Archive for the ‘website design’ Category

Welcome to my video tutorial button announcement! Recently I’ve added a tutorial button on all the templates for my website and blog. Located all the way to the top right of every webpage, the tutorial button allows my online visitors to go straight to my video tutorial page to view any of my video tutorials in a single place.

Notice the photo at the left shows the before and after with and without the new “Tutorials” button. With a simple addition of one line in all my website templates it was possible to add the new button for easy access to my tutorials, all on a single page!

If you have an existing website for your small business, I wouldn’t suggest making changes to your own code unless you’re absolutely sure you know what you’re doing. Making template adjustments is something that should be left to your web designer, who would know to backup your original before altering anything. One character change can throw your entire website’s appearance off kilter, so avoid making changes without expert help.

Don’t have a small business website? Your own website could attract traffic to your business and actually bring in customers. Contact me today by phone or email for details on how you can get started right away! Keep posted on my blog and website for more news, tips and advice concerning various topics online from custom website design to the latest trends happening in the internet world.

Having a website isn’t beneficial if it lays stagnant. Search engines detect freshly added content and reward websites that do so on a regular basis.

Adding quality blog posts to your website offers more for search engines to index. Showing up on Google page one could potentially give you more customers, so writing a lot of posts can be advantageous to online promotion.

When writing on your blog, focus on positive aspects of your business and what makes you stand out over your competition.

Most small business owners don’t always have time to write on their blog or website due to the busy schedule of running a company, so I offer blog writing services to promote SEO for many websites online. I speak a language that your target market wants to hear and give your readers a reason to return on a regular basis.

This graph below demonstrates a steady increase in traffic for one of the websites I write for. The website visitor statistics steadily increased partially due to my blog writing service starting in July 2010 to now. Notice the impressive peak of over 1600 page loads in one single day just recently.

If you are interested in adding professional blog posts to your small business blog or website, contact me today for more details! If you don’t have a blog or website, I can make that a reality for you as well! Keep posted on my blog for more news, tips and advice concerning website design, blogging, and the internet in general.

An algorithm is an ever-changing formula developed for search engines which decides the order that websites are indexed upon searches. This constantly evolving algorithm uses data collected by actual human ratings of what makes websites trustworthy.

Thousands of websites were rated by experts on the basis of many factors. Some questions that were considered include whether the articles are duplicated, if the content is original and whether the author seems to be an authority on the topics written about.

Grammar and spelling errors are even taken into consideration upon the rating of these websites by the panel of experts. The computer’s program then bases rankings in search engines on these factors.

The Panda Algorithm is the most recent of these formulas that Google depends upon to form the website page ranking order. First developed in February 2011, there have been many more additional tweaks made for search improvements. Taking into consideration what makes a website trustworthy now can help your website achieve better search results.

From a website design standpoint, the new factors taken into consideration gives a basis on which to create website content for my clients. I give thought to the trustability of the content, providing topics that readers would have genuine interest in, and whether I would trust the website with my credit card information. The algorithms are not just beginning to think like website critiquing experts, but have been for a long time now.

Happy Thanksgiving, happy holidays and warm wishes to your family! Bookmark my blog for news, tips and advice in the computer world, and contact me for details on starting a small business website of your own today!

Any of the comments that you make on fan pages or public posts with the Facebook Comments social plugin can now be indexed by Google. Will this affect how you post considering that your comments may be indexed? Although Google isn’t violating any privacy laws by doing this, we may see more censoring on the social media website.

If your profile is private then the Googlebots won’t be able to index your comments, however postings in fanpages can be traced back to you by Google. The content was already public, Google just made it much easier to find.

Had you been cautious of your postings and do not mind having them tied to your name, you probably don’t have a problem with the change.

Not only is Facebook is being watched by Google, but Google can now index AJAX and JavaScript content on websites with Facebook comments built in. This means anything posted in a forum or public page can now be easily found with Google’s search engine.

What this means from a website designer’s perspective is that I see the potential for more non-deceptive means of advertising using social media to promote one’s business. If Google is indexing content from Facebook and other websites forum posts, this is an opportunity to gain more website visitors just by being more active in these online communities.

Google’s all seeing eye is peering into the far corners of the internet, so be careful what you comment and watch what you say. Make some postings about your business and now you just may get indexed for them.

Advertising with YouTube may be a good idea to promote your small business. Make your own YouTube video and post the link on your Facebook, or embed the video on your blog. Whatever you do, adding a YouTube video could be an easy way to get you more business with a personal touch.

Even someone with little computer knowledge can make a video. Producing a quick Video is really easy to do, and can be about whatever you want, of course never posting anything illegal on the website. Give an instruction tutorial on something you think there may be a need for, interest your readers with a video blog, or show the physical location of your business in action. Having a video with yourself in it creates a personal touch that your readers can relate to.

Uploading the video to YouTube is about as easy as uploading or saving it to your computer. Either create an account or log into an existing one then click the “upload” link at the top right of youtube.com. Once you have a video uploaded you can review any positive or negative feedback you may receive and adjust these factors for your next video. Remember you are making your video viewable to the world, and should consider being responsible for the video content and be careful with the amount of information you disclose.

Keep posted on my website for news, tips and advice concerning small business website design, and contact me today for options and ideas concerning a custom website design for your own business.

Adding custom social media buttons on your website or blog gives your online visitors the option to “Share” on Facebook, “Tweet” on Twitter, or add your site to multiple other social media websites on the net.

Allowing your website visitors to be able to share and tweet about your blog or website allows you to have more exposure in your business online. More exposure on social media websites could bring you more traffic and in turn, more potential clients.

I recently added these buttons to every page of my website and blog, and can offer the same service to you, if you have a website or blog set up already. Adding these social media buttons to EVERY page of your blog or website could be a very timely process for you, so you may want someone like me to handle that for you.

Don’t have a blog or website? Contact me today for details on just what it takes to get started! Keep posted on my blog and website for news, tips and advice concerning custom website design.

For directions on adding Google +1, Facebook share, Twitter tweet, and other social media buttons on every page of your blog or website, have a look at this Google Plus One Button Tutorial.

As the most popular social media website around and the second most popular website in terms of new accounts, Facebook attracts members of all ages. With currently over a steadily growing 750 million active Facebook users, the opportunity for using this social media platform for business purposes arises.

Facebook allows users to introduce webinars, podcasts, blog posts, articles, products and services while connecting with current and potential clients. Create a community around your business and be discovered by those who are searching for your products and services through advertising and promotion online. It is these connections which lead to referrals, customers and return clients.

Privacy settings control which portions of your profile different connections can or cannot see. Using this function allows you to decide what aspects of your business are exposed to your friends and those not friended yet.

Engage with potential customers online by being helpful, informative and providing interaction. One good practice is to ‘like’ other businesses who may need your product or service. When they return the favor and ‘like’ your page, their individual fans will be exposed to what you do as well.

Remember, social media can be a positive experience, but as with anything else online, you should be careful of what you click on. Read my post on Viral Infections on Facebook to better prepare yourself before diving in.

Use the Facebook logo on your printed material, business cards and website. Don’t have a website for your small business? Contact me today for ideas to promote your business with a custom website design for a fair price!

To keep your customers involved in your business online, simple website navigation is an important factor. Imagine a natural flowing positive website experience, and consider these tips for a web design that is easy to navigate your way through.

The sections of your small business website that you want your websurfers to naturally land on should stick out like a sore thumb. Think about which parts of your website you want visitors to be sure not to miss. When someone cannot locate their particular topic of interest, chances are they could bounce off to another website. The object is to keep them digging for more, and eventually bookmark you and refer you to others.

In order for your website visitors to navigate easily, it may be a good idea to add a sitemap to sections with numerous pages. When a single tab grows large enough you may even want to make a short guide list for reference. On my website I created a Resources Sitemap which covers everything under my “Resources” tab on one page.

Consider having tabs across the top so your potential customers can find what they are looking for quickly and easily. Make the custom website design intended for function so everything is simple to find.

Group your most important links together on a sidebar at the left or right. Highlighting the links you think are the most important and using bold appropriately can easily guide your website visitors where they need to go as well.

Visit my blog and website on a regular basis for web design related tips, news and advice, and contact me by email to discuss your own small business custom website design.

Upon taking my own advice of “studying keyword analytics in order to find out what keywords your visitors use to locate your website”, I discovered a total of 15% of my website traffic in the last month came from “sidebar” related searches. I thought this was rather coincidental considering just last night I did a sidebar redesign for my stepbrother’s website, Masterson Construction Services located in the Los Angeles, California area.

Some of the terms I was found on Google’s search results were ‘website sidebar ideas’, ‘sidebar ideas’, ‘wordpress sidebar ideas’, ‘web design sidebar’, ‘webdesign sidebar’ and ‘side bar ideas’. There seems to be no problem planning website content, but my readers have a need for website sidebar ideas.

In this recent project the website’s right column had the same two pictures on each tab. By changing them each to the theme of the tab they were located under, the website visitor gets more of a feel of what each tab is about. Feel free to click through the tabs to see how the photos on the right side are unique on each webpage.

If you have a subject you’d like to see a post about, feel free to comment something of interest. Bookmark my blog and website for tips and advice dealing with website design and other internet related topics. Contact me by email for information on custom website design.

When filtering spam comments on your blog, a few considerations need to be focused on. Identify whether you are looking at an actual comment by a human or a program designed to add comments for the purposes of gaining a backlink.

Besides some of the add ons and plugins that are offered with most blogs to filter spam, you may still have to delete some spam that gets through those defenses. When you notice a comment has nothing to do with the post you wrote, chances are you can delete it for being spam. Sometimes you can recoginze blog spam comments by the website it links back to.

A great way to filter a large portion of blog comment spam is with the WordPress Akismet and the SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam plugins.

Here are some examples of some actual comments on my blog that I approved:

Dear Rog,
MUCH BETTER! I like the new vid much better.

I very much appreciate this update my computer has had some issues so this will definitely help

The tips provided by you are very good and useful.
Thanks

I really enjoyed flicking through this. Think I’m going to look through your other posts!

Spam has always been a problem, and seems to be getting worse every day. A good way to tell if a comment is spam is to see if it has anything to do with your blog post or if it is just a general comment. Spam comments usually say something like, “while the sites we link to below are completely unrelated to ours, we think they are worth a read, so have a look” or “we like to honor other sites on the internet, even if they aren’t related to us, by linking to them. Below are some websites worth checking out.”

Bookmark my blog and website for internet related tips and advice, and contact me by phone or email about a custom website design for your small business website.