Texture design

Search Engine Optimization Journal???s Top 20 Design Blog ListWriting by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, 19 of December , 2007 at 12:40 pm

We have researched and compiled our first annual list of some of the most useful Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing Blogs???other than the Search Engine Optimization Journal!
Please feel free to visit these blogs as they provide excellent information! Please let us know if we missed any blogs off of this list.

1. Matt Cutts: Design, Gadgets and Design
Blog URL: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/
Design news and tips coming straight from a Design employee who is recognizably one of the biggest names in the Design industry.

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Landing Page Optimization, Quick Design TipsWriting by Nick Stamoulis on Thursday, 20 of December , 2007 at 9:59 amAre you planning some landing pages? Here are five QUICK design tips for speeding up the process and creating better landing pages.

Did you notice what I did with that preamble? That ought to give you an idea of what this article is about.

Use a style sheet - CSS is popular for a reason. If you don’t know how to make a style sheet, go to Amazon and buy a book. It is easy to learn and one of the most important aspects of modern web design.Use fixed width columns - Monitors now come in all shapes and sizes. A big part of landing page optimization is the visual optimization. Fixed column widths let you know exactly how the page is going to look on your visitors’ screens.Use a quality page editor - I am partial to Dreamweaver. A good web page editor is expensive, but has a lot more versatility. Your pages should end up optimized for both IE6,7 and Firefox.Get colorful - I like a simple color scheme with my landing pages. I usually use red and blue for keywords. I am also partial to text highlighting, for which I use yellow.Optimize your images - Make sure that the images that you use are optimized. Dreamweaver does most of this for you, but you will need to manually enter a title for each image.

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Cash for Links, it Works but be CarefulWriting by Nick Stamoulis on Friday, 21 of December , 2007 at 8:57 am

The following helpful advice was taken from Marketing Pilgrim. I think it sums up some very good advice for those of you that want to build up traffic through link buying. Link buying is a strategy that works, but is increasingly frowned upon and tends to fall into the black hat category these days.

1. Only buy links from sites that are highly relevant to your web site content. If you sell ring tones, that link from an online florist will stick out like a sore thumb! 2. If the site you are buying links from already has more than 5 paid links on the page, walk away. 3. If the site labels the links as ???sponsored??? or ???paid links??? or anything like that, walk away. 4. Be selective in your targeting. Don???t buy footer or sidebar links if you can help it. 5. Vary your anchor text. Try to make your anchor text look natural. If you buy links on 100 pages, and they all use the same text, you???re asking for trouble. 6. Avoid any paid link where the seller is also an affiliate for the broker. Those ???earn money selling links???banners? Yeah Design can see those too! 7. Check that the page ranks well for its targeted keywords. If it doesn???t rank well for its own keywords, it will likely not help you. 8. Point the links at different pages within your site. Don???t buy lots of links for your homepage. 9. Try to get the links in a contextual format. A link that is part of a highly relevant paragraph will be more valuable. 10. I guess I should round this out to ten.

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Quick Tips for Photo OptimizationWriting by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, 12 of December , 2007 at 7:24 am

If you want to have photos on your website then make sure you read these quick tips about photo optimization. They are simple tips, but many people do not consider the benefits of photo optimization. There are a ton of indexed articles out there, most people skimp on image optimization, so it is possible to pick up image search traffic. Optimize your photos, you might be sorry if you don’t.

It’s all in the tags ??? An untagged photo is a waste of space. Search engines see text not images. Make sure that the ALT text is there and give it a decent description. Use lots of keywords in the description, but be sparing in the title.

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Landing Page Optimization Makes Sales SenseWriting by Nick Stamoulis on Tuesday, 11 of December , 2007 at 8:06 am

Landing pages are a great way to drive traffic to products that you wish to promote. They are marketing tools and to the vast majority of us they look ugly, maybe even a little spammy, but they move products like there is no tomorrow. A quick landing page optimization checklist is below:

Did you work from a style sheet?Is the content entirely original?Are the images optimized?Is the material sales oriented?Is it longer than 250 words but to the point?Did you make an effort to highlight keywords and key phrases that you want your visitors to read?Does it flow logically from one section to another?Does it include a purchase button?

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The Difference Between www. and http:// With No www.Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Thursday, 6 of December , 2007 at 6:11 pm

These 20 Design tips are a gold mine. I’d like to elaborate on though:

12. Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html. Ditch the index.html or default.php or whatever the page is and always link back to your domain.

A lot of webmasters are confused, particularly new webmasters, about the difference between domain names with www at the forefront and those without. If you purchase a domain anme these days you’ll automatically get a redirect from www to the non-www site, or vice versa. In other words, you won’t find a competitor snagging up one while you’ve got the other. Buying one buys both. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have anything to worry about.

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Website Copywriting: The Most Important IngredientWriting by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, 5 of December , 2007 at 9:54 am

What is the most important ingredient to good website copy? Is it keywords? Is it repetition of those keywords? Links? Good meta tags?

Answer: None of the above.

The key to good website copywriting is to write copy that gets people interested. The first thing that attracts readers??? attention is the headline. Does your headline shout, ???Read me???? If not then you likely won???t find many readers. Learn to write good headlines and people will read what you write.

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Search Marketing Standard ReviewWriting by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, 21 of November , 2007 at 3:46 pm

Search Marketing Standard is the leading print publication covering the search marketing industry. It offers practical and informative articles, interviews, tips and advice from leading experts in the industry, trend analysis and much more.

If you’ve been looking for a definitive source on search marketing then look no further. The Search Marketing Standard is a magazine that sets the standard in knowledge and information on all things related to search marketing.

Published four times a year, the magazine covers every topic necessary for businesses wanting to be successful online. Among the topics covered include:

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Here’s a tip for first timers at an SMX conference like myself, don’t rush out of the bathroom without drying your hands and then say hi to Danny Sullivan for the first time trying to explain that the moisture on your hands is water and not some other liquid.

My coverage is not the live blogging variety which the most excellent Tamar Weinberg and Lisa Barone serve up. I hadn’t been online since travelling to London as the internet access did not work in my room and I am sure that my mouse hand is suffering muscle wastage.

Suffice it to say Internet access was not the hotels’ best point. The food was superb though, and that goes a long way.

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StumbleUpon Toolbar Optimized For DesignWriting by Nick Stamoulis on Thursday, 8 of November , 2007 at 4:28 pm

If you are a StumbleUpon user then you are probably already aware of SUs new toolbar, version 3.15. If not, then I’d suggest that you download it right away. If you’re not a StumbleUpon user then I’d recommend you start using it, and StumbleUpon’s new toolbar is the reason why.

Seriously, this is the coolest new tool. The toolbar will tell you when one of your friends has a new stumble. Not only that, but when you perform a Design search, you’ll be told on the SERP how many StumbleUpon users reviewed the websites that appear on the SERP. All you have to do is one click and you’ll be taken to StumbleUpon to see the user reviews. Furthermore, the toolbar will tell you if any of your friends stumbled a particular result. That makes stumbling all the more fun and all the more essential.

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