The field of Search engine optimisation is a combination of several types of strategies and the success the overall SEO campaign is dependent also on the individual accomplishments or contributions of the said strategies. One method that can augment one’s own SEO campaign is through the pay-per-click system being offered by advertising companies, the most common of which is the Google adwords service. The process involves the bidding for keywords and from which you can utilise such keywords for your links to be added to a website that accepts advertisements. Unfortunately, most business people who engage the services of the pay-per-click system are actually committing several errors that are detrimental to the whole pay-per-click campaign and ultimately their SEO campaign. Among these errors that are commonly committed by people who are engaged in the pay-per-click system are:

1. Clicking your own ads, the system is a pay-per-click method. Clicking your own ads would generate a deduction to your pay-per-click account, not to mention that such clicks may be interpreted as fraudulent and thus might become a cause or basis for the pay-per-click account to be closed.

2. Do not customise the adsense code beyond what is required by the pay-per-click company. The PPC company can provide you will all the necessary tools for you to customise you advertisement but once you are given the code never modify it again by changing the color or even by touching the ad or search code as this could cause a serious problem later on when your advertisement do become live and online.
3. Always adhere to the limits set by the pay-per-click company in terms of the number of ads to place in a website.

4. Make sure that your pay-per-click account information are kept private and confidential as this information can be potentially utilised against you by your competitors.

5. Your clicked ad must launch on the same window and not on a new web page. This is because opening on a new page from clicking an advertisement is considered by most a nuisance and are easily closed by internet users. Thus, you have to remove the base target code in your adwords script. It is in this manner that you are not only making your advertisement efficient, you are also making it more SEO friendly.
6. Your advertisements must be placed only on content pages. This is because advertisers only pay for content driven ads.

One very common question that emanates from clients whenever they are considering of employing the services of website designers and website design companies is that why such website designers should be needed if they can make their own website using the free and available website templates? A valid question that merits a defense from website design companies, first we have to know what are template website design, this type of website design are those that are readily available website designs that are downloadable over the internet. Template website designs are further, the website designs that are pre-made and thus HTML, CSS and other scripting languages’ codes are already in existence. It requires almost none to minimal modification and the designs are sometimes categorised according to the different general themes like education, business etc. Due to the fact that such website design is already prefabricated it does not require too much knowledge of the different scripting languages only the understanding of it. Template website designs are also much cheaper to construct because it has the capacity to be created in-house and it does not require the services of any website design company. Template website designs are limited only to the actual designs being created for people to download.

A custom website design on the other hand requires the services of website designers or a website design company as the website design is constructed from the ground up. It is because of this hiring of the services of website designers and website design companies that the cost for the construction of a single website will require you to shell out some cash. Custom website designs are tailor-made to fit your concept on how your website should look like and how it should function. Custom website design further allows you to incorporate features that you want to be included into your website, like flash animation, videos and images among others. Being a custom made website design it requires and depends heavily on one’s knowledge of the different website design scripting languages.

From the looks of it economically speaking a template website design is advantageous over the custom website design right? Well we have to take everything into consideration, if your websites’ purpose is only to inform people and it is not used for any business purposes or any campaign purposes such as looking for sponsors for a charity organisation then template website design is really the way to go, but if your websites’ purpose is to gain clients for your business or to gain sponsors for your charity organisation then making use of the a template website design is not going to be enough. This is because of the fact that templates are easily downloaded by anyone thus it is going to be hard for you to establish a unique web presence because of the fact that such template website design will be able to be utilised by virtually anyone. Establishing a unique look and feel for your website design is imperative for any website in order to make your mark to the potential clients. Also, custom website design allows you to create or incorporate your “personal touch” onto your website design that will give it the identity that is in relation with your company or main line of business. Further, a custom website design allows you to freely add features that you want that you believe to be beneficial or is important in increasing the usability and security of your website.

So is template website design really is the way to go? Well I suggest that you think again.

Search engine optimisation is not done via the use of only one strategy nor is it successful using only a single step. Effective Search engine optimisation, as SEO companies and SEO consultants can vouch for, will require several steps. Among these steps are the planning, implementation and the monitoring stages, notice that SEO doesn’t have an end stage because it is after all a continuous process that will only end if you decide for it to end or if it is already the end of the internet technology, the latter of course being highly unlikely. The stages mentioned above are the basic steps for a starting SEO to follow in order to direct his or her SEO campaign into the right direction. Starting the SEO campaign is as important as the implementation and the monitoring of such campaign thus it is important to give equal attention to the different stages as mentioned herein.

The Planning stage is the step where SEO companies, SEO consultants and even just SEO practitioners starts to map out the different SEO strategies  to be implemented later on. This stage will also determine the different contingency plans in case the implemented strategies are not going to work or if such has been rendered useless. The planning stage further includes the research phase where keywords, competitive keywords, competitor’s websites and Search results data are gathered for the next phase in the planning stage the analysis phase. The analysis phase will rely heavily on the data gathered from the research phase and these data will be analysed as to their effectivity and competitiveness in terms of the data gathered from the keyword research and the website structure and strategies employed by the competitor website. From the analysis result strategies will then be formulated.

The Implementation stage, as the name implies is the actual application already of the different strategies formulated during the planning stage and this will include all the different implementation steps in SEO, such as but is not limited to incorporation of keywords in the content, using the ALT attribute in the website images, reconstruction of the website to conform to the SEO campaigns’ aims, using social media networks and asking for link exchanges. This is where the bulk of the search engine optimisation work is seen to be performed by the SEO company and SEO consultant.

The monitoring stage is done after all formulated strategies are already implemented to the website. The monitoring stage now only requires Search engine optimisation practitioners to monitor statistical data from the different analytics engine or tracking applications installed in the website. So what are we to monitor exactly? Basically the number of traffic entering your website, conversion rates and also number of sites linked to you and even whether or not your websites’ content is being plagiarised by other websites. It is important to keep track of these because these are the factors that will allow you to make a sound judgment on how you will proceed with your SEO campaign.

Google has not only been engaged in the field of search engines, since it’s success with the battle for search engine supremacy in terms of its share of number of search engine users the search engine giant has since then ventured outside the search engine business. Google has put up several divisions that will take care of these other ventures by the search engine company. Among these ventures entered into by Google is the application for Iphone the igoogle and the development of a handset operating system called android which is also set to conquer the computer operating system field an area where Microsoft is currently reigning supreme.

Recently Google has announced that it has implemented an upgrade to its igoogle and android products. Upgrades for igoogle includes the incorporation of thirty-eight languages (38), it also added the conventional necessities like tabs and quick access to gadgets that were recently used which is hoped to increase speed and usability in the access of the application and other connected applications. The igoogle upgrade will be very accessible to users by visiting the website using the mobile phone and clicking on try on the new igoogle link.

The Android mobile operating system on the other hand had also incorporated some new innovations and or upgrades. One of the improvements announced by Google was the incorporation of an autocomplete function that will allow users to key in less words and thus speeding up the process of using the application. Google also has incorporated Gmail keyboard shortcuts that will allow users to also increase speed and usability of the operating system.

Read More SEO related news on our SEO Blog

Google is a tough search engine to defeat and it’s executives has been very confident that theirs is the most formidable search engine algorithm. This is backed-up by Googles’ continued supremacy over the internet users share leaving the competitors far behind. The Google era is here and now and it will remain that way for a very long time, or so it seems. Having been always in the number three spot in terms of internet users’ share Microsoft had put it’s efforts time and again in developing the perfect “Google Killer” and with the recent launch of Bing it seems that their efforts are paying off. Microsoft’s Bing for starters showed a strong launching that it even surpassed another search engine pioneer Yahoo who belongs to the number two spot in terms of internet users share. It has also been reported that many SEO’s and online-marketers are contemplating on starting their SEO and their other online marketing campaign using Bing as their base search engine and not Google. With these latest trends favoring Microsoft’s Bing, Google has recently announced that Microsofts’ pet project is really not a threat to the supremacy that Google is currently holding, assailing the reliability and the stability of its search engine algorithm, showing that the search engine giant remains unfazed by the threat posed by Bing.

But unfortunately unfazed is not really an accurate word. Insider reports from the search engine giant stated that its co-founder Sergey Brin have instructed the formation of a team that will take charge in the determination of the differences between Bing’s search engine algorithm with that of Googles’. It has been further reported that this team will be headed personally by Sergey Brin, ending a long time none hands-on participation in the running of the company. This unusual action taken by a Google co-founder is putting doubts on the mind of people of Googles’ invincibility in terms of its search engine algorithm.

In every Search engine optimisation campaign there is always a need to focus on what the website designer produces, that is of course if you are not the website designer yourself. If by chance you are the website designer as well as the SEO then you still need to focus on your website design process and how to integrate what the client wants and what you require in your SEO campaign. Clients, most of the time are business persons with no apparent training in the field of Website Design or Internet Marketing let alone SEO, this is the reason why there are a lot that your client might want to incorporate in the website design which might be detrimental to your Search engine optimisation campaign. This will become a problem especially with the client insisting on what he or she wants and not on what is efficient for both the aspect of website design and Search engine optimisation.

Problems such as the client wanting a Flash based website as well as a good, fast and efficient SEO campaign. This might pose a potential problem because of the fact that most basic SEO techniques are not applicable on a purely flash based website. It is thus imperative for an SEO and a website designer to find ways on how to compromise in the design such as making an HTML based designed sitemap rather than incorporating it in the entire flash based website. This will allow the SEO to facilitate the crawling of the website by the search engine agents or spiders.

Another problem may be that the clients may ask for is to incorporate mostly images on the web pages rather than utilise texts. Many people believe that the more images there are the more it adds to its aesthetic value. Although that may not always be true it is still the website designers’ duty to implement the clients’ wishes even it may also mean that it will be the cause of the failure of the websites’ SEO campaign later on. Again, it is the duty of the SEO Company or SEO consultant or the SEO inside the website designer to adjust by way of using the ALT attribute for the img element of HTML where the image can now be given a description and a chance for the SEO to utilise keyword rich texts for that matter.

The above mentioned problems are those that may commonly encounter later on by and SEO and a website designer. What is important is whenever faced with such problems creativity on formulating strategies will play a very important role.

The process of website design is a complex and tedious process, it requires several stages in order to allow us to create, develop or design a website that will have most if not all the characteristics of a good website design. The website design model and or process are basically a straightforward process already known deductively by many people website designers and non-website designers alike. These stages are the planning, design, implementation and testing stages.

We take the first stage in perspective, the planning stage. The planning stage or also known as the story boarding stage is a stage in website design where the whole website design will be mapped out. Flowcharts are also created in order to determine how one web page is connected to the other web pages it is commonly seen as plotting a story thus the name story boarding. This is also the phase where the contents are being brainstormed along with the design of the web page including its main color scheme, that is the basic color scheme that will be utilised all through out the website design. These two divisions in the planning stage actually determine now the usability and aesthetics of the entire website design.

The design phase is divided also further into two phases, the first phase is the mock-up process where the website designer will have to create the website design using first an image or photo editor in order to map out how the web pages would look like. If satisfied the images are then sliced and is prepared for the second phase the coding phase, this is where the whole mock-up is then transformed into an HTML document using of course all the scripting language that is applicable.

The implementation stage is where the website design is now going to be uploaded to the host server. This stage requires two additional steps, first is the process of buying or purchasing a host and domain. The host will handle the file storage of your website along with other pertinent features while the domain will be housing your site’s URL. This process requires your shoppers’ instincts as their prices vary online and for some you may even get them for free that is why choosing a hosting and domain plan wisely according to your needs is imperative.

Finally when the website design is already uploaded the testing phase will follow. The website, before it would go live it should require your close scrutiny and to be more efficient in the checking of your website design it is also imperative to require your clients, friends and virtually anyone to check the website design that you have uploaded and list down the errors encountered in every page.

Following these steps may not guarantee a one hundred percent (100%) website design, mistakes or errors may slip pass us but these stages will always make it sure that errors will be kept to a minimal point thus allowing also minimal amount of revisions later on.

The process of Search engine optimisation is a tedious endeavor but many people are engaged in such endeavor because of the very high pay-out. Many SEO’s resort to different strategies in order to gain the much coveted page one SERP for their target web page and having this kind of web presence would mean that your site will have the probability of having the most web traffic and conversions thus the high pay-out. Unfortunately, the web and the competition on SEO and Search engine ranking is becoming more stringent by the minute and in order to keep up with this minute by minute changes due to competition and incorporation of newly developed technologies Search engine optimisation practitioners are trying to develop new strategies that could augment their SEO campaign. One such strategy that was developed was link building. During the inception of Search engine optimisation the effective use of meta tags and keywords would have been enough but today several search engines, particularly Google, has given weight on links and back links as one of its criteria in ranking the website. It is because of this change in search engine algorithm many SEO’s have developed the strategy known as link building.

Link building is a process or strategy done to increase the SERP of a website through the incorporation of links within or even outside the website. Creating links within the website is a simple process as it comes with the website building process but the external links are those that are hard to gain due to the fact that it requires other websites to link to your site. Fortunately, some SEO’s have found a quick and easy way on how to produce these types of much needed links and these are through the use of :

1. Forums – forums are websites that solicits the opinion of members and even guests on a particular topic at hand. Forums therefore are one of the easiest avenue for you to include a link to your website just by adding it to your forum post. Take care of course that your posts will not be tagged as spam, to avoid this you have to first build your reputation so that your posts will be tagged as reliable and or dependable.
2. Social Bookmarking – is in layman’s term a website that allows users to submit different media such as videos, images and even URL’s where the community will be allowed to view and vote whether it is bad or good. Since you can submit URL’s this is the easiest way for you to start a viral for your websites’ URL within the community.

3. Blog Posting – Web logs or commonly known as blogs are the latest trend in the internet. Blogs are viewed as online journals of people, where they are allowed to write about anything or everything. Blogging can increase your SERP via the use of the links from the blog to your website. Asking your friends to write a blog about your website and including the URL onto their blog will greatly help your Link building and SEO campaign.

These are just several of the sure fire way for you to get your link building campaign to start off with the right direction.

Google is continuously moving forward on its quest to maintain it’s number one spot in the field of search engine usage share from internet users. Google have experienced set-back though from it’s rivals, from the Government and even from itself. Set-backs from itself emanated when Google was hit with an outage this year which forced the search engine giant to transfer it’s search query server to Asia an event that caused the search query on the search engine during that time to be unbearably slow. Google also faces set-backs from the Government as it has to go on a legal battle and scrutiny from the justice department on issues of violating the anti-trust policy. Finally Google also faced set-backs from it’s rivals via the development and launching of two search engines the Wolfram Alpha and Microsofts’ Bing adding to the list of contenders for Google’s spot, not to mention also the increase of popularity of the micro blogging site Twitter.

All those set backs were already answered by Google except for the fact that for a long time Google stayed quiet about the threat coming from Twitter but such will change as Google is prepping to develop and launch its own meta search engine for micro blogging sites. Because of the increasing popularity of such micro blogging sites Google started to develop such meta search engine which is actually evident now when you use Google’s translation console.

This move by Google actually is a recognition of Twitters’ increasing popularity and Google will then try to exploit this by utilising steps and processes such as that mentioned above.

For more related news visit our SEO Blog.

The importance of the web in the field of business is undeniable, considered as the fourth dimension of business the web had strongly made its presence in the business world. This is the reason why nowadays people who are engaged in business are looking into the web as a possibility to market their wares because of the fact that conventional means of advertising or marketing products have become very competitive that small entrepreneurs are eaten up by larger companies solely because of the formers’ inability to equal the advertising expenses of the latter. With this increase of moving into a different marketing strategy many people engaged in business are trying to develop their own website, which, unfortunately for some they do not have any knowledge in web development. This is where website designers and developers would come in. Unfortunately, because of the fact that the business on website design is fairly new and the price tag on website designs are not standard and also include the fact that many businessmen are not familiar with the web development process many website designers are taking advantage of the businessman’s lack of knowledge on the actual pricing and procedure of website design and website development. In order for a businessman not to fall prey to these types of website designers it is imperative that the following should be checked by the businessman before closing a deal with the website designer.

First the website designer must show proof of his or her website design and web development background. This can be done by asking the prospective website designer to furnish you a copy of his sample work including the URL’s of the websites that he has already developed and made live. This way you can gauge whether you like the prospective website designers’ style in designing a website.

Second if possible, contact his or her previous clients to get a testimonial of his or her work, or if the prospective website designer has his or her own website try to view the testimonial page if provided, if not just take note on the way his or her personal website is designed or developed.

Third, just like a normal shopper you have to ask around for the rates thus allowing you to gauge rate of a prospective website designer if such is affordable taking into consideration what you want to incorporate in your website design. This will also further allow you to gauge whether the asking price is reasonable or not.
Following this three simple steps will save you the time and money by allowing you to discern between scammers and genuine website designers.