In addition to making sure that the design and web-tools on your new site are effective and easy to use, you also need to consider what your website is going to be called and how people are going to be able to find it online. This name for your website is referred to as a “domain name”.

Domain names are the part of your web address that comes between the “www.” and the suffix that you choose, be it “.com”, “.biz”, “.org”, etcetera. This is how people are going to remember your website, and come back to it time and time again.

If you choose the wrong one, you may end up shooting yourself (or your company) in the foot, as you will not be able to effectively attract new customers and clients to your website.

But what makes finding the perfect domain name difficult these days is the fact that all of the very simple ones are taken. If you have a used car dealership in Akron, Ohio, you are never going to be able to register a name like “cars.com”, or “usedcars.com”, because names like this will either all be taken, or will be extremely expensive to buy. Instead, you must think of something more innovative.

If the name of your car dealership is short and easy to spell, then this would be a great domain to register. But if your dealership is named Kowalcyk´s Lot or Nguyen Cars, you might not be able to count on the public to find your website if it uses those hard-to-spell names.

So what is the solution in a situation like this? Often, the best thing to do is find a simple combination of words that will stick in the public´s consciousness, and be easy to spell. Try something like akroncars.com, yournewcar.com, or buyusednow.com.

Depending on how basic the combination is, the domain name might have already been purchased by someone who is “sitting” on it, trying to sell it to prospective buyers. Try to avoid this situation if you can. For example, buyused.com might go for a high price, while you can purchase buyusednow.com at a more reasonable rate.

The one temptation that you want to stay away from is choosing a suffix other than “.com”. The majority of the Internet-using public will assume that any website name ends in this most basic suffix, even if they are told and constantly reminded otherwise.

You do not want to lose traffic because everyone assumes that your website is usedcars.com, when it is really usedcars.org.

The final pitfall you want to avoid is altering a spelling in a way that might confuse people who want to come to your website.

If you go with usedcarz.com, with a “z” instead of an “s”, this might be passable, if you mention it in your ads repeatedly, making sure that it is driven into people´s heads that there is a z at the end of the website name.

But it is best to avoid such a situation all together and choose something that is commonly spelled.

About the Author: Henry Cook - Find out what domain names are still available and act now before they are gone. Check out networksolutions.com for more info.

original article from entireweb.com newsletter

Local search results were previously relegated to a small map, which would appear within the first page of results, but now they enjoy first page domination for local search terms.

The benefit of this to small businesses is that they can now appear above their much larger revivals who are relegated to the last few results on page one of Google.

Don’t miss out on local search results; they’re your next customers. Here’s 10 tips to help you capture them:

1. Claim your Google Places listing - it’s easy to do and if one doesn’t exist for your business then you can quickly and simply create one. What is it? A Google Places listing is effectively a profile attached to Google’s local search results. It is important because Google ranks these profiles above all others in their new first page local search results.
2. Add pictures to your Google Places listing. The effectiveness of your Google places listing is impacted by its completeness. Images will not only flesh out your listing, but when they appear in the search results, besides your Google Places listing, they are eye-catching and attractive which will increase clicks.
3. Gather citations - citations are instances on the web where your business is mentioned, Google uses the consistency of the information it finds and the authority of the referring site to boost your rank in local search engine results. The quality as well as volume of citations is an important factor in local search engine optimization.
4. Include your locality in on-page optimisation - revisit your META and Title Tags to ensure your town is included wherever possible. Make sure your address appears on every page and that you have a contact page.
5. Submit your site to local directories including Yell.com, Qype.co.uk, Hotfrog.co.uk, local Chamber of Commerce and business directories. Local directories will have greater relevance in local search as it narrows your field of operation for Google to a localised area.
6. Manage your online exposure - make sure the information distributed across the web that pertains to your business is managed carefully. Trawl local directories and existing listings, double-check that your details are correct and that they match both your Google Places contact information as well as your websites contact page.
7. Get your reviews and testimonials on the web - no doubt you will already have testimonials collected from customers, these need to go online as well as in other marketing materials. Put a process in place of asking satisfied customers to review you online if at all possible. Pen a short email with instructions of where and how you would like the review left and send this to all satisfied customers.
8. Use a local phone number instead of a 0800, 0845 or 0870 - this again refines your location making it easier for search engines to place you within a specific region.
9. Target local keywords - when link building make sure you target some local variations on your keywords in the anchor text of your links.
10. Use your supply network - think about local search as being similar to networking. No doubt you will already have a network of local contacts, associates and suppliers who all allow your business to thrive. Simply transfer this network online by linking to each other.

Local search is set to dominate first page results for all local search terms. Small, local businesses should take advantage of this by implementing some or all of the tips above which will allow them to compete with much larger businesses who have until now monopolised the first page results by investing in aggressive SEO campaigns.

About the Author: Kriss Davies, SEO Expert at Liberty Marketing
original article from entireweb.com newsletter

Experience

One should find out how long their website developer or website agency has been in business and what type of projects they have worked on. There are many models for websites, and often someone whose past experience with a similar client type will be an advantage to you.

Past experiences with similar business types should lead to quicker discovery because that website designer knows what options there are and what questions to ask. Also, make sure that your developer is working with modern technologies and best industry practices, no matter if they know your business model or not.

Modern practices lead to better search engine results and good usability across multiple browser types and operating systems.

Development Skillset

Although this may be harder to hone in on, ask your website developer or website agency about their skill set and attention to best and industry standards. Ask if they are using most modern HTML coding, high quality CSS for best cross browser compatibility, smart basic search engine optimization practices, and a site that is foundational in that you can add more pages or content down the line. You may want to ask how far their technical strengths are in custom programming, ecommerce, content management system development, or other skills if you know you may need them.

If you want to sell products online, you will need a website developer who has a lot of experience in ecommerce design and development. Often, as a company uses the web more and more, business owners find they need more than one person do handle all skill sets needed for a particular website project.

Website Portfolio

A website company’s work will most often speak for itself. Decide if you like their website design portfolio.

A design portfolio will show you what styles a website company can deliver and what type of features to expect in their page designs. When you look at a website design portfolio, you can form questions about those designs that may lead to a better design for you. If you see something you really like one of the website designer or website agency designs, you can point out what you like about it, what you want, and what you do not want.

Client References

Ask for your website designer’s client references. Who better to talk to than current and past clients? One should not feel strange about asking for this.

A website is often not a small investment and one should be sure he or she knows what the website developer’s customers are saying. You may want to talk to client’s who have similar projects to yours.

Strategy

A website project requires proper preparation, attention to detail, collaboration, and more. Organization becomes as important as any of these items.

You will want a website designer who can effectively communicate with you and your personnel, from project start to project completion. If you need a hand holder, hire a hand holder. If you want someone who will come in for planning meetings once a week as part of the project, hire someone who can commit to that.

A website developer needs to have organizational tools in place to keep the project on time and can get all involved to meet deadlines in order to meet time goals. Ask your website developer how a project process will go and see that you can agree to meeting times and other requirements for good outcome.

Availability

If you know when you need your website to go live, make sure your website developer will be able to make him or herself available to meet your deadline. If they have many projects at once, make sure they will make your project as important and will meet your time requirements.

Flexibility

On the other hand, if you require a designer who can be more flexible and accommodate you when you can make time, see that this can be done. If you know you want many designs or may change your mind in the middle of the project as to what direction you want to go, make sure you developer knows this and can work with you.

Developers may require more or less money depending on the flexibility you need. If you need the flexibility, however, the change in price may be an easier decision that if you did not.

Location

Website designers have the luxury and flexibility to work wherever they have a computer with their website design software tools and utilities. Some designers are less flexible in that they require the ability to work from home or from an office that is provided for them.

A website client must determine what type of communication is required, especially when considering websites will need updates. Your website designer will probably be someone you will work with for quite a while if all goes well.

If your business is in Los Angeles, California for example, and you require someone to visit your office once a month, you should probably hire a website designer who lives in Los Angeles or nearby.

Education

Many website designers teach themselves or take specific courses in school to be able to do what they can do. A degree is not a requirement, as nothing speaks for itself like a good website design portfolio, but a degree in a related field does add credibility.

Degrees in Marketing, Graphic Design, Business (with emphasis in e-business), Communication, Programming, Sociology, and Psychology are additional assets. Often, when an agency is hired, they will have people with various degrees. Many eyes on your projects from diverse backgrounds may help better user experiences for all personality types.

Personality

Do you like your web designer’s attitude, their tone, and the way they dress and present themselves when in your company? Make sure you feel comfortable with the website designer you choose because you will most likely work with this person for a long time.

Websites need updates and website trends change. You will want a website developer who will communicate with you about all of the things you can or should be doing with your website. Again, do you like the people you are about to hire?

About the Author: David Ephraim from a Los Angeles Web Design company, cracks the essential 10 characteristics to look for while choosing a web designer for your website design projects.
original article from entireweb.com newsletter

Some people employ certain methods in acquiring a high page rank in search engines, even if these are considered to be deceitful in the sense that they are designed to trick the search engines - one of these methods is actually duplicating web content.

What is duplicate content?

Duplicate content in SEO is actually any web content that is considered to be similar to another site. Search engines have actually implemented new filters specifically to monitor these types of deceitful attempts to improve site’s search engine page rankings.

A lot of people think that by creating multiple but similar replicas of their web pages or content, that they will be able to improve their site’s page rankings since they will be able to get multiple listings for their site.

Since search engines are now monitoring these types of trickery, sites using duplicate content can actually end up getting banned from search engine indexes instead of improving their ranking.

What are considered as duplicate content?

There are a couple of duplicate content types that are being rampantly utilized by a lot of people, each one a bit different in their use, but all of them employed for the same purpose, which is to trick search engines to get better page rankings.

One way of getting duplicate content is by having very similar websites or identical web pages on different sub-domains or domains that offer basically the same content. This may include landing or door pages aside from the content, so make sure that you avoid using this if you don’t want your site to become vulnerable to search engines’ duplicate content filter.

Another method of creating duplicate content is by simply taking content from another website or page and reorganizing it to make it appear dissimilar to its original form, though it is actually the same.

Product descriptions from many eCommerce sites are actually being utilized by other sites as well. Other sites simply copy the product description of manufacturer’s utilized by other competitive markets as well. And add the fact that the product name, as well as the name of artist, manufacturer, writer or creator would be included, a significant amount of content would show up on your page. Although this is much harder to spot, it is still considered to be duplicate content, or spam.

Distribution of copied articles by other sites other than the one that distributed the original article can also be considered to be a duplicate content.

Unfortunately, although some search engines still deem the site where the original article came from as relevant, some however, do not.

How do search engines filter duplicate content?

Search engines filter for duplicate content by using the same means for analyzing and indexing page ranking for sites, and that is through the use of crawlers or robots. These robots or crawlers go through different websites and catalogues these sites by reading and saving information to their database.

Once this is done, these robots then analyzes and compares all the information it has taken from one website to all the others that It has visited by using certain algorithms to determine if the site’s content is relevant, and if it can be considered as a duplicate content or spam.

How to avoid duplicate content?

Although you may not have any intentions to try and deceive search engines to improve your site’s page ranking, your site might still get flagged as having duplicate content.

One way that you can avoid this from happening is by checking yourself if there are duplicate contents of your page. Just make sure that you avoid too much similarities with another page’s content for this can still appear as duplicate content to some filters, even if it isn’t considered to be spam.

About the Author: Craig Edmonson - The Google Top 10 offers SEO Services to U.S. based companies. Stop by for a free web site analysis.
original article from entireweb.com newsletter

Link building methods have changed form time to time and a specific method that worked yesterday may not work today anymore. This is due to changes in the industry over time and in some cases extreme abuse. If a specific link building method has been abused too much, then that method will not work anymore.

It is therefore very important to know which link building method works today so that you can spend your time in a most productive way.

There are many link building methods out there today that work with some working better than others. Below are some of the today’s popular links building methods that work to some extent:

Article Submission

If you are reading this article, then you know that you can publish your own article in article directories. Not only do you gain backlinks to your site from your published articles (see bottom of this article), you will get some traffic as a bonus. Think of you reading this article. There might be many reading your published articles as well.

Article submission is a great way of building backlinks as it provides you with 100% relevant contextual backlinks that Google loves.

Directory Submission

Directory submission used to work lot better before but it is still a popular link building method that still works if done properly. How many directories are out there as of this date is anyone’s guess but one thing is certain: that most of the directories aren’t worth submitting to.

Google considers a Yahoo Directory link as a quality backlink so if you can afford and justify the cost, it is worth submitting to Yahoo Directory. Yahoo charges $300 for a yearly submission and there is no guarantee that your site will be approved!

DMOZ is another directory that is worth submitting to and can come to great benefit in your SEO campaign. It may take months to get the approval form DMOZ and the chance of getting approved is pretty slim. Lot of small directories use DMOZ directory categories so getting listed with DMOZ would mean getting bonus listing on many other web directories.

Another good directory to submit to would be BOTW directory that cost $99 for a yearly submission and $299 for a permanent listing.

Other than the above ones, you should look for quality directories where you can submit your site. You can judge the quality of the directories by analyzing the number of sites listed, number of backlinks the directory has, PR, age of the directory, etc.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking worked like charm only a few months ago. If bookmarked on authority and quality bookmarking site like Digg, Mixx, Propeller, etc, then you can still make good use of social bookmarking. Other than backlinks, social bookmarking also offers you some bonus traffic depending on where you submit to. If you can manage to put together or collect a good bookmarking site list, then social bookmarking can still be a useful link building method.

Blog Commenting

This is a link building method where lots of spamming have already been done so to make the best of it, you need to work a little harder here. It is best to find quality blogs related to your own category and make on-topic relevant comments. Not only do your comments add value to the blogpost, you now have a greater chance of getting your comment approved and your comments have greater chance of staying on those blogposts.

Press Releases

Submitting to press release sites can get you some backlinks as well. It is however hard to put together a list of good press release sites that’s worth submitting to. If a good list can be managed, then this method can offer some quality relevant backlinks as well.

Social Media and Web 2.0 Pages

There are a lot of quality social media and Web 2.0 sites where you can publish your articles for backlinks. You should write articles that are relevant to your site and publish them on these social media and Web 2.0 sites with your keywords hyperlinked to your own site. Some of the authority sites are Squidoo, Hubpages, Blogger, Wordpress.com, etc.

Social media and Web 2.0 links are very popular these days as they work great. They offer quality relevant contextual backlinks that Google and other major search engines love. There are lots of other link building methods out there but if you can utilize the above ones to their fullest potential, there is no need for any other methods.

About the Author: For more information on Link Building and to learn on outsourcing your link building campaign, visit the author’s Link Building Service site.
original article from entireweb.com newsletter

This is not a static science. Search algorithms change constantly, and as they are carefully protected secrets, one can never know what those designing the search engines are really doing under the hood.

No, it’s not rocket science; A more apt analogy would be trying to reverse engineer a UFO that one can only see from afar, the specs of whose propulsion system constantly change.

Do not kid yourself: Becoming a genuine expert in this field is no easy task. In addition to all the knowledge needed, competition can literally be fierce. Your competitors may even actively sabotage you. One mistake can undo months of hard work.

If working on behalf of a client, you had better be darn sure that you keep your methods above board so that you do not get their site exiled to the far reaches of the Internet where it will never be found.

Meanwhile, some of your competitors will be using very underhanded techniques to try to make that happen. Like I said, it’s hard to reach Jedi level, and once you do, you have to take care to stay on the bright side of the Force.

If you are in business, it is extremely important to choose the right SEO company or employee.

If you want to become the right SEO company or employee, here are a few suggestions on ways to train yourself (and being self-taught is the only way to do this):

1. Build at least five websites and administer them for at least a year. Keep each one separarate from the others, its own little sanitary petri dish not to be sullied.

2. Go about it scientifically. Test hypotheses rigorously until you have a few bona fide theories. Keep good records and track results. Take special note of changes in search engine behavior and the keywords and descriptions that draw your visitors. Connect those changes to your SEO activities.

3. Learn how to identify effective keywords. Despite what you may have heard, this is not as easy as finding words that are both searched for and non-competitive. It’s best to be somewhat intuitive. What keyword combination are potential customers likely to use as opposed to bored or curious web surfers?

4. Use different tools until you find one that works. I have my favorite, but I’m not allowed to mention it in this article. Follow the link in my bio and surf around the blog. You should be able to determine what that tool is. Try it free.

5. Success before sales. Once you have at least 20 pages to the top for fairly competitive keywords, you can turn prospects into clients.

6. Play your cards somewhat close to your chest. Once you have some success, take a cue from the people who write the search algorithms and keep your exact methods to yourself. Also train and improve continuously so that your skills do not slip.

If you go through that training course, you will become a Jedi-level SEO expert who commands top dollar and deserves every penny.

About the Author: Chuck Linart works with small to medium-sized companies. He blogs about SEO here. Chuck also wrote this article.
original article from entireweb.com newsletter

By including links back to your own websites or blogs you can generate direct surf through traffic while also building back links to your website that will help to improve search engine rankings for your specific keywords.

Writing the most appealing articles, submitting them to search engine friendly directories, and repeating the process on a regular basis can be the recipe for search engine success.

What Is Article Marketing?

All websites have a thirst for high quality, topical content that will be relevant to their readers but not all website owners and promoters are willing or able to create this content as part of their marketing routine.

By creating content articles that others can use for their websites you are rewarded with the opportunity to include one or two links back to your own website. As well as receiving a link from the article directory itself, which are often authoritative websites crawled regularly by search engine spiders, you also gain some benefit when other websites publish your article and links on their own site.

Why Do It?

Article marketing offers an effective and inexpensive way of building quality inbound links to a website. You know that the links generated are from contextually relevant pages because you have written the content that is used.

Furthermore, by using the most beneficial and SEO friendly directories you can dictate the keywords that are used in the anchor text; a critical component of a strong SEO link.

As well as the SEO benefits, you may also find your article published in ezines and newsletters that have a strong, dedicated, and loyal following driving direct traffic to your site.

Choosing Directories

There are literally hundreds of article directories online and choosing the right ones should be considered an integral part of article marketing success.

Directories should be SEO friendly so do not use nofollow tags in links or in robot files. They should allow you to use HTML code for your links and they should keep the number of links and advertisements on a page down to a minimum. They should also be crawled by search engines and be considered a strong SEO site in order to offer any real benefit.

Alternatively, they should generate a large number of visitors directly through the links in your articles.

Writing Articles

The most popular articles are well written and provide genuinely useful information. Good directories will not accept those that are little more than blatant self promotion and very few will accept articles with more than 2 or possibly 3 links to your website.

Ensure that your writing is not only appealing to other website owners but also to their own readership base because this will encourage more website owners to use your articles.

Including Links

Links to your site are typically added to the “Resource” or “About The Author” paragraph. Some directories will allow links in the body of the article and these too offer very good benefit especially in driving traffic directly to your pages.

Always try to use those directories that enable you to construct your own HTML link including anchor text because this will give you SEO benefit as well as potential surf through traffic. Always ensure that the link is relevant to the page you’ve written as well as to the page you direct readers too.

Submitting To Article Directories

Having written a useful piece on a relevant topic and having chosen SEO friendly directories you will need to submit the articles for consideration. Most directories use a number of anti-spam measures to ensure that they offer only very good quality articles to publishers. Manual submission of articles is, therefore, advised. While automated software does exist, you will still find that you need to complete a number of aspects of the submission yourself.

Using Article Submission Services

Manual article submission services do exist and can prove a beneficial method of building links and generating traffic especially if you do not have the time or resources to write and submit a large number of articles.

Try to see a good portfolio of articles that have been written by the service and always ensure they offer a manual and ethical submission service.

About the Author: Matt Jackson - WebWiseWords offers a variety of SEO copywriting services including a full article marketing package that includes the writing of compelling articles and their submission to SEO friendly article directories.
original article from entireweb.com newsletter

Coupled with the fact that SEO changes only slightly less rapidly than the weather, it can be downright overwhelming to know where to start.

So, if you’re an SEO newbie looking for a place to start, here’s a look at some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) basics. What Is SEO?

Even the most beautifully-designed site won’t do you much good if potential customers can’t find it. That’s where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes in: SEO helps ensure your site is more visible in the search engines, drive qualified traffic to your website, and convert that traffic into actual customers.

In short, SEO increases your website’s rankings in the search engines by making the pages within your site more attractive to the search engines. The more attractive your site is to Google, the higher its rankings in the search engine results pages. And the higher your rankings, the more likely users will visit your site. Obviously, a site with a result on Page 1 of Google is going to get more traffic than a site buried on Page 14.

If your site is missing from the top search results, then you may not be maximizing your ability to generate new business and add revenue to your bottom line. Let’s take a look at some stats:

• 1.3 billion Internet users
• Over 85% start at a search engine
• Less than 25% will go beyond the top 10 search engine results
• Top 10 results get 80% more traffic than those ranked in the 11-30 spots

Besides gaining better rankings in the search engines, SEO is effective in several other areas as well:

• Branding/establishment as an authority
• Pre-qualified lead generation
• Easily tracked ROI
• Cost savings compared to other mediums such as glossy brochures and yellow pages ads (average cost per lead is $0.29!)

Breaking SEO Down
SEO consists of several key elements that work together to generate increases in a website’s rankings, traffic and conversions: Keyword Selection, Copywriting, Link Building, HTML Optimization and Analytics. Let’s take a look at each element in more detail:

Keyword Selection
The foundation of any SEO campaign is good keyword research. That’s because targeting the right keywords is essential to getting your SEO on the right track. If your sell silver ladies watches, then you’re going to want to rank in the search engines for the phrase “silver ladies watches” and other similar phrases. If your keyword research is off and you target the wrong keywords, then you may not get visitors who want what your site has to offer. That’s why you need to make sure that your site is properly optimized for the most-searched-for keywords related to your business.

Copywriting
Getting potential customers to your site is only half the battle; you’ve got to convince them to buy. That’s where persuasive copywriting comes in. Be sure to tell people why they need your products or services and include conversion points throughout the site. The search engines like content, so you also need to optimize your copy to include your keywords. This includes things like descriptive product pages, built-out content like biographies, news sections, etc. One important point to remember is to keep your most critical content “above the fold” - that’s the area that’s visible to your users before they have to scroll down.

Link Building
Think popularity contests ended in high school? Think again; you’re not so lucky. Link building is like one big online popularity contest, and the search engines like the popular kids. Your success in the search engines depends, in part, on the amount of relevant incoming links to your site. Of course, having lots of good links also drives customers to your site, which is a good thing, too. Links can come in various sources, including directories, business partners, organizations, social media sites, and much, much more.

HTML Optimization
Title tags, header tags, Alt tags, Meta-descriptions — the search engines want your site’s HTML to be descriptive and clean. Search engines want to know exactly what your page is about; they don’t want to sort through a bunch of extraneous code to figure it out. That’s why you’ll hear SEO types talk about the importance of having clean code and how to use CSS to make that happen.

Measuring Success
No SEO campaign is complete without analytics. After all, if you aren’t measuring things like traffic, link popularity, and conversions, then how do you know if your SEO strategies are working? Programs like ClickTracks and Google Analytics help make the number-crunching a little easier. When analyzing an SEO campaign, it’s important to only make one change at a time so that you know which changes are effective.

If you want to have an effective SEO campaign, you need to include each of the five SEO elements listed above. Keep in mind the information here just scratches the surface of these topics, and there are certainly other more advanced SEO strategies that can benefit your site as well. These building blocks, however, are the perfect way to get your SEO campaign started on the right track.

About the Author: Collyn Floyd is a marketing and public relations specialist with The Karcher Group, a web development and search engine marketing firm based in North Canton, OH. She is passionate about helping The Karcher Group’s clients achieve greater online traffic, leads and sales through search engine optimization and marketing.

Optimize Your Images

One thing to remember when creating graphics and images for your site is to optimize. What do you mean by optimization?

Optimization is a way to compress data to make your file size smaller. One way optimization works is that it will read through all the color of the image and use other color combinations to make similar colors. This will then discard some colors that will not be needed for the particular image. But there is a downside with optimization. You will lose quality in your graphic and/or images. Quality vs. Size

When optimizing your images watch the quality compared to size. You want the smallest size possible for your site, making your site load faster. This will make it easier for your visitors and search engine bots.

If you image or graphic becomes too distorted, raise your file size. You don’t want a pixelated image on your site. You want your images to look good and professional. You just need to find a balance between having a clean professional picture and having a decent small file size.

Image Optimization Tools
Adobe Photoshop has put this into consideration in some of their new application versions. You can now do a File > Save for the Web Options and Adobe Photoshop has a pre-built optimizing process that is very good. You can choose what file type to save in and how much to compression and optimization. Adobe Photoshop is an expensive commercial program, another option is using Dynamic Drive’s Image Optimization.

Types of Image Files
Last thing to touch on is JPEG, GIF and PNG. There are so many file types, but these are highly recommended for web development.

JPEG
JPEG is a compressed file that has very good quality standards. Because of its compression, colors and data are squeezed out of it to create smaller file sizes. This can cause some blur with images with sharp edges, which is great for photos. If you look at a photo there are no straight lines or edges. Everything is blended together, which why JPEG is great for photos. You can get great optimization out of a JPEG file.

GIF
GIF is used more for vector based graphics. A vector based graphic is when a graphic is made of lines and shapes. Vector graphic have sharp corners, edges or text. When dealing with graphics like described, it is better to use a GIF rather than a JPEG. A JPEG could case distortion on your sharp lines. GIF can also be use for animation. Frame by frame animation saved as a .gif will animate on your page. Transparency is another feature that GIF can support. You can save your images with a transparent background.

PNG
PNG is one of the newest web graphic technologies. PNG is great for quality and file size. You have the best of both worlds in a PNG. PNG can also support transparent backgrounds. The only downside to a PNG file is that some old web browsers don’t support PNG. This problem is becoming less and less a concern. But keep that in mind.

Quickest Time for Web
Optimizing images and graphics is almost a must in web development. Having big file sizes could cause some of your visitors to leave your site. If your site is too slow to load, you need to optimize immediately. Rumour is that you have 3 seconds to pull a surfer in. If you site doesn’t load in that amount of time, then you might lose them. Time your page in your browser and see how long it takes. If you are under a couple of seconds, you’re doing a great job.

About the Author: Cody Sparks - This is a WebHostDesignPost.com Article. Read more articles and information for Web Development and Optimize Web Images.

Below are seven of the top items (though certainly not the *only* common items).

1. JavaScript and CSS code on the pages…

If you’re using JavaScript to do any cool functions on your website or CSS for styling effects, the code for that JavaScript and CSS should be moved to an external file that is then called from your webpage. If you’re not sure how to do this, check out this guide to reducing the size of your “head” (the area within your HTML document where this code appears).

2. Not having unique title and meta tags for every page…

Every single page on your website should have its own unique title tag that describes the topic of that specific page. Title tags are an extremely important on page factor and having each one be different and topical are vital to your success – both for rankings and click through rates in the search engine result pages.

Additionally, every meta description tag, while not instrumental to your rankings, should be unique to each page because search engines often use your meta description tag in their search engine result pages. Good and unique meta description tags contribute to the overall uniqueness of each page and can help increase your click through rate in the search engines. Which listing looks more appealing?

Homepage
Welcome to our landscaping site. Home Services Rates Contact Us … provide great landscaping services to all of… bookmark us now because you will want to …
www.acmelandscaping.com

Acme Landscaping Services | Houston Texas Landscaper
If you’re looking for landscaping services in the Houston, area who serves the South Houston, Pasadena and Deer Park regions with competitive rates, stop here.
www.acmelandscaping.com

I’m sure you get it now. The meta keyword tag? In my opinion, it’s of no real use, but it is simply good practice to include it on your pages, making sure that the content of this tag applies to the content on your page.

3. JavaScript or graphical site navigation…

If your site is using JavaScript for your menus, kill it now. Even with an additional sitemap to lead the search engines, you lose out on valuable internal anchor text and links. There is no reason not to ditch the JavaScript and change your menus to utilize CSS – and by using CSS, you won’t lose the current design or feel. If you’re using graphics to link to your internal site pages, you’ll want to get a redesign to instead utilize a straight text navigation system or retain your current appearance by utilizing a CSS menu.

4. Enter here pages…

Sure, they look cool, but there are several problems with having the homepage of your website be a flash movie or graphic that asks users to click something to enter the site. First, it is typical that a site has their homepage as the most frequently linked to page on their site. By having a bunch of inbound links coming to a page with no indexable content, it wastes the power of your homepage in regards to obtaining search engine rankings.

Additionally, because some people linking to your site may choose to link to the page you get to *after* you “click here” to send *their* visitors directly to the actual content, it also splits the link popularity between what is essentially two homepages – one with content and one without. You’re better off having all of your power combined into one effective, well designed and content full homepage.

Second, from a user perspective, making them click more than necessary is never a good thing. Don’t make users search for content – put it directly in front of them.

5. Canonical issues…

Basically, a canonical issue refers to the search engines finding several different URL variations of the same page. On your server, they are all the same page, but the search engines, particularly Google, have a hard time figuring that out. For instance, your homepage can likely be found be default under a variety of different addresses:

www.homepage.com
homepage.com
www.homepage.com/index.asp
homepage.com/index.asp

To your server, those are all the same pages. Google however sees them as four separate pages. Fixing a canonical error is fairly simple… pick the URL you want the engines to consider your “real” and only homepage and 301 redirect the other variations to the URL you have chosen. I typically recommend that you choose a version of the root. Either:

www.homepage.com
homepage.com

Additionally, I typically recommend that most sites use the www.homepage.com version, as most people will tend to insert the www automatically. However, you’ll notice that Michael chose to use the non www version for the real and only homepage on SEO Class. His reasoning (sometimes you learn something new every day) was that he found that you could get a larger font size for the URL on your offline advertising materials by omitting the www. We plan to do a bit of offline advertising as our primary focus is New York businesses. If you do as well, I’d recommend keeping Michael’s tip in mind. If you don’t plan to do a lot of offline advertising, my recommendation would be to choose the www version. If you already have a canonical issue, check out Matt’s post on the topic for expectations in fixing it.

6. Multiple domains for the same site…

This is an offense committed mostly by big companies with various brands. They have one site at www.brand.com and then own www.subbrand.com, www.subbrandtwo.com and www.brandnickname.com and either have 302 redirects in place from the sub-brands to the main brands, or simply render the same exact site that appears on www.brand.com on all of the alternate domains.

If you’re utilizing more than one domain name, place a 301 redirect on the other vanity domains to either the main page of the site or to the appropriate sub page on the main site. For instance, www.brandnickname.com might 301 redirect to www.brand.com while www.subbrand.com might 301 redirect to www.brand.com/subbrand.asp.

This allows you to use multiple domains for advertising purposes, but 301 redirect all visitors (and inbound links) to the appropriate pages on the main domain to avoid duplicate content issues as well as consolidate the inbound links to the various subdomains to the correct pages you want to rank for the terms in the search engines.

7. Focusing on the small stuff…

Almost every site has problems of some form if there hasn’t been an SEO professional working with the site since before the launch. But, it is important to have any items you need to work on prioritized in a manner that allows you to make the most impact in the shortest amount of time, or which allows you to fix the biggest thorn. An example:

A client of mine once had huge duplicate content issues. In addition to using part of their content from another site (with permission) they were allowing a huge, old, big brand site to utilize their original content verbatim. The “other site” was ten years old, has over 100,000 backlinks and is someone you would see advertised on television. I had to explain to the client that they were being seen as the duplicate and that this big brand site was who was showing up for all their search terms. In addition, the site had canonical issues and needed a big push in the link development arena.

They proceeded to spend thirty minutes asking about whether or not they should bold their keywords on their pages. I told them that if their website was a house, then the garage was sitting in a sinkhole and that asking about bold tags was the equivalent of asking me what color curtains would look best in the kitchen. It wouldn’t matter what color their curtains were because no one would be visiting them while their house was taking on mass damage from the sinkhole.

Moral: If something is causing you massive damage or your site has a big issue to address, fix it before you do anything else.

So there you have it – a few of the more common items you can address before attending a workshop or conference, or paying a professional to take a look at your site.

posted on http://seoclass.com/ unknown author.