7 Surefire Ways To Increase Your Traffic

So, we all know what is at the core of it all, traffic is the most essential thing to a successful company on the internet. Aside from ensuring that you have a great product to sell, and you have your company’s internal organization well taken core of, it would be time to get to the nitty gritty of things, generating traffic.

If you already have a site and you think that you're not getting the traffic that you're supposed to be getting, then its time to reconsider what you are doing. If you are contending in these very competitive niches, you should always be a step ahead of your competition, increasing your traffic flow should have been done starting yesterday.

Timing is essential, that’s an old adage known to everyone. But with generating traffic, you should always be on your toes and be a day ahead of everyone. Never think of today and tomorrow as a starting point for making your site traffic laden, it should always have been yesterday.

To help you out in generating more traffic for your site, here are some seven surefire ways to increase your traffic starting from yesterday.

1) Invest in good advertising with search engines

Google’s Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture provide great advertising schemes that are very truly popular and assures great traffic. Although with this surefire way to increase your traffic would cost some money. While some would shy away from spending money to increase traffic, it is imperative in this case to do so because Adwords and Overture is the top surefire way to increase your traffic.

You could see for yourself the success this search engine advertising methods have reaped rewards for so many companies. Lots of site feature these advertising system and many have signed on to reap the benefits. Do not be left behind. Every penny is worth it with using Google and Yahoo’s advertising.
(You can email us at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com to request a FREE $100 coupon for Adwords to get you started)

2) Exchange or Trade Links with other sites

With exchanging links with other sites, both of you will benefit from the efforts both of you do to enhance your sites traffic. When one site features another sites link, they could provide one another with the traffic one site generates. The efforts are doubly beneficial because it would seem like both of you are working to generate more traffic. The more links traded with more sites the more traffic could be expected.

3) Use Viral Marketing

Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your company and product without any costs or if ever low costs only. This is a marketing method that can be quite sneaky; you can attach your company’s name, product or link to a certain media such as a funny video, entertaining game, an interesting article or a gossip or buzz. With this method, people get infected with the creativity and entertainment of the medium that they will pass it on to many people.

4) Search and use proper keywords or keyword phrases for your sites content

Search engines look for certain keywords that they would show in their results page. In doing so, having the right keyword and keyword phrase is a high requirement in ranking in high in search engine results. You could write your own content or you could hire someone to do it for you. Googles Adwords Keyword Tool is free to use and we definitely recommend it.)

5) Write Articles that can lead traffic to your site

Submit articles to sites that would contain the same subject that your site deals in. If you sell car parts write press releases and articles about cars and car parts. Attach your sites description and services at the end of the article as well as the link.

6) Join forums and form online communities

Capture a market and show your expertise and credibility. When you found a good foundation for your site, people will trust you and your site and will pass on to many people their trust. Traffic will certainly increase because they know that you can provide what they need.

7) Lastly, Offer newsletters.

If many people know what you are about and your existence is shared with many others, you will find a loyal traffic that can provide you with more traffic by recommendation. If you arouse the curiosity of your customers they would be pushed to help you with your traffic.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

5 Simple and Easy Ways to Advertise Online

Most people in business agree that advertising is everything! Regardless of whether you have a product, a service, a hobby website or just want to share pictures of your vacation, you have to advertise it to get traffic to your site, blog, or whatever the case maybe.

Not all traffic is equal. There are services that can help you drive tons and tons of traffic to your site like safelists and traffic exchanges and it won't do you any good at all because it's not targeted.

For example all of the many different 'surf for traffic' or 'traffic clicking' programs that are out there. If you have a website that is about your hobby model airplanes (like my grandpa,) then what good is this traffic really going to do for you? Who's uses these services?

Webmasters and marketers who want traffic on their own site. So they most likely won't spend any more time on your page than is required by the little timer these services use and then they will be gone again. Even if your site is about these traffic services (this is about the only time you will see any benefit from using such a tool) you will still have to spend a ton of time just surfing and clicking around to get a real benefit from these programs. Once marketers realized this they switched gears. They started promoting all the different programs to a lot of other marketers to get them in their down lines, so they could get some traffic as a bonus.

The Bottom-line is... You need targeted traffic. So here are some tips on how you can generate exactly the traffic you need and bring the visitors you want to your website without having to chase after them.

1. Content
What is your site about? Do you just have a page with a lot of links and not much else?

If this is the case, think about adding some content to your website that will be of value to any potential visitors. You can write articles or find articles at one of the many directories that you can reprint on your site.

2. Talk about your experiences in your subject matter.
You don't have to put up some kind of resume (although that can work too), but rather try writing about what you are doing, as it relates to your topic of choice. Let's look at the model airplanes again briefly, you could talk or write about the latest plane type you built, how the last time flying your plane went, what challenges you run into or perhaps even post some pictures of your plane or of you flying it.

3. Forums and bulletin boards.
You could add a forum or bulletin board to your website where your visitors can interact with each other. There are a lot of free services available out there that you can use to either remotely host a forum for you, or even software you can install on your website's server. To find some of these, just head over to your favorite search engine and you will definitely find plenty to choose from. (I love google!)

While you are visiting the search engine, why not run a search for any bulletin boards and forums that are already out there on your chosen topic? You could visit those and interact with the visitors there and since many allow you to post a signature or a profile, you could add a little line about your own site with a link (just check the rules of the forum first so
you don't violate any of them).

4. Start a blog.
Blogs are very popular and search engines love them because they provide constantly new and fresh content. Your blog would be a great place to talk about what you are up to that day. So if you spent some time today buying new parts for your plane you could write about where you found them, how much they cost you, why you chose those parts, anything really goes.

The really great part about this is that you can point links from your blog back to your website, so when the search engine stops by to grab and index your latest content, it will also stop by your website and you will start seeing very targeted traffic heading your way.

5. Write articles.
Writing articles isn't hard and can be a great source of fresh, new traffic to your website. There are a lot of ezines on any topic out there and there are also a lot of directories where you can share your article.

Basically, what you do is write an article and then add a small resource box that links back to your website (just like a signature) and then let other ezine publishers know that you are allowing them to print your article in their ezine. And many publishers go to the article directories to find new content for their newsletter and even their websites. And since there are
websites and ezine newsletters on any imaginable topic out there, you can't lose. Write an article every couple of days and post it in the directories (even one a week or every two weeks will start getting you traffic). Very soon you will find new traffic coming from search engines, newsletters and websites.

Best of all, these 5 simple tips will bring targeted traffic, meaning the visitors are coming to you because they are interested in what you wrote and they are absolutely free!

So there you have it. Whether you have a simple and basic Work at Home Business or a significant Internet Marketing enterprise you can benefit from these 5 easy and simple ways to advertise and drive traffic to your website at absolutely no cost.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

A Pay Per Click Beginner's Guide.

Should you Pay Per Click?

Commonly refered to as PPC among the savy internet marketers. If you have been marketing online for any length of time you have probably seen PPC eat up your advertising dollars with little or no results.

You research and choose the hottest keywords, then burn through your daily budget in an hour with no sales. The myth that mega traffic produces mega profits is just that. A myth.

Traffic is great. Traffic improves your search engine ranking. It increases word of mouth advertising. Traffic gets you more traffic, but when you are paying a pretty penny for each and every click you want sales.

You may remember the class action law suit against Google. A group of businesses sued Google claiming the company didn't do enough to prevent click fraud so they lost money in their PPC campaigns.

In my less than humble opinion, click fraud was not the culprit. For those who don't know, click fraud is when someone who publishes Google Adsense ads clicks on ads on their own sight to make money with no intention of purchasing the product advertised.

As I said, in my opinion click fraud was not the culprit. It was badly chosen keyword phrases. Instructions on how to choose and bid on keyword phrases are available on the PPC sites so I won't go into the mechanics of bidding.

The important thing is, if you chose the most popular keyword your ad will show up in hundreds maybe even thousands of searches an hour. This means you will recieve hundreds maybe even thousands of clicks a day.

Mega traffic right? For instants. If you are selling hand painted porcelain piggy banks and you bid on the keyword "bank". Who will see your ad and possibly click on it? People looking for online banking, people looking for a rock band called "Bank", kids writing a report for school on the banking industry. In other words, people who don't want what you are selling.

They will click on your ad without reading the whole thing and go "This isn't what I want." and hit the back button. Remember, it cost you money for them to click. It costs them nothing, so people aren't careful about what they click on.

Choose your phrase carefully. You want clicks from visitors who are looking to buy what you are selling. Target your phrase. Bid on "porcelain hand painted piggy banks" if that is what you are selling. People who do broad searches are just looking. People who target their searches are looking to buy.

Will you get less traffic? Yes. Will you make more sales? Maybe, depending on your product, how easy your site is to navigate, your prices, etc, etc...

The point is, with PPC, looky loos cost you money. Save the most popular keywords for your free traffic sources. Target your PPC so that only credit card in hand buyers click your ads.

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Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

7 Things You Can Do Today To Make Google Fall Head Over Heels In Love With Your Small Business Website

Creating your own small business website can be a scary thing to do and extremely tough. It requires some planning to get it right and make Google sit up and take notice of your site at first glance. Small business website search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the keys, but all too often, business people leave the creation of their websites up to a family member or a friend who happens to know something about it. This is strange, for they wouldn't dream of letting the same people build their bricks and mortar store or office. This is why business owners should leave it to the professionals.

Of course, getting an expert who fully understands small business SEO to build your website is not likely to come cheap, but it may be the best solution if you are starting out from scratch. However, this article is aimed at those small businesses that already have a website, but are disappointed at how poorly it performs. If you're frustrated because your website appears on page 42 of the Google search results, and no one is visiting your website, here are 7 things you can do to quickly improve your results.

1. Create an Effective Website Title Tag, Description Meta Tag,
and Keywords Meta Tag

The most important part of any website page (in the eyes of the search engines) is the title tag. The title is enclosed between the opening title tag: and the closing title tag: . It is located in the head section of an HTML document, or web page. You should use your page's main keyword in your title. Try to use your main keyword near the beginning of your title, and perhaps again near the end. But always strive to make your title readable, and not obviously keyword stuffed. You must also make sure it appears on the main page at least 3 times, but don't be to repetitive.

Your description tag plays an important role in SEO for your local small business. This tag is used by most of the search engines in their listings, so you need to spend some time getting this right. The description tag looks like this:

<meta name="description" content=

and it is also found in the head section of your web page.

Something brief such as, "Acme Dynamite, Makers of Green Dynamite," gets the message across, but you could do much better. Try to list benefits rather than features, and use your main keyword in your description as well. Keep your description reasonably brief, but not too short. Something like, "Acme, Inc., Makers of the Strongest, Most Powerful and Affordable Dynamite on the Planet" is better.

Like a headline for an ad or sales flyer, your description may take time to develop. Start with a list of all of the benefits your product or service offers and then try to write 20 different descriptions for your site based on those benefits. Test your descriptions by reading them to your customers, employees or others familiar with your business. You'll find out which description resonates most strongly with your potential prospects - and that's good for the search engines and for your sales.

The keywords tag, again found in the head section of your web pages, looks like this:

<meta name="keywords" content=

The keywords you choose for your page are important, because they tell the search engines what should be found on the page. Google and all the other search engines present search results based on relevancy – how relevant your web pages are to the keywords and phrases your prospects are searching for.

Keep your keyword phrases to less than seven and don't repeat the same words. For example, if you have two keyword phrases, which are, "blue widgets" and "bright blue widgets," you should only include unique words after including the first "blue widgets" keyword.

Curious to know what your Title, Description, Meta and Keyword tags currently look like? Here's a simple tip – just go to any page of your website, then click on "View Source" or "View Page Source" from the "View" menu. Or Ctrl+U in most browsers. There you'll be able to see exactly what your tags are telling Google when they crawl your site.

2. Optimize Your Website Copy

Your website copy consists of the words on every page of your site. Try to make it interesting and informative. One simple way to arrange your articles, or informative pages, is to use a simple three-step format. Begin with an introductory paragraph that tells your visitor what you are going to tell them. Then in the next two or three paragraphs, tell them. Finally, wind up the article by telling them what you just told them.

This may seem overly simple, but it works. Speak to your website audience as you would to a seven-year-old child. Don't patronize them, but lay it out clearly in simple steps using straightforward language that anyone can understand.

When writing your copy for each of your pages, make sure to focus on one or two keywords per page. If you are selling dynamite in all colors and you also sell blasting caps, then dynamite should be on one page and blasting caps on another. Keep it simple for your customers and the search engines by focusing on one idea per page and your customers will thank you for it, and Google will thank you too.

3. Establish an Acceptable Keyword Density for Your Website Copy

While optimizing your website copy you also need to establish a keyword density that is acceptable to the search engines. Opinions differ, but somewhere between 2% and 5% is probably about right. This means that for effective small business SEO, your main keyword phrase should appear around three times for every 100 words.

Where your keyword appears is important too. Try to use your main keyword or phrase twice in the first paragraph, once in the second paragraph, once around the middle of the article, and once again near the end of the article. Try to start and end the first paragraph with your main keyword if possible, but don't force it. Always aim for copy that is readable before copy that has perfect keyword density.

4. Create Quality Back Links to Your Website

Increasingly, the search engines are giving added weight to the number of quality back links your website has. It used to be that reciprocal linking was quite acceptable, and it still is, but now Google and the other search engines give higher credibility to one-way back links as far as your search engine rankings are concerned.

And it's not just any back links either. You need to have quality back links, or back links from sites that are similar to yours. It's not much good getting a back link from a site about butterflies if your site focuses on racing cars. With Google, it's all about relevance. You should also strive to get back links from so-called authority sites. These are sites that the search engines deem to be an authority on their chosen subject. They tend to be quite big and to have been around for some time. Google gives more reward for .edu backlinks and its not really as hard as you would think. I have some from Harvard and I've never been there in my life.

5. Use Local Directories Effectively

If you are marketing to a local market, then make use of local directories. How do you find them? If, for example, you are located in New York, then go to Google and search for, "directory" + "new york." This will return a list of all the local directories in that city. You could even try searching for, "green dynamite directory" + "new york," if you are marketing blue widgets.

Once you find a suitable directory, submit your website to it. People do search on local directories, so even if your product has worldwide appeal, there's a greater chance that you will get the sale if someone finds you in a local directory over someone else located in another continent who can deliver just as cost effectively or as quickly.

6. Create a Proper Site Map and Google Site Map

Every website should have a site map. This is merely a directory of all your site's pages with links to every one. You should have a link from every page of your site back to your site map, and your site map must be updated whenever a new page is added.

A Google Site Map is also a site map, but one that is in a special format that Google can easily spider. It has the great advantage of allowing Google to instantly "see" your site and evaluate it. It can be a very useful tool in getting Google to index your site more quickly than otherwise. For more information on creating a Google Site Map, go to: http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/.

7. Add Fresh Original Content to Your Website at an Acceptably Measured Pace

Your website should never be considered finished. It should always be a work in progress that is constantly expanding with fresh and original content. The easiest way to do this is to add new articles on specific subjects on a regular basis. One article a week is the least you should aim for, but don't add content too quickly either. Dumping 100 articles a day into your site will ultimately work against you, because the search engines look for organic growth – in other words, growth that seems natural. Since it's not likely that you were able to write 100 articles in one day, Google and the other search engines will see this as unnatural and will count it against you in your page ranking.

SEO for your local small business is easier than you might think. Getting Google to fall head over heels in love with your small business website is not rocket science. You only need to implement a few simple things on a regular basis, and over time Google will notice and your page rank – and your placement with the search engines – will start climbing.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

An Introduction To Search Engine Optimization And Web Design

Create a website and in no time at all you will be receiving visitors, right? Wrong. It can take time before a search engine finds and indexes your site. Once it does, it is by no means any guarantee that you will be one of the first sites listed under your subject. Search engines index billions of pages and even the most obscure subject can have thousands of pages.

So how do you put your webpage at the head of the pack? It all comes down to search engine optimization. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the term used to describe methods and tricks used that will help improve how search engines rank your page. The higher that your page ranks, the better chance your page will be selected by someone searching, resulting in more traffic to your site.

Search Engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo! use complicated, highly guarded algorithms to rank your website that can be so confusing Einstein himself would have trouble figuring it out. Instead of focusing on those issues, let us instead focus on a few basic areas that will help improve your websites ranking. 

One final note about search engines: The most popular search engine right now is Google.

Keywords
Choosing the right keywords for your page is the most important step in SEO. In actuality, "keywords" usually key phrases since you will be choosing about three or four key phrases for each page of your website and rarely focus on a simple word. It is important that you are specific when picking your phrases. You need to stay away from generic terms such as “cat,” “television,” or “car.” Pick phrases such as “marketing consultant”, “plasma television”, or “Chevy Corvette”. The more specific you can be the higher that your page will be ranked, and the better chance your page will be found by your target audience.

To pick the right phrases, think about what words you would type in when looking for your site. Ask your friends and family members what they would type into the search engine. Understand that television and TV are two different words and not interchangeable in the minds of search engines. Going back to my example of Creative Marketing Consultant, I might choose the keywords of “Creative Marketing Consultant”, “Professional Marketing Consultant”, and “Consultants in Peoria, Illinois” for a marketing consulting website. Keyword phrases should only be about three to four words long.

Domain Name
If you have not picked a domain name, it is best to pick one that uses at least one of your keywords in it. Use dashes to help separate the words, if desired. A website named http://www.marketingconsultingpeoria.com or http://www.creativemarketingconsultants.com is better than http://www.randombusiunessname.com. For even better results, choose something that is specific to your keywords. That said, it is believed that search engines may rank domain names with  two or more hyphens lower because they are usually associated with lower-quality or spam-ridden sites.

Anchor Tags
Anchor tags, also known as anchor text, are the visible hyperlinked text on the page. Search engines typically weigh them heavily. Make sure that your anchor tags contain as many of your keywords as possible. Also, they should not be too long, although there is no limit, and be a clear indication of what the user will find by clicking on it.

Headings
When designing a webpage for search engine optimization, it is important that you use headings (, , ) for your titles instead of graphic images. Search engines weigh headings heavily as an indication of what content to index your pages. Therefore, it is important that your page have headings that include your keywords. Pages without any headings rank lower in search engine results.

Meta Tags
Meta tags help search engines index a website correctly. Although there are quite a few meta tags to choose from, the two most important are description and keywords. If you do not place these two in your heading section of your website, search engines will decide for themselves, usually by taking information from the first text it can find. Here is an example of each of the meta tags.

• meta name="description" content="An introduction to search engine optimization, or SEO, including how to pick and use the right keywords, use meta links, title tags, alt tags, image names, site maps, links, and headings.

•  meta name="keywords" content="search engine optimization, SEO, webpage design, choosing keywords, anchor tags, headings, meta tags, title tags, alt tags, image names, site maps, robots.txt, keyword spamming or stuffing, web content development

The description should be about 170 characters long and never exceed 200 characters--including spaces and include all the major keywords for the webpage. Notice that commas separate the keywords and there is no comma after the last keyword in the sequence. Also, try not to repeat a word more than twice in the listing. A lesser important meta tag is the author tag. While it will not help your website be ranked higher, including it will help your company or your name be recognized.

It is critical that your description and keywords are accurate and relate to that page. Listing words or phrases that are not included in the text of the page lowers their relevance ranking. Search engines will rank the relevance of terms based on how many times the term occurs on the page, the position they are located in the document, the length of the document and the “weight” of the search term. Weight is determined by how often and the location of the keyword. Words that appear in the title, headings, and tags are considered heavier than other terms.

Title Tags
Technically, the title is a meta tag but because it is probably the most important one, it is listed separately. It is also what search engines list first, so it should be carefully thought out. Make sure you have a unique title for each of your pages.

The title tag is placed in the header section inside . Most people simply place the name of their site in the title tag, which is not good SEO. Instead, place your most important keywords phrases inside the title tag without listing them. For example, instead of saying “Andy's consulting” say, “Andy's Consulting - Home of the finest creative marketing consultant in Peoria, Illinois”.

Length is also important. Google displays 66 characters of a title tag, cropping between words. Yahoo! allows much longer titles, up to 120 characters. Therefore, you are best to include a title that is at least 66 characters long and subtitle that is an additional 54 characters long. You also want to consider what will be displayed by web browsers, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome. What would be displayed if a visitor bookmarked your site or on browser indexes?

Alt Tags and Image Names
Search engines only index text. However, they do index the alt tags associated with images. This is why you should label each image on your website with tags that use your keywords whenever possible and relevant to the image. Do not include alt tags that are simplistic. Be as specific as possible without going overboard.

File names are another great place to include keywords. While you cannot include spaces in a file name, you can separate your keywords with hyphens (-) or underscores ( _ ), which will be perceived as spaces by search engines. Going back to the above picture, instead of naming it “image1.jpg” list it as “american_wirehair_kittens.jpg” or “wirehair_kittens.jpg”.

Site Maps
Site maps are documents that can be submitted to search engines that help them learn the structure of your site. You need to set up a site map that has a direct link to every page on your site and place a text link to that site map on the index page of your site. You can also submit this site map to search engines such as Yahoo! and Google.

Robots.txt
The robots.txt file is a file that you place on your web server that instructs web robots which directories can or cannot be crawled. A robot is a program that searches the web hypertext structure looking for websites to index. They are also known as web wanderers, web crawlers, or spiders. Robots.txt implements the Robots Exclusion Protocol, which allows the web site administrator to define what parts of the site are off-limits to specific robots. The very basic robots.txt file will simply contain the text:
    User-agent: *
    Disallow:

This signals that any robot can search all of the pages on your website. If there is a page on your site that you do not want robots to index, simply insert a backslash and list it after disallow. For example, if you want to exclude the page “www.calebscattery.com/friends.html” you would place the following in your robots.txt file:
User-agent: *
    Disallow: /friends.html

Once you have created and uploaded your robots.txt file, you can make sure it is valid by going to Robots.txt Checker [http://tool.motoricerca.info/robots-checker.phtml].

Keyword Spamming or Stuffing
Keyword spamming, also known as keyword stuffing, is when irrelevant keywords are included on a webpage in the hopes of attracting unsuspecting surfers to the site. This can be done in a variety of ways such as listing phrases at the bottom of the page, including hidden text on the page, or other methods. This is also the most popular of the “black hat SEO” methods, or unethical search engine optimization. DON"T DO IT OR YOUR SITE WILL BE BANNED
Search engines are good at recognizing these tactics. Sites that employ these methods are either ranked lower or, in extreme cases, removed altogether from the search engine. Even if the web robot does not recognize your methods, your competitors might and then report you.  

Web Content Development
Each page of your site needs to contain at least 250 words, although 500 words would be better. When web robot visit, they will read your site from top to bottom, left to right. For that reason, try to include your keywords very early on in your text and then a few more times within your text and in the last sentence of your text. Do not list the words or repeat words just to repeat words. You have to write your content for humans too. ;-)

It is also important to note that web robots “count” any html, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), JavaScript or other code listed on the site. Learn and use external style sheets to remove it from your page. It is believed that most robots will only look at the first 80-100 lines of code--including any blank lines you may have included. If your text is buried at the bottom, it might not get included when they index your page.

Spending the time to optimize your site for search engines is as important as developing quality content when it comes to finding and keeping visitors. Having the best site in the world does no one any good if it cannot be found. Good SEO should not change the content of your page or alter it significantly. It will only alter its ranking by search engines.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

3 Traits Of High Quality Seo Web Design

When it comes to web design, there are so many amazing designers out there.  Most web designers are very creative and have a strong artistic background. They are able to use their talents to create layouts that are guaranteed to catch the eye of your visitors.  Unfortunately, there is one major thing that most web designers are missing. The overwhelmingly vast majority of web designers are not familiar with the concepts and implementation of search engine optimization techniques. Even if a web designer has at least some basic knowledge of SEO (Search Engine Optimization,) they do not worry about implementing search engine optimization strategies into their designs.

While this may seem like a trivial detail, it can actually be the root of some major problems for your site and your businesses bottom line. No matter how attractive your web site is, if it is not indexed by the major search engines, the traffic it receives is going to be minimal. Once you realize this is happening, you are going to have to hire someone with SEO knowledge to fix your layout. Therefore, you may end up paying double for something that should have been done the first time around.  Whether you are a web designer or someone getting ready to hire a web designer, here are three traits of quality SEO web design:

Usability: As a general rule of thumb, if the design of a web site makes it easy for your human visitors to navigate, it will also be relatively easy for search engine robots to access, crawl and index your web site.  Making your site user (and search engine) friendly includes minimizing (or completely eliminating) things such as Flash (in some cases), Javascript navigation and layouts designed with tables.  By designing with usability in mind, you can be sure that your visitors and the search engines will be happy with your web site.

Avoid Being Sneaky: Because web designers are generally very creative people, they like to push the envelope when it comes to designing web sites. Although this mentality can result in some truly amazing web layouts, it can also cause problems if taken too far. When creating a web site layout, it is important to keep the web master guidelines of search engines like Google in mind. Incorporating things like hidden text into your designs is a sure way to get penalized (or de-indexed) by search engines. It is ok to push the envelope with your designs, but just make sure that you avoid doing anything that the search engines tell you not to do.

On-page SEO: Although this is the last item on the list, it is actually the most important.  On-page SEO is the basis for quality SEO web design. It is vital that properly implement things such as title, meta, H1 and H2 tags (header tags), along with internal linking and the other key components of on-page search engine optimization. Taking the time to employ these practices will make a significant difference in where your web site ranks in the search engines.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

Tips to Increase Ranking and Website Traffic

It is worth cataloging the basic principles to be enforced to increase website traffic and search engine rankings.

• Create a site with valuable content, products or services.
• Place primary and secondary keywords within the first 25 words in your page content and spread them evenly throughout the document.
• Research and use the right keywords/phrases to attract your target customers.
• Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Like Title, META tags, Headers, etc.
• Keep your site design simple so that your customers can navigate easily between web pages, find what they want and buy products and services.
• Submit your web pages i.e. every web page and not just the home page, to the most popular search engines and directory services. Hire someone to do so, if required. Be sure this is a manual submission. Do not engage an automated submission service.
• Keep track of changes in search engine algorithms and processes and accordingly modify your web pages so your search engine ranking remains high. Use online tools and utilities to keep track of how your website is doing.
• Monitor your competitors and the top ranked websites to see what they are doing right in the way of design, navigation, content, keywords, etc.
• Use reports and logs from your web hosting company to see where your traffic is coming from. Analyze your visitor location and their incoming sources whether search engines or links from other sites and the keywords they used to find you.
• Make your customer visit easy and give them plenty of ways to remember you in the form of newsletters, free reports, reduction coupons etc.
• Demonstrate your industry and product or service expertise by writing and submitting articles for your website or for article banks so you are perceived as an expert in your field.
• When selling products online, use simple payment and shipment methods to make your customer’s experience fast and easy.
• When not sure, hire professionals. Though it may seem costly, but it is a lot less expensive than spending your money on a website which no one visits.
• Don’t look at your website as a static brochure. Treat it as a dynamic, ever-changing sales tool and location, just like your real store to which your customers with the same seriousness.
  
  
  Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com

5 Important Rules in Website Design

weWhen it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.

1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter". In fact, they are just that -- pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the "back" button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valuable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered drop down menus. If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don't confuse your visitors because confusion means "abandon ship"!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they're not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it -- volume or muting controls would work fine.

Andy Ray Uppole is an artist from Peoria, Illinois that specializes in audio and video production, graphic design, commercial art, and creative consulting. You can contact him by calling 209.509.4120 or email him at subversiondesignsolutions@gmail.com