If you design websites as part of your job, do you ever print off the designs so that your clients can approve them? The reason I ask this questions is because some years ago I worked for a design agency that insisted on printing off website designs in order to review them, and to present them to clients. They were of course a print design agency by trade, and printing proofs of designs was the accepted way of reviewing them because, of course, with a print design the final product would also be printed.
However, a website design is never intended to be printed; it’s a digital media. A website design is intended to be seen on a computer screen (or even a TV screen or mobile phone these days) and printing one off doesn’t give you an accurate representation of what the design will look like when it is live.
For one thing, the colours on a website design are RGB, because they’re not intended for the printed media – therefore printing the design doesn’t give you an accurate image.
Secondly, website designs are designed to (more…)
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We wrote a post recently about how Flash (Gordon) was very bad for SEO in the sense that Flash websites are difficult for Google to index and their content isn’t as visible.
Now – you are of course able to perform SEO on a website built in Flash. For starters, you could engage in a fierce link building campaign, amassing thousands of high quality links from relevant websites. This isn’t cheap however, and it often entails a recurring cost as your links need to be topped up to keep you ahead of your competition.
You could also create a HTML section of your website, using the same content as contained in your Flash website, so that Google (and those discerning enough to not want to use Flash) can access it.
You can create satellite sites, utilise social networking and all manner of advanced SEO techniques – but to be perfectly honest, no matter how much time, effort and (more…)
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Altogether now… Flash a-ah – Saviour of the Universe!
Ah, Flash Gordon. One of the best comic book movies ever made (and we’ll have words with anyone that says otherwise) but while Flash may have been able to score touchdowns for fun, defeat the mighty Ming the Merciless and save the earth, he was never that good at SEO.
Yes, the hunky New York Jets quarterback was a hero, but when it comes to getting your website found in Google, Flash just lets you down – badly.
You see, Flash looks good (as we can see clearly) and he’s very interactive, with lots of moving parts and buttons to press, but Google doesn’t even know he’s there.
We are of course talking about Macromedia Flash (or Adobe Flash now, thanks to the great takeovers) and its use on websites. Flash is very popular among some web designers because their really are no (more…)
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This week I was searching the Internet for a suitable locksmith, and Googled such phrases as ‘locksmiths in Manchester’. SEO competition for this phrase, and related phrases, was quiet fierce and some of the sites that ranked near the top of Google had obviously spent a fair amount of money on their search engine optimisation campaigns.
However, after searching through three or four websites, I decided instead to visit yell.com and look for a local locksmith there. Why I hear you ask, especially when, as our business is SEO, we should at least use websites that rank within Google’s natural SERPs and support businesses that engage in search engine optimisation.
Simply put, the websites that ranked near the top of Google were all poorly designed and laid out. They had spent an awful lot of time and effort on getting to the top of Google, but hadn’t bothered too much with their actual (more…)
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The way you set out your website’s navigation can have a huge impact on your rankings. Not only do the search engines need to be able to move through your site easily to access the information they need, your site’s users need to find their way through your site as well. With this in mind, it’s important to use search engine-friendly methods of displaying navigation.
Navigation bar
The first place to focus on your site navigation is in your navigation bar. Most SEO experts recommend that you feature a navigation bar at the left edge of the screen, as the search engines will encounter it there sooner in their search. The navigation bar should feature links in text form, again for the benefit of the search engines.
Make use of keywords in links
It’s important to make use of your keywords in your link anchor text. Using keywords in this way boosts the relevance of the linked-to page to its target keyword. It’s important to remember, though, that not every link needs to feature a keyword. It’s perfectly acceptable to (more…)
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Error pages are a fact of life for any website. Every so often, the browser will fail to contact the server or a similar small error will prevent your page from loading. The most common error occurs when someone tries to access a page that is no longer there. Up pops the predictable, boring, subtly confusing ’404: Page Not Found’ screen.
This page can lose you customers, unless you do something about it.
There’s no avoiding the fact that an error page will pop up in connection to your site every now and then. At the same time, you don’t want your site’s users subjected to a boring, soulless white page at the same time as a frustrating delay. These pages, which often provide no explanation or apology for the error, don’t help the situation at all.
The answer is to customise your 404 page to make the situation a little more palatable. Companies have noted that a customised 404 page, with an explanation or a joke, will keep an Internet user engaged long enough for them to look for an (more…)
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Facebook launched another design update this week, a design update that was greeted with the usual tirade of criticism from a section of its userbase. It seems that whenever Facebook changes something there are always those who will complain about it, insist they’ll never use Facebook again or start groups asking for the old design to be put back.
The last big Facebook redesign saw 1.75 million Facebook members join the group ‘Change Facebook back to normal!’.
Are Facebook’s updates utterly useless? Are Facebook’s designers completely out of touch with what its users want? Or is it more likely that some of the users of Facebook just don’t like change, and find it hard to adjust to even the slightest change in the way something works, something that they use every day?
The latest changes to the Facebook design have seen the notifications button moved to the top, next to friend requests and messages. This makes sense. I have always had a problem with it (more…)
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In the online job market, job titles, job descriptions and job roles have developed considerably over the past decade. There was a time when a job that involved building websites, incorporating design and development, would have been branded as a ‘webmaster’ role – suitable for someone who had been tinkering with the Internet for many years but didn’t have any specific skills.
Webmaster roles were sought around 1998 and they were usually looked for by companies who didn’t have much experience of the Internet. Following webmasters were roles for ‘Web developer / Designer’, as this again was considered to be the same thing. Anyone who knew how to build websites surely knew how to design them?
As the Internet grew and awareness of different aspects of websites grew, roles such as this (more…)
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