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.

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.

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.

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.

Broken links are one of the worst things your website can contain. When your site is full of broken links, your visitors will view you as unprofessional and quickly leave your website in favor of another one whenever they encounter a broken link. Since it is so hard to get people to visit your website in the first place, you want to do everything you can to keep them on your site. Fixing any and all broken links immediately is a great way to accomplish this goal.

Checking for broken links is also important for your website’s SEO. When a search engine crawler comes across a broken link on your website, it will be unable to move to another page on your site and index the rest of your content. This can leave you with unindexed content, which will limit your exposure in the search engines. Also, you do not want a search engine to serve up a URL that does not exist in their search results as no one will be able to visit your website when searching for that particular term.

 Tools For Checking Broken Links

There are several tools that you can use to help you check your website for broken links. Rather than spending your time manually checking all of the links on your site, it is recommended to use one of these tools to help speed up the process.

 W3C Link Checker – This particular tool checks your links for a variety of issues including whether or not the link is broken. The W3C Link Checker is a good tool you can use to make sure your website is functioning properly.

 Free Link Checker – Free Link Checker is another tool that helps you check for broken internal and external links within your blog. A nice feature associated with this tool is the ability to check image links as well to ensure all of your images are rendering properly.

 LinkTiger – LinkTiger may be the most robust link checking tool of the bunch. This particular tool allows you to check up to one hundred links per week for free. Once a broken link is found, LinkTiger will send you an email alert so you are the first to know about the broken link.

 Google WebMaster Tools

Another good tool to have in your arsenal to fight against broken links is a Google WebMaster Tools account. By setting up a WebMaster Tools account for your website, you will be given further data you use to help run your site. One of the nice features of this tool is letting you know the Google search engine spider finds errors with your site, including broken links. Through your WebMaster Tools account, you can request a broken link be removed from the search engine results if it had been indexed by Google and no longer exists on your website. This will prevent people from visiting broken links on your website from Google’s search results.

 Plugin For WordPress

If you are using WordPress as your content management system, you can use a plugin to manage your broken links. The plugin named Broken Link Checker is one of the better plugins you can use to address this problem with your blog. This particular plugin will check for links that do not work, missing images and redirect. If the plugin happens to find any issues with your site, it will send you an email notification, allowing you to quickly address the issue.

Another nice feature of the Broken Link Checker plugin is being able to update links from within the plugin itself. There is no need to go through every page of your website and update all of the links manually.

Having broken links on your website makes your website appear unprofessional as well as hurts your rankings in the search engines. Utilizing a series of link checker tools and updating any errors in your Google WebMaster Tools account will allow your website to proceed without any broken links.

Richard H. is trying to optimize the loading times of a site for a NYC law firm Samuelson Hause & Samuelson. Curious as it is, release versions of popular CMS programs can still be optimized.

If the past year has taught us anything it’s that the world of SEO is changing and if you cant change with then you’re going to get left behind which means no first page rankings for you, sorry about that. So what exactly is changing in SEO that is making old tactics obsolete and have a negative impact on a sites rankings? The main change over the past year or so has been a shift of focus by Google from link building to link earning. So what is the difference between link building and link earning?

Link Exchange vs. Partnership Creation

Link building is all about creating as many links back to your site as possible often regardless of whether the site that is linking back to you is relevant to your industry or has any strength to pass on. The old link building tactic of exchanging links with other websites is no longer a sensible strategy. Instead you should focus on establishing natural partnerships with other sites within your industry. Don’t worry too much about getting a link from their home page or through exact anchor text. The important thing is that the relationship you have with them is natural so if you think your users will enjoy or benefit from reading a blog on their site then link to it and the same goes for them. Natural linking will reap far more rewards than obvious reciprocal linking for no other purpose but boosting your rankings.

Email Marketing vs. Social Promotion

Although I wouldn’t go as far as to say that you shouldn’t pursue an email marketing strategy I would suggest that instead you focus on social promotion. If you create a social community of relevant contacts within your industry and potential customers then you can promote your latest offers and deals in a more engaging and less intrusive way. People don’t like promotional emails, the majority of us delete them with even reading them as we see them as spam but if you already have an online relationship with someone then they will be more likely to pay attention to your promotions.

Directory Submissions vs. Content Creation

The days of adding your url to every online directory you can find are thankfully long gone. Directory submissions are an example of link building at its worst although there are still some local business directories that are useful to be in. Instead of adopting a directory submissions strategy I would recommend focusing on creating excellent, engaging and most important of all, unique content that other websites will want to share, embed and link to. This will tell Google that your site is relevant within your industry and that you know what you’re talking about therefore they will want you to ranking highly in their search results.

Stuart Cooke is a freelance SEO Consultant. His business Pinnacle SEO helps webmasters of all levels achieve higher rankings and gain more visitors through ethical link earning techniques.

Yellowish Widgets are ACE!

Here’s a post about yellow(ish) widgets which i am using as a SEO example for a potential client. I am publishing this at around ten o’clock on Thursday night (yes, I work late) and am fully expecting to be on the first page of the search engines for the term yellowish widgets within 1 hour.

Here’s some nonsense that i picked up searching for stuff about widgets…

Ok so most of you alcoholics probably knew this already but now glasses have widgets in them. A while back I got a Stella glass from pub, no I didn’t nickit, I asked, and I loved it but my missus broke it.

Anyway I went for a beer with my Nephew on Sunday and they had the same glasses, I asked again and the old girl behind the jump said no. As with the other glass I asked for I just used my charm and she said I could have one.

Why are widgets Yellow?

When I used it I noticed it was producing beer like a fu**g ice cream cone, huge bas**rd head on it. When I looked the bubbles were swirling up from the bottom in a swirly type fashion. I had a look and in the bottom of the glass are two circles with the words Stella Artois in. So I thought it must be a widgety type thing. I did a Google and apparently they have been using them since 1999.

Ideally this post should be around 500-1000 words, but let’s see how we go with around three hundred.

I was going to backdate this post so that when people visited the design guys site they wouldn’t come across this post and think i’d lost it and was off my rocker, but then I thought – hold on. It’s all about testing, testing, testing anyway and as you know SEO is an ever-changing game and to be on top you need to be trying new ideas constantly.

So, i reckon that’s about it – the simplest SEO, all on-page with that unpopular keyword phrase yellowish widgets – be right back with news…

UPDATE: Took me about 15 minutes to be ranked number 1 on Google with purely basic on-page SEO and nothing else. Obviously I went for a keyphrase with low competition, but just goes to show if you know what you are doing and you’re keeping up with good white-hat SEO techniques, you can rank pretty quickly for your chosen keyword or phrase.

To keep this post at the top of google, i would work on stage 2 of my SEO campaign – Off-Page SEO. Although that won’t happen as I’m taking this post down in an hour  or so (no, let’s leave it for a while and see how long it ranks for! – I won’t bother with any Off-page SEO… )

Below you can see screenshots of my speedy ranking process…

So there you have it folks… The design guys quick and safe SEO tricks to get your sites to the top of the SERPS above your competition! Simple.

One of the most important aspects to SEO is not whether or not you have keywords in your website, but whether you have the right keywords.

It can be a tricky process selecting the right SEO keywords but when you find the perfect phrase it is like a magic word which has the power to bring a wave of traffic to your website. Just like “Abracadabra” or “Open Sesame” all you have to do is write the magic word the right number of times and you will unlock the magic.

One Word Just Won’t Do It

When it comes to keywords you should actually be thinking about keyword phrases instead. This is because ranking for a single word is pretty much impossible at this stage in the game. If you are a company which sells furniture, you can’t simply have “furniture” as your keyword because you will be competing against millions of other websites which also use the same keyword.

By using a keyword phrase you can narrow down your search traffic and have a better chance of ranking high amongst more relevant searches, such as “antique furniture in Manchester” or “outdoor furniture in Bournemouth”.

Also, another reason to use a phrase rather than one word is because your potential customers will not be searching for only one word. Think about it, do you ever do searches for only one word when you are looking for something online? Chances are you use other words to specify your search, which is what your customers will be doing.

Using a more descriptive keyword phrase will also increase your conversation rate as well because it will drive more interested buyers to your site. For example, if someone types the keyword “jewellery” they could be looking for pictures of jewellery, jewellery making techniques, information about jewellery or a variety of other things. However, if they type “silver charm bracelet for sale” they are more likely to make a purchase on the site they find.

However, Don’t Go Crazy

However, it is important not to make your “magic word’ too long. If your keyword phrase is an entire sentence, this will not work very well for a couple of reasons.

First of all, you will need to work in your keyword phrase into your website at a healthy keyword ratio, which is between 1-3% in order for it to be picked up by Google. To get an idea of how many times you will need to repeat the phrase, if your website copy is 1000 words you will need to include the keyword between 10 and 30 times.

It’s possible to include a short keyword phrase in there the right amount of times without it sounding awkward, because you can use short phrases a number of different ways in a sentence. However, if your keyword phrase is long and unwieldy it will be painfully obvious when you try to use it too many times on your website.

Also, the other reason is that the longer the keyword phrase is, the less people are likely to be searching for those exact words. If you get too specific, you will lose a great deal of people who are interested in your niche but perhaps didn’t use your exact words to describe it.

It’s All About Balance

When it comes down to it, the secret trick to finding the magic words for your website is about finding a balance between keyword phrases which are too short to be competitive and ones which are too long to have any search volume.

When you find the phrase which is right in the middle of these two extremes, you will have unleashed the magic power of SEO and you will see your low-traffic problems start to disappear into thin air.

An SEO Company is like a wizard who knows all of the magic keywords that your site needs to unlock its potential for more traffic. Here are some tips for finding that special magic word.