blogging 102

Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes By David A Robinson I’ve just had a meeting with a potential client regarding their website. They launched into a list of things they wanted including, videos, animations, 360 degree images etc. What they hadn’t thought about was the whole purpose of the site. Who is was for, what it was for, who the stakeholders were and what success looks like. Building a website is a time consuming and costly exercise. There are many component parts to a website, the look and feel being only one of them. The problem is many people only focus on the pretty pictures and Flash animations, only stopping to think about SEO once the site’s live. This is a recipe for disaster. SEO starts before a single line of HTML is written or a single pixel has been added to an Illustrator canvas. SEO can be used to help you figure out some of the BIG questions you should be asking when developing a website. convey_source = "English"; Read More →

Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes By Craige Stacey Recent studies suggest that more than 80% of new visitors to any web site get there as a result of a search engine query. If this study is to believed, it certainly suggests that working to get high rankings in the search engines might be the most effective thing you can do to bring traffic to your site. The following 12 design tips will help you get started in optimizing your site’s search engine placement. 1. Design for Specific Search Engines – there are hundreds of different search engines, but for best results you should design your site to take full advantage of the search criteria of the big three – Yahoo, Google and MSN. If you can get high rankings in these three, you won’t need to worry about the other search engines. Knowing how these search engines rank sites (as well as why they will penalize a site) is important. The rules change often, but the tips below are the most current. 2. Know your target audience....