Head Resist

Web design, Programming, Development and SEO

Archive for the 'Tutorials' Category

Search Engine Optimization Tutorial Part 1 – Have A SEO-Friendly Web Design

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

In this search engine optimization tutorial, let us talk about the importance of having a SEO-friendly web design and architecture. Before you can do any optimization on your site, what you must do is to have a SEO-friendly web design. Why is this so important?

If your website is built on Flash and JavaScript, search engines will not be able to crawl the content of your website. With no content, it is impossible for search engines to award your site with good rankings. Therefore, if your site in built with either of the above platforms, you must change the architecture before any optimization effort can reap reward.

So what if your site contains dynamic pages? A dynamic page contains an URL which looks something like this: “yourdomain/products.asp?productid=59″. When search engines index a dynamic page, it eliminates every thing after the “?” and index “yourdomain/products.asp” which displays nothing. With this, search engines will not be able to index your dynamic pages. Hence, no good ranking will be awarded too.

Therefore if you want to achieve good organic ranking on search engines to drive quality leads for your business, you need to have a SEO-friendly website. It is a norm for every SEO agency to review your site before any optimization can commence. If they find your site unsuitable for SEO, they will suggest changing the architecture of it.

In order to optimize more keywords on your site, pages with quality content are very important. Therefore, it is important to plan the sitemap of your website properly. Let’s say that you wish to optimize a particular product called “Product ABC – Model ZZZ”of your company. The best practice is to create a page which only talks about this product. Place the product name in your Title and Meta tags, and within the content of the page. You should also name the page according to the product name such as “Product-ABC.html”. This will make this page highly relevant to search engines when someone searches for “Product ABC – Model ZZZ”. This will make search engines to give your listing a higher ranking in the search result page.

To add more interactive to your website, instead of building it entirely on Flash, you can use Flash banner instead. Flash banner adds interactivity to your site, without jeopardising the need to have quality content for search engines to index.

Good SEO performance always results from having good website architecture. With a SEO-friendly website, you are on the right track to obtain high organic ranking on search engines.

Search Engine Marketing, Standing Above the Rest

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Introducing the Searchlinqs.com Web Blog.As a member of the searchlinqs Internet Marketing team, it’s an exciting time to be a part of our emerging Internet Advertising Industry. Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Placement (SEP) & Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are shaping the way we work, play, shop and market ourselves online. That’s a pretty big statement to make! The content that appears on Google, Yahoo and MSN are by no means accidental or arbitrary. The algorithm/formula for sorting what appears on the Search Engines, are closely guarded secrets worth millions of dollars of marketing revenue and can turn the most obscure site or gossip into international results.Much like a newspaper editor or publicist, a decision is made on what content is relevant or invisible to the rest of us. The search engine results only begin with the selected keywords entered into a Search Engine. Careful observation and analysis of those search results are part what the SEO industry and Search Engine Optimization companies do. Google, Yahoo and MSN has become the defacto portals and gatekeepers for the online service world. The sheer volume-combinations of search terms, keywords and related keywords can only be managed by software agents. When these giants move, the Search Engine universe shudders. Google has released no less than 10 updates in the last 2 years; each change shapes the search engine landscape.We have created this SEO blog to showcase Internet Advertising, Internet Marketing tools, showcase Tutorials & Recent Articles, Keyword research strategies and offer opinions on that we feel are major issues affecting our industry. We hope that you find us a useful source and hope you visit us often. Search-Engine-Man www.searchlinqs.com

An Overview of Online Computer Training Courses

Thursday, December 29th, 2011

Computer training courses have become the last refuge of the jobless. Unemployment has been rising at an unprecedented rate. If you look at the newspapers, you will feel like there are no job openings coming up in the near future: economic recession, downsizing, outsourcing, and off-shoring is all that newspapers are full of. Because of all this, many people are being forced to think about a career change.

Previously people thought about a career change only when they felt bored with their existing job or when they felt that there was nothing more left to achieve in the existing job. However, not many employees at present can afford the luxury of a voluntary career change. Many employees have been given the pink slip over the last one or two years. The only option for them is to learn new skills and start their career anew.

At present, computer training courses are the most attractive option. The best thing about these courses is that they are affordable. What’s more, it is comparatively easy to learn the working of software packages.

A number of computer training courses are conducted by universities and educational institutions. These courses cover a broad spectrum of subjects ranging from simple office applications and accounting packages to complex programming languages. If you have a personal computer with an internet connection at home, you can learn many software packages and languages even sitting at home.

Web Designing And Application Developing

Ever wondered who creates all these wonderful websites and animations? These are created by people just like you and me. One has to learn software tools and languages such as html, xml, javascript, PHP, and Photoshop for creating professional looking websites. One can find many free tutorials of these software tools on the internet and can download study material. Web designing is ideal for those who have the artistic talent for painting or drawing.

However, for learning web application development you need to have more than just artistic talent. There is not much distinction between scripting code for web applications and writing the code for creating new software tools. The good thing about the internet is that if you develop a new path-breaking software application, you can announce it to the rest of the world almost instantly using social networking websites and mobile phones.

Office Automation Packages

These are perhaps the most popular computer training courses. They include a typesetting software tool like MS Word or Open Office Writer. A spreadsheet package like MS Excel or Open Office Calc is also essential. In addition, one can learn how to work with database management software tools like MS Access or presentation and slide-designing tools MS Power Point or Open Office Impress. The basic training tasks of these tools are typing, formatting, and printing letters; carry out some simple accounting jobs; and creating slides to amuse co-workers.

Accounting Packages

These were the favorites of early birds of computer training. Every big company has an accounting and finance department. Therefore, almost all companies will periodically have vacancies for accountants who are well-versed in accounting procedures and accounting software tools. You need to have either some kind of qualification in accounting or some kind of work experience in an accounting-related department or organization. Otherwise, you may not be able to optimize your learning with computer training courses.

Suggested Terms

2012 a, a

Multimedia and Search Engine Optimization

Thursday, December 22nd, 2011

After an email inquiry from a small business website owner who had considered adding a flash presentation to their website, it’s time to emphasize the search engine optimization value of flash and other multimedia website content. For a small business commercial website design, my advice is avoiding content that requires a large file size such as multimedia. Unless it is absolutely required and does NOT load automatically, visitors on dialup will leave immediately due to the intolerable load time.

Exceptions might be photographers or graphic artists showing high resolution versions of their work, or perhaps a recording studio with sample music or videos. The average small business owner does not need autoloading multimedia.

Here is a response to the email from the site owner previously mentioned who was considering flash:

“Why would you want to add a flash scene to your site? In my list of “Don’t do this” for website design, flash is at the top of the list. It has zero SEO value, and the file size is intolerable for people on dialup. With more than 50% of internet users still on dialup you cut off half your potential visitors by having flash. Unlike videos that allow visitors to make a choice of play or not, flash loads automatically and cannot be avoided. People visit commercial websites for information. Flash is “entertainment” and most people want answers to problems, so my advice is stay focused on text content that search engines can index.”

Let’s consider audio and video next. Another client wants background music to play automatically when a visitor arrives at any page of her restaurant website. This is an intrusion of the visitor’s expectations and privacy, and could actually get them in trouble. Imagine a visitor at work with their speakers turned up, and searching for an area restaurant to visit that evening. The embarrassment of being caught engaged in non-work related surfing on company time could get them fired. Giving visitors a choice with a play button would be more appropriate.

The real question for any small business owner is deciding if music or video in their commercial website design will enhance the sales of their product or service. If the value is strictly entertainment, don’t do it. Another client insisted having flash content on their site, and stated their average sale is $500,000 and they were confident their target market all use high speed internet access. That seems appropriate at first. However, a site done entirely in flash has zero content when it comes to search engines. A 100% flash website will not get traffic driven by search engines, so the owner’s success depends on direct marketing and driving visitors to the website.

Audio, whether voice or music, may be appropriate. Video certainly provides an opportunity to introduce your business, demonstrate a product, or provide advice as a tutorial. As long as these do not autoload and the visitor is given the choice of listening or viewing, multimedia may enhance the experience and sales potential. A visual or audio experience may create a more lasting impression as long as it’s not forced on the viewer. Weigh the pros and cons first.

Next, consider the marketing basics of matching target customers and their needs to what you offer, and then decide the most appropriate method of delivering your sales message. Multimedia is content that cannot be viewed or rated by search engines, so if search engine optimization and driving traffic to your site is important, be careful with multimedia choices for your small business website design.

Finally, people search the internet for information with answers to problems. Problems are perceived needs that visitors want to have solved. The goal is the same whether you call their motivation “information” or a “problem”. If your website is optimized for people first, and then considers search engines, you are more likely to convert visitors to buying customers. People looking for answers are impatient. If your competition has a small business website that uses flash or other autoloading multimedia and you do not, potential customers are more likely to find answers quickly on your website.

Understanding what visitors to commercial small business websites really want, could give you the competitive edge.

Website Content and Search Engine Optimization

Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

There goes a popular belief in the world of search engine optimization and that “Content is the King”. A website which provides fresh and relevant content is going to reap the benefits from the search engines in terms of search engine rankings. Google and other major search engines have one primary goal and that is to provide the internet surfers with the most relevant search results for the keyword that they are searching for.

Quantity and Quality of Content:

The first thing to keep in mind when writing content for your website is the quantity of quality content per page. You need to have a good amount of information and text on every page of your website in order to get importance from search engine for your page and its keywords. At least one should have 250 words for each page of website that to get indexed by Google . It’s roughly three average size paragraphs. You need to have this much content on each page in order to make your website informative and relevant. Search Engines only wants to show relevant results to the user and it is quite doubtful that a site with one paragraph would be going to be useful for a searcher.

Having a high quality content which is relevant to your business expertise will help you gain back links automatically. If you are offering tutorials related to SEO, then having plenty of useful content on your website will help you gain back links from other websites.

Usage of Keyword

Another important thing to keep in mind when writing content is usage of keywords. Your keywords should constitute 5% of your total content. A particular keyword should only be repeated 5-8 times in a paragraph consisting of 250 words. You should also make sure to include relevant keywords. A gaming website should not try to optimize content for charity. You should make sure that your keywords are synchronized with the actual content on your website.

Keep providing fresh Content

If you can, then try providing fresh content to Google. Search engines like those websites which produce quality and fresh content on regular basis. Updating and adding content regularly to your website pages will help you gain higher search engine rankings. You can also try to add a Blog on your website. This will help you update your content on regular basis. Writing a Blog at least once a week will make sure that search engines will keep finding fresh data from your website and thus will find your website useful.