Marketing & Design is proudly maintained by turtle herb design. Andrew has been working as a freelance designer and consultant for almost 2 decades, being a freelancer he has managed to gain experience in every possible field of advertising. He has worked on projects ranging from magazine layout to corporate marketing to signage design and construction and webdesign. His skills and broad knowledge has given him a opportunity to market and design for a range of diverse clients.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Keyword Density
Keyword density is an indicator of the number of times the selected keyword appears in the web page. But mind you, keywords shouldn’t be over used, but should be just sufficient enough to appear at important places.
If you repeat your keywords with every other word on every line, then your site will probably be rejected as an artificial site or spam site.
It is the search engines that finally bring your website to the notice of the prospective customers. Hence it is better to know how these search engines actually work and how they present information to the customer initiating a search.
There are basically two types of search engines. The first is by robots called crawlers or spiders.
Search Engines use spiders to index websites. When you submit your website pages to a search engine by completing their required submission page, the search engine spider will index your entire site. A ‘spider’ is an automated program that is run by the search engine system. Spider visits a web site, read the content on the actual site, the site's Meta tags and also follow the links that the site connects. The spider then returns all that information back to a central depository, where the data is indexed. It will visit each link you have on your website and index those sites as well. Some spiders will only index a certain number of pages on your site, so don’t create a site with 500 pages!
The spider will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed. The frequency with which this happens is determined by the moderators of the search engine.
A spider is almost like a book where it contains the table of contents, the actual content and the links and references for all the websites it finds during its search, and it may index up to a million pages a day.
Example:Excite, Lycos, AltaVista and Google.
When you ask a search engine to locate information, it is actually searching through the index which it has created and not actually searching the Web. Different search engines produce different rankings because not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through the indices.
One of the things that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a web page, but it can also detect artificial keyword stuffing or spamdexing. Then the algorithms analyze the way that pages link to other pages in the Web. By checking how pages link to each other, an engine can both determine what a page is about, if the keywords of the linked pages are similar to the keywords on the original page.
5 Ways to Avoid the 1998 Look on Your Website --------------------------------------------------------
If you've looked around at a few websites, you might have noticed that many of them look absolutely terrible. In many cases, this is because they were produced in the early days of the web's mainstream popularity, but they haven't been maintained or updated since. The chances are that their creators have never even looked at them in a modern browser, and don't realise just how bad they look now. These websites have an affliction I like to call the '1998 look' – but, unfortunately for you, even new sites aren't altogether immune to it. Here, then, are five ways to avoid becoming a victim.
1. Don't Use Animated GIFs.
The animated GIF is dead. It was a charming idea, once, letting us include animations on our pages as easily as normal graphics. Now, though, it looks extremely dated thanks to the small number of colours used, not to mention jarring and out-of-place. It's even worse if you use one of those early-web 'stock animations', like that spinning @ symbol to represent sending email – there are very few things that look more amateurish.
If you don't want to look like you don't know what you're doing, stay away from animated GIFs.
2. Text in Graphics.
Unless it's your logo or possibly a heading, don't type text in Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, save it as an image, and then put it on your site. It's supremely silly, and gives you no benefit whatsoever – not only does it make the text take much longer to download, but it also stops people from selecting it or doing anything else they might want to do with it. Not to mention that text created this way is usually aligned badly and compressed so that it looks even worse than it would usually.
Keep your text as plain text, and use graphics for pictures. Text as a graphic is almost always bad.
3. Bad Backgrounds.
It's amazing that people still do it, but there are plenty of websites out there still with absolutely disastrous backgrounds. Either they'll have a colour that doesn't provide enough contrast with the text, making the text unreadable, or, even worse, they'll have a small pattern, tiled to fill the entire background. Wallpaper-style patterns are one of the most 1998 things in existence, and instantly make your website look like a joke, not to mention often making it entirely unusable.
So what should you use as a background colour? In almost all cases, the answer to the question is white – but, if you really want a colour, make sure it's a restrained background colour that people can still read your text over. If you're using a pattern, don't repeat it more than once.
4. System Requirements.
Listing system requirements on your website is no longer fashionable, and thank goodness for that. In the bad old days, sites would write things like "best viewed at 800x600 using Internet Explorer 4". Did they really think people were going to switch, just to view their website? It acted like a disclaimer, saying they couldn't be bothered to make the site look good for everyone, and anyone using something unusual had no right to complain. It was, quite simply, terrible.
The end of the Internet Explorer/Netscape war thankfully consigned these messages to history, for the most part, but there are still some sites that have them. Don't let your site be one – it does nothing but make you look hopelessly out of touch.
5. Open in New Window.
Finally, there's this one, back from the days when graphic designers were just starting to get to grips with the web and wanted exact control over everything, including the size of the web browser. Going to a site would give you a message like 'click here to launch', and the site would then try to open a new window automatically, with none of the browser's toolbars.
This technique has always been bad (it takes away too much control from the user), but it's even worse now that so many users have pop-up blockers thanks to the abuse of pop-ups for advertising. If you design your site this way, many people will have trouble seeing it, including people with the latest version of Internet Explorer. Don't do it.
5 Steps to Understanding HTML. ---------------------------------------
HTML is a relatively simple language, but that doesn't stop people from having problems with it. Why is that? It's mainly because, while the HTML tags themselves are easy, creating an HTML document that works as intended on a web server requires you to know a few extra things that aren't often explained. Here, then, is a guide to understanding those parts of HTML that they just don't tell you about in the books.
Step 1: Understand Doctypes.
It isn't often noted that valid HMTL documents don't actually start with the tag – they have one extra tag before it. This is the doctype, and it must be present right at the top of your document for it to be valid HTML.
There are only really two doctypes that you really need to know about. The HTML4 doctype looks like this:
The XHTML one looks like this:
These versions of the doctypes that are a little more forgiving – if you're a purist, you can use the strict ones instead by changing the words 'transitional' and 'loose' to 'strict'.
But what is the doctype for? Well, its purpose is simple enough: it tells web browsers exactly what version of HTML your page was written in, to help them to interpret it correctly.
Step 2: Understand HTTP Errors.
A truly shocking number of people writing HTML pages don't know how HTTP works – and they quickly run into trouble because of it. HTTP is the way a web browser communicates with a web server, and this communication includes information about your pages, such as cookies.
You don't need to worry too much about the internals of HTTP, but it's worth knowing that it works by the browser sending a request to the server for a certain page, and the server then responding with a code.
Your website should be set up to handle error codes well. For example, a 404 (page not found) error should show a page with links to the most useful parts of your site. Other common error codes include:
200 - OK
301 - Page moved.
403 - Forbidden (no authorisation to access).
500 - Internal server error.
For more information, visit www.w3.org/protocols.
Step 3: Understand MIME Types.
MIME types are another part of the HTML header – an important one. Also known as the content-type header, they tell the browser what kind of file they are about to send. Browsers don't rely on HTML files ending in .html, JPEG images ending in .jpeg, and so on: they rely on the content-type header. If you don't know about this, you can have problems if you need to configure your server to send anything unusual.
Here are some common MIME types:
text/html - HTML.
text/css - CSS
text/plain - plain text.
image/gif - GIF image.
image/jpeg - JPEG image.
image/png - PNG image.
audio/mpeg - MP3 audio file.
application/x-shockwave-flash - Flash movie.
Step 4: Understand Link Paths.
One of the hardest things to understand about HTML is all the different things that you can put in an 'href' property. Abbreviated URLs are created using the rules of old text-based operating systems, and there are plenty of people writing HTML today who are completely unfamiliar with these rules.
Here are some examples. For each one, the assumption is that the link is on a page at http://www.example.com/example1/example1.html.
- links to http://www.example.com/example1/example2.html - links to http://www.example.com/example1/example2.html - links to http://www.example.com/example2.html - links to http://www.example.com/example2.html - links to http://www.example.com/ - links to http://www.example.com/example1
To put it simply, one dot means "in the folder we're in now", while two dots means "in the folder above the one we're in now". This can get confusing fast – just look at the difference one dot can make! Be careful with it.
Step 5: Understand How to Insert Things That Aren't HTML.
One of the most common HTML questions is how to insert things like Javascript and CSS into an HTML document. This is one of the easiest questions to answer: you simply use the link and script tags, like this:
5 Simple Steps to Accepting Payments. -----------------------------------------------
When you're selling things, you need people to be able to pay you. Sure, they could send you cheques in the post, but that's not really convenient or scalable, is it? No, to do business on the web, you need to be able to accept card payments electronically – and, luckily for you, it's never been easier. Here's the whole process, in five simple steps.
Step 1: Choose a Payment Service.
While you could get a merchant account and do your own card processing, it isn't usually worth it, unless you do an awful lot of transactions. For most business, third-party payment services are a better solution, and there are lots of services out there that let you accept card payments for a small fee.
When you choose a payment service, then, the main things you want to consider are the prices, and whether your customers will trust it. You used to need to consider which services your customers would have accounts with, but as most services now let you accept payments from people who don't have accounts with them that's not much of an issue any more.
Right now, the biggest general payment player is PayPal, and they're worth considering first, but you should be aware that many businesses have had issues with PayPal freezing their accounts and being slow to respond (see www.nopaypal.com for more). StormPay (www.stormpay.com) is a decent general-purpose PayPal alternative, and useful to keep around as a backup. You might also like to check out more specific services, such as AuctionCheckout (if you're taking payments for auction items) or ClickBank (non-physical products only, popular for ebook sales).
Step 2: Create an Account.
The next step is to create an account at your chosen online payment provider. This will require you to give out either your personal name and address or a business name and address. Depending on who you're registering with, you may also need to give out credit card or bank details. It almost goes without saying that you shouldn't give these details out to anyone you're not sure of – be suspicious of payment services that you've found with a search but never actually seen in use.
Step 3: Get Verified.
Before you can receive any significant amount of money, most payment providers require you to become 'verified' – this is usually nothing more than the minimum they need to do to comply with the law. If you haven't been asked for your bank and credit card details already, you will be at this point, and some services will even ask you to fax them a photocopy of your physical card, to prove you're the real cardholder. Some services will even cross-reference your phone number with your address and then phone you up to make sure it really was you. Don't be too disturbed by all this: it's all in the name of security, and you're not doing anything bad (or at least I hope you're not!).
Step 4: Add the Payment Button to Your Pages.
When it comes time to actually start accepting customers' money through the service, all you'll need to do in most cases is add some kind of button or image of a button to your sales page that says 'Pay Now'. The payment service will usually provide the HTML for this, and a few tutorials to explain things like ways to make sure that the correct amount shows up on the payment page.
Step 5: Withdraw Often.
Whenever you're dealing with electronic payments, the final step is to withdraw every time you get an amount of money you consider significant, and an absolute minimum of once per week. There are all sorts of reasons for this, but the biggest one is that online payment services aren't anywhere near as strictly regulated as other financial institutions, and aren't under that much of an obligation to give it to you in any timely manner. You should consider any money left with them to be at risk until it's securely in your bank account. Besides, you don't want your money sitting there earning interest for them instead of you, do you?
6 Reasons Why You Need a Website. --------------------------------------------
If you don't have a website, then you might not realise all the great things they can do for you. Maybe you think there wouldn't be any point, because your business is too small – or maybe you don't even have a business! Perhaps you think it'd be a lot of work for little reward. Or maybe you paid big bucks for a site back during the dot-com 'boom' days, only to get nothing but trouble out of it and shut it down a year later.
Whatever your situation is, though, you need a website, and I'm here to tell you why.
1. People Will Look for You Online.
Sooner or later, someone's going to type your name into a search engine. What do you want them to find? Nothing? These are people who want to find you, and if you don't have a website then you're letting them down – they expect you to be online. For many people, you might as well not exist if you can't be found with a search engine. Not having a website is like not bothering to get listed in the phone book. Whether it's customers or old school friends you're hoping for, very few people are going to find you if you aren't online.
2. Websites Cost Next to Nothing.
Once, it cost a lot to run a website – but those days are long gone. There are 'pay as you go' services out there now charging as little as $1 per gigabyte of bandwidth. If you're sensible about the size of your pages, that dollar could last you a whole month, or even longer! If you don't want to pay for design, it's never been simpler to do it yourself, or find free software to do it for you. Really, it's never been cheaper to have a website than it is today.
3. Websites are Great Advertising.
Whatever you're advertising – your services, your products, or just yourself – a website is a great way to do it. Every other kind of advertising going costs a premium, especially if you want to target a specific kind of person, and there's no guarantee that they're paying attention. Websites are like brochures that are free to reproduce, interactive, and quickly distributed to people who are already looking for them. No advertising medium even comes close to the ease-of-use and effectiveness of a website.
4. A Website is a Worldwide Presence.
On the web, it doesn't matter whether someone is next door to you or on the other side of the world – they can see your website just the same as anyone else can, at no extra cost to you or to them. Phone and post both cost enormous amounts long-distance, but a website lets you send information anywhere without any extra effort or expense. You can make friends and contacts in places you've never been and will never go – suddenly, working globally is no more effort than working locally.
5. Your Website Can Make You Money.
There's a lot of money on the web, and it's not hard to get some – the longer you're online for, the bigger your share can get. If you have something to sell, you can sell it worldwide, thanks to credit cards. Doing business online eliminates almost every overhead there is: all you need to do is have the goods. If you've written something useful, you can put it out there with a few ads. You won't get rich overnight, but you can set up a steady trickle of income... and there's no limit to the number of trickles you can set up.
6. Your Website Can Save You Time.
Giving out information takes time, whether it's on the phone, or in brochures, or even if it's just emailing your family. Websites are designed to save you time. All your family and friends can read your online diary (known as a weblog), but you only had to write it once. Customers can see your whole product catalogue without ever needing to talk to you or visit you. This is the power of the web: things on it are written only once, but can be downloaded endlessly – a good website runs itself, and keeps being useful to people for much longer than you'd expect.
10 Easy Ways to Promote Your Website. ------------------------------------------------
Promoting your website can be a daunting task: it feels like there are thousands of ways to do it, but all of them take a lot of time or money for no guaranteed return. To help solve this problem, I've compiled a list of ten easy ways to promote your website.
1. Advertise in the Media. Now, you might have already ruled out advertising in newspapers and the like as too expensive, especially since the chances are your audience doesn't live in any specific local area. That mostly rules out radio, too, and TV is even more likely to be out of your reach. What you might not have realised, though, is that you should stop looking at the general media and start looking at the specialist media for your area. For example, if you run a house-buying website, you could advertise it in specialist property magazines, and even on 'lifestyle' cable channels that show programmes about moving home.
2. Write Your Web Address on Things. If your business has any physical objects, whether it's a product, a carrier bag or just the front of your office, make sure to write your web address on there. Even if people don't keep or remember the exact address, it at least lets them know that your website exists.
3. Give Out Leaflets. There's nothing wrong with a bit of old-fashioned paper promotion: leaflet as many areas as you can. The chances are that your website is targeted to a specific demographic rather than an area, but the post office will be surprisingly helpful when it comes to getting your leaflets where they need to go, if you ask them.
4. Go to Specialist Events. If there's some kind of trade fair for the industry your website is in, turn up to it and promote your website. While there might not be all that many people there, the ones who are there will be influential, and can get your site talked about.
5. Put it on Business Cards. It should go without saying, but once you've gone to all that trouble to set up a website, don't forget to put it on your business cards. After all, if you're relying on them to get people to phone you, why not give them the option of reading more about you on your website?
6. Astroturf on Forums. An often overlooked way of getting traffic to your website is to participate on forums related to the subject and put your web address in your signature. This gets you more traffic than you'd think, especially at very popular forums.
7. Create Controversy. A great trick to promote your website is to use it to say controversial things: as the saying goes, any publicity is good publicity. This works best if you say something that you know will be provocative to a certain kind of person, getting it linked from all over the place. Bear in mind, though, that this strategy is better for advertising-driven websites than it is if you're trying to build a reputation and make sales directly.
8. Keep a Good Blog. While more and more businesses are starting blogs, few of them are doing it right. If you're using your blog to publish product announcements in corporate-speak, it's useless. You need to remember a simple mantra, 'views not news' – make sure your blog has something interesting to say.
9. Buy Search Engine Ads. Many people seem to think it's some kind of admission of defeat, but search engine advertising can work very well, especially with keywords that aren't already cluttered with ads. If you do it right, you can get very targeted ads very cheap – indeed, ironically, the more targeted the ads, the cheaper they tend to be.
10. Start an Affiliate Program. Finally, if you're selling something, don't forget that old standby of web marketing: the affiliate program. Offer visitors a cut of the profits if they can sell your products for you, and all of a sudden you've got a crack sales team raring to go. The only trouble with this plan is that everyone is doing it, so you'll need to offer a high percentage of your profits to your affiliates to make the offer attractive to them.
I have been a Design & Marketing Consultant for nearly 2 decades in the south african market. I also breed appaloosa horses and own a farm farming culinary herbs and speciality vegetables.
