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Welcome to my Blog!
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Tuesday, February 22, 2011
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The first step to bringing change to a Website
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When you first set up a Website, it can be reasonably easy to consider the SEO implications of everything. Your spanking new Website needs to be perfect, and you won’t really spare any expense trying to get it the exposure it deserves on Google. But a good part of what SEO is all about, runs far past first blush; retaining a reasonable ranking on Google is all about the sustained pumping of relevant content into your Website on a regular basis. And that is where a lot of Website creation interest begins to flag. It is difficult enough to keep adding new material; considering the SEO impact of every word you bring on board, can be a little more than most Webmasters can handle. A lot of the time, people realize after the fact how all the SEO equity they have in the bank from the time they first designed their Website on good advice, is quite lost after a content refreshing round. The first rule of undertaking SEO content updating is, don’t forget to secure what standing you have on Google to begin with (a bird in hand and all). A good attitude to a site refresh is to make sure that you first bring up a rank report on all the new links and URLs that you plan to add this time around. This is something that is going to inform all your content plans for the future, and it is important that you think this through. You’ll need to first obtain a reliable picture of the kind of job your Website is doing in its current state – which keywords seem to be working, which links are bringing in all the search traffic, and so on. This way, you’ll be able to zero in on your most important URLs and make sure no one disturbs those. The way your content is structured right now could be the entire reason you enjoy a good ranking on Google right now. You want to take a moment to assess what parts you want to leave unchanged. Any change to the top draw URLs, and you could see a drop in your search rankings, and consequently in your traffic......................................
Next, you need to make sure that it’s only the people in a company who are properly informed about SEO that are allowed to make changes to the Website. If for instance, the company’s advertising department wants the text-filled clutter on the home page replaced with a snazzy flash presentation, that should ring an alarm right there. If they aren’t SEO insiders, it should be hands-off for them. While there are ways in which you could move things around and still not mess with the components of the Webpage that are putting you in the top 10, these are such ticklish problems that you don’t want to fix something unless it’s broken. What about removing the Webpages that are no longer relevant – as you might need to do when there are product pages for products that are being discontinued? Removing irrelevant information certainly is important, as maintaining pages with obsolete information makes your Website look neglected. But one needs to remember – just because you keep your Web site updated yourself, it doesn’t mean that Google’s index does so too. People searching for the discontinued product will still see the results for it on Google, and try to navigate to that nonexistent page. What you need to do then for such an eventuality, is to set up a proper 301 redirect on that discontinued product page. Basically, an SEO expert needs to be a part of every single change planned for your Website. You even want to get their ideas on what kind of new content might be good for your business. If you are going to be commissioning new content anyway, it might as well really work for you.
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Tuesday, February 22, 2011
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SEO – How can higher location in Google enhance my business and sales. Do I need SEO?
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SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization, is the operation of optimizing one’s website to improve the position in which the website will appear within the search results acquired from a search engine based on individual keyword phrases.
To operate a business today without the benefit of an online presence is particularly hard. The convenience and plethora of data attainable over the Internet has created an anticipation that any serious business should have a website supplying at minimal contact data and a fundamental summary of the services and/or commodities they have at hand. Today almost every institution regardless of size or field of company has some sort of web site or blog reachable online. For the customer this is an excellent resource, available 24 hours a day and in the privateness of the home as well. For the firm owner having a repository to post itemized information concerning the services one provides, business convictions, product catalogues, pictures, videos, and itemized descriptions of wares including prices, supplies a fantastic marketing opportunity............................................
Herein lies the predicament; every single opposing firm owner knows these identical findings. Even for somewhat obscure business’ there can be literally thousands of (if not more) vying web sites, supplying comparable wares or services, competing for the comparable top billing spots. When the ordinary consumer decides to look up a business on the Computer network 69.5 percent of the time he or she will use Google to accomplish the search (according to research firm Hitwise for f.y.2008). Yahoo and Microsoft make up the lion’s share of the outstanding search queries with AOL coming in a remote 4th (although AOL actually uses Google’s results). According to marketing research conducted by Chitika, a search based advertising network, the top ‘organic’ location in Google drove 34.35% of all transactions in the sampling. This was roughly equal to the collective traffic from positions 2 through 5, and was more than the combined total of positions 5 through 20. Organic spot number 1 is worth very nearly exactly double what organic spot number 2 is worth, and the decrease is steep after that. This is what I like to call the Google ‘Sweet Spot’. Achieving that coveted number 1 organic spot on Google for a particular keyword phrase can double the volume of commerce a website can assume to receive over the second position. For an online firm today, with margins as slight as they are now, this could be the distinction between business success and business failure.
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Tuesday, February 22, 2011
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Professional Website Planning…
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The initial impression that a website has on users has a significant effect on the perception of the visitor regarding the products. It also determines whether or not the visitor will navigate to another website. Seasoned marketers are aware that a professional website design can affect the attitude and internet habits of online visitors. With a professional website design, technical skills are applied to the process of web application design. It is important for businesses to invest in professional websites that can expand their customer base. Understanding what the targeted customers require and their expectations can serve to guide the process of creating a professional website design The innovation and creative flair of the website owner is reflected through a professional website design according to web experts. This does not mean the designs have to be complex. Web designers can transform simple aspects and integrate them in a way that will be visually appealing............
Visitors are attracted to websites that are designed well. With the professional application of logos, color, images and graphics, the visitors are bound to be interested. The space between the content of the site is also a reflection of an organized website owner. Website content should be evident from the entire appearance of the site.........
Various goals such as search engine optimization, animation and content management can be achieved with the use of a professional company design. Specialized designers come up with designs based on the requirements and objectives of their clients and proceed to develop these designs into functional systems. To achieve success with a professional website design, it is essential for the company’s goals to be clearly understood. Once these needs are understood, professional designers are able to assess web design objectives and how these objectives can grow the business. From website development to online marketing, professional website design is a guarantee of quality development solutions. A website should be a realization and reflection of one’s ideas and visions that have been transformed into reality through a competently designed website..........
A website should ideally be professional, customized and cost effective. Online businesses have the potential to be highly profitable because a large number of people have access to websites. The competitive environment makes it challenging to succeed and this why it pays to invest in professional web designers. The final consideration for professional web designers is the use of accurate and clean codes. Though this is not obvious to the ordinary web user, compliant coding determines how well a website performs, ranks and is listed on the search engines.
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Wednesday, December 01, 2010
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Yahoo! Maps for ActionScript 3.0 Released
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Yahoo released a new Yahoo! Maps API which is entirely built in ActionScript 3.0. This API now integrates a complex set of services and controls that you can leverage in your applications to create custom components, overlays and markers while consuming different webservices provided by Yahoo!, or your own.
http://developer.yahoo.com/flash/maps/
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Wednesday, December 01, 2010
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Web Design
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Designers are, in general, a cranky, and when it comes to their own communications company, they are even more. Designing a web site for an award-winning design verges on the impossible. A design firm’s presence on the Web is used primarily as a tool to attract new business from a global community and, secondly, as a means to show. Designers are by far the worst critics of their own, and their websites to tread fine line between being cutting edge to attract new companies and more traditional appeal to companies or more conservative.
First school
An analysis of the design of business websites can provide instruction in a number of best practices of visual organization for the web, and reveal the principles of good content structure and typography.
Many of the most successful and well-known companies are run by designers who cut their teeth on publication design. They understand the principles of good design and understanding of their Web presence. Although many companies to outsource the design of their site, it is ensured that the leaders of the art company actively direct the project, and insist on good typography and design.
An analysis of the design of business websites can provide instruction in a number of best practices of visual organization for the web, and reveal the principles of good content structure and typography.
More than any other design principles, hierarchy and structure play a key role in the design. The hierarchy is the hierarchy of text and image elements in order of importance. Hierarchy allows the designer to position and highlight the most important elements or features clearly and obviously the second most important obviously less, and so on. Once content is organized and ordered by the hierarchy, the next series of decisions involving the structure of information. In the print and web design most commonly used is a grid structure. A network is a system of vertical and horizontal divisions that organize and create relationships between items. Grid system are usually formal arrangements and are designed to create visual order and production efficiency. The grids are frequently used in the publication design and web design guide as hierarchies and promote the visual rhythm and consistency between pages or screens. |
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Tuesday, November 30, 2010
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Introduction to CSS Website Design
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CSS or Cascading Style Sheets is modern way to use a website design to create a website layout and apply various styles to the website in conjunction with HTML code. CSS has been a standard in web design for some time and continues to grow as we can see with the new standards being developed in CSS3, the latest version of CSS. This means that it is worth getting to know and worth getting comfortable with using CSS in order to create attractive, accessible websites. CSS is a different type of mark-up from regular HTML in that it does not have tags stored in angle brackets to describe how elements of a webpage are displayed. CSS works according to a set of hierarchical rules where the top most element sets a particular set of behaviour, and any components that inherit from that element will have the same behaviour, unless they explicitly override it.
Traditionally, elements describing how the HTML elements in a webpage should display were included in the normal HTML markup of the webpage but now CSS allows for cleaner web page code and higher quality website design by separating out the code used to describe how the HTML elements should appear. |
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Tuesday, November 30, 2010
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New industry on Web Design
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The Internet has opened up a whole new industry – web site design development projects have come from nowhere to become the most in-demand services in the whole design sector. Nowadays, just about everyone wants to have a their own website, and there are barely enough freelance web design and development professionals available to meet the demand.
What does this mean for you? In a word, opportunity! If you have expertise in areas such as ecommerce web site design, small business web design, custom web design or web site development, you can build a very profitable home business that could earn a good income for many years to come, undertaking jobs on a free lance basis for clients on a global scale.
This field is so broad in scope, that no matter what your background is, there are options for you to build a niche business. For example, you could choose to specialize in flash design, banner design or ecommerce development. Alternatively, you might have an interest in application development, or database development jobs. Another huge area of opportunity is video game design and development. As a game software developer you can break into a massive market. There are a great many freelance jobs to be found in fields such as these.
If you are an expert with packages such as Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Photoshop, Shockwave and Fireworks, you have skills which are in demand around the world. All you have to do is learn how to promote and market your services to those many clients who need them. From Houston to Phoenix, and from Seattle to Orlando, people worldwide are looking for an expert like you.
Fortunately, this element is now much easier than ever before. In fact, all you have to do is join Go Freelance – one of the most popular web site design and development jobs sites on the world wide web today. Sign up for the trial, and discover how easy it is to pick up work. |
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Tuesday, November 30, 2010
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Reasons for redesigning your website
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There are dozens of reasons that will justify your website redesign; however, if you’re not an IT person, you may even not realize that your website needs one. How to check whether it’s time to change the layout of your web resource?
First of all, browse other websites and try to notice whether their web page design looks more stylish than yours. Aesthetics is a very important aspect of the web design, so if you understand that your website looks outdated and unattractive to the target audience, you need to take some measures, because chances are you’re losing customers every day. Remember, that in order to gain a competitive advantage over your rivals, you need to look for a high quality custom web design that will create a positive and modern image of your company, help to build brand awareness, increase customer loyalty and convey the message of your company the way you want it.
Another important reason why you should consider redesigning your website is the increase of usability. Every year web standards change radically and web building techniques become more advanced in order to comply with these standards. If your site was developed several years ago, it probably has heavy graphics or a lot of unnecessary html code, not letting your web pages load fast. Get a custom web design to increase the usability of your interface and this way attract more visitors.
Today thousands of people, especially young people are surfing the internet using their cell phones and PDAs. Old websites with fixed pages and coding have no chances to display correctly even in modern versions of web browsers, it goes without saying they look all messed up on PDA screens. Modern techniques of CSS coding allow to make web pages as flexible as possible, so getting yourself a new custom web design might be a good idea if you want to increase the availability of your site.
If you want to increase sales generated by your website, you might consider applying modern SEO techniques to rank your site higher in the search engine result pages. As a rule, professional designers of today know how to optimize your site to make it more relevant to the necessary key terms, as well as to make it easier for the search bots to index web pages.
Content Management is another reason to justify the creation of a new custom web design for your website. If several years ago website content was static and unchangeable, unless you knew HTML to change it, nowadays you don’t need all that knowledge and so much effort, as you used to — modern content management systems make content management easy as it has never been before. Knowing the simplest text editor is the only skill you need to change texts, images and other media files, add new pages and sections to your web site. As a rule, if you order a custom web design, you’ll receive a CMS integration as well, so if you want to update not only the looks, but the information on your site, redesign is just what you need.
Now that you’ve determined whether your site needs a new custom web design, you might wanna know some of the DOs before contacting a reputable designer.
First of all, consider adding some special features to your website that will make your customers want to return again and again. These features include forums with engaging conversations, blogs with up-to-date information or interesting article base.
Before applying to a web designer make sure you’ve backed up your old site, because things happen and you need to be sure your site will be able to work anyway.
In the process of redesigning your website ask your designer to minimize the old URL changes, because, for all this time your site has been functioning, it has probably received a lot of organic links over the internet, that benefit not only your traffic, but also the search engine rankings of your site.
If you are afraid to put a lot of money into your new website design, think about all the returns on your investment. If your site brings you some yield now, a smart custom design solution will only increase your profits.
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Tuesday, November 30, 2010
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Why should you hire a freelance web designer?
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Web design is the most complicated method supporting a communication process all over the world. Hence, content, usability, appearance and visibility are the most important aspects to consider while designing a website. That means that all materials and information placed on the website should be relevant and targeted the website’s concerned audience. Also, there should be a user-friendly interface with a reliable and simple navigation structure. A single style for graphics and text should be used when designing an interface to provide maximum comfort for the website user. A relevant, appealing and professional manner is required. Moreover, Search Engine Optimization measures should be taken to increase the search visibility and key words relevancy of the website.
Considering this, once going to hire a designer you are expecting him to possess at least basic web designing and programming skills. But the quality of your website is depending not only on a web designer. Notice that the communication is the most significant factor to rely upon. The designer’s professional skills don’t really matter when you cannot convey your ideas to him. Of course he will end up with a good looking website but will it fit your business requirements?
There are millions of companies offering their services on the market. Traditionally, professional web design agencies are so popular due to their experience, extensive skills and the quality of provided services. Hiring a self-employed designer is an alternative way of a website creation, and while you might be thinking that there is no difference between them it does really matter whether you are going to hire a designer or a design agency. In both cases you will expect them to create an incomparable presence for your website, to make it looking good and to provide you with assistance. So, what are the benefits of hiring a freelance web designer?
Usually, big studios are categorizing the projects in order to fit the current budgets of the clients. Being a small reasonably priced project your website is probably going to be done by junior designers. Although a junior designer not necessarily means a bad designer it is much better to hire a freelancer in order to complete the job. Moreover, an experienced web designer possesses some extra knowledge like Search Engine Optimization, Content Management Solutions and other website development technologies.
Notice, that small agencies usually have a list of freelancers that can be outsourced to for completing some development work. Technically, the designing process is going to be done by a freelance workforce anyway, so it is a cost-saving decision to hire a freelance web designer from the very beginning. Besides, due to overhead costs and support staff work a web design agency is unlikely to provide cheap services, while having no staff and work space to rent gives freelancer an opportunity to keep the hourly rate low.
Also, freelance vouches you for having better budgeting and cost control when you are to hire a designer. Big companies are interested in big projects due to their less scalable services, that’s why they consider small projects unprofitable. On the contrary, a freelance web designer is ready to complete all size projects and is providing custom services. He or she will not only suit the individual client’s needs and ideas but will help with the project costs management, suggesting possible ways of costs cutting.
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Tuesday, November 30, 2010
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Marketing yourself as a freelance web designer
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Freelance work gives specialists a lot of opportunities starting from individual growth in terms of experience and professionalism, and ending with great working environment, independent schedule and the lifestyle you like.
But there is a serious drawback — all freelancers have to look for clients themselves and this task requires some knowledge and skills. A lot of experienced and professional designers start freelance careers having talent and abilities in web design but not knowing thing about marketing, and this is one of the most serious problems, because absence of marketing strategy will definitely result in lack of clients, lack of work and, consequently, lack of profits.
What you need to understand now is that you’re selling yourself and your web design services, you are a brand and your activity has a lot to do with branding. This is why whether you are an experienced freelance web designer or just starting your career, it’s time for you to work out a marketing plan that will help you not only develop your web design skills, but also build your brand and a strong client network.
For some web designers freelance is just a temporary job, necessary only to fill a portfolio, in this case your marketing strategy should include creating new samples for your portfolio. This means that being a freelance web designer you need to take up as many projects as you can do, sometimes even at low prices, if you are sure that the project will be a good addition to your collection of works.
Some other freelance web designers have huge plans to start their own business, like a web design agency or studio. Therefore, what they need to take care about is a network of clients that will apply to their studio. Third type of freelancers wants to stay this way in ten years or more, because they are satisfied with the way things are. Their marketing strategy should cover the issues of preparing a basis for future price increases and skill development, as well as name recognition.
Whatever the reason why you are working as a freelance web designer, and whatever you plans for future, you need to stick to your strategy and differentiate approach according to the goals.
Branding is another thing you need to consider in freelance marketing. Although branding tactics is something we would expect from a large company, it can be equally efficient for an individual freelancer. Branding approach should considerably rely on the marketing goal of a freelance web designer. What you need to achieve, is your brand name recognition. Name recognition most usable techniques include taking part in different designer or web designer competitions and contests, blogging, publishing your works in offline magazines and web resources, various galleries and web design reviews.
Sometimes it makes sense to target on a specific market; the narrower it is the better. You can narrow it by geographical territory, budget, CMS system, type of business you want to work with etc. It’s also a good ideal to narrow your specialization that will help you to get more targeted clients.
Now that you’ve determined your strategy, you need to allocate some amount of money for advertising your freelance web designer services. Such an investment will help you maintain a consistent work load, in case if you lose some of your clients or decide to expand. There’s a large variety of ways you can advertise yourself, most beneficial ones can be targeted PPC campaigns, banner ads or paid links. There’s no big point in marketing yourself offline, because chances are people looking for web design services will mostly search online.
Remember, you need to keep the advertising even if you are working and have arrangements with clients for the nearest future. This is necessary to eliminate work downtimes, and if you can’t possibly have them, new potential clients will be a good basis for your web design service expansion. Always remember to track the results of your advertising campaign to learn which marketing methods are bringing the results and which aren’t.
The last piece of advice I’m gonna give you is to take care of your portfolio. When all your marketing strategies succeed and potential customers do come to see your works in order to make the final decision about cooperation, make sure you have good things to show them, because portfolio is meant for evaluation of your professionalism and creativity. |
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