The Creative Design Blog

When it comes to website graphics and design, you must always make sure that every detail runs smoothly and serves a purpose. To help guide you, here are seven very important steps to observe and help you bring your website to the top of it’s game.

1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the very first sites that you see when you come to a website. They usually have flashy pictures and words that draw you in. Remember though that all they are are pretty pictures to draw you in, nothing more. Don’t give people a reason to leave! Show them that your site has meaning, without using a splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least knowledgeable people have trained themselves to block out banner ads, so do not waste your time or internet real estate! Rather, fill up that space with content and possible links to go with the content, instead of useless advertising. Make your customers feel welcome, not forced in!

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

You always have to provide a very straightforward way to the product, so that anyone can use your website efficiently. Stay clear of Flash menus that have multi dropdown menus, no one wants to mess with that, and if no one knows how to use it, they will leave your site for good.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don’t confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they’re not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it — volume or muting controls would work fine.

Before you buy, create, or build online, make sure you check John Neyman’s excellent free website on Website Graphics, and Website Design

If you examine the HTML coding of a web page, the Meta tags are HTML codes that are inserted o the header of a web page, between the “opening” and “closing” HEAD tags. Meta tags provide information about your Web page to search engine robots so that the search engine can better understand what your site is about. Meta tags provide this information in a format that the web crawlers/spiders that visit your site can understand.

Meta tags were the original way to tell search engines what your page was about. Meta tags list information about the web page, such as the author, keywords, description, type of document, copyright, and other core information. Lastly, Meta tags are not visible in the web page unless the user selects to ‘view source’.

Several types of Meta Tags

The Description Meta Tag: should contain a coherent description of the page, and should contain words that are located within the page content.

The Copyright Meta Tag: is utilized to indicate that your information and facts is copy righted.

The Author Meta Tag: is used to insert a name belonging to the webmaster or organization.

The Language Meta Tag: is utilized by regional search engines.

The Charset Meta Tag: is used to tell the browser which character set to use.

The Distribution Meta Tag: is used to tell search engines whether the page is global or locally oriented.

The Rating Meta Tag: is employed to set an audience content rating.

The Robots Meta Tag: is utilized to inform search engines whether to index and/or crawl a web page or not.

The Revisit Meta Tag: is used to tell search engines when to come back next and index your web page again. It has been stated the Meta Revisit After tag will boost your site’s rankings with search engines that credit fresh pages. Search engines, nevertheless, will not obey the Meta Revisit After tag and will come back to index your website on their own schedule, not when you notify them to.

The Expires Meta Tag: is used to tell search engines when when the page and content is no longer valid.

The Meta Refresh tag: is used to specify a delay in seconds before the browser automatically reloads the document or URL specified. It is recommended not to use the Meta Refresh tag as search engines can detect the use of the Meta Refresh tag and they consider it Spam.

Want to find out more about Meta Tags and how they after your site? Visit AdVantage SEO. Information covering search engine optimization, PPC advertising, web design, usability issues and social media marketing.

“Form follows function” is a dictum first postulated by the famous architect, Louis Sullivan. His advice is still valid today and can be used on your website(s) to improve the sales conversion rate. Many people have pretty websites that don’t convince people to buy their product. This is because they haven’t considered how to design the website to elicit the response they want. This report will outline 5 easy steps to correct that problem. It is part of an much longer free report that gives 25 easy steps that can make your website a superstar.

1 – Using one color, one font and one text size is boring. Once a reader gets bored, they leave and they don’t come back. Using bright contrasting colors with varied font styles and text sizes creates interest and people will stay longer on your site and read more of the information. It’s a fact that people don’t read web pages, they scan them. If they get bored or don’t quickly get the information they want, they’re gone. Using color and multiple text styles will keep them longer and give you more opportunities to sell them on your product.

2 – Give people a reason to buy – today. Everybody loves a “deal” and people on the internet are no different. You have to provide more value and one way to do that is add a “free bonus” or a “one time offer” or a discount that expires in 12 hours or something that sweetens the deal. Why does an appliance dealer advertise the “red tag special?” Because it works. Obviously using any, or all, of these offers won’t result in a 100% sales conversion. Nothing will do that. But if you combine these ideas, you will get more buyers and make more money.

3 – People are inherently mistrustful of buying on the internet. They have heard about scams and may have been a victim of one themselves. You have to gain their trust quickly. One way to to this is to make it easy for them to contact you. Some internet marketers are outsourcing a customer service phone or offering “instant chat” to make their potential customers feel that there is a person on the other end of the web page. Using testimonial from happy customers is also a great way to make your potential customers trust that your product will solve their problem.

4 – Stick with the familiar. Have on your page things that people know. For example, having a Paypal option allows people who have used Paypal to feel more comfortable about buying from you. If your product has any write-ups in magazines or newspapers or if you can put “As Seen on TV” on your web page will add credibility and trust.

5 – Always Be Testing! Micro test and split test everything. This is the only way to incrementally improve your sales. It’s not hard to do. Try one landing page with a blue background and another with an orange background. Is there any difference in sales? If so, keep the one that works and try another color. Does that one work better? If not, try another color. Also try using different words. Does “Buy Today” work better than “Buy Now?” Just remember always be testing.

Increasing your internet profits is a never ending process. Get your free report 25 Great Tips To Building High Converting Websites . It will expand on the ideas I have shared here and give you ideas that will astonish you with their simplicity and deadly effectiveness. Youll send your profits through the roof. The report 25 Great Tips To Building High Converting Websites is free. Get it now!

What exactly are Meta Tags?

If you examine the HTML coding of a web page, the Meta tags are HTML codes which have been inserted in the header of a web page, between the “opening” and “closing” HEAD tags. Meta tags provide data about your Web page to search engine robots so that the search engine can better understand what your web page is about.

Are Meta Tags still important to SEO?

Meta tags were the classic way to tell search engines what your web page was about. Meta tags list details about the web page, like the author, keywords and phrases, description, type of document, copyright, and other key information. However, because of spamming of keywords and massive abuse of Meta tags by adult-oriented sites, their significance has greatly diminished in the search engine algorithms.

That is not to say that meta tags are completely useless. Yahoo! And Bing still make use of Meta Tags in their search engine algorithms when it comes to ranking websites, Google places emphasis mostly on the Title Meta tag and the amount of backlinks to a webpage.

Meta tags, for example, can tell a browser what “character set” to use or whether a web page has self-rated itself in terms of adult content. Meta Tags are not always required, but as a rule of thumb, it makes much more sense to take advantage of them than to leave them out. If the Meta Tags are not in place, the search engines will generate their own description of the web site based on the content found within the first 200 words of the web page. This might not always be optimized for keyword density, consequently affecting your page’s ranking in the search engines. By correctly optimizing Meta Tags with your targeted keywords and phrases, you have more control over what is displayed in the search engines for your web page.

SEO tips for optimizing your Meta Tags

Meta tags are not magic bullets for search engine ranking, but they are far from being dead. Meta tags with informative, well-written descriptions and targeted keywords and phrases should be an integral part to your promotional strategy.

Title tag: This will be the most significant meta tag since Google pays special attention to the keywords and phrases used inside the Title tag. Ensure it’s no longer than 70 characters long and insert your main keyword at the beginning of the Title tag for maximum effect.

Description tag: This is the second most important meta tag because it is displayed in the Search engines, and should contain keywords reflected in the Title tag, and an accurate summary of what the page topic is about. Do not use more than 155 characters in the Meta description tag.

Keywords tag: This is the least significant Meta tag as Google doesn’t pay much attention to it due to the prevalence of keyword spam. A general rule is to contain keywords that are present from the page content, with no more than 10 keywords recommended.

Understand how Meta Tags affect your site’s performance in the search engines. Visit Advantage SEO. Information covering search engine optimization, PPC advertising, web design, usability issues and social media marketing.

Want to take your site on top 10 search engine ranking? If yes, then I have some tips for you. Yes, in this article I will give you some tips using which you can take your site at the top of the search engines. There are numerous sites being constructed every day. And also each website wants to get the top position. Due to this competition is increasing a lot and it is becoming more and more difficult to take the site to the top.

Just have a look at some of the useful tips to take your website to the top 10 search engine ranking. These tips will be very helpful and easy to implement.

First of all keep a check on all the instructions that are given by the search engines. It is important that you design your website according to the instructions. The main reason behind building your website according to this is that the search engines give first priority to the websites which are built according to the guidelines and by this way the ranking of your website increases a lot. This is the first step that you should take into account while designing your website to take it to the top 10 search engine ranking.

The second step is to use different keywords in the website. It is important that you use keywords in the content of the website and sprinkle it around the content. This will increase your website ranking. This is because whenever somebody searches for a particular keyword on the website the search engine checks in which websites the keyword is present and then list the websites. For example you put the keyword cars in the search engine. Now what search engine will do it will search for the websites in its database and see the keyword cars in the websites. Then it will list the websites with the keyword. The listing is done according to many different priorities. But it does not mean that you start keyword stuffing as it will only bring bad name to the website.

The third thing that you should do is to make a professional reading link and keep it in different websites. Whenever somebody looks at the other websites they may also look the link to your website and may click it which will help in increasing the popularity of the website. This is also a useful way to increase the ranking of the website and take it to the top 10.

You can also write articles about your website and place the articles in your own website and in different article directories. Also place the link of your website under the article. People read articles from article directories and hence may click the link to the website.

If you put your links and articles in paid websites then it will help a lot in popularizing the website as the search engines keep the paid sites on the top.

One of the most important points is that the coding of the website should be in HTML or DHTML. Search engines read this coding easily.

You need to be top 10 search engine ranking to make your website get noticed by many online visitors. In this way can you draw more income for your online store. Or you may want to improve search engine rankings.

Search engine optimization is increasingly being accepted as a powerful and critical component of the marketing plan. With the costs involved in other forms of online marketing growing significantly, it has become almost a necessity for companies to include SEO in their overall marketing mix.

So it should be at no surprise that the SEO industry is booming and new company’s who claim they are experts but are in fact very far from it pop up every single day. Today finding the reliable seo service becomes a very mundane and scary task.

Search engine optimization firms employ varying methods to get high rankings for websites and not all of these techniques are considered ethical. With the increasing number of ‘black hat’ SEO firms, (companies using unethical and unfair methods and techniques to manipulate search engines), and the thin line between actual ‘black hat’ and ‘white hat’ SEO practices, it is crucial to be well informed of the methodology the company plans to use for your website before you decide to hire them.

Here you will now find 8 simply tricks that you really do need to use in order to keep your site safe and to help you choose a trustworthy search engine optimization service provider:

1. Firstly you want to understand the basics of seo so that you don’t end up paying top end prices for bottom end services that you really don’t need and that wont help you or your site. Simply take a few hours and search google for ‘basic seo’ and you will find loads of information to get you started!

2. Your project budget. In general search engine optimization services are split into packages with varying things included in each such as directory submissions, social bookmarking and video submissions etc. But you shouldn’t just choose a company based on it’s price, after all the most expensive company could in fact offer the same as a cheaper company. What you instead need to do is evaluate what you need for your site and then find a package to suit in order to realize your budget.

3.Size and specialty of the firm Depending on the size of your website and requirements of your company, it might be a good idea to check out whether the firm is adequately staffed and what their customer to SEO team ratio is.

Another important thing is to ensure that the company specializes in all areas of SEO and has a team of professionals experienced and accomplished in each of the areas including design, development and actual coding.

4. Where are they? This solely depends upon your choice and can often reflect on the pricing too. Local company’s means you can normally keep in touch with them a lot better whereas a off shore or abroad firm may be alot cheaper but contacting the may be a bit more difficult as you can’t just walk into their office.

5. Reviews and References. These are really important and something every reliable company should have. If they don’t then ask them if you can see some or talk with some previous client’s especially if your spending alot of money too.

6. Policy’s. A lot of company’s don’t offer any sort of guarantee in rankings and it shouldn’t. It is very normal for them to say you will get more traffic and rankings from where it is now but to guarantee a specific ranking is wrong and cannot be completely controlled by them. So make sure you understand this!

7. Company Ethics. As we said before the firm’s ethics are very very important, if they are going to go out and spam your site everywhere and call that professional seo then they should be in for a shock. Not only will it hurt your site in the long run, any raise in positions that they do achieve will only be short term and by the time you see them drop their guarantee period will have run out and your left off worse than before.

8. Success measurement and reports. Make sure you ask the following questions. What reports will i be getting? How long will the service take and how long until i can see a report?

It is largely up to you to define the goal and success level of your SEO campaign. It may be an increase in the traffic to your site, potential leads from a mailing list subscription, or an increase from last years sales. Make it a point to discuss and articulate your goals with the SEO firm and come to an agreement before you hire them. It is however important to set realistic expectations. Unlike PPC and other forms of paid advertising, SEO is a time consuming process, both in terms of implementation as well as results.

To conclude, hiring a SEO services firm can have a significant impact on your company’s bottom line, however the decision to partner with a particular SEO firm should only ensue after a careful evaluation of the firm and after you have done the groundwork necessary to help you decide your own goals for the program.

That being said i can recommend the following company to buy backlinks from which i have used before and who will run a full seo service for you at a reasonable price and who’s backlinks rank your website.

With the incredible rapid growth that online video sharing and video search sites are realizing, more and more advertisers are pumping money into video advertising. According to the latest research, online video advertising revenues in the US are expected to reach $7.1 billion by 2012 which is a 72 percent compound annual growth rate for the next five years. In 2008, the projections are just shy of $1billion.

Because of the keen interest of the advertisers towards the online video segment, many video sharing sites have been encouraged to come up with different formats for the placement of video advertisements. The quantum of investment in this segment has fueled innovation of the methods in which video sites are deploying online video monetization and advertising programs. In-stream (pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll) advertisement formats have been in existence longest and have produced a good share of revenue for online video content producers.

Pre-Roll Ads – In this format of advertising, the advertisement clip is inserted before the actual video and while playing the video, the advertisement clip is played first and the viewer is compelled to watch the advertisement before the start of the real video file.

Post-roll Format – In post-roll, just like the other in-stream ad formats, a short clip is played and streamed within the player at the end of the video stream itself. This is not as desired by advertisers as they know that many users never watch a video all the way until the end.

Mid-Roll Format – With mid-rolls, a short clip is streamed in the middle (sometimes every X minutes) of video content that is playing. This tends to be less annoying to users as they are accustomed to this format in television advertising.

As stated earlier, due to the demand, many of these video websites have begun to test and offer new, innovative ad solution for video. One of these experimental format is the In-Player ad: With in-player ads the player skin itself can be used to place relevant images or text content for the advertiser so that the ad is displayed for the entire time that the video is played.

One of the most promising video advertisement formats is contextual advertising which attempts to match advertisements with the most relevant content and visa-versa. This ad itself can take of various different forms, in-video banners, lower-thirds, and contextual text overlay advertisements. The nice thing about this particular method is that it does not disturb the viewing of the video and it responds only when the viewer clicks on it.

One of the most popular version of contextual video advertising is that of what is known as the “overlay ad.” In this format, relevant textual ads are scrolled or displayed across a small portion of the video screen (usually the bottom). Users in particular prefer this format as it is relatively unobtrusive.

Although there are a few other formats that are being tested and utilized, the formats that I covered are the most commonly used formats at the moment. That being said, with the attention on this sector as it is, we will likely continue to see rapid innovation and will keep our eye out for the next best online video ad format.

This post was provided by ReelSEO, the web’s leading resource for online video industry news and information, covering video marketing, video advertising, social media, and much more. For more information specifically about internet video advertising, visit ReelSEO.com

If you are the proud owner of an Atlanta based business, but you still haven’t had a website designed for your business after so many years, you need to wake up. The time has arrived for you to study the services provided by the many Atlanta web site design companies.

The bottom-of-the-range package is the one where the designers will only design your website. They will not provide any additional services such as registering a domain name, arranging web site hosting and web site promotion. These are obviously the cheapest packages, but in the long run they might not be worth it.

A more suitable offer available from many Atlanta web design businesses is one where they will not only design your website as per your requirements, but they will also throw in a domain name and web hosting for the next year. This means there will be no need for you to deal with domain registrars and web hosting companies, who tend to have a language of their own.

The next step up is a package that will include a website, domain registration, web hosting and also submitting your website to all the major search engines. Although you can do it yourself, your site has to be designed in such a way that it’s optimized for the large search engines and there is nobody better equipped to do this than your web designer.

Apart from the services mentioned above, the top Atlanta web designers also offer the service of promoting your website on the major bulletin boards and articles directories on the Net. All this will provide valuable links back to your website, which will in turn have a positive effect on the search engine ranking of your site.

As you will realize by now: there is much more to Atlanta web site design than just putting together a few web pages. Doing it right from the beginning will in the end have a hugely positive effect on the success of your website.

Discover the help you need for your Atlanta Web development online. With the correct choice of an Atlanta web site design you can pull in more traffic. Head online now and learn more.

There is no quicker, cheaper and more convenient way to access information than through search engines. The increase search engine ranking replaced all other information sources, most particularly books in this light. Some thirty to forty years ago, access to information was very limited. In the 1960’s until about halfway of the 1980’s; people, books, communication media and a few others were the only information carriers. But during the transition to the 90’s era, information – that is knowledge per se, has been widely accessible through the internet. The development of search engines has literally placed information at the end of our fingertips. It is just a type away.

This convenient feature of the search engine made its mark to popularity in the World Wide Web. To connect and gain information in the net means popping up a search engine that will direct you to millions of channels in the web. They are the nerves connecting to the brain and has proven that the increase search engine ranking is the quickest ticket to whatever data, news, music or figures we might need. Everyone has been dependent to this handy tool of information. It provides the students with instant reports and fill-ins for homework and projects. It also supplies professionals and the entirety of the business sector with necessary figures for research and has been a fitting medium of communication. Truly, the increase search engine ranking has benefited every aspect of living.

However the healthy developments that search engines bring carries setbacks as well. There have been a progressive number of issues and concerns about the effects, misuse and abuse of search engines as time pass which might be attributed as the long term result of search engine usage. It can easily be manipulated and exploited to serve a single purpose, which is why using it requires a learning curve.

Due to this dilemma, China has censored the available information through search engines within their country. The main reason believed to be behind all these is China’s stern precedence to national security. They have placed unique limits to information where search engine returns are mostly web pages that are blocked, ultimately to counter cyber attacks, espionage, and theft and moreover threat to national security. Many believe this effort was abnormally strange. They say it is impossible for the economy to develop while controlling the flow of information.

Evidently, the issues concerning increase search engine ranking progresses in time. Before, integrity and validity issues were the only major concern with regards to the mass of information that is available. The surge of info hints false truths exist within the bulk where you get even those that you should not, even those that you do not need. Search engine returns too many results from just one keyword. Contradicting information also abound the returns from search engines.

But in totality, there are more and better advantages than disadvantages with the increase search engine rankings. The main idea of increase search engine rankings is to promote quick and easy access to information. It is a system where people are free to connect with others, to obtain and in return provide truthful information. The root cause of its negativity is the malicious minds and deeds of those who use it. In the end, it will always be the peopleware who drives technology to impact the future.

You need to increase search engine ranking to make your website get noticed by many online visitors. In this way can you draw more income for your online store. Or you may want to try improving search engine ranking.