Bosscher Design

150 Quick Web Design Tips

2011-06-01T18:20:00.001-07:00

As web professionals, we’re always looking for ways to improve our knowledge and skills. Tips, tricks and checklists are often one of the most underused yet potentially useful models of providing great, quick and easy to follow pieces of useful information. For more detailed information please visit http://www.bosscherdesign.com

You may or may not know some of the tips below — and you may or may not agree with everything listed — but hopefully it will give you some ideas for your own sites or motivate you to create a checklist to help cover your bases.

Perhaps a few items may even inspire you investigating a subject further, and that would be pretty awesome too.

This is the first part of a 2-part series. In this first part, we will cover planning, content creation, and design elements.

Part 2: 250 Quick Web Design Tips (Part 2)
Planning and Getting Into the Web Design Profession

Planning what your website needs to contain can help you scale the project size.

One fundamental aspect of creating a website is the planning stage. This includes things like looking for a domain registrar and hosting package, seeking out inspiration for your design, building the information architecture, and much more.

Getting your website’s purpose mapped out will help you better write content (to match your needs) and more effectively create a design that will retain the look-and-feel you want to put across.

Below are some tips and tricks which may prove useful when you’re making decisions before putting your (or your clients’) website together.

Picking Domain Names
1. Many people are used to seeing the www at the beginning of a website address (e.g. www.sixrevisions.com). Ensure your website functions both with and without this famous subdomain.

2. Reserving a subdomain called m (e.g. m.sixrevisions.com) for mobile devices has become a common web design convention. It’s cheaper than — and as widely recognised as — the .mobi top-level domain (TLD).

3. Most of the non-technical general public tend to only recognise .com, .net and .org. It’s worth checking the TLDs you want are available before dedicating yourself to a brand name.

4. Avoid using dashes in your domain name. (e.g. sixrevisions.com versus six-revisions.com).

5. Domain hacks like del.icio.us have become pretty popular, and while they may be harder to spell, they can give you an awesome alternative to a simple but unavailable .com address.

6. If you want to target a local audience, it may well benefit you to purchase a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) in your own country. Something like co.uk may be great for grabbing regional visitors in the UK.

7. Remember that some ccTLD domains require you to be a resident of a certain country. If you don’t live there, you could forfeit the TLD as a violation of the registrar’s agreement.

8. WHOIS privacy can be a dicey affair when you allow your registrar to put their details in place of your own. You run the risk that you may lose the domain if a conflict occurs.

9. Domain auctions like Sedo can be a great place to get a domain that’s already been taken. While it can be somewhat expensive to pick up a rare domain, you might find yourself the owner of your preferred domain name.

Web Hosting
10. When picking a website host, ensure that you check what you’ll get in the package. Disk space, bandwidth, CPU usage and other specified features may decide the cost you’ll encounter. If you already have a web host, test their performance using these tools.

11. Beware of hosts proclaiming unlimited bandwidth or resources. Everything in this world is finite and you may find yourself falling short of contractual small print and fair use policies.

12. If you’re starting a website or service of your own, it pays to start off with shared or grid hosting rather than a VPS or dedicated because you won’t know how many visitors you will need to cater for.

13. Free hosting for commercial use is not a good idea. If you plan on having a commercial website, it makes sense to avoid the intrusive advertisements and purchase some basic web hosting.

Development Platform
14. If you want to have a good testing environment that will run PHP and mySQL on your own PC, install XAMPP. It’s quick, easy and will help you get things running before you go live.

15. Unless you know what you’re doing and have the money to finance the infrastructure, hosting your own website may not be the best or most economical idea (as fun as it sounds).

16. Pick your development platform carefully as some products (such as WYSIWYG editors) inherently produce less reliable code than a classic text editor that allows you to write by hand.

Tools
17. You don’t need to rely on Adobe or Microsoft software to create a fantastic website as there are lots of free and open source products which can do the job without cost.

18. Ideas: GIMP, Inkscape, Dia, FileZilla, IcoFX, Audacity, Paint.NET, Scribus, Eclipse, Skype, KeePass, Xenu Link Sleuth, Tweetdeck, FoxIt Reader and Notepad++ are great free products for designers. For more great open source products, read the article called 30 Useful Open Source Apps for Web Designers.

19. Finding a good selection of checklists and cheat sheets can give the fledgling designer some quick, easy places to get advice on how best to approach a task.

Project Management
20. Set yourself aside a decent workspace environment. The less distractions your workspace has, the better off you will be in terms of productivity.

21. Always have realistic expectations about how long a project will take to complete. Rushing your work and releasing it "half-baked" can cause issues — just look at Windows Vista.

22. Getting some decent time-tracking or project management software is important. It’s far too easy to get distracted and lose sight of the big picture if you’ve lots of small tasks to achieve.

23. To-do lists may seem inconsequential and rather trivial, but you may find them useful in structuring all the various tasks you need to deal with and setting yourself deadlines.

Learning
24. Always keep learning because there is no excuse in allowing your education to lapse or become deprecated. You could keep up to date with news through design blogs or perhaps learn a new web language.

25. There are many fantastic web design books and magazines out there. They also cover a wide range of subjects with ever-increasing depth as a source of education they are second to none.

26. Web resources like Six Revisions are great for learning new techniques. While perhaps not as in-depth as books, many web resources offer you useful and up-to-date advice on the web industry.

27. Remember to verify anything you learn through a third party resource. There’s an awful lot of outdated information out there (like W3Schools) that could encourage bad habits.

28. Sites are beginning to teach classroom-style lessons and video-based instruction classes (e.g. Lynda.com) on web design and development. They can get pricey, but may be good alternatives to a degree.

Specialization and Competitive Analysis
29. There are many sectors you can work in as a web professional (web designer, UX, UI, front-end development, etc). You shouldn’t restrict yourself to a core subject unless you know exactly what you want to end up doing.

30. Whether you decide to become a Jack of all trades or a specialist is entirely up to what you prefer. It’s worth noting that there is enough work in the industry to cater to both work styles.

31. Investigate what your competitors are doing with their services as you can learn so much from the mistakes or successes that others have had — they can be a goldmine of ideas.

Learning About Your Target Audience
32. Research is the mother of all invention if you’re going to work on any project. It pays to ensure what you’re planning will meet the needs of the audience you’re trying to gain.

33. Always try to be inventive with what you create. There’s no point cloning another successful website when you could improve upon it to convert some of their existing user base.

34. If you plan to produce a blog or an informative website, ensure that you know your subject. Trying to create a medical blog with no knowledge is not a good idea. You should be passionate and be well read about your subject matter.

35. Seek out the kind of people who might want to use the service your planning and ask them what they would like to see in such a website and what popular topics is worthy of inclusion.

Inspiration
36. If you’re stuck for ideas for what kind of site to create, browse around the web looking for subjects that are popular. You could serve a niche market where there’s existing demand.

37. Finding inspiration for a site can come from the most unlikely sources. Watching movies or TV, taking a walk, or even talking to your friends and family can help you get business ideas.

Handling Data
38. Deciding whether you need an SSL certificate or not depends on whether sensitive personal details like credit cards or login information will be processed. It may be worth buying one.

39. Handling your customer’s information is of critical importance. Never store passwords as plain text documents and do what you can to encrypt details that are stored in databases.

Conceptualization and Information Architecture (IA)
40. Creating a visual sitemap before you start building the website can do wonders for your core structure. If you know what pages you may need initially, you can plan the content ahead.

41. Certain types of websites require certain types of documents. Most portfolio websites, for example, have a contact page. Seek other likeminded websites to get required page ideas.

42. When in doubt, always do what works and the norm. There’s a reason why certain types of websites succeed. It’s because they follow conventional practices that visitors will adapt to quickly.

43. Concept sketches are useful for developing your ideas. Sometimes a piece of paper or a napkin with some doodles can assist you in turning what’s in your mind into a workable design.

44. Wireframes are a simple, underused method of planning and plotting out an idea. You can create something as simple as basic shapes, right down to mapping out your site structure.

45. Beyond wireframes, you could also consider a working prototype when planning your site. Mocking up a quick and simple website can eliminate potential feature flaws quickly and easily.

46. Brainstorming is another fantastic but underused method to evolve your business or website ideas. Picking a loose concept and mapping related ideas to it can give quick but abstract results.

47. Some site owners write a business plan to scope out a project’s evolution before it happens. If you find yourself too easily distracted, it might prove to be a useful document to make.

48. Determine what kind of person you are, and the way you use websites. It’s quite subjective, but provides a good grounding point in conceptualising how an idea can become a real product.

Miscellaneous
49. Products like EverNote or Microsoft OneNote provide you with a great platform to gather and store research and ideas. Think of it like a sketchbook you can turn to for inspiration.

50. Never give up. It’s so easy to think an idea has fallen flat, and most people tend to move on far too quickly. Most ideas can become what they’re intended to be with enough hard work.

Content Creation

Even something as simple as an About page should have purposeful content produced.

Everyone keeps reiterating the same term over and over: "Content is king" has almost become a mantra which writers of web copy sing from the rooftops. And they’re right to do so!

Whether your content is provided in textual form, vivid imagery or some beautifully implemented audio and video media, ensuring your website’s content is up-to-scratch will help you turn visitors into customers.

When you come to producing the content that will help visitors understand what the website is about, the following tips may give you some relevant advice to keeping your users hooked.

51. There is more to content than text. Providing polls, infographics, or interactive elements that have content-based value can help improve the interest and readability of on-page information.

52. People respond to engaging prose.

Copyright, Content Licensing and Legalities
53. If you’re intending to build for other people, ensure you have some good solid contracts to work from. You don’t want to be unprepared if the client refuses to meet their obligations.

54. Creating paperwork such as invoices, receipts of purchase, questionnaires (for contract work) and other useful materials will reduce your workload if you start doing freelance jobs.

55. Word of mouth constitutes a binding contract, though it’s harder to prove you shouldn’t say you can or will do something unless you fully intend to follow through what you state.

56. All services should have good terms of service, privacy policy and copyright agreements. It’s important that your end-users know what you expect from them (and that works in reverse)!

57. You don’t need to have a copyright statement on your website (though it’s good as a reference). Ignorance of intellectual property does not qualify as a valid excuse.

58. When deciding how to license your finished design, you may want to check out creative commons or open source licenses; they’re pre-written and flexible (which is great).

59. A cheap way of writing agreements or contracts for your website is to examine others and then write your own based on it. You can save yourself a lot of money in potential legal fees.

60. Avoid legal jargon whenever possible and simply state outright what you want to say in an agreement. Your clients will be more likely to read what you say if they can understand it,

61. If you write your own contracts, it might pay to have them read over by a lawyer to get them as watertight as possible. Verifying is often cheaper than having it custom written.

62. Accessibility statements aren’t as important as they used to be (as being natively accessible is more of a requirement), but providing one may be useful to your website’s audience.

Content Formats and Considerations
63. Get the hang of compression — whether it’s using GZIP for content, caching for external files or squeezing extra bytes from images and media. It will increase the speed of your website.

64. Consider the best image format for what you are trying to achieve, while GIF makes for good basic animations, JPEG or its less lossy friend PNG will be better for high-resolution photos. Read The Comprehensive Guide to Saving Images for the Web for more information.

65. Be careful as to what you use images to portray. Not everyone can see images (like search engines) and this may present readability problems if you use them in place of text.

66. When adding video, audio or graphics into your site, make sure alternative content is available for those who cannot take advantage of these mediums due to accessibility issues.

Images
67. Opacity in images is a tricky issue with Internet Explorer. There are fixes for issues in IE6, but you should remember that only full alpha transparency has issues, not single colors.

68. Your logo is one of the most important aspects of your website as it’s what people will recognise you for. Therefore, it pays to have a good, memorable one created for your brand.

69. While the favicon is one of the smallest graphics you’re likely to encounter on a website, it provides a fantastically unique way of gaining recognition in bookmarks and social networks.

70. Producing an Apple touch icon at 57×57 pixels can be useful for users of the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch who can proudly display your site in their home screens (using web clip).

71. There are loads of sites that provide free stock images, audio and video if you’re not much of a pixel-pusher.

Content Writing
72. Even if you’re not an articulate individual, trying to ensure that your spelling and grammar are correct should be at the top of your agenda.

73. If you’re at a loss for what to write, taking a break or using one of the many techniques to help remove writer’s block can prove indispensible to the content creation process. See the Content Strategy category for tips.

74. A simple way to reduce the complexity of content is to take what you have and boil it down to 50%. It may seem a lot, but reductionism can seriously help eliminate the waffle!

75. Writing your content before you start designing your website can help you better approach the coding stage as you can pick the right elements that describe your content’s value.

76. Content is king. If you sacrifice the quality of the content for the design of the website, your visitors may likely hit the back button in their browser and never return as a result.

77. Much of writing for the web is down to practice. Don’t be afraid to start off small with the likes of Twitter or forum posts before building up your credibility as a web content writer.

78. Making content fun and involving is important to being successful. While dry humourless copy might get across the point, being quirky will emote passion.

79. Never be afraid to ask for help and feedback or get colleagues to proofread what you have to say. Often, a bit of critique will help you become a better professional.

80. When linking to another website, ensure you notify the visitor of how the target site relates to the content or element of the website so they don’t end up at an undesired location.

81. Break your content down into easy to manage segments. Using unordered lists, for example, can help increase the content readability.

82. Fluff and poor quality marketing speak is unnecessary. Always keep to the point and avoid redundant technical language. We all hate junk and in the recycling bin it all belongs.

83. Ensure that what you say is factually correct. Citing references will give your words added credibility.

84. Don’t plagiarise or steal other people’s content. If you find people stealing yours, it’s worth taking the time to learn how to send DMCA takedown notices and cease and desist letters.

85. When writing content of your own, simplicity is valuable. If you can strike a balance between being informative and being overly wordy, you could avoid wasting your reader’s time.

86. Don’t span long documents over multiple pages if you can avoid it. Such practices can reduce the readability of content as readers will be forced to break their natural flow to jump pages.

87. If you’re planning on having a blog, ensure that you state if you’re reviewing something and have been paid to do so.

88. There are so many fantastic CMS solutions (i.e. WordPress). If you find less technical people are going to contribute to a site you make, they can be ideal in removing some complexity and speeding up content production.

89. Consistency is important with everything you write. Maintaining a core set of standards and values helps ensure regularity.

90. Always try to put across information in a friendly and non-aggressive tone. Being overly sarcastic or rude can lead to arguments that can degrade the value of your content.

91. Feedback can be just as important in content writing as the written material itself. Using blog comments, for example, can give entertaining and potentially informative extra reading.

92. Write for people, not search engines. Your users are more important than your Google PageRank.

93. If you plan on providing translated content for international users, nothing beats a human translator. With that said, there are some decent translation tools out there.

Multimedia Content
94. If you create a podcast for your website, a good compression-to-quality ratio is 96kbs MP3 (for voice recordings). Large file sizes are a pain, and at this level, you can save a lot of bandwidth.

95. MP3 is arguably the most compatible audio format around. If you’re providing alternative formats like OGG or FLAC, then ensure an MP3 version exists for more restrictive audio players.

96. Embedding Windows Media Player or Apple QuickTime into a page may have problems if people don’t have the players installed. Flash has a higher market penetration than both.

97. Automatically playing music is a sin — it’s annoying, so don’t do it.

98. Remember that Flash-dependent components are not reliable: People with vision and hand-mobility impairments limit them in accessing a lot of Flash-based content.

99. If you are planning to provide content through email, keep subscribers’ email addresses private (don’t use the CC feature when sending out emails en masse).

100. Don’t spam or send out heavy streams of email – people hate it.

Design Elements

Color is a critically important part of your design as it may invoke or reflect emotion.

One of the most subjective parts of creating a website is its design. Whether you’re looking at accessibility, usability, the user experience, or even something as fundamental as the psychology of color, giving your users the best possible experience with as little effort as possible can prove tricky.

101. Your web design does not need to be pixel perfect. Every device, platform and browser render things slightly differently but that’s not always a bad thing if your site’s still usable.

102. If you are requesting users to sign up for a service on your website, always keep the amount of required information to a bare minimum. Keep things simple.

103. Keeping file sizes as small as possible is important for improved page response times.

104. Mobile web designs should be simple. If you have less content, no Flash dependence, a single column layout and a liquid design, you should have few problems with visibility.

105. mobiForge has an excellent mobile web development guide that is full of best practices and some useful guidelines to helping make the mobile experience better for your end-users.

106. Don’t rely on fixed-width designs. Toolbars, sidebars, add-ins, viewport sizes, window sizes, screen resolutions and many other factors can affect the amount of real estate available to users.

Colors
107. Color can invoke a wide range of subtle psychological influences over people. Knowing how to use color and various contrasts may help you better engage with your audience.

108. Consider how people associate color with feelings: red for hot, blue for cold, white with purity and clarity, black with darkness and death, yellow with happiness and sunshine, etc.

109. Contrast is important when using colors. For certain people like the color-blind, the ability to distinguish various shades may be diminished and they may struggle to read content.

110. The idea of web-safe colors is relatively redundant due to the way screens have evolved, but making sure your site is color accessible for visual impairments is worthy of your consideration.

111. Color theory and harmony are important parts of design. Understanding how such devices influence the way information is perceived is worth studying.

Typography
112. Typography is an ever-increasing variable of importance within web design. As the range of fonts that can be used within designs increases, the legibility of those fonts becomes vital.

113. Producing a font stack is easy! Have your chosen font followed by an alternative that looks similar, then its closest relation that’s likely to be available, and finally the type (like serif).

114. Size is another variable of typography within design that you should consider. The larger the scale, the more readable it becomes and the increased attention it will receive.

115. Giving emphasis through styled italics, strength through bold visual styles or underlying and striking through content can affect the perceived importance design elements receives.

Arranging Design Elements
116. White space/negative space is a valuable commodity. Don’t pack your design full of stuff! Having enough breathing space will improve the readability of your design and help the reader "scan."

117. Scanning is the act of an end-user flicking through content on your pages to determine the information they are looking for. The ease they can do this will affect how they use your site.

118. Websafe typography is a big deal unless you embed a font (which has legal implications). You can’t guarantee the end-user will have any font installed, even common ones like Arial.

119. Organising your information on-screen can be a tricky task. Using conventions and patterns like the logo appearing in the top-left hand side can improve the ease of use for visitors.

120. Knowing how to appropriately display content like navigation menus is an art form and a science. Seeing how others implement such devices can help measure success rates; check out the site called Pattern Tap for common design patterns such as site navigation.

121. Remember that most people read content in a left-to-right manner. Therefore, it makes sense to have important details as high and as far to the left as possible in your design.

End-User Considerations
122. Your design should directly reflect the needs of the end-user. Don’t pack it with useless features and widgets like clocks or weather applets. Only give them what they need, as they need it.

123. When updating your website (which you should do often), check your website statistics to see how people navigate around your website. It can be helpful to find where issues occur.

124. Understanding how people perceive and respond to your brand can be the difference between trust and abandonment. Your visitor’s views are more important than your own.

125. I’ve noted it earlier, but it’s worth reinforcing: update your website often! People gauge the prevalence and accuracy of websites by the rate at which they are maintained.

126. If you have the time, consider reading about psychology and sociology topics. They’re not strictly dedicated for the web, but they apply in so many regions of the industry that it’s worth learning about.

127. Don’t design a website for yourself. As much as you may like that scrolling animated reel you just implemented, you will spend little time visiting the website compared to your audience (who matter).

128. In a websites design, people look for an experience. If you give them something positive to remember, you’ll give them satisfaction, which may result in a long-term relationship.

129. The satisfaction a user gets is directly related to the way you provide information. If the user struggles to find their way to a document, you’ll make them angry.

130. Interaction-based design is important. While static content has uses in certain situations, giving users something to explore and play with will result in a more memorable experience.

131. Unnecessary interaction should be eliminated from the project. While subtle or useful enhancements are great for the end-user, added barriers may cause a user to abandon ship.

132. Applications tend to follow different rules to conventional content distribution. A need for logical structure and purpose will be of increased importance within the user interface.

133. If developing apps for a mobile device, it may prove useful to attempt an offline version for when Internet access is not an option. Dead zones for cell phone signals still exist.

Web Accessibility
134. Accessibility is an important aspect of any web design. If certain people can’t access the site or the content, that’s a group of people who you could have converted to a customer.

135. Numbers in relation to accessibility are highly biased. Don’t think of people with disabilities as a minority; just think of how many people need glasses for reading — that’s a major one!

136. Impairments come in all shapes and sizes: they can be physical, intellectual, emotional, social or even technological (e.g. people without broadband connections or people using mobile devices as their browser agent).

137. The scale and duration of disabilities differ: someone may be paralysed (which would be long-term) or they may have a broken arm (short term). Don’t just think of lifelong issues.

138. There are plenty of helpful specifications and laws in relation to accessibility. Have a read through WCAG 1 and 2, Section 508, PAS 78 and the Six Revisions guide on quick web accessibility tips, to name a few accessibility guidelines and best practices resources.

139. Always provide alternative content for images or media and don’t rely on elements without alt attributes or Flash content without text variants. You’re hurting some of your visitors.

140. Checking your work in a screen reader is quite easy to do. There are free tools out there such as WebAnywhere, a browser-based screen reader simulator, as well as commercial alternatives like JAWS that you can install and test your website through.

141. Don’t become too reliant on tools like Cynthia as accessibility validators because these tools only examine machine-readable code. They’re not perfect solutions for checking your design, semantic structure, content flow, and visual elements of accessibility. Read more about the problems with website validation services.

Usability
142. Usability.gov has a selection of great guidelines in PDF format that can help you improve a website for your end-users. These PDFs are well worth reading through to see what they can offer in your design process.

143. Steve Krug and Jakob Nielsen are two highly respected experts in the field of usability. If you pick up books they have written, you’ll find lots of fantastic usability guides in them.

144. Usability is about making a website as seamless and functional for the end-user as possible. Do whatever you can to help users find and accomplish what they set out to achieve.

145. Before you launch a website to the general public, it’s worth getting a group of people together to test out your design and find any bugs which exist in the system and to see how usable your design is.

146. Carrying out a usability study can be as simple as asking a group of visitors to carry out a specific task and getting their feedback in the form of a questionnaire to improve upon.

147. Ensure your design degrades gracefully to create a usable design that is as universally designed as possible.

148. Progressive enhancement should be what you aim for. Simply put: you want to make sure everything can be used at a core level, and increase functionally for devices that can cope. A scenario would be using CSS3: make sure that your design still works and looks decent on browsers that don’t yet support CSS3.

149. Encourage people to get involved in helping improve your design. Ask for useful critiques and feedback that can give you future website evolution ideas.

150. Keep striving for perfection. It’s probably not possible to have a perfect web design, but if you always aim for the best, it’ll encourage you to continue making an effort in maintenance.

25 Point Website Usability Check List

2011-05-27T09:40:00.000-07:00

Building a good looking website is excellent, but if you do not ensure proper usability, you site will not be used effetively and thus, it will not be ranked for SEO (search engine optimization) as well as it should be. Check out these tips and please visit http://www.bosscherdesign.com for more details.

Section I. Accessibility
This section contains not only traditional accessibility issues, but anything that might keep a visitor from being able to access the information on a website. If no one can load your site, or the type is too small to read, all of the usability in the world won't matter.
1. Site Load-time Is Reasonable
Call me old-school, but I still like to see sites come in under 100KB (60KB is even better). If a site takes forever to load, most people will just leave. Yes, many of us have broadband now, but that makes our patience even thinner.

2. Adequate Text-to-Background Contrast
Dark-gray on light-gray may seem stylish, but I'm not going to ruin my eyesight to read your blog. Eyes and monitors vary wildly, so keep your core copy contrast high. Good, old-fashioned black-on-white is still best most of the time.

3. Font Size/Spacing Is Easy to Read
Opinions vary on the ideal size for text, but err on the side of slightly too big. Poor readability increases frustration, and frustration leads to site abandonment. Also, make sure your line spacing is adequate - white-space is a designer's best friend.

4. Flash & Add-ons Are Used Sparingly
No matter how great your site looks, people won't wait 5 minutes for a plug-in to load. Use new technology sparingly and only when it really enhances your goals. Sticking to standard HTML/CSS is also a plus for search engines.

5. Images Have Appropriate ALT Tags
Not only do sight-impaired visitors use ALT tags, but search engines need them to understand your images. This is especially critical when you use images for key content, such as menu items.

6. Site Has Custom Not-found/404 Page
If a page on your site doesn't exist, a white page with "404 Not Found" is a good way to lose a customer. Create a custom 404 page, preferably one that guides your visitors to content.

Section II. Identity
A key question when someone first comes to your site is "Who are you?" It's important to answer it quickly, and make the paths to obvious follow-up questions ("What do you do?", "Why should I trust you?", etc.) clear.
7. Company Logo Is Prominently Placed
Put your logo or brand where it's easy to find, and that usually means the upper-left of the screen. People expect it, and they like it when you make their lives easy.

8. Tagline Makes Company's Purpose Clear
Answer "What do you do?" concisely with a descriptive tagline. Avoid marketing jargon and boil your unique value proposition down to a few words. This is also a plus for SEO.

9. Home-page Is Digestible In 5 Seconds
In usability, we often talk about the 5-second rule. There's some disagreement over just how many seconds you get, but website visitors are a fickle bunch, and they need to get the basic gist of your home-page in just a few moments.

10. Clear Path to Company Information
The good old "About Us" page may seem boring, but confidence is important on the web, and people need an easy way to learn more about you.

11. Clear Path to Contact Information
Similarly, visitors want to know that they can get in touch with you if they need to. It's also hard to do business if no one can contact you. Preferably, list your contact information as text (not in an image) - it'll get picked up by search engines, including local searches.

Section III. Navigation
Once people generally know who you are and what you do, they need clear paths to the content that interests them. Information architecture is a huge topic, but these points cover some of the basics.
12. Main Navigation Is Easily Identifiable
Almost every site on the web has had a main menu since the first browsers came on the market. Make your main navigation easy to find, read, and use. If you have two or more navigation areas, make it clear why they're different.

13. Navigation Labels Are Clear & Concise
Don't say "Communicate Online With Our Team" when "Contact Us" will do just fine. Your main navigation should be short, to the point, and easy for mere mortals to grasp.

14. Number of Buttons/Links Is Reasonable
Psychologists like to argue about how many pieces of information we can process, but if you start to get past 7-or-so menu items, think hard about whether you need them. If you've got 3 layers of flyaway Javascript menus, do yourself a favor and start over.

15. Company Logo Is Linked to Home-page
This may sound minor, but people expect logos to link to home-pages, and when they don't, confusion follows. I've seen video of users clicking on a logo over and over, with no idea what to do next.

16. Links Are Consistent & Easy to Identify
The underlined, blue link is a staple of the web. A little artistic license is ok, but consider at least making your links either blue or underlined. Links should stand out, and you should use them sparingly enough that they don't disrupt your content.

17. Site Search Is Easy to Access
If you have a site search, make sure it's prominent. Usability guidelines tend to prefer the upper-right corner of the page. Keep the button simple and clear - "Search" still works best for most sites.

Section IV. Content
You've heard it before - Content is king. If you don't want the kingdom to crumble, though, content needs to be consistent, organized, and easy to skim through.
18. Major Headings Are Clear & Descriptive
Most people don't read online, they skim. Use headings (major and minor) to set content apart and keep it organized. Headings should be clear, and for SEO benefit, using heading tags (H1, H2, etc.).

19. Critical Content Is Above The Fold
The "fold" is that imaginary line where the bottom of your screen cuts off a page. Content can fall below the fold, but anything critical to understanding who you are or what you do (especially on the home-page) should fit on that first screen. Average screen resolution these days is about 1024x768, depending on your audience.

20. Styles & Colors Are Consistent
Make sure people know they're still on your site by being consistent - confuse them and you'll lose them. Layout, headings, and styles should be consistent site-wide, and colors should usually have the same meaning. Don't use red headers on one page, red links on another, and red text somewhere else.

21. Emphasis (bold, etc.) Is Used Sparingly
It's a fact of human cognition: try to draw attention to everything and you'll effectively draw attention to nothing. We've all seen that site, the one with a red, blinking, underlined "NEW!" next to everything. Don't be that guy.

22. Ads & Pop-ups Are Unobtrusive
Ads are a fact of life, but integrate them nicely into your site. Don't try to force ads and pop-ups down peoples' throats. Also, do people a favor and make your ads clear. If you blur the line between ads and content too much, your content may suffer.

23. Main Copy Is Concise & Explanatory
This isn't a lesson in copywriting, but look at your home-page - can you say the same thing in half as many words? Try to be concrete and descriptive and avoid jargon - nobody cares if you can "leverage your synergies".

24. URLs Are Meaningful & User-friendly
This is a point of some debate, but meaningful keyword-based URLs are generally good for both visitors and search engines. You don't have to re-engineer an entire site just to get new URLs, but do what you can to make them descriptive and friendly.

25. HTML Page Titles Are Explanatory
More importantly, your page titles (in the TITLE tag) should be descriptive, unique, and not jammed full of keywords. Page titles are the first thing search-engine visitors see, and if those titles don't make sense or look spammy, they'll move on to the next result.

Using press releases in search engine marketing

2011-05-26T14:00:00.000-07:00

This is a great article that I thought everyone could use.

Newsworthy press releases help your business. What if you could get traffic and better rankings, too? The four easy steps outlined in this article help you get results.

By Pandia Guest Writer Laura Cunningham

(November 2004) First, let's discuss why it's important.

The standard method for press releases is pretty simple. You write your press release on something newsworthy -- a new product launch, announcement of new service, awards, or other item of interest.

Press release distribution

Usually, you run your press release through the proper channels, send it out over the wire, and it's complete. If it's a great release, it gets picked up on various sites and channels and possibly results in media calls.

Newsworthy press releases that are optimized with keyword-rich content are invaluable to your business. If properly optimized, press releases add the potential for increased traffic to your site from clients searching for your product and business, provide improved rankings overall and in News search engines, and increase your chances of additional press.

They may even enhance backlinks (links back to your site). Press releases also increase your brand awareness.

Once you release the press release over the wire, make sure to publish it on your website as well for double the impact. Not only is this smart for optimization purposes, it is good PR strategy as well.

Where to submit your press releases

You have written an excellent press release optimized for the search engines. Now, how do you get it to the search engines and your potential readers?

If you put the press release up on your site and add a link to it from a page already indexed by the search engines, they will find it.

You may also send the text as mails to web site and newspaper editors you believe will be interested in the story. However, make it personal to make sure it does not look like spam.

However, an even more efficient way of getting the search engines to index the press release is by submitting it to one of the online press release services. The search engines do spider those sites often, in search for fresh content.

The Pandia Metasearch
Directory has a list over Metasearch
3.pl?etype=odp&passurl=/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/Promotion/Press_Release_Services/" >services that may help you disseminate press releases.

If you are on a tight budget, you may consider using the free PR Web wire service for your release. Pandia has used them with great success.

The Editor

Target editors

Once released over the wire, optimized releases help you get ranked in News search engines such as Google or Yahoo! News. Millions of visitors, including journalists searching for a story, search Yahoo! and Google News daily.

Since it is updated with fresh, new releases and articles less than 30 days old, the right target audience will find your relevant release with keyword-rich copy.

Editors looking for new fodder or information for a story may contact you as a source, or for fresh content, solely based on your press release being properly optimized and relevant.

However, make sure the press release is well written, to the point and easy to understand. Avoid hyperbole and jargon that outsiders might find it hard to understand.

Target your audience

As touched on earlier, optimized press releases also offer the benefit of targeting your audience. Effective press releases build brand awareness with your customers, target new ones and continue to build your reputation.

Optimized releases have the added benefit of driving potential clients to you. Your chosen keywords drive traffic to your site and build market exposure for your product or service.

How to optimize your release for the search engines

Why not get extra benefits from your press release? Add four simple steps and have a search engine optimized press release. It's simple. Follow the normal process for writing a release with the following additions:

1. Research keywords for your target audience/subject matter
2. Add keywords to the press release to create keyword-rich content
a. Add keywords to your H1 header tag
b. Add keywords strategically within your press release copy
c. Add keywords in links back to your site
3. Make sure density levels are appropriate (I recommend an 8-15% overall density)
4. Make sure your optimize the first 250 words of your content

And, that's it!

An optimized press release is an extremely effective marketing tool. You will experience significant traffic from potential clients, interest from editors and higher overall rankings on your selected keywords. Increase your brand awareness and get listed in the top News search engines. Optimize your release and see results!

Laura Cunningham is the SEM Copy Editor and Team Lead for the Copywriting Team at Websourced, Inc. She leads the team in writing effective SEO copy for over 1,300 Websourced clients. She has over a decade of writing, editing and publishing experience including both technical and marketing writing. Her marketing experience includes both B2B and B2C markets. She has implemented effective marketing and branding strategies including traditional and interactive marketing for various companies.

For more information about using press releases in SEO marketing please visit http://www.bosscherdesign.com

Leaffilter Facebook Page

2011-05-21T06:27:00.000-07:00

Announcing the launch of the new Leaffilter Facebook Page. Currently it can be found at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Leaffilter/125815137499202 But will soon be found at https://www.facebook.com/leaffilter . For more information on leaffilter, please visit http://www.leaffiltermi.com

Leaffilter was developed by Edward A. Higginbotham, LeafFilter™ gutter protection is the only in its industry that can stand behind its "nothing but water - guaranteed" motto.

They'll throw the scientific facts at you: the principles of surface tension, liquid adhesion, and reverse curves, the concepts on which most gutter protection systems are based. What they don't say, however, is that most of their designs are merely updated versions of systems originally patented back as early as the 1890's.

There is a flaw in applying these principles to gutter protection: water draws whatever is in it wherever it flows. Once leaves and debris are saturated by rain, they naturally follow water - right around the curve of these systems and directly into your gutter. The effect is magnified the harder it rains. As a result, they all know their limitations, some even trying to boost their effectiveness with "wide mouths" or oversized downspouts to compensate for the amount of debris they draw into your gutter.

In spite of all their shortcomings, these systems sell because people desperately cling to the hope that they can do something... anything... to stop them from the hassle of cleaning their gutters. Little do people realize how often they wind up trading one gutter problem for another...

Backed by a lifetime money-back warranty, it is easy to see why LeafFilter™ has become the discriminating homeowner's only choice for top quality, exemplary performance and long term peace of mind.

Its strong siphoning action promotes the self-cleaning properties of LeafFilter™. It washes away spores of pollen, dirt, and gummy or glue-like substances that tend to cover or clog other gutter protection products. Mud, mold, pollen, or even 30 weight engine oil hasn't clogged this filter! These types of substances often coat other products and cause them to fail.

For example, oil leaches out of roofing shingles and coats gutter covers in products like K-guard. These products eventually lose their water adhesive properties and shoot water over, rather than into, a gutter trough.

XELA FilterShield's exclusive technology makes LeafFilter™ unmatched in its ability to keep debris out of your gutter. NOTHING ELSE EVEN COMES CLOSE! LeafFilter™ is chosen nearly 100% of the time over competing brands of gutter protection systems. Consumers believe that LeafFilter™ ensures their gutters won't clog.
Does this statistic sound questionable? Test LeafFilter™ today against any other product on the market and become a believer! LeafFilter™ just hasn't failed. Once you try it, you'll understand why it's rapidly becoming the only gutter protection system homeowners trust.

How to increase Google Search Ranking

2011-05-16T07:23:00.001-07:00

Google Page Rank is the star and everyone talks about how to increase it. However it is updated at long intervals of three to four months or even later. What is more practical is for the site to come first in the results page returned by Google to queries from viewers. When your site/blog comes up in the first few results then there is a rapid rise in traffic to your site..........

WHAT IS SEARCH RANK?

When a viewer enters a word or query in a search engine box it returns thousands of sites which have that word in them. Typically viewers will only see the first few pages and click on the first few links only. Your Search Rank is the number of your site in the list which appears in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

This rank depends on what keyword has been entered in the search box. When you optimize your site for a keyword it will rise in the list and appear in the first few pages. This is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

CHECKING SEARCH RANK

You can check the Search Rank of your site for a particular keyword by entering that word in the search box of any engine and counting how many positions your site is from the top in the results returned.

You can also check your Search Rank for a particular keyword at Speedtester

HOW TO INCREASE SEARCH RANK?

1. Titles should contain your keywords. Research your keywords properly before applying them.

2. Put keywords in metatags.

3. Put your keywords in post titles and in bolded headings within the post.

4. Use keywords in alt tags for images. Use lists within your posts.

5. Make your post titles into readable links by enabling post pages in Settings---->Archiving.

6. Submit sitemap to Google.

7. Ping all the search engines after publishing a post using Multipinger sites.

8. Get site code validated for XHTML and CSS.

9. Make your site faster to load by putting less posts on the main page. Settings------>Formatting------->Show __ posts on main page.

10. Lastly SEO should be undertaken after all content has been added to the site and is a cyclical process without an end.

Read more: http://www.blogdoctor.me/2007/05/how-to-increase-google-searchrank.html#ixzz1MWdBoZ6H

What to Do About Social Media Overload, or How to Network Online and Still Have Time to Run Your Business

2010-07-27T05:58:00.000-07:00

LinkedIn. Facebook. Twitter. YouTube. MySpace. StumbleUpon. Posterous. Ecademy.

And the list goes on. With so many options available today, it’s easy to experience social media overload.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m a big fan of social media and how it can help you generate buzz and develop your business. But it can be overwhelming, even addictive for some. With new social sites popping up every day, how do you make the most of the opportunities social media provides and still have time to run your business?

Top Six Ways to keep your Sanity and Stay Sucessfull:

1. Be choosy. You don’t have to participate actively on every available site. Pick a few sites that best match your goals and your target audience and invest your time there. Don’t feel guilty if you don’t have a presence on MySpace or Digg just because “everybody” else does.

2. Check your web analytics. Review your web stats to see where your traffic is coming from and focus on the social sites that bring the most traffic. A great free tool that helps you analyze your web traffic is Google Analytics. You may be surprised when you view your results. For example, I didn’t expect much when I created a Xing profile, but I generate a lot of traffic from this site even though I update it infrequently.

3. Schedule time for social networking. Whether it’s every morning for 15 minutes or once a week for an hour, having a schedule helps you set limits. Your schedule doesn’t have to be set in stone, however.

4. Categorize sites based on effectiveness. If you discover that Facebook generates far better results for you than Twitter, for example, invest more time on Facebook and update Twitter less frequently.

5. Consider automation. Using tools like Ping.fm enable you to update multiple social sites at once. Linking between your social site profiles, your blog, and your website also helps increase visibility with little effort.

6. Get focused to get results. Just because you spend an hour a week on social sites doesn’t mean you’re automatically going to generate the results you want. You need to understand the best ways to use each site so that you spend your time effectively. Fifteen means of strategic social networking can be worth far more than several hours of aimless social surfing.

For more information please visit Bosscher Design, a Howell, MI based company.

Five ways the iPad can help small business in the Brighton and Howell Michigan area

2010-04-01T10:35:00.000-07:00

It's the consumer electronics gadget everyone is talking about, but is it ideal for business, too? Here are some of the ways an iPad can help your small business -- and some of its challenges, too.

There was a hush in the room when Apple CEO Steve Jobs (finally) took the wraps off the long-rumored Apple iPad in late January. Perhaps it was because the audience -- populated primarily by journalists and analysts -- realized this portable tablet would blur the lines between work and play, much like the iconic iPhone that came before it.

Now the iPad is available, and many are wondering if this digital device is truly suitable for small to mid-sized business -- or even a boon for it.

The basics

The iPad (from $499 for 16GB) is a thin, 9.7-inch touch-screen tablet, ideal for reading electronic books and digital newspapers, surfing the Web, reading e-mail, flicking through photos, watching videos, and playing games -- all via your fingertips instead of with a keyboard and mouse.

Sure, other manufacturers have launched WiFi-enabled tablets in the past -- aimed primarily at businesses -- but more often than not have proven bulky, slow, and limited in software. The iPad, on the other hand, is a svelte 1.5 pounds, powered by a 1GHz processor and out of the box works with most of the 150,000 plus applications ("apps") available at Apple's popular App Store (part of iTunes).

Built for business

A recent business survey conducted by Information Technology Intelligence Corp. (ITIC) found 42 percent of participants planned on purchasing an iPad within the first six to nine months. Only 14 percent said "no," leaving the remaining 44 percent as "possibly" or "undecided."

"Interestingly, the line that divides home life and corporate life has blurred considerably over the past few years," says Laura DiDio, a principal at ITIC, a research and consulting firm based in the suburban Boston area.

When asked how they'll use the iPad, 64 percent of respondents said they'd use the iPad for business, 31 percent for personal use, and 86 percent for both.

"Ten or 15 years ago you can be reasonably certain your IT department would issue you a desktop device that was more state of the art than what you had at home," says DiDio. "Now, consumers get more state of the art, feature-rich devices than what's issued by the company, and in many cases they can use them for work, too."

Top 5 reasons iPad is good for business

DiDio says there are a number of reasons why the iPad is good for business. Here are the top five reasons to consider an iPad for business:

Price (under $500)
Power (better than netbooks)
Portability (1.5 pounds, 10 hour battery)
Usability (home and business use, which fits today's telecommuting trend)
Functionality (150,000 apps and counting)
"With a list price that begins at $499, Apple has broken price barrier, making it appealing to consumers and businesses alike," explains DiDio. "Plus, the iPad has the performance and graphics capabilities not found in most netbooks."

Another advantage: many corporate workers are "road warriors" these days, adds DiDio, "from the smallest businesses all the way up to enterprise." The iPad's svelte 1.5-pound frame and 10-hour battery make it ideal for travelers and telecommuters alike.

"Many today juggle home and business life simultaneously, so while the iPad is great to keep the kids entertained in the backseat of the car, mom or dad can then edit a sales report when they reach their destination," says DiDio.

A wide range of applications also make the iPad very appealing to small and mid-sized businesses.

Not everyone agrees

Tim Bajarin, principal strategist at the Campbell, Calif.-based Creative Strategies research firm, says he recognizes Apple has added some productivity software to the overall iPad model, such as the iWorks programs, but still believes the iPad is more of a consumer device than a business tool.

"You saw Jobs demonstrate the iPad reclining in a chair because the iPad is optimized for a 'lean back' experience rather than a 'lean forward' one," explains Bajarin. "This is fine for browsing the Web, reading a book, or watching video, but business is more of a learn forward experience -- such as writing long e-mails and reports, or working on spreadsheets and presentations."

Bajarin says the success of the iPad in the workplace will also depend on the type of job at hand. "Those who need bigger screen real estate will stick with a PC monitor, such as those in graphic arts," says Bajarin, "but vertical markets -- such as hospitals, transportation, police and fire, and small medical clinics -- might find this tablet of use, where ultra portability is important."

For more information please visit Bosscher Design, a Howell, MI based company.

71 Ways to Build Links

2010-03-04T16:22:00.000-08:00

Love for Lists
1. Build a "101 list". These get Dugg all the time, and often become "authority documents". People can't resist linking to these (hint, hint).

2. Create 10 easy tips to help you [insert topic here] articles. Again, these are exceptionally easy to link to.

3. Create extensive resource lists for a specific topic (see Mr Ploppy for inspiration).

4. Create a list of the top 10 myths for a specific category.

5. Create a list of gurus/experts. If you impress the people listed well enough, or find a way to make your project look somewhat official, the gurus may end up linking to your site or saying thanks. (Sometimes flattery is the easiest way to strike up a good relationship with an "authority".)

Developing Authority & Being Easy to Link At
6. Make your content easy to understand so many people can understand and spread your message. (It's an accessibility thing.)

7. Put some effort in to minimize grammatical or spelling errors, especially if you need authoritative people like librarians to link to your site.

8. Have an easily accessible privacy policy and about section so your site seems more trustworthy. Including a picture of yourself may also help build your authority.

PPC as a Link Building Tool
9. Buy relevant traffic with a pay per click campaign. Relevant traffic will get your site more visitors and brand exposure. When people come to your site, regardless of the channel in which they found it, there is a possibility that they will link to you.

News & Syndication
10. Syndicate an article at EzineArticles, GoArticles, iSnare, etc. The great thing about good article sites is that their article pages actually rank highly and send highly qualified traffic.

11. Submit an article to industry news site. Have an SEO site? Write an article and submit to WebProNews. Have a site about BLANK? Submit to BLANKinformationalsite.com.

12. Syndicate a press release. Take the time to make it GOOD (compelling, newsworthy). Email it to some handpicked journalists and bloggers. Personalize the email message. For good measure, submit it to PRWeb, PRLeap, etc.

13. Track who picks up your articles or press releases. Offer them exclusive news or content.

14. Trade articles with other webmasters.

15. Email a few friends when you have important relevant news asking them for their feedback and/or if they would mind referencing it if they find your information useful.

16. Write about, and link to, companies with "in the news" pages. They link back to stories and blog posts which cover their developments. This is obviously easiest if you have a news section or blog. Do a Google search for [your industry + "in the news"].

17. Perform surveys and studies that make people feel important. If you can make other people feel important they will help do your marketing for you for free. Salary.com did a study on how underpaid mothers were, and they got many high quality links.

Directories, Meme Trackers & Social Bookmarking
18. This tip is an oldie but goodie: submit your site to DMOZ and other directories that allow free submissions.

19. Submit your site to paid directories. Another oldie. Just remember that quality matters.

20. Create your own topical directory about your field of interest. Obviously link to your own site, deeplinking to important content where possible. Of course, if you make it into a truly useful resource, it will attract links on its own.

21. Tag related sites on sites like Del.icio.us. If people find the sites you tag to be interesting, emotionally engaging, or timely they may follow the trail back to your site.

22. If you create something that is of great quality make sure you ask a few friends to tag it for you. If your site gets on the front page of Digg or on the Del.icio.us popular list, hundreds more bloggers will see your site, and potentially link to it.

23. Look at meme trackers to see what ideas are spreading. If you write about popular spreading ideas with plenty of original content (and link to some of the original resources), your site may get listed as a source on the meme tracker site.

Local & Business Links
24. Join the Better Business Bureau.

25. Get a link from your local chamber of commerce.

26. Submit your link to relevant city and state governmental resources. (Easier in some countries than in others.)

27. List your site at the local library's Web site.

28. See if your manufacturers or retailers or other business partners might be willing to link to your site.

29. Develop business relationships with non-competing businesses in the same field. Leverage these relationships online and off, by recommending each other via links and distributing each other's business cards.

30. Launch an affiliate program. Most of the links you pick up will not have SEO value, but the added exposure will almost always lead to additional "normal" links.

Easy Free Links
31. Depending on your category and offer, you will find Craigslist to be a cheap or free classified service.

32. It is pretty easy to ask or answer questions on Yahoo! Answers and provide links to relevant resources.

33. It is pretty easy to ask or answer questions on Google Groups and provide links to relevant resources.

34. If you run a fairly reputable company, create a page about it in the Wikipedia or in topic specific wikis. If it is hard to list your site directly, try to add links to other pages that link to your site.

35. It takes about 15 minutes to set up a topical Squidoo page, which you can use to look like an industry expert. Link to expert documents and popular useful tools in your fields, and also create a link back to your site.

36. Submit a story to Digg that links to an article on your site. You can also submit other content and have some of its link authority flow back to your profile page.

37. If you publish an RSS feed and your content is useful and regularly updated, some people will syndicate your RSS content (and some of those will provide linksâ€¦ unfortunately, some will not).

38. Most forums allow members to leave signature links or personal profile links. If you make quality contributions some people will follow these links and potentially read your site, link at your site, and/or buy your products.

Have a Big Heart for Reviews
39. Most brands are not well established online, so if your site has much authority, your review related content often ranks well.

40. Review relevant products on Amazon.com. We have seen this draw in direct customer enquiries and secondary links.

41. Create product lists on Amazon.com that review top products and also mention your background (LINK!).

42. Review related sites on Alexa to draw in related traffic streams.

43. Review products and services on shopping search engines like ePinions to help build your authority.

44. If you buy a product or service you really like and are good at leaving testimonials, many of those turn into links. Two testimonial writing tips — make them believable, and be specific where possible.

Blogs & the Blogosphere
45. Start a blog. Not just for the sake of having one. Post regularly and post great content. Good execution is what gets the links.

46. Link to other blogs from your blog. Outbound links are one of the cheapest forms of marketing available. Many bloggers also track who is linking to them or where their traffic comes from, so linking to them is an easy way to get noticed by some of them.

47. Comment on other blogs. Most of these comments will not provide much direct search engine value, but if your comments are useful, insightful, and relevant they can drive direct traffic. They also help make the other bloggers become aware of you, and they may start reading your blog and/or linking to it.

48. Technorati tag pages rank well in Yahoo! and MSN, and to a lesser extent in Google. Even if your blog is fairly new you can have your posts featured on the Technorati tag pages by tagging your posts with relevant tags.

49. If you create a blog make sure you list it in a few of the best blog directories.

Design as a Linking Element
50. Web 2.0-ify your site. People love to link to anything with AJAX. Even in the narrowest of niches, there is some kind of useful functionality you can build with AJAX.

51. Validate and 508 your site. This (indirect) method makes your site more trustworthy and linkable, especially from governmental sites or design-oriented communities. There are even a few authoritative directories of standards-compliant sites.

52. Order a beautiful CSS redesign. A nice design can get links from sites like CSS Vault.

Hire Help
53. Hire a publicist. Good old fashioned 'PR' (not PageRank) can still work wonders. Andy Hagans now offers a link baiting publicity service.

54. Hire a consultant. Yes, you can outsource link building. Just make sure to go with someone good. We recommend WeBuildPages, Debra Mastaler and, ahem, Andy Hagans.

Link Trading
55. Swap some links. What?! Did we really just recommend reciprocal link building? Yes, on a small scale, and with relevant partners that will send you traffic. Stay away from the link trading hubs and networks.

56. In case you didn't get the memo — when swapping links, try to get links from within the content of relevant content pages. Do not try to get links from pages that list hundreds of off topic link partners. Only seek link exchanges that you would consider pursuing even if search engines did not exist. Instead of thinking just about your topic when exchanging links, think about demographic audience sets.

Buying Sites, Renting Links & Advertisements
57. Rent some high quality links from a broker. Text Link Ads is the most reputable firm in this niche.

58. Rent some high quality links directly from Web sites. Sometimes the most powerful rented links come direct from sites not actively renting links.

59. Become a sponsor. All sorts of charities, contests, and conferences link to their sponsors. This can be a great way to gain visibility, links, and a warm feeling in your heart.

60. Sell items on eBay and offer to donate the profits to a charity. Many charities will link both to the eBay auction and to your site.

61. Many search algorithms seem biased toward older established sites. It may be faster to buy an old site with a strong link profile, and link it to your own site, than to try to start building authority links from scratch.

Use the Courts (Proceed with Caution)
62. Sue Google.

63. Get sued by a company people hate. When Aaron was sued by Traffic Power, he got hundreds or thousands of links, including links from sites like Wired and The Wall Street Journal.

Freebies & Giveaways
64. Hold a contest. Contests make great link bait. A few-hundred-dollar prize can result in thousands of dollars worth of editorial quality links. Enough said.

65. Build a tool collection. Original and useful tools (and collections of tools) get a lot of link love. What do you think ranking for mortgage calculator is worth?

66. Create and release open source site design templates for content management systems like Wordpress. Don't forget the "Designed by example.com" bit in the footer!

67. Offer free samples in exchange for feedback.

68. Release a Firefox extension. Make sure you have a download and/or support page on your site which people can link to.

Conferences & Social Interaction
69. It is easy to take pictures of important events and tell narratives about why they are important. Pictures of (drunk?) "celebrities" in your industry make great link bait.

70. Leverage new real world relationships into linking relationships. If you go to SEO related conferences, people like Tim Mayer, Matt Cutts, and Danny Sullivan are readily accessible. Similarly, in other industries, people who would normally seem inaccessible are exceptionally accessible at trade conferences. It is much easier to seem "real" in person. Once you create social relationships in person, it is easy to extend that onto the web.

71. Engaging, useful, and interesting interviews are an easy way to create original content. And they spread like wildfire.

For more info please contact
Bosscher Design
http://www.bosscherdesign.com

Web and Graphic Design for Small Business

2010-01-25T07:00:00.001-08:00

We all would like to land that "BIG" client to pay our entire salary for a year, but if we are all honest the majority of our business comes from the smaller business owners. As such, I think we as web and graphic designers, should show special appreciation for these people. I live and work near the Detroit, MI area.. more specifically Brighton-Howell, MI. I'm finding that even in a down economy, people are investing in the future of their companies. Small business owners and ever new start up companies are coming to Bosscher Design with new projects. Working in the web and graphic design field for over eight years now, I'm continuing to see a gradual up-tick in work every year, regardless of economy. I think small business is finally seeing that the internet is the future of their company and unless they have a presences online, they will soon disappear. But simply having a website that looks good is not enough anymore. You have to optimize it for SEO (search engine optimization). This includes things like page titles, keywords, key descriptions, and page names. When these things are working correctly, a finely tuned site can draw in customers and bring in business. The SEO work pervasively mentioned however, is only 25% of what makes your website get noticed. The other 75% is don off-page, through blogs like this, facebook, twitter and other social media outlets. Gaining links that point to your site are maybe the most important aspect of SEO. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me http://www.bosscherdesign.com.

Thanks so much

Dustin Bosscher
Creative Direction
Bosscher Design
517-518-2415
dustin@bosscherdesign.com

iRise Tech Tip: Loading different views from a master on multiple pages

2009-10-16T06:40:00.001-07:00

This video will show you how to take one master with multiple views, and load any view you want, on any page you wish. This gives the user the ability to use only one master for things like global navigations.

iRise Tech Tip: Print Screen Functionality

2009-08-27T13:44:00.000-07:00

Skypecap: Cheap videocasting alternative

2009-08-20T08:58:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wanted to save your Skype sessions so that you could see or hear them again later or share them with someone else? Have you ever missed information during a session and wish that you had a rewind button? Skype cap is a very cheap alternative to those expensive video recording and video casting software packages. Online audio conversations, one-to-one interviews, online conference, on the phone recordings are all the rage now that a large number Internet users can tap into broadband. SkypeCap allows audio conversation recording from Skype! With a significant increase in Internet speed and amount of data that can be rapidly transferred, downloading a multi-megabyte video file is not something reserved to a few anymore.

Normally I wouldn't advertise for a company like this, but this product is excellent when it comes to capturing your skype meetings. This could also be used to host a like Skype webinar and then post your video at a later date for those who couldn't attend.

Thanks so much

Dustin Bosscher

Creative Direction

Bosscher Design

517-518-2415

http://www.bosscherdesign.com

Using Colors to your Advantage

2009-08-13T11:40:00.001-07:00

Most often in our creative process, we tend to gravitate towards lots and lots of loud colors and wild fonts to ensure our customer is attracted to our site, logo, design, advertisement. But we make a very common mistake when the majority of our pages or ads are loud colors (i.e. Orange, Red, Green, Blue) While initially these colors will attract a viewers attention to your design, your message and purpose tend to get lost in translation. If everything is saying "look here", "no here", "hey over here", then your failing to directed them to the main content of your design. We suggest that when using loud colors, you do so only to highlight the focus or focal points of your design. Leave the rest of the content to be covered in neutral earth tones. My general rule of thumb is, if I would not put it on the walls of my home, it should be used sparingly! By following this simple process, you will ensure your viewer can follow and absorb the proper content.

Thanks so much, if you would like to know more please visit http://www.bosscherdesign.com

Dustin Bosscher

Creative Direction

Bosscher Design

517-518-2415

http://www.bosscherdesign.com

Using iRise to Save Time and Money

2009-08-08T08:03:00.000-07:00

iRise is a rapid prototyping tool that allows for viewing applications and websites before they are developed. iRise can also track and record requirements and change requests. When you host a client meeting, you can build a very basic (wireframe) prototype and get approval before spending any time in development, thus saving re-work time.

iRise gives you the ability to quickly make changes within that very same meeting, to show the client that you understand their vision.

"Visualization from iRise is now the standard for how forward-thinking companies define business software"

In the future on this blog, we will discuss different techniques for using iRise successfully and how to avoid pit falls in creating prototypes.

For more information, please visit our site or give us a call.

Thanks so much.

Dustin Bosscher
Creative Director
(517) 518-2415
http://www.bosscherdesign.com

How to balance graphics and flash on your site

2009-08-07T05:32:00.000-07:00

A website is much more than just good graphics and color, it's defining who you are and what you do. Finding the right balance between flash and content is key, while maintaining the fluidity and ease of your site is essential. In order to portray a professional image, all of the your companies identity pieces should have a consistent look and feel. When designing identity systems, Bosscher Design( http://www.bosscherdesign.com )chooses to establish an overall "brand" that reflects the values and industry of each client, as well as, appeal to your target market. This of all the huge corporations such as Coka Cola, Burger King etc. That if you were to only see a color and a font type, you would instantly be able to identify it as that companies identity.
When adding flash to your site, it is crusial that it is done in such a way, not to interfere with a viewer's experience. Flash animation should enhance a viewer's time on your site, not distract them from finding what they are looking for. Have you ever been to a site that has video's, flash, and many moving pieces? It can be distracting and either turn a viewer away from the site or confuse them on how to navigate correctly.

Generally, if you are trying create or re-design your website, take causing with large graphics and the use of flash. Start with identifying your company identity and work forward from there.

Thanks so much

For more information, please contact

Dustin Bosscher
President of Bosscher Design
(517) 518-2415
http://www.bosscherdesign.com