Learn the basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and increase your rankings in all major search engines. This blog aims to provide beginners with SEO tips and tutorials, as well as SEO strategies used by expert webmasters.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

High Converting Web Design With Offshoring

Offshoring: Web Design and Web Design ServicesPsychologists are aware what makes people tick. Now, they even work with web designers in order to build the ultimate online store that will convert shoppers to buyers. With the spread of online shopping, people are also being more aware of online scams. That is why it is becoming harder and harder to convince web shoppers to become web buyers. How can you reassure your customers and get them to pull out their credit card?

Converting visitors into customers is a tricky process. The most important thing is for the website to gain the trust of the would-be customer. The website must create this ultimate shopping experience where the buyer will be comfortable to part with his or her money.

How does one make a web shopper comfortable? Buyers need to feel that they have control of all parts of the transaction. All things must be transparent to them. No underscoring terms or hidden agreements. Full disclosure is required.

Here are a few points that you should concentrate on when developing a website design for your website.
  1. Offshoring: Web Design and Web Design ServicesWebsite design that loads quickly: Make sure that your homepage loads within 10 seconds of your visitor typing your domain (or coming to your site if coming through a search engine

  2. Website design with light background: Make sure that the background of your website is light and makes it easier for the visitors to read the content of the website. Most of the modern website designers understand this aspect. Think about using black or dark blue font on a white or light body background.

  3. Concise Navigation: Make sure that your website has a navigation that is easy to follow. Again I believe that most decent website developers will help you develop a concise navigation.

  4. Instil Confidence: You should work with your web designer to create a website design that helps develops trust between you and the visitors to your website. Its only when your visitors trust you, they will become your customers.

  5. No Advertising banners: I can't argue this point enough; no website design needs external advertising. Your website design should be developed so that it helps you grow your business and not someone else's. Also many visitors will not take your website seriously if they see third party ads on your website.

  6. Create a "sense of urgency." Urge the customer to act immediately; they are not likely to come back later and buy. Emphasize that supplies or time is running out, or that if they miss their chance it will be gone forever. Of course, try not to go overboard as if you are overly hyperbolic or "spiel-like" (ever seen a really bad infomercial?) the customer might not believe your sense of urgency claim. Just like in dating, you don’t want to sound desperate or use ultimatums that will put off your customers and destroy your credibility.

  7. Eliminate clutter. Clutter does not look professional and it confuses the mind. Remember that Google built an empire on a web site that is mostly white and minimalistic, and there are some important lessons to be learned from that.

  8. Easy E-Commerce: If you want to sell using your website, make sure that your visitors find it easy to make a purchase.

Some tips on making the ultimate, most comfortable shopping experience are-
  1. Offshoring: Web Design and Web Design ServicesMake the site look professional. Professionalism builds credibility.. And web shoppers look into credibility, because a lot of online scams are already present. Upon learning that credibility, this is already one step in making their shopping experience more comfortable.

  2. Ease navigation. Make the site very user-friendly.

  3. Have an FAQ page ready. Answer all possible questions the web shopper may have.

  4. Have a contact form or e-mail link available. (Assure the potential client that their queries will be answered to ASAP.)

  5. Offer lots of payment options. (Ones that have good reputation where the buyer will not even doubt on.)

  6. Offer shipment options too. Something that is secure where the buyer would not feel violated about giving away shipping information.

There are many online tools that companies can use to gauge their web design’s performance. There is the Google Website Optimizer. The best thing about this is that the service is offered free!




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Saturday, June 13, 2009

Getting Indexed by Search Engines

Getting Indexed by Search Engines
by: Eileen Maravillas


If you read a lot of articles, guides, tutorials and any other materials about basic search engine optimization, getting indexed to search engines is the most important part of SEO after you've created your site and optimized its content.

What will you do after you've uploaded those web pages, optimized the content as well as your meta tags? Getting listed in SERPs of course! Here's what learned about indexing web pages:

Submitting to Search Engines
Many would say that submitting your home page to search engines is just a waste of time. Well, if your trying to submit on all those search engines then you really are just wasting your time. You can still do this method but my advice is to submit only to what webmasters' call “The Big Three”, namely Google, Yahoo and MSN.

You can still get your web pages indexed without having to do this method. There are other ways, which I think are much better, that can help you get your site indexed in SERPs.

The Power of Social Bookmarking
If you haven't heard if Digg.com or StumbleUpon.com then you're way behind in search engine optimization. These are samples of a social bookmarking sites which is similar to the ordinary bookmark tool we have in our web browsers' menu bar. The difference between the ordinary bookmarking and with social bookmarking are:

* you can access your bookmarks on any computer you use just by registering an account;
* and share your bookmarked sites/links with other members

Why Should I Submit to Social Bookmarking Sites?
Here are the reasons I've learned why I submit to social bookmarking sites:

1.For fast indexing - high traffic social bookmarking sites are more frequently visited by search engine spiders. If you submit your site, the higher the chance you have getting indexed.
2.For traffic - people love interesting topics, important news, humor and tutorials.
3.Increase more traffic - posts on Digg, and other social bookmarking sites, also appears in SERPs, giving you a higher chance of visibility!

Social Networking Sites
Do you like Facebook or Twitter? These are social networking sites where you can submit your links. Isn't that great?! Now the key to the successful use of social networking sites is you got to have lots of friends. Mingle with other members, join different groups, share your profile and be active, don't just login to your account to post a link. This link building technique is very helpful if you use it properly.

I find social bookmarking and networking as a part of link building technique that you can both use for work and have fun at the same time. Because you get to meet other webmasters doing link building of their own, you can exchange SEO tips and secrets, and the normal internet users you can interact with while doing work. And best of all you can even earn extra income by offering link building services to companies/sites that needs help with their search engine rankings.

Sitemaps
There are two types of sitemaps we can use, the XML and HTML sitemaps.

.XML Sitemap - This sitemap is used to inform search engines of pages that are available for crawling in a website.

.HTML Sitemap - This sitemap is for your visitors. It is used as a guide/navigation for visitors who are looking for a specific page, product or service you might be offering.

Now, you'll find these search engine optimization techniques quite easy to learn and do. Submitting your site or blog to the big three search engines can take you at least five minutes to do, social bookmarking and networking can be time consuming but it's all worth it, and submitting sitemaps to search engines is a must-do if you want to get all your web pages indexed.



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