Archive for the 'Design Solution' Category

Understanding Inbound Links

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

Many of types of links can be beneficial for direct traffic if placed well, but will often only be counted once or twice rather than dozens or hundreds of times no matter how many times they occur on a web site. The first concept to understanding is that there are many types of links that can be targeted, not just an anchor text link with two or three words to a particular page of your site.

1) URL or Web Page Links – these links are directed to a URL of a web site. This type of link to a specific page does increase the general authority of that particular page and is beneficial to use to increase the natural occurrences of inbound links to a web site.

2) Name Links – these links include the anchor text of the particular page or perhaps even the title of the page’s context. An example might be a page with the anchor text of “SEO Position” where the URL used points to our own company home page.

The later of the two above is one of the most used types of links from directories or resource-type sites who simply describe the “landing page” with more intuitive text for the user to understand the page’s contents.

3) Exact Anchor Text – this type of inbound link points to and describes exactly what a page is about using specific targeted keywords. An example of this linking method would be the anchor text “content writing” which points to a specific page about content writing and targets specific search terms. These types of text links can be confused with name links mentioned above, although they are more targeted and commonly used by webmasters wanting to build ranking for particular terms and pages. Name links happen more randomly, making them seem more natural to search engines.

The second are of inbound links include the locations in which links are acquired.

1) Contextual Linking – links in this category are simply links within any body of context or paragraph/sentence where the link appears. This type of link is perhaps the most beneficial since search engines have the ability to understand context wrapping around the text link, thus weighing it more heavily as a resource or authority.

2) Directory Links – simply achieved by the “title” field that almost every directory asks for when submitting your URL, these types of links appear on categorized pages and often include a simple anchor text with a description after it. Directory links can be beneficial for your web site if understood and used properly.

3) Site Wide Links or Run of Site (ROS) – These links were used by many webmasters and companies a year or two ago and are still used today. The effectiveness of these links are less weighted because search engines now understand that, let’s say, link to site “widgetmaker.com” appears on every page on the right-hand side in the navigation area, thus saturating its effectiveness.

Sitepal Animated Characters

Sunday, June 14th, 2009

Thanks to Sitepal from Oddcast, it is relatively easy and inexpensive to add a lifelike animated character to your website. Sitepal allows all kinds of businesses to create animated, talking avatars for websites. These avatars can be used for a variety of applications such as customer service agents, virtual salesman, or even a reporter for news sites. Their eyes follow the mouse cursor.

Personalizing your character is flexible and easy. The system lets you choose hairstyles, shades, necklaces, shirts, mouths, and face models. For the audio, you can record a message using a microphone or use the pre-made audio. There is also a text-to-speech option that speaks the text you type in, although the voice often sounds computerized and unnatural. The avatars support 13 languages in 60 different voices.

According to Oren Levy, executive vice president of New York City Oddcast, there are 10,000 eBay auctions running with Sitepal virtual sales representative. These avatars aren’t there for decorative purposes, they produce real results. Some businesses customize characters targeted to sell only one product. Although Sitepal can be used anywhere, it is most effective with high consideration products like computers, large appliances, and furniture. They’re also effective when used with products facing tough competition.

4 Highest Secrets In Page Layout

Saturday, May 16th, 2009

Below are four highest secrets in page layout:

Most of the designers practice nowadays is to develop a ‘uniform-pages’ look. They try to use same background colors and other peculiarities to establish similarities to the homepage or other pages. But the fact is that viewers can be easily bored with that scheme. Placing lines in between contents also manifests division. Instead of using these lines, use blank ‘buffer zones’.

Do not forget that functionality is the king of web development. Moreover, keep the content and information full, tight and pretty useful. Use the space, don’t waste. Only leave a small percentage for blank spaces. Use the space cleverly in order for the website not to look crowded at the same time loose. Multiple columns are also advisable in order to maximize space.

The use and mastery of contrast is indispensable. Contrast is one thing that makes the page attractive. The use and mastery of it in color, value, size and weight will greatly affect the site’s appearance and edge. In fact a typeface may appear bigger with the use of contrast in color. The latter can also affect the look of organization of the page. At a glance, a page may appear organized or the exact opposite. That is the secret of contrast.

Centering it all is no good. The secret is doing the contrary and not centering everything. The latter will just make the page disorganized, strewn and drab.

Viewers always want something new and by giving them a repetitious work, they are pissed off and transfer to another site where they can feast both their eyes and mind.