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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.

SEO Friendly Web Design

Posted on Monday, December 28th, 2009
Posted by Teena at 10:21 PM
Categories: Web development
9 Comments »

Designs of a website can really entice people. Most web designers also think that their skills could be measured by the looks of the website they created. They think that a good looking website will be enough to attract visitors. But what if you’re in the marketing field? A good looking website will surely not be enough to attract people to visit your site.

Since people would tend to use search engines to look for what they need or want, a web designer should design the website wherein the search engine can recognize the site easily. So showing off of skills by creating a site full of graphics is a big no-no. Remember that search engines don’t have eyes like humans to see those graphics jammed in your site. Your site would not be recognized for what it is about in that way.

The job of search engines is to give relevant results for visitors as to what they’re looking for. Therefore, your site should have a theme beginning with your META tags, your page content and the H1 tag that contains the on-page title.

Web designers should avoid putting in a lot of code into your design. If the client’s field is marketing then the web designer should forget about bragging on his skills in design and focus on content instead. Excessive amounts of codes will hinder the search engines in getting to the content because as mentioned above, search engines don’t recognize graphics so no matter how beautiful the site is, it’s useless if it has a crappy content.

Again, an all image or all Flash site will not help you on your way up in search engines. Because as mentioned above, search engines give consideration into content so if there are way too many unnecessary codes then you won’t end up successful in getting your site indexed.

All in all, a good web designer is not just about having excellent artistic skills. He should know the technique of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) combined with building up a web site. If you’re looking for someone to design your site make sure that your designer knows SEO. This would be truly beneficial for those who are into marketing and would like their web site to look good and at the same time have a high page rank.

You can also tell you web designer about what you want be done specifically with your site. It is better to discuss things with your designer so that he could tell you which ones are possible and which ones are not. This way you would also be aware of the advantage and disadvantage of a certain design and what would be its effect on your web site’s ranking.

So do not settle for a web designer with good designing skills. Look for the one who can design your site nicely and give you a high page rank in search engines at the same time. If your web designer knows nothing of how SEO is incorporated in web design then look for another one.

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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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Link Wheel Building – Will it Wheel for You?

Posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
Posted by Teena at 2:59 PM
Categories: Web development
11 Comments »

Yes, definitely, link wheels are an excellent way to generate more traffic to your site. Some may not be familiar with it since people tend to focus on what’s talked about with regards to link building. We always hear the same old approach of getting back links, and jump start right with it without proper planning.

I am not saying that this don’t work, of course it does, blog commenting works provided that you post comments on relevant site, else it will not give any PR boost to your site. Directory submission is an excellent way to establish your site. Article marketing is another way to build back links. What I am actually saying is a strategy or an approach you could implement to build links.

First let me define what is a link wheel, basically, it is a set of links interconnected with one another and pointing towards your main website. Link wheel building therefore is creating interlinked pages pointing in one direction.

This is Web 2.0 properties comes in handy, such as Squidoo and Hubpages. The idea here is to create unique article for each high PR site. This article then has an anchor text pointing back to one of the pages created.

For example your site offers website design, web development and search engine optimization (SEO) services. You then build article pertaining to website design like “How to Create SEO Website Design Friendly”, create an anchor text, your strong keyword that you want to rank and submit it to Ezine or other high PR article directories (the resource box is the great place to place your anchor text). Next create another hub or lens on Squidoo or whichever you choose pertaining to SEO, with another anchor text pointing to the article you just created and another to the main website. The same will step will follow until you have created 6 spoke, preferably unique article – every spoke has two links, one pointing to the main website and the other pointing to the other sites you have created.

If you try to visualize the basic steps on link wheel building, it’s actually like a wheel in motion. When done properly, it could generate huge traffic to your site. It may be time consuming preparing articles and creating accounts but it’s a proven and tested way to boost your chances on appearing on Search Engine Result Page (SeRP).

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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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10 Link Building Strategies

Posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
Posted by SEO Expert at 9:37 AM
Categories: Internet Marketing, SEO
9 Comments »

Various link building strategies can be implemented. To name a few, I listed down 10 common strategies that are use by most SEO experts. And before implementing your link building strategy make sure to analyze your competition. This could help you decide how to go about it.

1. Directory submission – make sure to submit your website to various website directory. Include paid listing such as Yahoo Directory, Yellowpages and Best of the Web, it would cost a bit but it pays to be more credible on the web.

2. You probably have an idea where your competitors are linking if you’ve analyzed your competition, from here try to get hold of any links linking back to your competitor site. You can send in a letter of intent to have your link included on their page, perhaps through link exchange or paid inclusion.

To make your job easier, Firefox offers various plug-ins like Foxy SEO tool to easily identify your competitor’s backlinks.

3. Write a Press Release. A well written Press Release could dramatically increase your sales and expose your company to the public.

4. Create a blog and actively read and write comments on other blogs.

5. Join online communities and actively participate in Forums.

6. Article Submission – this is a good and proven method that will ensure that your links will last for years. Listed down are some of the few article directories available on the web:

  • Ezine Articles – Submit Your Best Quality Original Articles For Massive Exposure.
  • Go Articles.com – Free content search engine and article directory.
  • ArticlesBase.com – Submit articles for distribution, publication and promotion.
  • Artcle Dashboard – Submit articles to the Article Dashboard directory, search and find free website and ezine content, and open an author submission management account.
  • Article Alley - Submit articles to Article Alley for free syndication

7. Write a product or service review.

8. Link Baiting – natural method of link building. The key here is writing a buzz worthy content or providing free online tools. Read more information on Link Baiting

9. Resort to Pay Per Click (PPC)

10. Buy ads space.

In link building a combination of method is used to improve Search Engine position. This should be done regularly. There’s no sure way or a guaranteed combination of method and span of time to get your website ranked in Search Engines, it’s how you implement your strategies that will spell out your success.

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10 Tips on Search Engine Optimization

Posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
Posted by SEO Expert at 9:25 AM
Categories: Internet Marketing, SEO
5 Comments »

There are so many ways to optimize a site but the key is to plan ahead and know exactly where to start before pushing through with your campaign. Below are some tips to help you optimize your website.

1. Choose the right keyword, you must first decide on what keyword you want to get higher ranking. Website owners would typically bid for a keyword to get higher ranking, you should optimize your site the best way you could to beat the competition. How? Analyze your competitors’ website, keywords they use, incoming links etc, in summary analysis of how they made it to no. 1 of Google or other Major Search Engines (SE’s). It will be your benchmark regardless of how old the site is.

2. Optimize your meta-tags using keywords

<HEAD>
<TITLE>Title that you would like to appear on SeRP</TITLE>
<META CONTENT=”description of the content”>
<META CONTENT=”keywords separated by comma”>
</HEAD>

Do not repeat your keywords on each tag and do not resort to unethical practices such as keyword stuffing. Suggested keyword density is 3-5 it’s the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page, according to Wikipedia.

Develop content that is unique, again, this should include your keywords with suggested keyword density.

3. Build SEO friendly URLs

4. Create Sitemap

5. Establish your site by submitting to trusted directories like Open Directory Project, Yahoo Directory and Yellowpages.

6. Submit to Web Directories and Search Engines

7. Build Links

8. Know when and how to use Social Media

9. Use Analytics to monitor progress and know which works best

To add to the list, don’t be afraid to experiment and be patient. SEO is a continuous process what works today may not work tomorrow.

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How to Promote your Blog?

Posted on Saturday, November 14th, 2009
Posted by SEO Expert at 10:13 AM
Categories: Internet Marketing, SEO
1 Comment »

I’ve read a lot of blogs lately and analyzed how this blogs really caught my attention. First things first, before you promote your blog, make sure you know your target audience is and create blogs relevant to your niche market. And second, before you go out promoting your blog, which everybody would want to do, try asking yourself if your content is worth reading. Are you really giving out something that your readers expect from you, not that you have to stick on a certain topic – just stick on the relevant ones. Create a brand for your blog and deliver that message. This is really helpful if you are just starting-up –attract visitors in your niche first before diving for the big fish. Your content is why you develop huge list of followers and try to give what they expect from you, and be consistent.

So how are you to promote your site? First Submit your blog to blog directories like:

There are tools to automate the process, it’s in your discretion to use it or not or should I say to trust a software to do the job for you like the Blog Planter. You can also submit your blog to general directories if you wish.

The next thing is to post a Press Release to online resources about your new blog. This could attract new visitors to your site. There are sites that allow free Press Release posting such as http://www.clickpress.com/releases/

Create Link Bait, it means naturally attracting backlinks for your page. How? There are in fact various ways to do it, like interviewing a prominent personality and publishing it, writing something funny or embarrassing, disagree with authority, anything that will caught a readers attention and would definitely share it with others or talked about it in forums and communities.

Also comment on blogs your niche, including actively commenting on do-follow blogs.

Another is to participate in Blog Carnivals, it’s a Blog community where you could submit your blog to a certain topic. It’s some sort of a magazine only that it’s in the form of a blog article. You can also participate in other blog communities like bloglog.

Use social media as well, like StumbleUpon, Reddit, del.icio.us and Facebook.

There are various ways to promote your site, what I mentioned are just one of the common way to promote blogs. The best thing to do is plan ahead before jumping in to promote your blog, with so many ways to do it; chances are you may not know what really works for you. Establish your blog first the rest of the ways are geared more on active participation on communities. And of course, you must always provide fresh content to your reader. It doesn’t have to be everyday or every week, what matters is the quality of the content you have. Relevant and meaningful content could help you develop loyal list of followers, and as always, give them what they expect from you.

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Link Baiting – Has it Vanished?

Posted on Saturday, November 14th, 2009
Posted by SEO Expert at 10:12 AM
Categories: Internet Marketing, SEO
1 Comment »

Link baiting is a white hat technique which has been around since 2006. It has not vanished, it’s in fact one the safest method of link building. It’s a natural method of having viewers to link on your site perhaps because they find it interesting or worth the buzz. Although I personally no longer read a blog regarding link bait, successful companies usually implement this strategy, viewers are just not aware of the term with what they do when they link to other sites.

According to Wikipedia:

“Link bait is any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. Attempts to create link bait are frequently employed in the overall task of search engine optimization. Matt Cutts defines link bait as anything “… interesting enough to catch people’s attention.”

So how are you going to create link bait? There are actually dozens of ways to do it, it’s not that easy, in fact you have to keep experimenting, same way as catching a fish – use the right hook and drop it at the right place. But when you succeed on this, you could make even millions of dollars. What do you think readers do when they link to a certain article on ezine to their site, or simply sharing it with others? Its link baiting, Search Engines prefer it because it’s “organic” – meaning natural, its quality vs. quantity when it comes to link popularity.

Some ideas on creating a link bait

  • Writing something controversial (works all the time)
  • Write a review (new gadgets, establishment or service)
  • Oppose someone’s idea
  • Write entertaining articles
  • Provide useful list of resources
  • Conduct a research on something
  • Be up-to-date with what’s going on, technology, celebrity, economy etc. and share your opinion

There are far more than I can imagine, you just have to be creative and ask yourself what is your goal for creating link bait? Is it only for the link popularity or to attract a certain niche?  You always have to start with something before preparing your bait to catch a big fish.

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Google Dashboard Review

Posted on Friday, November 13th, 2009
Posted by SEO Expert at 9:47 AM
Categories: Google
Comments Off

Perhaps, I am already one the people who’s completely amazed with what Google Dashboard could do, anyway Google never cease to amaze me.  Aside from their Google Analytics, AdWords and Adsense, I am completely satisfied with the current Google Dashboard released; perhaps because it keeps me organize.

My initial impression is that it gives me quick access to every Google service I use. GMail, Google Chat, even the Calendar is accessible with just one click. Local search is possible too, pretty amazing how it does that. What’s more, even file you already forgot could be searched using Google Local Search.

Google Dashboard exactly tells you how much Google knows about you, it summarizes the data of each service you use. To give you a few of the products offered by Google that you may find interesting, I list down those that I personally use and accessible also in Dashboard.

  • Google Alerts – Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.
  • Google Blogger – is a free blog publishing tool from Google for easily sharing your thoughts with the world. Blogger makes it simple to post text, photos and video onto your personal or team blog.
  • Google Calendar – With Google’s free online calendar, it’s easy to keep track of life’s important events all in one place.
  • Google Docs – Create and edit web-based documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Store documents online and access them from any computer.
  • Google Reader – Read them in one place with Google Reader, where keeping up with your favorite websites is as easy as checking your email.
  • Google Talk – Chat with family and friends over the Internet for free.
  • iGoogle - is your personalized Google page. Add news, photos, weather, and stuff from across the web to your page.
  • Gmail – email from Google. Gmail is built on the idea that email can be more intuitive, efficient, and useful.
  • Web History – Web page tracking, which records Google searches, Web pages, images, videos, music and more. It also includes Bookmarks, search trends and item recommendations.
  • YouTube - Popular free video sharing Web site which lets users upload, view, and share video clips.

All this are just one of the few products of Google that could be access and controlled over one application – Google dashboard. Though it’s kind of creepy to know how much data Google knows about you, personally I will continue using it. If you will try to explore all plug-ins available, it’s really awesome, my personal choice for plug-ins -Google Scratch Pad and To Do Gadgets. So for peace of mind here’s the link to Google Privacy Center visit http://www.google.com/privacy.html.

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