Entries Tagged as 'Development'

5 Steps to Improve Conversion Rates

July 23, 2008 // Drew Stauffer

Whether you’re redesigning your website or starting from scratch, you need to make sure that whatever you have online is converting users.

Some sites sell products while others measure success by how many users contact them; either way, you have to be able to determine what’s working.

There are many ways to test your website, but the most important step is to just get started. You can debate with colleagues about color and style for weeks, but in the end you have to let the users determine what works and what doesn’t.
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SEO & Web Design - Are They on the Same Page?

June 30, 2008 // Drew Stauffer

When constructing a website, SEO design and web design don’t have to be two different functions. Sadly though, these two sets of features often come from different sides of the building.

Very few graphic people understand SEO or even what it entails and marketing people are focused on results and may feel that the design is secondary. But can combining SEO and web design be that hard?

If you breakdown the functions of both SEO and web design, they’re not really that different and can be easily and effectively integrated if thought through.
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Doing What You Love

April 1, 2008 // Drew Stauffer

Most of the time client work isn’t going to be that exciting or glamorous. But every once in a while a client comes along that lets you have fun. Chris Cote, Editor In Chief of Transworld SURF magazine, decided he needed his own blog. Having worked with Wildfire partner John King at Transworld SURF, he knew who to contact when it came time.

From start to finish the project took about a month. Chris knew John’s work enough to just let him go. Design gets approved, I build out the blog, and we’re live. A truly extraordinarily easy process, and cotescube.com is born.

I would love to describe it for you but I think he can paint a better picture. Here’s how he puts it:

Cote’s Cube is a place for you to find epic gear, supremely cool restaurants and bars, skate spots (for mediocre skaters like me), look at art, see what happens at lame parties, check out my friends being all friendly and shit, and you may even learn something (god forbid).

I highly recommend Cote’s Cube for anyone who reads Transworld SURF Magazine or anyone who just loves the industry.

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Zero Out Your Margins

March 6, 2008 // Drew Stauffer

Have you ever designed a beautiful website only to find that it doesn’t quite look right across multiple browsers? All browsers are not created equal, and often they have slightly different standards for presenting web pages. Internet Explorer can put a little margin here or Firefox can put a little padding there, and even the smallest differences can make your life a nightmare if you’re not prepared.

Developing websites without using tables can give a designer an extraordinary amount of control when it comes to how you want to style your design. Unfortunately with all that control comes a greater responsibility to make sure that each element stays in place across every browser that a user might open.
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Bad IE

January 15, 2008 // Drew Stauffer

Due to some nasty rendering in Internet Explorer were going to have to put the new theme on hold for just a bit. We should be able to get her back real soon.

IE Will Not Cooperate

June 4, 2007 // Drew Stauffer

IE positioning is fickle at best. I was recently designing a new site for a client when I could not get around this one bug that kept appearing in IE when I would test the site. No matter what I adjusted, nothing would correct the problem. Thank god I ran across positioniseverything.net. To my surprise I was dealing with the IE Doubled Float-Margin Bug.

I have a full summary with images of what happened on my other site, Drew Stauffer. If you’ve had any other problems with IE, or more importantly solutions on how to fix the problems, I would love to hear about them.

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The Power of a ReDesign

March 1, 2007 // Drew Stauffer

A few days ago I wrote a post over at Wildfire Productions, How A Simple Re-Design Can Increase Traffic and Sales. The article points out the benefits that can come with a simple redesign. From design, to development, and content to search engine optimization, everything about the site was redone with great success. Popoyo Rental is now listed on page 1 of Google, Yahoo, and MSN for many of its keywords.

Check out the article in full length for a thorough breakdown of what we did for each aspect of the site.

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How to Write Blog Posts to Increase Search Engine Traffic

February 19, 2007 // Drew Stauffer

Businesses put a lot of time and energy into website development, design, blogs, and search engine optimization. These elements need to be implemented into a website in order for it to be indexed and perform well on the search engines. But once you’re done, you’re not really done, you’re just beginning. Since you were wise enough to implement a blog into your website, you can now utilize this feature to create content that is going to increase your search engine traffic and exposure.

The nice thing about writing blog posts to boost your search engine traffic is that a lot of the thought process has already been developed while constructing the foundation for your website. Hopefully, you took the time to carefully research the keywords that are targeted on each particular page of your site. All you need to do now is write your posts with those keywords in mind and direct your links to those pages. It can be really simple if you organize your website design and development and plan everything out.

Here’s an easy formula to follow:

You chose to target keyword A for page2.html in the development of your website, use that formula when you are thinking of posts and article ideas.

  • In your blog, write a post with keyword A in your title…something catchy, more info on that over here at seomoz or copyblogger
  • Write in-depth and informative content related to keyword A
  • Target keyword A in a link from your post to page2.html
  • When appropriate, link out to other authorities that can offer more information about your keyword topic (Use this tip with caution. While you are trying to give the user more info and get the attention of the other site – thus possibly getting a link back to your site – you should try to strike a balance so that the effectiveness of your post is maximized without excessive links out from your site)
  • Remember to vary the way you link keyword A to page2.html (did you target long-tail keywords? Those are very easy to alter)
  • Repeat this process on each post for all pertinent keywords throughout your site

The nice thing about this formula is that you actually tackle quite a few of the common marketing questions that challenge many business owners.

Common business marketing questions:

Q. We have a website…now what?

A. Writing informative posts and articles re-iterating your keywords will only build your prominence on the search engines for your particular keywords.

Q. We have a blog, but what do we write about?

A. Now you will have at least a post for every keyword in your site…the more posts on each keyword topic, the better.

Q. How do we create link bait?

A. Writing content rich articles and posts that are targeted with your keywords both in your content and witty titles will attract users, thus creating link bait.

Business can easily get side tracked with all the commotions of new clients, old clients, and day-to-day affairs. This focused plan will keep your business on a steady path and not have you chasing this month’s new trend in search engine marketing and website promotion. These steps will likely take a while to fully implement, but if applied correctly and consistently they can help promote, market, and develop your site as an authority in your niche. In time your posts will increase your presence on the search engines and increase your overall traffic.

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You Want Link Bait, Here It Is!

February 12, 2007 // Drew Stauffer

Link bait is what you need, but what’s the best way to go about achieving it? We all know quality content is the best source of link bait, but what is quality content? Andy Hagans’ lays out all you need to know when it comes to good link baiting and with his simple formulas, link bait doesn’t seem so hard. Here are few examples:

Title, maybe the most important part of link bait:

  • Who Else Wants [blank]?
  • The Secret of [blank]
  • Here is a Method That is Helping [blank] to [blank]
  • Little Known Ways to [blank]
  • Get Rid of [problem] Once and For All

Quality Content

  • News Hook
  • Resource Hook
  • Contrary Hook
  • Humor Hook
  • Tool Hook
  • Giveaway Hook
  • Research/Statistics Hook

Packaging and Formatting

  • Scannability
  • Take down your ads
  • Images are good

Promotion

  • Digg
  • Delicious
  • Netscape
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit

Check out Andy Hagans’ Ultimate Guide to Linkbaiting and Social Media Marketing article for a complete break down on each section. It doesn’t get more in-depth than this.

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Google Announces Backlink Tool for Webmasters

February 9, 2007 // Drew Stauffer

Google has released a new feature in their Webmasters Central that allows you to see the backlinks to your site. Although this is a huge advancement to their console, Matt Cutts is quick to put things into perspective:

Do not assume just because you see a backlink that it’s carrying weight. I’m going to say that again: Do not assume just because you see a backlink that it’s carrying weight. Sometime in the next year, someone will say “But I saw an insert-link-fad-here backlink show up in Google’s backlink tool, so it must count. Right?” And then I’ll point them back here, where I say do not assume just because you see a backlink that it’s carrying weight.

This is a very nice feature that Google has added compared to their link: operator, which only gives you a sample of your backlinks. But why is Google still preventing us from seeing all of our backlinks? Yahoo’s Site Explorer still shows a much larger percentage of backlinks, but are they as legitimate?

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