Site Navigation:Navigation should be simple. The less Javascript and Flash, the better. Although Google is beginning to learn how to crawl flash, it’s still not as good as text. Link all your pages together. Most of the pages should be accessible from your homepage. Do not use frames under any circumstance. All frames are bad. Avoid linking with images if possible.

Meta tags: Use <Description> and <Keywords> Metatags. Metatags do not have as much effect today with Google, but other search engines still rely on them heavily and they always help your ranking. Remember that what you use for a description will often be used as the search results description so write it well. The <Keywords> Metatag allows for you to input as many keywords as you want, however, 20 is a good number to aim for. Do not use keywords that are not found on your page.

Inbound links: Although inbound links remain largely out of your control, they are a great asset to you website. Links from similar websites are some of the most valuable as well as high PR links and e.du and .gov links. Do your best to avoid links from link farms and avoid linking to such websites. If you have any control over it, have different anchor text for your inbound links.

Unique content: Content is king. Content is the most important part of your website. If you have good content, visitors will return often to see what is new. They will spread the word about your site. Search engines can recognize unique content and they highly favor sites with original information.

Domain Expiration Date: Extending your domain’s expiration date can be a great thing for your website. It’s one way of telling search engines that you plan to stick around and aren’t a fly by night site. Expiration date does not have a huge effect on SEO but between 2 similar sites, the one with the later expiration will show up first in results.

Keyword Density: Too many keywords in your text and search engines view it as spamming. It also takes away from your content if you are specifically trying to stuff it with keywords. No one wants to read an article that uses “X Brand Hot dogs” in every sentence. Then again, if you have to few keywords in your text, it is difficult for search engines to decipher what it is about and which keywords to index it as. As a general rule, try to stay between 3%-6% keyword density.

What IS Cutting-Edge Web Design?

Admittedly, it is just as ambiguous a term as “web 2.0”, but it does have meaning. I’ve most commonly heard ‘cutting edge’ refer to new technologies that are just emerging into use, but it’s not limited to that. I’d consider some color schemes, design techniques and even new uses for existing products or services to be included. Most importantly, the term is mostly indefinable and totally discretionary.

Who Are You Designing For?

Web designers are getting creative. Really creative. Maybe too creative. Take a look at designer Bryan Veloso’s site, Avalonstar (seriously, go ahead). There are some really nice, “cutting-edge” effects here. Since Bryan describes his site as ‘his playground’, the design is exactly what it should be – whatever he wants. More often than not, however, sites are being built to connect with consumers of some kind and are not just our design ‘playgrounds’. This means that the consumers should, at least at some level,  be dictating our sites’ designs .

If the designer’s responsible for AARP.org were to use a similar design, they would absolutely be missing the mark. AARP is an “organization for people age 50 and over.” The youngest a member could possibly be in this organization (born 50 days ago, today) would have been nearly 40 when AOL 3.0 first launched on Windows 95. In addition to being more prone to vision problems that would make lower-contrast sites difficult to read, this demographic as a whole is far less familiar with the internet than most 4 year-olds today.

Providing a cutting-edge website to this demographic doesn’t mean pumping it up with a bucket of Silverlight and 3 cans of ‘web 5.0’… Simply using the internet is cutting-edge to some consumers. Keeping your consumers’ aptitudes in mind will help you keep their viewership.

]]> http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/its-great-to-be-cutting-edge-unless-you-get-cut/feed/ 0 http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/a-few-key-rules-of-excellent-web-design/ http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/a-few-key-rules-of-excellent-web-design/#comments Wed, 27 Aug 2008 03:24:54 +0000 Anders Haig http://reencoded.com/?p=454 Whether the incentive behind building one’s website is business related or personal, it is important that one’s website must look professional in its design. Along with a beautiful and professional design a website must be very interactive and structural. When designing a website one wants to keep the user in mind. One wants their content to be easily viewable and easily accessible. In short one’s website should be user friendly. In order to make the website user friendly some key principles must be used. These principles include fast loading time, browser compatibility, organization, and the design should be related to the content to a certain extent.

To create a fast loading time it is a very good idea to create a clean and basic HTML page while flash is nice it takes a long time to load and can get very messy at times. A another great idea is to not use too many high resolution graphics try to keep the page clean and simple. Overuse of graphics and effects will cause the website to load much slower than it needs to. A fast loading time goes hand in hand with organization. If one organizes the website nicely then one will be able to create a clean and simple layout that loads quickly. The organization of one’s website determines how long a visitor or user will stay on the website. The user is more likely to read the content on the website if it is well organized. The clean layout design is a a design that actively uses the white space to enhance a website’s appeal. Try focusing on the content of the site, and use fonts that are available on most or all computers. By concentrating on the content of the website it makes things a lot easier for the visitors or users which in turn creates traffic for the website and this causes the website to gain popularity. The golden key to a good web design is one that is professional, content based, and easily accessible.

Wix is a web-based application that allows average users to create flash-based websites and content. It is a completely free service and is not template based meaning you can create an unconstained design. With google learning to crawl flash content, there’s few reasons not to start building more websites in flash and Wix offers complete control over photos, video, images, text, animation etc, without difficult and confusing configuration files.

Wix doesn’t compare with a premium website but a competent web designer but it is the best thing on the web for users with no experience and at free, you can’t beat the price. Everything is easy to use and doesn’t require training.

Wix offers an intuitive interface and native support for multiple flash photo gallerys, video players, text animations and other flash widgets. Wix enhances artistic self-expression by allowing anyone to publish media rich content on the web.Wix.com itself is created by the Wix platform so give it a look today.

Usability
Web developers can often get so caught up in have a cutting edge, up to the minute design, that they forget about the visitors to the website. Without return visitors, and increased traffic to your website, your product or services won’t sell and your information will not be heard. This is where usability comes in. Usability basically means that your website readers are able to navigate easily through your website to find the item, service or article that they have been looking for. If the pages on your website are not clearly outlined, visitors will often become frustrated, leave your website and search for another website that fits their needs. This is why popular websites generally have an easy to read menu bar at the top or side of the web page, and navigation buttons throughout the graphical columns on the front page.

Fast Downloads
It doesn’t matter how amazing the graphics on your website look if they take too long to download. In this fast paced, microwave society, high-speed downloads are essential for a well designed website. If a video on your website takes so long to download that it bogs up the visitor’s computer, they are unlikely to return to your website, or to refer your website to others. If, on the other hand, the website has excellent graphics, videos, and flash that are quick to load and presented in an effective manner, your visitor retention rate will increase dramatically. Try out Yslow to help your site in this area.

Effective Content
Another important ingredient of a website is the actual wording, known as content, on the web pages. On the front page of your website, the content should be clear, concise and to the point. Visitors should be able to understand the basics of your website by briefly viewing this content. The content should be short stories or paragraphs which lead your visitors to the other pages within your website. Once the visitor has chosen another page on your website to view, this is your opportunity to expand on your information, offer your products or services, or inform your visitors of your contact information. Each page should have content that is limited to the overall theme of the web page, perhaps adding additional links to your other web pages, or related websites. Readers appreciate websites that have contact information, prices, and product or service descriptions clearly outlined. After all, that is why the visitor chose to come to your website in the first place!

The Bad Website Syndrome
Avoiding the bad website syndrome is easier than you may think. When you design your website, the last thing that you want to do is turn readers away by having a bad or ineffective website. A website is a great way to showcase the professionalism of your company, and increase the confidence that a customer or visitor has in your company. Bad websites generally have hard to read content and text and show a lack of organization.

Content
Inspired web designers know the importance of creating content that is easy to read. One way to do this is to use a medium to large size bold font that does not clash with the color of the background. Don’t use hard to read colors for the text or background such as lime green or lemon yellow. Limiting the amount of CAPITALIZED TEXT is important as well because too much capitalization can be hard on the eyes, and cause the text to blend together. Content must also be easy for the reader to understand and free from spelling and grammatical mistakes. It is important to proofread your content for inaccuracies and errors, and correct them accordingly. Enlist the help of your friends and family members to ensure that your website content showcases your products, services or information appropriately. There are many programs and services available to assist you in this process if you need a little help.

]]> http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/advice-for-the-inexperienced-web-designer/feed/ 0 http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/guide-to-buying-traffic/ http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/guide-to-buying-traffic/#comments Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:20:19 +0000 Kyle Robbins http://reencoded.com/?p=311 While many niches depend on PPC search traffic, there’s a wide group of sites that benifit from bought traffic from individual sites.  Often times you can get very high quality traffic that converts very well from niches that tend to deal in a more direct site to site type traffic deal, rather than 3rd party ad networks.

This guide is mostly to be used when buying traffic from forums, from individual websites, and from “plug” type packages, yet there are many things that transfer over to more traditional PPC outlets.  Without further ado, on to the guide:

1. Know what they are sending. Get 3rd party tracking software and use it. I use LinkFacts.com. I’m sure there’s TONS more. The great thing is, this tracks in real time and tracks BEFORE ANYTHING LOADS… It also tells me uniques vs. raw and countries that traffic is from.

I use this to track links FROM my sites for most larger campaigns (mostly just to check my system numbers and give a 3rd party view of what happened if there’s problems). Often times you will find that it’s not the traffic, rather it’s the way you track it.

2. Don’t buy out of your means! If you need the profit for paid traffic to buy your next meal, you’re probably going to get burnt. Remember, the return for your traffic isn’t always going to show up right away. As you grow, you also have more opportunities, more places to trade with, better sponsor opportunities, etc. Also, don’t buy HUGE packages from BIG sites just because they are big.

3. Understand that traffic is only worth what you can make on your site. This is where too many sites get in trouble. You don’t have any idea what traffic is worth on your site. You should know exactly how much every visitor on your site makes. You should know exactly how much you can spend to break even.

]]> http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/guide-to-buying-traffic/feed/ 0 http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/make-your-content-work-for-you-creating-and-promoting-viral-content/ http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/make-your-content-work-for-you-creating-and-promoting-viral-content/#comments Thu, 14 Aug 2008 07:05:56 +0000 Kyle Robbins http://reencoded.com/?p=284 Viral Content:  The only kind of virus people actively seek.  Google’s paying millions for it, making a huge purchase of the king of viral content, YouTube over the past few years.  And if Google sees viral content as the wave of the future, who am I to disagree.  If you haven’t heard the term “Viral Content” you have at least been exposed to the idea…  Creating content that spreads rapidly around the internet through word of… mouse.

With the cost of quality traffic rising and reaching and maintaining top search engine position becoming more and more difficult as EVERYONE is moving to the net, viral content blows up one of the most spouted off cliche of all time… “NOTHING IS FREE”.  The exposure and added traffic that an amazing piece of content can generate is free.  That’s the beauty… with a truly viral piece of content, everyone else does your promotion for you, letting you sit back and enjoy the ride.

While some viral content has much more “exposure power” than others, every type of site in nearly every niche can produce some type of viral content. Different sites offer different ceilings, with humor, video, entertainment, and gaming sites offering huge platforms for amazing amounts of viralness.  But even if you own something more, umm, boring, you can still reap the benifits of everyone else promoting your site.

Here’s a few tips for creating viral content and an example of each:

1. Give your visitors tools to download or use that relates to your content.  If you own a financial blog you might use a microsoft access spreadsheet that you keep your budget with.  It would make sense to brand that spreadsheet with your logo, create a link or two on the sheet, clean it up really nice, and release it with your post on balancing your budget.  If your visitors download and use that, they’ll see your logo and have many opportunities to continue visiting your site.

2. Consider what tools you use daily in your niche and/or are asked for by your visitors and offer them to your visitors. Say you have a baseball blog and everyday write articles using tons of numbers and stats… from OPS to OBP to ERA to WHIP.  Why not create a feature that shows what those numbers are, how to figure them out, and give a calculator that they can add to their site that will do the work.

3.  Think like a chain letter! I’m sure you get them still.  Those stupid letters that say “if you don’t pass it on, you will die or have bad luck or lose your hair… And if you do, you’ll find your love, millions of dollars, and happiness.”  Now, everyone in the world knows these are fake and stupid… Yet people still pass them on because, well, maybe they aren’t fake.  And it can’t hurt right?  The power of suggestion is a VERY powerful thing indeed.  Use it to your advantage!

4. Use Guides, Lists, and Humor! People love top 10 lists, they love bullets, and they ADORE humor!

]]> http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/make-your-content-work-for-you-creating-and-promoting-viral-content/feed/ 0 http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/want-to-know-what%e2%80%99s-red-hot-adobe-flex/ http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/want-to-know-what%e2%80%99s-red-hot-adobe-flex/#comments Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:25:23 +0000 Kyle Robbins http://reencoded.com/?p=238 I am not going to insult your intelligence and try to teach you how to use Adobe Flex because frankly, I am just learning. Over the past few months, every major project and initiative I’ve heard about has components built using Adobe Flex. With the emergence of Flash as a usable technology and ActionScript as a top notch coding language, Adobe Flex has quickly become the hottest new tool in uber trendy web development circles.

So what is it? And what does it do? Well, the according to Adobe: “Create engaging, cross-platform rich internet applications. Flex is a highly productive, free open source framework for building and maintaining expressive web applications that deploy consistently on all major browsers, desktops, and operating systems.”

For me, it’s takes all the possibilities of flash, seamlessly integrates it into about any application you want, allows the interactivity of AJAX, and does so with a very basic knowledge of ActionScript. The more ActionScript you know, the more amazing things you can do. If you’re used to coding in PHP or standard ASP, it’s a completely new and intuitive way to look at application development, yet not so far fetched that you’d never catch on. It almost reminds me of .NET when I first started looking into it, as I wondered where it had been all my life… Yet this is totally cross-browser and platform capable.

So you want to see it in action? Here’s the demo from Adobe that literally blew me away. I’ve created video sites on numerous occasions and have used RSS feeds extensively throughout these sites. I feel like I’ve written very similar scripts using PHP and ASP that took at least a week to create. With Flex, this demo had the base of what took me at least a few hours done in the first minute! Check out this demo! FLEX APP

Personally, I use two different sites, both have subscription packages (which is the best deal if you use lots of images) and sell individual images.  Both start at just $1 for many images and are safe and secure.  I have found both have VERY talented photographers and between the two, I can almost always find what I have in mind.