Technorati Tags: customer database, build customer database, increase clients, attract clients, attract customers, increase website traffic, website traffic

If you have a website then you already know the importance of traffic. Traffic is to Internet marketing as location is to real estate. It’s the only thing that really matters. If you cannot generate targeted visitors to your site, you will not make any sales.

Usually the owner or designer of the website is the person designated to drive traffic to the site. The chief ingredient in generating traffic is the search engine. Of coarse, you can use advertising, but it’s going to cost you. Using the search engines to generate targeted (interested in your product) traffic is the least expensive method known.

Unfortunately, many website owners do not understand the importance of search engine visibility, which leads to traffic. They place more importance on producing a “pretty” website. Not that this is bad, but it is really secondary to search engine placement. Hopefully, the following list of common mistakes, made by many website owners, will help you generate more targeted traffic to your site…after all, isn’t that what you want.

1. Not using keywords effectively.
This is probably one of the most critical area of site design. Choose the right keywords and potential customers will find your site. Use the wrong ones and your site will see little, if any, traffic.

2. Repeating the same keywords.
When you use the same keywords over and over again (called keyword stacking) the search engines may downgrade (or skip) the page or site.

3. Robbing pages from other websites.
How many times have you heard or read that “this is the Internet and it’s ok” to steal icons and text from websites to use on your site. Don’t do it. Its one thing to learn from others who have been there and another to outright copy their work. The search engines are very smart and usually detect page duplication. They may even prevent you from ever being listed by them.

4. Using keywords that are not related to your website.
Many unethical website owners try to gain search engine visibility by using keywords that have nothing at all to do with their website. They place unrelated keywords in a page (such as “sex”, the name of a known celebrity, the hot search topic of the day, etc.) inside a meta tag for a page. The keyword doesn’t have anything to do with the page topic. However, since the keyword is popular, they think this will boost their visibility. This technique is considered spam by the search engines and may cause the page (or sometimes the whole site) to be removed from the search engine listing.

5. Keyword stuffing.
Somewhat like keyword stacking listed above, this means to assign multiple keywords to the description of a graphic or layer that appears on your website by using the “alt=” HTML parameter. If the search engines find that this text does not really describe the graphic or layer it will be considered spam.

6. Relying on hidden text.
You might be inclined to think that if you cannot see it, it doesn’t hurt. Wrong…. Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them invisible. For example, some unethical designers my set the keywords to the same color as the background of the web page; thereby, making it invisible.

7. Relying on tiny text.
This is another version of the item above (relying on hidden text). Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them tiny. Setting the text size of the keywords so small that it can barely be seen does this.

8. Assuming all search engines are the same.
Many people assume that each search engine plays by the same rules. This is not so. Each has their own rule base and is subject to change anytime they so desire. Make it a point to learn what each major search engine requires for high visibility.

9. Using free web hosting.
Do not use free web hosting if you are really serious about increasing site traffic via search engine visibility. Many times the search engines will eliminate content from these free hosts.

10. Forgetting to check for missing web page elements.
Make sure to check every page in your website for completeness, like missing links, graphics, etc. There are sites on the web that will do this for free.

This is just a few of the methods and techniques that you should avoid. Do not give in to the temptation that these methods will work for you. They will do more harm than good for your website.

Not only will you spend weeks of wasted effort, you may have your site banned from the search engines forever. Invest a little time to learn the proper techniques for increasing search engine visibility and your net traffic will increase.

Technorati Tags: search engine optimization, seo, search engine tips, search engine optimization tips, search engine mistakes, seo tips

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Technorati Tags: css, what is css, css concept, benefits of css

Would you buy meat from a grocery store that left the bad meat in with the good meat or wasn’t clean? Would you buy a car from a sales lot that had totaled automobiles on the front lot? I wouldn’t and neither would you. Your website is your grocery store; your car lot. You must have an atmosphere that is pleasing to buyers. One that tells that buyer that you are not an amateur, but instead a trained, seasoned professional. Your site is a direct reflection of your product and that is why that having a well designed website can make or break your sales.

The first thing to keep in mind when designing your website, is “surfability”. Take a few minutes a look around at several web pages. What makes them appealing? Were there some that you closed out of immediately? Why? Take notes and do your research. Keep in mind that when a person visits your site they have a goal in mind. They are either seeking information or shopping for a product. Give the person what they want without having to search for it. Be sure that all the information on your site is relevant to your product. Make the buyer think that they need your product to solve their problem.

Your main page serves a very specific purpose. It should be an avenue by which the customer can shop your site. It should be easy to view and load very quickly. This is your first impression and we all know that first impressions can either close the deal or loose the deal. Make it simple. It is best to have links that are easily viewable by the reader that will navigate them to where they want to be. Tables are often a great choice when deciding on a way to design the main page of your site. Your main page should load very quickly, chances are if it takes the page more than ten seconds to load even on a 56k modem, the customer will click away to save time, hoping to find the information or product elsewhere. To increase the loading speed of your main page you should avoid large graphics or excessive graphics. Too many banners or special effects can cause a page to load slowly as well.

To make your web site more appealing to the eyes, you should stick to mild colors. If your site is a content site where the user will be doing a lot of reading, it is best to stick to black and white. Color can be added when using tables, as a way to brighten up the page, but remember to keep the overall look of the page professional and appealing to the audience that will be visiting most often. Since screen resolutions vary among monitors, it is a good idea to set the pixels to a standard 800×600. You may also choose to set the tables in your web page to span a percentage of the page rather than a set number of inches. This will be sure to accommodate all screen sizes. You should remember that a lot of Internet users will not use the same browser as you, and therefore you should be sure that your site looks as good on other browsers as it does your own. You can do this by downloading several browsers through which to look at your page.

Be aware of the fact that the overall look of your website is a way to make money. The appearance of the site, if designed properly, can be an excellent marketing strategy for your product or service.

Technorati Tags: website that sells, website marketing, website design, website design that sells

Technorati Tags: brand recognition, brand building, online brand, online brand recognition

Consider these important questions about branding and the brutally honest answers that could help you sell more and save you lots of money that is typically wasted on branding. If you sell yourself as a branding expert – you might not like these answers. These are frank answers that demystify branding.

1. What is branding? Branding is the ongoing process of creating and enhancing the brand. The brand is the emotional connection that encourages your clients to cling to the organization, product or person. It is important for you to understand that branding is an emotional connection. And emotion is devoid of logic.

2. Why is branding important to business? Effective branding builds that emotional connection. The more emotional that your clients are about you, your company and your product – the easier it will be for you to sell to those clients. You can appeal to emotions instead of logic. Emotions, although more complicated, are easier to influence than logic.

3. What mistakes do companies make with branding? Many entrepreneurs get confused about branding. They believe that branding is about logos, fonts and pantone colors. That happens because graphic designers and advertising agencies, masquerading as marketing experts, claim that branding is about image.

Often bad marketing decisions and wasted money are justified with the phrase, “It’s good for branding.” Branding is not the goal – it is a tool. The goal is to sell more.

Many corporations fall into this trap. The corporate branding police insist that every PowerPoint slide be a particular color, including the company logo and in the company fonts. Readability and purpose are thrown out the window by the branding police because they lose sight of the purpose and focus on the tool. Maybe they should be fired.

4. How can business build a strong brand? A strong brand is about feelings. First you need to decide the feelings that you want to evoke from your customers. You need to be clear on your intended message and the mindset of your best customers.

You can build feelings by the way you treat your customers. You need to treat them in a manner that stands out from the competition. Southwest and WestJet airlines demonstrate this well.

5. Give an example of successful brands. Nike and Coke are companies that built strong brands because of huge marketing budgets and mass marketing over time. That’s the most common way that most well-known brands were built. Unfortunately it’s too often emulated by small business as the only way.

Harley Davidson and Buckley’s cough medicine are examples of branding built on creative positioning. That method is the smarter choice for businesses without multimillion dollar advertising budgets.

6. Is branding the best marketing approach? No. Branding is only one approach to marketing. Marketing is about making customers want your product. Branding is about building an emotional bond with your customers. It takes time to build that bond. And branding requires one of two things in abundance – money or creativity.

7. What is the alternative to branding for small business? Small business can do something that’s better than branding. They can build real relationships with their clients. Big corporations can’t do that. That’s why big corporations spend millions of dollars on branding. Small business has a better tool. They can build real relationships.

When you are building your brand ask the important questions and get the straight answers about branding.

Technorati Tags: branding, branding tips, branding strategy, brand strategy

Taking a good photo isn’t as hard as you may think. You don’t need the most expensive camera or years of experience, just 10 simple tips.

Enjoy!

Tip 1 – Use All Your Available Space
Don’t be afraid to use all the space in your photo. If you want to take a picture of something, it’s ok for it to take up the whole shot with no or very little background showing. Keep distractions out of your shot

Tip 2 – Study Forms
This is a vital aspect to photography. Understanding forms in your photos. Don’t see an object, she its shape and its form and find the best angle to photograph it from. Form is all around us and I highly suggest you read as many books on it as possible.

Tip 3 – Motion In Your Photos
Never have motion in your photos if you are photographing a still object. If there is something moving while you are trying to photograph a stationery object, your photo won’t turn out anywhere near as well. Also never put a horizon line in the center of your frame.

Tip 4 – Learn To Use Contrasts Between Colors.
Some of the best photos have shades of white, gray and black. You can take great shots with just one color on your subject, but the contrasts between colors in a shot is what makes you a great photographer.

Tip 5 – Get Closer To Your Subject
This is one of the biggest mistakes most photographers make, not getting close enough to their subject. Get up and personal and close the distance gap. You can always reshape and resize a good shot but you can’t continue to blowup a distant object.

Tip 6 – Shutter Lag
Shooting action shots with digital camera’s can be tricky due to shutter lags. What this means is, when you press the button to take the photo, it can take up to a second for the shutter to take a photo, by that time what you were photographing would have moved or changed somehow. This means you have to compensate for shutter lag by predicting what your subject is going to do and taking the photo just before it takes the action you want. More expensive digital cameras don’t have this problem.

Tip 7 – Pan
If you are taking an action shot and your shutter speed is slow, pan with the object. Follow through with the subject, from start to finish and one of those shots will be a winner. You have more chance of getting a good shot if you take more then one photo.

Tip 8 – Continuous Shots
To pan like I suggested above you will need a camera that does continuous shots and doesn’t need to stop and process after every shot.

Tip 9 – How To Take Fantastic Night Time Shots
Night time shots can be spectacular, almost magical…. if done right! If not they can look horrible. Really horrible. Without adequate lighting, even good camera’s can turn out crappy photos if the photographer doesn’t know what he or she is doing.

Tip 10 – Study Your Manual
If your digital camera has a special night time mode, read the manual and follow their instructions on how to use it properly.

Technorati Tags: photography, photography tips

Like a brush is to a painter an essential skill in the field of graphic design is Photoshop. The software offers increased productivity as well as flexibility. The features include aspects like file browser, vanishing point tool, smart sharpen filter, noise reduction filter, smart objects, as well as camera workflow enhancements. Photoshop offers professional photo editing features, digital imaging, as well as non destructive editing.

There are so many hidden features and insights to software, that it is often impossible to know them all.

1. There is a hidden option using which you can simulate bold and italic formatting styles for fonts that do not have these options. Click the button on the type tool option to bring up the character palette. Then select text and click the arrow in the upper right hand corner of the palette menu where faux bold and italics are present. However you will not be able to warp type when formatting has been applied.

2. One can quickly flip through blend modes while trying out effects by using the keys “shift+ to change to next mode and shift- to go to the previous mode.” When a painting tool is active this shortcut will change the blend mode of the painting tool. However, if anything is highlighted then the shortcut will not work. You will have press esc and then use the shortcut keys again.

3. The photomerge feature can be used to seamlessly combine multiple images to create a panorama. This feature can be accessed from the Automate menu. You can even refine the composition using tools like rotate, zoom, pan, and set vanishing point.

4. When re-sampling images one can use either Bicubic Smoother or Bicubic Sharper. You can use Bicubic smoother for up sampling and Bicubic sharper for down sampling. You can actually specify which interpolation method is to be used by going to general preferences and setting a default.

5. There are two features for printing. You can use contact sheet II or picture package. Use contact sheet when you want all images in the same size and you want to print the name below the image. Use printer package when you want different image sizes on the same page, or multiple copies of the same image, or a text overlay.

6. If you want to remove a glare on the eyeglasses of an image you should use a part of the lens that does not have a glare and use it to layer the lens with a glare. Use tools like rotate and skew and soft-tip eraser to soften the edges. Ensure the glare does not show through from below. Or, do some careful work using the clone tool.

7. The online services enable you to connect to online photo printing and sharing sites.

8. The Web Photo gallery can generate hyperlink pages that can be uploaded to a server.

9. The Picture Package option will help you prepare photos in layout with multiple size prints on one page.

10. You will never forget how you achieved a certain result because the History Log will detail every step taken by you as well as time-tracking, and a legal record. There are three choices wherein, you can create a sessions only record where, it will record only when Photoshop is opened or closed; or a concise record which will record each action including the text that appears in the history palette; or the complete editing history including the text that appears in the actions palette.

Adobe Photoshop is a dream tool for every designer and one can over time master every subtlety of the tool and crop, rotate, resize, create shapes, add layers, change text, and play with colors. It is a hands on software where the more you use it the more you will learn.

Technorati Tags: adobe photoshop tips, photoshop tips, psd tips, adobe psd tips, photoshop tutorial

Would you like to break out of a regular job and start freelancing? Perhaps you’ve got the skills, but are not quite sure where to start looking for work, or how to deal with the business side of freelance work? Freelance marketplace websites specialise in bringing together clients looking to outsource projects and skilled professional contractors looking for freelance jobs. If you have web design or development, graphic design, programming, writing or translation skills then you will find opportunities waiting for you, if you know where to look.

There are many benefits to freelancing – you have a high degree of independence, choosing when and where to work, and even for whom to work, once you are established. You aren’t tied to a fixed schedule and you are directly paid the full rate for your work, not just a portion of it like an employee is. There is plenty of work out there, but you have to learn how to find it and build your contacts. This is where freelancing sites such as Project4Hire.com can help, especially when you are just starting out. These sites offer a wide range of projects to bid on and give you the chance to learn about the freelance marketplace.

Once you start as a freelancer, you need to think of more than just keeping your skills sharp. You are a business now, and have to build relationships with clients and sell yourself. This can seem daunting at first but is made easier by freelance marketplace websites that bring together outsourced projects with freelance contractors. These sites all include feedback and rating systems for both clients and contractors, meaning that as your experience builds, your record of quality work will be visible to all the other members of the site, giving you more credibility. You will also find that as you gain more experience and contacts, people might approach you directly for work. In the end you might even have to turn away work – alternatively you can start sub-contracting it out yourself through the freelancing sites, giving you the best of both worlds.

Your success is all down to you – if you are professional and polite, and always deliver good quality work on time, people will come back to you as there is a strong demand for good quality freelancers. When setting your rates, don’t be solely concerned with being the cheapest. Instead look at the budget of the project you are bidding on, then look at what you need to earn for it to be worth your time. Work out a rate that meets both the client’s budget and your needs, then use it as a part of a high quality bid. The lowest bids are often rejected in favour of the bids that offer the most professional package. Small businesses looking to outsource some work will often pay a little more to someone who will offer a more professional service. Your aim, as a freelancer, should be to be that someone.

As with any business undertaking, there are a few potential risks, but with care and planning you should manage to avoid these most of the time. The most obvious risk is completing a freelance job for a client who then will not pay. Project4Hire.com, like most freelance marketplace sites, offers an escrow payment system to protect both clients and contractors from these problems. It works by taking full payment for the project from the client at the outset of the project, and then passing it to the contractor upon successful completion. Other challenges you can have to deal with are changing requirements from your client and poor communications, but again freelancing sites help here with feedback systems and message boards, ensuring a record is available of the original details of your bid and the project, so as long as you deliver what you bid, you should get paid.

Don’t let the challenges and risk put you off – freelancing is a very rewarding way to earn a living and make the most of your marketable skills, and with freelance marketplace sites to help, it isn’t as difficult as it used to be.

Technorati Tags: freelance, freelancing, design freelance, design freelancing, freelancing success