Archive for June, 2010:

SEO Basics: How to Choose the Right Keywords for SEO

Once you’ve taken the time to produce a complete checklist of key phrases and words to use for your web site, you may be facing a large number of search phrases to choose from. This kind of investigation will take your website in many directions if you aren’t careful in your keyword selection. If you are a first time site developer or business owner hoping to build a successful web site, getting the appropriate keywords matters. The job of paring down your search term choices to discover what people are looking for is often more important than the website design itself.

Write each and every in the keywords and phrases you have come up with and develop a chart or spreadsheet. This procedure is one of the ideal ways for you personally to pare down your selections in key phrases and also to develop an efficient and effectively balanced web site that functions for your distinct requirements. Analyze the terms you’ve got detailed in the chart with the following points in mind:

• Figure out what the most useful keywords are. This implies determining which keywords and phrases most relate for the theme of one’s website. If you sell stereo and TV’s, for example, you might look up individual make and models as well as assessor components.
• Find out how much traffic a keyword generates. You can use the Google Keyword Tool or other commercial software. By seeking which keywords are critical for your small business by their search volume, you’ll be able to really begin to determine the value of some words over other others.
• Find out the competitiveness of the keyword.  A simple keyword search on Google will give you how many other sites you are competing with.  You can narrow down the most serious competitors by searching Google with an all in title search, which will show pages with your keyword in their title. Another method of determining the competitiveness is looking at the first page of your keyword results as well the characteristics of the sites that show up on the first 3 spots. 80% of users click on sites on Google’s first page with the first position receiving 30-40% of all clicks. When analyzing these position rankings check how many back links are to those pages and the Page Rank of the page. This will tell you how much work must be done to be in the top 3 spots.

The objective in developing this type of chart is always to give you additional details and comparison resources to assist you to opt for the keywords and phrases which have been going to attain your targets for the website. There are several distinct terms available and sometimes it is not uncommon to possess 10,000 or a lot more keywords that could relate to the internet site. Nevertheless, that doesn’t imply that you simply ought to use all of individuals terms. If wish to succeed in search engine optimization you must choose keywords you can rank in the first page of Google.

When conducting research about SEO and key word utilizes, there are several things to look at. You most likely desire to choose search phrases that include a good selection of the most well-liked keywords and phrases similar to your internet site. That only makes sense given that this can be what ultimately will figure out if your web page is heading to fit the wants for your clients and guests. Even so, hitting all those top search phrases may possibly simply not be enough to obtain you within the major standing for the look for engine results pages. How could this be?

Article Marketing 101 for the Busy Business Owner

If you are reading this article, you are probably a business owner looking to increase your web traffic. You have probably researched the various methods employed in effective SEO marketing, and may have contacted a few SEO firms out there. As you have probably read, article marketing is an effective way to build quality back links and bring traffic to your website. Article Marketing is the foundation of many SEO strategies for the simple reason that good content is king, and Google looks to reward those who provide quality content.

What this article will attempt to do is show you the key points on how to put together an effective article marketing campaign.  You will have to spend your time or a little money, and probably both.  Article marketing is not an overnight success story and should be thought of as a long-term endeavor.

Point 1: Choose the right keyword. It is a tremendous waste of time and energy should you begin working on a project, only to discover out later which you can’t make any product sales because of your poor keyword choice. It is very important that you just get to know the industry first. Understand how your consumers are searching for a product. One should only enter the niche if you really feel confident of creating product sales.  You must take time and conduct research on the competitiveness of a particular set key phrases or key words for your service or product. Without quality keywords, you cannot effectively market your articles.

Point 2: You must generate quality content. You cannot copy verbatim other people’s work on the internet has most search engines can account for duplicate content. Furthermore, there are services such as copyscape.com that can tell if you have stolen and plagiarized other peoples work. The key to writing good content is to answer the question of your consumers, and provide solutions. A simple way to brainstorm ideas for articles is simply writing down the questions your customers or clients have asked in the past. Another method is to send out a customer satisfaction questionnaires to previous consumers. An added benefit of sending out customer satisfaction questionnaires with written responses (instead of just multiple choice) is you will see the language of how your customers ask questions. This is extremely important since it gives you a valuable insight in keyword research.

Point 3: Choose the right article directories. There are hundreds of article directories out there so you must choose the right ones to spend your time submitting to. Most of the well known directories will not allow you to submit duplicate content. That often means you have to rewrite your article for each directory submission. When choosing the right directory you must check the article directories Page Rank (PR) and number of visitors. One of the main reasons you are article marketing is for back links and obviously the higher the PR of an article directory, the higher quality your back link will be. Obviously article directories that have millions of visitors are important, but don’t overlook smaller directories that specialize in a particle niche. For example, if you are a contractor and writing a “how-to” article  one of the best places to submit is ehow.com

Tips for a Web Designer to create efficient User Experience (UX) process

Good User Experience (UX) is a planned process and it is difficult in creating a good user experience. Why do we do it? As a web designer, we want to take a strategic approach in creating the website.

When creating a website for User Experience (UX), start by examining factors! Is product findable? Where do you get it? What is it? How do I use it? Is it desirable?

Start the creation by using design, structure, and communication. Research and understand the end-user, focus on their behavioral traits rather than general market criteria. Tell a story, during the UX design process, outline each phase to it is more organized. Define what your working on, find goals, find design principles on how it makes the end-user feel, understand the needs of the end-user and administrator of the website, post each element into separate layout blocks and design a sitemap, then finally, create and implement your prototype.

Finally, testing is an important feature throughout the design process whether within your facility or from focus groups. Finding a real user to interact with the experience creates the best results.

User Experience, Future of Web Design

User Experience, Future of Web Design

User Experience, also known as ‘UX’ has become an essential component of web design process and can be sometimes subjective or hard to create the perfect experience. Specifically, it is what the customer perceives when engaged in your product.

How do I define user experience (UX)?

User experience deals with getting inside your end-users heads. When someone sees a website, what do they think, feel, expect! The psychology behind web design has never been more important. Some websites make you feel affirmed, confident, free to share and be yourself.

It is difficult in deciding what human psychology expects. Why? Because it is impossible to read someone’s mind or know exactly how they will react. But we can predict and test to make sure we are on the right track. UX design deals with visual, interaction, and content. Finding a way to articulate and combine all these features to find the optimized way can be achieved by putting the experience of using something should feel like.

Since the birth of the internet, web design began with a very cookie cutter approach, simplistic, but it has changed to a more dynamic approach. There are hundreds of web languages and frameworks to use like html, css, php, html5, css3, java, jquery that allow a website to have features such as forums, social networks, drag-able drop features, etc. We have moved from people learning about command lines, to input systems, GUI interfaces, and UX brings forth natural user interfaces. There are more tools to create a website that or flexible and usable. Once UX is mastered, websites will now become more persuasive.

The question is not if someone can use the site, but the question now becomes if they want to. For a web designer, to achieve a website that is effective, we take several steps in design a website with User Experience from: interface design, information architecture, usability and product design.

Combining these elements make a presentation that incorporates interaction and organization. It starts with understanding the user experience from start to finish. It grows beyond just what a website looks like and how it functions.