Newscounter
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Four Critical Web Design Rules

When creating a new website or redesigning an existent site, there are four critical regulations which the interior designer should follow to do the land land site effectual and functional - and successful.

1. Easy to Read

When edifice a website, the first thing you necessitate to be certain of is that your website is easy to read. When you compose content, retrieve that most web land land site visitants don't read every word of a page - in fact, they only scan pages to happen what they want.

Break up Your Content

Break up your pages and usage headings between major thoughts so people scanning your site can happen what they desire quickly. Use meaningful headings between each paragraph or major thought - this assists with SEO. Headers should be created with the H1 through H4 tags for SEO. Always usage good authorship structure. Additionally, avoid long paragraphs that tally on. You should interrupt up any long paragraphs.

Color and Fonts

To assist readability, usage high direct contrast colours between fount and background. Black textual matter against a achromatic background may look stark, but it is very readable. To do a website easy on the eyes, seek an off-white background and a dark grey (almost black) textual matter color.

Things to avoid with content color:

  • Avoid vivacious background colours like violet or yellow. Such dorsum colours do textual matter hard to read.
  • Avoid using an mental image behind your text.
  • Avoid using bright textual matter colours on bright backgrounds.

Fonts Matter

One simple statement covers the fount issue:

  • Simple founts are the best; the more than illusion the font, the harder it is to read.

Since many browsers only have got the criterion fount set, usage criterion fonts. In reality, there is no "standard", but there are certain founts that are installed on most browsers. These include Arial, Verdana, Tahoma and Times New Roman. Your readers will see something different than you see if you utilize other fonts.

Standard Compliant Browser for Development

When developing and testing your site, usage a Standards compliant browser like FireFox. If you develop your land site to be criteria compliant, it will work in most browsers, including multiple sclerosis Internet Explorer (IE). It is recommended that you prove your land site using the up-to-the-minute and last browser versions of IE (IE6 and IE7). To run multiple versions of IE on the same machine, TredoSoft.com have a free installer that volition put in multiple versions of IE. It works great!

2. Simplify Navigation

The menus and golf course do up the pilotage that the visitant utilizes to acquire from page to page in a site. Always program a land site around how people will acquire from page to page. A visitant to your land site should be able to acquire to what they desire within three chinks of their mouse.

Multiple pilotage points do it easy to happen things. Repeat the top bill of fare and at the bottom. Also make a left or right menu.

Using golf course within your textual matter to other countries on your site. You can make golf course so that they are good for hunt engine optimisation (SEO). There are generally two ways to make golf course within your text:

  • The incorrect way: "For hunt engine optimisation techniques, click here."
  • The right way: "Good techniques for search engine optimization are of import to use."

  • Using nexus textual matter (anchor text) that depicts what the nexus is about is the best way. Search engine web sycophants (programs that automatically index the table of contents of websites) visit your site, they "read" links. Spiders can index descriptive golf course into a topic or keyword category. Spiders have got nil to work with when reading a "click here" until it attains the linked page.

    This is Cross Linking - usage it as much as possible when it make sense to do so when authorship your content.

    3. Consistent Design

    At most, one or two layouts should be used in your land site design. As a reader browsings your site, they should be able to acquire used to looking in the same topographic point for your navigation, for your sub-navigation and for your content. That's all there is to state about that.

    4. Lower Berth Page Weight is Better

    Page weight is the sum size of a page on your land site in bytes - code, textual matter and images. Your site's page weight do a large difference to your viewers. Lighter page weight is better for your readers because the page will download faster. The faster a page downloads, the faster they will acquire to the content.

    What is Means to be Light

    • No big images. (unless the site's intent is to show window images, fine art or photos)
    • Fewer mental mental images are better.
    • Optimize mental images for the web at no more than than 72 dpi
    • Use as little an mental image dimension as possible for the given design.
    • Use a tabular array td bgcolor property or a background-color style property for solid colour backgrounds.
    • Make gradients horizontal or perpendicular (not diagonal) so that you can utilize a little mental image "strip" and repetition it.

    How "Heavy" Should a Web Page be?

    Certain surveys demo that 64K is a good upper limit webpage size. 64K is a maximum, however it is still, in my opinion, really big! The littler the page, the better. 25K is good, 15K is even better. There is a balance between designing and function. It is a good thought to concentrate more than on function.

    Try putting pages on your web host waiter as you construct your land site so you can prove it as you go. For pages online, you can prove the page weight to be certain you are on track.

    Ways to do pages lighter:

    • Use linked style sheets
    • Use DIVs instead of TABLEs where possible
    • Use simple repeating backgrounds for consequence

    Summary

    Visitors to your website should be able to happen what they are looking for within about three clicks. Making a land site easy to read with consistent page design, and easy to voyage volition do it easy to happen information. You will be on the manner to edifice a readable, effective, functional and hopefully successful website if you follow these rules.

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    Thursday, May 31, 2007
    Top Website Design- Top 3 Elements of Search Engine Optimization

    Top Website design is a combination of usability, search engine optimization and aesthetics. If you work hard to make usability a priority, and spend time developing a pleasing and professional layout, your visitors will reward you with purchases and return visits. But without search engine optimization, all of your hard work might go unnoticed.

    Search engine optimization works with your site's usability because search engines are looking for the same things users are looking for in a Website and they will recognize and reward a usable Website design. And SEO feeds Website usability if the site is optimized properly on relevant keywords. For example, the very first part of Web usability is assisting users to find what they are seeking. Good keyword research and keyword placement in your pages does that.

    Top 3 elements of search engine optimization

    1) Research keywords to be sure you are using relevant search terms that are meaningful to your prospects in your niche. Don't leave this important step out. Don't guess at what words are used to find the products and information you provide. Know what they are instead. If the cost of keyword research is prohibitive, use free tools like Google Suggest and Wordtracker's free keyword tool to help find the best keywords for your niche.

    2) Use your keywords in the Web page title, description and headings, as well as in the text. Always be certain that you use relevant, researched keywords in page titles. Proper use of page titles is a primary element of implementing good search engine optimization in top Website designs.

    3) Build your Website's reputation with incoming links from quality, related top Websites. This takes effort. Find Websites or reputable directories that are related and ask for a link to your site. Build the kind of quality content that will make others want to link to your Website. Purchase listings in top directories.

    Top Website design is not just pretty. In fact, pretty is only beneficial if you have a usable site that is well optimized for search engines. Take an objective look at your site. Have you done everything you could to help the search engines index, understand and include your complete Website in their results?

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    Thursday, May 10, 2007
    Web Page Keywords - Do's and Don'ts

    Quite simply, our Web sites should produce returns just like we expect from our other marketing programs. Surely, you've heard the terms "optimized" and "keywords" thrown about. Perhaps you suspect that your web page keywords are important but you are not quite sure why.

    These days, there are a number of hotly debated issues related to Web page keywords and the search engine optimization techniques that rely upon them. In this article, I will identify these debates in the course of discussing the proper selection and use of a Web page keyword list.

    Meta Keywords TagFirst, let's be clear about the importance of your web page "Meta keywords". So the question is: Is the keywords Meta tag important? Answer: It's not clear. Meta tags are HTML code snippets inserted into the "head" area of your web pages that are, for the most part, not viewed by visitors to your web site. The "Meta keywords" tag contains phrases and synonyms designed to be a brief and concise list of the most important themes of your page.

    But, many experts suggest that the major search engine crawlers ignore the Meta keywords tag (e.g., see "How To Use HTML Meta Tags", Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Watch, 5 Dec. 2002). Heck, some experts claim all Meta tags are useless. It turns out that over the years spammers put keywords into the Meta tag that had nothing to do with the content or theme of the site. It is believed that Web crawlers ignore the keywords Meta tag because of past deceptive practices.

    Should you care about the Meta keywords tag? I believe you should. Your search engine optimization strategy should be as comprehensive as possible. You should use every legitimate technique available to you, including utilization of the standard Meta tags.

    Regardless of where you stand on the keywords Meta tag issue, it is clear that the careful creation of a keyword list is an important first step towards optimization of your Web page. We now turn to the process of selecting your keywords.

    Keyword Selection How should you select your keywords? Your goal is to find keyword phrases that are related to your business and that your potential customers actually use in Google, Yahoo! or other Internet search engines. You know your business best – should you just choose the key phrases that best describe your products and services? WRONG!

    Let's pretend that you sell Global Positioning Systems and that you have adopted "global positioning systems" as a keyphrase. But in December of 2006 YAHOO recorded 655,000 searches on "GPS" and only 7800 searches on "Global Positioning System". Another one - you sell Pneumatic Nail Drivers but in December of 2006 there were about 9700 YAHOO searches on "nail gun". Few searches on "Pneumatic Nail Driver" occurred – perhaps just a few folks can even spell pneumatic?

    See where I am heading with this? You may be too close to your business to objectively determine how your prospects will look for your products and services. You may not be the right person to develop your keywords unless you have kept up with the latest trends in search engine optimization. At a minimum, spend time analyzing the keywords and techniques your competitors and peers use to achieve search engine success.

    In addition, you will want to factor keyword popularity into your analysis. Here are a few keyword selection tools you may wish to utilize:

    • Overture Keyword Selector Tool - inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
    • The Google Suggest keyword selection tool - google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en
    • The Google Adwords Keyword Tool - adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

    You can use these tools to suggest alternative phrases and synonyms that you may not have considered. In addition, the Overture Tool in particular provides invaluable quantitative information about the actual popularity of these keyphrase Internet searches.

    Note, however, that keyword popularity alone is not enough! Scrub your list of phrases carefully to ensure each phrase is BOTH popular and relevant to your business. Your list should contain phrases that generate a reasonable volume of qualified leads. You want visitors you can convert to customers not just visitors.

    You provide a wide range of products and services. So you should you add them all to your list, right? WRONG! Experts disagree on the ideal number of keywords you should define. However, there is no reason to exceed 20 or 25 keyphrases. And remember - order does matter. Put your most important phrases first.

    Create a comma-separated list of keywords that you can copy and paste into the keyword Meta tag of your HTML Web page. Here's an example of a keywords tag designed for the hidden heading code of a "Search Engine Optimization Tip" page:

    • meta name="keywords" content="seo tips,search engine optimization tip,seo google tip,denver seo,denver search engine optimization,search engine optimization denver,seo company,search engine optimization company,internet marketing strategy"

    As you can see, the keywords Meta tag appears in the "HEAD" section of your Web page. The Meta tags, however, are not visible on the page. If you view http://www.ebizmachine.com/seotips.html you will not observe the keywords Meta tag.

    Keyword Placement Let's assume you have carefully created a keyword list and you have updated the keywords Meta tag of your Web page. You're done, right?

    Not even close! There are a number of ways in which you will utilize your most important keyphrases. Unfortunately, this brief article cannot speak to each of these techniques. In fact, experts disagree about the relative importance of the many locations where you might embed your keywords. I will discuss a few techniques that are almost universally considered important.

    Here are several potential locations where your primary keywords can appear:

    • Header Tag Content (i.e H1, H2)
    • Title Tag in Anchor Tags
    • Body Text
    • URL/Filenames
    • Meta Keyword Tags (discussed above)

    First, the title tag is believed to be very important. Like the keywords tag, it is an HTML code snippet but in this case, the title tag content actually appears in the top bar of your Web browser. Make sure to embed your primary keyphrase in the title tag.

    Here's an example of the HTML title tag also contained in the "HEAD" section of the web page:

    • TITLE - Search Engine Optimization - EBIZ Machine SEO Tips

    As you can see, it also appears in the "HEAD" section of your Web page even though it is not a "Meta" tag.

    It is also believed that keyphrases embedded in HTML header tags (like H1, H2, H3, etc) are given more weight by some search engines. Here's an example of the Heading1 (H1) tag:

    • H1 align="center">Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips and Tricks

    If it's not too late, create domain names, file names and URLs that make use of your important keywords. Here's an example that focuses on the keyphrase "Search Engine Optimization":

    1. First create and upload a web page named Search-Engine-Optimization-Tips.html

    2. Create a link that is something like Review key search engine optimization techniques designed to improve your page rank that links to your new page.

    Note: it's OK to separate the keywords in your file name by hyphens in order to help search engines distinguish the keywords. You can see that the link text discussed above also uses our keywords – don't just display "click here for more information" – you're missing an opportunity to promote your important keyphrases.

    Finally, your keywords should appear in the body or content areas of your Web page. However, you should not overdo it! In the online "SEO Chat" article "The Ten Commandments of Keyword Selection" (seochat.com/c/a/Choosing-Keywords-Help/The-Ten-Commandments-of-Keyword-Selection/), the author speculated that the optimal keyword frequency range is between 4% to 9%. This suggests that you should stay below the 9% frequency limit in order to avoid penalties from the major search engines for "keyword stuffing."

    ConclusionGood search engine optimization requires a great deal of experimentation – what works for one Web site might not work for your site. The techniques your SEO company will recommend and implement will go well beyond those discussed in this article.

    In this document, I summarize several proven techniques for using your carefully developed keyword list and dispelled a few myths along the way:

    1. Do create a short keyword list of phrases that are popular and relevant to your business.

    2. Don't assume you know what Internet users type into the search engines – you might be too close to the business.

    3. Do consider keyword search popularity but don't forget about the quality of the leads a search is likely to generate.

    4. Do use your primary keyphrase in the Web page title tag, heading tags, domain name, Web page file name and page links.

    5. Don't overdo it – pay attention to keyword density.

    [1] Please keep in mind that this content is provided for educational purposes in order to introduce you to important search engine optimization concepts. There are many factors that influence search engine page rank - we cannot promise that the techniques described in this article work in all cases. Thank you! –Bill Schwartz, EBIZ Machine

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