Tel: 0113 2170419
www.littlefishwebdesign.com
3 steps to search engine traffic
Saturday, December 30, 2006
If your website needs more visitors, a useful article named "3 steps to search engine traffic" really does help you understand how to increase search engine traffic. The three steps go through the process of choosing your keywords, creating a page for each keyword and then obtaining backlinks to that page. The only thing I think the article missed mentioning explicitly is keyword density - just remember when writing a page or article to write it for you web visitors, not the search engines. Keeping your keyword to less than 8% of the page should ensure that your site is readable.
Web Safe Fonts
When designing web pages, it can be difficult to know which fonts are safe to use - fonts are not attached to a webpage - they have to reside on your visitor's computer and this is where the problem lies.
You might have a fantastic collection of different typefaces you want to use, but if your website visitor doesn't have that particular one, your website will look completely different as their web browser will resort to a default.
There are a few ways to overcome this - firstly specify a font-family in the stylesheet and check your design using these variants e.g.
font-family:arial,verdana,sans-serif
Or you can use a site such as font tester which lists web-safe and other fonts. Their list of web-safe fonts are:
- Arial
- Arial Black
- Bookman Old Style
- Comic Sans MS
- Courier
- Courier New
- Garamond
- Georgia
- Impact
- Lucida Console
- Lucida Sans Unicode
- MS Serif
- MS Sans Serif
- Palatino Linotype
- Symbol
- Tahoma
- Times New Roman
- Trebuchet MS
- Verdana
- Webdings
- Wingdings
Labels: webdesign
Blogger Classic Template Labels Hack
Friday, December 29, 2006
I've spent quite a while (and am taking a short break from) labelling all my posts in the new Blogger. However, I use my own template (classic blogger style) and can't make use of the widgets that new blogs can in layout mode.
As it is, someone can click on one of the labels at the bottom of a post and see all other related posts, but what if someone wanted to see a list of them?
A bit of lateral thinking later and here's your answer (many thanks to JavaScript Kit for their dropdown menu code):
<form name="labellist">
<select name="labels" onchange="go()">
<option value="path/to/your/blog/labels/here">label name</option>
etc...
</select>
<script type="text/javascript">
<!-- function go(){
location=
document.labellist.labels.
options[document.labellist.labels.selectedIndex].value
}
//-->
</script>
<input name="labelgo" value="Go" onclick="go()" type="button">
</form>
<noscript>
<p>
<a href="/blog/labels/adsense.htm">label name</a><br /> etc...
</p>
</noscript>
Just paste this code into your template where you want the labels to go. You do need to know a few things first though - where your labels are kept (should be a subfolder of your blog folder), and the names of all your labels so you can list them.
This method works whether your blog visitor has javascript enabled or not - if they do, they'll see the dropdown box and select from there. If javascript has been disabled, they'll see a list of all your labels.
Labels: blogging, programming
Can keyloggers be beneficial?
A keylogger is a software program or hardware device that records every keystroke on the computer on which it is installed. These keystrokes are stored for someone to review later. Most people have heard of them after one has been installed as spyware and passwords or other sensitive data have been stolen.
However, keyloggers are not always detrimental- they can be used in a variety of ways, from simply recording productivity on data entry tasks to the more complex issue employee monitoring (e.g. to ensure compliancy with legal issues or to check logs to make sure employees are not breaking their company's rules on internet use).
On a more trivial level, if you are terrible at remembering passwords, or for the life of you were sure that you bookmarked that really interesting website but now can't find it, a quick check of your keylogger logs would confirm what you were looking for.
And to take this analogy further, a keylogger could help protect you and your children. If your teen swears they've not used your credit card online, you can confirm whether they're telling the truth or not. And for your younger children, you can silently monitor what they do online without them feeling that you're 'cramping their style'.
If you are looking for keylogger software, try looking at Spector Pro - it has been awarded the PC Magazine Editor's Choice award on several occasions.
Labels: pp
Search eBay more effectively
If you use eBay regularly you may not be aware of how to increase the effectiveness of your searches. Here's a few tips below that may help:
1) Be specific
If you are looking for a particular item, put in more details e.g. if you want blue shoes type in 'blue shoes' rather than 'shoes'. If you are looking for a poster for your favourite band, type in 'bandname poster' rather than 'bandname'. Try also years or brands for specific results.
2) Search both titles and descriptions
The length of titles in eBay can be quite limiting - so if your search returns no results, try searching descriptions too.
3) eBay and Google search differently - use singular and plural versions
When searching in Google, your results will come back with both singular and plural variations. eBay doesn't do this so try both versions e.g. 'fish' and 'fishes'
4) eBay and Google search differently - and / or
Search engines do not use 'and' and 'or' literally - they allow you to use them to help target the results of your search e.g. 'fish and chips' will only find pages containing the words 'fish' and 'chips'. eBay on the other hand will only return results with exactly 'fish and chips' in the title / description.
5) Don't use punctuation unless it is standard
Again, eBay treats punctuation literally, so unless the item title or description uses it, you won't find any results e.g. if you want a t-shirt, search for 'tshirt', 't-shirt' and 't shirt'.
6) Searching for phrases
Typing in 'little fish' will find any results containing the words 'little' and 'fish'. Typing "little fish" (double quote marks) in the search box will find results containing words in that order only.
7) Removing a word from results
Typing in 'fish' may return results that also include sharks. What if you don't want sharks? Enter your search query as 'fish -sharks'
8) Removing multiple words from results
Typing in 'fish' may return results that also include sharks and whales. What if you don't want sharks and whales? Enter your search query as 'fish -sharks -whales'
9) Variations on words
From example 5 above, it would be time consuming to enter three different search terms, so instead enter (tshirt, t-shirt, t shirt) as your search term.
10) Wildcard searches
From example 3 above, it would be time consuming to enter different variations, so instead enter 'fis*' and any results containing 'fis' followed by anything else will be returned e.g. fish, fishing, fishes, fission etc...
11) Specific searches
If you know that you only want 'fish', type in "fish" (double quotes) to ensure that you only get results containing 'fish'. With some searches eBay automatically changes your search term to match more items. Searches using double quote marks will prevent this from happening.
Find eBay items in the UK or in the US.
Labels: ebay, searchengines
Font-tastic free fonts and dingbats!
Thursday, December 28, 2006
There's hundreds of times that you could use different typefaces in your documents and projects - my sister for example at Christmas, made placecards for the whole family each member with a different font to reflect their hobby or job - and they looked fantastic.
Urban Fonts is a great looking site which offers free fonts and dingbats to download. They have a distinct 'web 2.0' look and feel - curvy corners, slight 3D effect on the logo and bright colours. The site is well laid out and easy to navigate with features such as the top searches shown as a word cloud, featured free font of the day, useful font articles, categorised fonts and a blog.
One feature that I did like? No pop-ups! There are ads on the site but they don't obscure or obstruct your view, and with providing over 8000 free fonts, I think they're probably entitled to try and earn some money!
When you've chosen a font category or are viewing your search results, you can select whether to view both free and commercial fonts or just free ones or just commercial ones. From these results you can download the font directly for both windows and macintosh, or if you click for further details, you can then see the full range of letters available or even better, type in your own text and font colour to see what it will look like in a range of sizes which is a really nifty feature.
A 'dingbat' in case you've not come across the term, is used to describe a font with symbols and shapes rather than alphabetical or numeric characters - common examples are wingdings and webdings in Windows.
Search Engine / Online Marketing
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
I recently posted about SEO / SEM (search engine optimisation / marketing) and what to look for when choosing a someone to do it for you. But what else can you do to ensure you get your money's worth?
- Make sure that a link building service offers one-way links not reciprocal ones, and that the links are either contextual (links embedded in text) or if they are in a list, in a tightly themed list with no more than about 15 external links on that page. A variety of sources for your links are important, and so is the speed at which you accumulate links - don't grab 100 links on one day and then for months.
- Don't allow anyone to guarantee you top rankings - this cannot be guaranteed by anyone unless they use underhand black-hat techniques that will get you thrown out of the search engine listings.
- Ignore services that offer to submit your site to 100,000 search engines - think quality not quantity. There are only a handful of good quality search engines and many of these 100,000 sites are really link farms which will damage your site's online reputation.
DiscountClick appear to offer quality services without making false promises if you want to pay someone to improve your site's visibility in the search engines.
Pay Per Post - money making on your blog!
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Pay Per Post is a new blog marketing technique that works for both bloggers and advertisers. If you have a website, the best way to get known is to get links back to your site - the more organic (natural) a link the better. For advertisers, rather than pay to have your text links on sites where your site is listed in a links section, Pay Per Post allows your site to be mentioned as part of a blog post (see the 'blog marketing' link above).
And for bloggers, Pay Per Post is an easy platform to make some money - signup for the program by entering a few details about yourself and your blog, and once approved, look through the opportunities to see what you want to blog about. Specifications are straightforward with a minimum word count, whether the tone of the post should be positive, negative or neutral, how much you'll be paid, the links and/or images you need to include etc...the Pay Per Post website programmers have done well in producing a site that takes you through step by step so even Internet beginners will manage. Payment is by PayPal once your post has been approved and left for a 30 day minimum.
There are some rules - paid for posts cannot be successive and your blog must be at least 90 days old with 20 pre-existing posts. This helps keep the quality of blogs for potential advertisers. Conversely, you don't have to take any opportunity that you feel is unsuitable for your blog, which keeps the quality of your blog at the standard you set.
Christmas Holidays
Just to wish everyone who drops by the blog a happy Christmas and New Year.
Remember to put 'check the LittleFish Web Design blog regularly' on your New Year's resolution list, if you don't already do it!
Labels: misc
Need AdWords or SEM help?
Thursday, December 21, 2006
So you've got your website launched and are now waiting for that flood of visitors to come and buy...what next? Well, a bit of SEO (search engine optimisation) will help your site be found in the search engines which will lead to more visitors which in turn will lead to more sales / leads or whatever your primary objective is.
SEO or SEM (Search Engine Marketing) can be daunting so if you're not sure what you're doing, hiring the services of a professional company can help. If you want AdWords help to gain in the paid-search listings ensure that the company you choose is AdWords qualified whilst if you want help in the organic listings, check that your chosen professional can show you their portfolio so you can check out their claims. In the past, there have been instances where unscrupulous companies employed 'black hat' techniques that get you banned from the search engines faster than you can blink!
Companies such as Apogee Search can help you turn your web fortunes around, and as they have recently joined the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organisation, you can be sure they are ethical in their approach.
Labels: pp
Social Networking Conference
Whilst you hear frequently of Internet Marketing events and Search Engine and coding seminars, it's not often you hear of other Internet events. The Social Networking Conference however is attempting to change this.
Billed as "the business conference for community and social networking websites", this 2-day conference is expecting over 300 participants and takes place in Miami next month. Topics will include how to: improve online business efficiency, identify new technologies and increase both web traffic and conversion rates.
For further details see http://www.socialnetworkingconference.com/conference-miami-2007.php
Labels: pp
Blogging for pennies - a disclosure
I have recently signed the LittleFish Web Design Blog up to some 'get paid for blogging' services.
Why am I mentioning this?
I feel that it is only fair to readers that they are fully informed of any potential changes to the blog.
How will I tell?
Any posts that I am paid for will be labelled 'PP'.
What difference will it make?
I will always retain the integrity of this blog - I won't just jump in to make some money, and in fact, it may even encourage me to update the blog more. In summary - the only difference you may see is more frequent posting!
Labels: legal
Internet Search Engine Safety
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
McAfee - famous for their antivirus software - compared the safety of five leading search engines earlier this year using their SiteAdvisor to generate website ratings:
"We again find that most leading search engines are similar in the safety of the sites they link to, though AOL replaces MSN as the safest engine and Yahoo! replaces Ask as the engine with the most risky results. Across search engines, we find sponsored results significantly less safe than search engines' organic results. Unsavory e-mail conduct is the dominant security risk although search engine users are also heavily exposed to risky downloads, browser exploits, and scams."They recently revisited these results to see what had changed - the updated report states that search results from Google, AOL, and Ask.com are less likely to lead to dangerous sites than they did six months ago whilst MSN's and Yahoo's results however, send users to more risky sites than in May.
So should we worry? I don't think so, it's more about being aware - overall less than 5% of sites were considered unsafe and most of these were from sponsored results. It also depends on how well protected your computer is as to how much notice you feel you can take of the results.
See the report summary for more details.
Labels: browsers, searchengines, security
Top 10 downloads of the past 10 years
Thursday, December 14, 2006
CNET have published their list of the ten applications that best represent the top downloading trends in the past 10 years, via their download.com site:
- ICQ - instant messenger
- Winamp - music player
- Napster - controversial turned legit file sharing / music service
- Firefox - see button in top left for more details
- WinZip - file compression
- iTunes - music player and organiser
- Ad-aware - spyware detection and removal
- Skype - free calls over the internet
- RealPlayer - audio and video streaming
- Acrobat Reader - PDF reader
Labels: resources
PHP and MySQL tutorials for beginners
Monday, December 11, 2006
If you are wanting to start using databases to drive aspects of your websites, I thoroughly recommend two tutorials.
The first - http://www.freewebmasterhelp.com/tutorials/phpmysql assumes absolutely no knowledge and walks you through setting up the database, inserting information, displaying data, selecting specific records, error trapping, updating and deleting records. It's very straightforward and surprisingly simple.
The second is at http://www.tizag.com/mysqlTutorial/ and again assumes no knowledge but covers everything in more detail and continues to a more advanced level. I probably refer to this more often than the first tutorial now.
Tizag also has a great PHP tutorial if you need a starting point there.
And of course, you could always refer to the PHP and MySQL manuals.
Labels: programming, webdesign
Free faster safer surfing
Saturday, December 09, 2006
OpenDNS is a free service with no software to download or install that can vastly improve your surfing experience.
As well as blocking phishing sites and speeding up your surfing, it can intelligently correct typos in your address bar e.g. if you type 'og' rather than 'org' it will still take you to the 'org' site.
It works by you changing your DNS settings. If that sounds scary, don't worry, full illustrated instructions are provided, whether you do this by changing your broadband router settings or on your desktop or mobile phones.
See OpenDNS for more details.
Click for HIV & AIDS funding
If you visit Light To Unite and click on the candle, Bristol-Myers Squibb will donate $1 to the National Aids Fund. For just a few seconds of your time, you can make a big difference (and it seems that you can click daily as well).
Labels: charity
Why you should listen to Matt Cutts
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Anyone that owns a website and is responsible for the content should check Matt Cutt's blog occasionally.
He's also known as 'Google Guy' and regularly posts really useful information on how to stay on the right side of Google.
As someone who works within the GooglePlex, he really knows what he's talking about so you are wise to take note.
A good summary on some of his earlier posts can be found at SEO EggHead.
Pearls of wisdom include:
- Use dashes rather than underscores in URLs
- Don't use hidden, or nearly-hidden text
- Use user-friendly URLs
- Use the nofollow tag
More google info can also be found at their webmaster central blog.
Labels: blogging, searchengines, seo
Links
Previous Posts
- How linkable is your blog?
- Stop Yahoo! tracking your every move
- Grab your free copy of Lucid SEO
- Wordtracker coupon code - 15% discount
- Free Wordpress theme generator
- Comprehensive list of CSS techniques
- Web 2.0 online generators
- Tracking your e-mail marketing campaigns
- The Internet Marketing Myth - A Review
- Review: MyBlogLog and its marketing potential
Archives
Categories
Buy made to measure wooden blinds online at Blinds-4UK