MH1 Web Design Blog

Whether your internet marketing strategy utilizes websites, blogs, article marketing or press releases correctly using keywords is an absolute must.

Anyone involved in an online business will tell you their marketing efforts are dramatically reduced if they haven’t optimized their published content correctly with the right keywords.

Keyword optimization is a very integral component of an effective online marketing strategy.

The proper keyword optimization of content helps anyone searching for information like yours to easily find it. Done correctly and you’ll be rewarded with a higher ranking in the search results. The manner in which you use keywords within your content will make or break you in the search engine rankings. A low search engine ranking will make you virtually invisible to anyone searching for content like yours.

Search engines rely heavily on keywords to accurately identify and rank sites found on the internet for people searching for the content that these sites contain. Under or over utilizing keywords will only hurt the ranking of the site giving it a very weak showing in any search results.

There are 3 areas of focus you’ll need to be concerned with to correctly utilize keywords within your content. By doing so you’ll gain the favor of the search engines and also quite a bit more traffic to your site.

Let’s discuss these 3 important areas of keyword optimization below:

ACCURACY

Any keywords you select to use should be relevant to the content itself. Search engines are very strict about this and will bury you in the search results if they feel your keyword selection doesn’t reflect the content. When people search keywords on the internet they’re expecting to find information directly related to the words they are searching on. Search engines for their part want to insure that people using their search engine find what it is they’re looking for.

POSITIONING

Another factor to be considered when using keywords is the placement of these words within the content itself. For instance it is recommended to use keywords in the title of your content when you can. Even within the title it is better to place the selected word or phrase at the title beginning if at all possible. Again you must remember that these keywords must accurately describe, reflect, or relate to the content within.

Another consideration is to place your primary keyword at the beginning and the end of the body of content you’re performing the keyword optimization on. Additional theme keywords should be used conservatively thru out the content when their use makes grammatical sense.

FREQUENCY

Here’s an area where some people may have a tendency to get carried away. In an attempt to gain the attention of search engines some may overuse their selected keywords throughout the content. Keyword ’stuffing’ as this is known is frowned upon by search engines as a deliberate attempt to gain higher search rankings. Search engines discourage this by penalizing you with a lower search engine ranking.

Opinions vary on what is the right percentage of keywords to use within the content that will maximize your optimization efforts while avoiding penalties. Generally any keyword usage between 2 and 5 percent of the total body of content is considered safe. A free keyword density tool you can use online to check your content can be found at live-keyword-analysis.

Always remember to use your selected words in a natural way within the body of your content since you’re writing for the reader and not the search engine. So before you hit the ’submit’ bottom proof-read your work to ensure it reads like a human wrote it and not some cyborg.

Proper keyword placement and utilization is almost always at the core of any successful internet marketing strategy. Thru the correct implementation of this online marketing technique you will increase your search rankings thereby boosting the awareness of your online presence. Whatever your reasons for being online may be, if you’re looking to boost your traffic this is one of the most effective and fundamental ways to achieve that!

TJ Philpott is an author and Internet entrepreneur based out of North Carolina. For additional online success tips and a free guide that demonstrates how to find both profitable markets and products visit: http://blogbrawn.com.

by Brad Derricott

Websites Are Like Houses

I think building websites and building houses share some common attributes. The analogy has been helpful on many occasions when attempting to explain to a client how important it is that we understand all of their requirements fully before we can estimate or build their website.

Custom vs. Manufactured Homes

Custom homes typically cost more than manufactured homes. It’s the same with websites. A custom-designed, custom-built website will generally cost more than a website built from an off-the-shelf design template.

Why does custom cost more? Simply because it’s exactly what you want or need, not a pre-packaged product for the masses. It requires unique effort (like creating custom plans or blueprints) that is not easily replicated for the next customer. It requires more time and input from an actual human who has sufficient experience to design your unique solution rather than a low-level person who just works on an assembly line building the same piece over and over again.

As Web designers, this point is at the core of what we do.

A Lot to Build On

You’ll need to purchase a lot or a tract of ground before you can build a custom home. Likewise, on the Web you’ll need a domain name (the address of the website) and a hosting server (the physical location where your website files will reside) in order to make your website available for the world to visit.

Unlike in real estate there aren’t necessarily good or bad areas in which to purchase your “lot.” You do want a good, memorable domain name and it is certainly worthwhile to find a hosting provider that is reliable.

Blueprints from the Architect

To build a great house you need to have great blueprints. An architect’s job is to understand what it is you want in a house and to create plans for the builders to follow. This makes sure you get what you want and that you know how much it will cost when it’s done.

An architect needs a lot of information from you before he or she can create accurate blueprints. It isn’t enough to say, “I want a house with 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms.”

Likewise, getting an accurate assessment of the costs and timeline for building a website requires more than a brief description like, “I want a website that will allow me to sell my products.”

Many people undervalue the step of documenting a website’s requirements, though. Like a custom home, a website will be better constructed if a set of plans is followed.

An “information architect” is often used on larger website projects whereas the designer and/or developer will often serve as the architect on smaller projects. The important thing is that someone fill this role.

Quality Construction

Because there are so many do-it-yourself options for creating a website it creates some confusion for customers as to why a custom website from a professional firm may cost thousands of dollars while there are so many instant website offerings for a fraction of that price.

The difference in quality isn’t always immediately apparent. Much of what quality is about is the things that are less visible. The longevity of the product, the customer service during the project, and the expertise in assembling/constructing the deliverable are all reasons to choose quality over low price in both homes and websites.

Changes to the Plans

Once your home is built it gets quite expensive to change things. If you’ve built a 4 bedroom home, adding a 5th bedroom isn’t going to be cheap.

Although websites are far more flexible than homes, the same principle applies. Once your website is built it is more expensive to make changes than it would have been had you asked for the feature at the beginning of the project.

The reality of web development is that most of us don’t know exactly what we want until we see it. For this reason, processes like Agile and XP development have been created to embrace the fact that clients often change their minds along the way. Rather than create an adversarial environment around change, these methods seek to give the client freedom to change as often as they wish and to decide when they’ve received the value they desire. (Note: MH1 offers custom content management tools that serve this purpose) The challenge is that these methods make it difficult to establish a firm price for the entire project. And from our experience, most clients have a hard time starting a project if they don’t know exactly how much it will cost.

Conclusion

What do you think? Is building a website at all like building a house? Do your customers appreciate your expertise as a designer or developer or are you often competing with the kid down the street who’s charging pennies to your dollar?

from Microsoft bCentral

Creating a business website can be a major investment of time, money or both. How do you make sure that you get the most out of that investment?

Here are six pieces of essential design advice for making your website work harder for you.

1. Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Too many small businesses are enamoured with speckled backgrounds, unreadable type fonts and a bewildering gaggle of buttons and animated gizmos running across their websites. Resist the temptation to do this yourself. A simple, clean design will do a better job than a site which looks like a flashing slot machine. You don’t see the big guys like Amazon or Yahoo using pink marble or shadowy logos for their site backdrop – with good reason. The background can quickly get in the way of the site itself, so the best advice is to keep it clear and keep it simple.

2. Catch them in the first 10 seconds and make the site’s purpose clear.
Your front page must be designed to act both as a stop sign and a fast, effective messenger. In two to three seconds the person should know exactly what the site is about and what the business does. Determine what image and message you want the customer to “get” in those first few seconds, and design your website’s front page with that objective in mind. Ask yourself, What’s in it for them?, as this is all your website visitors are interested in. Convey clear benefits in a few short sentences, summarizing what your business does.

EXPERT ADVICE: Jakob Nielsen, CEO of Nielsen Norman Group, suggests you “include a one-sentence tagline.”“Start the page with a tagline that summarizes what the site or company does, especially if you’re new or less than famous. Even well-known companies presumably hope to attract new customers and should tell first-time visitors about the site’s purpose. It is especially important to have a good tagline if your company’s general marketing slogan is bland and fails to tell users what they’ll gain from visiting the site.”

3. The first page should load FAST.
If you want to catch them in the first 10 seconds, your front page had better not take 20
seconds to reveal itself. Test it to be sure!

Photographs are usually the culprits when pages load too slowly. Many small businesses scan photos for their websites, but you need to compress photo images so they are small enough to load quickly. You can reduce file size and optimise graphics for the web by removing some colour information from your photo and reducing the quality of the image. It’s a balancing act to remove enough information so the photo loads quickly but not so much that the image look like an amateur pointillist painting.

EXPERT ADVICE: Usability expert, Jakob Nielsen again: “Users don’t care why response times are slow. All they know is that the site doesn’t offer good service: slow response times often translate directly into a reduced level of trust and they always cause a loss of traffic as users take their business elsewhere. So invest in a fast server and get a performance expert to review your system architecture and code quality to optimize response times.”

4. A navigation system that a 6-year-old can master.
Make it extremely easy for people to find their way around your site. The navigation system (which guides users through your site) should be designed so that a young child can master it. Website navigation is best placed on the left side of the screen, because this is where visitors EXPECT it to be (like the contents page of a book). Since some surfers still turn off graphics, you need to provide text-based navigation, as well. Most sites do this at the bottom of each page.

5. Update your website regularly.
Bring people back to your site by providing important or difficult-to-find information. The one caution here is that you must keep information up-to-date. Recently, I visited a restaurant’s website where the front page proudly featured a special menu for New Year’s Eve 1999. If you don’t have time to keep it current, avoid time-sensitive information altogether.

Keep these pieces of advice in mind when it’s time to create your website or to give it a serious facelift and you’ll get more from your website and more from your visitors. There’s little point spending effort promoting your site until you know you can build customer loyalty and convert website visitors into customers. By keeping your website clear, fast and fresh, and conveying your message in a brief and compelling manner, you’ll generate better results from your web investment.

by Mike Hallaron,
MH1 Web Design

The ubiquitous company logo is a sticky subject for many companies, but I hope to simplify the issue. As a young advertising salesman in the 1980s, I was taught that when designing an advertisement layout, forget the logo unless your company is Coca Cola or McDonald’s. In other words, only use a logo if it’s instantly recognizable across corporate America. Well that advice was misleading and a dramatic overstatement. While it is true that smaller companies logos are not as well-known, it is more important in the web design world of the new millennia than the newspaper/magazine ad world of the 1980s. Your Web site probably needs a logo. The trick is in the design and usage.

Designing a company logo is best left to a professional designer. Too many small business owners attempt it themselves with disastrous results. A professional graphic designer or Web designer will have the proper software, knowledge of marketing and design techniques as well as technical proficiency with print and Web file formats, not to mention artistic talent. Logo design and in a broader sense graphic design often suffers the same fate as people who think they have a lovely singing voice after two glasses of wine in a Karaoke bar. If you know you can’t sing – don’t. The same is true for creating your own logo. Your business is serious. Invest some dollars in your logo design. Unlike the logo advice I received over two decades ago, a recognizable logo is important in identifying your company and your Web site.. even for small and mid-sized companies.

Veteran British Web design guru Paul Hoskins offers these guidelines about creating a company logo:

• Make sure your logo works offline in print media as well as online. Your designer should use a vector art program such as Adobe Illustrator so the logo can be optimized properly for print as well as Web media.
• Avoid special effects such as drop shadows and beveling. These make your logo look outdated and amateurish. They can also wreck your logo when used against different contrasting backgrounds and colors.
• Stick with a clear, clean design, avoid being too clever. Most people will not get it. Use only two to four colors and experiment with you logo on white and black backgrounds. Tell your designer you want to see it both ways.
• Show the design to friends and colleagues and get their opinions. But remember, their comments are only opinions. Feedback is important.

Designing a logo for the Web

The Internet relies on much smaller, simpler versions of image files including logos. Images are composed for color computer monitors and optimized as jpeg, gif or png files. These files are much smaller with far less resolution than their print-bound counterparts. Your designer should build your original logo files using high resolution, large file size vector art software. The final “print” format may be a TIFF. These large print files can be scaled down in Adobe Photoshop for manageable use on the Web. Photoshop converts the large TIFF file into a smaller Web-friendly jpeg or gif. When the design job is finished, you should receive a CD of various versions of your final logo for print and Web use.

When designing your Web site, it’s best to place your logo in the upper left. Statistics show that 85% of Web sites do the same, so visitors are accustomed to seeing the company brand here and identifying pages within your Web site the same way. Make sure to keep your logo in place within your masthead or header on every page. It does not need to be very large – certainly no more than 100 pixels high. Site visitors do not spend time studying or even considering your logo. They are too busy looking for relevant content.

Don’t forget that many companies use only type or words in their logos, too. The Nike swoosh or other artistic shapes and images don’t always work for every company. Dell Computer is a great example of a company logo that only uses letters. Of course the font, color and other typography attributes are standardized so the logo always appears the same. Uniformity is the key.

Follow these basic logo guidelines and your Web site will look more professional. And your online and print marketing efforts will match giving your company a polished appearance.

Some notable examples

www.apple.com

www.hp.com

www.windows.com

www.shell.com

by Mike Hallaron, MH1 Web Design

Core fonts for the Web

Typography, or the use of font style and lettering, is one of the most overlooked aspects of Web design. But readability and comprehension are essential when creating your business Web site. When deciding which font will be used on the pages of your company Web site, try to select one of these common fonts that are preloaded with all versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer. These are commonly referred to as “browser safe fonts”. Otherwise, your site visitors browser will default to a font their computer software possesses. That can drastically alter the look and layout of your Web site.

This font set below is installed along with Internet Explorer. It differs very slightly depending on the platform – Mac or Windows – but you can count on the following fonts being present on well over 95% of all computers connected to the Web.

Select one these standard fonts for your readable text and headlines on the pages of your Web site. Text used within graphic images and images may use any font, but remember that such text is unreadable by search engines indexing your pages to determine your site relevance and page ranking.

Microsoft’s core fonts for the Web

Andale Mono (formerly Monotype.com)
Arial
Arial Black
Comic Sans MS
Courier New
Georgia
Impact
Times New Roman
Trebuchet MS
Verdana