November 5, 2008 at 12:12 pm · Filed under Web_Design
The easiest way of improving your ranking in the search engines is to let them know that your website is important. How do you do that? Well, the best way is through the process of link building. Link building is the practice of encouraging other websites to link to your own website. If other websites are linking to your website, your “link popularity” will increase, search engines will deem your website important, and in turn, you should receive more traffic. Link building is a time consuming task, and it is for this reason that most all websites rank so poorly in the search engines. Many website owners are unaware that link popularity can have such an effect on their search engine rankings. This is good new for you. Start building your links now and establish your “web cred”.
Importance of Page Rank
Google, the Internet’s most popular search engine, measures a website’s link popularity through the use of Page Rank. To view a website’s Page Rank, just download the Google Toolbar. The toolbar will display the Page Rank of every website you visit, measured as a little green bar. A website’s Page Rank can vary from a low of zero to a high of 10. Don’t worry if your website has a low, or no Page Rank. Many websites only have a Page Rank of 1 or 2, but the Internet’s most popular websites possess a Page Rank of 8 or 9.
Quality Counts Search engines are not just looking for the number of links that point to a website. The most important aspect of the process is obtaining quality links. Quality links are links from website that possess a high Page Rank. Obtaining a link from a website with a high Page Rank is best, although any site with 1 or above is beneficial. Search engines also consider the theme of a website which links to you. It is best to get links from websites that are associated with the industry in which you do business. For example, my trade is website design; therefore, I work to obtain the majority of my links from other web design related websites.
Getting Links
One of the best ways to advance your link popularity is to offer quality and informative content to your visitors and hope for natural links. If they find the information interesting enough, they will naturally link their website to your own.
Directory submissions are probably the fastest and easiest way to obtain some inbound links. But, because Internet directories link to thousands of other websites, the value that they can add to your Page Rank gets diluted by all the other links. The one must-submit-to directory is The Open Project Directory (www.dmoz.org). After this, it is best to search for smaller niche or local directories. Submitting your website to Canadian, Ontario, and even Windsor web directories will help let the search engines know which region(s) you are servicing. Then, you should submit to industry related directories to indicate to the search engines your line of business. A Google search can help you find these types of directories.
If you feel that you have a knack for writing, a good way to generate inbound links to your website is to write articles. These articles can then be submitted to article syndication websites, where other webmasters are free to use your article on their website. But, there’s a catch - they must provide a link back to your website in return for using the article. If you don’t have the time or drive to write an article, but you participate in an industry related discussion forum, you’re in luck. Just remember to include a link to your website in your signature.
The last way to generate quality inbound links is through reciprocal linking. This type of strategy involves contacting other webmasters and proposing a link exchange. Find some non-competitive, but related websites and simply e-mail them to see if they are interested. It’s best to already have their link on a page in your website before the proposition.
Linking Text Is Important
When employing any of the above linking approaches, it is imperative that you try to use targeted key words as part your link. The search engines read this text to determine what your website is all about. If your website involves “Red Widgets”, try to use this as part of your link text.
Conclusion
Link popularity is very important when attempting to rank well in the search engines. Link analysis is only going to get more important to search engines, not less. This type of strategy is resistant to manipulation and justifiable way to measure a website’s importance. Therefore, the link building process must be given high priority in your Internet marketing efforts, and since it takes time, the sooner you begin the better.
Paul Coulter owns and operates a full service custom web design company in Windsor, Ontario. Contact Paul by visiting his business, Windsor Websites: http://www.windsorwebdesign.ca
Tags: link building, search engine optimization, website promotionlink building, search engine optimization, website promotionShare This
November 4, 2008 at 11:09 am · Filed under Web_Design
The key to effective web design is to convert visitors of your web site into buyers. There are numerous ways to do this, the first being the organization of you web site. Organization and allowing the visitor to easily navigate throughout your website is a powerful tool which must be incorporated into web design. First, you need to determine what you are trying to sell. Whether it’s a product or an ad, if you don’t know the main theme you want to get across, you’ll be designing things forever trying to get where you want to go by trial and error. Try to sum up your main point in a few brief words, or at least one sentence. Then build the basis of your entire design, including and sub points you want to make, in the same way you organize the points you want to cover in a presentation or a group discussion. Think of a good ad design as a great piece of artwork, expressive and able to relate a little bit to almost everyone. That’s where your main point helps your focus. Then, add in all the little sub points you also want to make, and work them in according to their order of importance. Remember, not everyone will pick up everything you put in an ad or design. So keep the points simple, cover just a few things, and cover them in the order of most importance.
Like art, a good design is very detail oriented, but just like an exceptional piece of art, an exceptional design only puts in exactly what it needs and nothing more. Intricate detail is always important, just remember that good detail adds to the overall effect, it never takes away from it. If you have too many details, the reader doesn’t know where to look first. A good design helps the reader to focus and understand what you’re telling them. If you’re not sure that a point should be made, it probably shouldn’t.
In organizing your website in a simple and straight forward fashion, you will have the ability to guide your visitors all the way to the cash register.
About the Author
Carmen is the VP Client Relations of Ms. SEO Inc., a Calgary based Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing Company. Ms. Seo Inc. works with their sister company Ms. Hype Inc., a Calgary Website Design Company. and their parent company Cre8 Hype Solutions Inc., a Calgary based Internet Marketing Company, to offer their clients a powerful online presence.
Tags: Canada Web Design Company, internet marketing, search engine optimizationCanada Web Design Company, internet marketing, search engine optimizationShare This
August 27, 2008 at 11:13 am · Filed under Web_Design
Beyond Appearance: Every design has a “sales” potential. Think about it, why do some websites sell better than others? While every site needs to be visually attractive and pleasing to the eye, effectiveness of the web site to perform for the company is what the goal of the web site should be. The key to effective web design is to convert visitors of your web site into buyers of what ever your selling (products, information, ideas, etc.) Even though we always need to keep in mind important SEO and Marketing strategies when creating content rich pages, we ALWAYS need to keep the visitor in mind to “close the deal”.
Rule I. Sacrifice Beauty for Effectiveness: While we want the website to stand out on a visual level, we need to realize that there are many factors to making a website a success on the internet. Before we add a ton of great looking graphics we need to ask ourselves if this is hindering the overall effect we are trying to create with the viewer. Would we be better off using text links to allow for better site navigation and usability? Most times the answer is at least partially YES! Text not only makes the page load faster, it also allows non conventional web browsers to navigate the site more effectively. For instance, when a search engine “spiders” (crawls through) your site, it could care less about graphics and goes right for the text links.
Rule II. Less Is More: Unless a site is quick and easy to use it will be a barrier rather than an open invitation to users. Current usability standards suggest users spend on average less than 2 minutes on a website. The key to engaging visitors must therefore be simplicity over complexity. Keep in mind that when using the word “simplicity” I am not talking about getting rid of all of your content, in fact words are the lest amount of problems. All pages should still have over 250 words on them to properly get your point across and for SEO purposes. However less graphics, less flash and other memory hogs need to be reconsidered. That’s why you need to live by the axiom that less is more - less clutter, fewer barriers. Let’s look at a few ways to obtain the results of this axiom:
A) Make pages easy to read and engulf. It’s a well documented fact now amongst designers that people rarely read pages online - they “speed read”. Therefore, if the information they need is not easy to access they move on rapidly. Using easy navigation techniques like proper heading placement will allow users to access the information they find valuable from you faster. Proper use of white space and overall spacing should be a must in a webs design. Clearly differentiate thoughts with space and borders making accessibility priority.
B) Follow Standards: When it comes to labeling headings, tags and navigation links. It’s imperative to follow industry standards that have evolved on the internet. Not only will it bring a sense of familiarity to the user, but also comply with search engines and internet browsers.
C) Layout, Graphics and Colors: The web makes it easy for designers to do some amazing things with graphics and colors. The first portion of your site is similar to opening a letter sent in an envelope. When you remove the letter that is folded in three sections, you will see the top third of the page first. Designs with a dramatic color can make compelling choices for setting a mood, however reading on a computer screen demands contrast, otherwise the web viewer will be dizzied by vision fatigue. You do not want to irritate or tire your visitors in any way to keep them reading on or coming back. Striking graphics can be real eye-catching for viewers; however successful internet marketers are pretty much agree that you should avoid flash graphics as much as possible. Another important factor to consider is that not all colors are viewed the same way on all monitors, so here we revert to the KISS policy of keeping it simple.
D) Copy Basics: You may not realize this but many of the successful internet marketing businesses already figured out that design and layout of the website should be as much of a marketing decision as the ad copy on the website is. People feel comfortable with words. Words are found and analyzed by the search engines. Most importantly, words are what drive sales and build confidence among web users. This has been true in other forms of media long before the internet was born.
I will touch on all of these aspects and more in future articles, but this is a great starting point when embarking on your new web presence or a guide to recreating your current site.
Todd Levi is the owner of http://www.LeviSolutions.com. He specializes in effective web design, hosting and marketing strategies. With over 5 years of experience online he has dedicated himself to enriching the web with qaulity. He also has helps others do the same thing by focusing his efforts in his online blog at http://seo-marketing.levisolutions.com
Tags: content rich, sales copy, search engine optimization, simplicity, web design, web pagescontent rich, sales copy, search engine optimization, simplicity, web design, web pagesShare This
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