All that you have to do is to sit down in front of your PC/Laptop open up a text editor in one window and the site in another. Read through the first page of the site. When you have read it, start to think. What is this page about? Which of the words that appear in the document describe the contents of the page accurately? What kind of words or phrases would someone use if he was using a search engine and trying to find documents like this? When you have found the answers to these questions, write down the words and the phrases you have come up with. It doesn’t matter if the list becomes too long, as you can always remove some of the excess words later.

When doing keyword optimization simply select one or two medium-popular keywords or phrases per page. These are the main targets, and start to optimize heavily for them. Subsequently squeeze a few less common phrases and words into the body text, hoping that they will help the page to come up on some obscure multi-word searches. Repeat this process for every page on your site. You should be able to create an individual, distinct list of keywords for each page. The different lists should not “compete” with each other; instead each should cover different areas. This does not however mean that there shouldn’t be any similarities between your lists - it’s perfectly OK to have some, but the lists shouldn’t be 100% identical. It is better to have 20 good listings on different search terms than 20 good listings on the same one.

So, now you have the list ready. The next thing would be to go to Overture’s keyword suggestion tool and type in the different keywords and phrases you’ve come up with. The tool will tell you how many times each keyword and each phrase was searched at Overture during the last month. It won’t tell you exactly how popular different words are, since the statistics contain only the searches executed at Overture, but it will give you a general idea. Because Overture’s data is not always 100% accurate, you may also want to visit WordTracker. The service is not free, but the trial option offers a chance to search for good keywords without having to pay a dime. By using both Overture and Word Tracker and comparing what they think about the popularity of different keywords, you should be able to separate the words people search for from those that are rarely used.

If some of the words you were planning to select aren’t commonly used in searches, you might want to consider dropping them from your list. If other words look like they are used quite a lot, then it might be a good idea to consider adding them. But remember to…Keep the search engine optimization process in mind! By now, your list is probably pretty full of very competitive, single-word terms such as “songs” or “design” or “laptops” or whatever. Scratch them. This might sound harsh, but if you’re a novice, you have no chance of achieving a top listing under such terms. Even many professionals tend to avoid them, as they are extremely competitive. There are hundreds of thousands of sites targeting them and even with excellent search engine optimization skills; they are very tough to conquer. What you should do is to contract it down a little.

However, think about different variations of these popular keywords. If you were originally thinking about the keyword “design”, how about “web design with your country name” or “website design/graphic design”? These terms would be, not easy, but easier to rank well under. It is far better to be in the top 10 for a search term with medium usage than to rank 500th for a heavily used term. Select key phrases that do get searched, but that aren’t too competitive. You might also want to target common misspellings, if some of the keywords related to your site are often spelled wrong. Finally, you should have completed your keyword optimization process and now possess a pretty good list of medium-popularity keyword phrases for each of your pages.

For a designer, the matter in which search engine algorithms work can be a problem. Search engines may like H1-sized headings, but many visitors consider them to be ugly. As long as the content of your pages has any effect on their ranking, there will always be a conflict between what search engines and users want. These issues are usually solved by cloaking the page, which enables the designer to show one design to search engines and another to humans. However, cloaking takes plenty of work and sometimes money. If only minor visual changes are required to please both parties, a simpler solution would seem sufficient.

What is CSS?

As the Internet has developed, HTML has received an add-on called Cascading Style Sheets. This new language opens the possibility of altering the visual representation of pages without the use of HTML. While search engines still do not understand CSS very well, nearly all browsers support it to some degree.

Although CSS doesn’t offer the same flexibility and protection as cloaking, it is well-suited for making small design changes. However, an overwhelming majority of browsers understand CSS; most of them do not support all of its features. To avoid nasty surprises, it is best to check your pages in almost all available and most used browsers. As more recent versions of these browsers have better CSS support.

There are some “legal” things that can be done with CSS, build layout or to slightly adjust the size of headings and body text. Search engines consider the techniques which are known as spam, and it probably may ban a website if choose to use them. Using CSS to cheat the engines isn’t safe - it’s just somewhat safer than doing it with the traditional HTML method.

]]> http://arkisdata.com/blog/index.php/2009/06/css/feed/ http://arkisdata.com/blog/index.php/2009/05/type-of-website-design/ http://arkisdata.com/blog/index.php/2009/05/type-of-website-design/#comments Mon, 25 May 2009 06:08:57 +0000 admin http://arkisdata.com/blog/?p=360 There are many different platforms to choose from when putting together your website design. Web design languages or platforms include ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, Java, Flash and HTML. There are also other forms of website design such as Cold fusion web design and SHTML website design. An individual or a company has to consider what type of web hosting they want for their website design. Do they want the website hosted on a standard server or on a secure server (HTTPS)? They should also take into concern whether or not to implement search engine promotion into the website design for effective SEO.

Differences between each type of web design

HTML website design

A website design in HTML is probably one of the more recommended forms of website design whilst advertising online. This is merely because search engine crawlers such as the Googlebot can read the content of the website a lot easier. An HTML website design goes hand in hand with our search engine promotion techniques, even though search engine friendly dynamic ASP or PHP pages can be created. The only draw-back to a HTML website design is that unless correctly coded, it may prevent search engine spiders from actually viewing the content on the web pages when advertising online.

Dynamic website design and E-Commerce Web design

As a matter of fact, when advertising online dynamic web design such as ASP web design or PHP website design are great when developing a large-scale website. If someone was creating an online store where products are continuously changing, it is recommended to create the website design in either dynamic ASP or PHP for internet marketing. The reason for this is rather than creating one page per product, it would be better to create one template dynamic page with a back-end database for the database website design. That way, there won’t be hundreds of pages but just one page which pulls the information form a database and display as a virtual page across the internet browser.

However, it is also recommended to maximize the search engine optimisation on dynamic web pages by using website design techniques such as mod-rewrite. This website design technique gives the search engine spiders the illusion that there is hundreds of pages as opposed to just one page and this helps the spider from the search engine crawl the site more in depth, thus leading to quicker indexing of the website giving a successful database web design internet marketing experience. The main downfall of dynamic website design is that if not done properly, as with HTML website design, it may put off search engine spiders from viewing the content on the web pages. It is fundamental that some experience with dynamic website design or database web design to properly create an effective search engine friendly e-commerce website for internet marketing solutions.

One of the main factors in assisting your website to getting to the first pages of Google is website development. To develop your website regularly by adding new relevant content that is unique about new products or services is great for the search engine spiders as it keeps them coming back to index your website and keep up to date with your products and services. Website development is the process that continues once your website design has been completed and uploaded. When you access new web pages to your website there are techniques and website structure techniques that can be used to ensure your site is strongly equipped with the tools to compete in the top listings on the major search engines.

• HTML web design
• ASP web design
• PHP Web design Database website design
• Dynamic web design
• E-commerce website designs

Factors that have to take into consideration when trying to setup trading online are:

• Which platform are we going to use; PHP, ASP, HTML, Java or Flash?”
• Which website design company should I use for the web hosting?”
• Most important of all, “How can I get the correct website design?”
• After all the website design is the core to the success of your online marketing and web design also plays a key part in your online identity.

It may give a tricky impression at first, but try to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and take a long look at the message that your website delivers to the public. Pretend that you are a potential customer and it’s your first time ever visiting your company website. Let’s start by visiting the home page. Does it contain “sticky” content that is visually and mentally appealing? That is, does it have what it takes to keep today’s savvy consumer clicking through your site. Customers are getting more and more knowledgeable about the Web as time passes by, and their time is extremely valuable.

They are accustomed to getting what they want and when they want it. If they aren’t impressed right from the get-go, they will simply move on to the next company, in search of the product or service that your website could not provide. Your home page is a VERY significant, if not the most important, part of your overall website. Take the time to figure out exactly what your customers are looking for and make it readily available on your home page, or at least have a prominent link to the product or service in plain sight. Try to create headlines that grab the viewer’s attention and make them ask for more.

Next, make sure that your website navigation is clean and user-friendly. If you have buttons that lead the user into a dead-end corner of your site with no way out, then you have major problems to correct. The website user should never have to use the “Back” button in their browser to navigate. If they get lost, they will leave your site.

Your product or service pages should be informative and lead the customer to a course of action. Those pages should steer the customer into purchasing online, calling you directly or requesting more information or a custom quote. Make sure that your phone number, preferably a 1-800 number, is visible on every page of the website, therefore lowering the path of resistance to making a sale. Also, be sure that the rest of your contact information is easily accessible. That includes your phone number, address and/or a contact form or email address to reach you. We have seen many websites that do not post an address or phone number, leaving the potential client feeling weary about the company’s credibility.

Last but not least, if your webmaster or web design firm lacks the skills to produce a visually appealing site with strategically planned content and functionality, then hire someone that is able to do that. It will pay off in the end!

]]> http://arkisdata.com/blog/index.php/2009/05/putting-yourself-in-your-clients-shoes/feed/ http://arkisdata.com/blog/index.php/2009/05/sitemap/ http://arkisdata.com/blog/index.php/2009/05/sitemap/#comments Thu, 14 May 2009 08:17:57 +0000 admin http://arkisdata.com/blog/?p=340 A site map is a complete catalogue of all sections of a site, with short descriptions of every section. It should be easy to use for making quick searches to find needed information and for moving through your site’s links. It should be a complete map of a website, if such is possible.

Site maps are compulsory for website to obtain a high position in search systems, because search systems highly rate sites which have a site navigation map.

A site map should contain the following

• A short annotation to the site, in which fundamental keywords will be used in text links to main pages of your site standard navigation panel, where all other links to all pages in the site will be located.
• A well-conceived site map should lead to all site nodes. In this way you will get higher priority in when searching the system.

Basic Advice on the Creation of Site Maps

A site map should communicate with the design of the site. Departing from the common conception a site map, as from any other identical document, does not give your site its full measure of attractiveness, and even to the contrary can unnecessarily frighten away users.

The use of graphics elements during the creation of a site map is not desirable. Lately most users surf the Web by sites in the Internet in the mode which excludes graphics images. For this reason the presence of graphics as navigation elements in your site map will not be considered very helpful, as they will not function for all users, and the map will be merely a rudimentary representation of your creation. Ideally, therefore, a site map should look the same in all web browsers, for all website visitors.

The map’s structure should associate to the hierarchy of the site itself. For the structure of a site map it is desirable to use headers and lists. The use of tables makes this process much more difficult.

It is desirable to place the link to your site map on the main or first page of your website and to make it in such a way that the user could, if necessary, quite easily use it. The user should not stop for one second to think about what he should do, when he doesn’t know what to do further after landing on your website.

]]> http://arkisdata.com/blog/index.php/2009/05/sitemap/feed/ http://arkisdata.com/blog/index.php/2009/05/benefits-of-seo/ http://arkisdata.com/blog/index.php/2009/05/benefits-of-seo/#comments Fri, 01 May 2009 13:06:12 +0000 admin http://arkisdata.com/blog/?p=313 A higher search ranking is what many website owners dream of. What they don’t realize is that by optimizing their site for the search engines, if done correctly, they can also optimize it for their site visitors. Therefore, this means more people finding your website and increased sales and lead generation. But are search engine optimization and usability compatible? Aren’t there trades-offs that need to be made between giving search engines what they want and giving people what they want?

Keyword research carried out Before you even begin building your website, you should carry out keyword research to identify which keyword phrases your site should target. Using publicly available tools such as Word tracker, you can discover which keywords are searched for the most recurrently and then specifically target those phrases. Doing keyword research is also critical for your site’s usability. By using the same keywords in your website that web users are searching for in search engines, you’ll literally be speaking the same language as your site visitors.

For example, you might decide to target the phrase, “web design”, as your website does in fact do website design. Keyword research would certainly show you that web users are actually searching for, “web design” (think about it - have you ever searched using the word, “WEB DEVELOPMENT”, when you want to look for web designing companies?). By placing the phrase, “web design” onto the pages on your website, you’ll be using the same words as your site visitors and they’ll be able to find what they’re looking for more easily.

200 word minimum per page Quite simply, search engines love content - the more content there is on a page the easier it is for search engines to work out what the page is actually about. Search engines may struggle to work out the point of a web page with less than 200 words, ultimately penalizing that page in the search rankings. In terms of usability, it’s also good to avoid pages with very little content. A page with less than 200 words is unlikely to contain a large amount of information, so site visitors will undoubtedly need to click elsewhere to find more detailed information. Don’t be afraid to put a reasonably large amount of information on to a page. Web users generally don’t mind scrolling down anymore, and provided the page provides mechanisms to aid it shouldn’t be too difficult for site visitors to locate the information that they’re after.

100kb maximum HMTL size If 200 words is the minimum page content size, then 100kb is the maximum, at least in terms of HMTL file size. Anything more than this and search engines may give up on the page as it’s simply too big for them. A 100kb HMTL file will take 20 seconds to download on a 56k dial up modem, used by three in four UK web users as of March 2004. Add on the time it takes for all the other parts of the page to download, such as images and JavaScript files, and you’re looking at a highly un-user-friendly download time!

CSS used for layout The website of Juicy Studios saw a six-fold increase in site visitors after switching from a table-based layout to a CSS layout. Search prefers CSS-based sites and is likely to score them higher in the search rankings because: The code is cleaner and therefore more accessible to search engines, important content can be placed at the top of the HTML document and there is a greater density of content compared to coding. Using CSS for layout is also highly advantageous for usability, as it leads to significantly faster download times.

Meaningful page title If you know anything about search engine optimization you’ll know that search engines place more importance on the page title than any other attribute on the page. If the title adequately describes the content of that page then search engines will be able to more accurately guess what that page is about. A meaningful page title also helps site visitors’ work out where they are, both within the site and the web as a whole. The page title is the first thing that loads up, often quite a few seconds before the content, so a descriptive, keyword-rich page title can be a real aid to help users orientate themselves.

Headings and sub-headings used Search engines assume that the text contained in heading tags is more important than the rest of the document text, as headings summaries the content immediately below them. Headings are also incredibly useful for your human site visitors, as they greatly aid scanning. Generally speaking, we don’t read on the web, we scan, looking for the information that we’re after. By breaking up page sections with sub-headings that effectively describe the content beneath them, scanning becomes significantly easier. Do be sure not to abuse heading tags though. The more text you have contained in heading tags within the page, the less importance search engines assign to them.

Opening paragraph describes page content That search engines love content has already been established, but they especially love the first 25 words or soon each page. By providing an opening paragraph that adequately describes the content of the rest of the page, you should be able to include your important keyword phrases in this crucial area. As web users, whenever we arrive at a web page the first thing we need to know is whether this page has the information that we’re after. A great way to find this out is to scan through the first paragraph, which, if it adequately describes the page content, should help us out.

Descriptive link text Search engines place a lot of importance on link text. They assume that link text will be descriptive of its destination and as such examine link text for all links pointing to any page. If all the links pointing to a page about widgets say ‘click here’, search engines can’t gain any information about that page without visiting it. If on the other hand, all the links say, ‘widgets’ then search engines can easily guess what that page is about. One of the best examples of this in action is for the search term, ‘miserable failure’. So many people have linked to George Bush’s bio using this phrase as the link text, that now when miserable failure is searched for in Google, George Bush’s bio appears top of the search rankings!

As web users, we don’t generally read web pages word-for-word. We scan them looking for the information that we’re after. When you scan through text you can’t take any meaning from the word ‘click here’. Link text that effectively describes its destination is far easier to scan and you can understand the destination of the link without having to read its surrounding words.

Frames avoided Frames are quite an old-school technique, and although aren’t as commonplace as they once were, do still rear up their ugly head from time to time. Using frames is one of the worst possible things you could do for your search engine ranking, as most search engines can’t follow links between frames. Even if a search engine does index your pages and web users find you through a search engine, they’ll be taken to one of the pages within the frame. This page will probably be a content page with no navigation and therefore no way to navigate to any other page on the site! Frames are also disadvantageous for usability as they can cause problems with the back button, printing, history and bookmarking. Put simply, say no to frames!

Quality content provided This may seem like a strange characteristic of a search engine optimized website, but it’s actually crucial. Search engines, in addition to looking at page content, look at the number of links pointing in to web pages. The more inbound links a website has, all other things being equal, the higher in the search rankings it will appear. By providing creative, unique and regularly updated content on your website, webmasters will want to link to you as doing so will add value to their site visitors. You will also be adding value to your site visitors. Eventually, optimizing your website for both search engines and people needn’t be a trade-off. With this much overlap between the two areas, you should simply be able to have a website that web users can find in the search engines, and when they do find it, they can find what they’re looking for quickly and professionally.

You can tell if your site requires a website redesign if you first look at it as a visitor and not as its owner. This way, you find out some disadvantages and improvements that have to be done to the website. Sometimes, you have to update your website’s information so that it can compete with other websites. Thus, a website redesign proves to be an important factor.

Your website redesign should make your website more attractive

When you upgrade your website, make sure it becomes more eyes catching to visitors with a compelling layout design. You have to use interesting and relevant graphics, images, fonts and colors in the website to make it as compelling to the eyes of the visitor as possible. This will ensure that you give some competition to the other websites on the internet.

Your website redesign should include all the factors that you wanted to include in the original web design, but could not do so. Make sure your homepage has all the necessary information that will entice the visitor to browse the other pages of your website. Take a look at your original web design to spot out the flaws and difficulties a surfer went through to access the other pages of the website. This will give you ideas to incorporate in your website redesign.

Make your webpage more navigable with a website redesign

Make sure you have manageable links placed in the website redesign by having a navigational menu that is easily visible to the visitor. Difficult to find links make visitors irritated while surfing your website as they will not be able to access the information they were looking for in your website. Thus, redesign your website to organize its information in an appropriate manner so that all these problems are taken care of and so that visitors find it easy to navigate the different pages of the website.

Of course, you get the best inspiration for your website redesign by looking at the different websites of your competitors. Aim to be ahead of your competitors with the latest in graphics and fonts used in the website. Remember that websites more than 1.5 to 2 years were created using old technology. It is only with a website redesign that you will be able to compete with your rivals.

Hence, it can be seen that a website redesign is very important to improve the profitability of your business by increasing traffic to your site. More visitors mean more sales. Moreover, a website redesign adds professionalism to your website that will be viewed by millions of visitors worldwide.

In certain cases, each of those issues could be important considerations. But generally speaking, those aren’t the kind of questions to worry about. There are plenty of details, however, that do deserve much attention. For example: Is it crystal clear to visitors what they are supposed to do on your site? It’s critical to ensure that you’ve provided straight-forward directions to visitors as to what they should do on your site. Also, make sure your calls to action are properly emphasized and properly placed. In other words, don’t let them be overshadowed.

Have you answered all the objections visitors might raise? Visitors will have questions and hesitations at various points throughout the process of making a decision to buy. Are you answering those concerns at the points where they are likely to come up? It doesn’t count to just have the information on the site somewhere; it needs to be in the right place at the right time.

Have you emphasized the benefits of your services, not just the features?

Is your site organization clear and straightforward, and is it oriented around visitors’ needs and priorities? This is one question site owners continually fail to consider. The details of how you choose to organize the pages and information on your site will be very significant to your visitors’ experiences. Consider things from a visitor’s point of view, and organize around your visitors’ priorities not your internal company structure. The same goes for individual page layouts, not just the site organization as a whole.

Do the graphics on your site visually emphasize the most important items on each page? Take a long hard look at your pages and figure out which elements really stand out. Are you visually drawing attention to the important stuff?

Does your site draw along a path to an end goal? Every website should be a process geared toward getting visitors to take certain actions. It’s your responsibility as a site owner to figure out the details of how that process should work and which steps happen where. Have you specifically designed your site so that everything including all the small details that leads to your end goal?

Do you prod visitors along at appropriate points to motivate them to take the next step? Have you provided compelling calls to action at the points where visitors need to do something?

Have you made sure your copy is simple and engaging all the way through? This is an area where you should focus on details relentlessly. Make every word count.

Have you considered everything from a visitor’s point of view, not just a site owner’s point of view?

If you want to create an effective website, get intimately acquainted with your visitors’ mindset. Learn to identify with your visitors’ feelings all the way through from the very beginning of the process to the very end. Understand their specific needs, their concerns, and the benefits that speak to their hearts. Learn to tell when they have enough information and when they need more. Anticipate the points at which questions and objections are going to be raised and understand which questions and objections are going to occur when.

After you’ve done that, analyze the details of your site. The answers you’ve determined for the above questions will affect the fine points of your graphic design, of your page layouts, and of your overall site organization. Purposely evaluate why each element of the page is placed the way it is and identify what purpose every item serves. It’s not enough to just launch a website. You have to make the details count!

To make matters even more confusing, neither do PC nor Mac computers display images the same way. In short, images created on a Mac appear much darker on a PC, and images created on a PC appear much lighter on a Mac. Pixel size differences (72 pixels per inch on a Mac and 96 pixels per inch on a PC at 640×480) make font sizes vastly different.

So, there has got to be ways around these differences, right? What we’ll cover in this article are a couple of tips to make sure that your pages are displaying nicely regardless of the system or browser, and to help your pages download as quickly as possible no matter what they’re being viewed on.

Step One: Compress the Graphics

Before we do anything else, we have to make sure that our graphics have been optimized for the web. Most graphic programs have an option under file called “Save for Web”. Once you have created the graphic you need, made sure you like it exactly as it is, and are ready to upload it for your website take a minute to open this original, great graphic in your software and click this option.

When you click Save for Web, you should be able to preview the end result before actually saving. In Photoshop, you will be given this option and a “slider” that lets you move from maximum to low quality when saving as a JPEG. As you move between qualities, you will notice that the file size drops or increases. Look even closer and you will see a spot that shows approximately how much time it will take to download that graphic on various connection speeds.

The actual method for optimizing your graphics will vary according to the graphics software you are using. The end result is the same, you need to take a minute and create the highest-quality vs. lowest file size image that you can. The two main Internet graphic formats, JPEG and GIF, have some compression built in. There are major differences between the two formats, as we’ll see, and there are always ways of compressing that image down just a bit more to squeeze as much time out of it as you can.

JPEG - Is a loose compression method. In other words, to save space it just throws away parts of an image. The JPEG algorithm first divides the image into squares (you can see these squares on badly compressed JPEGs - commonly called “pixellating”). Then it uses a math equation called Discrete Cosine Transformation to turn the square of data into a set of curves that go together to make up the image. Depending on how much you want to compress the image the algorithm throws away the less significant part of the data (the smaller curves) which adds less to the overall “shape” of the image. This means that, unlike a GIF, you get a say in how much you want to compress an image by. However, the loose compression method can generate unwanted effects such as false color.

GIF - Stands for Graphics Interchange Format. It’s a loss-less method of compression. This means when the program that creates a GIF squashes the original image down, it takes care not to lose any data. It uses a simple substitution method of compression.  The maximum compression available with a GIF depends on the amount of repetition there is in an image. A flat color will compress well sometimes even down to one tenth of the original file size while a complex, non-repetitive image will fare worse, perhaps only saving 20% or so.

One problem with GIFs is that they are limited to a palette of 256 colors or less. Also, because you have no control on the compression amount, download speeds will greatly vary when using a GIF. Personally, I recommend using GIFs only when you need them for animation and relying on the flexibility of a JPEG for anything else.

ANTI-ALIASING - Anti-aliasing is a technique used to make curved edges appear smooth on a computer screen. It’s mostly used with large font lettering but can be used with graphics also. The effect is achieved by using intermediary colors at the borders, which obscure the hard edges. Anti-aliasing is a clever way of getting around the low resolution of computer screens and making your text appear as smooth as if they’d just come from a glossy magazine. When using text in a graphic or using a graphic to replace text always anti-alias the text. In Photoshop, you are given this option right in your toolbar - just tick the checkbox.

Step Two: Take a look or two

Since there is such a big difference between platforms and browsers, make sure that you “test-drive” your graphics - and layout in general, for that matter - before you decide that you’re “done”. Try to view your site in as many different browsers as you can get your hands on, and then take a look at it on a different platform - If you use a PC, see how the other half surfs on a Mac, and vice versa.

Another step you should take to help reduce download speeds on your page is to use the Height and Width tags on your images. WYSIWYG Editors will usually do this for you. If you do your html by hand, make sure that there is a height and width specified for every image on your page.

Finally, the more that you recycle the images you use throughout your site, the better the visitor’s experience will be. Once an image is in the browser cache, the browser will not download it again. This means that if you use the exact same navigation bar image for ten separate pages, the browser will only download it once.