Monday, July 27, 2009

Webdesigner's Success Guide - Free E-book!

If you've always wanted to take those web design skills and use them for your own business instead of someone elses, this book may be for you.

Web Designer's Success Guide is the definitive guide to starting your own freelance Web design business. In this book he gives designers step-by-step instructions on how to achieve many skills needed in order to go Freelance.

Take a look! It's an interesting read, and it's free!

Thursday, July 23, 2009

AdWords - A little about CPC

And now I bring to you an experiment in CPC.

Here are the results of looking up my keywords from the previous post with a budget of $20/day targeted at the USA and Canada:

Keywords Estimated Avg. CPC Estimated Ad Positions Estimated Clicks / Day Estimated Cost / Day
internet marketing $5.20 - $6.74 1 - 3 0 - 1 $4 - $6
search engine optimization $7.05 - $9.65 1 - 3 0 - 1 $2 - $3
web site design $4.78 - $6.22 1 - 3 0 - 1 $2 - $3
web traffic $4.76 - $6.05 1 - 3 1 - 2 $6 - $8
website traffic $4.26 - $5.48 1 - 3 0 - 1 $2 - $3

These results make it easy to figure out how much would be spent, and how much of a result I would get for my keywords. Now, say if I wanted to figure out my budget for my ad if I were to get 22 clicks per keyword a month. For that, you would add together each CPC result and multiply the result by the amount of clicks:

5.20 + 7.05 + 4.78 + 4.76 + 4.26 = 26.05 x 22 = $573.10
6.74 + 9.65 + 6.22 + 6.05 + 5.48 = 34.14 x 22 = $751.08

This leads to a budget of $573.10 - $751.08 for 22 days.

Now, people usually would like to get more for less. These results above were without an estimated CPC entered. What would happen if an estimated CPC of $1.50 were put in? As it turns out, the ad position number went up, and there were more estimated clicks.

AdWords ranks each ad based on a combination of the ad's CPC and the ad's click through rate. So, if a business created an irrelevant ad with a high CPC and it doesn't generate clicks, it's slowly moved to the bottom of the batch. This enabled business with a lower CPC to rank higher at less cost. So, the best combination would be a balanced CPC, along with top notch keywords. With the keywords themselves, don't use anything that the competition is using. Try to find the most unique but specific and popular keywords or phrases to gain the attention or the right audience, and get the most possible exposure. With a lot of thought and research, you'll be well on your way.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

AdWords - Best Keywords

On this blog, it would be beneficial to see how I'm going with my keyword direction.
So, I've been trying to find the best program or site out there that would help me find my top keywords. The one I've decided to go with is Google AdWords site, chosen because of the options it has available for the user for the low, low price of FREE. There are other options out there, but this will be the one focused on today. I'll be using a couple of articles as guides including this detailed article at Barry Wise to help me with discovering my top 5 keywords.

So. I enter my website into the field allowing Google to pick keywords from my site and let the marbles fly. This is what turns up:

Looking at all the keywords available, I can tell that they are all very popular with AdWords and that it would be next to impossible to pick them just with that. The ones that are somewhat unique don't have enough information available to make any kind of decision on them.
So, looking at the list, I'd be looking for something with a high global search rate, with a search rate of something close to that number to show that it hasn't gone down at all in popularity within the past month.

I'm thinking my best bets are:
  • search engine optimization (823,000 & 823,000) - even
  • website traffic (201,000 & 201,000) - even
  • internet marketing (1,830,000 & 1,500,000) - +330,000
  • web site design (673,000 & 450,000) - +223,000
  • web traffic (301,000 & 201,000) - +100,000
I was tempted to choose website marketing (673,000 & 135,000) over internet marketing at first, but then noticed that internet marketing had far more people searching that term. While website marketing had a better return, I thought the higher search amount and still positive return worth the risk.

I've noticed that there are little to no programs out there with KEI results for keywords. Arguably, KEI results make it easier to find the best results for your site, so it's a little suprising that Google wouldn't provide such an option for anyone using their tool. Then I remembered that they're probably trying to get users to use their products to their benefit, and it would only really benefit Google if users used their paid products to complement the free options. This keyword search has a bigger empasis on AdWords and helping you with that, rather than figuring out what would be best for your site. While that is unforunate, it is still useful for that reason. It was really easy to use and extremely helpful. The ability to download your keywords as a textfile or csv file for other use is great as well. It was a great way to discover that my site is still on track, although if I were doing more with this, I would have picked more than 5 keywords to work with.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Website Marketing (and more) Books of the Free Sort

Web design books are very useful. Especially when you have access to them for free.
Although many online sources don't allow you to save or print these books, that would be the point: if the book is there, you're more than likely going to keep coming back for access, or purchase a copy of it. Very smart marketing.

But that is a post for another day.

Here is a list of free, useful and relevant web books:

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Keywords Dos and Don'ts

When it comes to keywords, you don't want to be making any false moves that would cause you any trouble. There are good ways to use them, and there are bad ways.
This article shows many of correct and incorrect ways of using keywords, and gives some pretty good advice. Definitely worth a read!

Monday, July 13, 2009

Portfolio Website Major Overhaul Complete!

I have finally finished the redesign of my portfolio website and I am ecstatic! This site is over a years worth of planning. It might not look like much, but so much work went into it.
Everything describes a little bit of my personality, which was my goal. I wanted to find a unique way to display my work that I haven't really seen before, and while the concept itself has been done, the look has not. This would have to be the best site I've made yet, and I am excited to see what other improvements I can do to it as I learn more. I would not have been able to finish it without everything I've learned, and we'll see if the new SEO tips will help at all.

While it's not the greatest plan ever link-wise to create a one page site, I was planning to do more with it later on. Like for instance, I'd like to try out a link page using delicious someday, come up with things that I can share with other designers, that kind of stuff. It may all have been done before, but not by me, and that could bring something different.

Critique and compliments greatly welcomed. I'd like to hear what other kind of things I could do during the alteration time.
And now, back to homework.

Friday, July 10, 2009

xhtml is dead. long live xhtml!

The code wars are over. HTML5 WINS! But don't stop using XHTML 1.1, it's still valid: http://snurl.com/mit78

Friday, July 3, 2009

Intermission: Useless but trippy Javascript

We interrupt your useful reading to show you something either really funny or annoying, depending on your humor.
Go to a page with lots of images. Any page. I'll wait.
...
Ready? Okay.
Insert this Javascript into the address bar:
javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24;
x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200;
DI=document.getElementsByTagName("img");DIL=DI.length;
function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style;
DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=(Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5)+"px";
DIS.top=(Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5)+"px"}R++}setInterval('A()',5);
void(0);
Enjoy.
Code courtesy of this post.
And now back to our regular design posting.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

10 SEO myths debunked - iMediaConnection.com

Not everything you hear about SEO is true. This article will tell is just one of many that will tell you what and why about ranking.View

SEO Barriers - Inadequate Inbound Links

A lack of popular inbound links is a problem when it comes to good SEO. Without a healthy number of high quality links that point back, you'll be at a huge disadvantage. Promoting your site to build inbound links is one of the most important ways to increase page rank. There are many ways this can be done:
  1. Use XML news feeds to syndicate content to other sites
  2. Register feeds with news aggregators
  3. Write articles on topics for other sites and have a bio link to your site
  4. Create useful content properly, in ways that work for the web.
  5. Publicize new content with press releases.
  6. Get listed in major directories under appropriate categories
  7. Utilize social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace
  8. Get links from industry websites and discussion forums
  9. Use "high end" link exchanges, partner with others, and exchange links
Do these important things and you will be well on your way to a higher search rank, and getting out there. The easier it is to find you, the better your site will be.