Awesome Hank
Lots of businesses are now using SEO to increase business and help people find their products online.
Even though this is no directly about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) you can see that many companies utilise this form of business promotion.
From a Web Designers point of view this means that you will want to stay up to date with the latest changes in the SEO world. For those just starting out or who do freelance work it is important to keep an eye on your competition and see what they are offering. If you can stay ahead of the web design companies that you consider as competitors then you will have that competitive advantage when it comes to getting new clients.
Incorporating some basic SEO tactics you will be able to have your website designs be found more easily by others. Here are some simple things you can do to add a touch of SEO to your website designs:
1. Validate your code to W3C standards for both CSS and XHTML. Not only does this mean your website will display correctly on all browsers it will also assist the search engine spiders when they visit your site. In addition to this it also opens up the opportunity to submit your website designs to some of the top CSS design galleries, which in turn will give your website more exposure.
2. Having a fast website is of particular importance nowadays as we are creating more media rich web designs. On top of this the speed of a website has now become a ranking factor in Google. Using GZip to compress text, compressing images, combining CSS files and minifying JavaScript files are all going to help the speed of your site.
3. Use Google’s keyword tool to determine the most common phrases that people use to search for your clients website. By placing these words in the title tag of the website you are designing you can make it easier for people to find your website. This will also increase the relevance of your website to search engines.
Tags: internet marketing, search engine optimisation, SEO, Web Design
Posted in SEO · July 6th, 2010 · Comments (0)
Starting with the ground work a code editor is an essential part of what someone who does web design requirements. Having a good understanding of the underlying code used to create a website will give you a much greater flexibility when you produce your websites. The presentational languages I am referring to include JavaScript, CSS and HTML.
As far as the software that most professionals use Dreamweaver by Adobe is by far the most used and well known software for website designers. Dreamweaver is a fully featured program that can handle pretty much anything you throw at it with extra features such as assisted syntax writing making your life a little bit easier. Although as far as code editing goes you can achieve most of what you need with simple text editor. All of these features can be found in free programs such as Notepad++.
Of course you will also need the ability to edit and optimise photos for use on the web. The 2 main image editing programs that are used in the industry include Photoshop also from Adobe as well as Fireworks which is more geared towards producing web content. It is important to be aware of image sizes when creating web designs as non-optimised images can have a huge effect on the performance of a website. You can use GIMP which is free and very popular amongst people who don’t want to shell out for programs such as Photoshop.
You will also need some sort of FTP program to upload your files to the internet where everyone can see them. Dreamweaver already has an FTP client integrated into the software so there are no problems there but an alternative would be FileZilla. You will find many resources available online that can help you to setup your FTP client if you are having difficulties.
For nearly every piece of highly priced software there is an open source or free alternative you can use. AlternativeTo.net is a great place to start looking for these alternate software programs. After you get good with your web design software you can start using some SEO and internet marketing techniques to help boost the profile of your new website.
Tags: internet marketing, SEO, Web Design, web design software
Posted in Web Design · July 5th, 2010 · Comments (0)