Houston Website Design, SEO, Web Marketing and Branding Articles

7 Things NOT to Waste Your Time On When Doing SEO

Time is precious. They say “time is money,” but I think it’s even more than that. In this post, I would like to talk about the SEO practices that are a complete waste of time.

Before writing the post, I simply sat down and penned my SEO experiences. As a beginner, I used to waste a lot of time on different SEO methods that later on turned out quite useless. So, I made a list of those. I’ve also “interviewed” some of my SEO buddies and included their piece of advice in this post, too. So, what I would like to present to you is our distilled wisdom. Enjoy!

It is NO use:

1. Hanging Out at SEO Blogs/Forums

Ironically, this is what you are doing now, aren’t you? Well, it’s not the same, and let me explain why. There is a difference between CHOOSING to read a blog post or a forum thread that looks really helpful (this is what experienced SEO’s do) and simply reading everything in sight to stay informed about everything at all times.

I remember the days when I used to read every reply in a forum thread that I started, even when I already knew the answer to the question I had asked in the thread. I was just curious! So, guess what, I don’t have the time for curiosity anymore.

Also, one of my SEO buddies had volunteered to moderate an SEO forum. He thought it was gonna be fun, but it turned out to be extremely time-consuming. Well, if you have nothing better to do, you might as well do that.

2. Commenting on SEO Blogs/Forums

First, let me make myself clear and say that I do NOT mean using blog/forum commenting for SEO purposes, I mean using it for commenting purposes. Like, sometimes you’d get caught up in a heated discussion, especially when the “wow, I didn’t know that” stage is over, and you can give your opinion on different SEO matters, and you don’t hesitate to do it. So, this just eats up your valuable time and doesn’t really do anything for you.

3. Thinking That Manual is Better

To all of you perfectionists, double-checkers and sure-makers out there, I’d like to say that manual is seldom better. At least not when it comes to SEO. Many of my SEO friends, including me, say that, as SEO newbies, they had tried to do everything by hand. Partially, that was striving for better quality, and, partially, it was not trusting the SEO tools.

Anyhow, once they did try SEO software, they haven’t ever got back to the olden do-it-yourself ways, ever. The general principle here is, if there IS a tool that can do it FOR you (like, a rank checker), go for it. Will save you loads of time.

4. Submitting to Crappy Article Directoríes

One of the SEO managers I know admitted that she used to spend a lot of time submitting to crappy article directoríes. Later on, she discovered that article marketing was all about quality, not quantity; that it was better to find fewer better-targeted, perhaps even paid directories and submit there.

5. Spinning Content

Another fríend of mine did a lot of article submission, too. But those were not unique articles, but spun articles that were being submitted to hundreds of directoríes on the Web. At some point, he realized that writing and promoting one unique and useful article had a much bigger impact on site rankings, than spamming the Web with hundreds of “clones.”

6. Doing Manual Link Exchange

When I was still a beginner, the way I used to do link building was one link at a time. I would find a site, suggest to exchange links, write “best regards” at the end of each email – Hah, now, when I think about it, it seems just so ridiculous.

I don’t do that any longer, of course. I now use SEO tools like LinkAssistant and SEO SpyGlass to build links. I now sometimes build 100 backlinks a day, with very little effort on my part.

7. Keyword Stuffing

One of the SEO’s, who I have great respect for said that he used to engage in keyword stuffing at the beginning of his career. He just wanted to rank faster for his major keywords, you see.

Well, of course, that affected content quality. His bounce rates went up, and the rankings went down. So, my acquaintance decided to work on interlinking instead! He provided useful links between different pages of his site. This worked both ways: to help SEO and to improve user experience. Users began following those links and, as the result, were staying longer on the site.

So, this is it. Are you practicing any of the above-mentioned techniques? If you are, take our word, they are not worth it! There is a saying that goes like ‘a smart man learns from his mistakes; a wise man learns from the mistakes of others.’ So, be wise and save your precious time!

By Alesya Krush

Posted by Visions of Earth | February 9, 2012 | Categories: Business, Marketing & Promotion, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design | Tags: houston seo company, link building, marketing, Search Engine Optimization, sem, seo, smo, web promotion | Leave A Comment »

The Explosion of the Mobile Web…..Is Your Website Ready?

Just a few short years ago, it was a good bet that you would read articles like this one on your PC or laptop. Today, it’s just as likely that you are reading this article on a smartphone or tablet computer. So what’s changed, what happened? The mobile web happened, that’s what – and the Internet will never be the same. So, what’s the mobile web?

Loosely defined, the mobile web is a way of accessing the Internet via a wireless network, using a handheld mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet computer.

The Explosion Of The Mobile Web

The mobile web is growing at a phenomenal pace, and is forecast to overtake the desktop web in 2014. In other words, more users will access the Internet using a mobile phone rather than a PC for the first time.

Approximately 900 million people currently access the web with mobile phones, compared to 1.4 billion desktop Internet users. In 2014, mobile web users will outpace desktop users (approximately 1.7 billion mobile users to approximately 1.65 billion desktop users). By 2015, the number of mobile web users is expected to increase to 2 billion.

Assuming an annual growth rate of about 2 percent annually between 2010 and 2015 in cell phone subscriptions (77 percent of the world’s population will have cell phone subscriptions in 2010 and 87 percent will have subscriptions in 2015), about 6.35 billion people worldwide will have a mobile phone subscription and approximately 1 out of 3 subscribers (or 2 billion out of 6.35 billion) will be accessing the Internet on mobile phones. (Source: Wikimedia)

And according to the August, 2011 edition of eMarketer, 33 percent of mobile users are looking to access local content relevant to their GPS positioned location.

Is Your Website Ready?

So, what does all of this mean to you? It means more people than ever will be viewing your website through a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet computer, via a wireless network. It also means that if you want to survive and thrive, you have to adjust and adapt, and make your website mobile web friendly. The good news is, it’s easier than you think.

“Within the Alexa top 1,000 sites, 40.1 percent of all sites are mobile-friendly. These sites represent the world’s most popular web properties, like Google, Facebook and Yahoo!

Beyond the top 1,000, mobile friendliness still holds strong but is not yet as widespread. Of the top 10,000 Alexa sites, 29.7 percent perform well on mobiles. Once the input data is broadened to include the top 500,000 sites, the total number of mobile-friendly sites drops to 19.3 percent.” (Source: mobiThinking.com)

If you haven’t already done so, the very first thing you need to do is bring your website up to speed visually. In other words, you want to make sure that users of mobile devices can view your site optimally.

The quickest and easiest way to do this is to run your site through the MobiReady online testing site. This is a free service that evaluates mobile-readiness using industry best practices & standards.

The free report provides both a score (from 1 to 5) and in-depth analysis of pages to determine how well your site performs on a mobile device. There are also other tools that will allow you to test your site for mobile readiness. In fact, here are 10 Excellent Tools for Testing Your Site on Mobile Devices.

Personally, I have serious doubts about the accuracy of these types of testing tools. For example, I ran my site through MobiReady, and it gave my site a 2 out of 5 score which, according to their analysis is bad. I got the exact same score before and after I mobil-optimized my site.

Here’s the problem: I’ve had many friends and colleagues of mine, all with different makes and models of smartphones, on a variety of platforms, tell me that my site looks just fine on their phones. So while testing tools may be a useful resource, the true litmus test is what users of mobile devices are seeing – so be sure to ask them.

That being said, there ARE things you can do to mobile-optimize your website.

How To Make Your Website Mobile Compatible 1. Have a fast-loading site. Chances are, most mobile-web users who are using their phones to access the Internet are using a slower 3G connection. You can help these users out by making sure your website code is clean, which will not only make for a faster-loading site, but faster downloads as well.

2. Don’t use flash. Not all mobile devices can see flash? Personally, I’m not a huge fan of flash sites anyway. But if you absolutely, positively have to have a flash site, be both smart and considerate. Make sure you have an alternate HTML version of your site as well.

3. Have a clean, easy to navigate website. Remember, mobile users are viewing your site on a tiny little screen. In addition, there is no mouse and not all mobile devices are equipped with a touch screen. So don’t make it harder for mobile users to view or utilize your site than it needs to be. Clean up the clutter and streamline your content. Simplify, simplify, simplify. If you keep it simple, your site will be user-friendly for everyone.

4. Use HTML phone numbers. Don’t make mobile users have to type in your phone number. Use HTML so that they can simply click to dial the number.

5. Avoid horizontal scrolling. Mobile users prefer to scroll vertically as opposed to horizontally. It’s easier and less of a hassle for them. Always create your content as a single column of text that wraps for mobile users.

6. Use images sparingly. As I mentioned earlier, most mobile users are using a slower 3G connection. As a result, heavier images can take forever to load. To avoid this problem, you should use images sparingly on your website. But if you do choose to use images, they should be lighter-weight jpeg, gif or png format. Also, make sure to compress your images to avoid zooming.

7. Voice Search. Google’s Voice Search on smartphones, has increased voice search usage by approximately 600% in the past year. Since mobile devices don’t have a traditional keyboard like a PC or laptop, voice search makes searching quicker and easier for smartphone users. So you should definitely keep an eye on this trend for SEO purposes. Bear in mind, people tend to search differently when speaking as opposed to typing. For example, while you might type-search “best virtual assistants,” you might voice-search “what are the best virtual assistant services?” Again, it’s a trend you should keep an eye on.

Indexing Of A Mobile Site

Google mainly recommends the following for better indexing of a mobile site.

• Google has a separate mobile bot for indexing mobile friendly pages. So, always redirect this bot (check for user agent ‘Googlebot-Mobile’) to the mobile version of your site. This bot should not see the normal site.

•Use the XHTML Mobile doctype so that search engine bots can clearly identify the page as mobile friendly.

•For each page, there should be a link for the standard view of that page. It will help Google to categorize mobile pages and its corresponding standard pages. (Source: The Right Way to Build a Mobile Site)

By David Jackson

Posted by Visions of Earth | January 4, 2012 | Categories: Business, Marketing & Promotion, Media, Networking, Search Engine Optimization, Uncategorized, Website Design | Tags: mobile web, mobile web users, mobile websites, web design, website design | Leave A Comment »

Want To Sell Your Website? – Making Your Website More Valuable

Most of us do not start up a website with the thought of selling it one day – we usually start up a website with the thought of making that site popular, useful, and/or profitable. But inevitably, for anyone who has been in the online business world for any significant period of time, the thought enters our heads about whether or not we should sell our business.

There are a lot of articles on the Internet that concern how much a web business is worth. It is a topic that we may address some day in the future, but for the purposes of this article, I want to focus on factors that can help increase the value of your web based business.

One important note before we start: these tips are geared towards businesses whose value would be more than a few thousand dollars. This is not geared toward the “Flippa” crowd, but rather to more established online businesses.

With that, below are a few tips on increasing the value of your website.

Financial Records

The lifeblood of any online business acquisition is a business’s financials. If any experienced buyer approaches you, or if you solicit your site for sale to an experienced buyer, one of the very first things that a buyer will request are financial statements.

The reason for this is simple: buyers want to know how much they can reasonably invest in acquiring your business. Whether you are selling Youtube.com or MaAndPopShop.com, a buyer is constantly gauging the relative risk of their investment. Financial statements are simply the easiest way to get a starting point as to where a business can be financially.

Many people will read the above statements and think “but my business is much more than just the financials”. This is most likely true – every business has a host of intangibles that are mixed together to create an appealing business that works well. These intangibles do work together to build value in your business, but in the end, buyers are looking to gauge the riskiness of their investments, and financial statements help them do so.

But it goes a step further – whereas financial statements help a buyer gauge the riskiness of a particular acquisition, detailed and accurate financial statements that are easily verifiable help a buyer put to rest certain perceptions of risk. The point here is often lost on many people considering selling their businesses: detailed, verifiable, and clean financials can help you sell your online business faster and for more money.

Recommendations – If you think you may be selling your business in the near future do what you can to get your finances in order. This would include either hiring a book keeper or buying a version of Quickbooks and learning how to use it. Be sure to separate your business activities from personal expenses and income as well as other business activities. If you are able to, setup a dedicated business entity for the business you wish to sell – businesses that can be verified with tax returns are absolute gold to prospective buyers as it opens up the possibility for them to get a loan to buy your business.

Paint Yourself Out of the Picture

Nobody wants to buy themselves a job. Buying an Internet business comes with a set of risks that buyer’s are very familiar with. In essence, an Internet based business is an assetless business – the only asset tends to be “goodwill” and possibly some inventory (goodwill is a general accounting term used to describe a business’s reputation, relationships, and other intangibles). The problem with goodwill acquisitions is that they can quickly lose their value. If one were buying a restaurant instead of an Internet business, and the restaurant had to close, that person would still have the value of furniture, fixtures, equipment, and real estate to fall back upon.

In light of these risks, buyers find Internet businesses appealing for the same reasons you and I find them appealing: you can run a very profitable operation without having to manage a full store. Often times, you can run a great operation and work just part time.

Keep this in mind when preparing your business to sell: the more you paint yourself out of the picture and allow the business to be run without the owner being an “owner/operator”, the more buyers you will ultimately be able to appeal to.

Recommendations: Write out a current “day and week in the life of” describing your daily, weekly, and monthly tasks with the business. What can be done by someone else? What needs to be done by yourself? Try to get your hourly workload to no more than 10-15 hours per week and outsource what you can outsource. In addition, don’t wrap up your business in a special talent that you personally have (e.g. web design, seo, special writing style, etc).
Look for Single Points of Failure

Keeping in mind the previous section’s discussion on buyers looking to assess risk and the nature of how quickly an Internet business can lose value, it is important to identify single points of failure for your business. A single point of failure is any part of your business that you rely on that cannot be replaced by something else. Below are a few examples:

You currently rely on just one vendor for all of your products
You are a web design agency who has one very talented web designer that does most of your work
You have a handful of clients who make up a disproportionate amount of your revenue base
Your only source of traffic is from your top Google rankings

That last point is one that may surprise some website owners. It used to be the case that a top Google ranking was something that would add significant value. However, with the impact of the Panda updates and previously the Florida updates, buyers simply don’t trust rankings to be permanent. It is far better to show that the business is well balanced in all regards. Should one key aspect of the business falter, you need to demonstrate that while it may affect the business, even significantly, it would not kill the business because there is a backup plan.

Recommendation: Identify single points of failure and build a backup plan. If you currently rely too heavily on one or two vendors, reach out to other vendors and find out what it would take to start up with them. If you only have Google rankings driving traffic, startup a PPC campaign so you know what the cost structure would be. Startup a newsletter, build your social media presence, and the like.

Selling an online business can be a fun, yet intimidating process. By planning properly, sellers can often add thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to their overall value.

Author: Mark Daoust owner of Quiet Light Brokerage, Inc.

Posted by Visions of Earth | October 4, 2011 | Categories: Business, Marketing & Promotion, Uncategorized, Website Design | Tags: business, for sale, google, internet marketing, marketing, online business, online marketing, promotion, web marketing | Leave A Comment »

SEO – Is It All You Need?

It is unlikely that there is a single small business out there striving for online success which is not taking SEO (Search Engine Optimization) seriously and with very good reason. It is a business SEO strategy that will determine how quickly a website achieves a high ranking in the search engines, how well it maintains its ranking and ultimately how many visitors it receives.

Search Engine Optimization, in its simplest form, is the process whereby a website has its pages fine-tuned to appeal to the search engines for a certain set of keywords or search terms and builds up a good online reputation by gaining links to the site from other reputable and related websites.

Optimizing the pages of the website is often referred to as on-site SEO and involves creating Titles, Descriptions, Headings, Bold Text, Alternative Text for Images and, of course, the main textual content to include primary and secondary keywords. The keywords must constitute a proportion (or density) that the search engines consider appropriate but not so much that the site will be penalized for over-use of the keywords (sometimes referred to as keyword-stuffing). The keyword density in the various elements of a webpage is not a pre-defined percentage because rankings are always determined in relation to the competition. But a good SEO consultant will be able to advise on the appropriate keyword density for a particular set of targeted keywords.

The ultimate goal of off-site SEO is to build a good online reputation by creating links to the website. Many people still believe this is just about creating as many links as possible. But the search engines have become more sophisticated and SEO has followed suit. Link building is now focused on relevance, the page rank of the site from which the link has come, the type of link and the text associated with the link (anchor text). So, yes, you need a substantial number of links, but the quality of each link is more important than overall quantity.

But if your SEO campaign is a success and your small business achieves a page 1 ranking, does that guarantee the success of your company? Unfortunately there is much more to online business success than just SEO. To achieve online success, there are a number of other factors that have to be treated just as seriously as SEO.

Social Media

Create a business Facebook page, get active in Twitter, create a blog (and actually post to it regularly), invite people to bookmark your site from social bookmarking sites like Delicious. Ask people to bookmark your blog from Reddit and StumbleUpon. If you can’t manage your online social life and your business, then employ a ghost-blogger or social media marketer.

Website Design

Ask someone independent of the business to review your website for its look-and-feel, usability and functionality. Does your home page and your other main landing pages have a “call-to-action” above the fold (i.e. the user doesn’t have to scroll down to see it). A call-to-action can be something as simple as a button inviting the user to “View Special Offers Here.”

Traffic Analysis

Traffic Analysis is vital for all websites but particularly so if a site is getting plenty of visitors but has a low conversion rate. Conversion rates can vary quite dramatically by market sector, but you should have an idea of a typical percentage for your type of business. Analyze your traffic data to see which keywords are bringing visitors to your site. There may be a high percentage from long-tail keywords you were unaware of that indicate a visitor who may only, for example, be looking for information or advice. These visitors may push up the visitor numbers, but they are not the right type of visitors for converting into paying customers and can result in misleading figures for both visitor numbers and conversion rate.

Email Marketing

Don’t neglect this highly effective method of reaching potential new customers and retaining existing customers. Produce a regular newsletter or mailshot every week or every month with useful information, special offers, news etc. But don’t make the mistake of trying to sell something with each email – the purpose is to ensure that when customers are ready to buy, they will visit your website.

Quality Data Capture

Of course an email marketing campaign is only as good as the list of potential or existing customers to which it is sent. Capturing the details of existing customers is easy since they are usually required to provide their details to make a purchase. But the best way to obtain visitor details from people who are not yet ready to become customers is to offer something of value for free. Typically this would be something that could be downloaded in the form of an e-guide or e-book. For example, a holiday company might offer free tourist guides. Remember to make it clear that by signing up for the free item they will be added to your email list and ensure that every mailing gives them the option to unsubscribe from your list.

So search engine optimization is vital for all small businesses, but it is also important to see SEO in the context of a wider marketing approach.

By Michelle Symonds

Posted by Visions of Earth | August 4, 2011 | Categories: Branding, Marketing & Promotion, Networking, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design, Writing | Tags: advertising, business, content, internet marketing, keywords, marketing, online marketing, promotion, Search Engine Optimization, search engines, seo, social media, social networking, web development, web marketing, website design | Leave A Comment »

Things To Keep In Mind Before Hiring A Web Design Company

With the present boom in e-commerce, a well designed website that attracts the attention of potential customers is indispensable to the owners of various small-scale and large-scale industries. Endowing the website of a particular company with a prominent online presence requires an in-depth understanding of the needs and business objectives of that company. Therefore the business owner would do well to sit and discuss his requirements with his web designer. Most importantly, the website should be so interesting as to keep the viewers glued on to the page. However, shoddy work is often noticed in websites for which a hefty amount had been paid. This can prove to be distressing for small business owners who often lack the means of employing a professional to redo the damage. Thus, the foremost criteria for building up a good website are to get hold of a good professional website designer who understands his employer’s objectives. It would be of immense benefit to follow a few guidelines to help identify a competent web designer.

Before embarking on the search for a competent and affordable website designer, it would be better to keep in mind a few points:

The website should inform the customers about the kind of services provided by the company.
Whether the site will require frequent information updates.
The budget of the particular company.
The needs and tastes of the targeted audience.
Whether the company will depend on search engines to optimize it’s sales.
The web designer should be acquainted with all the above criteria in order to create a profitable website.

The next stage is starting to look for a web designer. Here again certain things need to be considered:

It is recommended that the business should check the portfolio of the web designing firm with whom they are entrusting their work.
It should also talk to the previous clients of the concerned web designing company in order to ascertain whether they got the right service and guidance from the website development firm.
Besides understanding the pros and cons of the company’s objectives, the web designer should also be able to improvise and build up a site that is capable of standing out from the crowd of other websites.
The company should also ask the web designing firm to show them examples of their previous work. This will reflect on the capability of the web designing company to design professional websites.
The website should also be easy to navigate. In order to retain the impatient online reader the web designer should ensure that no information is more than a couple of clicks away.
It is important to form a long-term relationship with the web designer. Otherwise it will prove costly to add new features to a website, if the original website developer who built it is not there to update it.
It is important that the website should load quickly. The concentration span of the average reader is very little. Therefore if the page takes longer to load it will have grave repercussions for the company. Prospective customers will veer away from the site.
While designing a website, the web designer should stick to the particular layout which users have become accustomed to.
If the company wants an e-commerce website, then the website should be so designed as to make it easy for buyers to buy products online.
The web designer should not use too many special effects as this will lead to increase in loading time, which in turn might have a negative impact on visitor retention.

Following the above mentioned points, will increase the chances of getting hold of a competent web designing firm who understands the business of its customer and provides valuable services which helps in meeting the cherished business goals.

Posted by Visions of Earth | May 30, 2011 | Categories: Graphic Design, Marketing & Promotion, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design, Writing | Tags: austin, boerne, hill country, houston, internet marketing, online marketing, san antonio, web design, web design company, web design firm, web designer, web designing, web development, web marketing, website design | 1 Comment »

Why Search Engine Spiders Can’t Index Your Pages

HTML Problems Can Prevent Indexing. This is a common problem. Your web designer has created a beautiful page with nice graphics and great Flash animations. Unfortunately, it seems that search engines won’t list your website no matter what you do.

This can have several reasons:

1. The HTML Code Of Your Web Pages Is Meaningless To Search Engines
Search engines use very simple software programs to index your web pages. A web page that looks great to the human eye can be totally meaningless to search engines.

Search engines cannot see content that is presented in images (GIF, JPEG, PNG, etc.), Flash elements, JavaScript and other script languages or other multimedia file formats.

If you use JavaScript links for your website navigation then search engines might not be able to find your website page.

Solution: Check your web pages with a search engine spider simulator. Spider simulators will show you how search engines see your web site.

If you use IBP’s search engine spider simulator, you can even enter the name of the spider, so that you can test if Google and Yahoo get different results when they visit your web pages.

2. The HTML Code Of Your Web Page Contains Errors
Some HTML errors can prevent search engine spiders from indexing your web pages. While most search engine spiders can deal with minor code errors, some of them will send faulty information to search engine spiders.

For example, your web page could contain a tag at the top of the page that tells search engines “the web page ends here” although your main content has not been reached.

Solution: Check the HTML code of your web pages with an HTML validator tool. You can find an HTML validator in the free IBP trial version.

3. The HTML Code Of Your Web Pages Doesn’t Contain The Right Elements
If you want to get high rankings for a special keyword then this keyword must appear in the right places on your web page. For example, it usually helps to use the keyword in the web page title.

There are many other elements that are important if you want to have high rankings.

Solution: Check the HTML code of your web page with IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer. IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer compares your web page with the top ranked pages and it will tell you in detail how to change your web page so that it can get top 10 rankings.

4. Your Web Server Sends The Wrong Status Codes
Some web servers send wrong status codes. When a search engine spider requests a web page from your site then your server sends a response code. This should be the “200 OK” code.

Unfortunately, some servers send a “302 moved” or even a “404 not found” response code to the search engine spiders although the web page can be displayed in a normal web browser.

In that case, search engines will think that the web page doesn’t exist and they won’t index the page.

Solution: Use the search engine spider simulator to find out which response code your web server returns to search engines. If the response code is not “200 OK”, IBP’s search engine spider simulator will return a warning message. ( Editor’s Note: You can also check your status code with our free HTTP Server Response Code Checker )

If you want to get top rankings on Google and other search engines then you must make sure that search engines don’t misunderstand your pages. Use the tips above to make sure that search engines see what you want them to see.

Autor: Jason

Posted by Visions of Earth | April 13, 2011 | Categories: Marketing & Promotion, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design | Tags: internet marketing, marketing, online marketing, Search Engine Optimization, search engines, seo, web design, website, website design | Leave A Comment »

How a Blog Could Revitalize Your Website

O.K. so you think you have an idea or even a product to sell through your brand new internet business.

Internet marketing is a brilliant business to be in. There are boundless opportunities to run online businesses which can make incredible amounts of money, if you have established that there is a market for your chosen niche or product, and have done the necessary research.

All set, ready to go?

Er, not quite.

You should establish a presence in your market before you unleash your product to the world.

If you are about to start an internet business, then you should be wondering about attracting traffic to your site. There are many advertising options available, but if money is tight, some of these options may not seem practical.

Advertising can be expensive especially if you are not too sure what you are doing. Money can be swallowed up very quickly if you do not study advertising techniques.

Promotion can take many weeks or even months to show results, and then may not be effective.

Many courses and books sold by some of the gurus are sometimes out of date. Outdated material and tactics which you pay for then find they just do not work.

You may have an excellent website, but bear in mind blogging is now probably more effective than a static site.

Of course, the most traditional way of running an online business over the last few years has been websites, and is still a very successful method.

However, blogging has moved to the fore because search engines seem to favor blogs over the standard static website.

For those who can constantly add to or update their blog, visits by search engines will become a more regular practice, which will give you more chance of a high ranking in the search engines.

The reason is that search engines seem to prefer blogs over traditional static sites and it is possible to see a page on your blog ranked on the first page in Google within 24 hours.

With a blog, you are updating on a regular basis, sometimes daily, and search engines love sites which are constantly updated, giving you a better chance of getting ranked more highly.

Therefore, blogging is probably the best way to build traffic to your site at the same time enabling you to become an expert in your field in a very short time.

A blog is very easy to use and so adding content to a blog is easy to do. A blog is similar to a diary or journal with which you can keep up-to-date with your thoughts and ideas.

It is easy to keep your customers updated with information or products.

You can build a relationship with your readers, thereby building confidence and respect as you are projecting yourself as an expert.

A blog also allows your visitors to post comments, so you are also creating an interactive environment which of course further develops your relationship with your visitors.

If your subject is one you are passionate about, then writing 300 words each day should not be very difficult. It should be simple to find endless ideas to write about. Adding to a blog on a daily basis will not take very long. You need only write about 300 words every day, and it gets easier the more you write.

Always make your content informative and good quality. Don’t ever give rubbish to your readers. Your readers should always be treated with the greatest of respect. After all, once you build up a large líst of members, who hopefully trust you because you have always given them quality, they will then trust you enough to purchase the products you have recommended to them.

The easiest way to set up a blog is to use a Google service called Blogger or WordPress. You can simply go to the website, choose a user name and the rest is simple. You can be up and running in minutes.

A big disadvantage with Blogger of course is that your blog is owned by Blogger and may be shut down by them without notice. Many thousands have been shut down without notice.

By far the best option is to set up your blog with WordPress because you will have full control over your blogging activities. Set up your blog with WordPress and host it on your domain.

The only downside with WordPress is that you must set your blog up yourself.

The power in your blog comes from the quality information you put into it, attracting readers to your blog and therefore establishing you as an authority and giving you credibility in your market.

Once again, the more often you can update your blog, the more often the search engines will visit. The more you can write, the more exposure you will get.

Your blog post does not have to be a great literary work, it can just be a paragraph or two on your specialist subject, but always make your information quality content, between 350 and 700 words.

You should use your blog to help build a líst of members, because it is one of the best ways of building a relationship with people who are keen to receive information from you.

Building a relationship will also build trust and confidence. Your readers will look forward to receiving e-mails or blogs from you in which you can recommend products and services.

The keyword here is recommend, rather than sell or promote. If someone feels that you have recommended – not sold – to them, then that will go a long way to build loyalty and trust.

If you can build loyalty and trust with your subscribers through your blog which establishes you as a respected expert, then you are on your way to a successful internet business which can easily earn you a substantial income.

Author
Ray Carr

For more information on creating a Blog for your site, please contact us.

Posted by Visions of Earth | January 12, 2011 | Categories: Blogs, Marketing & Promotion, Media, Networking, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design, Writing | Tags: blog, blogging, blogs, brand, business, internet, marketing, promotion, social media, social networking, web design | 1 Comment »

Are You Socially Challenged?

Remember that kid from high school, you know the one who really didn’t know how to socialize with others. He may have been home-schooled or secluded for the first 16 years of his/her life and as a result was socially challenged? You know what I mean? They would make inappropriate comments, add irrelevant content to a conversation, or just try to impress you with how smart they were by using grammar most people in college would not understand let alone a bunch of high school kids. We often refer to these types of people as, “socially challenged.” The question I have for you is: Are you socially challenged in your social media marketing?

The main reason that people become socially challenged is that they did not have the chance to experiment and see what social aspects are acceptable and which are not, what actions gained friends and what actions gained enemies, what actions got praise and which got ridicule, frankly how to not only be social but be socially acceptable.

The problem I continue to see is that with the advent of the Social Media Age and the potential power of social media, people are jumping in without understanding the rules of the play ground and have thus become social media challenged in an arena that focuses on being socially acceptable. The following is a short list to help you be more social. Think of this as the beginners guide to being social.

1 – Be Social

It is important that you are not only posting content about whatever your subject matter is, but that you are also reading and commenting on others content. There are some obvious reasons to do this, such as building links back to your site, but it is even more important that you are being social. The most important thing to remember here is that you are READING the content. Your goal should be to try and understand what the blogger is saying, then make a thoughtful and intelligent comment. Whether you agree or disagree make sure you add to the conversation. Here are some good and bad examples:

“Good Job, loved the content, keep it coming ;0)”

This is a terrible comment. It is idle praise you can save for your dog. Don’t do it on blog comments.

“Fantastic analysis of the internal propagation for insightful analysis of verbal and written interaction in a cacophony of media.”

What? Are you serious? Quit trying to impress us with how smart you are. You have offended most of the readers and all you have proven is that your are socially challenged.

“I agree that it is important to make comments on other content, but remember that you need to make comments on content that is relevant to you and what you do. It doesn’t do any good to comment on a blog about bikini’s if you are trying to sell stoves.”

Great comment. Although I don’t necessarily agree, it is an intelligent comment that adds to the conversation.

Hopefully you are starting to get the picture of what is acceptable and what is not. Remember we really are trying to be social and we want to learn from others comments that hopefully add to the conversation and get people interested in what we do and what we think. We are really looking for friends and the more friends you have the easier it is to be social.

2 – Write Yóur Own Content About Another Person

No I’m not talking about plagiarism, I’m talking about the biggest form of flattery. That’s right, if you read something that really made sense to you, share it with others. People who are taking the time to put content on the internet are excited to know that somebody read it, commented and then shared with others (just make sure you are giving credít where credít is due). Think about this from a social aspect, when people are talking they always say “well ________ said ________,” “I heard ________ say ________,” “Did you hear that ________ thinks ________?” This not only adds credibility to your conversation, but also gets the original person interested in what you are saying.

3 – Don’t Push People Down the Slide

There are a lot of people who write content that may not have been completely thought out (I’m guilty of this more than once a week), but it does not help the situation if you are the bully at the top of the playground pushing everybody down the slide. Not only is this not socially acceptable it’s just mean! Remember no one likes the bully, but most people like the guy/gal who has an opinion and is willing to help others.

In a meeting several years ago, one of my young loan officers was supposed to be giving a lesson on the Real Estate Purchase Contract or REPC. The young man had obviously not prepared for the presentation when he stood up and told us he would be teaching us about the REPC, turned to the white board and wrote in large block print “RUPC.” Most of the veteran loan officers started giggling at this obvious spelling faux pas, but one loan officer quickly commented, “Sorry James I told you the wrong spelling, it is actually REPC, which is a short abbreviation for Real Estate Purchase Contract.” It was obvious to all of us that the senior loan officer had not said anything to James, but he set the mood for a respectful conversation and diverted the ridicule from a young loan officer to one whom no one would ridicule.

4 – Become the Expert

In the world of social media there are thousands of pieces of content written daily, but only a handful of people are commenting. A recent study suggested that of all the comments that are being written 90% of them are written by the same 10% of people. Not only will you be learning how to be social (frankly the more you do it the better you will get at it), but you will soon be recognized as an expert in your field. You need to set down some specific times of the day to make sure you are researching for new content and posting comments on the content that is relevant to you and your product or service. Start by looking for the most influential people in your arena, but don’t forget to keep looking for new and fresh content.

5 – Invite a Friend Over

One of the first things we learned as young people is that you can learn a lot from a person if you invite them over to play or have dinner. You can do the same thing for your blog and content. Not only does it help you to establish better relationships and really be social, but it also exposes your content to a larger audience. By having a guest blogger you not only expose your product/service to your clients, but also the guest blogger’s clients as well.

At the end of the day you need to look at your social media as just that; being social, not just trying to sell product and services. People purchase from people. They like to know who you are and the more they know about you and your expertise they more likely they are to not only purchase from you but stay with you and refer others to you.

Author MyMark, LLC

Posted by Visions of Earth | December 8, 2010 | Categories: Blogs, Marketing & Promotion, Media, Networking, Search Engine Optimization, Writing | Tags: blogging, blogs, content, link building, marketing, networking, promotion, Search Engine Optimization, seo, social media, social networking, Writing | Leave A Comment »

Website Designers – Helping You Achieve Your Online Goals

Practically every business today has a website. Whether it’s designed to sell products or services online or purely act as an information port, everyone seems to have one.

Being that the online industry is extremely competitive, there is a lot of pressure on having a web site that is more effective than those of your competitors. Great website designers work with you to make this happen. Depending on the extent of the services that they offer, some designers can take care of your website’s entire effectiveness, allowing business owners to focus on other important aspects of their business.

The purpose of a web site is to attract visitors and not only convince them to do exactly what you want them to do once they get there, but make it easy for them to find what they need to.

One of the first things a website designer will do is discuss your business and your online objectives. If you are in a competitive online market, then you’ll need to enlist in their Search Engine Marketing services. Whilst having an eye-catching web site with amazing images and state-of-the-art graphics will certainly turn visitor’s heads, it’s actually getting them to your web site that’s of foremost importance.

Website designers who have Search Engine Marketing knowledge will carry out a number of things both on and off your website. From an on-site perspective, they’ll need to ensure your web content includes careful distribution of all of the most highly searched keyword phrases that relate to your business and web site. Once your Search Engine Marketing needs have been catered to, your website will be in a good position to rank in the Search Engines ahead of your competitors, meaning you are more likely to get more traffic, enquiries, leads and sales.

When a website designer builds your web site they will design it in a way that quickly engages your visitors, so as not to make them click off your site and onto another one. Now that your site has been properly marketed and your visitors engaged, it’s a matter of feeding them the right information that will persuade them to buy your products and/or services.

Once website designers have finished designing your web site they’ll often build it using a Content Management System (CMS) which will enable you to make any necessary changes to your website’s content, images or layout. A lot of website designers will charge you a set rate for hosting your site as well as giving you access to your Content Management System.

So if you’re about to launch a new business, speak to a web designer as they’ll often be able to tell you if they think you’ll need a website. Having one can make the difference between an average performing business and a highly successful one.

by Suzanne Carter

Posted by Visions of Earth | October 5, 2010 | Categories: Graphic Design, Marketing & Promotion, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design | Tags: boerne web design, boerne website design, business, graphic designers, mr designnet, ranking, san antonio web design, Search Engine Optimization, seo, submission, web design, web designers | Leave A Comment »

The Heart of a Company Logo – Can it Be Simple or Complicated?

There are two ways of looking at the choice of logos:

1. Simple logos are better because they are easy to remember.
2. Complex logos are better because they are unique and professional looking.

One reason many people prefer simplistic logos is that they are easier to recognize and easier to remember. One simple logo that everyone recognizes is the big “M” for McDonald’s. This “M” could stand for a number of different companies, but it is universally recognized and remembered as standing for McDonald’s.

There are those who believe a simplistic logo cannot pass on a message or clearly identify your products and services. Of course, you don’t always have to convey a message or explicitly detail your products and services. There are many fine logos that simply represent a company.

When drafting your logo, make sure it is easily reproduced, and also remember how it will be used. A complex logo may not reproduce well on a number of different materials. If you are planning to use your logo on the internet, take care when choosing your colors. Check to see what colors work best with web browsers. Clearly, it is important to know where and how you plan to use your logo before you begin choosing colors.

One thing is true of all logos – to be excellent, a logo must be easy to recognize and easy to remember. While there is no list of things that help make logos memorable, a couple of things that help are the company’s branding and high visibility of the image. There are some rules to guide the creation of a logo, such as using the least number of colors when designing a logo.

When you own your own business, you will surely want to choose a professional image to represent your company and yourself. Keep in mind that your logo will represent you business in a number of venues, so it must truly represent your company’s brands and perhaps show your company’s colors. Your logo will represent your business for a long, long time. That is why you must take great care in choosing one that really represents your business well.

Posted by Visions of Earth | August 5, 2010 | Categories: Branding, Graphic Design, Marketing & Promotion | Tags: advertising, branding, business, design, graphic designers, logo, marketing, print, san antonio, web design, web designers | Leave A Comment »

Ten Things You Should Know About Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is not difficult if you understand the basic concepts. If you know what to do, your website will get the best possible rankings on Google and other important search engines.

Four things you should know about link building

Inbound links are very important. The more websites link to your site, the easier it will be to get high rankings on Google. Google considers links to your site as votes for your site. The more votes your website has, the better your rankings will be. If more pages link to the website of your competitor, then it is likely that your competitor will get better rankings than you on Google.
It is important to get the right links. In addition to the number of links to your website, Google also considers the quality of the links. Links from unrelated websites won’t help your search engine rankings as much as links from related websites that deal with a similar topic as your website. A link from a trusted website that itself has many links pointing to it will help your search engine rankings more than a link from a website with few inbound links.
It is important to keep on link building. Many of your competitors will continue to work on their links. If you don’t keep on working on your links, your competitors will pass you in the search engine results sooner or later.
Google doesn’t like paid links Google considers links to your site as editorial votes for its quality. A paid link is not editorial. Google’s anti-spam team has asked webmasters to report paid links. If your competitors report your paid links, Google might penalize your website.

Three things you should know about web page optimization

Search engines rank single pages in the search results, you should optimize a single page of your website for a single search term. Do not optimize the same page for more than one search term. It is much better if a web page is highly relevant to one search term than somewhat relevant to many search terms.
Google considers all pages of your website. Although only a single page of your website will be listed in Google’s search results for a search term, Google will consider all pages of your website. If you optimize different pages of your website for different keywords that are all related to a certain topic, then Google will think that your website is relevant to this topic and it will be easier to get high rankings for your keywords.
Optimized web page content and inbound links work hand-in-hand. If your website has both optimized content and good inbound links then it will be much easier to get high rankings on Google. A web page that has been optimized for the search term “green widgets” and that has many links from other web pages that use the term “green widgets” as the link text is much more likely to get a top ranking on Google than a page that only has the inbound links or the optimized content.

Three things you should know about the technical aspects of your website

Redirects can cause problems. Web page redirects have been used by spammers in the past. That is why search engines don’t like it much. A 301 redirect is the only server side redirect that search engines interpret as a permanent redirect. All other redirects (except for a meta refresh redirect in some cases) don’t pass the links from the old page to the new page and they might even be interpreted as a spamming attempt.
Search engines don’t like duplicate content. Google wants to list only one copy of a piece of content in the search results. If your web page contains the same content as another page on the web then Google will pick one version of the content for their search results. Google considers exact copies and near copies as duplicate content. Website navigation and boilerplate are usually ignored. Google compares your page’s unique content with other pages and if it has a certain similarity to another page than it is considered a duplicate.
You can create duplicate content by mistake. Only link to one version of these URLs, otherwise, the other versions might be duplicates of the other.

SEO is not a black art. If you do the right things in the right order then you will get the best possible rankings on Google and other important search engines.

Your website must have optimized content and quality back links from other websites.

For more information or a consultation on Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing for your website please contact us at 832-253-8848 or email us with your questions to webmaster@mrdesignnet.com.

Posted by Visions of Earth | April 1, 2009 | Categories: Marketing & Promotion, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design | Tags: boerne website design, boerne website marketing, internet marketing, link building, Search Engine Optimization, seo, url submissions | 1 Comment »

5 Crucial Components of Website Design

Professional website developers know the importance of web design and the role it plays in making a website successful.

Designing a successful website is no easy task, especially for someone who is new to the world of web development. With the help of web development applications many people can and do create decent websites. But decent in most cases is not good enough to make a site successful from a traffic or financial standpoint.

There are five crucial components of web design that you must focus on in order to make a site valuable to its visitors and successful for you.

• SEO – Getting free traffic to your site.

• Usability – Ease of navigating around the site and finding desired information quickly.

• Aesthetics – Visual appeal.

• Content – Valid, up-to-date, relevant information.

• Graphics – Eye candy that relays relevant visual information to the visitor.

SEO

Before you ever lay down a byte of HTML code for a site, you have to know and understand at least the basics of SEO and how it fits into the design. SEO is the art of designing a site in a fashion that gives the site an advantage for obtaining free and abundant traffic.

The number one aspect of SEO is selecting keywords relevant to your site. The keywords you select should be based on high usage, low competition and relevancy to your topic. Once you select keywords you can then begin the development of your site. Keep in mind keywords are a critical aspect of the design. The keywords you choose will be applied within the design in strategic fashion to benefit the flow of traffic to your site. To understand more on how to implement SEO you should read and learn more about this important subject. If you don’t, your website success will be difficult to achieve.

Usability

Your website must be easy to navigate and designed in a way that makes it easy to find information. Visitors will not stay long if it takes more than one or two clicks to get the information they want or if it takes brain power to figure out how to get the information they want. One of the goals of your site design is to keep usability easy, and simple. To do this, apply the following three fundamentals of usability.

• Provide a site search tool. A visitor in a hurry can quickly find the info they desire then move on to the action they desire.

• Provide simple, intuitive and consistent site navigation. This provides visitors the tool they need to leisurely explore their way through your site.

• Provide logical and simple to follow content. Forget Expensive PPC Advertising – There is an Alternative!

The message of a site should start off in a simple and basic fashion with well defined links pointing the way to more detailed information or explanation as needed.

In the cases above, the goal is to make it easy for your visitor to find the information they want without frustration or difficulty. Doing this well will have a positive effect on increasing the return of your visitors.

Aesthetics

A website has to look clean, uncomplicated and strike a balance in layout that is pleasant to the visitor. Pleasing aesthetics come about when the colors of a site complement each other, the graphics blend and lend continuation of the theme and the layout brings unity and openness to the page.

Often overlooked by novice designers is the color palette of the site. While you can select color in a willy-nilly fashion and still provide a visually appealing site, a better idea for color selection should be based on an understanding of the color wheel and proven color strategies.

Many web designers often view a web page as an opportunity to blast a visitor with lots of information in hopes this will convince the visitor to take action. Usually this results in a quick exit due to the overwhelming visual effect and complicated look. A better approach is to provide less content and open space (referred to as white space) to allow visitors eyes to scan and explore with ease.

Content

An important feature of any website is the quality of the text content. Visitors come to a site expecting to find answers to their questions, solutions to their problems or for entertainment value. The content offered at your site must be well-written and without grammatical or spelling errors. It also has to be relevant to the theme of your site, with valid, up-to- date information for your visitors. Content is King!

Graphics

You can have a functional and usable website without graphic elements. However, if there are similar sites to yours that employ graphics, guess which site will get the most traffic. The necessary companions to any well-designed site are the images and illustrations that grace its pages. The images can’t be any willy-nilly graphic that you might think is cool. Graphic imagery has to support your branding, and communicate the message you are trying to convey. Before you incorporate graphic elements into your site, take some time to look around the web. Notice what looks good and how elements are laid out. These same layouts techniques can be used as models for your site.

The Internet is a highly competitive business arena. To be successful with a commercial website, you have to keep these five crucial web design elements in mind. Contrary to what many will tell you, it is rarely possible to have commercial success without the benefit of a professional website. This is not to say that you must hire a professional, however you must implement professional design elements to improve your chances for success.

Posted by Visions of Earth | June 6, 2009 | Categories: Marketing & Promotion, Media, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design | Tags: advertising, boerne website design, boerne website promotion, Graphic Design, marketing, seo, web design, website marketing | Leave A Comment »

Getting Targeted Web Traffic Can Be Easier Than You Think

So you have a new web site, and you have your website developed and uploaded and you are ready for the money to start rolling in.

Or perhaps you have had a page online for a while and have been disappointed in the results of getting free web traffic. Perhaps you are now considering that now is the time to buy website traffic.

Then again you may be an affiliate looking for different ways to get traffic to an affiliate program that does not involve using Pay Per Click advertising.

For the majority of newbies, the results are quite disappointing. We put all our initial efforts into getting the website to look great, adding the options for people to buy our products, or getting the ads fitting in nicely with our content, or our CPA (Cost Per Action) offers ready to rock and roll, etc.

But no matter how nice the website looks, it’s not going to do you much good without traffic coming to your website is it? This is a problem many beginning (and intermediate) internet marketers make. They do all the preparation of the website first, including choosing the products, etc without doing any research. Big problem!

And getting visitors is something they will get around to later.

I’m going to suggest this is the wrong way of doing things. Instead you should follow the steps below.

Step 1. Research your market and keywords first.

This is the most vital thing you need to do first. Spend time looking at your niche, and find out what people are looking for, and then sell it to them. Sounds simple right, but again and again I see people developing or promoting products that they believe are of interest. Let me tell you it’s not what you think people want, it’s all about what your potential visitor will find interesting and useful.

How are you going to find out what people want? With Market Research. Spend time looking in forums, competitor websites, and other websites to see what people are talking about, what their problems are, what they have issues with and then sell THAT to them.

Get it in your mind that you want to first and foremost help people. You genuinely should be aiming to help people, and not just try to make a buck from them. By putting the needs of your target audience first, you will find your results will improve dramatically.

Remember the market will tell you what they want to buy. Don’t second guess! Research!

Step 2. Targeted web traffic.

Now is the time to be figuring out how you are going to be getting an increase in site traffic to your website.

You should have a firm idea(s) in mind. Here are a few suggestions. Article Marketing, Blog Posts, RSS Syndication, Blog post commenting, web 2.0 promotion, more traditional SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

I will explain each of this in subsequent articles, but suffice to say if you do not know of many or any of these techniques, now is the time to be finding mentors to teach you how to do this.

Keyword research is also vital. You need to do some proper research into the keywords you aim to use with a view again of web traffic. Which keywords are you going to target? How much traffic do these keywords get each day? How much competition do they have?

These are questions you need to answer now before proceeding further.

Step 3 is about conversion.

In other words how are you going to make money from these visitors? e.g. getting a visitor to become a customer.

Are you selling a product? Do you have ads on your web pages? Are you aiming to get the visitor to sign up to a newsletter and promote to them via email?

You should have clear goals here of how you intend to make money, and also research what your competitors are doing. Before proceeding further.

The reality is that in some areas you will have less than desirable results with a particular form of selling, and research is the key to figuring this out.

Step 4. We get to the least important of the 4 factors and that is the product!

You have done your research, figured out how you are going to get web traffic, and have a plan on how to turn those visitors into customers.

Now you can think about the product! Most unsuccessful marketers start with the product first and wonder why the have no sales, or no visitors! They have not spent the time finding out what their audience wants and how they are going to get them to their website.

I hope this article starts you thinking about how you are going to get visitors to your website. With a plan and a clear direction you can achieve your goals. Make sure you take the time to figure out a plan of attack before you go running off to produce a product. Do the research first!

Sebastian Bock

Posted by Visions of Earth | June 10, 2009 | Categories: Marketing & Promotion, Search Engine Optimization | Tags: internet marketing, keywords, Search Engine Optimization, seo, website marketing | Leave A Comment »

How to Start Online Marketing

So, you’re a business that has just invested in a brand new website. You want to grow your business and make money through your site, how do you get started? The purpose of this article is to show how just having a site and getting it listed on Google is not enough to effectively use it as a business tool.

In order to make the most out of your website, people using the Internet need to be able to find it; they can’t buy unless they can find you. If you want to be found on the Web, you need to start doing online marketing.

Whatever it is that you wish to market and sell, there are several steps that you can take to improve your online presence:

Natural Search

If you want your website to be easily found by people using a Search Engine, you need to prepare it for SEO or Search Engine Optimisation. This means engineering your site to respond to the way that users search for your products or services online. Search Engines such as MSN, Yahoo and Google rank your website, based on a complex set of criteria.

The criteria changes regularly and only a few people are aware of the algorithms used to create the rankings. However, experts use tried and tested techniques to improve their client’s ranking position based on their experience of SEO. The problem is that many amateurs try tinkering with their website for SEO and this can often lead to some fairly costly errors.

Paid Search

One of the best ways to gain presence on the web is to advertise through Paid Search opportunities such as Google AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing. Pay per Click (PPC) offers a cost effective way of advertising online. PPC involves choosing the most effective keywords for your product or service and writing a short advert with a keyword rich headline and ad text.

When an interested user types your keywords into the Search Engine, your Ad appears. When they click on it, the user is directed to your website and you pay an agreed fixed amount to Google et al for each click. The performance of your PPC Ads can be compared, and their effectiveness tested through feedback on the all-important click to conversion data produced by the Ads.

Copywriting/Articles

The Internet is a text driven medium. The words that are placed on your website not only attract Search Engines but also human visitors. If your visitors find poor quality content, they are unlikely to stick around to find out what you have to offer them.

SEO copywriting involves using a professional copywriter, trained in SEO techniques to create the content of your website.

SEO content engages potential customers/clients and leads them towards taking your desired actions, whilst keeping your site well ranked by Search Engines.

Articles can be used for two purposes. In the first instance, they can be used to demonstrate your knowledge and improve credibility in your area of business. In the second instance, articles can be submitted to optimised article directories. Someone visiting those directories and reading your articles will be impressed by your knowledge and expertise and will click through to your website via a link at the bottom of the article.

Internet Marketing is not an area for the amateur or dilettante. The success or failure of your business could rest on your ability to conduct your own online marketing. Unless you’re willing to learn, or run the risk of damaging your potential income, maybe it’s time to call in an expert.

Posted by Visions of Earth | June 23, 2009 | Categories: Marketing & Promotion, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design | Tags: google, internet marketing, Search Engine Optimization, seo, website marketing | 1 Comment »

Getting Your Web Presence And Reaching The Global Market

Advertising with your own web site:

If you are serious about web marketing the first think you can do in the web is an advertisement, which would be really cost effective. If you want to put your advertisements then banner advertisement is a good choice. But from the banner advertisement now you need to give a hyper link to your web site where you tell about your business. Developing and operating a Web site can cost less than you think and the possibilities are very high. From a complete market research to product selling, from customer services to business promotions and purchases, having your own Web site establishes a dynamic presence for your organization. Moreover you can tell the detailed visual description about your products and services with full text, images, video and animations.

Finding targeted Audience:

There are millions of Internet users, searching on the web for something. Among them you need to find your potential visitors. So the site should be very focused on your customers and not all the casual surfers. If you are focusing only on customers from Europe means you need to put maximum information about your operations on Europe. If you are selling Hydraulic drilling machines means you can give many resources regarding drilling machines. This resources can help you to target your audiences through search engines.

Functionality of a web page:

HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is used to construct the web pages and control the web browser. HTML is a set of Tags that can define a document to display. We can display text, graphics, video etc., in a web page through HTML tags. Along with HTML we can use JavaScripts, CGI,ASP and other programming techniques to build interactivity in a web page.(Forms, Guest Books etc.,).

A Web page can contain Hyper Links(Clickable links to other HTML pages).We can navigate from one page to another or from one web site to another. A web site is a collection of web pages Linked between them and with other web sites.

Content of a web site:

Any Details about your business, products and services should target the international audience. As there is no space and location limitation for web pages, you can thrive varieties of customers with your focused content. You can give technical support and customer service. You can add Interactive forms, guest books, purchase inquiries and Web-based Emails. Moreover you can collect information from the users and save it in a database for future retrieval. To build good text you can approach professional technical writers who can help you in building your site content.

Building or Outsourcing:

You can design a simple web site with some graphics easily. But if you want to build interactive and professional web sites you need to know some internet technologies and tools. If you have good design ideas and time then you can learn some tools like Adobe photoshop and Macromedia Fireworks and Flash you can come up with a professional design. Moreover if you have knowledge in developing databases with MS-Access or MS SQL server you can design your own back-end databases to collect data from your web site. If you are strong in programming, with PHP, ASP, CGI or Java technologies you can build dynamic and complex web sites with back-end database functionality.(E.g.. Site with content management functionality).

Otherwise, If you need professional web site that is going to help you to build your company’s Image globally then you need to approach a Professional web developer and outsource it. A professional developer understands how to design a Web site that will most effectively present you, your business or organization, and your products and services. A professionally designed and implemented Web site is worth what you pay for it if you are serious about attracting business with your Web site.

The prices:

Before considering your web page you need to remember one thing, you are getting your global presence and global market with your web site. But fortunately you can achieve this with a very low pricing’s. You can go for a package deal or a customized development. You can compare various prices from the professional developers sites and you can pick one as per your wish. Since location is not a consideration in web development you can outsource to developers from other countries and outsource the work to them.

The first step:

The first thing to do is to give some thought in advance to what you want your Web site to accomplish then generate some ideas by looking into your competitors web sites. The point of this exercise is to realistically assess and prioritize the goals of placing your organization online. Here are a few questions you may want to answer yourself:

Is it your intention to:

Provide comprehensive information about your product or service?
Directly sell products from your site?
Reach new markets or clientele?
Provide online “customer support” 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?
Do market research by gathering visitor feedback?
Give employees internal information?
Post job opportunities?
All of the above?

Once you have an idea of what you want, then you can hire a developer to make your dream into reality.

Web site maintenance:

You may either outsource the job to someone and they will make changes for you on an as needed basis, or you may make those changes yourself if you have the necessary equipment and expertise. Professional web service firms are able to install web-based administration features that will allow you to make changes to certain areas of your site from your browser. Some typical areas include news releases, articles, FAQ’s, and more. Read our maintenance services and learn how we do maintenance.

Improving things:

If you need help in improving your web presence we can give you our hands, We specialize in makeovers — taking an existing Web site and transforming it into a productive, attractive and profitable business tool. We can also provide a professional Web site evaluation and make suggestions for improvement.

Author
Benny Alexander

Posted by Visions of Earth | July 7, 2009 | Categories: Marketing & Promotion, Search Engine Optimization | Tags: advertising, content, graphics, link building, marketing, promotion, services, web | Leave A Comment »

How Hiring An Internet Marketing Virtual Assistant Can Increase Your Profits For Your Business

If you are a small business owner or entrepreneur, you’ve come to realize that marketing your business online has massive potential for huge profits. But if you’ve done your research on internet marketing, you’ve probably also realized that there are so many different ways to market online and many of it takes time and effort.

This is where an Internet Marketing Virtual Assistant can be your answer. So what exactly can an Internet Marketing Virtual Assistant do and how will he/she increase profits for your business?

Here’s a brief list of the different internet marketing tasks a virtual assistant can perform for your business:

Maintain Your Blog or Website Maintenance If you have a blog or website, you can hire a virtual assistant to load your blog posts and schedule them to post on different days. A virtual assistant with search engine optimization expertise can make sure the right keywords are used on your blog or website. He/She can also update your content regularly on your blog or website when changes are needed. With your website consistently maintained and optimized for the web will help bring you a steady flow of traffic.

Write and Submit Articles

It is well known that writing articles and submitting them to article directories is a sure way to drive a flow of traffic to your website and generate quality leads. Your virtual assistant can write and submit 1 to 3 articles a week on your niche. This technique will definitely bring you continuous traffic to your site while building backlinks.

Write and Submit Press Releases

Press Releases are another fantastic way to generate traffic to your website. Each time your company has a new announcement to share, your virtual assistant can write a press release about it. Also, Press Releases like articles create backlinks to your site.

Email Marketing

In order to do email marketing, you need an autoresponder system. A Virtual Assistant who specializes in internet marketing will most likely know how to set up an autorepsonder service for your website. This includes creating the opt-in form for your site and loading all the messages. With this assistance, you’ll be able to concentrate on building a list instead of trying to maintain it.

Post Classified Ads

With so many classified ad sites available on the internet, your internet marketing virtual assistant can post several ads a day on the top visited sites.

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing is a form of internet marketing which uses sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube to achieve branding awareness of a company’s products and services to the masses. If you have an account with any of these social networks, then an internet marketing virtual assistant can maintain these social networks on behalf of your business helping you stay in touch with your audience.

As stated before, this just a brief list of the many different internet marketing techniques that an internet marketing virtual assistant can do to help increase profits for your business. When you are searching for a virtual assistant, just make sure to ask the person about their experience and expertise in this area before hiring. But once you find that qualified assistant, you’ll be seeing amazing results in your business in not time.

Author Lisa Santos

Posted by Visions of Earth | July 15, 2009 | Categories: Marketing & Promotion, Media, Website Design | Tags: hire a virtual assistant, marketing, press release, promotion, texas | 1 Comment »

Mirror of Self Reflection

Age creeps up on us all slowly stripping away our youth then one day we look into the mirror and the body does not seem to match the sparkle in the eyes anymore. Then we begin to look over our shoulder at our past and think I wonder what would have happened or what if I had taken this path?

The concept of there only being one life and a limited amount of time to live it is to most people like someone saying there is no Santa Claus. We simply want to believe in forever just like we wanted to believe in happily ever after as children.

You may think I am advocating quitting your job and going trekking in Africa but no that is not where this is going. Living is an art in itself it is not about time management or fit as much in as I can. It is about passion, depth, vision, love and much more.

I wish I could remember the taste of a meal long after I have eaten it, I wish I could see my partners face long after they have left, I wish I could feel my friends hug as she embraced me long after she had let go, I wish I could picture the one time my Mother said I love you long after she is gone, I wish I was so in tune with life, so aware, so enlightened that every moment was my greatest and I could feel it, taste it, and truly live it.

I do not want to wait until someone tells me there are no more moments left I do not want to feel cheated because a Higher Power took my moments away. I want to be grateful a Higher Power gave me the moment to begin with.

As youth slips away and it will slowly I want to be able to look in the mirror and see the happiness of a life lived with depth and passion etched in my face. I want to be able to feel the touch of my lovers hand as it brushed away my tears not just remember it. But unless I am truly aware truly in the moment at the time allowing myself to feel, letting go of expectations, letting go of the need to hold something back, unless that happens all I will have is a vague memory. I want more I want an imprint so strong I can carry it with me and feel it when the moments are at an end.

My wish for you is that you may look in the mirror of self reflection long before youth has disappeared. I hope you will realize life doesn’t need to be filled up with things rather it needs to be soaked up for all it has to offer right now at this very moment. My wish for you is that you may experienced even for a second a state of total being when everything falls away and time stands still and you can taste the air you breath, feel the earth pulsate beneath your feet and hear the whisper of the Angels.

Monique Romeijn Blog

Monique’s Mantra:

“Yesterday is the past, tomorrow is the future and today is a gift, that is why they call it the present”.

Posted by Visions of Earth | August 1, 2009 | Categories: Networking | Tags: article, mr designnet | Leave A Comment »

Tips to Selling on eBay and Starting an Online Business

For a growing number of entrepreneurs and small businesses, eBay is their sole storefront. The beauty of eBay is that it lets you get into e-commerce without having to go through the trouble and expense of setting up an e-commerce site of your own. These seven eBay selling tips will help you get started selling on eBay successfully and get on your way to becoming an eBay PowerSeller.

1. A picture IS worth 1000 words. It’s old-fashioned, but people still like to see things before they buy them. For successful eBay selling, make sure any products you list on eBay are accompanied by professional quality photographs.

2. Do your eBay research. When selling on eBay, before you list a particular product, spend some time researching other similar products on eBay and following the bidding process. This will help you gauge the interest for your product and help you determine how much your product might be worth.

3. Learn all about shipping. Shipping is under the control of the eBay seller, but some methods of shipping are better than others when you’re selling on eBay. You want to find the best method of shipping for your product in terms of expense and reliability and then specify that shipping method in your eBay listing. (And don’t forget to include the shipping cost in your shipping information for potential buyers.)

4. Pay as much attention to the writing of your eBay listing as to your picture. For selling on eBay, you need a powerful eBay listing. And the trick to writing a strong eBay listing is to combine search engine friendly phrasing with concrete details about the product in a way that will entice people to bid on your product. Take the time to craft your eBay listing just as you would any ad.

5. Offer a full slate of payment options, including credit cards. The more payment options you, as an Ebay seller, offer prospective bidders, the more bidders your product will attract and the more successful your selling on eBay will be.

6. Focus on getting positive feedback first. Feedback really matters when you’re selling on eBay. If you have a consistent record of positive feedback, prospective buyers will both bid more often and be willing to pay higher prices. So you may want to hold back on placing higher priced products until you have a successful track record as an eBay seller established.

7. Be business-like. Act professionally, provide the kind of superior customer service that will build your reputation, and make sure that you’re following all the business rules that apply, such as registering your business and properly charging and remitting taxes. Selling on eBay is just like any other business; to become an eBay success, you need to follow the rules and provide the kind of customer satisfaction that will translate into increased eBay sales.

Do you have some unwanted items? Want to clean out that closet or garage? Having a garage sale? Want to start an eBay store or business? Contact MR DesignNet to start-up your new venture. To view my eBay go here.

Posted by Visions of Earth | August 18, 2009 | Categories: Marketing & Promotion, Search Engine Optimization | Tags: e-commerce, ebay store, entrepreneur, small business | 2 Comments »

Information Technology – The History of the Internet

Throughout the history of man, our accomplishments have been marked by various ages. There was the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age.

These were primarily marked by the material used in the weapons of the day. In modern days we have gloried for a brief time in the Nuclear Age, but this rapidly fell from favor when we figured out we either could destroy the world, or die from all the waste from our reactors. With the advent of the Internet, we find ourselves in the information age.

Although most people think that the Internet is a recent development, it actually has its roots over 40 years ago. The US military saw the need to interconnect radar facilities all over the country. Later this ability would allow the exchange of information between educational facilities.

What we know as the Internet today actually got its start in the early 90′s. The advent of the personal computer in the late 1980′s spurred the growth of the internet. What started with a few college students talking to each other’s computers has grown to an international information exchange.

Remember the days when you would mention you had a computer to a friend and they would say, “Hey my friend Joe has a bulletin board, do you have a modem?” Once you figured out what a modem was, you went down to your friendly computer store and either bought one, or most likely had it installed. (I remember the days when I was scared to death to open up a computer case.) So you had your 1200 baud modem hooked up, listened to all those tones and viola, you were connected. It took maybe 2 weeks if you downloaded a picture, but you were actually talking to another computer. Heaven forbid that you even thought of video. No one could call you because the phone was always busy as you were exploring this strange new world.

Now we have DSL and satellite so we can talk on the phone while we text our friends on our cell while we post to Facebook.

Information is king in this day. You can find most anything within seconds. We have new words, “I’ll Google that,” or “I Googled that yesterday.” A word that a few years ago did not exist has become a noun and a verb for finding information.

With the rise of the internet we have seen a new economy develop. “Ecommerce” has become the byword of the day. Today it is quite possible to live and never leave your home. This new economy has given birth to a new generation of entrepreneurs, the Internet Marketer. Selling information on the Internet has become a multi-million dollar business.

People like Armand Moran, Alex Mandossian, and Rich Schefren are among the top Internet Marketers in the US, as well as Michael Green, Michael Cheney, and the up and coming Alex Jeffreys in the UK.

Although the main advantage of selling information on the ‘Net is it is a fairly level playing field that most anyone with a few skills can be successful in, it is becoming a bit more difficult now. There is quite a bit to process from web site design, content, sales copy etc.

Unless you are very self-directed, and disciplined, one of the better ways to become successful is to find a mentor. A mentor can provide the information and inspiration to guide you along the way. After all, they have been down the route before and already made the mistakes.

Finding the right mentor can be a challenge. You must take care that you don’t get one who is willing to take your money and leave you standing. Some of the best places might be forums directed to the Internet Marketing niche.

Look for people with a good reputation check references. You can also try typing the potential mentor’s name and “scam” to see if there is any negative feed back about them, but do this with an open mind. Sometimes disgruntled people will leave undeserved negative feedback.

Can anyone know how long the “Information Age” will last? What is next on the horizon, implants that bypass the computer and let your brain directly access the Internet? Can you make it “big” on the “Net?” The only way to know is to find a mentor and give it a try.

Author: Gene Ilten

Posted by Visions of Earth | September 2, 2009 | Categories: Marketing & Promotion, Media | Tags: computers, ecommerce, internet, marketing, research, web promotion, website marketing | 2 Comments »

Basics of Video Marketing on the Internet

Marketing through audio-video is very cheap as compared to other form of advertisement. It can also be said that one video can be equal to many other forms of promoting. This marketing technique can also be very cost effective and useful in driving more and more customer. And with the way video promoting is exploding the day is not far when it will become the most powerful way of online marketing. You may not believe it but majority of the clients prefer to watch a video about the company rather than reading about the same company.

Video marketing is becoming a large online marketing system. Several businesses nowadays are using video to reach out to their customers or clients. It is the most sorts after thing in internet marketing today and websites like YouTube and Google videos are providing the options for uploading your video so that it can be viewed by a large number of people over the internet.

But creating a video only will not make sure that your job is done as videos will not help you increase your page rank on Google as it’s a viral and relies majorly on community submission and social tags. Only a video commercial will not help in increasing your search rank. But it can surely increase your clientele as many people prefer watching then reading. In a recent survey it was found out that people prefer entertainment while learning and that is what video do it entertains people while they get to know about your business. Sites like YouTube can provide a great marketing campaign for your online business or website and at present you can gain effectively from these marketing campaigns online.

Checkout my online video marketing campaign for Satellite Imaging Corporation on YouTube. A remote sensing and GIS company that provides high resolution satellite image data for mapping purposes.

Majority of the people are still not using video marketing and are not comfortable with this marketing technique. It’s a widely open area to be taken to boost your business through video marketing. In future it certainly will be the mostly used marketing tool, so why not get you ahead of time and get maximum benefits from video marketing technique today. Companies that feel to reach masses would prefer this technique sooner or later as video marketing is effective and efficient.

Posted by Visions of Earth | October 2, 2009 | Categories: Marketing & Promotion, Media, Networking, Search Engine Optimization | Tags: advertising, business, internet marketing, marketing, seo, web marketing | 1 Comment »

How a Blog Can Seriously Help Your Business

If your business website doesn’t have a blog, get one. A blog, if done right, can act as a direct and indirect mechanism that brings large amounts of qualified visitors to your site, many of whom may become customers.

This is mostly related to the way blogs interact with search engines and the traffic I am speaking of will come from search engines, mostly Google.

Before I explain how you can do this to help your website, let me first give some background on how search engines work, Google in particular.

When it comes to optimizing your website (or blog for that matter) for search engines you must always keep in mind two things: on-page optimization and off-page optimization.

On-page optimization is the elements of a Web page that better optimize it to be found and ranked well in the search engines. These elements can include on-page content such as the actual sentences and paragraphs on the page, the headlines (or headers or Hx tags), the links, the links’ text, the title tag and much more.

Off-page optimization means the things that are done on sites besides your site, namely link-building. Off-page optimization is the process of creating links (or causing others to create links) on other websites that point to your site. Inbound links as these are often called have a major impact on how well you rank in search engines. Generally speaking, the more inbound links, the better. But the quality of the sites with these inbound links, or the way the search engines perceive the sites, is even more important.

To rank on the first couple of pages on the search engines requires work on both on-page and off-page optimization.

Two additional and important pieces of information that you’ll need to understand are related to site content and internal links.

Search engines also very much love new, original and quality content, and they like to see your website regularly adding this kind of new content. You don’t need to add pages every day, just add pages at the same rate over time. So if you add a page a week to your site, keep it at around that same pace, or increase or decrease gradually.

A website can be considered a living entity in a sense. It certainly shouldn’t be static. It should grow over time. And the fantastic thing about content is that the more of it there is on your site, the more chances you have of getting found in the search engines.

The idea that inbound links help your search engine rankings that I explained above can be extended to your internal pages as well. In other words, the more links to a particular page coming from other pages within the same site will boost that page’s rank as well.

Think of it this way. If you had a ten page site, including a product page and every page on the site contained a link to your product page and, if all other things were equal, your product page would rank higher than the rest of your site’s pages (besides the home page which is given a little extra weíght).

Now let’s consider what would happen if there were only you and your competitor in your industry (if only that could be true!) and your site still had those ten pages while your competitor’s site contained one hundred pages. Furthermore, your competitor set it up the same way as you where he added a link to every page on his site that pointed to his product page. If all other things were equal, his product page would outrank your product page every time. Why? Because he had 100 internal links pointing to his product page and you only had 10.

If you put all these pieces together now, on-page optimization, off-page optimization or link building, content creation and internal linking, can you begin to see why a blog may be a good thing? A blog helps with all of these.

A blog that is regularly updated is providing a mechanism for adding fresh content on a regular basis. Plus, it’s so easy to use a blog that anyone can use them, so even if you or your employees don’t know a thing about Web pages and HTML, you’ll still be able to add new content to your site.

Consider this. If you add fresh, quality content to your blog on a regular basis by writing posts, something the search engines love, and within each post you link to an important page within your site, let’s say your product page for instance, you’re now building links to help your rankings using your blog. With this additional link your product page gets that much more boost in the search engines.

Remember how I explained that links from within your site help your rankings? Adding links within your blog posts pointing back to your other important pages that you want to rank well is a great way to help your rankings.

And every time you publish a new post, you’re giving the search engines one more entry point into your site. Your site will quickly get bigger, and with each new page your site gets more visible.

Keep in mind that the links you make within your blog posts should be relevant. Only link to your product page from a post that has to do with your products. And also, blog posts ought to be useful to your site visitors. The less you talk about your products and instead offer useful, free information that people can use, the more traffíc and repeat visitors you’ll get.

Remember that people really don’t care about you, your website or your products, they only care about how you can help them. If you sell furniture, a blog post about how to find the best deals on furniture would be far better than a post about how your chairs are the best in the world.

One important thing to remember is that if you plan on creating a new blog for your business as a way to augment your website be sure you put the blog on your actual domain. This means that you would not use a remote service like Blogger.com. Instead, you must have the blog on your business website’s address (or domain).

By adding a blog to your business website you are creating a way to get additional traffic. You’ll get direct traffic from your posts, which get indexed by the search engines and drive traffic to your site from searches. And, you’ll get indirect traffic from your other site’s pages ranking well in the search engines because they have links pointing to them from your blog posts.

You’ll be regularly adding fresh content to your site, which search engines love, thereby creating more ways to be found in the search engines at the same time. And each post provides a new chance to create a link or two to other pages and blog posts on your site, thereby boosting those pages’ rankings.

Like I suggested at the beginning, if your business website doesn’t have a blog, go get one.

Jason O’Connor

Posted by Visions of Earth | October 26, 2009 | Categories: Marketing & Promotion, Search Engine Optimization | Tags: advertising, blog, blogs, design, link building, marketing, optimization, promotion, search engines, seo, web | 1 Comment »

Writing Compelling Content for the Web

Content is one of the most valuable things you can focus on during development of your website. Consider each page of your website a chance to capture or lose your audience. If a web page has paragraph after paragraph of text, many visitors won’t bother to begin reading. There are various other things to be leery of when writing for the web. This article covers eight tips to help you succeed when writing content for your website.

Entice with Communicative Headings

Visitors decide whether to invest their precious time reading your content, typically after scanning a heading or two. Consider which headline will receive more attention:

• PHP solutions for the Web

• Three eCommerce PHP Solutions for the Web

While both could be headings for the same content, the second heading will attract more attention because it clearly denotes what will follow. Additionally, it adds a level of expertise. It is also important to keep your headings concise. When headings wrap to multiple lines, they start becoming paragraph-like and readers cannot scan them. Sub-headings are another way to make your content easier for visitors to scan. Once readers have decided your heading is worth investing more time in, they often scan the sub-headings to jump to the section that is most applicable to them.

Conclude Before You Expand

Every page of your website should cater to the most impatient reader and clearly state what the page is about in the first few lines. Most readers won’t want to read an entire page to get to the point. Write an introductory paragraph that summarizes the most important parts.

Many successful writers outline the points they want to get across, fill in those points and only then do they write their first paragraph. It is not necessary to write from top to bottom and this method can help you write a stronger introduction.

Create Effective Lists

It is quicker to scroll down a web page than it is to read from left to right and keep your eyes wrapping from line to line. For this reason, readers appreciate lists. However, it is important not to use overwhelmingly long lists. Studies have shown people can remember 7 things at a time. A list of seven bulleted items is digestible, while a list of 50 is intimidating. If it is crucial for you to list 50 points, break up your lists with sub-headings so readers are able to jump from section to section efficiently.

Write Clearly and Succinctly

Whether your visitors are coming to gain information, make buying decisions or simply be entertained, respect that they don’t have all day to read your content. If you are wordy, you can expect your visitors to drift to competitors’ websites. However, don’t sacrifice clarity for brevity.

Similar to print writing, each paragraph should contain only one idea. The attention span of a web reader is shorter than that of a print reader though, which makes it important to trim your paragraphs to a few sentences each.

Eliminate unnecessary words. For example, there is no need to say, “at this point in time” when you can say “currently.” It is useless to say “an awful tragedy” when tragedies are awful by nature. Avoid describing an object as “round in shape” when you can just say round.

Avoid the passive voice. For example, replace, “My life has been made easier by templates” with “Templates simplified my life.”

The above paragraph helps illustrate that examples are useful; however, I should specify that repeating yourself is not. Do not say the same thing in three different ways.

Use consistent language. Consider your audience when writing in first, second or third person and be careful transitioning from one to the next. Jumping from a formal paragraph to a first person story sounds like two authors wrote the content.

Finally, read your content aloud and trust your first reaction. If you have to re-read to put the emphasis in the correct part of the sentence or to understand your point, you can bet that others will too.

More importantly, have someone else read your content – preferably, your target audience, not your business partner. You are too close to the ideas you want to communicate and others may find ambiguities that you will certainly want to clarify.

Create Content Relative to Your Audience

Know your audience and speak to them, not at them. Whether your objective is to sell toilet seats or convey a change in the stock market, play to people’s emotions. Don’t use technical terms for a less than savvy audience.

Don’t assume your readers have been to certain pages of your website before others. With a growing dependence on search engines, visitors often arrive at a website two tiers down from the home page. Consider the visitor’s point of view: If I knew nothing about this company or website, would I understand this page?

Be cautious of tangents, information and links that will distract a reader from the web page’s primary purpose.

Specify Links with Style and Language

Links are another way visitors can scan your web pages as they stand out from normal text – or at least they should. Make sure your links differ in color or style from other text on your website. Using “click here to learn more” is a waste of space. Instead, use “learn more.” Your links should tell readers where they are going, but they shouldn’t be reminded they need their mouse to get there.

Be specific with where the link is leading to. There are many websites that break up articles into two or more pages. Readers are more apt to click on a link that says, “Part 2: SEO Tips” than they are to click on a link that says “next.”

Proofread – Forward and Backward

There are some people who are a captivating force to typos and grammatical blunders. While some will gloss over these errors, the people who do notice are typically repelled. Websites with typos look unprofessional – or worse – like the author didn’t care enough about the reader to take the time to proofread.

Tips for proofreading:

• Use spell check and grammar check.
• Read backward. When we read forward, our eyes skip over small words and miss mistakes.
• Have someone else proofread your content.
• If in doubt, look it up!

Trusting copy/paste is a common mistake; be sure to proofread your content after it is on the web page.

Conclude with Action

Although many of your readers won’t make it to the end of your content, it’s important to summarize for those who do. Include your overall point, as well as where you would like to lead your reader to next. If you are fortunate enough to have your readers want more, don’t miss a chance to provide it!

For example, I would like to conclude by articulating that web writing has similarities to print writing (entice and be concise!) but differs in that readers are more impatient and can easily “surf” elsewhere. The more you understand how people read on the web in general and what your audience wants to know, the more you will keep visitors coming back for more.

Resource: WebAssist

Posted by Visions of Earth | November 25, 2009 | Categories: Marketing & Promotion, Search Engine Optimization, Writing | Tags: article, communication, content, development, internet, marketing, promotion, seo, web, web design, websites, writers, Writing | 1 Comment »

2010 New Year Resolutions

New Year’s Eve has always been a time for looking back to the past, and more importantly, forward to the coming year. It’s a time to reflect on the changes we want (or need) to make and resolve to follow through on those changes.

1) Be realistic by setting achievable goals. Winning the lottery, for example, is out of your grasp.

2) Describe your resolutions in specific terms. Instead of “I don’t want to be lazy,” opt for “I want to exercise regularly” or “I will cut down on my television watching.”

3) Break down large goals into smaller ones. For instance, commit to losing weight by resolving to join a gym and improve your eating habits.

4) Find alternatives to a behavior that you want to change, and make this part of your resolution plan. So you want to quit smoking but you smoked to relax yourself? What other forms of relaxation are available to you?

5) Above all, aim for things that are truly important to you, not what you think you ought to do or what others expect of you.

Posted by Visions of Earth | January 1, 2010 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

The Importance of Choosing the Right Colors for Your Website

Colors have psychological impacts, they are attributes of eyes, but are the chemistry of the mind. Colors are perceived though pupils and its effects are produced with associated nerves to the brain neurons. Light reflecting through objects in different wavelengths and frequency stimulates different “cones” or color receptor cells of the retina in the eyes and makes perception possible for different colors.

Colors influence people through psychological changes and are associated with certain feelings and meanings. Colors exist everywhere else, it is omnipresent. Colors represent cultural, social customs and emotional values and its use in arts, printing, designing, websites, graphics, etc. – these days are unavoidable.

Choosing proper color is an essential constituent for your website and its graphics; as visitors to your website first encounters colors and graphics before they read your textual descriptions.

Colors are used in website design and graphic design for various forms; use of colors can be for backgrounds, navigation, logos, and navigation buttons to emphasize, highlight, symbolize your text description and outlining your site.

Despite the fact that your website is enhanced and fabricated with textual and graphical design, if you are using the wrong color combinations, then you are annoying your own visitors rather appealing them. As a result, to attract your customers, it is important to understand psychological behavior of your customers to your websites chromatics. The use of wrong colors results in the wrong impression.

Below are the details for color interpreted through different professions, culture, and physiology science:

Red: Red is a color of intensity, stimulants, love, gaudiness, blood, war, excitement, speed, heat, leadership, masculinity, power, passion, strength, energy, financial loss, Danger, fire, radicalism, aggression, stop, anger, and revolution.

Blue: Blue is a color of peace, unity, harmony, depression, coldness, ice, tackiness, winter tranquility, calmness, coolness, confidence, water, ice, loyalty, conservatism, dependability, cleanliness, technology, winter, idealism, and obscenity.

White: White a color of peace, innocence, cleanliness, simplicity, security, humility, sterility, winter, reverence, purity, coldness, surrender, cowardice, and fearfulness. Black: Black is a color of power, sophistication, Evil, death, fear, anonymity, anger, sadness, mystery, formality, elegance, wealth, style, remorse, mourning, and unhappiness.

Green: Green is a color of nature, spring, good luck, illness, greed, vigor, generosity, go, grass, wealth, money, fertility, youth, environment, envy, misfortune, jealousy, aggression, and inexperience.

Purple: Purple is a color of spirituality, royalty, nobility, enlightenment, sensuality, creativity, wealth, gaudiness, ceremony, mystery, wisdom, mourning, profanity, exaggeration, confusion, arrogance, and flamboyance.

Brown: Brown is a color of richness, stability, anachronism, dirt, dullness, filth, heaviness, poverty, roughness tradition, calm, depth, natural organisms, and nature.

Yellow: Yellow is the color of joy, happiness, optimism, idealism, gold, summer, hope, air, sunlight, hazards, dishonesty, avarice, weakness, cowardice, and illness.

Orange: Orange is a color of energy, flamboyance, playfulness, balance, heat, fire, enthusiasm, overemotional, warning, danger, fire, aggression, arrogance, flamboyance, and gaudiness.

Even choosing color is a professional skill in graphic design business, as it is not only just the colors, but are the color that stimulates the mind of your viewers. Graphic designs inevitably comes with colors, and selecting the best ones for your business is an expertise.

Here is a more in depth description of colors and their psychological effect from this interesting article.

- Purple and violet are psychologically inspiring for the spirit, and benefit the pineal gland, cerebral cortex, right eye, central nervous system and upper brain function.
- Indigo aids concentration, insight and imagination, and promotes peace of mind. Physically it benefits the pituitary gland, left eye, sinus, nose and eyesight.
- Blue is linked to integrity, honesty, loyalty, kindness, commitment and endurance. It benefits the throat, thyroid, parathyroid, lungs and mouth.
- Green promotes compassion and unconditional love, forgiveness, contentment, nurturing, harmony, and generosity. Physically it is linked to the heart, circulatory system, arms and hands.
- Yellow stimulates humour and logic, efficiency, warmth, self-awareness and personal power. It corresponds to the solar plexus, stomach, liver, gall bladder and pancreas.
- Orange is required to stimulate sensuality and passion, vitality, optimism and enthusiasm, tolerance and hospitality. It affects the reproductive organs, genitals, gonads, prostate and spleen.
- Red will arouse instincts of self-preservation and survival, stimulating the senses and bringing out the spontaneous primal urges. It relates to the base of the spine, adrenals, kidneys, bladder, colon, spinal column, legs and blood.

by Bharat Bista

Posted by Visions of Earth | February 3, 2010 | Categories: Graphic Design, Website Design | Tags: Graphic Design, print, web design | 1 Comment »

Did Google Steal Your Soul?

I wasn’t looking for Google… but Google was looking for me.

Google seemed very austere. No flashing banners, no blinking buttons, no prettiness at all in fact, but very COOL non-the-less. Less is more. Clothed in simple green and blue, I liked Google right away.

Google said that I could search all of the world’s information that was currently online. Google said that one day, in the near future, the sum of all human experience, the totality of all knowledge would be safely stored, managed and maintained by Google.