This article was written for Web Design Success by John Siebert, Tampa Web Designer with over 10 years search engine marketing experience.

In the following four SEO factors, we will examine the top results for the term “personal injury lawyer”. Surprisingly, the cost per click on Google Adwords is over $20 for each click! It has 550,000 searches last month. Imagine that monthly Google Adwords Bill! So you can be sure they did the best SEO practices to get to the top free spots in Google. They have used top SEO experts to get to their web site to the top for this valuable term. I will explain how not to overlook these simple rules and how to increase site ranking.

#1 Poor Content

Many sites suffer from poor content. While Flash animations and loads of images may be visually enticing, you will notice the top ranking sites actually fill there site with text. It’s recommended to have at least 500-1000 words of content per page.

The top 5 listings for the highly desirable keyword “personal injury lawyer” have the following word counts: 664, 265, 1910, 1477, and 600 respectively. So if your content is like many sites out there with very few words of text. You might want to add up your word count and see how you compare. FYI your keywords are most effective in the 150 words closest to the top of the page. All of these top results conform to this rule.

#2 No inbound links/Poor Quality Links

Inbound links are the most important and influential ranking factor. As you might already know, Google uses a sort of voting system to rank terms. If you were to search for our example term, “personal injury lawyer,” you will find there are 12.5 million web pages with that term in it. So which one should Google put as #1? One of the ways Google decides is by using inbound links as “votes” for your site. If more sites link in with the search term then Google moves the site towards the top.

Our top 5 sites have a lot of other sites linking in. According to MagesticSEO.com’s tools, the number of links in the top 5 sites are; 47k, 360mil, 233mil, 6k, and 4k. Now that’s a lot of links. To get such a desirable term you can see they’ve gone to great lengths to make sure they have plenty of links to their site. So you might want to get out there and start begging for links from other web sites!

Since Google knows how SEO experts are trying to artificially move their listings by building links they have begun phasing out poor quality links. Google has devalued links that it deems un-worthy. Your links should be on quality web sites from real webmasters. Poor quality links are from sites that are computer generated or have no real value. Google has a sophisticated method of determining these sites. You can usually identify poor sites by noticing that the sites content doesn’t make much sense or is not to one particular topic. For example, a site about web design is talking about casinos, mortgage rates, and free guitar lessons. If you know the webmaster is a regular person and the content is on topic, chances are the site is not a spam site in Google’s eyes.

#3 Poor Keyword Optimization

There are certain areas to feature your keyword in a page to make it more attractive to Google. To put it simply there are certain spots where Google would like to see your keyword for your site to rank higher. If your keywords are not in the right spots you simply will not rank for that keyword. It should be in the title tag, meta description, alt image tag, heading tag, and bold.

You can test your web site with sites such as SEOMoz’s On-Page Report Card or websitegrader.com. The top 5 sites followed this rule by these percentages respectively: 75%, 95%, 95%, 95%, and 95% (as determined by SEOMoz’s tool).

#4 Lack of Keyword Research

Many web sites don’t perform as well as they would like because of poor keyword research. Your first stop would be getting the proper terms to target. Focus on targeting 2-3 keywords that meet two qualifications: Search volume (amount of potential visitors) and Keyword effectiveness (amount of visitors that will turn into sales).

Search volume is relatively easy to calculate. There are a number of search volume estimators. I prefer the tool by the source, Google. The Google Keyword Tool easily tells you the amount of searches from last month. If you’re trying to decide whether to target “personal injury lawyer” or “personal injury law firm” you can test using Google’s tool. You will notice “personal injury lawyer” has 673,000 searches where as “personal injury law firm” only gets 135,000 monthly searches. That’s almost 5 times as many searches for the previous term.

The other requirement in keyword research is the keyword effectiveness. This depends on how much you’re willing to put into your SEO campaign to try to get to #1 ranking and how much each lead is worth to your business. For example, in our sample terms you might want to go with the lesser search volume term because maybe that term fits your target audience better. The search volume becomes less relevant if you’re not converting visitors into sales. If the first term has 10,000 searches per month and the second term has 5,000 searches per month it seems obvious to target term one. But if term two converts into sales three times better then term one then it actually makes more sense to target the term with the lower search volume.

If you’re working with an SEO company you might want to bring up these points with them. If you’re doing your own search engine marketing then I hope none of these points were missed. If some were missed on a previous job, don’t forget there is always time to get your SEO back on the right track. Happy SEOing!

If you visit our main website then you obviously have some form of interest in photography, whether it is being behind the camera, or just using photos for your work. So we have decided to do a couple of new articles looking at applications you can use to help your creative juices flow, or even create whole new works of art!!

They are live now on the website, starting with 2 posts. The first is a Toonpaint review, a cool little app to have. The second is a review of Hipstamatic which is also wicked.

Both are compatible with the iPhone and also the iPod touch, so get downloading!

We have a two week comp running to win $50 credit at the popular photo sharing site dreamstime.

To enter all you have to do is put your name and email address into the form and click submit, then you’re entered. For your chance to win enter now: http://www.freestockimages.net/competition-dreamstime-credits/

Although the value is in dollars the service is global so no matter your region you can enter. Closing date is Wednesday February 24th, so hurry! A great prize if you regularly need stock pictures for website usage.

Notice: if a winner then in order to claim your prize you will need a free account at the dreamstime website.

The popular web hosting company, Hostgator, currently have a special promotion code running to allow you to get a 20% discount on your order.

This website is hosted with Hostgator (check the whois to view nameservers) and we also have a review on our main site, the article is titled good web hosting and pretty much tells you the story from the title! For us they have been very reliable, good uptime, fast customer support responses, and excellent prices means great value for money.

To take advantage of this offer – it is only available until November 1st – simply enter the word ‘AUTUMN’ when you go to checkout on their website, it is very easy to do and means instant savings!

Although prices are in dollars don’t be put off if you are in another region as they are a global business, we are in the UK ourselves. They accept major payment methods such as credit cards, paypal, check and even cash so it is easy to pay.

The series of new articles going on our main site continues. Our latest addition is a free Dreamstime Review. Although we happily list other stock image providers as well, these guys are our particular favorite.

The reason we like Dreamstime so much is simple; the quality of images is awesome, the website is very easy to use, and the prices represent incredible value for money! Read the full review for more info.

It also contains details about; how to use the site, payments, coupons and also some free tips. Don’t forget to also read up on some of the other free articles we have added online in recent weeks.

During September 2009 the guys over at the UK web host and domain registrar LCN.com are having a special month of offers!

Each day they are posting one new offer, which is only valid for 24 hours. At the time of writing the promotion code is for 99% off web hosting. Yes you did read that right – 99% off! Which means their basic package for 1 year would cost 21p, and their biggest and best package a whopping 56p!

At the time of writing the offer above only has 12hrs left so you may miss it. But can keep an eye on all the offers on THIS PAGE, add it to your favorites and return each day to see the new offer.

This is a one-off opportunity so if you are a UK webmaster and want to lower your costs check them out and save a few quid. They are a big company with over 50,000 websites hosted and 350,000 domains registered so they are trustworthy.

Another new page of quality content has been made live on the website, it is a 123rf Review. It looks at the main aspects including; costs, quality of images, how to use and our opinion on it.

123rf is one of the largest and most popular stock image providers on the web. The page also includes details about getting money off via coupons and special promotion codes.

At the time of writing (it may now have expired at the time of you reading this) you can use the code 123savemore when you checkout. This will give you a 20% reduction on a subscription plan, or 20% extra credits if you buy a credit package. A quick and easy way to get more bang for your buck!

Other reviews and new content coming soon so watch the blog for further details over coming weeks.

After the recent revamp of the main website we are continuing to add free new content as fast as we can. All content is (of course) totally unique and aiming to fill niches.

The latest article to be made live online is about stock market images, they are one of the most popular searched for types of pictures as it must be a topic which is reported on a lot.

Other new articles have also been added which we will post about in the coming days and weeks.

We have now made live the new design of the main free stock images website, here is a cheeky screenshot:

It is designed to be a lot more user friendly, better to look at and load faster. So all round a definite step in the right direction. Any problems with the new design let us know, or any recommendations always welcome!

I’ve written about checking browser compatibility before. Recently I downloaded the new Internet Explorer 8. It’s a definite improvement over IE7, and I actually prefer it to Google Chrome, which I didn’t think I would.

One tool I especially like is Compatibility View, it is a small button next to the address bar (enlarge image left) which the user can click if the webpage they are viewing is not rendering properly. So menus out of place, bad placed images, dodgy text etc all moves to its appropriate place. A clever little tool which means the user can still use the website, despite it being designed for old browsers.

This doesn’t mean you should just slack from checking your website is compatibile, and fixing anything you need to. Users won’t want to be going round having to constantly click the little button. Personally all my websites render fine in IE8, so their is a good chance you won’t need to fix anything. But check just to be on the safe side!

I was recently approached about embedding videos in one of my websites, initially I just thought it was no different to YouTube. But the company I was approached by work slightly differently. And it brings up the opportunity for me to publish quality content for users and increase my ad space at the same time!

Before the embedded videos begin they have a small advert, much like they have on some MSN videos. By publishing the videos on my website I get a share of the revenue. For every 1,000 views I will receive £3, which I think is a decent return given the nature of the revenue stream.

So the end result will be more (and very good quality) content for users, and also more profit for me. A total Win Win situation.

I’m trying to think of other ways to mix user function with generating revenue. Providing great articles with affiliate links is always a winner, but I’m trying to think slightly out of the box compared to that. There must be more ways then just video.

If you have high-traffic website(s) and already embrace video it may be worth you looking at companies who publish video with ads, I think is a sure fire winner as everyone benefits and you don’t have to make any web design changes!

Image: mycreativecorner

Imagery is very important on your website. On informational websites (like this one) the images you use help get across the message you are sending. On ecommerce websites they help sell products. They also give the website it’s ‘feel’. No matter what type of website you own, images are very important.

There are now a lot of good quality stock images available to download completely free, however by using these images you may have to put a copyright notice on your pages. The image will also be used by hundreds, maybe even thousands of other webmasters. Also, sometimes you can’t get the exact image you want, so you end up with an image which is ‘ok’ but probably doesn’t help get your message across like you want it to.

Another way to go is to use your own photographs in your content. Sometimes this won’t be possible, but generally it should be, especially in some subjects you should be able to use them all the time.

The chances are unless you are writing about an event or holiday or something you won’t have the photos already. So you are going to have to have your camera handy at all times and think ahead of pictures you will need so you can take them in good time.

At the top you will see an image of my shed that I took last week when it snowed, pretty huh? I couldn’t think of an image that would work with the article that I took myself, so I thought I’d go the opposite way and just choose a good picture – always a winner!

What are the benefits of using your own images?

• No copyright issues
• Totally unique
• Can help get the message across to visitors
• Gives your website more of a natural feeling
• Helps get your personality across to your regular users

So even if you aren’t a keen photographer, as long as you have some kind of camera I definitely recommend using your own images when possible. It may take slightly longer then just searching the stock image provider websites but the added benefits of using your own photographs make it worthwhile.

Every month from now on I will be doing a Feature Of The Month, or FOTM for short. Each month I will do a post on a company related to webmastering.

This is the FOTM for February 2009 – Anistock Animations. Anistock is a low cost provider of 2D and 3D animation clips to use in your web designs as well as video backgrounds. They can also be used for video projects, TV, broadcasting, presentations, emails and mobile marketing.

The Thing With Animations
The thing with animation clips is they can either look brilliant or really tacky and rubbish. The animation has to be ideal for your website and not just random but you chose it because “it looked nice”. Done wrong they look terrible, pointless, annoying. Done well though they can have a big visual impact on your designs and really separate your website from competitors.

Choice
As far as I’m aware Anistock are the largest provider of its kind, they have thousands of clips. Some of them look good but I have no idea how they could be used by anyone, a few look tacky and should be avoided, but most of them are good quality and I can see how they could be used.

Availability Of HD
If you have a super slick website and need a clip in high definition you can pay $5 for a clip to be ugraded, very good value for money in my opinion.

Cost
You can’t just visit the website and buy one animation, you have to buy a ‘plan’. The cost varies from plan to plan.

The cheapest plan is $19.95 for the Webpro 10 plan where you get 10 downloads. The most expensive is $79.95 which is a partnership with iCLIPART and gives you 1 years unlimited downloads from over 7.8 million photos, clip art, fonts, graphics and you also get 120 downloads from the Anistock website! Depending on how often you do web designs all packages are decent value for money I think.

Conclusion
Overall I think Anistock provide very good value for money. Used properly these animations can help you stand out from competition. Alternatively if they are being used for presentations, emails or mobile marketing they can give that edge of quality you normally wouldn’t be able to achieve.

Website: Anistock.com

Recently I started getting serious with 2 websites, one about multivitamins and one about paperbacks. The domains have been online and indexed for a while but not had a website properly set-up on them. Now they are properly set-up and initially my aim is to grow traffic and subscribers at the expense of revenue. So for example, where I would normally have a banner ad I now promote my RSS feed.

But I’m now thinking about how long can I go putting design ahead of profit?

The obvious answer is “duh! As long as you can afford to”. Well thats the thing, in theory I can afford to for a very long time, but then it loses the whole point of being a business. At what time do I stop and say “ok, we need to start making some profits here”.

Do I set targets of visitors & subscribers, or do I set a time schedule? Say 12 months and then the profit making begins. To be honest I’m not sure which way will be most beneficial for the site from a long-term viewpoint, or if in fact whichever I choose won’t matter and ultimately long-term the site will have the same success/profitability.

The 2 new websites have only been live a couple of months so there is no hurry. I think I’m going to mull it over and come to a conclusion as soon as I can so I know the plan and where I’m going.

Image: mikesansone

When I first started webmastering I was a bit scared of getting feedback. The fear of someone telling me “your web design is absolutely rubbish” was the main reason, I would take the critiscm personally (looking back I have no idea why!). So I would just do my designs so that I think they looked ok and then that would be that.

In recent times I found the true value of getting feedback, as well as the different types of feedback you can get and also how to provoke the most feedback.

Types Of Feedback
Rather than just asking “what do you think of my site?”, it is good to be specific on areas you are most concerned about. So try asking simply about your color scheme of dark purple/light blue/silver, or whatever yours is. Other things to ask about are; navigation bar, logo, ad placements or font format.

Recently I did a post asking for people to test the load speed of my website. You can some software to test load speed but I always find when you ask actual people it varies a fair bit. So this is always a good one to ask.

How To Provoke Most Feedback
From looking at forums I’ve noticed the posts that get the least action are normally the “what do you think on my website?” questions. Other users think they are going to have to visit the site and comment on just about everything. Here are a few ways to provoke the most feedback.

• Ask a specific question about your web design EG “do you like my logo? how would you change it?”
• Be short in your post. No point rambling on about how you came to your current situation. Just politely ask the question and you’re done.
• Say you won’t need much time. In my post title I often put “What do you think about my Blah Blah – 30 seconds of your time please”. If a user knows your thread is only going to take him 30 seconds to read, look at your site & respond he will be more likely to view your thread.
• Put the nature of your website in your title EG “Please look at the color scheme on my health website”. I have found this leads other owners of health websites to be much more inclined to look at your site.
• Do follow up posts. Once you’ve started the thread don’t just leave it for others to post. When you have a few replies add your own reply saying thanks for the feedback, good points made etc, then ask for more. Keeps bumping the thread and makes it look more popular.
• Offer green rep in return for feedback. This may encourage posters who only care about reputation/post count but one way to encourage replies is to say you will give a green rep to those who reply.

Feedback is very important because it helps you improve your website and gives you an idea of what the majority of people think of your website, rather than just yourself. Best of all feedback can be received absolutely free and for minimal effort – win, win situation!

Image: Nirak

Professional designers will already do this but most general webmasters (like myself) often don’t. Everytime you do some work on your web design always check it is compatible in all browsers.

In the past I had done work and checked it using Internet Explorer and not even considered how it looked in Firefox, Opera etc. As soon as it looked fine in IE I presumed it would be fine in the others. However that wasn’t the case and for ages I had some web designs which were all skewif in Firefox, not good for visitors!

How To Check Cross Compatibility
Don’t worry you don’t have to download all browsers. Simply visit browsershots.org, type in your web address and check the options for browsers/systems you want to check.

Wait 30minutes or so and you will soon have a bunch of screenshots showing you what your website looks like in the different browsers. Then you can make corrections as required. Very easy and completely free!

Image credit: cogdog

Back in August 2008 I pondered what the future held for web design. We are just entering 2009, so what does this year hold for web design?

Here are some expert views on the year ahead in web design!

Smiley Cat has a great set of predictions. Including thoughts on; hand drawn websites (I don’t like them personally), mobile web design (very important!), social media, javascript libraries, online video, interaction design.

Here is an excerpt from the SmileyCat article:

In 2009 it won’t be enough to simply create a web site for a client. Web designers will need to implement a farther reaching strategy that includes the main social media web sites. For example, creating Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter pages for a customer or product.

A 14minute podcast (free to download) from Jim Degerstrom talks about web design trends for seo, content management systems, DIY web design, multimedia content, and the page width standard for 2009. Worth a listen whilst your working.

I’ve seen a few comments on the odd forum post as well but there aren’t many other comprehensive predictions for 2009 (sitepoint and others don’t have any!?). The few comments there are just cover the usual; web designers embracing SEO/SEM etc.

This blog is all about how web design affects success. So of all the predictions I am most excited about Interaction Design and also further embracing Online Video which users seem to love. Let 2009 unveil itself….

Image credit: mulad

We are now approaching the end of 2008, the perfect time to reflect on how your last 12 months have gone for your online business. No matter what type of business you run it is vital to reflect back.

By looking back I don’t mean just thinking “hmmm, yeah that was good”, I mean getting yourself comfortable, no interuptions, going into deep thought and getting on a long train of thought.

Looking back can make you feel proud of achievements, understand why some things may have gone badly, realise why things have happened like they have, lay to rest bad things and also help you decide what you want to achieve next year.

So when you can take time out and have a good think, it will be more beneficial than you think.

Image credit: a_of_doom

It is only a few weeks since the last redesign of the website. But here we go again – yet another new design, and we’ve gone green!

The truth is the last one didn’t work. I wanted the blog to look like a mirror of the main website – same logo, same background, same text style etc. So that’s what we did. But it just didn’t work, for a start it looked ugly and didn’t suit a blog. Secondly it wasn’t particularly user friendly. How can we post entries on this blog if our own blogs design is a mess!

So I’ve scrapped that whole idea and we have gone for a completely fresh look which shows off our “web design success” slogan and has the feel of a proper blog.

Web2.0 Effect
In this current web2.0 era I think it is harder to do effective web designs. My reason being that the visitors who come from Digg and other such sites don’t stay for long. So I want it to be super simple to navigate, easy to read text and easy to see links to subscribe to accomodate those who do arrive from social bookmark sites.

Yet I also want to fit in my normal ads, logo and other bits and pieces. As well as the buttons for social bookmarking sites and my social media accounts. This is why I think the previous design failed, not only did it look bad it couldn’t accomodate these things.

If Your Design Fails – Do It Again!
Designs always take a lot of tweaking. Then getting feedback. Then tweaking more. Then getting feedback…..and so on. But if you finish your design and it still looks bad like ours did, don’t accept it – just redo it! It will cost you a lot of time and maybe money in the short-term but if you accept the crap you’ve already got then you will never succeed. It’s all about the long-term. Don’t be scared to do your web design again.

This post ties in nicely with the one I wrote titled Don’t Let Web Design Slow Your Growth, I certainly felt the old design would really slow the blog down.

If you want to read more great articles like this visit our archives or subscribe for free updates to find out about future postings.

Image credit: jongos

4,100,000 + 3,100,000 = 7,200,000 - that is how many stock images are available to download from Dreamstime and 123rf. And you can buy most the images for less than $1 each, thousands of the images are completely free!

It is often a problem that you develop a new page for your website but can’t find the stock image you are looking for. Spend a dollar or two and you can get the perfect image for your website. The great thing is both websites accept paypal and allow instant download so you can get the images as soon as you need them!

Wise Investment
They say that “an image speaks a thousand words”. A good image can help the text on your page, it draws readers in and complements the message you are trying to get across in your text. It also makes your website more visually appealing which means visitors stay longer. You can also use the image you download again and again on your webpages, especially ideal if you have a blog.

The best thing of all is that all the benefits listed above come for only a dollar or two, or sometimes even free!

So don’t waste your time looking through loads of websites, get yourself over to Dreamstime and 123rf and improve the look and user experience of your website for only a few dollars!

For more quality posts about improving the web design on your website you can subscribe for free to our instant updates!

Image by deneyterrio