on the link

– increase the number of visitors to your web site

– dramatically improve your search engine rankings

Even though there are software packages on the market that help automate the linking process, use them sparingly, if at all. Aside from creating useful content that encourages inbound links, the most successful way to create inbound links is by creating them manually. That’s a hard fact to swallow, given how I like to automate as much of my marketing as I can.

Here are the 10 most important inbound links you must have to your site:

1. Directory links: Directories are indexes of online sites, typically organized by category. Links back to your site from directories like Yahoo Directory and DMOZ.org are very valuable. DMOZ.org is edited by human editors, and while it’s free, it may take awhile for your site to be listed. Getting listed in Yahoo’s Directory costs 9/year.

2. Press releases: If you’re writing press releases, make sure they are optimized for keywords that someone would use to find a business like yours and include links back to your site, as well. Once written, you can have your press release distributed through a service like PRWeb.com, which will create links from high traffic news sites back to your site.

3. Article directories. Writing and distributing articles through high traffic article directories, like EzineArticles.com, is a great way to get valuable inbound links from a high traffic site. By crafting an effective resource box at the close of your article, you can drive traffic back to your site!

4. Social bookmarking: Similar to web browser bookmarks, social bookmarking sites store individual pages (bookmarks) online and allows users to tag (with keywords), organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources as well as share them with others. If you bookmark your own content on these sites (like Digg.com, Reddit.com, Del.icio.us.com), you get a link from the service. By producing content that your readers love and then bookmark to their friends, the link increases in SEO value.

5. Blog comments: To find blog posts on which to comment, you can use blog-specific search engines like Google Blog Search. Make sure these are blogs read by your target market, not your colleagues. Brand yourself by always using the same name and remember to link back to your site. Always leave a comment that adds to the conversation that’s happening within the comments.

6. Social Media: Now, Google also indexes your Twitter updates and your social networking profiles. Add that to Web 2.0 hubsites like Scribd or HubPage and you’ve got the option of creating many, many inbound links in a very short period of time.

7. Blog/podcast syndication. Submitting the RSS feed of your blog and podcast to syndication services will give you a link back to your site. Most of the time, when you publish a new blog post, a link is assigned to the new post, as well.

8. Video syndication. YouTube is one of the most visited sites online, and the number of sites that syndicate videos is growing each day. These sites often allow you to link to your site either in your video’s description or on your profile page, or both.

9. .EDU and .GOV links. Government and education web sites carry a great deal of weight with search engines, and thereby hold a great deal of credibility. Frankly, it isn’t easy to get inbound links from these sites.

10. Internal Links. Remember, if you have more than one web site, or a web site and a blog, be sure and link one to the other. You can do this by linking one article to other related articles, or link to categories or archives of information.

Creating a sound inbound linking strategy is a key component of your search engine optimization efforts. Try a few of the strategies listed above and see how your traffic and rankings increase.

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Using Wordpress as a Static ECommerce Site

admin    Adobe After Effects     Ecommerce, Site, Static, Using, WordPress

Using Wordpress as a Static ECommerce Site

Wordpress is one of the most popular blogging platforms available, however many people don’t realize that Wordpress can be customized to provide a great eCommerce website. This necessitates some changes to the default settings which come with Wordpress when you first set your account up, but they can be achieved relatively easily.

In this article we are going to look at some of the practical issues which you can follow to establish a static website appearance and why Wordpress provides such a cost-effective platform for your commercial web activities.

Creating a Static Front Page

The initial Wordpress setting is for the front page to show the latest in your string of blog posts Wordpress is a blogging platform first and this is what bloggers will usually want. For an eCommerce website you will probably want a fixed front page to avoid any confusion with visitors to the site.

The first thing to do is to produce your static, front page open Wordpress’ Dashboard, click on Pages and Add New you will open a screen of the draft page to which you can add graphics, company logo, any headline or welcome message and also add a list of product categories. Tailor the page to your requirements and then publish the page to the site.

We now need to set this page as the Default Page return to the Dashboard and click on Settings; below Reading Settings select the Static Page option but be careful that you also save a title for the page, e.g homepage.

If you activate the Wordpress eCommerce plugin, you will also get the option to have the static homepage automatically display your products; you can do this by choosing Products Page from the drop-down menu which is provided. This will also let your visitors see your products as soon as they visit your homepage.

Implementing Widgets

Widgets are also sometimes referred to as, sidebar accessories and are a very simple, quick and effective means of increasing the variety of content displayed in your sidebar. Widgets can be used to add or render changing graphics, text, web code (Java or HTML) and much more which adds to the visual attraction of the site as well as providing additional functionality for the visitor.

To use widgets, open the Dashboard again and select Appearance; next select Widgets which will unveil a long list of different widgets for you to use to customize the look and feel of the site. Wordpress uses a very simple, drag and drop system for you to add widgets to your site and it is extremely simple to change the appearance and position in the sidebar you don’t need any coding experience or knowledge whatsoever.

Text widgets are a popular tool in creating eCommerce websites using Wordpress because they perform a wide variety of functions and so easy to customize. Typical uses include:

creating a special offer or discount promotion;

highlighting a featured product;

creating drop-down menus for navigating to other parts of the site, especially for other product pages;

displaying customized images and graphics for different products or product ranges; and

automating changing content.

Choosing Web Site 2.0 Design And Logo Design And Psd To Html Or Xhtml Comapny India

admin    SEO Flash     Choosing, Comapny, Design, Html, India, logo, Site, Xhtml

Choosing Web Site 2.0 Design And Logo Design And Psd To Html Or Xhtml Comapny India

Webdesignshoppe.com

Webdesignshoppe provide you best website designing, logo design & development, psd to html/xhtml conversion, SEO Services, image editing, flash design, convert (.psd .jpg .giff .png) to xhtml and web design development, with a unique affordable web design services, which truly represent your business.

Website Design Services

Choosing a web design company can be a challenge. That is why webdesignshoppe developed a helpful design process that is simple, clear, and fast. Custom Website Design with web 2.0 graphics we create websites from scratch. Our designers use the elements of typography, usability, color profiles and optimization. Beautiful web 2.0 graphics our web 2.0 graphics are custom-made and will scale without distortion across web and print.

PSD to html/xhtml Conversion, Valid CSS/XHTML

We code W3C valid CSS and XHTML. The reasons to use W3C valid CSS and XHTML are many. From fast load times of your website, SEO Semantic code, easy of use, fast and easy updates to your site, all browsers compatibility and future proofing your investment.

Logo Design & Development

Our logo design & Development process is simple and highly creative. We discus with you and carefully listen to everything you have to say. We’ll work with you to define your message and from there we’ll create your identity website, logo, and print.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Google Rank: we will quickly get your site ranked.

Internet Marketing and Advertising: Ask us how we can help you reach customers and gain rank with Google.

Keyword Optimization

Keyword optimized content is important. Content should be clear and search-engine-spider friendly.

Open design process

Our design process is guided by our clients. Your schedule and timeline dictate the pace at which we work. Our process start talking to you and listening to your ideas and concepts; then we take your ideas and work with you to create the product you need. Your involvement with the design & development process, from beginning to end.

Usability in design

The world of usability is extremely important, how the user experiences color, the layout of the navigation, W3C valid CSS and XHTML. This ensures your website is the way you want and works on all browsers and monitor sizes. We do extensive group testing to make sure your website is accessible.

Keywords

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Related SEO Flash Articles

Search Engine Spiders and Your Web Site

admin    SEO Flash     Engine, Search, Site, Spiders

Search Engine Spiders and Your Web Site

Axandra Search Engine University<!– .graugedrucktes { color: #777777; font-size: 10px; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica; text-decoration: none } .kleinergrau { color: #777777; font-size: 8px; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica; text-decoration: none } .kleinerlink { color: #0018a5; font-size: 11px; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica; text-decoration: underline } .tabelle { color: black; font-size: 11px; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica; text-decoration: none } .kleingedrucktes { color: black; font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica; text-decoration: none } .kleingedruckteslink { color: #0018a5; font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica; text-decoration: underline } .weiss { color: white; font-size: 11px; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica; text-decoration: none } .weisshead { color: white; font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica; text-decoration: none } a:active { color: #f90; font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, Sans-serif; text-decoration: underline } a:link { color: #0018a5; font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, Sans-serif; text-decoration: underline } a:visited { color: #00180a; font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, Sans-serif; text-decoration: underline } body { background: url(../images/ibp-logo.gif) no-repeat fixed center; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial; background-color: #ffffff } h1 { color: #ff8800; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; font-size: 16px; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial } h2 { color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial } h3 { color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; font-size: 13px; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial } p { color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial } td { color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial } ul li { color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial }–>

A web page that looks great to the human eye can be totally meaningless to search engines. For example, search engines cannot read the text on the images of your web site, and many don’t understand web languages such as JavaScript or CSS.

If you have a great looking web site that is meaningless to search engines, you won’t be able to achieve high search engine rankings with that web site – no matter how good and interesting your web site content is.

In general, search engines cannot see content that is presented in the following file formats:

images (GIF, JPEG, PNG, etc.)
Flash movies, flash banners, etc.
JavaScript and other script languages
other multimedia file formats

Some search engines can index some of these file formats but in general, it’s very difficult to obtain high search engine rankings if your main web site content is presented only in these formats.

Search engines need text to index your web site. They cannot know what’s written on your GIF or JPEG images or in your Flash movies. If you use a lot of images on your web site, you should also create some web pages that contain a lot of text.

If you want to find out how search engines see your web site, you have to use a search engine spider simulator tool. A search engine spider simulator tool emulates the software programs search engines use to index your web site. They show you what elements of your web site are visible to search engines.

IBP’s search engine spider simulator helps you to find out how search engines see your web site. IBP’s spider simulator even allows you to emulate special search engines spider names so that you can find out if your competitors send different pages to search engine spiders.

Just enter the URL of your web site and IBP will tell you what text and which links search engines can find on your site.

That allows you to quickly find out whether your web site lacks information that search engines need to properly index your web site.

More information can be found in our free weekly Search Engine Facts newsletter

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Copywriting SEO: Securing Genuine and Lasting Results for Your Site

admin    SEO Video     Copywriting, Genuine, Lasting, Results, Securing, Site

Copywriting SEO: Securing Genuine and Lasting Results for Your Site

The Internet has become so competitive that every website employs different strategies to get high ranking on search engine result page. And search engine copywriting is the most reliable of all the methods used to get top rankings. When it comes to SEO, nothing can be compared to the content of the site. The images, graphics, videos etc. are of no use if your pages do not contain any relevant content. In SEO, content is king and this is very much why SEO copywriting is regarded as the most important and reliable strategy in boosting search engine page result ranking.

In this type of copywriting, the copywriter first tries to understand the nature of the website (what business it is into? what are its products or services? who are its targeted audience? etc.). Accordingly he develops the content of the website. The content is neither lengthy enough that visitors get bored going through it nor short enough that it is unable to provide full information. In Copywriting SEO, a content of the word count of 250–500 is considered healthy. Again the content should be prepared using keywords. These are words or phrases that the visitors are likely to use as search terms on search engines. When the search engine indexes the pages containing the search terms, and if your site contains the maximum number of keywords matching the search terms entered, your site will automatically rank high on search engine result page. But remember that the keywords should be equally spread throughout the content. And its number should not exceed 3 percent of the total word count of the content.

SEO copywriting is also the most powerful method of page optimization. By using other SEO techniques your site may get higher ranking on a particular search engine. But a different search engine may give a different result. Again, even if your site secures high ranking it may not be able to sustain the ranking for long. However, a SEO copywriter can guarantee you stable ranking across all search engines. So go for SEO copywriting for lasting and genuine results.

Ten – Deadly ‘web Site Design Sins’ and How to Avoid Them (part One of Three)

admin    SEO Flash     Avoid, Deadly, Design, Part, Sins’, Site, Them, Three, ‘web

Ten – Deadly ‘web Site Design Sins’ and How to Avoid Them (part One of Three)

1) Do you want to be FLASH?

Having a whole site developed using flash by a specialist design consultancy can result in an exciting and even exhilarating media experience for your customers, the main points to keep in mind as to whether to go ‘All Flash’, ‘No Flash’ or ‘Some Flash’ are as follows:

Is your customer base likely to view your website via a high-speed connection, for example are you in the B2B (business to business) space?

Who is your main target audience? If you are selling to mainly home users who may still have a slow dial up Internet connection then no flash or a very limited usage of carefully constructed flash will be the only real option.

If you are an established business who has already built a strong and loyal client base and do not need to worry about search engines to achieve your expected or projected revenue, then using Flash for your entire website can be an exciting choice, especially if the design consultancy are excellent at what they do. A Flash website can be a captivating online experience, one which can both engage your target audience and project interesting dimensions into your clients interaction with your business, something which cannot be achieved to quite the same degree on the usually more flat and less engaging standard non interactive websites.

You need to be mindful of the technology utilised by search engines to find your all important content, as the web is based upon different technology to Flash and as such, at this current moment in time for the majority of website designs it is worth restricting the usage of flash. Utilising Flash to provide your target audience with a more engaging user experience can be a fantastic choice as long as it is built around a solid html based architecture; this will ensure that using this great media tool does not spell disaster for your online organic marketing.

If you are looking to run a campaign or advertisement on your website or are looking to incorporate a few elements of flash it can be a powerful tool to engage your prospective target audience. It will not be long when the use of streaming media and flash media becomes an everyday part of the web, as Telco companies entice more and more people away from the chains of dial up Internet unleashing the true power of the web.

2) Do not do a ‘DIY’ website design -

Generating the correct image for your organisation, whether small, medium or large is imperative in today’s business world, like no other time in history has it been more important for you to create the right image with your target audience, one that resonates with them, one that allows them to identify with you and conversely you with them.

People are now targeted every day with so much information and with so many choices it makes it imperative for you to communicate with your target audience so that they can recognise and differentiate you from the thronging masses, if you do not then how can you expect to gain their attention and ultimately their business? DIY web site creation at the outset may appear to be a cost effective strategy, and if you have the time and expertise to become an expert, (or at least produce expert quality work) whereby you utilise design tools to re-create the template into a unique custom looking design, then it may be a viable possibility. Though, for the majority who do not have the time, creative flare or technical skills to produce expert quality work you are more likely to produce low quality design that will be perceived as sloppy, unprofessional and third rate. For those who opt for a template design it will be a false economy as at first glance your business website may appear professional, though as with all template designs your business will have the look and feel of hundreds if not thousands and thousands of other business websites. Why create a whole business around the design, look and feel of a thousand of other websites when you can utilise the services of an affordable web design company who can create a unique masterpiece for you that will propel your business into a league of it’s own. In the crowded streets of this superhighway you want to make sure that you have another gear to be able to drop down into so that you can leverage full steam ahead leaving the opposition whirling around in confusion.

3) Navigational Design and Structural Architecture:

Using a Design house that can look at these elements of your website and build them into the design as they map out and structure your site is a key component of successful website design. The vast majority of web designers miss the point completely in this area, either the design is weak or the navigational design and structural architecture is all wrong. If you utilise a professional company who use skilled expert designers that work along side other professionals with diverse backgrounds in areas such as corporate learning and development and/or marketing then you are sure to achieve a resounding and satisfactory result for your business. These companies are rare, though there are a few who do exist, unfortunately they tend to charge a small fortune for their services, however if you look in the right places there are still companies out there who offer this quality of work for an affordable and fair price. You need to partner with a graphic design agency that have a diverse and multi-skilled background, a team that understands and achieves great design whilst always adhering to core principles of navigational design and structural architecture. Your business deserves a team whose sole aim is your immediate and continued future satisfaction. When these core principles are adhered to then during the SEO phase of your website promotions the need to spend unnecessary time and money on the navigational redesign & architectural modifications to your website will be minimised, if not completely eradicated.

However if you are in the unfortunate position of owning or being responsible for one of the many websites that suffer from this very real and prevalent problem, then there are a few Expert SEO (SEM) companies out there, whose extensive skill set and expertise can provide you with SEO solutions to rectify and undo all the damage inflicted by a previous novice provider.

Even with a great looking design, poor navigation will ultimately lead to fewer returning visitors to your website, and consequently less sales for your business. One analogy that springs to mind, is the business that has a prime position, fantastic street frontage and a great fit out, though with absolutely no parking in the immediate vicinity of the business, undoubtedly creating another unwanted road block between the customer & the business. Roadblocks push your potential customers to another business that is easier to deal with, otherwise known as your competitor. If visitors cannot easily find the information they are looking for within your site, or they experience error pages, broken links, or pages with too many moving objects (animations, scrolling menus and text, motion driven flash, marquees) then they are likely to either completely leave your website, never to return, or will miss important information that you wanted them to see. Create an environment where the customer wants to stay, a place where they can find what they are looking for, and a place where buying from you is made hassle free and easy, after all that is the reason they are looking at your website in the first place.

Keep your navigation simple by creating clear links on all web pages, do not provide the visitor the reason to click elsewhere, or even leave your site altogether.

Ensure that you do not fall into the trap of having endless web pages that scroll down forever. Websites who utilise this adaptation of one endless page of information are thankfully set to become a thing of the past, a little piece of unimportant Internet history.

Another terrible and deadly design sin is the use of the horizontal Scroll bar; it is a little like the sales man who has a weak and feeble handshake and cannot even comfortably look you in the eye. It is the ultimate design sin and one you cannot allow under any circumstances. There will never be a justifiable requirement to employ such a terrible piece of navigational design within your website.

Another important and usually overlooked usability guideline for navigational design is the need to help users understand where they’ve been on your website, where they currently are, and also where they can go to – Try to think about it as Past, Present, and Future.

Take the necessary time out to ensure that your website includes a sitemap, this will ensure that advanced users have the ability to navigate your web pages easily, some more advanced users will often navigate a website this way, at the same time as creating a page that is easy for human users of your website to understand you will also ensure that your pages are presented in a format that is preferred by some of the main search engines, this will allow them to index your pages and follow the deep linking within your site so as to discover more of your websites all important content. There are other methods which can be utilised to govern the way search engines view your site, one of which is through your robots.txt file, again something else that is better placed in the hands of a expert SEO company

Look out for the next part of this information packed series (Three part series, submitted over 3 weeks)

How to Make Better Use of Web Site Page Titles and META Data

admin    SEO Flash     Better, Data, META, Page, Site, Titles

How to Make Better Use of Web Site Page Titles and META Data

We got down to the basics with web site page titles and META
data as part of a new study on how manufacturers use natural
search engine optimization (SEO). Businesses of all types could
benefit from the following case studies that show how poor
titles and META data can be improved from an SEO perspective.

Case Studies: Ineffective Optimization

We selected 10 of the web sites (among 350 we studied) that
scored the worst in terms of search engine optimization. Here’s
a closer look at what they may be doing wrong on their home
pages (company names are removed).

Case Study No. 1

Business NameANALYSIS: Title lacks keywords, page doesn’t include META data.

Case Study No. 2 Company name followed by
corporate attribute

ANALYSIS: Title may have one keyword at the most after several
non-keywords; META data poorly used. Flash page with “skip
intro” button won’t perform well because it lacks text.

Case Study No. 3 Welcome to Business
Name

ANALYSIS: Title lacks keywords, page doesn’t even attempt to
include META data. Case Study No. 4 Company
name followed by one search phrase

SEO and Site Architecture – Developing Search Engine Friendly Websites

admin    SEO Flash     Architecture, Developing, Engine, Friendly, Search, Site, Websites

SEO and Site Architecture – Developing Search Engine Friendly Websites

You are looking at creating an online presence, revamp an existing site or just want something fresh and innovative but are not sure what design or structure to follow? With a number of choices available deciding which firm to use for a small business website development service or an ecommerce website development service is another area of concern. Added to this is the awareness that the design and the site coding must be in accordance with search engine crawlability. Well here is a simple tip – Keep it Simple – SEO is just an extension of the best practices of web design. Identify these with the firm you choose to carry out your website development services.

What is common between good SEO and good design is simple navigation and simple architecture. In other words make it easy to find information on your site. Let the important pages be no more than 2 clicks away from the main page. Keep pages as close to the root as possible by avoiding deep sub-directories. Keep in mind that what works for Users works well for Search Engines. 

Stuck on Navigation! top, left or right? A top navigation is the most common pattern followed. It is most natural to use the top bar for the first level of navigation as the numbers of items placed on the top bar are normally fixed. The second level which would normally hold the services or products works well as a second top bar or a side bar. In either case keep the important pages no more than 2 clicks away from the Home page.

Using drop down boxes is not very user friendly as unless a user clicks on the text link the destination page is not known at all. For deeper navigation it is good to follow breadcrumb navigation. Breadcrumb trail is the part of the navigation that shows you where you are currently with respect to the site hierarchy and structure. This is useful both from the perspective of search engines as well as from a human visitor point of view – as breadcrumbs let you see how far from the root is the destination page.

If there is a lot of information to present it is better to split the information – this keeps the amount displayed limited to a single page which encourages users to read the page as well as search engines to crawl the page faster.

If graphics are used keep those limited to certain sections of the site. This allows the page to load faster – allowing for users to stay on the page rather than make an early exit. If you have added links, within images also make sure that these are repeated as text links on the same page. This increases the relevancy of the page for both human visitors and search engines.

Keep the code short. If Java script is being used make sure it is called externally. Search engines cannot follow JavaScript’s. If you offload JavaScript and CSS code, it provides easier access and a better load time. Avoid using frames. If it is really necessary to use frames then create a NOFRAMES version of your site. Search engines avoid frames. Restrict the use of flash, QuickTime or other plug-ins on your HTML pages.

There are a few other areas which should not be overlooked. Check the way the files within your site are named. Keep this name relevant to what the page is about and the page will hold well for both search engines and visitors. It is a good idea to keep the same keyword for naming the files and the keywords selected for the page title.

Many websites choose dynamic content over static content. Even for dynamic sites the Urls displayed should appear as static. For a visitor to understand what the page is about, it makes better sense to display a page as: www.abc/services/service1.htm rather than a string of characters such as:
www.abc/services/thread.php?threadid=12345&sort=date.

The visitor is more likely to click on a static url as it makes sense as against a dynamic url which looks vague. Furthermore Static URLs are typically ranked better in search engine results pages, and they are indexed more quickly than dynamic URLs. In addition keep the url keyword rich.

When working on the layout of a landing page to keep the following in mind:

Identify the most important elements for the site. These are the elements that you want to focus or target. These elements need to be placed somewhere on the top half of the page rather than on the bottom.

Identify what is it that you want the visitor to do on the site. For example if you are offering a free report, or you want to aim at getting newsletter subscriptions etc. –  Instead of writing long sentences – keep words to a minimum, highlight these in a way to draw attention. These should enable the visitors to take action. Besides highlighting use of contrast also draws attention.

Use the right medium to display your message. If graphics are used make sure these portray what the site and page are about. An image is a representation of your business – make sure that the images used across the site are consistent with each other.

Make sure your words describe what you are, what you stand for, what is being offered on the webpage. This helps both visitors and search engines to understand what your webpage is about.

Keep information simple and easy to present. Display information only if it worth a read.  Having a News section with only one or two headlines is hardly of interest to anyone. Make sure you remove outdated information. Provide error pages where necessary

Keeping these parameters in account can help you decide in choosing the right website design firm to create landing pages designed for better conversions.

For more information on website design services visit: http://www.cranvas.com/website-design-services.htm

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