Cheap seo and website design services

SEO and Disillusionment: Dealing With The Downside Of The Industry

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:33:00 +0000

If you ask an SEO professional if passion is necessary to succeed in the industry, they will likely tell you ‘yes’. Without that passion, the job becomes monotonous and the desire to learn new things begins to die. You become unhappy with your work and the quality suffers.

Unfortunately, the SEO industry seems to be a victim of its own demise. It has grown at such a speed that those outside of it often miss the point and have a very poor understanding of what it entails. Solo professionals deal with clients who want impossible guarantees and results. On top of that, they still need to worry making a living and maintaining a solid reputation.

The mass amounts of bad information, the arrival of social media into the mainstream, and the lack of clear lines have created dissension and mistrust within the industry as well as with paying clients.

You would think that in-house SEO’s would have it made since they just take the orders and run with it.

Well, I’m afraid this only complicates matters. Some companies offering a mix of services understand that SEO is a vital component, but they fail to understand the limitations and rules of the game. They make promises that are impossible to keep and the professional is stuck working with a client who refuses to look at their situation any differently.

Then, there is a sharp end to the learning. It seems like once you reach a certain point, the facts suddenly disappear and opinions take over. Disagreements begin and confusion ensues.

These are just a few of the problems facing the industry, which cause a number of professionals lose interest in the field and quit outright. We need a number of solutions, and we need them fast.

With the high saturation of professionals in the industry (and I use this term loosely), you need to set yourself apart from the crowd. Focusing on a particular niche is only one way to go about it. Consider adding additional services such as viral linking opportunities, submission to niche social media sites (Tip’d for financial sites), and social media optimization. Find out what your clients have to look for before and after they hire you and either supply it, or make it easier for them.

Don’t be afraid to qualify your clients. It can be hard, but turning away a client who will be difficult to deal with is your better option. Otherwise, you torture yourself, the other person, and end up with a bad outcome that could likely cost you your career. Companies with in house SEOs should follow the same practices.

Other SEO professionals are not your enemy; join forces instead of drawing swords. It doesn’t matter how much we like or dislike it, search engines, IR experts, social media people, marketing, business, and other professionals all have something to offer. By working together, you will learn things you might not learn otherwise, open the door to new opportunities, find friends to vent to that you didn’t know you had, and maybe even collaborate to create something new and in demand.

Stop preaching to the choir and focus your marketing. If you maintain a blog to increase your ratings and situate yourself as an industry leader, don’t focus on advanced techniques and industry news. You will attract lots of attention from other SEOs in your industry, but chances are high that your target clients aren’t going to understand or be interested in this type of information.

On your blog, focus on how clients can enhance their online business and the results you provide for them. (Focus on problem solving and benefitting the client.) This improves their experience with your company and increases the chance that they will return. Situate yourself as an industry leader and improve your blog further by using your in-depth SEO posts for guest posts on great sites.

One of the biggest problems seems to be educating the client or the company you are working for. You should still try, but don’t expect it to make a significant difference. Clients often don’t care and aren’t interested in how things work; they only know they need money (traffic) and don’t care what it takes to get there. This is where qualifying your clients come in.

Mix up your work. Just because your main focus is on SEO for dentists for example, doesn’t mean you are limited to that. Take time to sign up and volunteer for beta testing important new tools and markets on the web. Currently, I write, work in social media, and am involved in beta testing a new Twitter tool for measuring the success of a campaign that is unlike any of the others currently market. This is perfect for me; I love Twitter, like trying out the new tools coming out, I get in on some of the best tools and concepts on the web, and the developer gets the information needed for a quality product.

Perhaps the most important thing is to understand your limitations and learn not to take everything to heart. With the economy in the toilet, everyone is grasping at whatever straws they think might help to ease the pains. For the days when it seems like all of the crazies have found their way out of the virtual forest, find a safe place to complain and take your mind off things.

Have you noticed the economy and frustration taking their toll on the industry? How do you combat these things?

via : seoscoop

SEO Strategy: Bigger and Better Goals

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:11:00 +0000

SEO is not one-size-fits-all.

Although at Fuel Interactive for SEO, we have

•A standard SEO process
•A prioritized checklist of best practices
•Several simultaneous optimization paths…

…we don’t treat every client the same.

We start by looking strategically at rankings, traffic, pagerank, inbound links, and best practice optimizations:

•How is the client doing now?
•What are their competitors doing better?
•What competitive advantages might the client better leverage?
When we’ve met a client’s initial goals, we need to raise the bar. We look for results that are meaningful to the client. Then we say, “Ok, what’s next?” We push for the next strategy to get more results.

Targeting Keywords According to Difficulty

There’s no more obvious place for goal retargeting in SEO than keywords. Every SEO knows that some keywords are more competitive than others.

1.Brand Name Keywords: If you have a client that’s not ranking for their brand name, you have a serious problem or a serious lack of SEO, and that comes first. Sometimes we get a completely non-optimized client: almost zero inbound links, same title tag for every page- those optimizations come first. It’s also possible in some industries, like tourism, national sites also sell the local brand- if the local brand’s SEO is horrible, they might not crack the first page for their brand name.
2.General Keywords: Then you can move to more general keywords- categories, geolocations, etc. These will be more competitive, so you’ll have to make the site more competitive. And there will be levels of difficulty within the general keyword group- some are more competitive than others.
Targeting Keywords According to Results

Another way to look at keywords is according to rankings, traffic, conversions, and conversion rate. Here’s how our keyword evaluation process goes over time:

1.Launch keywords: Initial keyword list based on site, offerings, brand names, category, etc. These come from research tools. At worst, you have no other clients in that vertical and start from scratch. At best, industry experience has already taught you something about the best keywords.
2.Revised keyword list: Reprioritized and expanded keyword list based on analytics, rankings, traffic. Analytics exposes keywords you couldn’t find in step one.
3.Conversion keywords: Reprioritized keyword list based on conversion data. A keyword might get a lot of traffic, but if its conversion rate is significantly low, keywords with medium amounts of traffic that convert well might be better targets.

Revising Keyword Goals After Implementing Basic Best Practices

One of our clients ranked about #5 for their brand names, and nowhere in the top 50 for more general keywords. Not surprisingly, they required significant best practice optimizations including:

•301 redirects from an older domain name
•Clean-up and 301 redirecting of older missing pages
•Keyword optimized, page-specific TITLE tags
•Keyword optimized, page-specific Meta descriptions
We did all of the above with sensible category-specific and geolocation-specific keywords. The result, after several months, was that the brand name keywords all rank #1, and the site began to rank between pages two and four for more competitive general keywords. We have now switched our strategy to target 5-10 of these more competitive keywords and are building content and finding links to achieve higher rankings for them.

Expanding Focus to Mid-Tail Good-Converting Keywords

Another client was very focused on ranking higher for a very competitive keyword. We had suggested a more broad focus that would start with long and middle tail keywords and work up to the major keyword, but the client insisted. Over several months, we were able to move them from #4 to #2 for that keyword. But we continued to present the data to them, which showed the following:

There’s really no disputing the value of their number one keyword, but the next five biggest converting keywords receive more conversions than the main one does. As you go further into the mid and long-tail, conversion rates go up, and ranking difficulty goes down. It makes sense to go after all of these, too one degree or another.

via: seo scoop

Free SEO tips for high ranking on Google, Yahoo, Msn

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 20:42:00 +0000

Getting a high ranking on Google is a big achievement. There are many factors that go into pulling a high page rank. I have put together a small list of things that should not be overlooked when optimizing your site. Let’s start from the top:

META Tags- Sorry, but Google doesn’t read META tags. That includes the KEYWORD tag. Some search engines, however, still use them.

URL- Having a keyword or words in URL will help you somewhat. Having a key word in your URL is not by any means a guarantee, but it never hurts.

TITLE Tag- This is an important step, use this tag wisely. Place your top keywords here. Remember, your page is indexed starting from the top of the page. Make this one count.

Site content- The first paragraph of your site is a crucial part of your optimization. This will also be used as your site’s description. Be careful not to overdo it on the keywords. Make sure your content makes sense. Your keywords should make up a total of 6% to 8% of your page content. An average of three hundred words is a good rule of thumb.

Header Tags- Header tag should be considered important. Make headers uniform on your site. I like using them on the top of my page just before the first paragraph.

ALT Tags- These tags are great for adding keywords to images, so take advantage of them. I also use mouse over text with linked text.

Links- Any links you have on your site should have key terms in them. Never use "Click Here" or other unrelated words when creating links.

Bonus tip: When exchanging text links, use key phrases as the actual links. This will certainly help you out.

For Example:

Affordable Search Engine Optimization & Web Site Marketing
Mr. SEO is the leader in SEO. We handle targeted traffic, marketing and more. We also offer Web Site Marketing Articles to help you get more traffic to your site.

Links exchange- This will help boost your overall ranking. It’s actually better to be linked from another site (one way) than reciprocal (both sites linking to each other). Being linked one way is a huge bonus. However, the following should be kept in mind.

A: The site you are linking to needs to be related to your site.

B: Google’s page rank of the site should be higher than yours; the higher the better.

C: Avoid linking to sites that have too many links. A site that has forty or more links will only hurt you.

Bonus Tip: See where you rank on Google by using this free tool.
http://www.googlerankings.com/ultimate_seo_tool.php

This Google ranking tool will show you under what keywords you are found on. Use this to help adjust the keywords you want to be found under. Be sure to check your ranking before you start any optimization. Then do it again 3 – 4 weeks after you have made your adjustments. See if your ranking has gone up.

Source:buzzle

Free New 55 Quick SEO Tips, Tricks

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 12:18:00 +0000

New TOP Free search engine optimization ( SEO) TIPS:-

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Everyone loves a good tip, right? Here are 55 quick tips for search engine optimization that even your mother could use to get cooking. Well, not my mother, but you get my point. Most folks with some web design and beginner SEO knowledge should be able to take these to the bank without any problem.

1. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.

2. Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.

3. If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you don’t want the link.

4. Don’t be obsessed with PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR.

5. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a major brand name that is a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.

6. Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.

7. Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here” link.

8. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches.

9. Don’t design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won’t cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images.

10. Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even your domain name.

11. Check for canonicalization issues - www and non-www domains. Decide which you want to use and 301 redirect the other to it. In other words, if http://topseoservices.blogspot.com/ is your preference, then http://topseoservices.blogspot.com/ should redirect to it.

12. Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://topseoservices.blogspot.com/ and internal links go to http://topseoservices.blogspot.com/index.html.

Ditch the index.html or default.php or whatever the page is and always link back to your domain.

13. Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem - you can’t link to a single page. It’s either all or nothing. Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results.

14. Your URL file extension doesn’t matter. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won’t make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned.

15. Got a new web site you want spidered? Submitting through Google’s regular submission form can take weeks. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.

16. If your site content doesn’t change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.

17. When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.

18. Search engines want natural language content. Don’t try to stuff your text with keywords. It won’t work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you.

19. Not only should your links use keyword anchor text, but the text around the links should also be related to your keywords. In other words, surround the link with descriptive text.

20. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.

21. Be aware that by using services that block domain ownership information when you register a domain, Google might see you as a potential spammer.

22. When optimizing your blog posts, optimize your post title tag independently from your blog title.

23. The bottom line in SEO is Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation.

24. Make sure your site is easy to use. This can influence your link building ability and popularity and, thus, your ranking.

25. Give link love, Get link love. Don’t be stingy with linking out. That will encourage others to link to you.

26. Search engines like unique content that is also quality content. There can be a difference between unique content and quality content. Make sure your content is both.

27. If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a splash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold.

28. Some of your most valuable links might not appear in web sites at all but be in the form of e-mail communications such as newletters and zines.

29. You get NOTHING from paid links except a few clicks unless the links are embedded in body text and NOT obvious sponsored links.

30. Links from .edu domains are given nice weight by the search engines. Run a search for possible non-profit .edu sites that are looking for sponsors.

31. Give them something to talk about. Linkbaiting is simply good content.

32. Give each page a focus on a single keyword phrase. Don’t try to optimize the page for several keywords at once.

33. SEO is useless if you have a weak or non-existent call to action. Make sure your call to action is clear and present.

34. SEO is not a one-shot process. The search landscape changes daily, so expect to work on your optimization daily.

35. Cater to influential bloggers and authority sites who might link to you, your images, videos, podcasts, etc. or ask to reprint your content.

36. Get the owner or CEO blogging. It’s priceless! CEO influence on a blog is incredible as this is the VOICE of the company. Response from the owner to reader comments will cause your credibility to skyrocket!

37. Optimize the text in your RSS feed just like you should with your posts and web pages. Use descriptive, keyword rich text in your title and description.

38. Use captions with your images. As with newspaper photos, place keyword rich captions with your images.

39. Pay attention to the context surrounding your images. Images can rank based on text that surrounds them on the page. Pay attention to keyword text, headings, etc.

40. You’re better off letting your site pages be found naturally by the crawler. Good global navigation and linking will serve you much better than relying only on an XML Sitemap.

41. There are two ways to NOT see Google’s Personalized Search results:

(1) Log out of Google

(2) Append &pws=0 to the end of your search URL in the search bar

42. Links (especially deep links) from a high PageRank site are golden. High PR indicates high trust, so the back links will carry more weight.

43. Use absolute links. Not only will it make your on-site link navigation less prone to problems (like links to and from https pages), but if someone scrapes your content, you’ll get backlink juice out of it.

44. See if your hosting company offers “Sticky” forwarding when moving to a new domain. This allows temporary forwarding to the new domain from the old, retaining the new URL in the address bar so that users can gradually get used to the new URL.

45. 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 search.

46. To get the best chance for your videos to be found by the crawlers, create a video sitemap and list it in your Google Webmaster Central account.

47. 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 sites like Metacafe, AOL, MSN and Yahoo to name a few.

48. Surround video content on your pages with keyword rich text. The search engines look at surrounding content to define the usefulness of the video for the query.

49. Use the words “image” or “picture” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches are for a keyword plus one of those words.

50. Enable “Enhanced image search” in your Google Webmaster Central account. Images are a big part of the new blended search results, so allowing Google to find your photos will help your SEO efforts.

51. Add viral components to your web site or blog - reviews, sharing functions, ratings, visitor comments, etc.

52. Broaden your range of services to include video, podcasts, news, social content and so forth. SEO is not about 10 blue links anymore.

53. When considering a link purchase or exchange, check the cache date of the page where your link will be located in Google. Search for “cache:URL” where you substitute “URL” for the actual page. The newer the cache date the better. If the page isn’t there or the cache date is more than an month old, the page isn’t worth much.

54. If you have pages on your site that are very similar (you are concerned about duplicate content issues) and you want to be sure the correct one is included in the search engines, place the URL of your preferred page in your sitemaps.

55. 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 “200 OK” status or “301 Moved Permanently ” for redirects. If the status shows anything else, check to be sure your URLs are set up properly and used consistently throughout your site.

10 Ways to Make your Website More Popular

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 07:45:00 +0000

Everybody who owns a website wants it to be more popular. From the web design team at the New York Times right down to the small retailer trying to expand into ecommerce, popularity is the key to success. Reading and working with popular websites every day can sometimes feel like living in a bubble where everybody has good search engine rankings and sites are all beautiful so it’s nice sometimes to look at how “normal” websites can improve their popularity.
Invest in a good design –

while people like Ling might think design isn’t everything it is one of the key aspects a site can use to build their visitors trust so you need to get it right.
Learn about usabilty –

having the best designed website in the world is useless if normal people can’t use it. Sit behind some of your non internet savvy relatives and friends and watch them navigate your site and make purchases from your store. If they struggle with things you need to improve your usabilty.

Create a useful website – I know this might sound simple but having a website isn’t just a way to tell people about your company. If you really want to become popular make sure your website is actually going to be helpful to the people who arrive there. If every visitor who was pleased by your site gave you a link or told one of their friends your traffic would increase to Facebook
levels in months.

Keep it up to date –
if your company can’t be bothered to keep your website updated at least once a year then I probably won’t want to use it. Broken links, outdated news and copyright notices from 2003 are not going to turn me on.
Be topical –
just because you are a retailer it doesn’t mean you can ignore the latest news in your niche. Having a company blog might be a bit beyond most businesses but you should at least have a news section to publish company information and responses to popular stories.
Manage your reputation –

responding to your readers/customers comments is key to establishing your company as one that cares about what people say about you. You could also use the criticism to make your website better.
Learn about the internet –

this might sound simple to some people but trying to explain to a middle aged company directory why they need to worry about buzz marketing is hard enough without them asking questions about what links are and what blogs do. Knowing how ideas spread through forums and blogs is essential for webmasters to understand online marketing.
Be controversial –

having a boring corporate site isn’t always the best way to become popular. Sometimes you need to upset 95% of the world just to get the attention of the other 5%. After all, having 5% of the population loving your site isn’t a bad goal to have.
Be interesting –

sometimes a website can break every rule in the book and still succeed. The one characteristic these sites have is they are interesting. So much content on the web is boring and repeated that having an interesting site is probably the best way to get noticed.
Learn about Google –
ever wondered why some websites rank highly on Google while some languish on page 4? It’s because one of the owners understands how Google works. Spend a few days reading the official guidelines and making sure your site follows all the normal optimisation rules and you might be surprised how much of a difference it can make.

Do I Really Need to Perform SEO for My Website?

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 07:32:00 +0000

This question may seem like a no-brainer, but actually, the answer is not necessarily yes in all circumstances. If any of the following examples apply to you’re website, you may not be in need of an search engine optimization campaign right now:
You have a website that you really don’t want strangers to find, such as a training tool for your employees, a classroom tool for your students or some sort of communications platform/blog which is intended for employee’s or family members only.

You already have a website which is ranking well, and you’re fully satisfied with your sales, website conversions, and incoming inquiries, and you don’t want to rock the boat.
You’re in a big hurry—say, you’ll go out of business without a major upswing in revenue in the next couple of months. This is not to say that SEO can’t help you, but good SEO takes time. You may need to focus your energies elsewhere right now.

Your site is going to be completely rebuilt or redesigned in the next couple of months. If that’s the case, be sure to incorporate SEO tactics from the outset. Anybody can have a go at SEO, and i would always encourage you to do some research and try the SEO for your site yourself, but if you really don’t have the time, and want your new website in expert hands, consider hiring an SEO agency to work with your web designer from the outset.

It is a rare site indeed that couldn’t use a little improvement in the SEO department. And, with the importance of SEO on the rise, if you don’t need it today, it’s a good bet you’ll need to brush up your SEO smarts for tomorrow. If you do decide to work on SEO yourself, be sure to checkout my article, Top 10 SEO Myths Explained where I have taken the most prevalent myths that seem to be constantly resurfacing and examined them for you. This is a must read for anyone looking to hire an search engine optimisation firm or someone looking to do SEO for themselves.
via:seoptimize

Web Design and SEO: The Eternal Debate

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 07:27:00 +0000

Web design focuses on appearance and aesthetics. SEO focuses on text quality and quantity. Web designers don't really like to clutter their designs with text. They prefer to see the images stand out on their own. SEOs on the other hand don't like images that much. Sure, an image can be optimized for the search engines by adding relevant alt attributes and titles, but this is not enough for a site to be properly optimized. Page copy still plays the most important role in website optimization for SEO.

As a business owner you are caught in the middle of this conflict. For your website to convert you need both design and optimization. There is no middle way. You cannot have a little bit of this and a little bit of that and still be competitive. You cannot have just one of the two either. Without optimization your site is invisible to the search engines, hence to your potential customers. On the other hand, without a good design your site, although not invisible, will get nothing but hits. Web users are picky and if they find nothing of interest on your site they will just surf to the next site.

Having a beautiful website no one can find is like having a store and keeping the doors locked. You know it is there, you've done a great job decorating it, the products are waiting for the customers, yet no one comes in.When you pay for web design don't automatically assume that by paying thousands of dollars on a layout you'll be a hit on the Web. The Web is a highly competitive place. There are already thousands entrepreneurs who, just like you, invest in design and hope to become the new "it." Without online marketing (SEO being an important part of the discipline) all these entrepreneurs will remain in the shadow, with their beautiful websites closed to the world.SEO is the key to that virtual door you need to open for your customers. It is important that you consider this tool when you first conceive your site.

Web design and SEO don't need to be enemies. There are enough professional agencies that employ both web designers and SEOs who work together to develop a good business website, a site that is SEO ready, accessible and readable with any browser. You just need to take your time, research and send a few inquiries. Then choose the company that answers your questions in a timely manner, basically choose the company that proves a clear ability of designing with W3C standards and a clear understanding of the online trends and realities.Then balancing content with visual appearance shouldn't be such a difficult task. Aside graphics and artwork you have to choose proper font types, in a readable size, with colors that harmonize with the layout of the site and so on. If your site is not SEO ready from the first stage of the project you'll face additional costs after you launch. SEO ready means a site that is properly coded (errors in the HTML code might stop some search bots from crawling and indexing your site correctly), with good navigability and good internal linking structure.

On the other hand, SEO and appearance are not the only traits of a good site. Brand conscious companies should look at the broader picture: instead of debating what is better online entrepreneurs should ask themselves what works best to convert visitors into clients.Studies show that an over optimized page might hurt the user-experience of people with disabilities. For example, many SEOs stuff the image alt attributes and their alternative titles with keywords. Blind and other visually impaired people who use screen readers to access the Web and read the pages cannot see the images and, instead of listening to a relevant image description, they'll hear... nonsense.Usability and accessibility are equally important as design and optimization. Strangely enough images are better for usability. They give focus to the design and when properly optimized they provide for less cluttered website content. The problems appear when the images slow down the loading times, but with the use of CSS loading times should not be a big concern.As search engines prefer fast loading sites it is easy top understand why good coding and optimization are so important. Poor coding raises many other problems aside loading times and might increase costs when you need website updates, especially when your website administrator is not the one who created your site.
via: designnewsnext

How to Properly Utilize Headings in SEO

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 07:33:00 +0000

So we all know that the title is the most important single element to optimize on a page, but it’s all to easy to forget the power of headings. Headings are like little titles that can be worked into a site’s content, and while no one heading can affect rankings as much as your title, having several keyword rich headings on your page can be an extremely powerful optimization strategy.

It is important to remember that there are actually six different kinds of headings ranging from H1 to H6. H1 tags have the most effect on your ranking followed by H2, and so on. To turn a piece of text into a heading you simply need to place it between and tags (where * is the heading value of 1 to 6).

The best way to use headings in the optimization of a page is to include a single H1 tag near the top, containing a word or phrase similar to (but not necessarily the same as) your primary keyphrase.
In addition to this, it is a good idea to scatter a few H2 (and possibly H3+) tags throughout the page containing as many of your secondary keywords as possible.
A word of caution, however: it’s not a good idea to overuse headings on any one page as search engines might see this as spam. In the vast majority of cases, you should be using only one H1 tag per page, and include at least two paragraphs of content for every H2 tag.

Overall, heading optimization is just a matter of common sense. Just write a good page of content, then spread a few relevant, keyword rich heading tags throughout your page, and your search engine ranking should be affected for the better. (via:seomix)

The Truth About Meta Tags and SEO

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 07:28:00 +0000

The meta description and keywords tags are often seen as some of the most basic ways to optimize. But are they so basic as to be obsolete?

The short answer is that meta tags are no longer a requirement, and serve very little practical purpose in SEO. This is because they serve absolutely no role whatsoever in the ranking algorithms of Google or MSN, and play a very small part in the algorithm used by Yahoo.
This does not mean, however, that adding meta tags is completely useless. Even though it doesn’t count towards ranking, Google sometimes shows it to users on SERPs (search engine result pages).

Meta keywords are, if nothing else, a good organizational tool. I for one am a great believer in the value of sketching out lists of keywords and keyphrases that you want to optimize for, and keeping track of them on a page-by-page basis. So what better place to put them than on the page itself? This is an especially handy touch for plain HTML sites with no database, where you have to edit each page individually.
Despite the fact that meta tags are virtually obsolete for ranking, there is no doubt that they still have a few useful side benefits. Whether it is worth it to add these tags needs to be decided on a site-by-site basis, and largely depends on the amount of time involved.
As long as you use them in moderation, meta tags won’t damage your rankings. They won’t help them either, however, so if you are adding them to beef up your keyword density, you will almost certainly be disappointed.

12 Steps to Creating a Professional Web Design

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 07:55:00 +0000

Before we share some of the necessary steps used to create a professional web design and website, the following question must be addressed: What constitutes a “professional web design”? More often than not, a web designer or web design company claims to offer professional web design services for their clients. However, should they be promoting “web design services” rather than “professional web design services”? When measuring the professionalism of a web design and website, one must take into consideration a number of factors/steps:

Multi-stage web design process
Project collaboration tools (if project has more than one person involved)
High-quality design
Attention to detail
Current web design technology (CSS)
Well written, interesting, grammatically-correct content
Usability
XHTML and CSS validation (clean code)
Standards-compliant
Optimization
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly
Abuse of Flash, Javascript, and sound effects

To put it simply, what separates professional web design from web design is whether or not a designer or web design company takes into consideration the above items when designing and building a website. Other than paying for a respected companies name and reputation, the items listed above are why professional web design services tend to cost more than regular web design services - you’re getting a lot more than a website - you’re getting the total package of web design professionalism that will surely shine through once the website is completed and released to the public.

The good news is, you don’t need to hire a professional web design company or professional web designer if you want a professional web design and website. Although there is a great deal of work involved, if you’d like to attempt to do the heavy lifting on your own, then the following professional web design tips will help you create a professional web design and website.
Note: You might be wondering why a professional web design company would give away their process and professional web design “checklist” for free. The answer is quite simple: there is only so much time in the day, and unfortunately we can’t professionally design every website in the world. The more high-quality, professional websites there are in cyberspace, the happier we as professional web designers and lovers of websites will be. To be blunt, there is just way too much junk out there. Lets get started

Stage 1: Conceptualization and planning (flowcharts)

When designing a website, one should not begin the process inside of a text editor (BBedit) or website builder application (Dreamweaver, GoLive, etc). Instead, the process should begin on a piece of paper or within flowchart software. According to Wikipedia, a flowchart is:
a schematic representation of an algorithm or a process.
In layman’s terms, a flowchart provides a visual chart illustrating the structure of your website. How many main navigational items will your website contain? What will these items be called? Will there be any pages contained within the main pages? What will they be called? By planning out your website using a flowchart, you get a head start on:
Information organization
Usability
Determining the volume of content required

Stage 2: Modeling (wireframes)

In the modeling stage, static “wireframe” mockups are created for each unique web page. To create wireframes, one may use either:
paper and pencil
mockup software such as Adobe Photoshop or our personal choice, OmniGraffle Professional
These wireframes contain a bare-bones skeleton which illustrate the layout of a particular web page. Where will the logo go? Where will the content be located? Will there be breadcrumbs? Will you have a login box? Each of these questions (and many more) are answered in the modeling stage. A few things one should take into consideration when creating wireframes:
be sure to include all important elements that will be used (logo, navigation, content placement, images/video placement, login box, search, breadcrumbs, etc)
reference the flowchart which you created in Stage 1
don’t use graphics - wireframes are meant to be bare-bones: boxes/circles/ovals which illustrate the placement of objects
only use text to label the elements, don’t use body text (thats for the third stage)
focus on clean, well-organized, user-friendly layout; avoid cluttered layouts

Stage 3: Execution

The third stage in our professional web design process includes:
Creating the graphical user interface (GUI), also known as the design
Creating the content
Converting the web designs from images into code (markup) which web browsers use to present your website on the Internet
In the final stage, reference both the flowcharts created in Stage 1 and the wireframe mockups created in Stage 2 to create the final page layouts and designs. The design should be finalized in Photoshop or whatever image editing software you choose to use because it is a pain to make changes to the design once it has been converted into markup (code).
Trust us, process makes perfect
Following a well-structured web design process is by far one of the most importance steps that many web designers choose to neglect. By following a web design process such as the one we’ve just described, you increase the likelihood that your website will be well-organized, easily navigable, and user-friendly. If you’re going to skip any of the items in our professional web design checklist, make sure that the web design process is not one of them.

Step 2: Project collaboration tools

Note: If you are the only one working on your project, then you can skip this step. Project collaboration tools are only recommended for projects which have two or more people involved.
Communication is one of the most important elements in a project. When multiple people are building a website, there usually are quite a few e-mails sent back and forth between one another. The more e-mails exchanged, the longer it can take to find a certain e-mail and the easier it can be to misplace important bits of information. This was one of the biggest problems that our professional web design company faced when we first began - there wasn’t an easy way to organize the e-mails, attachments, milestones, etc.
Thankfully, after a little bit of research, we discovered a project collaboration tool called Basecamp. Taken directly from the Basecamp website:
Projects don’t fail from a lack of charts, graphs, stats, or reports, they fail from a lack of clear communication. Basecamp solves this problem by providing tools tailored to improve the communication between people working together on a project.
Basecamp (and project collaboration tools like it) allows multiple users to access a website which stores all of the messages, milestones, file uploads, to-do lists, time it takes to complete parts of the project, etc. that are associated with a project. No more sending e-mails. Everything is securely stored on the Basecamp servers. The only e-mails you will ever receive are notifications whenever something is contributed or changed within a project.
Basecamp has packages available that can be tailored to suit your needs. If you only need to use Basecamp for one project at a time, then you can signup for free. Unfortunately with the free version, there are no file uploads allowed. However, for a measly $12/month, you can control up to 3 projects at once, have 250 megabytes of file upload space, have unlimited people and clients, have a real-time chat that can easily be integrated into Basecamp, and much more.
When it comes to project collaboration and communication, nothing beats a web application like Basecamp. If you’re serious about your project and want to have the best communication possible, then you must try Basecamp. A project collaboration tool such as Basecamp is especially useful for a professional web design company which handles a number of projects and clients at any given time. For project collaboration, there is simply no better way to communicate.
Plug over.

Step 3: High-quality design

Who and what determines a “high-quality design”? There isn’t one answer. Often times something that is appealing to one person may be extremely unappealing to another. Despite this fact, there are several things that a high-quality design should have:
Balance. Balance refers to the equal distribution of the heavy and the light elements on a single page.
Unity. Unity keeps all of the similar elements in the website alike and those that are diverse further apart; everything should be pulled into one integrated whole.
Emphasis. Emphasis involves the main points where the eye is drawn into the design; also known as “focal points”.
Contrast. Not just color contrast, but also contrasting shapes, sizes, textures, and even typography.
Rhythm. Also known as repetition, rhythm brings internal consistency into your web design.
Since this is a broad topic and cannot be fully covered in this article, you can read more about the five basic elements of web design.
In addition to these five basic elements of web design, information overload is often times one of the biggest killers of a website design. Designers sometimes forget the saying “less is more” and somehow seem to believe that the more information that is stuffed onto one page, the better it will be. Don’t become a victim of information overload. Keep your layout as clean as possible. Give different topics their own dedicated web pages. One of the biggest causes for information overload is not successfully planning out your website layout through the use of flowcharts and wireframes, discussed above in Step 1: Multi-stage web design process. Remember: white space is not necessarily a bad thing. As a matter of fact, white space is your friend, especially when creating a professional web design. Successful professional web designers learn how to use white, negative space to their advantage, and make it a key element of the design.

Step 4: Attention to detail

When professionally designing a website, every little detail is thought out and planned. Should there be a line above the headers, and if so, why? If you use rounded corners for your main body, should you be consistent and use rounded corners for everything else? Does your logo look better with a reflection underneath? The only way to answer any of these questions is to experiment. Sometimes the best results come from accidental experimentation. Don’t always be happy with the first design. Work to improve upon the design and go through a few revisions, each time asking yourself “What can be done to make the design look better?”, be more consistent, and most importantly, give your website a stronger identity and image.
When we say “detail”, we’re not just talking about graphic design elements. No, graphic design is just the tip of the iceberg. We’re also talking about typography (font faces i.e. Arial, Verdana, Trebuchet MS, font sizes i.e 10 pixels, 12 pixels, 18 pixels, font weight/style i.e. bold, italic, font placement), the use of negative space, and other elements of design.
Attention to detail is important because it is oftentimes the details in your design which make your website stand out from the competition (or from other websites in general). People get bored with the same old design - give them something different, unique, and attractive, and they will come back and visit. Heck, they may even become inspired by your design.
Remember: Less is more. Use details, but don’t abuse details.

Step 5: Current web design technology (CSS)

CSS - also known as cascading style sheets - replaced table-based website layouts years ago. The problem is, a lot of web designers are still using tables to create their designs. Not only is this unprofessional, but tables just plain suck. Here are a number of reasons why using tables for your web design is a bad idea:
Tables slow down your website. Everything inside of a table’s cell is loaded before being shown to the user. This is especially apparent for people using dial up connections.
Tables make messy code and add unnecessary junk markup. File sizes are increased due to the excessive lines of code which means slower load times. Also, having to sift through hundreds (sometimes thousands) of lines of code just to make a change isn’t a lot of fun.
Universal layout updates are difficult and time consuming when using tables. Making universal edits with tables involves opening each file, sifting through the code and junk markup, and making a change (again, on each page). Often times with CSS, all one must do is open the stylesheet and change a single value.
Tables should only be used to show data, not be used to design websites.
Tables limit your creativity and design. Table layouts are limited to boring, grid-based layouts. With CSS, you can place anything anywhere. The layout possibilities with CSS are endless.
CSS will save you time and increase your revenue in the long run. Updates and edits are much easier using CSS than tables. Because of faster load times, fewer visitors are likely to become impatient and leave. Longer visits = more browsing, more ad-clicking, lower bounce rates = more money for you.
Display your CSS website on tons of high-quality CSS Showcase websites. Tons of exposure if your website is featured. Table-based layouts are not welcome. Complete list on listible.com.
Some people will argue that table-based layouts are better than layouts which are built using CSS. However, oftentimes the person arguing that tables are better than CSS is the person who spent thousands of dollars on a table-based layout. Despite what anyone tells you, table-based layouts are inferior to CSS and should be avoided at all costs.
To read all about CSS, visit w3schools.com. Again, to be blunt, if your website is created using tables, it is not professional web design quality. Start using CSS stylesheets today and keep the tables in your spreadsheet application.

Step 6: Well written, interesting, grammatically-correct content

One thing that greatly compromises the quality and credibility of a website is poorly written, grammatically incorrect, misspelled content. This kind of content is unfortunately present in an extremely high number of websites - especially “professional” company websites.
If you don’t know how to write, then hire someone to write the content of your website. You’ll thank yourself later. Even if you do know how to write, mistakes are easy to make. Run through your content a few times to confirm that everything makes sense, is interesting, and is spelled correctly. You’ll look more professional and people will take what you have to say more seriously.

Step 7: Usability

Website usability is extremely important. According to usability.gov:
In general, usability refers to how well users can learn and use a product to achieve their goals and how satisfied they are with that process. Usability, as defined by Joseph Dumas and Janice (Ginny) Redish, means that people who use the product can do so quickly and easily to accomplish their tasks. Usability may also consider such factors as cost-effectiveness and usefulness.
If website usability is poor, then people can easily become frustrated and leave your website. A great deal of importance must be placed on website usability if you want your web design to be of professional quality. It is usually poor usability which separates the regular websites from the professionally designed websites. Usability is the most important element of a professionally designed website.
For a wealth of information regarding website usability, visit usability.gov and also read our Dos and Donts of Website Navigation Usability.

Step 8: XHTML and CSS validation

Some people will argue that validating your website with XHTML and CSS validation from W3.org is a waste of time. To be blunt, they are wrong (for a number of reasons).
Accessibility. Without accessibility, you run the risk of being sued. For example: a disabled person who cannot use a “conventional” browser can sue you if your website is inaccessible to them. Although validation doesn’t necessarily guarantee accessibility, it is an important component of exercising ones due diligence and is reason enough that you should validate your website’s XHTML and CSS.
Cross browser compatibility. The more validation errors your website has, the higher the chances are that your website will not look the same in all web browsers. We will cover the importance of cross browser compatibility in the next step.
You look more professional with a valid website. Again, like having interesting content free of grammatical errors and misspellings, having a valid website makes you look more professional to your visitors. It tells them “Hey, I care about my website’s image, I took the time to validate it”.
If you’re building a website for the first time, then you may find that your website has a lot of validation errors. Don’t worry, this happens to the best of us. The more websites you build and the more time that you take to learn the rules of validation, the fewer errors you will get and the easier it will be to validate your website.
For more information about XHTML and CSS validation visit W3.org.

Step 9: Standards-compliant

Perhaps the most difficult, time-consuming aspect of professional web design is making sure your website is standards-compliant.
Taken directly from Wikipedia:
Standards-compliant is a term often used in describing websites & user agents’ (often web browsers) relative compliance with web standards proposed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
In layman’s terms, if you want your website to be considered professional, then it must look and function the same in all major browsers. In addition, achieving interoperability lowers costs to content providers since they must only develop one version of a document.
As mentioned above, creating a standards-compliant website will take a good deal of time and can even involve using basic hacks in order for certain elements to appear the same across all major browsers. Major browsers include: Internet Explorer 6 (IE6 -PC), Internet Explorer 7 (IE7 - PC), Firefox (PC and Mac), Safari (PC and Mac), and Opera (PC and Mac). These browsers control the majority of the browser market share and therefore the website which you create should be tested extensively in each of these browsers to ensure standards-compliance. In addition, XHTML and CSS validation (as mentioned in Step 8: XHTML and CSS validation) are extremely important when programming a website to be standards-compliant. Validate your website, validate your CSS stylesheet, validate yourself (okay, you can’t validate yourself, but if you could, would you?).

Step 10: Optimization

Website optimization is another crucial factor that must be taken into consideration when professionally designing a website. Website optimization includes:
Image optimization. Next to audio and video, images can severely compromise the speed in which your website loads. Always compress your images using Photoshop or your favorite image compression utility. By compressing images, you decrease the size of a file which allows a web page to load quicker which ultimately decreases the chance that your visitor will leave your website due to long load times.
Audio/Video optimization. Another major annoyance which screams “unprofessional” is having enormous video and audio files embedded in your web pages. Try to use Flash Video (.flv) compression for your video files and (.mp3) compression for your audio files. Not only are the file sizes smaller than using (.avi) or (.mpg) for video or (.wav) for audio, but the video/audio loads faster which means other elements on your web page will load faster, too.
Clean code (just say no to tables). In case you skipped Step 5, do not use tables when designing your website - use CSS (cascading style sheets). Tables have a ton of junk markup which will slow down your page load time, increase file sizes, and make editing and updating quite difficult.
Validate your XHTML and CSS. Although covered in Step 8, XHTML and CSS validation is an integral part of professional website optimization and therefore should not be skipped. Validate your XHTML and CSS.

Step 11: SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly

Professionally designed websites should be designed with a solid SEO friendly foundation. To make your website SEO friendly:
Don’t use Flash. If you must use Flash, make sure it is used sparingly. Flash content is not crawlable by search engine spiders and therefore the content located inside of Flash files cannot be indexed in the search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, or Ask.
Don’t use Frames. Search Engine Spiders have a difficult time crawling through a website that uses frames. Many Search Engine Spiders will receive the following message when visiting a website designed using frames:
“Sorry! You need a frames-browser to view this site.”
Keyword Research. Optimize your web pages by including keywords relevant to the content on your website. Use keyword research tools such as Wordtracker or Overture to find the best, most relevant keywords for your content.
Researched Keywords in Title of web pages. Arguably the most important element in SEO, make sure that your title tags include the keywords found in the keyword research stage.
Researched Keywords in URL. Be sure to include the researched keywords in the title of your web pages as well. For example, if a page on your website is about energy drinks, make sure that the file is saved as “energy-drinks.html”. Use dashes instead of underscores, if possible.
CSS Navigation/CSS Stylesheets. CSS navigation guarantees that your website navigational text is crawlable by search engine spiders. CSS navigation also loads very quickly and anyone will be able to view the navigation using any browser.
Researched Keywords in Anchor Text. For hyperlinks inside and outside of your website, be sure to include the researched keywords in the anchor text of your hyperlinks. This helps search engines better determine what a particular page is about and will help that page rank higher with the researched keyword(s).
Images: ALT tags, no text in images. Not only are ALT tags required for XHTML validation, but they are necessary components of web accessibility. Try to avoid placing text inside of your images since search engine spiders cannot crawl image text. However, if you must place text inside of an image, use the text inside of the image as that image’s ALT tag. Search engine spiders can read ALT tags, just not the text inside of images.

Step 12: Abuse of Flash, Javascript, and sound effects

The last step in creating a professional web design and website is to avoid the abuse of Flash, Javascript, and sound effects. Not everyone has Flash or Javascript enabled on their computer, and therefore your website should not be built around them. If you’re going to use Flash or Javascript, use it sparingly.
Try not to use Flash Intros on your website. Most people hate waiting for Flash Intros to load, hate being forced to sit through them, and hate being surprised by the sound that many of them have. Do not create your website using only Flash. Again, what about the users who do not have Flash enabled on their computer? That could be a potential client, customer, or reader who you’re missing out on because of an unnecessary technological limitation.
If you’re going to use sound effects, make sure that they only play if the user enables sound on your website - never force sound effects onto your visitors. Nothing screams “unprofessional” like having a sound effect play each time a navigational item is rolled over or even worse, when the visitor lands on the home page of your website.
As a matter of fact, Flash and sound effects should generally be avoided when creating a professional web design. Javascript is the only exception as long as you program the website to work even if Javascript is disabled. Flash and sound effects are a nuisance to a lot of people, so for that reason alone, try to stay away from them.
The recipe to professional web design
These 12 steps make up the majority of the recipe which many professional web designers live by when designing websites. Of course, knowing the things that you know after reading this article and actually being able to create a professional web design are two very different things. However, as it does with anything, practice makes perfect. Now get out there and start building a professionally designed website! And hey, if you can’t do it yourself, go to Google and search “professional web design”. Chromatic Sites is in there, along with many other highly-respected professional web design companies.

How to Optimize Mobile Websites - Mobile SEO Site Opens

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:51:00 +0000

The Mobile Website Optimization Company, North America’s premier mobile SEO specialists have opened their collaborative mobile SEO and mobile search engine marketing and promotion website.
This is the first mobile website of its kind where users can get information ranging from creating free mobile websites to programming advice to consulting. Much of the information is free and provides a much needed value added service for mobile web designers and webmasters. The biggest advantage of a website like this is the fact that MWO has experience in all kinds of website marketing and has made a seamless transition to the mobile space for their clients.
MWO offers several value added services including programming help and tutorials, mobile website marketing, mobile optimization, free SEO tools, articles, forums, as well as a special section selling high traffic mobile websites. Visitors to the site can submit questions, advertise their own high traffic mobile websites, utilize the free tools or have MWO provide a service or services they need to get their website properly mobilized.

When visiting MWO be sure to check out their articles section as many of their mobile optimization articles are quite detailed and give mobile webmasters some very good insight into properly optimizing and marketing their mobile websites and online mobile businesses.

Website Design Services

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:59:00 +0000

Website design for many visitors, your website will be their first point of contact with your business, and therefore must represent the professionalism of your enterprise and capture their attention.Usable, accessible web design In close consultation with you, we will work towards creating a design that is both appealing and provides access to important information rapidly.

The notion of "accessibility" is also something that is very important to us, and we pride ourselves in constructing websites that are extremely easy to use and navigate – this is done in compliance with the latest standards agreed by the W3C.Getting your website foundWe will also take great pains to ensure that your website achieves excellent positioning on the important Search Engines and have a very strong track record in achieving top rankings on Google and other systems. This will, in turn, increase the likelihood of attracting potential customers.

Ongoing support and maintenance. We are committed to providing full support for the websites we build long after they have gone "live" and fully understand that things do not stay the same for long on the World Wide Web, and so will advise you of any recommendations we might have regarding the best ways to keep your site moving forwards.If you're interested in having a website developed for your business, don't take any chances - talk to us first!You might also be interested in...

* Graphic design
* Search Engine Optimisation

We live and breathe accessible web design and development - we are so passionate about the creation of standards-compliant, content managed websites and eCommerce stores, it is quite probable that we dream in XHTML and CSS. Website design, web design packages, website development, web & graphic design Dynamic webs have designed and programmed several hundred web sites. We have developed the expertise to utilise a broad range of knowledge to approach conception and design procedure in the most effective way. Using our own panel of experts covering all aspects of design, marketing and technical consultancy, we are able to assist customers who have extremely diverse requirements.

The comprehensive nature of our service has proved to be invaluable to our clients who have made substantial savings already during design-concept and planning phases.Dynamic Webs provide a special online service, which allows you to view the progress of the web sites construction. This enables you to suggest andanticipate issues regarding the web site development as well as do the proof reading - testing as and when the site has been developed.

Guaranteed Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Services

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:51:00 +0000

This motto "Results, not excuses."reflects the attitude we take towards the optimization of each and every website we work on. From helping you choose the best keyword targets to seeing your website among the top positions on the major search engines, we'll work with you to
Maximize your return on investment from our SEO services.How confident are we that we can attain high rankings for your website through ethical search engine optimization? Confident enough to offer a 100% money back guarantee on our SEO services.We are business people too, and like you we understand that every investment must produce results for your company. Whether that money is being spent on additional sales staff, new equipment, or on attaining high search engine positioning by hiring an SEO firm; that investment must generate revenue higher than its cost in order to be considered worthwhile.

Why does your website need search engine optimization services?

85% of all website traffic originates from the search engines, with the majority coming from a select few. If your company has an online presence but doesn't have a high ranking on the major search engines for your targeted phrases then you're losing money to your competition every single day.At over Search Engine Positioning we make sure that your website attains a high ranking for the keyword phrases that will produce the greatest profit for you. We do this through in-depth keyword analysis combined with the highest level of commitment to placing your website above your competitors on the major search engines with our SEO services.

If you've already got a website, but it isn't performing as you would have hoped on the Search Engines, why not speak to us to see how the situation can be improved to your satisfaction.Everything we undertake to optimise your website is done in close consultation with you - we will work hard to gain an appreciation of your business, and the kind of visitors you wish to attract.We only ever use "white hat" optimisation techniques to acquire solid rankings for our clients - in other words, we simply won't use methods that could have a potentially adverse effect on those all-important positions. Sadly, the same cannot be said of a number of our competitors who employ opposing "black hat" strategies in an attempt to boost a site's visibility on the Search Engines.Of course, you don't have to be based in London, or california to benefit from our experience in Search Engine Optimisation - we can help you wherever you or your business may be!

Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 15:35:00 +0000

Summary: The ten most egregious offenses against users. Web design disasters and HTML horrors are legion, though many usability atrocities are less common than they used to be.
Since my first attempt in 1996,
I have compiled many top-10 lists of the biggest mistakes in Web design. See links to all these lists at the bottom of this article. This article presents the highlights: the very worst mistakes of Web design. (Updated 2007.)

1. Bad Search

Overly literal search engines reduce usability in that they're unable to handle typos, plurals, hyphens, and other variants of the query terms. Such search engines are particularly difficult for elderly users, but they hurt everybody.
A related problem is when search engines prioritize results purely on the basis of how many query terms they contain, rather than on each document's importance. Much better if your search engine calls out "best bets" at the top of the list -- especially for important queries, such as the names of your products.
Search is the user's lifeline when navigation fails. Even though advanced search can sometimes help, simple search usually works best, and search should be presented as a simple box, since that's what users are looking for.

2. PDF Files for Online Reading

Users hate coming across a PDF file while browsing, because it breaks their flow. Even simple things like printing or saving documents are difficult because standard browser commands don't work. Layouts are often optimized for a sheet of paper, which rarely matches the size of the user's browser window. Bye-bye smooth scrolling. Hello tiny fonts.
Worst of all, PDF is an undifferentiated blob of content that's hard to navigate.
PDF is great for printing and for distributing manuals and other big documents that need to be printed. Reserve it for this purpose and convert any information that needs to be browsed or read on the screen into real web pages.

3. Not Changing the Color of Visited Links

A good grasp of past navigation helps you understand your current location, since it's the culmination of your journey. Knowing your past and present locations in turn makes it easier to decide where to go next. Links are a key factor in this navigation process. Users can exclude links that proved fruitless in their earlier visits. Conversely, they might revisit links they found helpful in the past.
Most important, knowing which pages they've already visited frees users from unintentionally revisiting the same pages over and over again.
These benefits only accrue under one important assumption: that users can tell the difference between visited and unvisited links because the site shows them in different colors. When visited links don't change color, users exhibit more navigational disorientation in usability testing and unintentionally revisit the same pages repeatedly.

4. Non-Scannable Text

A wall of text is deadly for an interactive experience. Intimidating. Boring. Painful to read.
Write for online, not print. To draw users into the text and support scannability, use well-documented tricks:
subheads
bulleted lists
highlighted keywords
short paragraphs
the inverted pyramid
a simple writing style, and
de-fluffed language devoid of marketese.

5. Fixed Font Size

CSS style sheets unfortunately give websites the power to disable a Web browser's "change font size" button and specify a fixed font size. About 95% of the time, this fixed size is tiny, reducing readability significantly for most people over the age of 40.
Respect the user's preferences and let them resize text as needed. Also, specify font sizes in relative terms -- not as an absolute number of pixels.

6. Page Titles With Low Search Engine Visibility

Search is the most important way users discover websites. Search is also one of the most important ways users find their way around individual websites. The humble page title is your main tool to attract new visitors from search listings and to help your existing users to locate the specific pages that they need.

The page title is contained within the HTML tag and is almost always used as the clickable headline for listings on search engine result pages (SERP). Search engines typically show the first 66 characters or so of the title, so it's truly microcontent.
Page titles are also used as the default entry in the Favorites when users bookmark a site. For your homepage, begin the with the company name, followed by a brief description of the site. Don't start with words like "The" or "Welcome to" unless you want to be alphabetized under "T" or "W."
For other pages than the homepage, start the title with a few of the most salient information-carrying words that describe the specifics of what users will find on that page. Since the page title is used as the window title in the browser, it's also used as the label for that window in the taskbar under Windows, meaning that advanced users will move between multiple windows under the guidance of the first one or two words of each page title. If all your page titles start with the same words, you have severely reduced usability for your multi-windowing users.
Taglines on homepages are a related subject: they also need to be short and quickly communicate the purpose of the site.

7. Anything That Looks Like an Advertisement

Selective attention is very powerful, and Web users have learned to stop paying attention to any ads that get in the way of their goal-driven navigation. (The main exception being text-only search-engine ads.)
Unfortunately, users also ignore legitimate design elements that look like prevalent forms of advertising. After all, when you ignore something, you don't study it in detail to find out what it is.
Therefore, it is best to avoid any designs that look like advertisements. The exact implications of this guideline will vary with new forms of ads; currently follow these rules:
banner blindness means that users never fixate their eyes on anything that looks like a banner ad due to shape or position on the page
animation avoidance makes users ignore areas with blinking or flashing text or other aggressive animations
pop-up purges mean that users close pop-up windoids before they have even fully rendered; sometimes with great viciousness (a sort of getting-back-at-GeoCities triumph).

8. Violating Design Conventions

Consistency is one of the most powerful usability principles:

when things always behave the same, users don't have to worry about what will happen. Instead, they know what will happen based on earlier experience. Every time you release an apple over Sir Isaac Newton, it will drop on his head. That's good.
The more users' expectations prove right, the more they will feel in control of the system and the more they will like it. And the more the system breaks users' expectations, the more they will feel insecure. Oops, maybe if I let go of this apple, it will turn into a tomato and jump a mile into the sky.
Jakob's Law of the Web User Experience states that "users spend most of their time on other websites."
This means that they form their expectations for your site based on what's commonly done on most other sites. If you deviate, your site will be harder to use and users will leave.

9. Opening New Browser Windows

Opening up new browser windows is like a vacuum cleaner sales person who starts a visit by emptying an ash tray on the customer's carpet. Don't pollute my screen with any more windows, thanks (particularly since current operating systems have miserable window management).
Designers open new browser windows on the theory that it keeps users on their site. But even disregarding the user-hostile message implied in taking over the user's machine, the strategy is self-defeating since it disables the Back button which is the normal way users return to previous sites. Users often don't notice that a new window has opened, especially if they are using a small monitor where the windows are maximized to fill up the screen. So a user who tries to return to the origin will be confused by a grayed out Back button.
Links that don't behave as expected undermine users' understanding of their own system. A link should be a simple hypertext reference that replaces the current page with new content. Users hate unwarranted pop-up windows. When they want the destination to appear in a new page, they can use their browser's "open in new window" command -- assuming, of course, that the link is not a piece of code that interferes with the browser’s standard behavior.

10. Not Answering Users' Questions

Users are highly goal-driven on the Web. They visit sites because there's something they want to accomplish -- maybe even buy your product. The ultimate failure of a website is to fail to provide the information users are looking for.
Sometimes the answer is simply not there and you lose the sale because users have to assume that your product or service doesn't meet their needs if you don't tell them the specifics. Other times the specifics are buried under a thick layer of marketese and bland slogans. Since users don't have time to read everything, such hidden info might almost as well not be there.
The worst example of not answering users' questions is to avoid listing the price of products and services. No B2C ecommerce site would make this mistake, but it's rife in B2B, where most "enterprise solutions" are presented so that you can't tell whether they are suited for 100 people or 100,000 people. Price is the most specific piece of info customers use to understand the nature of an offering, and not providing it makes people feel lost and reduces their understanding of a product line. We have miles of videotape of users asking "Where's the price?" while tearing their hair out.
Even B2C sites often make the associated mistake of forgetting prices in product lists, such as category pages or search results Knowing the price is key in both situations; it lets users differentiate among products and click through to the most relevant ones.

via: useit

A Very Unusual Pagerank Update

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 14:07:00 +0000

Last week, many webmasters noticed that Google’s public pagerank system (a rough measure of each site’s importance in the search engine) was displaying higher than expected rankings for some sites.

Many virtually unlinked and unheard of sites rose significantly on the scale, without any official explanation from the search giant. Two of my sites that were affected were handsetreviews.com and carriermix.com. Both were ranked 0 out of 10 before the change, but rose to PR6 afterwards. Other sites have been known to rise as high as PR8 as a result of this update.
The strange thing is that this was not a normal update, as it only made a difference to newly created PR0 websites, and didn’t affect most internal pages (at least in my experence). Reaction from other webmasters can be found at this SitePoint forum thread.
Many webmasters believe that this unusual update could further devalue the meaning of PR (which is meaningless enough already for SEO purposes), but I am currently mulling a theory that Google could have a different opinion altogether.

I find it somewhat unlikely that the world’s biggest search engine would deliberately destroy the entire PR system. Rough and inaccurate as it is, the PR scale is the only way to get a simple reading of a site’s backlink weight, directly from Google.
Instead, my theory is that Google is turning PR itself into an elaborate experiment. They could be attempting to make it a more accurate measure of a site’s value, updated on a frequent, or even constant basis. Such a figure can’t be expected to be totally accurate right away, but if Google is trying to introduce such an improvement, I commend them for it.
Now, I must warn you, this is just a theory, and I make no guarantees that it is correct, but it’s quite a possible explanation in my opinion. Whether Google has success in implementing it is another matter altogether.

Google Strives to Further Improve Search Functionality

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 14:06:00 +0000

Despite Google’s dominant position in the search industry, the internet giant’s decision makers insist that search is not a “solved problem,” and that there is still much room for improvement.
“Our position is that search is a very hard problem. We have still a lot of work to do,” commented internal engineer, Douglas Merrill, noting that 70% of Google’s efforts still go into improving search, as opposed to developing other services.

“It is not enough to have the information, the information should be right,” Merrill went on to say. “Sometimes the problem is figuring out what the users mean, not what the user said.”
At this point, some of Google’s main projects include improving mobile web search, personalized search, and language translation features, as well as finding new ways to combat SEO spam.
By keeping its focus on core search functionality, the internet giant is demonstrating its belief that no search algorithm can be “too good,” while recognizing the continual progress of competitors. This goes to show that even the mighty Google must work hard to maintain the upper hand against rivals like Yahoo and Microsoft.

Facts About Title Keyword Density

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 14:01:00 +0000

If you’ve done much SEO work for your website, I’m sure you’ve realized just how important it is to include the right text in the <> tag of each page.
As discussed in this article, it is a good idea to build each of your pages around its own primary keyphrase, and somehow incorporate that keyphrase into your <> tag. The question is, of course, what’s the best way to integrate it? The problem is that each search engine has its own unique answer.
MSN (aka Live.com) is generally thought to reward very high keyword density, and often grants top-five rankings to pages with 100% density in the title (that is, pages where the primary keyphrase is the only thing in the title bar).
Google, on the other hand, seems to make a point of devaluing pages on keywords that exactly match their <> tag. This measure was most likely introduced as a way to fight search engine spammers who over-optimize for a single phrase, by excessively placing it in their content, headings, and title.

Overall, you need to make an informed decision about which optimization route you want to take for each of your sites. As mentioned in the algorithm summaries, MSN is a good choice for driving short-term traffic and revenue, while Google has a lot more potential for long-term sustainable content websites.

If you want to optimize for Google, my advice would be to go for title keyword density of around 50%, and no greater than 75%. For example, if your primary keyphrase is three words long, you many wish to add another three-word phrase to your title, consisting of secondary keywords.

Guaranteed Search Engine Optimization & SEO Services

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 14:43:00 +0000

Maximize your return on investment from our SEO services.

How confident are we that we can attain high rankings for your website through ethical search engine optimization? Confident enough to offer a 100% money back guarantee on our SEO services.

We are business people too, and like you we understand that every investment must produce results for your company. Whether that money is being spent on additional sales staff, new equipment, or on attaining high search engine positioning by hiring an SEO firm; that investment must generate revenue higher than its cost in order to be considered worthwhile.

Why does your website need search engine optimization services?

85% of all website traffic originates from the search engines, with the majority coming from a select few. If your company has an online presence but doesn't have a high ranking on the major search engines for your targeted phrases then you're losing money to your competition every single day.

At over Search Engine Positioning we make sure that your website attains a high ranking for the keyword phrases that will produce the greatest profit for you. We do this through in-depth keyword analysis combined with the highest level of commitment to placing your website above your competitors on the major search engines with our SEO services.

Services-Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Website Design

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 17:04:00 +0000

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search Engine Optimisation (also known as SEO) can make the difference between a website attracting visitors, and therefore potential revenue, or languishing in online obscurity...

We have a proven track record in acquiring top-level positions on the most important Search Engines and directories, such as Google and DMOZ, with our clients' sites being returned on a wide range of carefully chosen strategic search terms.

Part of the success of our approach can be attributed to the fact that the accessible, standards-compliant websites we produce, are coded by hand, and come optimised right "out of the box" using industry-standard best practice and outstanding levels of client care.

If you've already got a website, but it isn't performing as you would have hoped on the Search Engines, why not speak to us to see how the situation can be improved to your satisfaction.

Everything we undertake to optimise your website is done in close consultation with you - we will work hard to gain an appreciation of your business, and the kind of visitors you wish to attract.

We only ever use "white hat" optimisation techniques to acquire solid rankings for our clients - in other words, we simply won't use methods that could have a potentially adverse effect on those all-important positions. Sadly, the same cannot be said of a number of our competitors who employ opposing "black hat" strategies in an attempt to boost a site's visibility on the Search Engines.

Of course, you don't have to be based in USA, or UK to benefit from our experience in Search Engine Optimisation - we can help you wherever you or your business may be!

Website design

For many visitors, your website will be their first point of contact with your business, and therefore must represent the professionalism of your enterprise and capture their attention.
Usable, accessible web design

In close consultation with you, we will work towards creating a design that is both appealing and provides access to important information rapidly.

The notion of "accessibility" is also something that is very important to us, and we pride ourselves in constructing websites that are extremely easy to use and navigate – this is done in compliance with the latest standards agreed by the W3C.
Getting your website found

We will also take great pains to ensure that your website achieves excellent positioning on the important Search Engines and have a very strong track record in achieving top rankings on Google and other systems. This will, in turn, increase the likelihood of attracting potential customers.
Ongoing support and maintenance

We are committed to providing full support for the websites we build long after they have gone "live" and fully understand that things do not stay the same for long on the World Wide Web, and so will advise you of any recommendations we might have regarding the best ways to keep your site moving forwards.

If you're interested in having a website developed for your business, don't take any chances - talk to us first!
You might also be interested in...

* Graphic design & WebDesign
* Search Engine Optimisation

We live and breathe accessible web design and development - we are so passionate about the creation of standards-compliant, content managed websites and eCommerce stores, it is quite probable that we dream in XHTML and CSS.

Website design, web design packages, website development, web & graphic design

Dynamic webs have designed and programmed several hundred web sites. We have developed the expertise to utilise a broad range of knowledge to approach conception and design procedure in the most effective way. Using our own panel of experts covering all aspects of design, marketing and technical consultancy, we are able to assist customers who have extremely diverse requirements.

The comprehensive nature of our service has proved to be invaluable to our clients who have made substantial savings already during design-concept and planning phases.

Dynamic Webs provide a special online service, which allows you to view the progress of the web sites construction. This enables you to suggest andanticipate issues regarding the web site development as well as do the proof reading - testing as and when the site has been developed.

Keyword selector tool - Monthly keyword ranking checker Google-MSN- Yahoo, wordtracker

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 14:15:00 +0000

Contacts

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:10:00 +0000

Please email for any query...

awaisqurni@gmail.com

Freelance webdesigner-cheap website and graphics designer

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 10:16:00 +0000

I Mr. Awais Qurni Professionally qualified with the business and economics study and as well as computer studies... I have experience of websitedesign and seo from couple of years. I nicelly done my work of mostly UK and USA clients. With the business and computer studies I am able to understand E-commerace and Online business marketing of any product with the strategic sloutions.

I already know that customers always want reasonable price well made product, I am offering my cheap services as a website design and search engine optimization (SEO) . customer satisfaction is my first periority, further for my work and prices please email me for any query...

awaisqurni@gmail.com

Google SearchTechnology-Google searches more sites more quickly, delivering the most relevant results.

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 16:16:00 +0000

Google searches more sites more quickly, delivering the most relevant results. Introduction
Google runs on a unique combination of advanced hardware and software. The speed you experience can be attributed in part to the efficiency of our search algorithm and partly to the thousands of low cost PC's we've networked together to create a superfast search engine.
The heart of our software is PageRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by our founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. And while we have dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of Google on a daily basis, PageRank continues to play a central role in many of our web search tools.
PageRank Explained
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages' relative importance.
Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.
Integrity Google's complex automated methods make human tampering with our search results extremely difficult. And though we may run relevant ads above and next to our results, Google does not sell placement within the results themselves (i.e., no one can buy a particular or higher placement). A Google search provides an easy and effective way to find high-quality websites that contain information relevant to your search.

via:googleblog

SEO - Search Engine Optimization Ranking Tips

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 17:52:00 +0000

Search Engine Criteria

The first thing that you need to know is that most of the major search engines utilize an algorithm to determine where a website ranks. The search engines have setup specific criteria that a website must meet to get to the top of the list. The criteria are different for every engine, but all engines share several commonalities. It all boils down to the type and amount of content provided on a given website, the level of optimization done on the site, and the popularity of the website (link popularity/PageRank). Below we examine these commonalities in more detail.

Understanding Keywords and Search Behavior

In order to rank a website, you must first identify and understand your target audience. Keywords can tell you a lot about the type of user that will be potentially visiting your website. Many times it is best to consult an optimization professional during this process. Most individuals can determine which keywords are best for their website, if they are using the right tools, which are readily available.
The difficult task if determining which keywords are most relevant, and realistic to optimize for. One must also determine which keywords to optimize for on the various pages. Search engine optimization is often referred to as "an art," and this is a perfect example of where it takes a professional's touch to achieve the best results. When competing for any keyword, you can be sure that there is anywhere from 100,000 to 100,000,000+ websites competing against you. Proper keyword targeting is crucial for a successful search engine marketing and optimization campaign.
The first thing to realize when targeting keywords is that it is not all about ranking for the most popular keyword. The most successful search engine marketing and optimization campaigns target the most relevant keywords. As an example, Hal's Auto Dealership in Wisconsin will probably never rank for the keyword "car." You must realize that the top 500+ results for the keyword "car" all have a much larger web presence when compared to Hal's Auto Dealership. Hal's Auto Dealership would be much better suited targeting keywords like "car dealership in Wisconsin," "used cars in Wisconsin," "new cars in Wisconsin," and the like.
There are several tools available from Google, Overture, and third party software developers that can make the keyword research process easier. Submitawebsite.com utilizes a combination of these tools and others that have been licensed to create a professional analysis for our clients.

Content, Content, Content

Again, thinking at the algorithm level, how do search engines rank websites? The answer is quite simple: Those who have superior content rule. The phrase "content is king" was born about 4 years ago, and it still holds true today. If you want to be relevant for specific keywords, than you need superior or at least highly competitive content. With that said if you want to rank for a slew of different keyword phrases, than realize that you require a slew of relevant content. On average, one can target between 3-5 like keyword phrases per page.
This is another example of where a search engine optimization professional can lend some expertise. An expert can help determine what content you need, when compared to the type of keywords that you want to target. Submitawebsite.com is one of many firms that offer this type of consulting.

Are you Optimized?

Now that you have determined the keyword you need to rank for, and you have the right amount of content in place, you need to optimize your website to stand out from the crowd. Regarding on-page scripting the search engines are really looking for 2 things: 1) keywords in the Meta and Title fields and 2) keywords in the body of your website.
Regarding Meta Tags there are 2 very important fields:
1) Title Tag - arguably the most important SEO tag for any website. Google, Fast/Alltheweb/Lycos, and Ask Jeeves support approx. 60 characters in the title, while Inktomi and Altavista allows for up to 110 characters in the title. It is important to target the most critical keywords in the Title. Every page should have a unique Title.
2) META Description Tag - also very important for every page on the site. Some engines do display the description defined, while others do not. All search engines do read the description tag, and do utilize the content found within in the ranking process. A good rule of thumb is to create descriptions that do not exceed 200-250 characters.

The META keyword Tag is essentially useless in today's SEO market, but is often times good to utilize as a placeholder for the keywords targeted.
The other optimization element to keep in mind is body content. Search engines are looking for dense content, with the right amount of keyword density and/or keyword placement. Depending on the architecture of a specific website, one may consider various means of placing keywords within body content. Typically it is best to place body content within a viewable area of the website. However, some websites may be graphic intense or within frames, or flash. In this scenario you will need to place keywords in ALT Tags, or No-Script tags.
Keep in mind that if you are following the rules published at the various search engines, that you must provide relevant content at all times, and it is always best to show all content to users that you show search engines.
At the end of the day, you must provide spiders with the keywords you want to rank in a variety of places, including META tags, Title, ALT Tags, Body content, links, etc. Enlisting the help of a professional is often times the most economical means of accomplishing these various nuances.

Are you popular?

So now you have determined the right keywords on the right pages, you've created all of the necessary content; you've optimized all of the content to the best of your capabilities. Congratulations - you're now in the top 80 percentile (from an optimization standpoint) of the websites listed for the keywords you're trying to target. So how do you get a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd page listing? The answer is quite simple: You have to be the most popular too. That's right, it's a popularity contest. In other words, how many other websites know you (link to you), and how popular are they?
This is typically referred to as link popularity, or called PageRank by Google. Every algorithm uses a different form of link popularity, PageRank being the most sought after because of the enormous Google network. Essentially, every website is given a score somewhere between a 0 and a 10. Google and a small handful of other sites on the web score a 10 - which is a perfect and absolutely unattainable score. You need a high score to target popularly searched keywords.
Consulting an expert here is almost mandatory for success.

Paid Inclusion

Once your site if fully optimized you'll need to submit to the engines, or pay the engines to guarantee that you will be indexed into their database. Paid Inclusion doesn't mean better rankings, but it does mean you are guaranteed the chance to rank because you will be listed in the databases. Currently you can perform Paid Inclusion with Inktomi, Altavista, Fast Search/Alltheweb/Lycos, Altavista, and Ask Jeeves. Submitawebsite.com can provide Paid Inclusion services, and does incorporate Paid Inclusion into many of its Search Engine Optimization and Placement packages.

Great alternative ways to use Google

noreply@blogger.com (Awais Qurni) — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 13:46:00 +0000

Find synonyms
The first one is to use Google to find synonyms for specific words. This following example will give you all the synonyms for food.~food

Google Currency
Great small tool, so you can convert the money currency from one to another.Currency of Sweden in American dollar

Specific file types

You can add a filter to only search for specific file types, I use this tool a lot, I love it, I often want to only find pdf files instead of websites."how to" filetype:pdf

Search in a specific site

You can choose only to search in a specific domain and not all the web, by defining the domain like so.photoshop site:0tutor.com

Weather forecast

I have never used this yet though, so it's quite new to me, but fun to discover, maybe I will begin to use it in the future, if it covers more than the US.Weather New York