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

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

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

We are happy to announce the launch of a new website this week: http://web-designer-orlando.com, to address the needs of our Orlando customers.
We are now offering quality web design at an affordable price to the Orlando area. We also offer web hosting and search engine optimization.

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. RSS feeds are ways to publicizing updates to websites. RSS feeds usually contain the title of the update originating from the website, and the link to the website source.

To use RSS feed you need an RSS reader to read the RSS feed from the source website. 
You can get a desktop RSS reader, or an online or web-based reader.

For beginners, web-based RSS reader are recommended since they are usually user-friendly.
Scan the homepage of your target website for the RSS or XML button. It contains the RSS code you need to enter in the RSS reader. Copy and paste this code into your RSS reader, and you can start reading the RSS feeds coming from the website. New postings appear as they are published in real time at the source website.

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com
 

Internet regulator ICANN has voted unanimously to expand the number of top level domain names. It’s in one of the biggest shake-ups in the Internet’s brief history in a vote on allowing millions of new domain names from .paris to .Pepsi.

The decision provides companies the opportunity to turn their brands into web addresses, while individuals could potentially use their names. A second proposal, that would introduce domain names written in scripts such as Asian and Arabic, was also approved.

“We are opening up a new world and I think this cannot be underestimated,” said Roberto Gaetano, a member of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

ICANN has been working on the move for nearly six years.

The new plan is sure to inspire a rush for thousands of new top level domains based on any string of letters, providing a “business plan and technical capacity” can be demonstrated.

The popular online trading site eBay is one of the many companies that wants to have its own domain name.

Broad product groups such as .bank or .car are also likely contenders.

Cities could benefit too from this liberalisation, with the German capital hoping for .berlin or New York for .nyc.

Expect the new system to come replete with contentious battles and bidding wars as companies move to secure domain names based on their intellectual property.

The new system is anticipated to come in the next year, so get ready domain name buyers!

The Web Design Team at mackeywebdesign.com