Website design is one of the most important aspects of having an online business. This is because of the fact that the website or your website will act as your store or establishment online, therefore having a usable and aesthetically presentable store is the same as having a business with in a respectable and beautifully decorated establishment. It is now established then that a Web Pages’ appearance is very important. Web pages or website design are built according to the product of a web designers’ imagination or creativity. Although such is the case every website designer are following basic structures in their website design and such structure are sectioned into four basic parts, these is the anatomy of the web page:

1.    Header – the header is found where else? Of course in the top most part of the web page. This part is usually the first to be seen by the internet user and it is here where the user will find or see your website name, business name, company logo and the a banner image. This is sometimes created using animation most specifically flash in order to add more presentation to the website. The header usually has a part where the user can click it in order to return to the home page or also to go to the company’s profile, this clickable part is usually found on the business name or business logo.

2.    The Navigation area – This section of the web page may be created horizontally immediately below and along the header or vertically which may be found at the left column of the web page. As the name implies this section of the web page is created by website designers for navigation thus this section contains the different links that connects the web page to other web pages within the website or the website to an external website.

3.    Content Section  – This is the middle part of the web page, this is also the section that is prominent because it takes up a large amount of space in your web page. This section will contain the text and images that will convey your message to your user, this is also the section where you can post your announcements, news updates, product offers and the like.

4.    Footer – often overlooked, this is still an essential part of a web page, this is where you can advertise yourself as the website designer. This area usually contains the link on how to contact the website designer and sometimes this is also where the host name is found. Although due to security reasons sometimes these information are not always shown to the public. What can and may be shown is the validity of the website design in terms of W3C standards.

For quite some time now Google has been the center of attention because of the fact that the search engine giant has been dominating the search engine field. In addition to that Google is also slowly entering and dominating other areas, areas such as the book publishing business which is one of the most highly criticised projects of Google because of the fact that it will have to affect the livelihood of writers and publishers a problem that may be nearly resolved. Another area in computing that Google has entered into is the operating system world where Microsoft currently dominates and to make things worst another area that Microsoft dominates and where Google has already entered is the field of documents or commonly known under Microsoft as Office and in Google the Google Docs. According to the latest survey there are around twenty percent (20%) of survey respondents who says they are already using Google Docs or will have plans to utilising it in the near future, this number is more than five percent higher as compared to the survey done a year and a half ago.

This only means that people or internet users to be particular are already becoming aware of the Document product of Google. The increase in the number of users for Google docs may also be attributed to the fact that it is a free service, although a paid service is also offered by Google. Many people who work at the office now are utilising this free service by Google to cut costs. Microsoft has taken notice of their rival in this field and is now making their move to promote their own version of a web based office application. With $18.9 Billion income in jeopardy Microsoft has started the technical preview of its Office Web Apps, an application that will run Office programs using the web browser. In addition to that the Operating system giant is also moving in closer to releasing their newest version of the Microsoft Office that is the MS Office 2010 which is expected for release early next year.

Many website designers are in constant debate on what elements are better utilised in sectioning or dividing your web page according to the header, content, navigation and footer, those just mentioned being the basic anatomical structure of a web page. In website design it is imperative to know the standard anatomy of a web page in order for you to know or where to place sections and what to place in them. For a header for example you need to place the company logo, company name or website name, for the navigation section it is here where you will be placing your links in order to allow the users navigate through your website and to external websites you are affiliated with. The footer will have to contain a brief information about the webmaster and the webhost and the content section will of course handle the content of the web page such as texts and its associated images.

It is because of this structure that website designers are debating on which is the most appropriate website design technique to use in layouting, is it through the use of the table elements? Or is it through the use of the div element specifically the properties in the Cascading Style Sheets? First of we look at the properties of a table element, it is designed to create tables in your web pages and through the different attributes and associated tags such as <td> or <tr> it is possible to create a layout similar to the basic anatomy of the web page. The drawback is that since it is a table it will behave as a table which means that the arrangement of the text within the table is as good as the length of the text, which means that by default the output will depend on the length of the content of every row and column, although you are given the avenue to adjust it is still a tedious task to do which is the second drawback of using the table elements. Comparing that with the use of the div element the design will be fluid and the process is much easier as long as you know the appropriate dimensions. Using the div element and its other properties is not going to limit your desire to position texts and or images anywhere on your web page to attain the desired web design output.

Google, the current number one search engine worldwide in terms of internet users’ share had announced recently that they are planning to re-activate their acquisition engine, a move that was triggered by the recovery of the economy from the global economic crisis. The search engine giant have been constantly acquiring small private companies until it stopped such operation early this year due to the fact that the prices too high for the search engine company. Speaking in a G20 convention the Google executive and CEO Eric Schmidt announce the return of their company’s acquisition of small privately owned companies. In his speech Google is looking at acquiring one company every month, this is being done in replacement of hiring employees. It is to be known that when a company is acquired the acquiring company have the option of changing the current pool of employees of the acquired company or they may retain the current employees. This depending on what the acquiring company wants whether it’s the technical skills of its employees or any other factors that does not involve the employees.

Last August Google has made its first acquisition of a public company and that is the video software make On2 Technologies where Google acquired the company for a hefty one hundred and seven million dollars ($107 Million). This move by Google in reactivating its acquisition engine means that many companies out there that are offering services to the public in general may be the next target of the search engine giant, whether the effect of the acquisition is going to be good or bad it is for the employees to decide.

Website design has come a long way since its inception, before, website design rests solely within the lingua franca of the web and that is the Hypertext Markup Language or HTML. Unfortunately, due to complaints and limitations that HTML provides it has been imperative during that time to create a new version of HTML that will accommodate and solve such complaints and limitations respectively. This is when the World Wide Web consortium developed HTML 4.01 which was followed by the extensible hypertext markup language or XHTML 1.0. These two standards that were drafted by W3C have a common ground principle and that is “content must be separated from presentation”. This means that the elements of HTML or XHTML are not to be utilised for creating the website design or presentation side of the website design, instead the presentation side will now be handled by the new style language the cascading style sheets or CSS. The Cascading style sheets was developed primarily to aide website designers in making a fluid and more presentable design.

With the advent of the Cascading style sheets there were more liberal manipulation of the different elements in the website design. Such manipulations or new concepts in design that were developed were the introduction of a table-less website design. This type of design enables the web designer to specify the location of certain elements within the website without being hindered or limited by the utilisation of table elements. This allows for a more fluid website design which also allows for incorporating further design elements and interactivity such as the rollover function on buttons where colors and texts on the links or buttons will change whenever the mouse cursor rolled over such links or buttons. Another design concept that website designers can now do thanks to CSS is the specification of the designers’ desired font size, which is unlike in HTML where the maximum font size that you can actually specify is seven (7), in CSS you can specify the font size depending on your needs and or desires. In addition to the different website design capabilities of CSS, the Cascading style sheets can also now allow the specification on the location of the background image, if in HTML the utilisation of a background image is not freely manipulated in CSS you can specify the location of the image where it should be found in the web page, you can also specify if the image is centered or tiled and on top of that you can also manipulate where the image is going to be tiled.

Truly, the introduction of CSS to take care of the presentation side of the website design could be one of website design’s treasure trove thus learning CSS along with HTML is a good start for you to becoming a professional website designer.

Before the internet was developed and made available for public use, the selling strategy of most companies is via a door-to-door method. This means that agents from the company will have to go to the retailers’ establishment in order to transact business. It is a frustrating and tiring endeavor due to the fact that you have to go on every establishment or even homes around the city, province or the whole country just to make a small amount of sales. This will require you to spend so much on transportation and meal allowances which when you compute would or could only set your finances into break even. With the advent of the internet the public especially the business community have found a better and cost-efficient way of marketing their business. Unlike for companies with established brand names and with the capability of utilising the power of media networks starting businesses does not have same financial and manpower resources that are why the internet is the best alternative for them. Some engage in Search engine optimization in order to make their product or websites’ presence felt over the internet community. In SEO you will have to tackle several strategies with the main goal of making your site be ranked first in the Search engine results page ranking or SERP ranking of a search engine.

However, the technique that comes close to doing door-to-door sales is email marketing. This marketing technique utilises the power of the email in order to make your product or website known to the internet community. Unlike SEO, you only need and email address and a good email content to get you started with this type of online marketing technique. First off you need to build your list of emails, contacting your friends may be an initial step and asking them to pass on the email to others to create a viral effect is a great technique to use. Second, you have to remember that you are targeting as many people as possible therefore; your email content must be flawlessly created. This means that your email should contain catch phrases to get the reader’s attention, call to action phrases or sentences and relevant images.

Email marketing is the same as door-to-door sales only that you wont feel the pain of rejection by witnessing the door slammed on your face.

When people talk about Search engine optimisation Google is already a household name. This is because Google is considered to be the search engine giant dominating it competitors Yahoo and Bing by more than a mile. The total internet users share of Google is approximately sixty percent leaving the rest divided among the other search engines like Yahoo, Bing, Ask and the others. It is because of this dominance by Google that Microsoft and Yahoo have merged together to combine their resources to improve their services and to hopefully dethrone Google in its reign as the number one search engine. Aside from spending a lot on advertising before launching its new search engine Bing, Microsoft also has created several marketing strategies and administrative moves such as hiring executives who have worked for Yahoo and Google at one point or another.

Now, Microsoft is also targeting the fastest growing market in the internet that is the Search engine optimisation. The plan to make Bing noticeable to SEO companies and SEO consultants was discovered by many already when they utilised the search engine query of Bing. Try to search using a search keyword in Google, take note of one link that is on the first page of Google’s SERP then visit Bing and try the same keyword on the search string and more often than not you will find the same link on a lower ranking and even on page two. This is a noticeable difference between the two search engines which makes SEO companies and SEO consultants wondering what is different in Bings’ search engine algorithm? This move by Bing is viewed as something that will spark the interest of many SEO companies and SEO consultants that they may also try to decipher it like what they are doing with Google, this means that there may be a lot of SEO companies and SEO consultants that may want to take this endeavor and which means that there will be a lot of traffic towards Microsofts’ Bing.

Website design is a process whereby a website designer creates a website that is both aesthetically pleasing and usable. Aesthetics and usability are the two factors that affect website design. Creating a website or a website design therefore requires the utilisation of both the creative side and the logical side of your brain. Creative, because of the fact that you have to create a website that will please the “eyes” and the “artistic sense” of the user or your website visitor. This will have to include several aspects in website design such as the integration of images and colors. Proper blending of colors against the color of the images is necessary so as not to “strain” the eyes of the people visiting your website. In addition you also have to take into consideration the font-type of the text that you will incorporate as the content of your website, in addition to the fact that you also have to take into consideration the different sizes of fonts that you will have to use. For the images, the insertion of the image may destroy your design if the images are not properly edited therefore, you also need to use picture or image editing tools in order to enhance the images that you would like to incorporate in your website.

Usability is defined in website design as the ability of the web page to function according to expectations. This means that every detail in the website design that has a specific function, like a link, should direct the user to the proper web page. The forms that has to be filled-up by the user must also serve its purpose. The loading time of a web page must also be up to the standard speed. The latter therefore means that you have to utilise the web friendly image compression file format which is the .png. Basically, what usability requires is the extensive and proper or correct use of web development code such as XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP or ASP, usability should be ensured apart from aesthetics in order for you to create a web page that will please your visitors instead of irritating them.

The operating system company Microsoft has learned a lot from the search engine giant Google. With these new knowledge, or old knowledge, learned Microsoft has started to turn the wheels onto integrating their new target market, the Mobile search which is one of the areas where Google is also dominating aside from the internet search engine. The mobile search was predicted by Google executives to be another market where there may be a large profit that can be gained. Using this knowledge Microsoft is now starting on this new project through the use of their new search engine Bing. Microsoft aims to design a search engine that will be compatible with mobile devices and that it will not be too troublesome to use despite of the fact that the mobile devices’ keypads are small.

This move by the operating system company Microsoft was augmented by the fact that it merged with the technology of Yahoo. This means therefore the with the tandem of Microsoft and yahoo there will be a larger market share that Bing can acquire competing with the market share by Google. The operating system company have expressed their intentions of targeting all the niches in the search engine field, but would like to first try out the efficiency of Bing in the U.S. market before promoting it internationally. Further the company would like to tune up their search engine algorithm before a wider audience is going to be acquired, thus the mobile search is one niche where Microsoft is trying to perfect its search engine algorithm. What does this mean for our SEO’s? well a continuous research and observation of the movements or improvements in the field of mobile search and decipher the search engine algorithm of the mobile search.

For a very long time now since the entry of Microsoft in the field of business that is dominated by Google, the two companies have been wrestling each other for the title of being ranked number one in the total number of shares in internet users. Up until today Google still holds the market where it was originally known for, while Microsoft is inching its way in to the top spot after utilising several strategies such as improving its search engine even changing its name to Bing. In addition to this Microsoft has entered into a ten years merger with the pioneer in the search engine field, Yahoo. So how come as of the latest Google now loves Microsoft? Well this is because of the fact that Google is loving Microsoft on one aspect only and that is on the development of the new version of the Hypertext Markup Language the HTML 5. For a very long time now since the start of the formulation of a new markup language for the internet Microsoft has not been very active nor participative in the formulation process. Before Microsoft the discussion was only between Google, Firefox, Apple and Opera. Recent events, On August 7, 2009 to be exact Adrian Bateman has submitted into the W3C forum a substantial feedback on the HTML 5’s editors’ draft this is done in behalf of Microsoft. These feedbacks have burned the forum, meaning it sparked a lot of comments and debates and if it were to be observed the forum’s recent comments and feedbacks emanated from the feedback given by Adrian Bateman. Many months before Microsoft broke their silence, Google has been berating the operating system giant saying that they are dragging down the development of HTML 5, but now things have changed and because of the comments of Microsoft, Google is loving them.