Design Development SEO Blog

This part of our site is meant to be quite informal. If our posts or comments seem a bit crude we appologize in advance. Contributors to this blog, however, are highly skilled app or mobile developers or otherwise been involved in web development or Internet Marketing for many years. Feel free to comment but please do not spam, your comments must show that you actually read the posts to be posted. Please register to receive our blog posts as newsletters.

How To Make A Budget For Your Website

Posted on Thursday, June 2nd, 2011
Posted by SEO Expert at 2:34 PM

Categories: Web design
3 Comments »

As we pick up the phone or read emails sent through our contact form we often see the question “So how much will this website cost?”. In reply we normally would ask back “Well what is your budget?” Now, many of you may feel uncomfortable providing a budget range. For most who have not been through a project like this before simply don’t know what they cost, while rest of you feel that if you share your budget range, we are going to try get as many of those dollars in your budget as we can! While we can appreciate your concern, this is far from the truth because:
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Zen Cart Makes Store Designing Difficult

Posted on Wednesday, May 18th, 2011
Posted by Online Software at 9:35 PM

Categories: E-commerce, Online Software, Web design, Web development
2 Comments »

Sure there are many good things about Zen Cart! If you are looking to get a quick and simple e-commerce solution, this cart is worth considering. But if you so much to look for a 100% custom look, this cart may not bring you an easy solution not to mention issues with many other popular must have features. Then why do some developers often root for Zen Cart? Mainly because it is free so they could play on it without investing any money in buying a more efficient cart to play with. Also because it may not need a great deal of development skills if you are simply wanting a little bit of cutomized template look.
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Secrets Revealed to Using White Hat Method

Posted on Sunday, July 11th, 2010
Posted by Teena at 8:09 PM

Categories: Internet Marketing, SEO, Web design, Web development
1 Comment »

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.
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2nd Day Insider Secrets to a Google – Friendly Website

Posted on Monday, May 3rd, 2010
Posted by Teena at 7:10 AM

Categories: SEO, Web design, Web development
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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).
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1st Day Insider Secrets to a Google – Friendly Website

Posted on Thursday, April 29th, 2010
Posted by Teena at 11:46 AM

Categories: Internet Marketing, SEO, Web design, Web development
5 Comments »

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:
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Why you need more than just a Website

Posted on Thursday, March 11th, 2010
Posted by Teena at 11:30 AM

Categories: SEO, Web design
4 Comments »

Although a website is the first step to succeed online, succeeding online don’t only rely on having a good site. It’s simply the first plan of action you need to implement before launching your site in the World Wide Web. Needless to say, it will be your store front to establish your online presence.

Before you start with the design, consider the fact that you need your site to work for Search Engines and end-users. You have to balance between the two, both are equally important for a website. You need more than just a website to launch an effective online campaign. Consider researching for keywords to use as your meta-tags, titles, description etc., learn the art of creating a navigation system that both users and spiders understand, create an XML site map etc. Visit this page on how to create an SEO Website Design Friendly.

Another thing, when I say more than just a website, it means worthy to be bookmarked as reference. Other site owners create a blog to share relevant information about the products and services they offer, while others provide a section for resources. You really don’t have to create a blog just to say you have one. You need to ask yourself this:

• Do I have passion for writing?
• Can I really maintain it?

These are just two of the questions you have to think over before launching your own blog (this will be discussed further on my next blog).

If what you have is more than just a website, then you don’t have to worry about on-site optimization. The next action you need to do is market your website doing off-site optimization. If you worked from the ground up, optimizing your site for Search Engine will not be as hard as it seems – less effort, more savings. Work from the ground up, learn the basics and avoid unnecessary processes to optimize a site. When the site is ready, you only need a good plan for your link building activities.

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Tips For Novice Web Designers

Posted on Saturday, December 12th, 2009
Posted by Teena at 10:54 AM

Categories: Web design
7 Comments »

Web designing has improved through the years since the internet came to existence. We can notice the changes of how a website designed and created a decade ago would differ from the one designed and created today. Before, most web designs are built in pure HTML and looked simple and plain. But during these days, website design is more attractive and catchy and has clearly gone up at a much higher level. Animations can already be incorporated in web design. But sadly, sometimes, web designers tend to overdo the designing wherein too much animations are included causing a certain web site to load at a slower rate. So here are 5 things that a web designer should avoid when it comes to designing their website.

1. Don’t be obsessed with Flash

Every web designer would like to show off how much they know about Flash and brag about it to everyone with their designs and projects. But as mentioned above, the use of too much Flash animation in a web site is not good. Why? Because again, it will surely slow down the loading of a web site and that is not what the visitors would want to experience upon visiting your web site.

2. Don’t play with ads

Instead of hiding the ads, it’s better to just allot a space for ads to be posted. It’s not really cool to have slide out ads and pop up ads. It’s actually a waste of time and effort on the part of a web designer because visitors are usually annoyed with pop-up and slide out ads. They won’t even bother taking a look at the ad and just close it right away or in most cases, they already have a pop-up ad blocker so your effort for creating those kinds of ads is just not worth it. Just keep the appearance of ads simple by putting up a banner for it.

3. Don’t clutter around

A good web designer can also be judged on how good he is by how organized his web site is. Remember that visitors would always want a web site that is easy to navigate through. They don’t want to look at their monitor screens with their foreheads wrinkled and wondering where they could find what they are looking for.

4. Don’t abuse glassy, reflective effects

This was made famous by the company of Apple. But if it’s too famous and widely used by web designers then people will tend to get sick with it and you might even get negative comments about it. If you really want to use that kind of effect on your design, use it creatively and don’t scatter it all over your web site.

5. Don’t name your Web 2.0 company in a weird manner

Be smart instead of using names that either lack a vowel or have excessive use of vowels. Web designers don’t have to go with this trend and stick to using names that are as smart as their web designs.

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A Graphics Artist Way to Save on Gifts this Holiday Season

Posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
Posted by Teena at 3:34 PM

Categories: Web design
1 Comment »

Share something different this Christmas – share your talent. As an artist you could create your own designs to boast and make your family, friends of even bosses proud of your creation. They say that time is the best thing you could give to someone, and devoting some time creating something different will without a doubt be appreciated.

Here are few ideas to help you get started:

  • Enhance an old picture of your parents and turn into something really different, change the scene perhaps or write a thing or two that will surely melt their hearts.
  • Create your own Christmas or postcards powered by your creativity. Make it as unique as possible.
  • If you have an extra bucks, design something you could print on:
  • Aprons
  • Bags
  • Hats
  • Mouse Pads
  • Mugs
  • Pillow Cases
  • T-shirts
  • Create a Calendar or a notepad
  • Just in case you have more time, compile photos, songs, or even recipes and create a unique packaging.
  • Some graphic artist are web designers as well, why not create a unique space on the web for families and friends.

There are various ways to save on gifts this holiday season, in fact, anyone who knows how to tinker with photoshop, gimp or any design software could create his/her unique presence for the coming Christmas. It’s about gift-giving, anything will do as long it comes from the heart, so why not spend time and create a personalized gift that will surely leave an impression.

The good thing about this is that, you don’t only share your talent but you market them as well.

Happy Holidays!!!

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How to Create SEO Website Design Friendly

Posted on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
Posted by SEO Expert at 12:10 AM

Categories: SEO, Web design, Web development
32 Comments »

A website should be eye catching to attract visitors. It should also be very search engine friendly. What matters aside from being user friendly is that it’s searchable on the web, otherwise, your website is useless.

How do we create an SEO friendly web design?

If you use flash on the entire website, you will have to put double the work to make it search engine firendly. Search Engine (SE’s) ignores Flash, therefore, you will also need a non-flash version of your website. If you really need to use flash, make sure that you have an alternative textual description that can be understood by SE spiders. Otherwise, you can also use web 2.0 technology to put your content first before your flash designs.

When using images, be sure to fill-in “name” and “alt” tags. The graphical image itself cannot be seen by SE spider, it is through this tags that SE spider interpret your website. Use relevant description only and do not try to deceive SE spider.

Avoid using frames, SE spiders have no way to interpret content on a frame.

Use CSS navigation and style sheets, doing so makes your navigational menu crawl-able and indexable by SE spider. Using Javascript and Flash do not have the same result – it is unseen by SE spiders. So if you have javascript or flash on your site, you also need to have simple texts of the same message you put in Javascript or flash.

Though it’s not a requirement to use CSS stylesheets, it will help your site to load faster.

Conduct a Keyword Research to use on your meta tags and contents but also avoid keyword stuffing, suggested keyword density is 3-5%. For the title tag, characters should be at lest 70 and 150 for the description. Have at least 5-8 important keywords listed in your keyword tag.

Also, use keyword researched on your anchor text, H1, H2 and H3 as much as possible. This will help you rank in Search Engine Result Page (SeRP).

Create SEO friendly URL, incorporate your keyword related to your web page. Use dashes to separate words.

Structure your site up to 3 levels deep; Google only sees three-levels deep.

Provide useful content and make sure to have at least 250 words each web page since some SE spiders requires at least 250 to analyze your site. Make it a point as well that content on your site coincide with keywords used, else, SE spider will find it of little value.

Lastly, provide a site map.

Having an optimized site works well with your SEO campaign, the second step now depends on you.

If you like this article you may want to read 10 Tips on Search Engine Optimization

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Effective Logo Design

Posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
Posted by SEO Expert at 7:42 AM

Categories: Web design
1 Comment »

A logo is a graphical representation of what a company stands for. Basically, it is used for immediate consumer recognition.  This may sound simple but it’s actually a part of your branding strategy and it entails careful analysis before creating a logo. It plays an important factor on how a company wants to be uniquely recognized among the crowd of competitors -  positioning.

The logo speaks for itself, it can stand on its own. Delivering the wrong message can weaken brand recognition. Without careful analysis on the design, it could send a wrong message to the consumers. Nobody wants that to happen.

To have an effective logo, it should portray company values and goal and be uniquely identifiable.

During inception, it should be clear what the company wants to portray and deliver. The colors, fonts, and icons/ graphics should be cautiously decided. The Brand Promise however may or may not be included in the design.

Colors – Use color that represents your brand promise and avoid multi-color design. Ideally, two colors is enough. Simple is better.

Fonts – It should be unique, easily identified as your own and not mistaken for other brands. Logos do not have to be an icon or graphics it could be a simple text like Nike, Mc Donalds, DELL and IBM. But make sure it has a strong presence.

Icons/Graphics – avoid using icons or graphics that literally represents a company. If the company is clothing line, the logo does not necessarily need to have clothes on it. If the company provides service, do not illustrate the kind of service delivered – be creative in delivering the message to attract consumers. Just imagine funeral and cremation service if you adopt literally the design on the logo. :D

Additionally, a logo should not be dated, meaning it only caters to the consumers of today. A company logo should be consistent with what it represents, regardless of the current trend.

An effective logo has a strong presence in the market.  So if you think your logo do not denote what you represent then it’s time that you reposition your company through branding strategy.

Remember that a logo does not need to be flashy. It only needs to be eye-catching and uniquely identified.

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