Archive for the ‘Web development’ Category
Secrets Revealed to Using White Hat Method
Optimizing a site may sound simple, perhaps simple in context if you know the standards set by Search Engines but could get really complicated when it comes to implementation. We already know what on-page optimization is but for those who don’t, it’s the first step to optimizing a site for SE – work within the elements of your site.
- Do create quality content or relevant information but Don’t overstuff it with keywords.
- Do use Keyword Tag but Don’t provide too much keyword 5-7 keywords will do.
- Do use keywords on Title and Description Tags but Don’t overstuff it.
- Do use Alt Tags but Don’t use it to stuff keywords, use only what is relevant.
- Do use Anchor text but Don’t use anchor text to mislead users.
If you notice I mentioned keyword stuffing several times, this is because abusing keywords is a black hat technique. Be reminded also that even if it’s not visible to the end- users how you stuff keywords, like changing the colour of the text to match the background, it can be read by SE. For on-page optimization, there’s not so much to do actually except that you have to update it from time to time to adapt with the current SE standard. Below are other things you could DO to optimize your site:
- Use keywords on your URL structure if it’s relevant to the content, example:
Instead of just www.yoursebsite.com/services use www.yourwebsite.com/seo-service.html or www.yourwebsite.com/linkbuilding-services.html this way you links are also optimized. For products, use relevant keyword for your URL structure related to your page. It’s not keyword stuffing since it will be related to your page’s content.
- Use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for leaner code. A well optimize site should also allow SE to read its code easily, by separating content and style sheets you can attain this.
- Use Site Map to easily navigate to your site.
These are secrets to a well optimized site using white hat method. The critical part though is finding the right keywords. The secrets are now revealed what you could do now is finding the right keywords and then adapt this.
Is Social Medial for all, if so should you Hire Someone to do it?
I’ve been pondering about social media for quite some time now, asking myself whether it’s applicable for all regardless of industry and if so, should you outsource social media. I came upon this great article from Conversation Agent site and this inspires me to write something about social media. At first, I thought social media is not for everybody, your reputation is at risk here, your brand, your company, profession everything will be revealed. Lately, upon reading and attending various seminars, well indeed it’s for everybody. When you say social media, it’s not just Facebook, MySpace and Twitter let me first define what Social Media is, according to Wikimedia:
“Social media is a term used to describe the type of media that is based on conversation and interaction between people online. Where media means digital words, sounds & pictures which are typically shared via the internet and the value can be cultural, societal or even financial.”
There are many forms of social media like forums, blogs, wikis, video and photo sharing, Q & A and social bookmarking. So from here, it really is for everybody provided that you know exactly what you’re doing. A blog post can make a lot of difference, one wrong move and people will be talking about you. Social media is for all, but not all has the right knowledge to strategize and make the best of what social media can do for you.
Next, should you hire someone to do it? It depends, outsource social media to do what, there are different stages before you actually maintain it. If we speak of design and development, you can hire someone to do it, depending on what you want to achieve, Facebook has a lot of feature you want to take advantage of and sometimes you just don’t know how, Twitter can be customize but how, monitor social media activity again, how…that’s when you need to outsource that part of your social media campaign. How about if your goal is to brand yourself or your business through the use of social media, that’s a tough one and I suggest you hire a Social Media Strategist.
How about the maintenance, it will If you ask me, there are several factors to consider, first is your goal, what was your goal in the first place, what do you want to achieve then ask yourself will you let someone handle your Facebook, Twitter, Q & A etc. (like asking yourself will you let someone be you or let someone handle your business who is not actually on the business). Secondly, your product/service, are they knowledgeable enough to know the ins and outs of your business.
Social media is for all but think twice if you want someone to handle your social media, there’s always an option to outsource part of the process but the whole thing, think about it.
If you want to know more visit Valeria Maltoni’s article of Conversation Agent, you’ll see different point of views and pretty much give you an idea in a broader sense. I like her approach and gathering inputs from her Linkdin connections. I don’t know her I just bumped into her article yesterday and I honestly love it and would love to share the link with you.
Target your audience
We spent some time today with Andrew from SmallBiz.ca. We were talking about marketing products. Now, do you know who your target businesses are? We do and I am not telling you who but let’s say this, for small businesses, it is very important to target. Otherwise, you could be throwing your money away. Sure! Walmart can target anyone and everyone! But is your business comparable to Walmart? If it is then fine! Go ahead run TV ads! But if you are not and not looking for a hit and miss then it would be a very wise idea to target your market.
So how do you market your product? Well, obviously you will need to make some investment and spend a lot of time. If you are a one man show.. well, I am not sure how you could do marketing and also build your products unless you are reselling someone else. Anyway, the bottomline is that you will need to invest much more money in marketing your product than the investment you make in manufacturing your products. You can have the best product in the world, yet, without proper marketing there will be no money in your pocket.
A major part of our own marketing is the SEO, we find search engine marketing to be the most cost effective solution, however, SEO is not the only thing we do. In business, it’s all about relationships we built. So we are spending a considerable amount of time building just that.. relationships! And we are growing very nicely. So I’d suggest guys, you do the same! Hey! Let me know if this tip was any help to you 
A perfect online software?
I was thinking today.. is there any such thing as a perfect online software? Well, age-old saying is nothing or nobody is perfect. I will have to agree to that. Sometimes I do think I wrote the perfect software just to realize that I could add more codes to it to do something differently. There is simply no such thing as a perfect online software unless you created it to say just “Hello World”.
So what is involved in software creation?
First of all, a flow chart, then some pseudocodes then…. ok enough with the geek talk! Lets speak in english now! Lol. So do you think your business model is perfect? No there is always room for improvement. Same goes for softwares.. always room for improvement and growth. These days people are getting more into online softwares, who wants softwares today that you can’t access from outside your house/office? You need all your documents on the go but remember just 1 thing NO software is perfect. You always could get hacked, your software could crash but our effort would be try to minimize the chances as much as we can.
Fly by night Website Designers
I can’t help but get really pissed off when people are looking for a website at a bargain basement price. We get an inquiry, we give them a rough estimate of the cost and then get a rebuttal.. they say, “But I can get a site done for allot cheaper”, ya! if you want crap! The facts are you need to get realistic on what you’re getting.
There’s a TV show about contractors that don’t do the job properly. Yes it is true, they don’t do the job properly because you’re getting what you paid for..If you want the work done right you need to hire the proper professionals to do it. These so called basement dwelling web designers whom most of them have day jobs and are designers by night can’t do the job properly. You will get what you pay for which is a poorly designed website at a bargain basement price. God forbid a couple of years or even months down the road something goes wrong or, you want to add or update something on the site, try to get in touch with the individual or so called website design professional that did the site for you and they’re nowhere to be found. ”
So beware of the flyers you see on the street light posts for cheap website design.
2nd Day Insider Secrets to a Google – Friendly Website
Google cares more about their users rather than those people spending huge amount of money to advertise their site. Regardless whether you give Google $10k a month for your PPC campaign, they can actually slap you anytime, “Google slap” as they call it. Another thing I learn, I’m not an expert on PPC (Pay per Click) yet, I only use it on my own personal site and I learn that you cannot just pause and play campaigns, just to test, there are other way of doing it. Why, your historical CRT (Click Through Rate) matters a lot. The acceptable CTR at least is 2%; Google actually monitors your activity and inactivity the first day you run a campaign. How do you measure CTR? It’s Click/Impression = CTR. And if you want to know your Ad Rank its CPC (Cost per Click x Quality Score). The CPC is the amount you’re willing to pay and Quality score covers your landing page, relevance of ad test, historical CTR, account performance and other relevant factors. In short, Quality Score encompass both your account performance as a whole and the quality of your website, which is quite a lot to discuss. Well, I can’t discuss it yet, I still have to attend another seminar this June on PPC, a hands-on coaching (I’m really excited on this one).
What else, I cannot actually reveal too much information since it’s a SECRET haha…just kidding. But as a whole, it was more geared toward harnessing the power of Social Media Marketing. What was actually exciting about the seminar was not the Insider Secrets itself, though it was the reason why I actually came but the tips you get from the experts themselves. I will be seeing them again this June and August for SEO and PPC. It’s always my goal to continuously improve, what works today may not work tomorrow. One example, the Page Rank, people are so focused on this, yes Google made an update this April and almost everybody notice an increase in their PR but it doesn’t really mean Google still uses PR. That was actually the question I raise during the seminar and was told by Simon Leung himself that PR is already obsolete.
One more I think you all should know: Google manually reviews each site/ads. They do have a system but the final decision still relies on the reviewer. Perhaps this is no longer a secret, there are just simple who don’t believe that they really conduct manual reviews, like the one who created a scene on the seminar, whoever the guy was, he was rude and today he didn’t come actually. Its okay to challenge the speaker but it’s not okay to be rude, there’s a proper way to argue your point. But I could attest to that, Google actually reviews your site, my personal site actually was blocked a year ago because of malware attacked, I contacted Google and within 2 days I got a response and my site was up again. Systems or software cannot interact with inquiries right, human intervention will always be there. Anyway, to wrap it up, I had fun, we had picture taking at the end of the day, and I have my certificate and a photo beside Simon Leung and Fabian Lim. It was great, this won’t be the last that I’ll be seeing this guys.
I need to take a rest now, it was a tiring day but I had fun.
1st Day Insider Secrets to a Google – Friendly Website
Just this morning I attended the 1st day of Insider Secrets to a Google – Friendly Website. The speaker was a Simon Leung, a retired most senior Google optimization specialist with guest speaker Fabian Lim who is currently the CEO of Internet Academy Pte Ltd. The event was sponsored by Powermax Consulting Group Inc. The topics covered were…well, of course we haven’t discussed some of the topic outlined below, I still have to attend to tomorrow though, but here it is:
· Crush All Your Competitors in Search Engines
· Overcome Automated Penalties to Your Websites
· Who Google Values More Than Their Highest Paying Advertisers
· The Biggest Mistake You Can Make on Your Websites
· Setting Up and Designing a Google Friendly Website Layout
· What Would Have Prevented Penalized Sites from Poor Quality
· Which Types of Website Google Associate with “Scams”
· Quality Score Elements You Must Be Mindful Of
· How to Set Up Your Navigational and Outbound Links
· Integrating Social Media on Your Site for Best Results
· One Simple Graphic That Instantly Increases Your Quality Score
· Essential Content Pages That Are Often Neglected On Most Sites
· Your Number One Goal For Every One Of Your Site’s Clicks
· Shocking Quality Criteria Most Websites Never Implement
· Building An Automated Lead Generation System The Right Way
The seminar was fine, the speakers of course are both good and the food served was great, lol. Though I can say that I am not new to this and would say perhaps Google Secret is not really a secret to me and for sure for other Internet Marketers out there, still attending this seminar is something I would opt to. Perhaps a confirmation if I was really doing it right and of course to gain competitive advantage, which definitely is my goal. It was an opportunity for me to listen to these people who have proved themselves well enough to earn six figures, that’s in US dollar. Both has its way of presenting their expertise, while Simon Leung highly recommend to harness the power of Social Media and to patronize its partners (love your own) Fabian Lim on the other hand presented his expertise by actually using a live site and do some googling on a particular term. This is by the way is very effective and I honestly learn new stuff in him with regards to keywords research. He will be here on July to conduct another seminar about SEO and Google Adwords, I don’t have the definite date yet but I will sure be attending. Anyway going back, there were 10 topics discussed today and as I’ve said earlier, I’m not new to this but it did meet my expectation.
Something I learn today about creating sales letter, I don’t know if you knew about this but I only learn it now. Long sales letter are conceived to be scams. I see a lot of that on the web; I’m honestly annoyed when I land on those pages with long sales letter. Simon Leong thought us how to create an effective sales letter, a landing, a call-to-action etc. In short, the seminar was A okay, plus the bonus of what I learn from Fabian Lim.
Tomorrow I’ll share what will happen on the event and perhaps share with you some links or photos of the events. For now I really have to rest from a long day’s event.
When to Stop Building Links
Based on experience, the moment you stop building links that’s when your Google ranking start to sink. So definitely, you don’t have to stop building links regardless whether your site is on the no. 1 page of Google and other major Search Engines. You have to bear in mind that you’re not the only person doing the same thing. Do not be complacent and always watch your back. It’s like deciding whether you have to stop promoting your site or continue campaigning for it.
Building links encompass many activities (read more about link building strategy). Generally, you don’t build links for the sole purpose of gaining as many links as you can. You also build links to advertise your business and attract as many potential clients as you can. So if you think you have enough links, well, there’s always an option to slow down. When you slow down the process, you also have to strategize at least just to maintain your position. It’s like, when you believe you already built a foundation then the next thing to do is how to strengthen this foundation.
Well, this is me speaking, personally, I don’t recommend site owners to stop building links. That’s a big NO for me. If just in case you really don’t have a choice, let’s say “I don’t have a budget”, “ time constraint” or just feel like, “I’m on top, what’s there to worry about”. For case where you think you don’t really have a budget, good news, you can actually do it yourself. Have the initiative to learn the process; there are huge resources on the web that teaches you about link building. Time constraint, outsource link building. Time constraints with no budget to outsource, as I’ve said earlier, you can always minimize your link building effort but you have to strategize. Being on top that gives you an excuse to be complacent… well.. well.. well.. if you’re willing to gamble your position that more or less represent 60% of your market, go right ahead
7 Best Firefox Add-ons for Everybody
Firefox Add-ons are not just for developers or techie guys out there, it’s for everybody’s use. I myself use several firefox add-ons not on this premise. I actually perform different task from design, to writing and even engaged in SEO activities.
What is a Firefox Add-on, according to Wikipedia, “Add-ons are installable enhancements to the Mozilla Foundation’s projects (and compatible variants such as Portable Firefox). Add-ons allow the user to add or augment application features, use themes to his or her liking, and handle new types of content.”
To simplify, it’s an additional application to enhance a certain feature of Mozilla. I used to ignore this stuff thinking that it can do nothing for me. I only needed to use the web, that’s all, no more no less. But then when a friend of mine recommended Firebug, that’s when I started to love Firefox and literally browse all the add-ons on a specific, category that I think could be of help. The notion of add-ons for web developers and designers ONLY was cleared out.
Here are the 7 of my best Firefox add-ons I’m using right now, these are in random categories, and would typically be beneficial to everybody who uses the net.
- Firebug. Don’t get me wrong I’m not a web developer/designer but this could really come in handy especially if you want to customize a website template. It was referred to me before for the purpose of knowing exactly where a particular file in Joomla and other CMS needs to be accessed to be able to customize the template. If you only need to change the background color, fonts an image etc, why pay when you can do it on your own. It’s very simple firefox add-ons that have a lot of use, more so if you are a web developer. You can actually debug and edit live on your site.
- Colorzilla. Since I design banner sometimes, colorzilla helped me pick colors on the web that is to my liking. I don’t have to guess what color was used. I only needed to click a button and point it on the color I like to pick. Simple as that.
- Screengrab. One of my favorite. Very useful if you’re one of those who usually grabs a picture on web. No need for a screen capture and paste in on an image editor. You can copy the whole screen or only a portion of the screen and immediately save it on your pc.
- Read-it-later. If you ‘re one of the person who simply browse the web for a nice read or a good buys, then you must really have it. You don’t have to bookmark everything that interests you, if you only need this temporarily then “read-it-later” will help you with that.
- Highlighter. I don’t know with you guys but from time to time, I really needed to use this add-on. It allows me to highlight something so I could get back to it while browsing another site. It’s also useful when I’m reading something and need to take a break.
- SEOpen. If you are a website owner, this could come in handy. Nowadays you don’t necessarily need to have your own business to own a site. It displays your ranking on Google Pagerank, inbound links, keyword density and a lot more. Really helpful if you want to gain insight of your site’s ranking. It would also help you analyze the things you need to do to compete on the first page of Google. You can even check your competitor backlinks.There are so many tools on the web for free if you don’t have the budget to pay for an SEO, this may be helpful to get you started. Study and analyze your competitor based on the backlinks is one of the ways to help you with your SEO plan.
- Lastly, this I use a lot, AddThis . Lately, I’ve been sharing links to my network in Facebook, Twitter etc. I also use this as an email service to share something on the web. This helps you get rid of going from one page to another just to share something to your friends.
Normally, this should be 10 but then, I don’t want to share something I don’t use personally. But if your already sharing an add-on and find it really usefully for everybody , feel free to share the no. 8, 9 and 10 or even more.
How to Plan your Link Building Activities Effectively
There are various ways to build links as mentioned on my previous blog but then again building links is not as easy as 1,2,3. To be able to really build effective links, it entails careful planning, yes, perhaps this is just a link referring back to your site but this could be hard to maintain. Another, you could be penalized by google without you knowing it, possibly you could also be considered as a “Spomments” , a blog related term meaning spam commenter. If that happens, good luck, though there are thousands of blogs, forums or what have you, it will be hard to retain the same ranking or at least get a link back to your site. Blog commenting is not only the way to build links, you may say, or there are numerous activities like directory and article submission, but take note they can also mark your submission as a spam, like I do with the directory I’m maintaining personally. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to scare the hell out of you, I just wanted to help the same way every blogger does to its readers.
So how do we build links the right way, first let’s create a plan, this enable us to manage our links easily, avoid duplication, getting banned from a particular site as well as help manage our resources. Let’s admit it, building links is time consuming and could be a little expensive if you hire someone to build links for you. This is a good move though since this will allow you to concentrate on your core business but we could avoid spending too much money on this if we can manage it well or hire the right SEO person or team to do it for you.
What we need to include in our link building plan? Let’s start with your goal, everybody knows that a goal should be S.M.A.R.T (Smart, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound). This should also be in line with your company’s goal. If you’re targeting specific sales for the month, this should coincide with your internet marketing strategy and traditional marketing efforts if you have one. From here, let’s set our budget, how much money are you willing to invest on this campaign. You also have to identify your target market, clearly state which niche you belong to. This is a critical part because this is going to be your reference in building links. Remember it’s important that you build links depending on your niche, relevancy to your site is very important. If you’re a web design company, submit directories on the relevant category, if you want to do blog commenting, comment on related sites, usually blogs related to web/graphics design and development or if you also offer SEO then also include that in your list of blogs to submit/comment to.
So now you have already distinguished your goal, working budget and target market. Next on the list for building links the right way is the activities you need to embark to. The best way to explain this is using this simple table below, you can create your own depending on the reports you need but make sure you have a means to monitor each activities on a regular basis.