Small Business Design Resources

Outgoing Links and SEO

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What is Flash and is it suitable for your business?

Flash is software that uses animation to create multimedia elements for websites. Flash on a web page is usually used to establish interactivity with visitors. It could be a button, form, movie, cartoon, or even a game. Take a look at the following examples of different uses of Flash:

Flash focused sites (full Flash sites):
Moodstream (brainstorming tool)
Uniroyal Fun Cup (racing game)
Chipotle (restaurant)

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Understanding and Improving Google PageRank

There’s no question that having your small business website on the first page of Google results is good for traffic. Google has been used for more than 70% of U.S. Internet searches so far in 2010, making it by far the Internet’s most used search engine. One reason Google is so popular is that Internet searchers trust the results it returns. Google’s method for putting together a list of great search results relies heavily on PageRank (PR), a number from 0-10 that reflects a web page’s importance. Average PageRank is 3-5; a PageRank of 6-7 is considered extremely good. Only a few elite websites have PageRanks of 8 or above, and only Google and a handful of others have PageRanks of 10. PageRank is a logarithmic calculation, meaning that each level is harder to reach than the last. For example, moving from PR 2 to PR 3 is easier than moving from PR 3 to PR 4. It also means that a PageRank of 4 is more than twice as good as a PageRank of 2.

The formula for calculating PageRank is patented and a closely guarded secret; according to Google, PageRank is determined by looking at more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. But even though you can’t know all the details of Google’s formula, there are some things you can do to increase your PageRank. Read more »

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Quick Tip: Add Customer Reviews to Boost SEO Rank

Customer reviews or testimonials when written directly on your website can increase your SEO rank. This is because reviews are generally considered as content and usually will include keywords that are associated with your company/products/services. Content with targeted keywords are always a plus with the search engines.

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Quick Tip: Update Your Website Often

Updating your website often keeps your website fresh in search engines. When I say update I’m not talking about a constant redesign, I’m referring to content. Search engines love text, so the more often your website has fresh content for them to scan, the more “points” your website gets for being an up-to-date source for visitors. The best way to add content to your website is by publishing articles on your blog of course. Learn more about What is Blogging.
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Quick Tip: Link Correctly to Your Homepage

It’s very important for SEO purposes that you link to your homepage correctly. Basically when you link from your inner pages or another website back to your homepage you must be sure that you’re linking directly to the root address, in other words link directly to your domain name.

So for example if your homepage is saved as home.html DON’T link to yourwebsite.com/home.html instead, just link to yourwebsite.com

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Optimizing Your Website Content

Your website might be well implemented, have a nice easy flow, attractive color scheme and easy navigation, and your product might be the best gadget ever invented or the best service in the business. But if people can’t find you, they can’t buy from you. It’s that simple.

Search Engine Optimization refers to creating a site that is keyword rich. Keywords are the words that people type into their favorite search engine to find what they are looking for. For example, if your website sells shoes, you will want keywords such as shoes, pumps, high heels, loafers, patent leather, boots etc. More creative keywords or keyphrases might include descriptive phrases such as blue suede shoes, sexy 4 inch heels, pumps that are to die for, and so on. Most people post articles on their website to increase keyword density.

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Keys to Search Engine Optimization:

You have built your website and published it to the web; you sit back and wait patiently but your site doesn’t show up in any major search engine. You might start to wonder; why won’t my website show up in a Google search? If you just sit and wait for your website to show up in a search engine such as Google, you might be waiting for weeks. If this is happening to you it’s time to review your search engine optimization strategy. Here are a few key pointers to ensure you are doing all the right things.

Getting your site to the top of the search engines is both an art and a science. Websites use crawlers and “bots” (short for robot) to crawl all the sites on the web. Using a complicated series of proprietary algorithms they assign rankings to web sites based on your site’s keywords. The phrase Search Engine Optimization refers to the art of building a site that ranks high in the search engines. To check your google ranking you can go to http://www.prchecker.info. Your site must be published before it will be ranked and it may take a few weeks after you publish the site before you have a ranking. That’s because it takes some time fort the search engines to find you. There are millions of websites on the internet.

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