Giving Your Website an SEO Check-Up

Published January 31st, 2008 in SEO - 60 Comments

Search Engine Optimization is a common concern/priority when building a new website. However, it sometimes receives little attention after the site has been up and running for a while. For website owners and bloggers alike, it can be worthwhile to do a routine check-up on the SEO health of your site periodically. Here are 10 things you can do to help identify potential improvements that can lead to higher rankings and more search engine traffic.

1. Find and Fix Dead Links

Finding dead links on a website can be time-consuming and annoying if you try to do it manually. Dead-Links.com is a free online tool that will crawl your website and search for dead links. Once you know where the dead links are, you can easily correct them.

10 Realities of Designing Websites for Clients

Published January 30th, 2008 in Design - 17 Comments

As a designer, working for clients is much different than designing a site for yourself. There are obviously pros and cons, but here are ten things that I have found to be true.
1. No Two Clients are the Same

Some clients will know exactly what they want and they will expect you to create it precisely in that manner. Others will have no clue what they want and they’ll leave most decisions up to you. Some clients will be a pleasure to work with, others will make you want to pursue a different career. Each client will be unique and will present new challenges and present new opportunities.

23 Resources for Clean and Compressed CSS

Published January 28th, 2008 in CSS - 47 Comments

There are a number of free online tools that can help you to create and maintain effective CSS coding. These tools include validators, optimizers, compressors and more. Try out a few of these tools and see how they can help you to keep more efficient style sheets.

CSS TIDY

CSS Tidy is an open source CSS parser and optimizer from SourceForge. It is available as an executable file, and there is also an online version. CSS Tidy is often able to achieve a compression ration of 30% or more. In addition to compression, CSS Tidy can also format CSS code for higher browser compatibility.

5 Steps to a More Engaging Website

Published January 27th, 2008 in Design - 17 Comments

The internet has become a very interactive environment for users. Websites need to be specifically built in a way that captures the attention of visitors and keeps them coming back, or they will quickly leave to go somewhere else. Here are 5 steps to creating a website that will effectively engage your visitors.

1. Avoid Clutter

By keeping your design free of clutter, you will make it easier for visitors to know what is most important, and there will be nothing else to distract them. Clutter can be excessive advertisements, images that don’t add anything to the page, text that is crammed in with very little white space, or anything else that unnecessarily causes a distraction for visitors.

Weekly Links – January 26th

Published January 26th, 2008 in Links - 11 Comments

Caroline Middlebrook has written a free e-book for developing money-making niche websites with WordPress.

Wayne Smallman from Blah, Blah Technology has released a unique WordPress plugin for social media users.

David Airey has launched a new blog, Logo Design Love.

Designing to Meet User Expectations

Published January 23rd, 2008 in Design - 11 Comments

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. No design will appeal to everyone. In recent weeks I’ve published two different galleries of web designs of unique website layouts and minimalistic websites and the sites featured in these galleries take different approaches to providing an attractive site for users. If you spend much time looking at which designs successfully present the image of a business to visitors, you will notice that websites in various industries frequently take a specific approach. Certain audiences will have expectations of what they want in a design, and if they don’t get it, the site will be out of place and most likely unsuccessful.

21 Factors to Consider Before a Redesign

Published January 22nd, 2008 in Design - 66 Comments

Redesigning a website can be a very involved process, and it is important to properly plan and consider the necessary factors that will make or break the redesign. Here is a quick look at 21 factors that you should be contemplated.

Creating Multiple Streams of Income Online

Published January 21st, 2008 in Make Money - 26 Comments

You started a website or blog and you want to make some money (that is the goal of a business, so that’s not a bad thing). Maybe you created a product to sell, or maybe you’re using AdSense, direct ads, affiliate ads, promotion of services, or some other method to monetize your site. In order to maximize the income potential of your website you’ll almost certainly have to take advantage of multiple income sources.

Promoting Older Posts With Social Media

Published January 20th, 2008 in Traffic Generation - 19 Comments

For any blogger or website owner, traffic is at least somewhat inconsistent, and ups and downs are a natural occurrence. However, during those slow times most of us would like to be able to turn the tables and get some new traffic flowing to the site. The common thought for bloggers is that new content should be created and promoted to get things moving. This isn’t always necessary.

Weekly Links – January 18th

Published January 18th, 2008 in Links - 6 Comments

The 4 Different Types of Authority Links and 11 Ways to Get Them from Wiep.

Site Search Scripts from Pixelhead Online.

7 Ways to Give Your Freelancing Career a Boost from Freelance Folder.