NIPA is the leading web design company creating custom web design.

Every great business idea takes wings with the launch of a professionally designed website. Internet has redefined the way business is transacted and your website is the gateway to these business opportunities.

A verifiable online presence has become indispensable for every company – to lead its competition and to secure a dominant position in the industry. It’s not only important to reflect the business strategy of a company through its website but, it is equally important to engage your potential customers and partners into conversation.

First let me preface this article by stating that you should NOT create pages for the “gaming” of AdSense. Most companies who use AdWords are small to medium sized businesses trying to grow.

With rampant click fraud, those advertisers won’t be able to advertise, and AdSense won’t pay out as well.

That said, let’s begin the process.

For our example, our topic is that of “widgets”, so where do get started?

Create the page – Sounds simple enough, but there are some coding standards you should always use. They are:

• Name of the page – Use the name of the keyword you are targeting. So, in this example it would be widget.htm. You can use your web server’s technology as well, but if in doubt, you can never go wrong with the .htm
• Title the page – Use the keyword again for the title.
• Meta Tags – Yes, they are still used. Make sure you include the keywords in your meta keyword list, and give a definition of the word in your meta description tag
• H1 – Put your keyword in stylized H1 tags. Use CSS to make the tag look consistent to the rest of your site

Content – This is often the biggest obstacle non-writers have. Don’t worry, follow these steps and you’ll soon be on your way to original content.

• Go to MSN, Yahoo and Google
• Enter your keyword into the search box
• Look at the top 5 sites listed from each search engine
• Educate yourself on the topic from the content found on these sites

Page Copy – Now that you’ve absorbed more information, compose your own page of ORIGINAL content. You can take bits and pieces from the other pages, but be sure to inject your personality into your writing. That will make it uniquely yours.

Links – Don’t forget to link to authority sites about your subject. It’s very natural for web pages to have links to other sites, don’t forget about this key point. Take a moment to see why you need outbound links.

Traffic – The most obvious is getting traffic to your site. Your site will have higher paying ads if your page gets more traffic. If you need help with this, be sure to visit the SEO resources section.

Personally, I tried using the traffic generating sites, and quite frankly, they are a waste of time. Sure you’ll build up your traffic numbers, but it’s usually from an autosurfing program.

One last note. On September 1st, 2005 Google shut down my account because they suspected click fraud. I really don’t have a problem with them shutting me down, because as an advertiser I want to know that they are watching my money. However, I believe they should show proof of the supposed fraudulent activity. I was even proactive in letting them know when I saw suspicious activity, but they never replied to my inquires.

Here’s a great article on what to watch for, and how click fraud is committed.

I hope you have better luck than I did.

By seoarticles

CEO High Rankings

Those who’ve been in the SEO biz for a number of years know how much more competitive it is these days compared to a few years ago. The number of web pages indexed by search engines has doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in past years. On top of that, a good portion of site owners and webmasters know just enough SEO to be dangerous. In the golden age of SEO, the vast majority of websites hadn’t given a thought to the search engines, and when they did, it was only to place some keywords in their Meta tags. (Which, incidentally, didn’t help then either.) Those were the days when anyone who knew even the slightest bit about SEO could easily rank highly in all the major search engines, with very little effort. Even competitive areas were doable with just a little more work than their non-competitive counterparts.

The Competition Is Fierce

These days, it’s almost the exact opposite. Even keyword phrases that nobody’s searching for can sometimes be difficult to obtain high rankings with unless you really and truly know what you’re doing. And even then, those rankings may be here one day and gone the next. The problem is magnified for new businesses and new websites. If your site isn’t at least a few years old, your SEO efforts will be less likely to provide the results you want. This is one reason why your website optimization should always be seen as a long-term proposition.

It’s About Targeted Traffic, Not Rankings

As we move forward in this industry, webmasters, site owners, and SEOs need to shift their focus from asking how they can get this keyword to this position in this engine to how they can get more targeted traffic and convert it into customers. Unfortunately, a large portion of those looking into SEO services are still seeing the small picture. For instance, on the contact form on our High Rankings site, I ask people to tell me a little bit about their “business goals.” A good number who fill it out want something like “top-5 rankings in Google and Yahoo for this keyword.” Huh? That’s not a business goal! A business goal is more like “Bring more people to my website who are searching online for the types of products we sell.” (As a side note, soon after writing this, I got an email from someone whose goal was to have their Flash site be “#1 in all the search engines for the word ‘spring.’” I kid you not!)

Don’t get me wrong, I very much understand why people would love to move their rankings up from #11 to #1 for a highly sought-after and targeted keyword phrase. I’m quite sure it would very much increase their targeted traffic and their sales (assuming they’re doing everything else right). My frustration lies in the fact that there are people who believe that somehow an SEO company can magically snap their fingers or wave their magic wand and make it so.

Even the best SEOs are not magicians. They can’t simply place a site at the top of the engines when there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of others that offer basically the same thing, and provide basically the same information. If they could, you’d see a whole lot more millionaire SEOs.

Does this mean that SEO is dead?

Absolutely not! But SEO that focuses on rankings for the most highly sought-after keywords in any given space is most definitely dying. This doesn’t mean that you have to settle for keywords that receive few searches. It just means that you have to broaden your horizons and see the big picture.

Almost every time I review one of those “put me at #1″ prospects’ websites, I see tons of opportunities for fixing the site in general so that it will work better for both their users and the search engines. They are almost always so focused on their “money phrases” that they completely neglect many areas of their site. Instead they put their special phrase on every page and never research the thousands of others that are being typed into search engines every day.

Content for Content’s Sake

Another trend I’ve been seeing a lot lately is the creation of content simply for the sake of creating content. What’s that all about? SEOs certainly throw the words “good content” around a lot, but why is it that nobody seems to know what that means? We now have a whole cottage industry of companies who will allegedly write “good content” for you. Worse, there are even some that will *rent* you content! Newsflash…good content has nothing to do with the history of your products. Nor is good content a bunch of madlib spam pages where you simply substitute keyword phrases from one page into the other. Good content isn’t stuff you write for the search engines.

What Exactly Is Good Content?

Good content is unique. Really and truly unique. It is creative ideas that simply popped into your head which nobody else in your space has thought of yet. The key to good content is creativity. Unfortunately, creativity itself seems to be a dying art. Being creative isn’t looking at what your competitor is doing and copying them. It’s being a leader, not a follower. It’s having your own voice and your own opinions and expressing them, regardless of what others might think. It’s pouring your heart and soul into your website, not looking for the next quick fix. And it’s (say it with me) making your site the best it can be for your site visitors AND the search engines. It’s what brings targeted traffic to our own site for thousands of phrases, and it’s what will help your site gain traffic for whatever phrases relate to it. But it’s not easy, and it’s not fast. And it can’t be done with the flick of a switch.

Determine Your True Goals

So please…if your pet phrase isn’t ranking highly enough, don’t call me and don’t email me. In fact, don’t call or email *any* SEO company. Instead of calling, you need to reassess your goals. No SEO company in the world will be able to help you unless you are ready to forget about what you think you want, and learn more about what you really need. Read that last sentence again until you really understand it. Forget about what you think you want, and learn more about what you really need.

Beware of SEO Companies Who Will Tell You What You Want to Hear

And remember, there are plenty of SEO companies that will say they can do whatever you want them to do. You want to be #1 for “spring”? Sure, no problem. They will happily take your money, do some work, and promptly get no results. Don’t blame them though – they were just telling you what you wanted to hear.

Summary:
The ten most egregious offenses against users. Web design disasters and HTML horrors are legion, though many usability atrocities are less common than they used to be.

Since my first attempt in 1996, I have compiled many top-10 lists of the biggest mistakes in Web design. See links to all these lists at the bottom of this article. This article presents the highlights: the very worst mistakes of Web design. (Updated 2007.) Cartoon – Man searching for ‘Honalulu’ and getting no results. – Woman: ‘Oh, forget it. Let’s just go visit my mother in Fargo.’
1. Bad Search
Overly literal search engines reduce usability in that they’re unable to handle typos, plurals, hyphens, and other variants of the query terms. Such search engines are particularly difficult for elderly users, but they hurt everybody.

A related problem is when search engines prioritize results purely on the basis of how many query terms they contain, rather than on each document’s importance. Much better if your search engine calls out “best bets” at the top of the list — especially for important queries, such as the names of your products.

Search is the user’s lifeline when navigation fails. Even though advanced search can sometimes help, simple search usually works best, and search should be presented as a simple box, since that’s what users are looking for.
2. PDF Files for Online Reading
Users hate coming across a PDF file while browsing, because it breaks their flow. Even simple things like printing or saving documents are difficult because standard browser commands don’t work. Layouts are often optimized for a sheet of paper, which rarely matches the size of the user’s browser window. Bye-bye smooth scrolling. Hello tiny fonts.

Worst of all, PDF is an undifferentiated blob of content that’s hard to navigate.

PDF is great for printing and for distributing manuals and other big documents that need to be printed. Reserve it for this purpose and convert any information that needs to be browsed or read on the screen into real web pages.

> Detailed discussion of why PDF is bad for online reading
3. Not Changing the Color of Visited Links
A good grasp of past navigation helps you understand your current location, since it’s the culmination of your journey. Knowing your past and present locations in turn makes it easier to decide where to go next. Links are a key factor in this navigation process. Users can exclude links that proved fruitless in their earlier visits. Conversely, they might revisit links they found helpful in the past.

Most important, knowing which pages they’ve already visited frees users from unintentionally revisiting the same pages over and over again.

These benefits only accrue under one important assumption: that users can tell the difference between visited and unvisited links because the site shows them in different colors. When visited links don’t change color, users exhibit more navigational disorientation in usability testing and unintentionally revisit the same pages repeatedly.

> Usability implications of changing link colors
> Guidelines for showing links Cartoon – guy being crushed under wordy ‘terms and conditions’ legalese
4. Non-Scannable Text
A wall of text is deadly for an interactive experience. Intimidating. Boring. Painful to read.

Write for online, not print. To draw users into the text and support scannability, use well-documented tricks:

* subheads
* bulleted lists
* highlighted keywords
* short paragraphs
* the inverted pyramid
* a simple writing style, and
* de-fluffed language devoid of marketese.

> Eyetracking of reading patterns
5. Fixed Font Size
CSS style sheets unfortunately give websites the power to disable a Web browser’s “change font size” button and specify a fixed font size. About 95% of the time, this fixed size is tiny, reducing readability significantly for most people over the age of 40.

Respect the user’s preferences and let them resize text as needed. Also, specify font sizes in relative terms — not as an absolute number of pixels.
6. Page Titles With Low Search Engine Visibility
Search is the most important way users discover websites. Search is also one of the most important ways users find their way around individual websites. The humble page title is your main tool to attract new visitors from search listings and to help your existing users to locate the specific pages that they need.

The page title is contained within the HTML tag and is almost always used as the clickable headline for listings on search engine result pages (SERP). Search engines typically show the first 66 characters or so of the title, so it’s truly microcontent.

Page titles are also used as the default entry in the Favorites when users bookmark a site. For your homepage, begin the with the company name, followed by a brief description of the site. Don’t start with words like “The” or “Welcome to” unless you want to be alphabetized under “T” or “W.”

For other pages than the homepage, start the title with a few of the most salient information-carrying words that describe the specifics of what users will find on that page. Since the page title is used as the window title in the browser, it’s also used as the label for that window in the taskbar under Windows, meaning that advanced users will move between multiple windows under the guidance of the first one or two words of each page title. If all your page titles start with the same words, you have severely reduced usability for your multi-windowing users.

Taglines on homepages are a related subject: they also need to be short and quickly communicate the purpose of the site.
7. Anything That Looks Like an Advertisement
Selective attention is very powerful, and Web users have learned to stop paying attention to any ads that get in the way of their goal-driven navigation. (The main exception being text-only search-engine ads.)

Unfortunately, users also ignore legitimate design elements that look like prevalent forms of advertising. After all, when you ignore something, you don’t study it in detail to find out what it is.

Therefore, it is best to avoid any designs that look like advertisements. The exact implications of this guideline will vary with new forms of ads; currently follow these rules:

* banner blindness means that users never fixate their eyes on anything that looks like a banner ad due to shape or position on the page
* animation avoidance makes users ignore areas with blinking or flashing text or other aggressive animations
* pop-up purges mean that users close pop-up windoids before they have even fully rendered; sometimes with great viciousness (a sort of getting-back-at-GeoCities triumph).

8. Violating Design Conventions
Consistency is one of the most powerful usability principles: when things always behave the same, users don’t have to worry about what will happen. Instead, they know what will happen based on earlier experience. Every time you release an apple over Sir Isaac Newton, it will drop on his head. That’s good.

The more users’ expectations prove right, the more they will feel in control of the system and the more they will like it. And the more the system breaks users’ expectations, the more they will feel insecure. Oops, maybe if I let go of this apple, it will turn into a tomato and jump a mile into the sky.

Jakob’s Law of the Web User Experience states that “users spend most of their time on other websites.”

This means that they form their expectations for your site based on what’s commonly done on most other sites. If you deviate, your site will be harder to use and users will leave.
9. Opening New Browser Windows
Opening up new browser windows is like a vacuum cleaner sales person who starts a visit by emptying an ash tray on the customer’s carpet. Don’t pollute my screen with any more windows, thanks (particularly since current operating systems have miserable window management).

Designers open new browser windows on the theory that it keeps users on their site. But even disregarding the user-hostile message implied in taking over the user’s machine, the strategy is self-defeating since it disables the Back button which is the normal way users return to previous sites. Users often don’t notice that a new window has opened, especially if they are using a small monitor where the windows are maximized to fill up the screen. So a user who tries to return to the origin will be confused by a grayed out Back button.

Links that don’t behave as expected undermine users’ understanding of their own system. A link should be a simple hypertext reference that replaces the current page with new content. Users hate unwarranted pop-up windows. When they want the destination to appear in a new page, they can use their browser’s “open in new window” command — assuming, of course, that the link is not a piece of code that interferes with the browser�s standard behavior. Cartoon – woman (at car dealership): ‘How much is it with automatic transmission?’ – sleazy salesman: ‘I’ll give you a hint – it’s an EVEN number…’
10. Not Answering Users’ Questions
Users are highly goal-driven on the Web. They visit sites because there’s something they want to accomplish — maybe even buy your product. The ultimate failure of a website is to fail to provide the information users are looking for.

Sometimes the answer is simply not there and you lose the sale because users have to assume that your product or service doesn’t meet their needs if you don’t tell them the specifics. Other times the specifics are buried under a thick layer of marketese and bland slogans. Since users don’t have time to read everything, such hidden info might almost as well not be there.

The worst example of not answering users’ questions is to avoid listing the price of products and services. No B2C ecommerce site would make this mistake, but it’s rife in B2B, where most “enterprise solutions” are presented so that you can’t tell whether they are suited for 100 people or 100,000 people. Price is the most specific piece of info customers use to understand the nature of an offering, and not providing it makes people feel lost and reduces their understanding of a product line. We have miles of videotape of users asking “Where’s the price?” while tearing their hair out.

Even B2C sites often make the associated mistake of forgetting prices in product lists, such as category pages or search results. Knowing the price is key in both situations; it lets users differentiate among products and click through to the most relevant ones.

By useit.com