Showing posts with label Seo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Seo. Show all posts

Friday, June 21, 2019

Search Engine Friendly Pages

Search Engine Friendly Pages

It makes no sense to create a website unless there are visitors. A major source of traffic for most sites on the Internet are search engines such as Google, Yahoo !, MSN, Altavista, etc. Therefore, by designing a search engine friendly site, you can easily rank in the search engines and get more visitors.

The major search engines use programs called crawlers or robots to index websites to include them in their search results pages. They follow the links to a page, read the content of the page and record it in their own database, and display it while people search for it.

If you want your site to be indexed easily, you should avoid using frames on your website. Frames will only confuse search engine robots and may even leave your site because of that. In addition, frames make it difficult for users to mark a specific page on their site without using long and complicated scripts.

Do not present important information in Flash movies or images. Search engine robots can only read the text in their source code, so if you present important words in movies and Flash images instead of text, the ranking of your search engine will be greatly affected.

Use meta tags on each page of your site so that search engine bots know what that particular page is about and whether or not they should index it. By using meta tags, you are facilitating the work of the search engine robot to crawl and index your site more frequently.

Stop using incorrect HTML tags such as <c.type to style your page. Use CSS (cascading style sheets) instead because they are more effective and efficient. By using CSS, you can eliminate redundant HTML tags and make your pages much lighter and faster to load.

The importance of good design


Your website is the center of your online business; It is the virtual representation of your company if your company physically exists or not. When you are doing business online, people can not see you physically as if they could be dealing with a company offline. Therefore, people judge you by your blankets. This is where a good design comes in.

Imagine if you are running a business offline. Would you allow your salespeople to dress in worn or casual clothes when dealing with their customers? By making your staff professional, you are telling your clients that you care about quality. This works simply because first impressions are important.

In the same way, the same case is with your website. If your website is badly done and it seems like a 5 minute "quick fix", it literally yells to your visitors that you are not a professional and that you do not care about the quality.

On the contrary, if you have a completely professional website design, you are giving your visitors the perception that you have paid meticulous attention to every detail and care about professionalism. You are organized, focused and really means business.

On the other hand, you should also have everything related to your well-designed company. From business cards to letterheads and promotional brochures, everything matters. This is because as your business grows, these elements become the face of your business. Once again, think about the anology of the "seller dressed in disrepair" and you will understand my point.
Pros and Cons of Flash-based Sites

Pros and Cons of Flash-based Sites

Pros and cons of Flash-based sites


Flash-based sites have been crazy since the last few years and, as Macromedia gathers more and more cool Flash features, we can only predict that there will be more and more flash sites on the Internet. However, Flash-based sites have been questioned for being inflated and unnecessary. Where exactly do we draw the line? Here is a simple breakdown.

The good:

Interactivity

The Actionscript of Flash opens a vast field of possibilities. Programmers and designers have used Flash to create interactive features that range from very animated comment forms to attractive Flash-based games. This new level of interactivity will always make visitors come back for more.

A standardized site

With Flash, you do not have to worry about cross-browser compatibility. No more problems about how a particular CSS code is displayed differently in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. When you place the elements of your site in Flash, they will always appear as they are while the user has Flash Player installed.

Better expression through animation.

In Flash, one can make use of its animation functions to convey a message in a much more efficient and effective way. Flash is a lightweight option for animation because it is based on vectors (and, therefore, on smaller file sizes), unlike the actual raster-based "movie files" and, therefore, much bigger.

The bad and the ugly

The flash player

People must download Flash Player in advance before they can watch Flash movies, so when using Flash, the range of visitors will decrease considerably because not everyone will be willing to download Flash Player just to see your site. You must also perform additional work to redirect the user to the Flash download page if you do not have the player installed.

Site optimization

If your content is presented in Flash, most search engines can not index your content. Therefore, you will not be able to position yourself well in the search engines and there will be less traffic to your site.

Loading time

Users have to wait longer than normal to load Flash content compared to normal text and images, and some visitors may lose patience and click on the Back button. The longer it takes to load your Flash, the more risk you run of losing visitors.

The best way to do this is to use Flash only when you need the interactivity and movement that go with it. Otherwise, use a mixture of Flash and HTML or use pure text if your site is purely to present simple text and graphic information.

Reducing Load Time Through Image Optimization


Even though more and more Internet users switch to broadband every year, a large portion of the web's population is still running on good old dialup connections. It is therefore unwise to count them out of the equation when you're designing your website, and a very major consideration we have to make for dialup users is the loading time of your website.

Generally, all the text on your website will be loaded in a very short time even on a dialup connection. The culprit of slow-loading sites is mainly large images on your website, and it is very important to strike a delicate balance between using just enough images to attract your users and not to bog down the overall loading time of your site.

You should also go to a greater length and optimize every image on your site to make sure it loads in the least time possible. What I really mean is to use image editing software to remove unnecessary information on your images, and thereby effectively reducing the file size of your image without affecting its appearance.

If you own Photoshop, it will be obvious to you that when you save an image as a JPEG file, a dialog box appears and lets you choose the "quality" of the JPEG image -- normally a setting of 8 to 10 is good enough as it will preserve the quality of your image while saving it at a small file size. If you do not have Photoshop, there are many free image compressors online that you can download and use to reduce your image's file size.

On the other hand, you can opt to save your images in PNG format to get the best quality at the least file size. You can also save your images in GIF format -- the image editing software clips away all the color information not used in your image, hence giving you the smallest file size possible. However, saving in GIF format will often compromise the appearance of your image, so make your choice wisely! 
Make it easy to buy from your site

Make it easy to buy from your site




Convincing your prospects to buy from you is a difficult job, but have you ever thought you are making the process twice as difficult for both parties if your prospects are convinced but do not know how to buy from you? No matter how good you are at convincing your prospects, they will not buy if they find the process cumbersome.

First, you'll want to verify that people can find your order form easily and without complications. You can write a clear and concise paragraph to direct your prospects to your order form, so you can minimize the chances of them being lost. You can also reduce the chances of losing prospects by placing a prominent link to your order page from any other page on your site.

Also, do they offer multiple payment options? Some people can feel comfortable paying through Paypal, others just want to pay with their credit card and others may want to send a check. The more options you offer, the more likely you are to cover the desired payment method of your potential customers. After all, it would not make any sense to sell hard to a prospect only to discover that they will not be able to pay him when they wish.

On the other hand, you will want to prove that you are a credible trader. Is your order form secured using encryption technology? You would want to look in SSL for this. You can also offer a money-back guarantee so that people feel safe to buy from you. How about after sales support? Who do they contact when they have problems after buying?

Alternatively, you can add customer testimonials, your contact information, address, etc. to increase the confidence of your prospects. Make them feel safe buying something from you, a stranger to them at the other end of the Internet.

As a conclusion, it would be very unfortunate if you sold a lot and sold well to a prospect and something goes wrong when he or she is ready to pay. Eliminate any chance of that to maximize your profits!

Errors to avoid when using web templates


Website templates are very affordable and save you a lot of effort and time when you want to create a new design for your website. However, many people make mistakes in the process of choosing and using a web template and end up with something that does not look like the image they had in mind. Here are some guidelines to help you avoid those mistakes.

The first obvious mistake you should consider is to use a template that is very popular. If many people use the same template, your website will not seem unique at all and your credibility as a solid and different website will be tarnished. In other words, it will appear generic just like its neighbors next door.

To the point of using a web template is to save time and effort. Just change the title and the appropriate details and you're done. The biggest mistake one makes is to customize the template beyond recognition. While that may be good in the sense that you are creating a unique graph, you are challenging the purpose of using a web template, saving time and effort.

However, on the opposite side, if the template you buy is adequate, but some changes must be made to adapt to the theme of your site, then you will have to take some time to make the changes. For example, you can find a very nice template that suits your hobby site, except that the original designer has put a stamp image in the header. You can find pictures of plants and garden swords to replace the seals on your gardening hobby site. However, just make the necessary changes and do not redesign the entire template.

In some circumstances, some people simply make the wrong choice of templates. This is a very subjective topic, but you should be careful when selecting templates to suit your audience. Do not choose templates just because they are beautiful, choose them because they serve your purpose.
Improve Usability of Your Website

Improve Usability of Your Website

Improve the usability of your website


No matter how brilliant the design of your website is, if it is difficult to access the content of your site, then your site is just as useful as an empty shell. Here are some tips to improve the usability of your website to ensure it fulfills its functions optimally.

The first method is to make sure that the typography of your content is adequate. If you have large blocks of text, be sure to use CSS to space the lines accordingly. The longer a line of text is, the greater the line height of each line. Also, make sure that the font size of your text is large enough to read easily. Some sites have text of 10 pixels high in Verdana font; While this may seem neat and tidy, you have to work hard to read the actual text.

Make it easy for visitors to find the content they want on their site. If you have thousands of articles on your site and a certain visitor wants to find a single item from that pile, you must provide a viable means for visitors to do so without problems. Whether it's a SQL-based database search engine or simply a glossary or index of items you have, this feature will ensure that your visitors can use your site with ease.

Make sure your site loads fast if you do not want to lose visitors. Most Internet users will leave a website if it is not fully loaded in 15 seconds, so make sure the cream of your website cream is sent to visitors as soon as possible to retain their attention.

Finally, try each and every link on your site before it is online. There is nothing more effective in tarnishing your professional image than broken links, so be very careful with that.

Building your mailing list with downloads

A mailing list is the vital element of your online business. The old adage "money is on the list" can not be true enough: if you had a specific list of prospects to contact each time you have a new product, you can save a lot of effort by publishing it on your existing list of specific prospects .

In fact, you can create a specific list of prospects interested in your products by offering a relevant download on your website. For example, let's look at a very good example: apple.com. When you download the free iTunes and Quicktime software from your site, you will be asked to complete an optional name and email form so that you can send offers on songs you can buy through: guess where: iTunes!

Actually, it does not need to offer such a "heavy" download as full-featured software, like iTunes. You can attract prospects equally well with some quality gifts, such as a simple report, a free wallpaper, etc. The important thing is that your download offers enough value for the prospect to be willing to give away their own email address to obtain it.

However, putting together a simple download and placing a link on your website will not be enough to attract qualified prospects. You will have to do some tasks so that your lead generation mechanism works well for you.

First, you should place your download form in a prominent place on your website. Preferably, dedicate a page and link to that page from any other page of your website. That way, there's no way your visitors can not find the download page, and when they do, you'll get some of them to become your prospects!

Also, you should put some effort into promoting your download. Explain and elaborate on the values ​​of the download and why your visitors should download it. You might think why someone would want to spend a freebie, but most of their visitors would be too lazy to make the effort to download it, since most of their downloads are only located on the hard drive and accumulate virtual dust. Therefore, it is important to show your visitors why they should download their promotional gift.
Generating Revenue With Good Planning

Generating Revenue With Good Planning

For anything to work well, care must be taken to make firm, workable plans to execute it and the same goes for website designs. With a well thought out website design, you will be able to create a site that generates multiple streams of revenue for you. In fact, may websites turn into online wasteland because they are not well planned and do not get a single visitor. Gradually, the webmaster will not be motivated to update it anymore and it turns into wasted cyberspace.

The crucial point of planning your site is optimizing it for revenue if you want to gain any income from the site. Divide your site into major blocks, ordered by themes, and start building new pages and subsections in those blocks. For example, you might have a "food" section, an "accomodation" section and an "entertainment" section for a tourism site. You can then write and publish relevant articles in the respective sections to attract a stream of traffic that comes looking for further information.

When you have a broader, better-defined scope of themes for your website, you can sell space on your pages to people interested in advertising on your page. You can also earn from programs like Google's Adsense and Yahoo! Search Marketing if people surf to those themed pages and click on the ads. For this very reason, the advertisement blocks on your pages need to be relevant to the content, so a themed page fits that criteria perfectly.

As Internet becomes more widespread, advertising on the Internet will bear more results than on magazines or offline media. Hence, start tapping in on this lucrative stream of profit right away!


Good Design Practices



Your website is where your company resides, it's like the headquarters of an offline company. Therefore, it is important to practice good design principles to ensure that your site reaches the maximum number of visitors and sells to as many people as possible.


Make sure you have clear instructions on navigating your website. The navigation menu should be neat and concise so that visitors know how to navigate your website without confusion.


Reduce the number of images on your website. They make your site load very slowly and most of the time they are very unnecessary. If you believe that any image is essential on your site, be sure to optimize them using image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size.


Keep your paragraphs of text at a reasonable length. If a paragraph is too long, you must divide it into separate paragraphs so that the text blocks are not too large. This is important because a block of text that is too large will dissuade visitors from reading its content.


Make sure your website complies with the web standards at www.w3.org and make sure they are compatible with all browsers. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but it breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you will lose many potential visitors.


Avoid using scripting languages ​​on your site unless absolutely necessary. Use scripting languages ​​to manage or manipulate data, not to create visual effects on your website. Heavy scripts will slow down the loading time of your site and even block some browsers. Also, scripts are not compatible with all browsers, so some visitors may lose important information because of that.


Use CSS to style the content of your page because they save a lot of work by designing all the elements of your website at once.
5 Ways to Keep Visitors Coming Back

5 Ways to Keep Visitors Coming Back

A lot of successful websites depend on returning visitors taking into account most of their traffic. Returning visitors are easier to convert into paying customers because the more often they return to a site, the more trust they have in that site. The problem of credibility simply disappears. Therefore, have your visitors return to your site with the following methods:

1) Start a forum, chat room or shoutbox

When you start a forum, a chat room or a message box, you are giving visitors a place to express their opinions and interact with their colleagues, they are all visitors to your site. As conversations increase, a sense of community will also follow and your visitors will return to your site almost religiously every day.

2) Start a web log (blog)

Keep a diary online, or better known as a blog, on your site and keep it updated with the latest news about you. Humans are curious creatures and will keep their eyes glued to the monitor if you publish fresh news frequently. It will also increase your credibility while showing you that there is also a real life person behind the website.

3) Conduct surveys or polls.

Surveys and polls are other forms of interaction that you should definitely consider adding to your site. They provide a quick way for visitors to express their opinions and get involved in their website. Be sure to publish surveys or surveys that are very relevant to the target market of your website to keep them interested in knowing the results.

4) Hold puzzles, contests and games.

Just imagine how many office workers postpone their work every day, and you can calculate how many people will continue to visit your site if it provides a very interesting or addictive form of entertainment. You can also hold competitions to award the high scoring winner so that people try to win the prize continuously.

5) Update frequently with fresh content

Update your site frequently with new content so that each time your visitors return, they have something to read on their site. This is the best known and most effective method to attract returning visitors, but it is also the least accomplished due to the laziness of webmasters. No one will want to navigate a site that looks the same for ten years, so keep it updated with new bites!

How to have websites created for you cheaply


Normally, if you want professional designers to build your site tailored, you must be prepared to distribute at least a few hundred dollars. All this can change if you know where to find the best deals, the best designs at the lowest price. Here is an approximate guide:

First, you must understand that it is a scam to have companies design websites for you. Have you ever seen those ads in the newspaper classifieds sections that offer a 5-page website at $ 500? These companies are established companies with physical locations, therefore, they have to increase the amount they charge to pay some general expenses: office rent, designer salaries, advertising costs, etc.

Therefore, it would be prudent to find independent designers who work from home. These people often work from home, so they do not have a high operating cost like that of a company. On the other hand, they can design images with a quality similar to that of the designers of large companies, making it a "simple" option.

However, choose independent professionals with care. The best way to do it would be to go to elance.com. There, you can publish the summary of your project and get thousands of freelancers to make an offer on your project, so you will surely get the best offer. In addition to that, you can choose the designers based on their experience, past transactions and qualifications, so that their value in money is assured.

Another route you can take is to design your website yourself. Think about it, if you only need 5 simple pages to present some simple information, why spend hundreds of dollars on it? Just spend a little time to sit and do it yourself. You can design your own sites even if you do not know a single line of HTML code with the help of WYSIWYG programs (what you see is what you get) like Microsoft Frontpage, Macromedia Dreamweaver, etc.
Important Rules in Website Design

Important Rules in Website Design

When it comes to your website, special attention must be paid to every detail to make sure it works optimally to fulfill its purpose. Here are seven basic rules you should observe to make sure your website works well.

1) Do not use welcome pages.

Welcome pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They usually have a very beautiful image with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter". In fact, they are just that: beautiful vases without real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the "back" button! Give them the value of your site in advance without the home page.

2) Do not use excessive banner ads

Even the least expert people in the network have trained themselves to ignore banner ads, so you will lose valuable real estate from websites. Instead, provide more valuable content and deliver relevant affiliate links in your content, and let your visitors feel they want to buy instead of being pressured to buy.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation.

You must provide a simple and very direct navigation menu so that even a small child knows how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash-based menus or multi-level drop-down menus. If your visitors do not know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply absorbed in navigating your site, you'll want to make sure they know where on the site they are at that moment. That way, they can navigate through the relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Do not confuse your visitors because confusion means "abandon the ship"!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay on your site for a long time, reading your content, you will want to make sure that the audio loops on your website do not bother you. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it: the volume or mute controls will work fine.
The importance of a sitemap


A site map is often considered redundant in the process of building a website, and that is the fact if you created a site map by having one. By highlighting the importance of having a well-constructed site map, you can adapt your own site map to meet your own needs.

1) navigation purposes

A site map acts literally like a map of your site. If your visitors browse your site and get lost among the thousands of pages on your site, they can always check your site map to see where they are and navigate through your pages with the greatest ease.

2) Transmit the theme of your site

When your visitors load your site map, they will get the essence of your site in a very short period of time. It is not necessary to obtain the "big picture" of your site by reading each page and, in doing so, you will save time for your visitors.

3) site optimization purposes

When you create a site map, you are actually creating a single page that contains links to each of the pages on your site. Imagine what happens when search engine robots arrive on this page: they will follow the links on the site map and, of course, each page of your site will be indexed by the search engines! It is also for this reason that a link to the site map should be placed prominently on the home page of your website.

4) Organization and relevance.

A site map allows you to have a complete bird's eye view of the structure of your site, and whenever you need to add new content or new sections, you can take into account the existing hierarchy just by looking at the site map. As a result, you will have a perfectly organized site with everything ordered according to its relevance.

For the above reasons, it is very important to implement a site map for website projects of considerable size. In this way, you can keep your website easily accessible and perfectly organized for everyone.