Professional Web Design News

Last week we talked about the different types of links (no-follow, reciprocal, one-way links) and I listed a few ways of getting each type of link. Well this week I am going to go into more detail about where to get links and what to look for when starting a link-building campaign.

When building links through any medium, there are a few things to keep in mind to ensure that you are not wasting your time on a particular site. First, make sure that anywhere you submit to does not use the “no-follow” attribute. Not very many places use this but if they do then you are wasting your time because your link on these types of websites will count for nothing. Another thing to look for is PageRank; the higher the PageRank of any given website the higher your link will be weighted by the search engines. They use the theory that if someone of high importance is linking to you, then you are probably of some importance yourself. However, don’t use PageRank as a decision maker alone because there are definitely some good websites with low PageRank and there are definitely some bad websites with high PageRank. Also, look for content; search engines like to see original content so if your link is on a page with text on it then it will be viewed in higher regard compared to a site with nothing but a list of links.

Directories

Submitting your website to different directories is probably the easiest and most common way to get links to your website. Most directories are either free directories, paid directories or reciprocal directories or any combination of these. Any of these can be quality directories so deciding where to submit to is up to what kind of campaign you are doing and how many quality links you are trying to get.

One thing to look for when submitting to directories, other than what I described above, is whether the directory is a general directory or a niche directory. General directories are much easier to find and there are thousands of them out there; however, because they are so general, your link will not be heavily weighted from a general directory compared to a niche directory. Niche directories are specifically about one topic, or a small amount of topics. Because these directories are so focused, if your content matches the topics of one of these directories then your link will be weighted higher.

Below is a small list of free and paid directories that I have found to be very good directories. This is only a quick, small list; I will save the full directory list for another article, another time.

Link Exchange Programs

Link exchange programs are usually fairly easy to find; whether it be through a mass exchange program between a lot of different companies and websites or just one of your business’ clients or other local businesses that you can exchange each other’s links. You can usually find a lot of link exchange requests in forums. These links are considered reciprocal links which are not bad for your website but they don’t really do a whole lot so I would only recommend spending time exchanging links with companies that are related content to your website.

Article writing

Writing articles is probably one of the best but most time-consuming way to get links. Google and other search engines really like to see unique content and when you write an article that consists of a lot of unique and original content, the search engines give a lot of weight to links attached to these. There are a lot of article directories out there that you can submit articles to and these will usually bring you pretty good article placement and traffic depending on the quality of your article. Again, the more your article is related to the content on your website, the high weight the search engine will attribute to that link. Unfortunately, this is a somewhat time consuming process because you are really only getting one link per article (articles are usually a few hundred words or more).

Below is a small list of a few article directories that you can submit articles to:

• Ezine Articles


• Qassia


• Article Dashboard


• Buzzle

Blog Comments

Leaving comments on other peoples blogs is a great way to get links and traffic, especially if their blog uses the “do-follow” attribute. Please make sure that when you are commenting on other people’s blogs, that you are providing some useful information or a useful comment because no one likes a spammer. They are providing you with an opportunity to generate links and traffic so the least you can do is have something useful to say. Besides, a lot of do-follow blogs usually moderate comments, so if you have a pointless post or it’s just an obvious link-drop then the moderator will probably just deny your comment and you just wasted your time.

Here is a list of some do-follow blogs: Dofollow Blog List

Or here a do-follow blog search engine: Dofollow Blog Search

Signature links

Signature links are usually specific to forums, chat rooms and emails. This is where you set a signature in your profile with you link in it; every time you make a post or send an email it attaches your link to the bottom of your post. With emails, the link does not help you with search engines but it can potentially increase traffic to your website. With forums however, your signature links are seen by search engines and do count as a link to your website. Forums are a great way to communicate with other people in your industry and it is a great place to ask and answer questions while getting a free link every time you make a post. Keep in mind, just like with any other links, the more the forum topics relate to your website’s content, the more value your signature links will be given by the search engines.

Social Media Networks

Social media has exploded with popularity on the internet within the past few years and while the topic of social media can be saved for another article, you can build links through social media networks. Most social media networks like MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. usually allow you to add a company website to your profile. These links are usually weighted pretty high by Google and other search engines, which makes it well worth doing but don’t expect to get a lot of links this way.

Below is a list of popular social media networks:

• MySpace


• Facebook


• LinkedIn


• SpicyPage


• Digg


• Technorati


• Eventful


• StumbleUpon

Labels: article submission, blog comments, directories, forum links, link building, linking, linking campaign, social media

Probably the most important part of search engine optimization is building good quality links back to your website. Anyone will tell you that a good SEO campaign consists mostly of a good linking campaign. Well what does that mean? What is a good linking campaign?

Search engines assign different weight values to different types of links and the higher the weighted value, obviously the more that incoming link helps your website. The goal to a good linking campaign is getting the most valuable links without wasting your time with links that the search engines do not give any weight to. Below is a list and description of different types of links, how to get them and what they do and do not do for your website:

No-follow links

These are the worst links to get and for the most part they are a waste of time. A no-follow link is a link that links to your website but in the code there is an attribute value (no-follow) set to tell the search engine not to follow the link. The only beneficial value to a link with the “no-follow” attribute is that your link is visibly seen which may or may not get users to click on it to go to your website; but the search engines will not give any value to these links because they do not follow them to your website. Some of the most common ways of getting links with the no-follow attribute are as follows:

• Lower quality directories sometimes use no-follow for their free submissions


• A lot of blogs have the no-follow attribute set for the comments section (this is to ensure that people don’t spam on another person’s blog because they have nothing to gain).


• If someone wants to display your web address on their site but does not want you to get the benefit of a link from them.

Reciprocal links

These are some of the most common types of links that consists of two sites that link to each other so they both gain some sort of SEO value. These links are usually fairly easy to get from directories or other websites but they require that you put their link on your website in return. If the content on the two sites are similar then the links will be viewed as more valuable but even still, reciprocal links are not valued to high in Google or other search engines. For example, if two sites about banking both linked to each other, the value of those links will be higher for both websites than if say a banking website had a reciprocal link with a pet store website. So it is better to get reciprocal links with sites similar to yours in regards to topics and content. But even if the two sites are not related you can still look at it as a link is a link. It may not have much weight to it but it is still a link and that only helps you and will not usually hurt you. The best way to get reciprocal links:

• A lot of paid directories offer free links with reciprocal


• Link exchange programs can be found on a lot of online communities


• Contact webmasters of sites similar to yours and request link exchange


• Some bloggers will offer to write a blog post about your website in their blog in exchange for their blog link on your website

One-way links

The best links that you can get to your website are one-way links. These are links from other websites to your website without you having to link back to them. These links hold the most value because in the search engine’s algorithmic mind, if someone is linking to you with no link back, then your website is probably offering some sort of service, product or information that is important enough to not require a link back. Just like with reciprocal links, the more the content and topics on the site linking to you are related to you, the more weight Google will give that link. One way links can be acquired from a lot of different sources:

• Article writing


• Directories


• Blogs


• If you provided a good service for someone it may be worth them linking to you


• Forum signatures


• Resource websites

So when you are trying to get links for your website, keep a look out for these three different types of links and try and get the most value for your time. Look for part II of this article soon as we will be going into detail about the different ways to get links and a little bit more on link weight and Pagerank values.

Labels: link types, linking, linking campaign, no-follow links, one-way links, reciprocal links, search engine optimization, seo

When it comes to search engine optimization and search engine marketing, every SEO expert has their own way of trying to get a site on the first page of Google. There are so many different tips and tricks that people use because there are no absolute set guidelines for how to optimize a website. However, there is one section of code that contains vital tags that should be found on any website that is being optimized and that is the head code (code located between the opening and closing head tags). This section should contain your title tag and your meta tags because this is code that is specifically for the search engines. SEO expert Matt Cutts from Google gave an interview with USA Today and he mentions a few tips about this section of code. He mentions that there are multiple meta tags that you should use but does not say exactly which ones. Below is a list and description of the best tags to use in this head code.

The Title Tag

According to Cutts, the title tag is one of the most important key tags to include in your website. This tag is what is usually displayed in the search results as well as at the top of your browser when you open a site. This tag should be the first piece of code after your opening head tag and it should have the name of your company and should include your keyword/keywords. You also have to keep in mind that Google hates keyword spamming so don’t just list off your keywords in the title tag; make it look natural. Search engines also only give weight to the first few words or so; so don’t make a title tag that is a full length sentence.

Meta keywords Tag

This tag is used to list the keywords that you want to be optimized for and what your site is about. A lot of people will fill this tag with a ridiculous amount of keywords, thinking that they are increasing the amount of words they will appear on. WRONG! This tag should only display the keywords that show up multiple times throughout that specific page of your website. This usually means around 3-5 keywords but definitely no more than 10 should be listed here. This tag is basically just preparing the search engine spider for what it is going to find throughout the page so there is no sense in using keywords that you do not have anywhere on that page. “Don’t worry that much about the keywords tag,” states Matt, “but there are a lot of other tags that you can use.”

Meta Description Tag

This is another very important key tag that you definitely want to include in your head code. Your description is what usually shows up right under the name of your company in the search results. Keep this description short and sweet and make sure it is rich with keywords (again, stay away from keyword spamming). Your description should start off with your primary keyword within the first couple words and then try and add a few other minor keywords within the sentence while making sure it still sounds like an actual sentence. Keep the description to less than or around 160 characters because that is all that is displayed by most search engines.

Meta Robots Tag

This meta tag is for specifying what the search engine robots can and cannot do when they reach your site. There are five terms that can be applied to the robots tag to tell the search-bots what to do when they get to the site: none, noindex, nofollow, all, index and follow. These terms need to be separated by commas if more than one is being used in the robots tag.

• None – robots are to ignore the page completely


• Noindex – page may not be indexed by the search engine


• Nofollow – robots should not follow any links within the current page


• All – robots are free to index the page and follow all links on the page


• Index – robots can include the page in their search results


• Follow – robots are welcome to follow links contained within the page

There is also a robots.txt file that can be placed inside your root folder that can specify sections of your site to ignore and you can specify this for each search engine (http://www.robotstxt.org/).

Meta Googlebot Tag

The Googlebot follows the same terms as the robots tag and an additional noarchive term. It is good to use this tag if you are applying the noindex, nofollow or noarchive terms to the robots tag because this can cause the Googlebot to not index, not follow and/or not archive the page. In the other sense you can tell the Googlebot to index and follow to guarantee that the Googlebot will index the page and follow the links on the page.

Meta MSNbot Tag

The MSNbot follows the same terms as the robots tag so using these in the robots tag can cause the MSNbot to not index the page or not follow the links. You can also use the “all” term to ensure that the MSNbot indexes the page and follows the links.

There are quite a few other meta tags that are out there that may be used for your specific application but for SEO purposes these are the best meta tags to use. Also keep in mind, just using the meta tag does not mean anything; it is the way you use it and how it accurately represents the actual content on your website that matters.

Labels: description, google, keywords, matt cutts, meta, meta tags, seo, seo expert, title tag

There is a very popular saying in the world of search engine optimization and that is “Content is King.” He/she who writes the most and best content is going to reap the benefits from the search engines. Google and other search engines have one primary goal in mind and that is to provide the internet searcher with the best search results for the keyword that they are searching for. These results are based on advanced search engine algorithms that primarily look at your pages content to determine keyword relevancy for each page in your website (I know, it’s kind of a mouthful).

The first major aspect to keep in mind when writing content for your website is the amount of content per page. You want to have a good amount of information and text on each page in order for the search engine to really give weight to your page and its keywords. It is usually recommended to have a minimum of 250 words for each page of your website that you want Google to index. This is about three average size paragraphs. You want this much content on each page because you want your website to be informative and have a lot of information on a certain topic/keyword. Remember the search engine only wants to show relevant results to the user and it is pretty doubtful that a site with 25 words on it is going to be relevant to the searcher.

Second thing to keep in mind when writing content is usage of keywords (for more info on choosing keywords check out SEO Tip Number 1: Choosing Keywords). You want your keywords to make up about 2% or 3% of your total content. So for a page with 250 words on it, you probably want your keyword to be repeated about 8-10 times. You want to primarily use the exact keyword or phrase but you can also break it up here and there if it fits more naturally (for example, if your keyword is something like “professional web design” you would want to use that phrase exactly most of the time but here and there you can use “web design,” Professional,” “professional design,” etc.). Sometimes this is necessary, especially if you are using key phrases, because a long key phrase does not always flow smoothly with the context of a sentence. This brings me to the next point.

Make sure your content flows smoothly because search engines read content very similar to a person. If you are just listing off keywords hoping the search engines will see you, they will; but then they will ban you for spamming. You want your keywords to flow with your content almost to the point that if someone was reading your text, they would have a hard time noticing the fitting of the keywords. Doing this will ensure that when a search engine spider crawls through your content, it will see that your website is truly about the keywords you posted in your meta tags and it will count your website as a good resource for that particular keyword.

One last important factor in content writing is staying on top of your content. Google and other search engines like to see websites that are constantly maintained and updated. Updating and adding content to your pages every so often will ensure that the search engines index your pages more often. Blogs are a great way to do this because they are easy to make posts and update content on the fly. Writing a blog post a few times a month or at least once a week will show the search engines that you are keeping up to date on your site and the website was not just something that was created, put live and then forgot about.

Good content is one of the most important aspects of an SEO compatible website. While there are many other factors that are involved in search engine optimization and a true SEO compatible website, “content is king.” Writing content is not usually the most fun thing in the world so there are companies out there that are professional content writers that can write SEO compatible content for you for a price such as http://www.pearlywrites.com. Whether you write the content yourself or you have someone else write your content for you, it will definitely be worth it in the end because the best SEO results come from good content and all other SEO efforts become less and less valuable if you do not have good content on your website.

Labels: content is king, professional web design, search engine optimization, seo, seo compatible

The Internet and technology have come a long way over the years. Technology is usually advancing so fast that it makes it difficult to buy things because everyone knows they will be out dated within a couple of months. Along with the advancing technology and advancing capabilities of the internet, professional web design has come a long way as well. Websites are now filled with high quality graphics, flash, javascripts, web applications and programs and just like with technology it will only get bigger and better.

The first online website ever created was made by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991. Obviously this was nothing fancy, in fact, it was just black text on a white background. Back when the internet was starting out this was all you needed. Companies did not care at all what a web site looked like because if you had a web page up, any web page at all, then you were already ahead of the game. The websites did not need to be super fancy because there were so little websites out there that there was not really any competition.

Then came the template style web pages. These were the next generation of websites that had images and color along with all the necessary content. Most of them were very uniform and blocky looking but they got the job done. For the time, these were great looking websites and most companies trying to get online would purchase or create these template style websites. It was nice because you could throw up your logo and use company colors and the site would look like a professional web design for your company. Template style websites are still created and used today although most of them have gone beyond the old school, blocky, uniform design.

Now the internet has gotten a whole lot faster and computer programs like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver have made it possible to create almost any web design you want. Also now that the internet is so big and so widely used, it is pretty much necessary for a company to have their own website. Now that there is so much competition online, companies are hiring web designers and creating unique and creative web designs to stand out and be different from the competition. Web designers and webmasters are constantly thinking of new, creative ways to professionally design websites and make them work. Here are some examples of some sites with really impressive flash capabilities: http://www.bluecotton.com or http://www.xpoz.com. Here are a couple of websites with some pretty creative and unique designs: http://www.musclecargarageaz.com or http://www.bird-malaysia.com. This site here, http://www.thefwa.com, has actually compiled a collection of creative and innovative websites; these sites are about as hardcore creative and unique as you can get, feel free to browse through and see the creativity and online capabilities of some of these sites.

As you can see, the web has now become a whole new entity. It has grown into something so big, it is hard to imagine the types of things you can find online. So if you are a business without a website or a business with a pretty basic website, it is coming to that point in time where you need to get online and stand out from your competition with a high-quality professional web design. SEO Compatible Design offers high-quality, creative, professional web design that is always SEO Compatible; give us a call or fill out a free quote form to see what we can do for your website.

Labels: internet, professional web design, seo compatible, technology, website