Posts Tagged ‘search engine optimization’

Organic SEO for Small Businesses – Part V

Monday, July 27th, 2009

Abstract: A detailed look at this area of search engine optimization focussing on relevant links targeted towards small businesses, organizations and sole traders.

Intended Audience: Small Business Owners/webmasters and anyone new to the world of web design and search engine optimization (SEO) particularly those working with small businesses, organizations and sole traders.

Note: Part IV of this series of articles was published on July 22nd, 2009 and can be viewed at http://www.istech.ie/blog/?p=127

The fourth article in this series focused on trusted links and we will continue the link theme in this article and take a look at relevant links and their significance in improving your website's position on search engine results pages.

Let's take a look at the concept of a relevant link. Consider the following examples:

1. A website about motor bikes linking to a website about fishing.
2. A dental care website linking to a dental association website

Obviously example 1 is not a relevant link while example 2 is a relevant link. A search engine will attach more value to link illustrated in example 2. A large number of non-relevant links can also be detrimental to your website's rankings on search engines and should be avoided.

The golden rule of relevant links is that links are from websites with content that is relevant to the content of your website. It is preferable to have relevant backlinks from a number of different websites but if you are able to acquire a number of backlinks from a particular website then it is important to have them point to different pages on your website i.e. not all backlinks should go to your home page.

It may be possible to have an SEO company unearth a list of relevant backlinks but remember that you are the best judge of which websites are relevant to your website so it's worth doing some research to establish your own personal criteria for a relevant backlinks. Sources of relevant backlinks include:

* Your Suppliers
* Industry Specific Websites and Blogs
* Industry Specific Forums

If you do decide to outsource the placing of relevant links to an external company it is important to retain control over the link approval process i.e. approve links before they are established not after as it can often take time to remove a link especially after it's been indexed by the search engines.

Your competitors are often a good source of information about where you should look for relevant websites to get a link. You can use Yahoo Search's linkdomain function to display a list of all websites that link to a competitor website.
The next article in this series will expand on the topic of free and paid web directories, social media, local directory services etc.

Article Tags: Search Engine, Relevant Links, Relevant Link, Relevant Backlinks

About the Author

Eoin Redmond – 23rd July 2009
Istech Technology Services Ltd
Leading Website Developer and SEO Specialists
Kilkenny, Ireland.
00 353 86 154 1049
Web: Website Design Kilkenny by Istech
Blog: Istech's Website Design Blog

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in SE Optimization | No Comments »

The Benefits of SEO and a Good Web Design

Monday, July 13th, 2009

The benefits of good SEO As a web design company the first request we get from clients is for an attractive looking website that will impress visitors and help to generate business. This is a very sensible request, and completely understandable from a business point of view. Fortunately we have a incredible graphic designer that can produce website designs that our clients love.

Generally in that first conversation the subject of search engine optimization (SEO) comes up. If our clients don't mention it to us, then we feel it is our duty as a responsible web design company to raise the subject and to explain what it is and what benefits it can have. Many companies that own websites are now savvy to how important search engine optimization is, and we get many requests lately purely for our SEO services. But there are still the uninitiateds that have never heard of SEO. After we explain that SEO is the process of ranking well on search engines, and most specifically on Google, our uninitiated clients look at us with a sense of wonder and you can almost see the penny dropping. Some clients are unconvinced and some clients are absolute against the idea as they are on a considerably tight budget. But the enlightened ones are intrigued and push us to tell them more on this new wonder called SEO.

You have to have a certain amount of forward thinking about you to understand the importance of SEO. And people with a little bit of the entrepreneur in them tend to grasp the concept and run with it.

A well designed website and good search engine optimization program are still the single smartest investments any business can make. It takes a little forward thinking, and is a long term investment rather than short term. And as every good SEO company will tell you there is an element of risk involved, as front page success cannot be guaranteed. But the benefits of good SEO are huge, and we have many other tales about the success of the SEO we have achieved for our clients websites.

Yes web design is important, but search engines are the air that websites breathe, and without search engine optimizations a website can be starved of air and visitors. So if anyone reading this is skeptical about the power of the web and about the power of the almost god-like search engine we call Google and then think again! Only make sure you choose the right SEO Company, because it can be a bit of a minefield out there!

Author: James Ward
www.seohunk.com/
Search engine optimization, SEO and web design

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Seo | No Comments »

The Five Most Common Seo Mistakes

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art and science of improving a site's ranking on search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN's Bing. Many companies try to improve their sites' rankings with basic techniques such as keyword rich copy and link exchanges. Some techniques (like link exchanges) are minimally useful, not useful or actually hurt site rankings. Others are effective, but can't overcome common mistakes. GILL Media is an SEO firm that provides complete marketing solutions. After years of working with businesses, they've identified the following five most common SEO mistakes. These are errors that GILL Media' developers often have to fix to help clients hit the coveted first page of search results.

SEO Mistake #1: Image Headers

Search engine spiders can only read text and Meta data. Image recognition is in its infancy. Unfortunately, many sites persist in using images for headers. Search engines can't read pictures of words. Even if you have a big, clear image banner that clearly says "welcome to my home page" the spider just reads the file name of your .jpeg or .gif. Switch to real text headers or use them in addition to image banners. Otherwise, search engines can't clearly associate your site with keywords and categories. Spiders assign weight to text headers using the H1, H2 and H3 tags, so make sure your header text accurately represents the site.

SEO Mistake #2: An SEO Unfriendly CMS

Joomla, WordPress and other content management systems (CMS) can make it very easy to add and change site content – but it can interfere with your SEO efforts, too. For example, if your CMS automatically sets up your headers, URLs and page titles you can't adjust them to fit your target keywords. Some CMS offer "SEO friendly" items that automatically pick your keywords, but these don't work very well either. Either go with a pure web design from the ground up or customize your CMS to let you choose every title, header and piece of Meta information. An SEO that never creates a page more than one layer deep is also highly recommended because search spiders index sites more easily when they don't have to crawl through too many subfolders.

SEO Mistake #3: Blank Titles

Page titles (as listed in the top bar of your browser) are perhaps the single most important Meta information field on your entire page. The title becomes the text for the page's search engine link, and is given significant weight by search engines when they associate pages with specific keywords. If your page's title is blank or uses default information it will almost always rank behind a site with any title. If your site has a title that incorporates your keywords you greatly increase your changes of ranking higher.

SEO Mistake #4: Other Blank Meta Data

Titles are only one piece of Meta data. Meta keywords are not as important as they were, but are still useful – they can act as "tie breakers" between two sites with similar authority levels. Meta descriptions often appear in search results. Image alt tags are invaluable; search engines can't see pictures, so they rely on you to describe them. Leave any of these blank and you're not doing everything you can to improve your site's rank.

SEO Mistake #5: No Target Pages

Don't try to improve rank for every single web page, and don't use a "cookie cutter" approach for every page on your site. You don't want your privacy policy or user login pages to rank and when they do, they use up site authority that should be channeled to pages that are designed to attract new visitors. Each site only has a limited amount of authority to spread around, so you don't want to waste it on pages that don't drive business. Use commands such as robots.txt and nofollow tags to exclude pages that aren't meant to generate new business and pick a few pages to be your specific SEO targets. Give each one its own focus and strategy.

GILL Media is a leading provider of strategic internet marketing and affordable web design for small, medium and large businesses. GILL Media's services include economical search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, e-commerce web design, hosting and internet video. These are only a few of its diverse range of services.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Seo | No Comments »

Career in Web Designing

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

The web design will develop the skills and knowledge for 'Front End' online publishing. Students will gain knowledge of screen based communication and work flows in various industry applications. The program will cover interface design, rich media design, online brand creation and graphics optimization.

This course curriculum is a complete solution to the design, creation, and maintenance of the web pages and web sites. With it, you will learn how to critically evaluate web site quality, learn how to create and maintain quality web pages, learn about web design standards and why they're important, and learn to create and manipulate images.

What is the web designing?

web design is the skill of presentations of content that is delivered to an end-user through the World Wide Web, by way of a Web browser or other Web-enabled software like Internet television clients, microblogging clients and RSS readers.

web design is similar to traditional print publishing. Every website is an information display container, just as a book is a container; and every web page is like the page in a book. However, web design uses a framework based on digital code and display technology to construct and maintain an environment to distribute information in multiple formats. Taken to its fullest potential, web design is undoubtedly the most sophisticated and increasingly complex method to support communication in today's world.

The process of designing Web pages, Web sites, Web applications or multimedia for the Web may utilize multiple disciplines, such as animation, authoring, communication design, corporate identity, graphic design, human-computer interaction, information architecture, interaction design, marketing, photography, search engine optimization and typography.

Now a days following technology combination is being used in order to design a website:

  • Markup languages (such as HTML, XHTML and XML)
  • Style sheet languages (such as CSS and XSL)
  • Client-side scripting (such as JavaScript and VBScript)
  • Server-side scripting (such as PHP and ASP)
  • Database technologies (such as MySQL)
  • Multimedia technologies (such as Flash and Silver light)

For the typical web sites, the basic aspects of design are:

  • The content: The substance and information on the site should be relevant to the site and should target the area of the public that the website is concerned with.
  • The usability: the site should be user-friendly, with the interface and navigation simple and reliable.
  • The appearance: the graphics and text should include a single style that flows throughout, to show consistency. The style should be professional, appealing and relevant.
  • The visibility: the site must also be easy to find via most, if not all, major search engines and advertisement media.

A web site typically consists of text and images. The first page of a web site is known as the Home page or Index. Some web sites use what is commonly called a Splash Page. Splash pages might include a welcome message, language or region selection, or disclaimer. Each web page within a web site is an HTML file which has its own URL. After each web page is created, they are typically linked together using a navigation menu composed of hyperlinks. Faster browsing speeds have led to shorter attention spans and more demanding online visitors and this has resulted in less use of Splash Pages, particularly where commercial web sites are concerned.

Once a web site is completed, it must be published or uploaded in order to be viewable to the public over the internet. This may be done using an FTP client. Once published, the web master may use a variety of techniques to increase the traffic, or hits, that the web site receives. This may include submitting the web site to a search engine such as Google or Yahoo, exchanging links with other web sites, creating affiliations with similar web sites, etc.

Web pages and Web sites can be static pages, or can be programmed to be dynamic pages that automatically adapt content or visual appearance depending on a variety of factors, such as input from the end-user, input from the Webmaster or changes in the computing environment (such as the site's associated database having been modified).

With growing specialization within communication design and information technology fields, there is a strong tendency to draw a clear line between web design specifically for web pages and web development for the overall logistics of all web-based services.

Career Path:

There are many career paths to take within the field of web design. web designers may choose to work as intro artist, in web designing, branding, illustration, logo design or often a combination of several fields. Belong is an ongoing list of job options within the field of web design.

(An article by ADMEC Multimedia InstituteFree Reprint Articles, Delhi)

www.admecindia.co.in ( Date: 18-06-09)

About the Author

Hi I m Pratibha & im doing job as a web designer & as SEO in private sector in Delhi (India) & I hope u like this article.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Education | No Comments »