Archive for the 'Web Design' Category

Published by Chris Channing on 01 Jul 2008

How Web Designers Build A Better Design

by Chris Channing

One of the biggest online industries right now is the web design industry- with its many demands to create the newest and biggest thing in awe inspiring websites. Web design may be a big industry, but it isn’t the easiest to get a foothold in. In order to best “wow” the competition, there are a few practices to keep in mind.

Before all sorts of colors, tables, and shapes are created- the concept of the readability of a website needs to be learned. The reader of the website is the target here, and how well they can read the content is the goal that needs to be achieved. Common practice states that a 10 pixel font or higher is sufficient, but going for bigger fonts is always appealing to Internet users.

Being able to read a website may be the number one goal, but navigation is a close second. Navigation is an essential in today’s standards, since it gives the Internet user an idea on what they can do and where they can go within the website they are viewing. Nifty little CSS menus with even niftier rollover effects can be created, but the average top or left navigation menu seen on most properly designed websites is usually sufficient.

Next is the factor is accessibility. Not everyone has the same tastes in web browsers. And in some cases, older computers will only run certain older versions of browsers. Because of this unfortunate aspect, designers need to code their web design layouts with multiple browsers in mind. Popular browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera- and it’s generally best to make a website standardized in each and every one of them.

Once all the basics in standardization and readability are maintained, the act of being creative and reestablishing the norms becomes the next test. Using different palettes of colors, using new forms of shapes and blocks (The rounded rectangle box is a current favorite for web designers), and ultimately thinking of new ways to display information has become the measuring stick in how a web design project is rated.

Lastly, it’s a good idea to make use of previously popular web design tactics. Newer and better forms of web design options are great to engage in, but the popular forms of web design options have been made popular for a reason- they are visually appealing and they just work. Thus, it’s always nice to conform to certain web design trends even if a unique look is desired. It isn’t always so much as trying to create a unique design as it is trying to create a unique experience for the Internet user viewing it.

Final Thoughts

Learning all there is to know about web design will take weeks. In some instances, not having prior knowledge of many technologies can make the process take several months (In which case a college level class is desired). Whatever the case, looking from other designs and continually expanding one’s knowledge of web design is the only way to get better- although the ride to the top is quite a fun one.

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Published by Russell G. Stuart on 12 Jun 2008

Use SEO Blogging Techniques To Boost Your Website’s Ranking

by Russell G. Stuart

It’s a no-win situation - you must be ranked high in search engine results to attract more web visitors and to get ranked high, you need to have a lot of web traffic. Sadly, the days of rich content alone attracting lots of web visitors are long gone.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the reason why a website gets a good ranking on web searches. Making a website SEO-based can be anything from legal to borderline illegitimate, depending on what techniques you use.

Some of these optimisation methods include writing keyword-rich web content, articl submission and link exchanging. These were the most practiced SEO techniques until some wise soul came up with the idea that blogging can be a valuable SEO tool. It has become a phenomena since then.

A weblog, better known as a blog, are created for both personal and business purposes. Your blog gives you the freedom to talk about anything you want and it’s quite an enjoyable task that’s worth all the effort. Blog attract loads of traffic and you can have your blog either within ot external to your website.

The content you post on your blog is your choice and you can include as many links as you prefer in each of your posts. If the blog is internally available in your site, you can post links to increase your site’s search engine ranking. Comparatively, if it’s located externally, posting links is a valuable way to get one way links to your website.

Exchanged links can boost your ranking, but one way links are definitely more valuable than exchanged links. This is a wonderful way of making sure that you have a lot of valuable one way links.

You have to make sure that your blog posts contain information that is related to your site, and is key word rich. If your blog is within your site, it is a convenient way of making sure that you have key word rich content in your site. Since blog posts are written differently from a normal article, it might not be that easy to incorporate your key words in them, but once you get that knack, it becomes a piece of cake.

The best part about blogs is that unlike articles, people can comment on them. You will know what people have to say to you, and there is nothing like constructive criticism to improve your site. This is also an excellent way of building contacts, and, therefore, prospective customers for your business, whatever that might be.

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Published by Gary Terrazas on 10 Jun 2008

Tips on Internet Marketing Services

by Gary Terrazas

Internet marketing services need to fulfil an Internet business’s goals in order for all its activities to do well.

However, it is not an easy task to find good Internet marketing service or a good Internet marketing affiliate program. This is because there are just as many bad Internet marketing affiliate programs out there as there are good ones too.

So, the first step in identifying the best provider of Internet services for your business is to learn the difference between what is a good Internet marketing programme and what is not!

There are Internet marketing businesses out there that are only interested in taking you for a joy ride and then there are businesses that are genuinely interested in providing you with excellent service. Knowing the difference between the two, right from the start, can help you make the right choices from the beginning.

A super tool to make use of is one known as affiliate marketing. But before you investigate this route, know that Internet marketing services affiliates that are of any worth do not charge you to subscribe to their membership or charge you for services that have not yet supplied. Therefore it may be best to avoid any marketing affiliate programme that requests money before you receive any value.

Search engine marketing opportunities are another valuable tool that you can avail yourself of. Based on your target market it requires that you optimise your website specifically for the most popular search engines. I.e. Google and Yahoo. Although, whichever search engine you decide upon, ensure that they reach your particular target market.

Do your best with the top search engines to see what techniques work and what doesn’t work for your site. By using this information you can identify the best techniques which are more suitable for successful ranking of your website.

PPC is an Internet marketing medium that can also be used for greater exposure. Contact a search engine to work with them on a paid per click programme or otherwise find a website with high traffic and advertise with them.

Be cautious of paying for advertising on a busy site when that traffic irrelevant to your business. E.g. advertising fine bed linen on a coal mining website!

Choose the best Internet marketing firm or authority should you choose to make use of their offering. Remember to make enquiries about their pedigree, history and projects they have concluded. Also ask them to send through their curriculum vitae and all their details if they have traded under anther name in the past. Investigate the information you receive for authenticity.

It is a good idea to ascertain an Internet marketing firm’s abilities before employing them. Do this by asking them to describe how they intend to help your business grow. A good company is pleased to provide you with all the information you request, a bad company not.

Choose the best from the many Internet marketing companies available to ensure that your business is successful.

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Published by Ashley Bryan on 07 Jun 2008

Search Engine Optimisation: Back to Basics

by Ashley Bryan

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is one of the most overlooked and under utilised means of website advertising, and even many web development businesses seem to stuggle to understand it, and apply it to the websites they design and develop. SEO is simply the process whereby a website is designed and developed with a view to it being found on one or more search engines.

Search engines are the cornerstone of your website marketing campaign because the majority of websites are still found via search engines. Here are some commonly asked questions about SEO:

Is it free?

Generally still free, although with the huge number of websites now going live the wait for your site to appear on that search engine can be long (several months). This is especially true of International search engines, many of whom have introduced paid “express submissions”. These can be value for money, but be careful.

Submit to 15,000,000 search engines for free?

Don’t you believe it. I do not recommend any company use these tools to submit their website to search engines. These services can spam search engines with your URL, an effectively get you banned or certainly prevent you from submitting your site again under controlled conditions. Submit your site to search engines one at a time. Remember: do it once and do it right!

What are the tricks then?

There are several key things, which need to be considered:

1. Domain name. Perhaps the most easily overlooked, a domain name that “says it all” about your business is really the first step 2. Meta tags. While not the answer to your prayers, they are vital to good search engine rankings 3. Keyword density and layout. Attention to keyword density in your both your meta tags, and site text is essential.

Another thing to remember: search engine optimize every page in your site separately, and relevant to the topic of that page.

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Published by John Neyman on 06 Jun 2008

6 Steps to Picking Profitable Adsense Keywords

by John Neyman

Knowing how to find the best keywords for use in your Adsense ads is not a straightforward process. Finding and implementing high profit, low competition keywords in your ads really is the trick for making Adsense payoff big.

The following process should yield profitable, low competition keywords for your Adsense ads. This process is not perfect, but when you analyze it and try it for yourself, you can see that it makes sense. Adsense that is.

Step 1 Research some keywords for your niche that have a high CPC value. To do this, first find your keywords using the Google Adwords keyword tool or another tool that will give you niche specific lists of keywords. Save those keywords into a spreadsheet program as a csv file. Copy and paste those keywords into Google’s Traffic Estimator (you will need an Adwords account). The traffic estimator will give you the estimated clicks per day and the average cost per click (CPC) for each keyword. Copy and paste this information back into your spreadsheet file for later reference.

Step 2 Multiply the average CPC by 30% to get an estimate of your maximum earnings per click. The higher the average CPC, the more likely the CPC for the 2nd - 8th positions are high as well. You want this higher average CPC to start because if the CPC starts to drop off significantly after the 3rd position, your chance of getting high click earnings as an Adsense publisher will be diminished.

Step 3 Use any one of many tools available on the internet for helping to estimate the 1st - 8th position CPC values. These tools will estimate the CPCs for each position and allow you to see how much the CPCs drop off after the first position. This dramatically helps your analysis for picking the most profitable keywords. If the CPC values stay close to the each other and to the value of the first position, then you will more than likely have a profitable keyword.

Step 4 Now determine which Adsense ads occupy which positions. You can do this by searching on Google for your keyword and looking to see which Adsense ads are generated in the search results and in which order they are. Another way to estimate this is to use the Adwords Accelerator tool. It has a feature whereby Adwords ads are dynamically displayed for a given keyword you input into the tool to check. If the Adwords advertiser has used “Adwords for Content” in his advertising, these ads will be the Adsense ads someone else is displaying on their website.

Step 5 Compare the ads you found in step 4 to the results of using a keyword check function tool (available on the internet). If the advertisers you find by doing this closely match those you found in step 4, you will more than likely have a profitable keyword.

If the advertisers are not he same, then the advertiser is possibly not using the “Adwords for Content” mode of advertising in his campaigns. This means that the keyword may not be the basis for the Adsense ads and may not be profitable.

Step 6 Now you must get the traffic. If you decide to get traffic using the Adwords approach, then just use the keywords in your Adsense ads that scored well from the above evaluation. Then, use lower cost per click keywords in your Adwords ads. The difference between the earnings from the click you get on your Adsense word from the cost of the click you pay on your Adwords word will be your profit.

If you are planning to use search engine optimization techniques to get traffic to the website where your ads are, make sure the keywords you choose have the highest KEI possible. KEI is the ratio of the number of searches for a keyword to the number of competing sites having the keyword. The combination of a high KEI and a high score from the above evaluation will yield the best profit results.

Our services at leaders excel include any where from a personal website to an elite Premium business package website. Our premium package features include creating a personal header with your company’s logo that communicates your product and/or services.

Check out Leaders Excel Solutions at www.leaderexcelsolutions today for all of your website needs.

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Published by John Neyman on 05 Jun 2008

5 Tips on Using Private Label Content

by John Neyman

Private Label Content is becoming increasingly popular as people join the rush to fill their websites with high-quality information. Admittedly, you can have articles written by freelance writers at sites like Elance or Rentacoder, but it gets expensive. For those who are not yet generating a high income through AdSense or affiliate sales, Private Label Content (PLC) provides a welcome alternative.

=== What is Private Label Content? === PLC generally refers to articles, e-books and manuals that are free for subscribers to use as they wish. There are a few restrictions, however: you cannot claim copyright to PLC, or submit it to article sites, unless you change the content significantly. (Interpret ’significantly’ as ‘unrecognizable as the original article’.) The cost of membership varies, but typically ranges from around $24 to $67 a month. For this you might receive anywhere from 150 to 300 articles per month. Some sites also offer graphics (e-book covers and site header graphics) and even ready-made sales letters.

To use PLC to the best advantage, you need to be aware of a few things.

=== 1. How Can You Use PLC Articles? === The most common use for PLC articles is to provide useful, interesting content for websites. There are other uses, however. Think about your immediate needs. If you require an incentive for people to sign up for your newsletter, you can offer an e-book or training manual made up from PLC articles. It’s easy to tweak these to be more relevant to your website and your clients. (As well as putting yourself in Google’s shoes, put yourself in your clients’ shoes. What do they most need to know?)

You could also create an e-course (anything from 6 to 52 articles - a short e-course, or one that offers an article for each week of the year). This gives you an excellent reason to stay in touch with your clients.

=== 2. How Can You Alter PLC Articles? === Submitting articles to public article directories along with your resource box is a great way to generate traffic to your web-sites. However, many directories don’t allow you to submit duplicate content - ie, you have to submit your own unique article. Therefore, when submitting an article that you obtained from a private label content resource, it’s advisable to first alter the article before submission. Here are a few tips in that regard…

(a) Change the title of the article. If you are using keyword-optimized articles, make sure you keep the keyword in the title - but be creative about the words that surround it. So if your article is based on the keyword “Mongolian Guinea Pig”, your title might be “Where to Find the Mongolian Guinea Pig” or “Taking Care of Your Mongolian Guinea Pig” and so on.

(b) Change the opening paragraph. All you need to do (usually) is make sure that your keyword appears once. Take a look at the rest of the paragraph. How can you say the same thing in a different way? Look for synonyms - using your thesaurus - or alter the tone. Perhaps you can adopt a more casual approach (this might work better for your readership anyway). You might prefer write a different introduction altogether.

(c) Work through the article. Add a sentence here; subtract one there. Present the facts in a different order. Expand by adding some new points. Break a long article into two shorter articles. (If you do this, make sure each article seems complete in itself.)

(d) Rewrite the ending. When you do this, think about what you want the reader to do. Is this a good place to put your own affiliate link, or write a lead-in to your own product or services?

=== 3. Blend Several Articles Into One === You can get a whole new look if you take two or more PLC articles on the same theme and blend them into one longer, fact-packed article. Sometimes you might find you HAVE to do this, if an article seems a bit ‘lightweight’. Not all PLC articles are created equal! Sometimes it’s obvious that the writer was low on inspiration.

=== 4. Think Outside the Square. === Most PLC articles are presented in batches relevant to one niche. For example, you might find that over the course of a month you get 20 articles on golf, 20 on cell phones, 20 on credit cards and 20 on travel. Let’s say that you are busy building a golf site. It might seem at first glance that only 20 of the 80 articles are relevant to your needs.

Not so! Golf vacations, for example, are very popular. Could any of your travel articles be massaged to fit the theme of golf vacations? It’s very likely that they could. And what about communication while you travel - or while you play golf? Does the golfer need a new cell phone that will easily adapt to overseas communications? How will the golfer pay for a new set of clubs or a golf vacation? Might he need to explore credit card options?

You see how it’s done. Be creative in your use of Private Label Content, and you will definitely get your money’s worth.

=== 5. One Final Tip - Hold Out For Quality! === Now that Private Label Content is becoming popular, more and more PLC sites are opening up. You can afford to be choosy. Check out the quality of the articles on offer, and especially the niches being targeted. Niche areas like golf and credit are popular, and that’s exactly what you want. You want to go where there is an *existing* demand. You do NOT want obscure niches where there is little activity. You WANT to go where there is competition. Naturally, the profitable niches will always have competition. Where there is competition, there are buyers! So you want to look for demand, look for competition, and carve your niche!

Finally, consider being a member of more than one PLC site. Is it worth it to you to spend $150 a month on quality, no-strings-attached content? That would get you membership of 3-4 sites and upwards of 400 articles each month. Even if you can use only 50 of those articles, you’re getting them for $3 each - a bargain!

Our services at leaders excel include any where from a personal website to an elite Premium business package website. Our premium package features include creating a personal header with your company’s logo that communicates your product and/or services. Check out Leaders Excel Solutions at www.leaderexcelsolutions today for all of your website needs.

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