Be it a busy bee or an idle slugabed, almost everyone starts his day with a visit to Facebook – the ultimate shrine and solace for all digital devotees.
And, in one way, it’s good, because you are connected to the world out there, making new friends, sharing bits and parts of your life and being ‘in touch’ with all those distant well wishers who requested you to. After all, this is what ‘social’ networking is for, right?

Now imagine doing this on your professional network as well. You connect with people of the same profession on a certain site LinkedIn, say, greet them with a regular ‘hi’ and suddenly, out of old Facebook habits, you end up sharing Kim Kardashian’s photo with them. How embarrassing would that be? And what if you find your B2B partners liking, commenting and sharing the same? Will it not be an egg on your face?

So, just know this – LinkedIn isn’t Facebook. And here’s how you should observe the golden rules of it:

Choose a profile picture that looks professional:
So, you have visited the Virgin Islands recently? But, why do you want your business relations to know about it? Do they care? Don’t yell out personal details with a loud photograph for your profile. Keep it out-and-out professional.

Treat the platform like your resume and not a networking site:
Provide details about your profession and not what you ate for breakfast. Tell the end user about your skills and what you are adept at. Take it this way – you are sitting for an interview session, explaining the interviewer about your qualifications, work experience and proficiency. Or say, you are sorting out what to include in your curriculum vitae and what not to. You would never reveal in it, where you went for your holidays last summer, would you?

Be careful while connecting your other social media profiles to LinkedIn:
Chances are that you’ll be at a lot more liberty on Facebook or Twitter or even Google+. So, while you connect these profiles to your LinkedIn account, take the pain to not share anything unprofessional. If these profiles of yours carry a lot of casual content, it’s better to keep them away from your professional network. A ’12 am and still at the pub’ status would definitely make your bosses, colleagues and B2B friends cringe.

Know whose out there and how to start a conversation:
You can start with a friendship request on Facebook, exchange phone numbers and LOL all over it. But, when on LinkedIn, remember that you are connecting with people on a professional front, primarily to land up somewhere with a good job. How you converse with the recruiters is an important issue. Never ask for an e-mail or a phone number straightaway. Your way of approaching him for a specific post should entirely reveal the gentleman that you are.

Be more choosy in endorsing or in being endorsed:
I am suddenly reminded of long-dead Orkut, where we could write ‘testimonials’ for each other. LinkedIn endorsements, too, do something similar. They let you choose skills for friends and accept those your friends choose for you. Impressions and opinions do matter. But, getting recommended by just a few insignificant souls does not pay very well. Okay, that friend of yours adores you very much. But, should you always pick up an endorsement for him? Or let him offer one for you everyday? This, somehow, looks shady.

These are undoubtedly the golden rules of the professional networking site. And there still are other minor ones too. For instance, you can cut those ‘Wssup’ or ‘Hiya’ greetings from Facebook and resort to using more formal words and minding to dot your i’s and cross your t’s. It’s not Twitter, you know, where you have to keep thinking about managing text space. So, while on LinkedIn, don’t shout and blabber, just speak.

The real question is – why would you not!? In an ever-evolving technological world, we’ve seen the sales of tablets increase by around 50,00 in 2014 compared to 2013, with a projected increase for 2015 that takes the sales of tablets over the sales of desktops for the first time ever. Following these statistics logically, this would mean that more users are accessing the internet via a mobile device, which would in turn convert to more users buying via these very devices. Not only this but 2014 has seen 52% of online shopping visits derive from mobile devices – again, more than desktop computers for the first time.

It’s not rocket science!

More people owning mobile devices means more people using mobile devices.

More people browsing online with these devices means more people buying online with these devices.

Why Going Responsive is the Way Forward

If your site is not at all designed or built for mobile and tablet usage, you could be losing a substantial amount of visits through user frustration and the discovery that a better user experience can be gained elsewhere. Slow loading times, lacking navigation and the inability to view the website as it is intended to be viewed are just a few off-putting factors that can be detrimental to traffic and conversions. Here are just a few reasons why you should consider going responsive:

1. To please the almighty, all-powerful sovereign that is Google: of course Google has preferences towards websites which are responsive, offering the ultimate user experience and having only one URL and the same HTML, making it easier to crawl and therefore easier to index.

2. Straightforward sharing and user interaction: having only one URL also makes it easier for visitors to share your website via social media and will send all referral traffic to your one URL. Users are also more likely to share your website with others as the result of a happy visit.

3.Enjoyable User Experience: Having a better visual appearance, fast loading time and smoother navigation is more likely to result in a repeat visit and higher conversion rates. If a customer is frustrated, they’re more likely to leave the website immediately and shop elsewhere than to persevere.

Need I Say More?

As 2015 approaches, non-responsive websites are in danger of falling far behind their competitors with responsive websites. We no longer use mobile phones primarily for calls and text messages but for social media, online shopping, browsing, downloading and Google only knows what else… So if you want to keep your current customers happy and have a shot at gaining more customers, move with the technological times and go responsive.

Free online advertising tips! Nothing is better than free…

You are opening or redesigning your online store. Your new website has been created, what other steps can you take to increase traffic to your website? If you don’t advertise nothing will happen, that is guaranteed

Here at WebDesignerExpress we will create a site that will speak to your target audience, we will work together with you and we will do a market research to find out what works for you. Our website will have ease of navigation and we will work hard to make sure that your client never has to look for your competitor.

But, what else can you do to increase traffic and visibility to your website? Here are some simple steps to free online advertising:

1. Ask us about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Trough the SEO process we will work to increase volume to your website, ensuring that your website will be indexed by the main searchengines; therefore increasing your page ranking. Better ranking will mean higher traffic and more business to you, if you are not comfortable doing your self ask us to do it for you. Here is what you should know about SEO.

2. Have your own blog. People like blogs, they like it when they feel like they are being talked to in a personal level and they have the ability to respond and comment on your blog. Make it interesting and write simple and complex content for all audiences. Your web designer and web developer can include a blog section to your site. Ask us about it.

3. Make sure you have substantial content that is relevant to your business and your industry, great content is everything in your website, remember to write what people want to read and not what you like to write.

4. Submit your website to an industry site and/or industry directory. However beware of directories that solicit you for upgraded listings. Make sure the directory is widely used and accepted in your industry. Always affiliate your site with reputable sites, don’t make the mistake of submitting your website to everyone that call be very bad.

5. Exchange links with other reputable sites that are related to your business, links can bring great amount of traffic to your website..

6. Utilize media clip websites such as YouTube to market your business. Only link related media that your consumers might find interesting.

7. Issue a news release. Once your website is complete, send a news release to newspapers or industry periodicals. Find an event that might be newsworthy, write an article related to your business and send it in making sure you include a link to your website. Utilize traditional and web targeted media.

8. Make sure you include your website address on all your business cards, stationary, flyers, brochures and all printed materials.

9. Promote your site on online forums. There are thousands of forums, internet communities, and social networking websites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Myspace among many others. Find online communities with serious discussions and make sure you actively participate and advertise your website.

10. Traditional paid advertising. Either printed media or internet paid advertising such as pay per click, ask one of our web developers for more information.

8 Practical Tips To Secure Your Cloud Data

No more having to bring your thumb drives or portable hard disks along wherever you go because cloud-based storage services are here to stay. From Google Drive to Dropbox, these cloud solutions store your data online and provide you with the ease of accessing them at any place and time where Internet connection is available. The convenience does seems tempting, but uploading your personal data to a cloud provider undoubtedly raises a couple of security concerns. For one, you can never be sure of who else could be accessing these sensitive information.

That being said, we can always protect our data from unauthorized access if we just make some extra efforts. Here are a couple of practical tips to keep your cloud data as secure as it gets.

1. Back Up Data Locally

when it comes to managing data is to always have a backup for your data. Generally speaking, it is good practice to create electronic copies for any of your data so that you will still be able to access them even when the original is lost or has been corrupted. There are many cloud storage services available in the market today, which means you can set up some cloud accounts for backup purposes. If you have data in the cloud, you should also manually backup your data in an external physical storage drive or device, like a hard disk or a thumb drive. This also allows you to access the information when you have poor or no Internet connection.

2. Avoid Storing Sensitive Information

I doubt there’s such a thing as real privacy on the internet, so personally I wouldn’t trust storing my top secret files in the cloud. Call it paranoia, but identity theft is on the rise and I just don’t want to risk any of that. In any case, we probably don’t have to look at our most sensitive data through the cloud on a 24/7 basis.Our advice is to keep only those files which you need to access frequently and avoid putting up documents containing passwords for your various online accounts or personally identifiable information (PII) such as your credit card numbers, national identification number, home address, etc.

3. Use Cloud Services That Encrypt Your Data

One of the easiest way to safeguard your privacy when using cloud storage services is to look for one that offers local encryption for your data. This provides an additional layer of security since decryption will be required before you can be granted access to the data. Otherwise known as the zero-knowledge proof in cryptographic, this method will even protect your data against the service providers and administrators themselves. While keeping data encrypted in the cloud may be good enough, it would be even better if the cloud service also ensures encryption during the uploading and downloading phases. This can be done using military-grade Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) (256 bits), which services like DrivePop adopts.

4. Encrypt The Data Before Putting It On The Cloud

If you choose not to use a cloud service that will help you encrypt the data, you can use a third-party tool to perform the encryption. All you got to do is download a cloud-protection app which will allow you to apply passwords and generate secret key sequences to your files before you actually upload them to the cloud. Even if you’re already opting for an encrypted cloud service, it wouldn’t hurt to go through a preliminary round of encryption for your files to get a little extra assurance.

5. Read The Small Print Of The Cloud Service Provider

Besides storing your data, some cloud services allow you to share your photos and files with others. This definitely sounds appealing, but sometimes these services come with a catch. There might be some fine print that they don’t advertise but will stuff in their Terms of Service (TOS) to make it legitimate. For instance, back in 2011, Twitpic wrote in their TOS that sharing your pictures on their service gives them the right to ‘use or distribute‘ the pictures. They later apologised but further clarified that they can distribute the securing-cloud-data on Twitpic and affiliated partners, although the final copyright still belongs to the owner of the photographs. While not exactly a dedicated cloud storage service, Twitpic puts forward a good case for why you should be cognisant of what to expect from your cloud provider, especially with regard to their security and privacy policies. Try to research online to find out if there are any bad reviews or caveats that you should be wary about. This will put you in a more informed position before you go ahead with their services.

6. Use A Strong Password / Apply Two-Step Verification

As the first line of defence against malicious hackers out there, you had better be sure that your password can stand a hacking or cracking attempt. There are tons of tips on the Internet on what makes for a good password. Aside from going for a strong and unique password, make sure to change it frequently and not repeat it across all other online accounts you have. Alternatively, you may go for the much more secure two-step verification for your login if your cloud service offers the option. In the case for Google Drive, users have to login to their Google account first in order to use the cloud storage service. Two-step verification can be turned on for Google accounts – a verification code sent to the mobile phone gives the much needed added security on top of just your password to be able to access your cloud data.

7. Be Wary Of Your Online Behaviour

Sometimes, the security of your cloud data depends on what you do online, especially on public computers or connections. When using a public computer, do you opt to not save your password, and ensure that you logged out of your account after you are done? Saving your password and leaving it logged in exposes you to the risk of strangers accessing your data. Do you tend to connect open and unsecured Wi-Fi hotspots in public places to log in to your cloud account? Such connections are typically unencrypted, which means that whatever you do while connected can be ‘sniffed‘ by a hacker on the same network. This can even include your login credentials for your cloud account! Just check out this useful article from NoWiresSecurity depicting what these hackers can actually see from unencrypted wireless networks.

8. Protect Your System With Anti-Virus & Anti-Spy

You may be using a secure cloud service provider which you absolutely trust, but sometimes the weakest link happens to be the computer system you’re logging in from. Without proper protection for your system, you expose yourself to bugs and viruses that provide penetration points for hackers to access your account. Take for instance the presence of a Keylogger Trojan which attempts to track all your keystrokes. By embedding this malicious software to seemingly legitimate files, hackers will be able to get hold of your user ID and password if your system isn’t well protected enough to detect it, and if the login isn’t secured and encrypted.

With the recent news that Opera is moving to the open source Web Kit rendering engine, only one question remains – why hasn’t Microsoft followed suit with Internet Explorer? Internet Explorer has been using the Trident rendering engine since before the dawn of time, and it has been constantly plagued with layout issues and inconsistencies with W3C standards. As a web agency, it is our duty to ensure that all of the websites that we produce are fully compatible with browsers back to IE7. However, without fail, during the testing stage of a website, something will break in one version of Internet Explorer or another.

Supporting Internet Explorer this far back comes with its own set of problems – we can’t use CSS3 to its full extent, and HTML5 support is limited. It does occasionally feel that, as web developers, the existence and continued use of older versions of Internet Explorer is a ball around our combined ankles. There are, of course, tools to help with supporting more modern technologies in older browsers such as modernizr.js and html5shiv, but all of these are JavaScript files, which renders (…get it?) the website next to useless if the user is using an older version of Internet Explorer with JavaScript disabled. .

Web Kit is now widely used on both desktop and mobile platforms, including Safari and Chrome (and their mobile counterparts). As far as I can see, this is the direction which the web is moving in. It is updated constantly and backed by some of the web’s largest companies, including Apple and Google. Gecko (Mozilla’s layout engine) is also updated multiple times a year. In contrast, Internet Explorer still follows a somewhat prehistoric update schedule, meaning that support for any new technologies is always a fair way off for Internet Explorer users. .

Perhaps this is just the web developer in me being selfish, but does a standardised combined approach to HTML rendering not make sense? Of course, in the meantime we will continue to build websites which work cross-platform!

It has recently been confirmed that Google is splitting it’s social network so Google+ will soon become Photos, Streams and Hangouts.

Bradley Horowitz, the new vice president of Google Photos and Stream recently posted saying, “Just wanted to confirm that the rumours are true — I’m excited to be running Google’s Photos and Streams products! It’s important to me that these changes are properly understood to be positive improvements to both our products and how they reach users.”

Google+ has always incorporated photo tools which allow users to backup and edit their photos so introducing Google Photos as a standalone product will make these more accessible to those not interested in a Google+ account.

Google Stream will essentially be the Google+ experience we are familiar with now but with the additions of News and Blogger.

The third sector will be Hangouts, one of Google+’s more popular services. With features allowing users to host meetings, screen share with customers for support and record videos straight to YouTube, it’s one platform that differs from the rest in the sense that it’s something different to anything else we know.

Since beginning in 2011, Google+ has not been the most popular of social network sites and appears to be struggling to maintain regular users. This update could be seen as an attempt to revamp the services offered and to subtly rebrand, or maybe even draw the line under Google+ completely?

Google’s senior vice president of products, Sundar Pichai, briefly spoke about the decision in a recent interview, saying “Google+ was always two big things: one was building a stream, the second was a social layer, a common layer of identity; how sharing works across our products and services.””I think increasingly you’ll see us focus on communications, photos and the Google+ Stream as three important areas, rather than being thought of as one area“.

The potential effect of Google+ giving Google a direct incorporation with social media signals and personal information was always great and we’ve seen some impact to search with Google+ posts showing in SERPs for signed in users, as well as the extent of the, now retired, Google Authorship functionality. However perhaps this is a sign that Google have changed the way they want to achieve this objective, especially on the back of the announcement that Google have struck a new deal with Twitter in February.

By moving away from under the Google+ brand name, the new features can gain reputations independently of peoples’ previous Google+ conceptions and employees can begin to think about the updates from a different perspective.

With the three main features all becoming three different apps, there is more potential to target different audiences and be successful as individual services, or will it remain the ‘ghost town’ of social networking as we know it now?

Colours impact our mood, our appetite, our energy level.

In web design colours play powerful role – make us feel and react certain way.

In corporate design colours are critical to building the brand’s image. Specific colour scheme used effectively and consistently throughout all marketing materials creates more unified and familiar look, associates those colours with a company.

By using colour psychology, you can send a positive or negative message, encourage sales, calm a crowd, or make ones heart to beat faster.

Here is a meaning of basic colours which will help you to make your colour choices wisely from the start!

The Meaning of Colours

YELLOW

Associated with: comfort, liveliness, intellect, happiness, energy, laughter, happiness, optimism, cowardice
Recognized as: creative, young, visible, bright, lively, cheerful, light, curious, playful, nutritious, eye-catching, attention-grabbing, cowardly

ORANGE

Associated with: enthusiasm, ambition, creativity, cheerfulness, affordability, stimulation
Recognized as: Welcoming, warning, festive, active, excited, communicative, inspiring, cosy, helpful, friendly

RED

Associated with: energy, strength, boldness, leadership, career goals, determination, fast action, movement, excitement, cheerfulness, passion, desire, love, life, courage, danger, risk, war, blood, bravery, aggression
Recognized as: Powerful, vital, dynamic, energetic, romantic, seductive, passionate, commanding, alert, rebellious, complementary, visible, hot, fiery, fun, drawing attention, eye-catching, noticeable

PURPLE

Associated with: power, wealth, prosperity, rich sophistication, nobility, luxury, mystery, royalty, elegance, magic, wisdom, respect
Recognized as: intelligent, artistic, aloof, luxurious, royal, vain, fantastic, melancholic, feminine, fragrant, solemn

GREEN

Associated with: reliability, safety, honesty, optimism, harmony, freshness, durability, growth, nature, money, wealth, envy, good luck, generosity, fertility, peace, harmony, support, good energy
Recognized as: reliable, safe, honest, patient, natural, adventurous, relaxed, athletic, lucky, balanced, safe, conservative, musculine

BLUE

Associated with: depth, stability, professionalism, loyalty, reliability, honour, trust, dependability, wisdom, loyalty
Recognized as: peaceful, formal, trustworthy, reliable, firm, determined, educated, clean, free, deep, technical

BLACK

Associated with: elegance, sophistication, formality, strength, mystery, authority, power, stability and strength, intelligence, evil, grieving
Recognized as: elegant, formal, powerful, serious, conservative, sophisticated, conventional, mysterious, sexy

WHITE

Associated with: cleanliness, purity, harmony, truth, new beginnings, virginity, peace, innocence, simplicity, safety, neutrality, creativity, spirituality, precision, positivity, union, goodness, heroism
Pure, clean, new, innocent, simple

For a site to naturally position itself higher in the search engines, it is imperative to follow certain rules otherwise known as On-Site Optimisation.

These rules fit naturally into the logic of things and yet I am still surprised to see the majority of webmasters not following these standard steps.If certain elements are easily recoverable after the website has gone live, it is then even more important to consider and focus upon those elements which are not.

Below is a compilation of the items you must consider before, during and after the launch of your new website:

Choosing a domain name:

The domain name of a website can have a significant influence on its position, not to exploit this potential can be unreasonable.The domain is the central part of the URL that appears in the browser, which includes an “extension”, . co.uk for the UK . fr for France or .com for international.

Traditionally, a name was important for business communications and many years on this still remains the case. However, subject to your product and or service you may need to reconsider what you originally had in mind, an easy to remember name is great but one that will help with your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) will certainly fair you better in the long run. Utilising the product and or service you provide somehow within your domain name as it will have a greater impact in the SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages). Indeed, whenever your website is cited in a forum, news, blog or a partner site, the backlinks generated invariably include your keyword as the Anchor Text , and this will help towards your position within the search results.Note: Google did have a crackdown on low-quality Exact Match Domains (EMDs) last year so don’t use an exact match domain and ensure that the content on your site is not only relevant but has a variation of keywords/phrases once every 100 to 150 words apart at the absolute most otherwise this will be seen as keyword cannibalisation, which will have the adverse effects.

Accommodation for geo location:

Hosting a website on a server located in your target country can help the likes of Google increase your visibility on its search engine within that region through its geo-location/tagging algorithm.

Regardless of the above, if you’re hosting a website on a slow server, due to let say poor bandwidth then you risk losing keyword positions, the reason why is simple, search engines have to make a snapshot decision within milliseconds from a search term and if your website is running slowly compared to that of your competitors then you run the risk of likes of Google not finding you.

Geo location also provides an opportunity to increase your visibility on local search, so if you site is hosted in London, and or your business address on the website is based in London Google will increase your geo-localisation visibility. I would highly recommend that you also sign yourself up to Google+ and Google Places for Business to help further increase you geo-tagging.

Decrease the loading time of your website:

ADSL became accessible to many people quite some time ago and yet we are still far from allowing everyone to use this huge advantage, Google is aware of this, which is why it favours smaller sites as the loading time is generally faster. In order to help speed up your site, a good bit of re-coding maybe required to reduce or balance what exactly loads first, it is also important to optimise your images with alt tags as the content should really load up first and the anchor text (Keyword(s)) within the Alt attribute (image) will be easier and quicker to be read, when utilising video’s use and external host such as YouTube to load or stream your content as any video on the site will surely slow the whole page down, you don’t want a website that won’t load up on your potential clientele’s browsers as well as not being found in the Search Engines!

The placement of your style sheet in an external file called the Head of your page will significantly increase its loading time. It is also possible to reduce the likes of JavaScript, Firebug , with the help of PageSpeed ​​and YSlow.

Firebug is mainly used with Firefox; a recent extension has nevertheless joined the SEO tools for Chrome.

The famous extension YSlow (Yahoo Slow) which was part of Firebug is available in chrome without having Firebug.

Meta tags:

There are several types of Meta Tags, the main ones being the “Meta Title” and “Meta Description”.

First, keep in mind that the priority is your keywords, as they are generally included in the name of the page as well as in the H1 tag in the optimised text.

Title tag:

Always start your keyword in the Title (H1). To prevent your then keyword from being made redundant avoid adding such things as a colon after that word and or phrase, as by adding these characters will cancel out that keyword/phrase!

A title tag is probably one of the most important tags you will find on any website, not only it is used by Google’s and site owners benefit but it is one of the most important foundations required to improve your onsite SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), but it is also the one displayed first in the search results a bit like the heading of a press release in a newspaper. It is the title tag that will indicate to users what they will find in your website, within a fraction of a second.

Meta description:

The Meta description is not generally taken into consideration directly by the search engines, meaning that though it works as a subtitle like that of a newspaper in the SERP’s its content in actual fact is ignored in the Keyword(s) process. It is also well worth noting that your description shouldn’t contain just keywords and shouldn’t contain more than 155 to 165 characters.

The Meta description’s main function is to encourage visitors to enter your site.

Reasons for optimising your images:

Lighten your website to allow faster loading time
Increase the relevance of images to be positioned in Google images
Reduce the disk space on your web host
The loading time of a website has become a requirement for anyone who wants to increase his or her chances of appearing in the top search results for this it is necessary to optimise your images on both the format and the size/quality.

Image formats: The most used formats are JPG, GIF and PNG, each with have a specific function.

Large images: it will be good to create multiple images in different sizes; the thumbnails will be in a format of 120 pixels x 90 pixels (as an example) and will not exceed 20KB, which will allow very fast loading time and the possibility of placing multiple images on the same page. Averages, often placed in a datasheet format will be a little bigger (usually 400 pixels X 300 pixels) and will not exceed 100KB. They will click on to view a large photo, web standards is 1024 x 728. The maximum should not exceed 1MB.

Optimise images to increase visibility in Google images

You have probably noticed when searching on Google, images are usually displayed within the results page of an ordinary web search, this is simply because those images from those websites have been optimised properly and external links (part of the link-building process of Off-Site SEO) from other websites to that domain have been created. Therefore it is important to increase the quality of your image attributes (ALT tag, image name, weight) to increase your chance of being found.

Optimise images to gain disk space:

Not all companies can afford dedicated servers; private, non-profit organisations will try to save on all budgets including accommodation. Optimising images are smaller; they significantly reduce the disk space and bandwidth generated for visualisation.

Optimising videos:

Again like images these will appear in the search results!

As a first step, it is useful to study the scenario of the video so that it generates a Buzz, if your video is dull, humourless or does not provide new information, it may well be just a bad investment.

Once you have created your video you should upload it to YouTube. When placing these videos on YouTube, you will need to be careful and ensure you put in the description, a link to your site, preferably at the beginning of the presentation, and if possible to the page where you will insert the video. Thus, each time a visitor views the video on your site, you will gain a view on YouTube and every time a visitor watches your video it will increase the relevance of that video.

It is also highly important to tag the video with relevant keywords and give users the opportunity to use your video in their site, which will create new backlinks, which will inevitably increase your rankings within the SERP’s.

You can also tag the video itself to consistently display your logo or domain name as a branding device. Optimise text for SEO:If you were not aware already “Content is king!” Yep, content is king on the internet, and since Google’s 13 Panda and umpteen Penguin updates last year alone, it has never rung more true.

The arrival of Google’s algorithm code name Panda has meant Google favours sites with good quality and original text (not duplicate content from another website).

The quality of your text should be treated, both in the grammar of spelling, the elements that will be deployed into your web page to be presented in a structured way to draw visitors in and to easily understand its contents.

Use H tags to optimise text:

Though briefly touch upon earlier, H Tags (Head) are your titles, they range from 1 to 6 and have a decreasing importance. The H1 tag is the most important of all, it is supposed to represent the keyword, the height of the page should be different for every page of your site, each page is supposed to promote a single message. The H1 tag may have a specific style to put the keyword as shown on this page, the title “Optimise texts” is set in a font larger, in bold and in a blue box. Apart from attracting the eye of the visitor, in the famous four seconds the information is sought, the H1 tag is a way to tell search engines the content of the page.

The organisation of the text on the page resumes, if necessary, following several H tags to convey the message and the importance of the text. So it will be good to divide the text into several paragraphs in order not to bore the visitor or scare off by displaying a block of daunting text.

Note that the H1 tag must be unique and exclusively to the text, it is still common to see websites with the logo as the H1 while H1 means “text box”. The logo cannot be equated with the text but in the drawing.

Note there can be only one H1 per page, so your most important keyword/phrases should be utilised here.

H2, H3, H4, H5 and H6 tags can be used for your other services/keywords”, it is interesting to use the blocks to make paragraphs. These second-level headers can also be used to optimise text by including a question including the keyword from the page and induces a reminder of that keyword in the response, thereby increasing the number of occurrences of keyword in the text and weight relative to the page. These subtitles can take many forms:

Informative Title: To optimise quality text

Sensational title: Optimise your own text!

Interrogative title: How to optimise the text?

And so on…

Internal links/site-links:

Internal links are text or images to allow your website visitors to get around your website easily. Optimising internal links is one of the most important elements of your on-site SEO strategy.

Unlike external links, it is preferable that your visitors move through your site without having to open new tab or window, it may not only be disrupting the multitude of pages open but also slow down the visitors browser if their pc isn’t powerful enough.

Internal links should be placed in the “Body” or body text, Google can easily identify the links as part of the navigation menu or your footer(s). These internal links will be deemed as better quality if they are in paragraphs.

Note, if you have multiple links to the same page that all point to the same place, only the first link will be taken into account, there is therefore no point in unnecessarily multiplying these internal links. At worst, use the right Anchor Text for the first link and “read more” on the others.

Internal links also have a very important role to play in terms of bounce rate and time on your website, indicators favoured by Google. If the bounce rate is too high, Google can conclude that the visitors did not find the right information and then will penalise you. The fact that visitors walk on multiple pages of your website via internal links reduces dramatically the bounce rate.

The time spent on site is also strongly reflected in the Google algorithm, it is estimated at + / – 45 seconds minimum time to read two paragraphs, which would lead us to believe that the information found was quite interesting and captured the visitor’s attention. Thenceforth the latter visit multiple pages via internal links, increase their attendance and by extension your quality score.

So far I have covered a number of important on-site optimising necessities to help you build strong foundations in moving forward with your SEO. In due course I will be looking at the remaining areas some of which are on-going alterations to your site in order to keeping it alive in the search engines eyes, tracking your visitors and interactions through your site and finally, I will explain Off-Site Optimisation.

Open source e-commerce software PrestaShop is giving the 200,000 stores on its platform the ability to engage in loyalty marketing on the Web.

Through a partnership with LoyaltyLion, PrestaShop merchants will be able to create a loyalty program that rewards points for purchases, shares, referrals and signups. Customers can then redeem the points for store vouchers. Merchants will also have access to a statistics dashboard that identifies which activities and users are engaged most.

“An online shopper’s experience should not end at checkout. To build brand loyalty, e-merchants need to continuously engage customers. LoyaltyLion’s platform allows our merchants to reward customers for their engagement. We love that our merchants can now launch a completely customized loyalty program that fits their brand,” shares Estefania Londono, Partner Manager at PrestaShop. “I look forward to our growing partnership and the potential for our merchants to grow.”

PrestaShop merchants running version 1.5 and higher can install the module directly from their back office. After a 14-day trial, LoyaltyLion plans start at £99 per month (roughly $150) for merchants processing less than 800 monthly orders.

Current research shows that 40 percent of consumers buy more from retailers who personalize their shopping experience across channels. Additionally, nearly three in four, or 74 percent, of online consumers get frustrated with websites when the content that’s displayed has nothing to do with their interests. It is clear that a personalized website is an advantage to every marketer or entrepreneur leading a successful business today.

Website personalization takes into account that users have different motivations, devices, locations and time constraints. With current technology, marketers can now gather specific information about what a website visitor is searching for and translate their visit into a higher conversion.

“Organizations spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and sometimes even millions of dollars, to create robust dynamic web experiences,” explained Itai Sadan, CEO and co-founder of mobile website creation platform DudaMobile. The company recently rolled out inSite that adds dynamic web content based on customer behavior to create personalized viewing experiences.

“Expensive tools and this type of personalization traditionally requires substantial web development and design, which is why we’re excited about bringing affordability to this exploding industry,” Sadan said.

Website personalization on a mass scale is indeed possible with the increasing number of low-cost options available to business owners today. Here are five ways business owners can begin to increase conversion through basic website personalization:

1. Visitor frequency should determine different user experiences. A visitor to a website for the first time will almost always be looking for different information than someone visiting the site repeatedly.

David Reischer, marketing officer at LegalAdvice.com, suggests tracking each user differently to give different user experiences. “We utilize a cookie to track a returning visitor so that we can direct them to the most appropriate and relevant page. This makes site navigation easier for repeat users.”

To increase conversion of first-time visitors include a phone number or business address, a contact form to capture leads, or a video tutorial to explain a product or service to a first time visitor.

“For frequent visitors, add a spot to sign up for a mailing list or add information about new products or services,” suggests Sadan.

2. Geo-location helps bring together online and offline marketing. The ability to know where someone is at the time they visit a website is game-changing for marketers.

“Online we can follow our customer’s individual buying journey, optimizing it every step of the way,” explains Bart Heilbron, CEO and co-founder of BlueConic, the real-time system of online customer engagement. “However, we were never able to use these insights in our offline interaction. With geo-location, we are now able to.”

If someone is only blocks away from a business and searching on a mobile phone, chances are they can be easily converted as a customer if they see an address and even a coupon that says, “Come in today and get 20% off.” For restaurants, an OpenTable button to reserve a table, or a Google Map app that provides step-by-step directions to the store location are critical for conversion.

3. Adjust content based on certain times. Changing the content on a website based on the time of day, week or even season can increase conversions as well. Consider replacing a phone number available to website visitors during business hours with a contact form when the business is closed. This will avoid missing out on potential customers who want to get in contact outside of business hours.

“The ability to offer different products over the course of a day based on targeted trends, habits or culture will increase conversions,” said CEO of internet marketing company WebiMax, Ken Wisnefski. “For example, a restaurant offers a different menu throughout the day as they switch from lunch to dinner.”

4. Recognize holidays and other special events. This is a great way to personalize a website and better connect with a customer’s sentiment. Change the theme to hearts during Valentine’s Day or add an image of fireworks during the 4th of July.

“This could have a positive effect on customer engagement, and in turn conversion,” said Sadan.

5. Capture the visitor source to adapt content. Knowing the original destination source that a visitor has entered a website from should greatly impact the content on the landing page that they see first. This can provide a seamless and consistent experience to the visitor.