Web Development Articles

Using Keyword Density for Google AdSense
 by: Calvin Johnson

With the decline of meta-tags, keyword density ranges have become very important. They’ve also become very controversial. Here’s the thing: you want a high enough keyword density—at least 7%–that your keywords rank highly in the bigger search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, DogPile, and HotBot.

But, you don’t want your keyword densities so high that they turn your content into over-hyped gobbledygook, nor do you want to raise a red flag when the spiders come crawling over your content. If your keyword density is 20% or more, the search engine will most likely red-flag you for “keyword stuffing” and penalize you by moving you down in the search results.

Thus, keyword density ranges are controversial. To make things worse, different search engines have different algorithms. One of them might thing an SEO keyword density of 18% is fine, another may not.

Shopping online has become more and more popular in America as we are all looking to save a little time and money. E-commerce sales are growing at astronomical numbers ranging from 20-25% per year. And according to Forrester Research, 40% of households are using coupons in their web shopping. The huge increases are obvious: the online savings and discounts are impossible to match by traditional stores constrained by the overhead costs of employees, rent, and insurance. By using some of the tips and tricks mentioned below, you’ll be able to take further advantage of a new American pastime: saving with online shopping!

Tip #1: Don’t buy Ebay. We all know online auctions seem like such a great deal, and it’s easy to get caught up in the emotion of auction. Thing is, auction sites like Ebay and Ubid have become saturated with buyers AND sellers, so virtually any discount found is quickly sought by re-distributors who then add their own markups to your purchase. The online marketplace has enough people out there that you can end up spending hundreds of extra dollars for the same things found in your local mall! Don’t let your emotions get involved ? these are not the right places for the aware shopper.

What pages need to be included on your website? The answer varies for each type of business and depends on how informative you want your website to be for potential clients. Below is a list of sample pages for you to review while you plan out your website.

Create a different name for these website sections if you’d like to add more personality to your site! For example, your “About Us” page can be titled, “Who We Are” or “Get to Know Us”.

Your business website, at minimum, should include the following pages:

? Home Page - (For more information on the design of your home page, click here) (www.elf-design.com/ articleHomePage.html)

? About Us and, if appropriate, About Our President/Principal

? Our Services ? A listing of the different services you provide, along with a short description of each. If some or all of your services require a more in-depth description, a link to more information should take the viewer to a separate page for those services.

? Contact Us ? Can range from a simple listing of your contact information to a more complex "intake form", with a range of questions on your prospect’s needs.

The Importance Of Monitoring Your Website
 by: Douglas Titchmarsh

Are you monitoring your website?

You should be, especially if you are using it

to make some extra cash, and definitely if

it is your only source of income.

You need to monitor your website to protect

it from so many nasties which could affect your

bottom line. Any of the following could bring

your site to a close.

A hack attack.

If your website is hacked, it could be used

for any number of illegal activities.

A hacker could use your hosting

account to send uce (Spam) from your domain

or even add web pages such as user information

“phishing” sites. These sites will have a page

which looks like a login page for Paypal, Ebay

or any bank. If someone fills in the form their

details are sent to the hacker who now has

access to their account. Your website will be

shut down, and you lose money while you sort

out the mess.

If you have any user information stored on

There are many attributes that makes a web hosting provider stand out from the crowd. But in this current highly competitive world the providers have become so adept in posing as the best out there that it becomes very difficult to choose the best for your business. Now it is the “knowledge” about what factors to consider becomes a must have, for your business. This is not an article about the factors themselves to consider but this makes the point for the need to have this knowledge and how to acquire this knowledge. In the services industry knowledge is almost everything. The knowledge about the technology behind the service, knowledge about the folks behind the service, knowledge of the customer service, quality of the hosting available and many more to list here. When you begin your search the first and foremost to decide is the budget allocation for the hosting. This may sound as something to decide at the end of the cycle, but it is important even before you acquire knowledge of the factors to consider. Let me put forward a small example if the budget you can allocate is less then 100$ then you ignore terms like dedicated servers collocation, etc. The more your budget the more you have to learn.

New Developments at WebmastersLookup
 by: Wim Hoogenraad

Dear Webprofessional,

In this newsletter we like to inform you about some developments on the WebmastersLookup.com website.

First of all we would like to thank you who joined WebmastersLookup. Without

the Designers community this service would not have grown so fast. The

membership is still open and is stays free. In the past few weeks we’ve been

very busy doing all sorts of wonderful that will BENEFIT our members. Here

are ’some’ of the things that we’ve been doing:

The benefit of the Keyword generator:

Since a few weeks we have a Keyword generator running on WebmastersLookup.

Because it is dedicated to the profile you must be a member and logon to see

it work. The generated keywords are related to the member profile and

portfolio and can be used as a guideline for the submission of websites.

The benefit of linking INTO WebmastersLookup:

New at WebmastersLookup is the Profile Link. Every member has his or her own

personal link to the WebmastersLookup profile. Placing that link on their

website will give members a higher position in the WebmasterLookup search

Thinking about designing your own website? Think again about adding any of these "features"?

1. Animated gifs. You know the ones: the dancing baby, the rotating email sign. No matter what you chose, nothing screams out "amateur" quite like an animated gif. Next!

2. Mouse trails. Those little pictures, or strings of letters that "follow" your mouse everywhere it goes. In my case, they follow my mouse all the way to the "back" button, so I can surf on to somewhere less annoying.

3. Music. If I wanted to listen to music, I’d play some myself. Meanwhile, I’m reaching for that back button again?

4. Indecipherable colour schemes. Navy blue text on a black background. White on yellow. Ye Gods! It hurts my eyes just to look at it, never mind read it. Just say no.

5. Poor spelling and grammar. Specifically: text speak. It’s bad enough on your mobile phone, never mind your website. If you’re going to go to the trouble of setting up a website, at least make sure people can read it without cringing. Or it’ll be that "back" button for you?

So, that’s how to get it wrong, but how do you get it right?

Know Your Audience
 by: Michael J. Garrett

Designing a web site is hard enough. You spend countless hours working on how it is going to look and what cool specials effects it is going to have. You even spent hours picking out your site colors. So now what?

Now you have to promote it. But how? There are many ways. You can submit them to search engines, join a pay per click advertising program and link exchanges. Of these link exchanges are the ones most picked, mainly because they are free. But do they work.

According to the emails that keep coming into my inbox, link exchange is dead. The big search engines know what they are about. Back scratching. You link to me and I will link to you. It does not help your SEO or your quest to be #1 on Google or Yahoo. But it does give you awareness to the people you exchanged links to. And this can be helpful.

I believe there is no one way to get your site ranked number one with anyone. But I do think if you plan your strategy correctly and use all of the tools available to you, you can get what you are looking for. You designed your site and you know what your audience is looking for. You may even know where your audience is.

Selecting your domain name Selecting a domain name can be a very frustrating process as a lot of domains have been sold already. With 30.000+ domain names being sold each day it can be a challenge to find the appropriate domain name for your company. So what do you do? Your business name might not be available or be too long. If you did think about doing business on the Web when you started, your name might not be appropriate for the web. What if your domain name is available for the country code extension but not .COM? Should you buy the .CA anyway? How long is too long?

Create a short list of domain names and variances. Talk with people that you trust and opinion you value or ask your regular customers. However, don’t wait too long about as 30.000 Domain Names are being sold a day now. Below you will find a few pointers or things you should have in mind when selecting your Domain Name.

Using your business name Using your business name as your domain name could be a great idea. However if your business name is really long or very complicated you might want to consider searching for an abbreviation or an alternative.

The Importance of a Well-Designed Logo
 by: Liz Jackson

You have one chance to make a first impression. Potential customers will form an opinion of a business within seconds. A company’s logo is therefore extremely influential, as it is almost always the first thing a customer will see. In addition, once a customer becomes familiar with a business, the company’s logo will always be associated with that company name, and in turn, the company name will be associated with the logo. For these reasons, a considerable amount of thought should go into choosing a logo.

A logo should be simple, recognizable, and effective at conveying the desired message to the public. Each aspect of a logo’s design should be carefully analyzed to ensure that it does in fact communicate the right message. The logo’s colors, style, size, shape, font (if it is a logotype), and overall design each play a part in the logo’s overall design, and are all important components to consider when creating an effective logo.