Wednesday, 23 February 2011

What makes a good website?

Now each person knows that, when on the Internet, a well attractive website with a great web design will have a huge number of traffic going to it and coming from it. However; that’s if the navigation is considered to be a huge hit with the users also! After all, people want to see a well working website with qualities of a great design.

Going on the point of web design, there are many simple things that people should remember to do which will help make their site look better:

Colour schemes: You should always take into account that with dark coloured text a white or light background should be used and vice versa. This is so text can be easily read without users having to go to close to the screen.

Headers and Sidebars: These should be used to break down paragraphs within the main body of the website. It is found that users like to scan the text on a website. As a result of this, headers can be used for them to find information much quicker.

Navigation: This is another aspect of web design which is very important. It is said that when a user visits a new website; if they can’t find anything that they require within 4 SECONDS of viewing it, then obviously, they’ll go to another site and try to find the information from there.

Another point on this is not to confuse users. So having a simple navigation will be a lot better.

Thursday, 17 February 2011

Social Media Tips

One of things that are hard to sustain as a business is to keep people interested so that they learn more about you, and therefore, for you (as a business) to generate customers. With the help of social media this can be achieved, however; only if it is used correctly and to its potential. You will notice that a lot can be achieved!

Now, there a lot of simple mistakes which people miss when coming to use social media as a platform for a business. Obviously, being a next result to a website, it will help create brand awareness of a company by generating recognition across the World Wide Web. This is a key point for businesses which helps them to establish their ‘online presence’.

So, some of the tips to bear in mind are:

· Using tools to in order to tweak your targeting and language i.e. if you are drawing your attention to a certain audience, then using particular keywords will help to draw then in. You’ll be surprised how changing specific words will help to do this!

· Make promoting fun! Making eye-catching advertisements will surely grab the attention of potential clients. Also try and make it different i.e. have a game where users win a prize.

· Attention to detail will surely work without a doubt! This will also give the impression that your business is efficient and professional.

These are just some of the main points which will help you when dealing with social media.

Friday, 4 February 2011

What to avoid when designing a Website?

Web design is an area which has taken many people by interest. As businesses are looking to increase their ‘online presence’, it looks like a website is the best way to start it off. This is because; it then becomes a platform to where clients can search for the company and find out what they want instead of you having to tell them.

Now you may think that web design is easy, however; there is a lot more involved than you think! Knowing your programming skills is a vital thing, obviously. So; using language such as HTML and CSS will help you transfer your paper designs to real life ones. In addition to this, having a creative eye will also help the design aspect by making sure the website has its own look and feel which says a lot the company.

Furthermore, there are also some points which you should avoid when looking at web design services.

These include:

• Having a poor navigational structure
One thing that will easily irritate a user is if they cannot find the information that they are looking for. Not only will this affect them, but it’ll also affect you as; the site would have been designed containing information that you want users to know, and, if they cannot find this information it will confuse them and hence; make them feel lost.

• Poorly written content
Another thing is having too much content. Users only tend to scan through website content to pick up relevant information. As a result, this means that you MUST AVOID LARGE BLOCKS of text and instead break them up into separate tabs or paragraphs. Also, having images relating to text will help to make it efficient.

Wednesday, 2 February 2011

Improving the SEO of your Website

It is said that one of the main challenges for an online business using SEO is maintaining the importance of using search engines. This obviously affects them when clients come to searching for a particular item by entering a certain keyword into the search engine. Each of these links that are then fired up link to a company’s website or webpage, hence; every time these links are clicked on will depend on its ranking and importance.

With Google controlling more than 90% of search traffic just in the US; it’s not surprising to see that, every web/ online marketing strategy is to hit that number one spot within that particular search engine.

Now SEO is seen as a major principle for businesses to have and in addition; it is a great way of them to start their online presence by being preparing entering into the world of ‘search engine domination’. Now there are many techniques that you can use to improve the SEO strength of your website. Some of these include:

  • Adding a blog. By doing this; it gives you the opportunity to update your material by being able to add new content regularly. Fresh content is an essential practice; if you can blog at least once a week it will give you a MASSIVE SEO advantage! In addition, it will generate a lot of traffic and also enable people to comment on your posts.
  • Use the keywords that you want to rank. As a result, these will determine the content of your page and the ranking of your webpage.

Sunday, 30 January 2011

SEO Services: Cowboys vs Black Hats

Over the last decade, SEO has been getting a bad name. From cowboys who charge huge prices for ranking useless keywords to black hat SEOs that risk your website getting banned - SEO services have really gone downhill. Of course there are still legitimate services that will get organic traffic flooding into your website, but finding them is never easy. This article will teach you how to find a cowboy and how to find a black hat.

Cowboys

Interesting creatures, they prey on a customer's ignorance by guaranteeing number one rankings for keywords that don't get searched for. Spotting them isn't easy and their sales spiel may have you begging to hand over that investment. Identifying a cowboy doesn't take the savviest of people - when a SEO service has told you the keywords they are targeting, go to the Google Adwords Tool (Google that) and type in the key phrase. Then check the box marked 'Exact'. This will then display the monthly search volumes for that keyword. If the keyword gets little to no traffic, you can be sure it will be simple to rank number one. Of course you won't get any traffic for that keyword and your money will be wasted.

Black Hats

Unlike cowboys, black hat SEOs are usually very savvy and understand SEO on many levels. However that does not mean to say that you should let them be in charge of your campaign. Black hat SEO is the application of techniques that violate Google's guidelines. This can be from hiding links (making them the same colour as the background) to moving content off the page so that it can be seen by Search Bots but not by users. This type of behaviour on-site can lead to your getting banned from Google!




Learn more about Black Hats on Wikipedia's page

Friday, 21 January 2011

SEO: A Brief Look

SEO is the abbreviation from Search Engine Optimisation...so; do you understand what that is? Well, this process includes “improving the visibility of web pages through search engines via the search results”. So, this simply means enhancing your website so that when searched through search engines it can be picked up more clearly.

This then means that you have to think in the view of a user, in that; you must be able to note down the top keywords you think will be searched in order to get the results containing you web pages. As a result of this, it will then help your site in drawing a lot of attraction from different viewers. In addition, using different platforms in order to link back to your site will also help even more users to see your site.

One other advantage about this is that, it may also benefit you in getting clients, so the beauty is that it can work in many ways for you!
It is found that SEO in the Midlands has become very popular due to many of the companies from this area applying and offering this service to others. However, we all know that there could be many SEO Midlands teams, but which one offers the best service? Only you can find that out! You will probably notice that each business may provide the same service but in different ways. But then again, knowing someone who knows how to do this will help so much too.

Friday, 14 January 2011

The Business of Internet Marketing

There are many things that are involved with internet marketing, business plans need to be made in order to take this into consideration, which will help companies achieve much better things.

However one question that you’re probably asking yourself is “how can it help my business?” Well, it is an excellent form of advertising compared to the traditional methods. It allows you to be more open and gain much more attention, which you wouldn’t get of many people if you were to keep to just emailing and phoning.

As stated on to the last point made above, by doing internet marketing business, it also helps companies to reach out to clients and buyers in a different way. This is a great point as; it enables companies to target specific people and, at the same time, gain a much bigger audience.

What you’ll find is that; users are becoming more and more ‘techno’ i.e. they are more computer illiterate, and for that reason; when looking or searching for a product, the Internet always plays a key tool for them. People want to be able to search for what they want whenever they want. As a result of this, offering this service will help your users and customers but also your company too. Therefore, what you want to do is; work around your users in order to gain something back from them.

All in all, recommending that you do incorporate the internet marketing business strategies will help to boost the company sales.