Keywords change in strength and effectiveness every month. Whether it’s a rise or fall, it can seem like a hassle to work keywords and generate SEO into text worth reading on a site.

Simply scattering keywords like buckshot onto a page can generate some attention, but it’s not the kind people can appreciate or even tolerate.  In fact, keyword heavy content with no quality can attract negative attention that results in bad consequences from search engines.

In other words, we could litter our pages with phrases like “Austin web design,” “Austin web design company,” and “SEO company Austin” to try and create strong SEO content. That would be a waste of time if these phrases were randomly scattered throughout pages without any tangible meaning or effect.

It’s important to remember that your website is a formal representation of you and your company. By throwing around as many keywords as you possibly can, the information, personality, and therefore affect that your site could have gets lost in this desperate reach for attention online.

Start with a Message that Matters

Anybody can write online, but it takes a certain amount of skill, practice, and  revision to really get the most out of your online presence. Some of that skill should derive from your own business – the subject of your expertise.

In regard to keywords, their accessibility and affect on a visitor, your pages can often become bogged down and noticeably sloppy when you’re trying to write just for keywords. Though SEO and keyword rankings are vital to a successful online campaign, it’s essential to write with purpose.

Whether it’s describing your core business on the home page, discussing awards you’ve received or specific services you provide, tailoring the written material with a focus on the purpose of the message will make your site more accessible and enjoyable for the reader.

Figure out what you want to say, what you want people to know about you and your business then revise and edit the material to see if any keywords are appropriate and coherent with the message.

Editing with Style & Getting Perspective

Have someone read you’re writing if you plan on putting it online. Between grammar, spelling, and other typos, we can often become caught up within the context of a piece, and then not notice these kind of significant pitfalls in our writing.

Working with someone who is familiar with the business you’re involved in, or has an extensive knowledge of rhetoric and literacy, is a step towards creating a strong website worth the public’s interest and time.

Any opaque phrases will be questioned by the editor and will allow you to make the proper changes and revise the piece into something worthwhile.

Even a person outside of your industry can make a great editor for your content.  This could give you good insight from an “unbiased” perspective and possibly some feedback from someone who represents your customer’s perspective – who might not be an expert on your business at all.

We can all recognize ‘good’ blogs when we see them, but we might not instantly know why we consider some blogs to be better than others. In general, there are two things that make a blog ‘good,’ or worth reading: interesting or educational topics and easy to understand writing.

When hunting for a good read, users typically search for an author or company with shared interests or concerns, and then they delve into the material. Readers immediately judge a blog by its content, language and length to decide whether it’s worth reading or not. While personal opinion and taste play a part, topic and brevity are still key to hooking your readers. Sometimes bloggers will let SEO concerns rule their blog-writing habits, but remember that readers don’t want to wade through a sea of keywords to get to the point. Likewise, very long, very laborious writing will turn off readers. Follow our tips to make your blog work for you, and not the other way around.

Content Before Keywords

When Truman Capote, author of the phenomenal non-fiction crime drama In Cold Blood, was asked about Jack Kerouac’s success and popularity he said, “That’s not writing, that’s typing.” Though some people may disagree with Capote’s opinion on the Beat generation’s foremost author, bloggers and writers everywhere can still learn from what he said.

Blogs are usually used as either a tool to gain business or a platform for people to write about their personal lives and passions. Business owners especially should keep in mind that people want to be captivated by the blogs they read too. SEO is a very important part of making your site visible to the world, and including keywords on your site is a crucial part of SEO. However, don’t go overboard with the keywords. Articles should have keywords in them, but they should not distract from the message. Posting well-written blogs a few times each week will actually do more to help your keyword rankings and search engine visibility than posting poorly-written posts over flowing with keywords once a month. Stay true to your company’s values and make your blogs interesting for readers; the keywords will come naturally.

Keep It Simple

This isn’t Ulysses and certainly not many of us are on the writing level of James Joyce, so why bore your readers with lengthy, complex posts? Though it may be tempting to rant and shoot off like a blogging bottle rocket, remember that the audience is there to learn something or explore an idea further. Also remember that the audience has a short attention span; anything over 800 words (unless you’re writing for an academic blog or journal) is a bit lengthy and can lose some readers in light of length alone. If you want the message to be clear and worth your readers’ attention, then you must revise and revise again until the message is concise and easy to understand.

Remember, keep posts to the point, write clearly and on topic, don’t focus solely on keywords, and post often. These tips can help keep readers on your site longer and more often.

A strong web presence can do wonders for any business. From attracting new customers to keeping loyal ones up-to-date on new or improved products and services, an online marketing plan can serve as a major expediter to delivering quality information and customer service.

However, business owners do not always have the time to maintain a rigorous SEO campaign on their own. To boost rankings and search engine visibility, we recommend consulting a web design, development, and SEO marketing company. Unless you are already a whiz at online marketing, it may be more trouble than it’s worth to try to play catch-up now; leave it to the professionals.

The Facts

In the US, over 77% of people are active online. That’s roughly 240 million users who could be looking for a business just like yours to serve them reliably and efficiently. In light of the massive web presence of businesspeople and potential customers, it is increasingly important to make sure your site is visible. Worldwide, Google alone answers more than one billion search queries every day! Of those one billion searches, 15% are brand new and have never been searched before. So even if your company is in a niche market or just starting out, people are searching the Internet for new things every day. Make sure they can find you and your services or products.

Limits of SEO

SEO is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website. However, writing page after page of keyword rich content can become monotonous; you don’t want to sacrifice quality writing for a few extra keywords. Hiring a professional SEO company can be very beneficial because these pros are experts at writing effectively for SEO while maintaining a company’s personality. Be careful, though; some companies do not offer custom SEO services. Make sure you go with a company that will provide personalized analysis, recommendations and content for your individual website.

Adding a keyword here-and-there as well as bombarding your pages with keywords will hurt more than help your business. Generating quality SEO intense material takes more time, research, and dedication than one would expect. Since keywords change and their effect fluctuates as the months go by, it’s important to have an SEO marketing provider who will monitor these changes and adapt to them promptly. While you focus on your business and honing your skills, the last thing on your mind is what keywords were strongest last month and which SEO-friendly words need more focus and appearance. This process takes up much time and research so it may be in the business owner’s best interest to hire a web consulting and SEO marketing company to assist you in generating relevant keywords to get the most out of your online presence.

What to Do Now?

There are many SEO providers to choose from these days. When debating which company to hire, be on the look out for:

1. Custom analysis and recommendations

2. Quality content provided by the company’s writing staff

3. In-depth reporting and constant communication

4. Personalized solutions for your business

Don’t put your company’s success into the hands of just any web company. Make sure you choose a quality provider who will work with you to deliver the best results.

There has been a lot of talk about Java in the news lately; the US Department of Homeland Security issued a statement to tell people to uninstall or disable the plugin from their computers to protect themselves from a security break in the system. But before you go disabling everything with ‘java’ in the name, take a minute to learn a little more about this technology. Java is the software that was affected by the security breach, not JavaScript.

What is Java?

Java, also known as Java VM or Java Applet, is a cross-platform programming language that allows web developers to write code that can be read by PCs, Macs, Unix and Linux computers without having to be translated. It’s one of the most popular programming languages because of this feature. Many websites use Java and require users to download plugins to run their site’s programs. The plugins act like apps for each site’s unique program.

Many bank and gaming sites, for example, require users to install a software plug-in to run their programs. Other sites like gotomeeting.com, webex.com and join.me.com also require Java plug-ins. This is the Java that may be susceptible to hackers, and this is what was recommended to disable in your browser.

How to Disable Java in:

• Chrome: Open Chrome, type chrome://plugins in the location bar. Find Java, click Disable under the name

• Firefox: Open Firefox, go to Tools > Add-ons (or just Add-ons). Click the Plugins tab. Click the Java plugin(s) and click disable.

• Internet Explorer: Open IE, go to Tools. Click Manage Plugins. Show all items. Disable Java Plugin.

• Safari: Open Safari, click the Safari menu and go to Preferences. Click the Security tab and uncheck the box next to Enable Java.

What is JavaScript?

JavaScript is a scripting language that programmers use to create dynamic websites and dynamic features on websites. JavaScript and Java use some similar names in their language, but the two are otherwise unrelated and have very different functions.

If you disable JavaScript on your computer, you will have problems. It is a very common programming language, and without it you will not be able to view many websites properly.

Should I Be Really Worried?

As of January 14, Oracle released a statement saying that they have patched Java, so users of the plugin don’t need to worry anymore. Other sources continue to say be cautious. We recommend the same, for now, until Oracle has definitely fixed the problem. Stay tuned for more updates.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is something every website owner needs to understand. If you aren’t in a highly competitive market, you may be able to spend less time on an SEO campaign, but it’s still important to keep yourself tuned-in. Running your business is still your top priority, but don’t you want to make sure people on the Web can find your business too?

The best way to boost your rankings in Google and Bing is to hire a web professional to run your SEO campaign. In the meantime, here is a list of things you can do on your own once a week to make your site more visible.

Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools

Google has given us so many things; Analytics and Webmaster are two of the best tools to monitor your site’s traffic and make sure nothing is broken on your website. If you haven’t signed up for an account yet, do it now!

Now that you have an account, check your Google Tools once a week. Webmaster allows you to quickly check to make sure your sitemaps are well linked and nothing on your site is broken. If you see a page missing or a broken link, fix it. Search engines crawlers can’t find your pages if they aren’t linked to your sitemap.

Using Analytics, you can see how many new and returning visitors are going to your site each month, which pages are the most popular, how long people spend on each page, and how they found your site in the first place. This kind of data is invaluable to the businessperson running their own SEO campaign.

If you know your services or products page isn’t getting a lot of love, then it’s time to make some changes. On the flip side, if you see that your videos are attracting a lot of attention, it’s time to make some more videos!

Update Your Tags

Whether your site is a basic HTML site or on a CMS platform like WordPress, updating title and meta tags is easy.

Every page in your site should have a title and a corresponding title tag. If you frequently add blog posts or new pages to your site, it can be easy to forget to include them, though. That’s why we suggest checking your pages once a week to make sure they all have title tags. If you don’t have a lot of pages, it’s easy to do this manually. If you do have a lot of pages, just check your Webmaster Tools and they can detect tags for you.

Once title tags are in place, check meta data too.  Meta tags won’t make or brake your site, but it’s still a good idea to check them out and make sure you don’t have any duplicate data.

Blog

This is when people start to roll their eyes and say, “Who has time to blog?” But blogging once a week can really improve your sites SEO. You don’t have to write an essay every week, but post a short piece (chock-full of keywords, of course) at least once a week.

Search engines love blogs, and visitors to your site will too. New posts mean new content to index. Plus, recent updates on your site show new visitors that you’re on top of your game, and give them another way to engage with your site. Set aside 30 minutes each week and crank out a blog on the latest happenings at the office. When you get your first I-read-your-recent-blog phone call, you’ll be glad you did.

SEO doesn’t have to take your attention away from your other work. Integrate these steps into your weekly routine; a little work can go a long way.

For more help, you can read about the SEO services we offer here, or contact us today.

If you are a small business owner or manager, you are probably focused on running your business (as you should be) rather than technology.  You just need it to “work” and be reliable.  So when it comes to deciding on a web host to support your website, you may already be overwhelmed.

Nearly every web hosting company offers several packages, some with catchy names.  But how do you know which web hosting plan is right for you?

When you contact our sales department,  we usually ask a few basic questions to understand your needs:

How much space is your website using?
Most small websites don’t need a lot of storage space.  But the need for space can vary.  For example, if you have a photography website that has collected 100s of pictures in 100 categories and the photo galleries are extensive, you might be using several GB of space.  Meanwhile, a local consulting business may only have a few basic web pages with general information and few graphics, barely approaching 30MB in size. If you have a current web host, look in your control panel for statistics for your current space usage. In some software like in WEBii’s control panel, there is an overview meter on the first page.

How much bandwidth (data transfer) does your website use?
Bandwidth is an important factor in website stability and growth.  More popular websites with a lot of traffic consume more data transfer, as do websites with large media files (like large interactive videos) or with intense custom software that has frequent simultaneous users.  If you are moving from a former web host, your data transfer consumption should also be a statistic you can track in your control panel.  If you are unsure, think about the nature of your website and traffic levels.  Today, many people are hosting videos with alternative sites like YouTube to save their own site’s bandwidth.

Many hosts will boast extremely large amount of data transfer in their plans, or even “unlimited”; WEBii does not practice this marketing tactic.  Instead, we propose realistic levels on our plans that ensure enough resources for all of our customers on the servers.  And we rarely have any client who exceeds their limit.  When dealing with shared web hosting services, it is vital to monitor data transfer consumption in order to maintain uptime.  When a host allows their customers to believe that they can have an endless amount of bandwidth, they are setting themselves up for server performance issues and downtime, when even 1 of those customers truly takes advantage of the situation.  Don’t let a web host talk you into believing that data transfer is a small priority commodity.

Websites that really are especially large and intensive are sometimes best suited for a dedicated server.  We custom build dedicated server solutions for clients that fit this situation.

Does your website have any special software?
If your website includes any CMS software like WordPress or Joomla, that tells us that you will need something that supports PHP and a mySQL database.  It also tells us that we need to be aware of the more dynamic nature of your site and that it might be better suited for a powerful server that has proven performance with those programs.  If your site is running an extensive shopping cart software like Magento, that tells us it is a bit more robust and will need some above average server CPU power.  If that online store has thousands of products and several customers shopping each day, we will likely recommend a larger hosting plan like our Corp Plan.

Do you have any special email or other technical needs?
While all of our plans include email services, this question might lead to specialized needs that the average customer does not have in a shared hosting service.  It is a good idea to discuss special email or technical requirements that your company has with your web host, so they can be at least aware of the situation and recommend additions or modifications to your plan.

With summer in full swing and Independence Day in our rearview mirror, we tend to lose focus on business due to the heat and wealth distractions that come with this lackadaisical season. If we could, we’d spend our days lounging by the pool, grilling with the family, or out on the lake. The fact remains, though, that no business stops for the seasons, and there is always work to be done. As Austin web designers, our beaches are the websites we create and the material we love to write, the warm sand is the keyboard below our fingertips. However, since many of your customers will be on vacation and away from their computers, now is the time to test out your website on your phone. Smart phones have become a growing necessity for most anyone, so making sure your site is mobile-friendly is one of the most important aspects of properly maintaining your website today.

Be cautious of cluttered designs, consider mobile plug-ins

One of the most frustrating facets of a website can be the number of images on a single page. Though we all love to be visually stimulated, when it comes to mobile-friendly sites, the best are those that are well organized and with as few images as possible. One way to do this effectively, aside from rearranging the format and design of your pages, is to invest in a mobile plug-in. This will allow you to make your website as versatile as possible. If your site is on WordPress, for example, they have a variety of mobile plug-ins that automatically format your site into arranged sections, turning your website into a mobile and user-friendly interface with just a simple download.

Stay away from Java and Flash

Using Java or Flash in today’s mobile oriented environment is practically a death wish for your site. Not only will they slow down users from accessing your site from their phone, but they are outdated technologies that could cost you visitors because of slow loading pages. Instead, use classic HTML and CSS coding to give visitors the most effective, efficient experience.

At WEBii, our team of experienced, professional web designers create the most dynamic and mobile-friendly sites for today’s competitive market. Creating the most sophisticated, stylish, and accessible websites for your business, our knowledgeable staff develops sites that suit your wants and needs. Before summer’s end, be sure to make the necessary adjustments so that your website is universally friendly across all formats.

One of the most important aspects of a website is usability. Web usability is defined as the flow of your website from page to page. In other words, it is a measure of how well your website is put together and whether improvements are needed to clarify or completely redo a part of the site. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Ask.com, are all masters of usability because their graphical user interface (GUI) is easy to use and accessible for even the least tech-savvy Internet users. There are a few steps and tests (like http://www.usability.gov/) that you can utilize to test the usability of your website.

The best way to test the usability of your website is to imagine situations related to visiting your website, and then asking people to act out these scenarios. While family and colleagues may be a varied (as far as Internet usage) and reliable source, the best results will come from people who are randomly selected. Ask the participant questions to make them feel at ease and discover their background (“How often do you use the Internet? How long each day? What do you use it for?” etc.) to better understand where they are coming from and how technologically inclined they are.

One of the most important aspects of the usability test are the scenarios that you provide for participants. For example, if I own a sporting goods store, I might give the user a scenario in which they must be able to find out if they can rent equipment, what the estimated cost would be, and how long they can rent the equipment. I may know that my business provides a special, 6-month rental deal but if the participant is unable to easily find this information on their own, then my website has a usability issue. Missing information, “dead” links (502 forbidden error), and a misleading or confusing layout are a few of the concerns that can be fixed after a usability test.

The goal of a usability test is ultimately to create clarity to your audience for all aspects of your site. Recognizing and deleting or renovating ambiguous terms or actions, as well as noting the efficiency (namely for eCommerce sites) of your site, will allow you to improve and strengthen your online presence. A web usability test is incredibly helpful and should be considered as an essential part of creating and maintaining your website.

Today almost everyone has a website of some sort. Whether it’s for business or pleasure, we are all connected to the Internet. Social media websites give you a generic, yet customizable theme that allows you to express yourself by posting text, pictures, videos, and listing your likes and dislikes. The World Wide Web encompasses so much information that it can be daunting to consider it on a holistic, international scale.

One element that all websites have in common is the language behind the images and information seen on a webpage. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the language that web pages use and translate to create the words and format of a webpage. Most likely, you will go your entire life without having an actual conversation in HTML but it is important to understand the language behind what our websites display.

In the early days of the World Wide Web, HTML code had to be painstakingly typed to the point of perfection for a webpage to appear the way you wanted it. While HTML and CSS (design/appearance code) are still major components for all websites on the Internet, sites like WordPress or Dreamweaver can now make the HTML-illiterate feel like the most tech-savvy person in the room by furthering your interaction with web design.

If you are interested in learning more about HTML and CSS, there are a plethora of resources available on and offline. Most colleges offer classes on HTML and hundreds of books and articles examine, explain and expand on HTML, its importance, and effect. Merely glimpsing at any webpage’s HTML code will make you marvel and appreciate the complex, attractive websites we visit daily.

So you have your website up and running. It’s receiving a decent amount of traffic and your business is beginning to expand. You’ve left the contact info and are beginning to have your private email filled with business related matters. Now, you want to create an email through and connected to your business’ domain name. Gmail and YahooMail are great for private matters but it can be overwhelming when business and pleasure, as far as email is concerned, collide.

To create an email through your business’ website, log into your control panel and search for the “Email Setup” button. You can than choose the kind of email you want to have (i.e. “Add new POP3”). Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3) is the most common and frequently used kind of email, allowing the messages sent to you to be transferred onto your computer and be seen when you log into your account. Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) lets you work with messages without downloading them to your computer. Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is used to send and receive messages in both the POP3 and IMAP email options. Use POP3, create a user name and password, and save your info. Be sure to send a test email to your new address to make sure you’ve done it correctly.

Any questions or concerns, feel free to contact our 24/7 email tech support: support@webii.net.