Well first off you’ll want reliability and professionalism. After all, this is to be expected in any situation where you’re looking to employ somebody else to perform a service for you. So how can you assure this in what is a largely faceless medium?

Nowadays it seems that everybody has to have a website. Whether you’re in Melbourne, London or Vancouver Web Design companies are easy to find by just putting a few choice terms into the search engines.

But if you decide that a website is right for you and you don’t wish to learn HTML so you can program it yourself; or you’re looking for something a little more complex, then you will inevitably look to one of the multitude of companies that advertise their wares on the net.

But what should you look for in a web design company?

Well first off you’ll want reliability and professionalism. After all, this is to be expected in any situation where you’re looking to employ somebody else to perform a service for you.

So how can you assure this in what is a largely faceless medium?

The important first step is to give the vendor’s website a thorough once over. Is the design clean; the pages easily accessible; and the navigation clear? Imagine if this was your website and ask yourself the question: “Would I have happily paid for this?”

Don’t be blinded by flashy design or gimmicky effects. By and large, there is no benefit from having a website that is in your face with the latest advancements in, say, Flash technology or Javascript. In fact, the converse is usually the case in that search engines have trouble indexing anything that relies simply on Flash or Javascript, with no actual readable text upon the pages. If your website is intended to promote your business, sell your services or products, then such a site will not be found in the search engine rankings and your investment will have been wasted.

If the web design company you’re looking into has an online portfolio then investigate it fully. Have a look at the samples of their work and their client list, and then visit the websites they have created and give those a thorough once over.

Take your time as this can be the make or break moment. Even if their own website ticks all the boxes, this is where it really counts. The actual paid work they have carried out for their clients.

The next thing to consider is price. Remember the old adage: “You get what you pay for”? This is almost always the case, and companies offering dirt-cheap websites may well deliver a shoddy service or an ugly, generic template website. Of course, if you’ve been thorough in your research up until this point then you should already have sorted the wheat from the chaff.

Costing can be based on a number of factors, depending upon the company. A lot of web design agencies will offer packages, dependant on size and the needs of a client; whereas others offer a fully bespoke service with each website priced on an individual basis. One thing to bear in mind is if you are opting for a static website as opposed to a content managed one, you will have to enlist technical help whenever you wish to make an update, however minor. This will invariably cost each time, so you should really decide beforehand whether you will be looking to make frequent updates. If that’s the case then it might be a little more financially sound to pay the extra money for a content management system , which you’ll be able to update yourself.

One final thing to consider when searching for the right company to design and develop your website is SEO . Search engine optimisation is of particular importance if you are a launching your business online or looking to promote your company via the internet. If carried out by a professional it can influence where your website will appear in the search engine rankings for specific search terms relevant to your website.

Be wary of web design companies that offer free SEO as part of the initial package, or for a nominal extra fee. This usually means they’ll simply fill out the keyword meta-tags, a redundant process in modern SEO. Search engine optimisation is a long-term process and it is perhaps a wiser investment to employ a company dedicated to the purpose and leave the designers and developers to what they do best.

Bear these pointers in mind and you’ll be online before you know it, with a great looking and fully functioning website.

Going for a responsive web design is a very strong consideration when developing web pages these days. Responsive web design allows a website to render perfectly regardless of what browser or device is used to access its pages.

Today, more and more people are using smart phones and tablets to view pages over the internet. How does your website display on such devices? That is why businesses are challenged to convert their existing websites to be more responsive to the newer browsers used by the equally new mobile devices and gadgets.

Shifting to a more responsive web design may be a little too expensive to some web owners. But the investment is very much worth it. Marketing experts say that companies are best to put their money on a fully integrated marketing program in order to produce a higher ROI. In a recent survey, it shows that 78% of teenagers all over the world own a mobile phone. And almost half of them have smart phones to boot. What more of adults with a higher purchasing power? The mobile market is indeed too meaty to be ignored. Those consumers have 24/7 access to the internet wherever they are. That alone makes the shift to a more responsive web design a very sound decision indeed.

Opting for a responsive web design is more ideal than having to maintain different versions of your website for different devices. The latter would cost you more money in the long run. If you shift to responsive web design instead, your website will detect whatever browser or gadget your visitor is using for viewing your pages and adjusts all elements accordingly. Your website will render perfectly on a mobile phone screen as it would on a desktop computer. Responsive and interactive is the current trend in web design. How good does your website fare?

Author: Petar Rastovic is an entrepreneur and internet marketer who writes for 1DigitalAgency.com, website Design Company that specializes in WordPress, Volusion and BigCommerce custom design.

Hey Folks!

Just a real quick one today, but still pretty useful. I’ve had a few people ask me about this problem so I thought i’d pop a super-fast tutorial together and then people can access it whenever they need it.

On WordPress 2011 theme when you create a single post, you’ll notice that by default it comes up with just one column and without a sidebar. Now, this is fine if you haven’t got useful stuff (or ads, affiliate deals etc) to show people on the sidebar. However, if you’re getting a lot of traffic to some specific single posts, it would be a great idea to let those visitors know about the rest of your content.

Here’s how to add a sidebar to the 2011 WordPress Theme

1. In the Theme Editor (Dashboard > Appearence > Editor), go to single.php and add the following:

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>

In a new line just above the footer code at the bottom of the file:

<?php get_footer(); ?>

Next, go to functions.php (Theme Functions) and find the following at the bottom of the file:

add_filter( 'body_class', 'twentyeleven_body_classes' );

Comment it out (by adding 2 forward slashes // at the beginning of the line) and it will force WordPress to stop differentiating between normal and single post pages.

Simple stuff, but useful nonetheless… Have a great day all!

Guest Post by Charly Daniels

People come into search marketing from a variety of different genres. Some are writers, some are magazine editors, some are from PR, etc. Whatever your angle, though, it’s vital that you continue to take on new skills. It’s essential, for instance, that you take on some aspects of basic web development. Here’s why:

It’ll help you reach more clients. Although WordPress is without doubt the easiest backend for SEOs to deal with, you won’t be able to deal with it all the time. Many of your clients will use other backend systems such as Magento, Droopl and even their own bespoke models. Helping to code, even at a basic level, will mean you can comfortably integrate meta strategies in any site.

It will help you add content. ‘Content is king’, as I’m sure you’ve heard thousands of times before. It’s certainly true. However, all those beautiful infographics, interviews and blog posts won’t mean much if you can’t put them anywhere! Knowledge of PHP and CSS will mean that whatever CMS you’re confronted with, you’ll still be able to ensure that the content gets online and is viewed by the right people.

It’ll help integrate with social media. With social becoming more and more important to search rankings, it’s important that your site integrates well with your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Whilst WordPress offers easy-to-install plugins that help you do this, but most other CMS won’t – especially not the bespoke ones! Basic programming knowledge ensures that you can integrate your social channels with almost any website, without worrying about plug-ins.

It’ll help you solve problems. You can conduct the perfect SEO campaign, but if the site you’re pointing towards has a whole host of issues then you’re still going to suffer in the SERPs. It’s important for you to be able to look at the way a page is coded, how the meta is set out, how the H1s and H2s are arranged and to be able to improve what you see. Otherwise, the site itself will only hold back your results and make you look worse!

It’ll mean you can conduct an SEO campaign from scratch. Coming into a search campaign when the site’s already on page one is one thing, but starting it from the beginning is entirely another. Being able to develop (even to a basic extent) will mean that you can integrate your own meta data on the pages you want, and will help you control both ends of the campaign.

For more advice on SEO & Web Design check out SEO Essex

Guest blogging has become one of the great ways to get high quality back links. You submit a post now and within 2-3 months it will have been shared across top social networks and related blogs; link juice grows as the months go by.

The chances are you are already posting on external blogs on a regular basis, but are you doing it right?

Finding Quality Blogs

The first stage is to find a high quality and relevant blog. The more relevant the blog is to the page you will link to, the better.

If you are submitting your low quality spun articles to 100s of low quality sites, you are going to get penalised. Simply do a Google search and you will find plenty of blogs to submit to.

You need to search “niche” + one of the following:

“Guest posting”

• “Write for us”
• “Submit article”

An example would be “write for us web design”.

• Check the PageRank using www.prchecker.info .
• Check the Domain Authority using OSE.

These are weak indicators, but combined with the actual quality of the content on the site, it should give you an idea if you want your content and links associated with that particular site.

Finding Quality Writers

Ok, so your problem might not be find places to post, but actually, finding a quality blog writer. That’s not surprising, as there are hundreds to choose from. The writers that you have found are either going to be low quality or overpriced. Here are some tips to help you choose a writer:

• Focus on quality rather than price. Quality posts will create much more link juice over time.
• View a range of samples from each service provider.
• Ask for references
• Discuss discounts for bulk orders

Making The Most Out Of Every Opportunity

Guest posting is working, there is no doubt about that. Thousands of websites have seen their websites boost in terms of their overall SEO score and SEO service providers are using this as part of their monthly campaigns. Why? They can get links on high quality sites that have huge levels of traffic; all they need to pay is the fee for the blog post!

This is a long term opportunity that will help boost your website SEO.

Vibe Tech Media offers a hands-free guest blogging package here: http://www.vibetechmedia.com/guest-posting-services.

Hey Folks!

When editing your pages, posts and even categories, sometimes WordPress can add a number to the end of the permalink to avoid duplicate URLs.

This sounds like it should be great and a useful tool but sometimes when you are trying to replace “sample” it can rename it “sample-2″ and can get a little stressful.

Here’s a nice and easy way to fully delete the old page without having to go into the database / PHPadmin etc (there’s no need:))
It’s similar to clearing a cache so you can add a new page with the original permalink and without a -2 or -3 after the postname.
Here’s the step by step:

1. Delete your page
2. Click Dashboard > Pages (Not “Add New”)
3. You will see above the page list the following: All, Published, Drafts, Trash
4. Click on “Trash” and select the pages that you want to delete permanently.
5. Click “Bulk Actions > Delete Permanently”
6. Then Recreate your page (by going to “Pages > Add New”) and the permalink should be fine and without a dash or number after the postname.

If this has helped, please leave a comment, Like or Tweet to show some love. Thanks!!

Over the past wee while, Google has been cracking down on sites which drive too many backlinks within a certain period. If a website gains too many backlinks quickly then it can be put down as spam and unnatural. Google want natural back linking because this shows that, the content is good and if the content gets enough backlinks pointing to it then Google will rank it higher.

Many new Internet marketers are now using Unique Article Wizard to make backlinks, although many people are sending the links straight to their domain name. This is not good for SEO, because Unique Article Wizard makes tons of links and it will look unnatural to Google if you send them straight to your domain name.

A good idea is to make a blogger blog and a squidoo page. You can then send the Unique Article Wizard links to the small blogs and then add your domain name onto the small blogs, giving your main site an SEO boost in the keywords you are want to rank for. If you know Pat Flynn, then you will be happy to know that this is how he ranked his blog, “smartpassiveincome.com”, quickly.

If you want to get some quick rankings then doing this is safe from the panda and penguin because all the links are point to the small blogs which can take, these kind of link building, then just point the blogs to your main site which will give you a great SEO boost.

What you should not do!

Do not send all links to your main site if you’re using Unique Article Wizard, because you will most likely get banned from Google. It looks very unnatural and the last thing you want is to get banned.

If you keep your site looking natural then Google will award you with good consistent rankings, so be smart.

My name is Larry and I have been helping people with Internet marketing for years now. You can check out my Unique Article Wizard Review at my blog.

In this tutorial I will show you how to make money by loading a script into your site and every click on every link will make you a small piece of passive income. All you do is copy and paste the adf.ly javascript into your blog then you start making money – seems pretty simple eh?

What is adf.ly?

adf.ly is a link shortener service that converts your link into a tiny one just like bit.ly or goo.gl. The main difference is that adf.ly PAY you each time a user clicks on the link you create. For further information you can visit their website.

Now I’m going to show you this cool little script that can convert ALL your sites links into adf.ly ones automatically. So, everytime a user clicks on a link, it will show a small advertising banner at the top of the page and you’ll make a small piece of cash. Imagine if you had quite a few visitors on your site each clicking say 2 or 3 links – That’s going to add up pretty quickly right?

Here it is:

<script type="text/javascript">
onmousemove = function adfly() {
adfly_id = '3080028'; //replace with your ID
banner_id = 'banner';
for (var i = 0; i < document.links.length; i++) {
var hrefer = document.links[i].href;
if(hrefer.match("adf.ly") || hrefer.match("javascript:")|| hrefer.match("#")) {
document.links[i].href = document.links[i].href;
}else{document.links[i].href = 'http://adf.ly/' + adfly_id + '/' + banner_id + '/' + document.links[i].href;}
}
}
</script>

Just paste it into your BODY tag of your site. If you are using WordPress as your CMS, i’ve found pasting the code into the footer.php file does the trick nice and easily.

Explanation:

This script will convert all your site’s links, EXCEPT adf.ly itself, google adsense, javascript href, and ‘#’ href. You can add any other link as exception such as your own site, advertising link, etc. To do that, just add the new || hrefer.match(“your URL”)) inside the IF section of the script.

That’s it.. Super simple right? I’m going to test this out for a month on a few of my sites and i’ll report back on the results. My only concern is that it could look a bit “spammy” and visitor level could drop OR it could be a tidy little earner. I’ll let you know and thanks for reading!

Show some love with a share, tweet or comment if you found this useful

For many hardcore webmasters, investing in domains is a part of their every day life. Although they are not considered an actual commodity, there is certainly potential there.

We all despise those people that got 95% mortgages, making 100% ROI within the space of a few years. If only we could turn back the clocks, right?

Remember, at the time, these gains were not guaranteed. Many people put all their assets on the line. They made calculated investments that paid off. The position many people were in then, is similar to the position that domain investors are in now. Their question was then, and is now; is this investment going to make me, or break me?

With property becoming unstable in the UK and the internet booming, could investing in domains be the nest egg that we all dream of?

Background research

Stats to help with investing in domains can be found on IDNX. This is about as close to valuing the domain market as anyone is going to get, for the time being. It gives a good visual overview of the market as a whole (take that into account).

Valuations

Appraisals are fairly pointless; the market operates similarly to unique artwork. When the price that a seller will sell for, is equal to that of the price the buyer is willing to pay, it will sell. Of course, the above could be applied to any market.

That said; compare this to the property market, prices of property will generally be inline with historical pricing. Investors can take the prices of multiple sales in the past, apply the increase/decrease in the market since the sale and get a fairly accurate idea of what the value is.

This is coupled with the fact that houses, using mortgages, are leveraged investments; increased potential gains, but losses too. This is obviously the reason why investing in domains could still be lucrative. As soon as detailed information relating to domain investing is released, the margins will close up; so the time is now or never.

Choosing domains for investment purposes

Here is one of the rules we have been using; if a basic ideas don’t pop into your head for a domain within 5 minutes, don’t buy it. Obviously it gets a lot more detailed than that. The ideas should consist of:

What is the purpose of this domain?

Fetch.co.uk recently sold for £17,500. The idea behind the new site will be a transportation based company.

Who will buy the domain?

Typically, “end-users” will pay MUCH more than other domain investors. Yes, you could flip a domain for 100% profit, but factor in those domains that don’t sell for 5-10 years; you’re probably making a loss.

How will you value the domain?

Each to their own, we have a fairly detailed formula for valuing domains on an individual basis. The formula is adapted based on SEO value, traffic, historical sale prices (of that exact domain and other similar tlds), CPC cost, search traffic and more.

This is our “assumption” of what a domain is worth and by no means fact.

What will you do with the domain?

If the time was available, would you invest time and energy, trying to develop a project and implementing SEO strategies? If not, most end-users are probably thinking the same thing.

The result

Investing in domains has proven to be profitable for some, but then again, so has poker. Like great poker players, great investors fill in gaps in information, the ones others fail to see.

Our unbiased opinion is that there are plenty of opportunities out there, but each opportunity should be studied in depth. Thin the herd, find the great opportunities.

At the same time, hang around for the right price. The same buyer might pay up to $2,000 for a domain that is advertised for $1,000. This was the case for hotels.cd, which sold for $986 (Feb 07) and $2,022 (Aug 07).

Prepared to spend time on SEO? That domain is probably worth investing in…

Vibe Tech Media is a UK business blog discussing ecommerce businesses issues, online marketing and more…

The emphasis is always put on business SEO. Why? Without great SEO, a fantastic idea is left uncovered. That’s not to say that a site with great search engine optimisation is going to succeed though. There are 100s of sites out there that fail to convert customers that visit their websites every single day; a loss of opportunity.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Have you focused any time on analysing conversion rates?
• Are your SEO efforts really worthwhile if your website doesn’t convert?

It’s not hard; you can easily increase conversion rates in a few minutes:

#1 – Use a CTA that is bold, possibly a different colour to your website template

#2 – Make the checkout process simple; the fewer clicks the better

#3 – Make use of great copy; put it in the right place to really sell

#4 – Do you offer just one payment option? Offer more!

#5 – Make sure categories are in a clear format. Customers know what they want and you need to show it them; quickly!

How do you think the above changes will help?
The obvious answer is; they increase conversions.

I’ll ask again; how do you think the above changes will help?

Dig deeper this time. A website that really “sells” products and services well, and is easy to use, means consumers can find more products. Sales increase, but sales value with increase too!

So there you have it. SEO is important, but don’t avoid conversion rates!

Vibe Tech Media is a UK online marketing company that helps people think outside the box; making their presence in the internet known. Try and relate this post on outsourcing to the above post on conversion rates.