To get your website ready to be indexed by the search engines, follow these simple steps:

1. Design your site in html.
2. Use meta tags that are coded properly.
3. Use the right tags in your page. Title tags call attention to your keyword phrases. 
4. Add link back to your site from other quality sites, with content related to your website.
5. Include a sitemap to make it easy for search engines to access all of your website pages.
6. Be sure to add relevant content to your website as often as possible.

A website design that meets basic SEO standards will do well in the search engines.

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com

The quality of your web site is measured by Google, by giving your site or blog, a page rank.
The higher your page rank, the higher your web site is listed in the search engines, and that means more traffic to your site.
How is page rank determined?

• The more back links you receive from other web sites the higher your page rank. Link back from quality sites on the same topic are better.
• The higher the page rank that a link is coming from, the better it is to boost your page rank.
• Another way to improve your page rank is to list your site in web directories, to increase your page rank, and the traffic to your site.

To see your site’s page rank, download and install the Free Google Toolbar.

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com

The Obama campaign has launched a search marketing campaign designed to mitigate potential negative press.
The paid campaign covers possible search phrases such as William Ayers and Barack Obama terrorist.
The ads take you to a website designed specifically to address the questions people may have regarding an issue.It does appear that McCain is trying to sway potential voters online, but not nearly as effectively as Obama is.
For more on this topic, please go here.

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com

Are you maximizing the possibilities of your site, or is it like a giant online business card?

• Do more than just increase traffic to your site- increase customer traffic through your site.
• Make sure your site has the same look and feel of professionalism as your company.  
• Find the right web design company that will help you achieve these goals.

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com

For many websites the days of rapid growth have passed and they have slipped into stagnation. In this latest post at boagworld, the author discusses websites’ common product life cycle, and how to overcome web site stagnation:

“This life cycle includes the following stages…

• Exploration - Most organisations begin with a series of exploratory sites, where they discover the potential of the web. This often involves low investment and slow growth.
• Growth - At some point during the exploration phases the ‘penny drops’ and the organisation realises how the web can benefit their business. More substantial investment is made, the site is dramatically improved, and rapid growth follows.
• Stagnation - Following the initial rapid growth there is a period of stagnation. This is because the ‘quick win’ fixes have been made to the site. Obvious problems have been resolved and so the benefits of fixing these changes have passed.
• Maturity - Once the challenges of overcoming stagnation have been met, a site enters a period of gradual but steady growth. This is characterised by continual incremental changes to the site, which consistently stimulate growth.

It is easy to generate rapid growth on an early version of a website. There are so many obvious problems to fix. You can have a big impact with relatively little effort. However, what happens once that stage is over? How do you avoid sinking into stagnation?”

Read more on how to re-energize your website’s here.

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com

We hope you had a nice relaxing summer!

Here at Mackey Web Design, we’ve been very busy this summer, designing new websites for our clients, which you can review in our porfolio.
As usual, we attended HostingCon 2008. This is the largest event of its kind in the world, making available a platform for all the professionals in web hosting and hosted services industry meet.

So, welcome back, and please do not hesitate to contact us for all your web design and hosting needs.

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com

Some people believe that SEO is a thing of the past. Here are a couple post to illustrate this theory: Is SEO a Dying Industry?  and SEO Has No Future.

• The search engine optimization proponents rushed to respond:
  Ian Lurie talks about how SEO really does have a future. Smart SEO makes it easier for search engines to crawl your site.
• Michael Gray also says that SEO has a future. SEO is here to stay, he says, and there’s nothing that anyone can say to stop that.
• Taylor Pratt says that SEO will exist as long as search engines exist. He says that while search engines are smart, SEOs are smart too and can work alongside search engines.

So is SEO a dying industry, or an evolving industry?
Smart SEO companies will evolve.

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com

Google, who acquired YouTube back in 2006, has partnered with some new content providers, to let AdSense publishers embed their videos and share in the ad revenue.

Broadbandtv: “Broadbandtv is partnering with YouTube to bring the very best video program lineup to a growing and engaged online audience. Broadbandtv shows include hits from Fashion, Celebrity News, Sports, Technology, Comedy and Travel to top notch Spanish-language TV series like Somos Tu y Yo.”

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: “CBC/Radio-Canada is Canada’s national public broadcaster and one of its largest cultural institutions. CBC/Radio-Canada is available how, where, and when Canadians want it.”

The Orchard: “A global leader in digital music, video, new media and brand services, The Orchard offers family content like Gumby, Mr. Bill, My Favorite Martian, and other categories of content like music and comedy.”

Google has created a gallery of some featured partners to give you a better idea of the videos that are available for syndication to your site. You’ll generate earnings for valid clicks or impressions on the ads which appear.

Read more about earning revenue from YouTube videos here.

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com

Stefan Mischook of  www.killersites.com has just released  a 10 minute video blog talking about the three critical aspects of a web site:

1. Content
2. Ease of use
3. Web design aesthetics

He goes over what each aspect means and also gives a few hints and examples of good web design.

This video is not just for web designers. Business owners, who want to effectively use their website to grow their business will find it very interesting as well.

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com

The layout of a website is as important as the content of a website;  it determines how easy a website is to navigate and how easy it is for your visitors to find the information they need.

People are more likely to return to websites that are pleasant to use.
Can a visitor find what they are looking for easily?

Your web designer should create a layout that is not too busy. The web site design should not detracts from the purpose of your website which is the content on it.
You will also want to make sure that the background colors are easy on the eyes: bright colors and multiple colors are great. However, if you can not read the text because of the color or it is hard on the eyes chances are you will end up losing visitors.

After your web designer presents you with the design, it is important to make sure that everything you need, link and page buttons, banners and menus are placed in the proper place.  Your web designer should be able to work with you to achieve the right balance. 

To your great success on the web!

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com