TheSEOFiles

Hollywood CPA

2008-12-26T13:54:00.000-08:00

Acosta & Burns are Certified Public Accountants licesnsed in the state of Florida and located in Hollywood, FL, USA. Acosta & Bruns CPAs are a full service CPA firm.

Contact Acosta & Burns today to see how they can help you with your tax issues.

How to Beat the Economic Downturn with your web site

2008-12-08T09:41:00.000-08:00

How to Beat the Economic Downturn with your Web Site

In the current economic down turn many business owners are looking at how they can make their businesses more efficient. I have written an article covering all of the following points on Ikroh.com. Take a look and see how you can employ the following principles to make your web site more efficient and make the most out of the traffic that you already have.

Ikroh.com, Affordable Search Engine Marketing Solutions

Usability Checklist

2008-11-25T05:45:00.000-08:00

Usability Checklist

Web usability is now a big issue and concern not only for web designers and online marketers but also for SEO's as user behavious can have a direct effect on a sites search engine rankings.
We have put together this quick usability check list to guide you on the right path to creating a usable and friendly site that people will find easy to read, use and navigate. These are the vital ingredients needed to create a usable web site.

Download Time
Page Layout
Browser Compatability
Headings
Navigation
Search Function
Static Site Map
Content
Simplicity
Download Times
Page Download time is a big issue even today. The fact of the matter is that people are inpatient and on the web, fresh new information is only a matter of clicks today. If you'r site doesn't give the user what they want, when they want it, ie right NOW!, then you will probably lose that visitor before they have even had a chance to see your site.

To make sure download times are kept to a minimum make sure that images are the correct size and are optimised for the web. Far too often huge high quality images are stuffed into a tiny space on a web page which causes a site to load much more slowly than it needs to.
If you aim to make a fully downloadable by a 56K Modem connection within about 5 seconds you will be on the right path for download times. There is a nice article on search engine guide all about reducing download times.

Here is a nice download calculator to see how long it would take to download a file of a certain type. To work this out for your site add up all of the files and images on one page, that includes javascript and css files, add up the file sizes and put the resulting size into the calculator. You may get quite a suprise!
Browser Compatability
Browser compatability is still a big issue today. Despite a lot of effort for web standardisation and some good attempts to bring things closer together, we still have browser compatability issues. This means that one browser may display things slightly differently to another, or in some case not at all!

This is why a web site should always be developed with cross browser compatability in mind and tested in Internet Explorer and Fire Fox at the very least. Different computer systems, screen sizes, screen resolution and colour depths all play a part in the user experience. Testing is essential.
Rekying on the latest versioon of Macromedia Flash Player to include the latest function is great as an application but consider that not everyone will have the latest version of flash player. This means your flashy new site might not be visible to 90% of the people that try and use it!

Google Analytics gives you a host of data here. Compare bounce rates between Internet Explorer and Firefox. Check with Mac and Windows systems and different screen sizes. If you identify a large diffence in bounce rate you have probably uncovered a browser or system combination compatibility error.

Page Layout
Page layout is important as people come to expect things to be in a certain place on a web site. It is a parady that design usually dictates something new and imaginative but for web design it is important to stick to convention.

This means a content in the center of the page, a header at the top, navigation across the top or on the left, a page title, a logo in the top left hand corner and some other design features that make all of it look attractive.

Google gives a heat map of people's focus on a web page. Whilst this particular image is about Google AdWords views the smae applies to general use of a web site. This shows how important it is to attract people's focus to the right areas of the page at the right time.
Page Headings
Page Headings keep a page focused and help to split it up into manageable chunks. On the web people don't read all of the content on a page they scan through. This is why having a bold heading is important and useful for attention grabbing to each specific section.
Site Navigation System
Navigation is one of the most experiamented areas of web design. The onue has been on creating something dynamic and funky but it should realy be on keeping it simple and usable. There are some drop down menu systems that only work on Windows and Internet Explorer. This cuts out a lot of people that could be spending money on your site.

I like to load sub menus permanently into a seperate pane if I have to use them at all. There is a three click rule that says you should be able to find what you want on a site within three clicks from the homme page. Can you do this on your site? This is brings us neatly onto the reasons for having a site search facility on your site.
Site Search Facility
Like I said, people are lazy if they can't find something they will click elsewhere. But all those lazy people who couldn't be bothered to click through several pages on your site might stick around if you put up a site search facility. This lets them put in exactly what they are looking for and if a match is found you have kept a visitor that you would have otherwise lost.
Static HTML Sitemap
A static HTML sitemap is a good thing to include as it lets a search engine index all of the files you have on your site easily. But it has another classic and now almost antique function of letting users have a quick over view of the site. It is a map of your site thus it is called a "site map".

You can easily layout all of the pages on your site for visitors to see. If you have a very large site you can create sectional or sub site maps. Google recomends keeping links on a page to below 100. You can also add an XML sitemap to further helps search engines find all of your pages.

Good readable content
Once you have kept a visitor with good design and layout you must have good readable content. If the content is not readable and engaging a visitor will simply click back and go else where. You don't want this at all so you had better write some good content!

Effective use of CSS is good to help form the look of a site. An important thing with your content is to use a sans serif fon't as it is much more readable. Also note that upper case letters take 50% longer to read than lower case letters. This means that all of your capitalised headings are taking people longer to read!

Write small paragraphs and keep them focused to a specific topic.... I'm still talking about writing content here so I must be doing a reasonable job right?

Simplicity
I am a big fan of the KISS theory or method - KISS = Keep It Simply Stupid! Some of the best inventions in the world are increadibly simple ideas. By keeping web sites simple they do not appear too busy and don't distract a user or cause visitors to get confused.

Make it Useable to Make it Successful
Having all of the creates products and content in the world will not help you at all if your site is not user friendly. User behaviour is a major factor in a web sites success and now influences search engine rankings. As an SEO, you simply can't afford not to pay attention to web usability.
Read some of the resource below and learn more about this important aspect of web development.

Resources
User Behaviour Issues
Add a Search Facility
SEO Copy Writting
Get a Google Analytics Account
Use Heading Tags Effectively
Utilise Broken Links
Deep Linking
XML Sitemaps
How to reduce download times
Download Calculator
Usability Check List from Net Mechanic
Google Heat Map

Google SEO Guide

2008-11-13T10:50:00.000-08:00

Google has created its own SEO guide!

Google has created its own SEO guide in answer to frequent requests by SEOs and web masters at Search Engine events and conferences.

The Google SEO guide is a helpful document for newbie webmasters and SEOs alike. It covers the basic principles and defines what is important with respect to optimising for the Google search engines.

It does go so far as to say and re-emphasize that you should create content for visitors and not search engines. The SEO guide is intended to be just that.

One thing I find that is worth noting is that it completely omits the META keyword tag and only shows the META description tag. It has long since been known that Google ignores the keywords tag but many people have failed to realise that.

I recommend that anyone should download Google's SEO guide even if you are familiar with SEO techniques.

Google SEO Guide

Google with a dose of Flu!

2008-11-12T10:30:00.000-08:00

Google is dabbling in medical issues now!

Google has launched a new tool called Google Flue Trends to help the US government track Flu trends and characteristics throughout the US.

If a particular trend shows an outbreak the system will notify the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention informing them of an impending epidemic.

The way the technology works it to look at the search usage of specific terms associated with flu like Influenza and other related terms and amalgamates the data in order to predict the scale of the problem in a particular area.

Google Trends technology has been used in online marketing and SEO for some time now and is a useful tool in its own right. This new implantation is just a nice way to use the data in a positive and helpful way. This is closely in line with Google's goal of organising the world's information.

Way to go Google!

Acchueeee!

Are .edu and .gov links Really that benneficial?

2008-11-10T14:57:00.000-08:00

For a while now in the SEO industry .edu and .gov links have been considered link gold but recent suggestions and even some confirmation from Matt Cutts suggests that Google does not actually give more weight to a link just because of the nature of its TLD.

Matt Cutts indicates that .edu and .gov links receive no more PR than they would if they were a normal .com domain.

Whilst this may be true, many .gov and .edu sites are authorities on their respective subject by nature of their content and are thus highly relevant and what you are looking for any way.

So, .edu and .gov links might not quite be the linking gold that we have considered them but if they are relevant to your topic and theme they are still a pretty good bet for a link!

Google Launches New Web Browser! Download Google Chrome!

2008-11-09T09:42:00.000-08:00

Google has entered the Web Browser market with its very own Google Chrome Web Browser.

Features include

Tabbed Browsing
Most Viewed Sites Pane
Icognitio Browsing for Secure browsing
Way Bookmarking

Technology

One of the most interesting things about Google Chrome is perhaps its lack of features. For years Web Browser producers have tried to push the latest and greatest features with a full on Browser war developing in reaction.

Whilst this all seemed like technical advancement it actually caused a great deal of problems with web standards which caused all kinds of headaches for web developers and users alike.

Google however in its typical innovative way has managed to provide us with a technically advanced but incredibly simple and easy to use alternative. Whilst its still in Beta test mode (a term which Google likes to use a lot!) it is a fully functional browser and will not doubt develop a cult like following in no time at all.

One of the more interesting technical aspects is that Google separates each individual tab and browser window with its own Process Thread thereby stopping the bottle necking effect most tabbed browsers are plagued with.

If one web page crashes - the rest of the Chrome browser carries on regardless. There is even a neat crash recovery utility to help you out if a web page does crash.

What does Google get from it?

As usual Google doesn't mis a tick and gets to view a lot of web usage statistics and data from its new Chrome browser. Whilst this seems to get some people twitching about privacy and security issues I am of the opinion that Google will use the data in a sensible and innovative way to product better products and more efficient web technologies.

Google is upfront about this though and gives you the option to not send any data and usage information through by way of a simple check box.

Conclusion

Google has produced a really neat, easy to use web browser that doesn't try and do too much and lets you get on with the job. Well done Google as usual!

You can download Google Chrome here...

Google Calls off its Yahoo Ad Deal

2008-11-06T14:22:00.000-08:00

The Senior Vice President of Google, David Drummound announced that the impending Ad Deal with Yahoo was being called due to the likeliehood of an extended legal battle with the US Justice Department.

Several Regulators, US Justice Department antitrust officials and Microsoft had all voiced concerns over the market dominating entity that would have been created.

Whilst Microsoft must be sighing in relief, Yahoo must be wondering what next? and Google, as ever, will find some new inovative technology to capitalise on.