Photoshop Training : Total Training Goes Online
Posted by Jennifer | June 8, 2007
Total Training are now offering their full range of courses online. Their videos cover everything from Print Design to Web Design to Communication and Development Tools. In the past I’ve bought their videos on Photoshop and Illustrator and found them to be entertaining and incredibly informative. It’s a nice way to learn, looking over the instructor’s shoulder.
They currently have a deal where if you buy $150 worth of their instructional DVDs, you will get ONE YEAR’s access to their online library. That will give you access to over $1000 worth of DVDs online.
The full range of Total Training Videos can be viewed here.
6 Lovely Dark Wordpress Themes
Posted by Jennifer Farley | June 2, 2007
Here’s a small sample from the literally thousands of dark themes available from wordpress. These templates are mostly black or very dark grey and yet they stand out because of their elegance and look that little bit different from the rest of the mob. Some of these themes you may have come across already and a couple of them are fairly new. Read more
Website Design : Nice set of Icons
Posted by Jennifer Farley | May 25, 2007
A huge icon pack (over 100 of them) is available for free download from deleket. The icons are bright and colourful and would be a nice addition (in moderation) to any webpage.
Some simple web design fundamentals for a business website
Posted by Jennifer Farley | April 30, 2007
Let’s take a look at some of the things you need to consider when building a website for your business. The fundamentals of successful website building include; making your site load quickly, making it easy to navigate and of course making it look professional. There are many tools available to help you get there but is it necessary to use all every bell and whistle on your site?Firstly, you may feel that using a lot of animated web graphics, flash, banners and pictures on your home page will lead to extra interest from your visitor. It won’t. All it will do is slow down the loading time extensively. People surfing on the web are incredibly impatient and if your site does not load in less than 5 seconds, the will go elsewhere. All graphics should be optimized for quality and file size before uploading to your website.
Next, you need to think about navigation. People need to know “where am I”, “where will this button take me?” and “how do I get back?” The visitor should only need to look at their screen to see where they are at all times. Navigation bars should be clear and easy to read and in the same place on every page. The visitor on your page is not interested in working out a puzzle to find out where they are. Keeping pages clean, tidy and clutter free will result in an easier and more pleasant user-experience for your visitor.
Finally, the “professional” looking website does not include distracting backgrounds, loud and annoying background music or font sizes that shout at your visitor in two inch tall capital letters.
Backgrounds should not clash with the text on the page. Choose a single colour for the background and a complementary font colour that is clear and easy to read on the background. Avoid red and yellow text for the main body of the text. They are too hard on the eyes and will leave your visitor drained rather than excited about your products. The actually copy itself should be well written and brief – again web surfers are an impatient lot and don’t want to read several paragraphs where one paragraph will suffice.
To sum up, if your web pages are easy to read, clutter free, easy to navigate and don’t take long to download or make your eyes water, then you’re probably doing okay. Check out other websites to get some ideas and look at other business and product web sites (in your own field AND outside this fields) to see what they have done.
A well designed and thought-out website is the first step to producing a very good income.
Website Launch : Digital Design Cottage Blog
Posted by Jennifer Farley | February 26, 2007
The Digital Design Cottage Blog has been around for a few months now but I’m only officially announcing it today!
The blog includes Photoshop tips and tutorials and will soon have podcasts featuring Photoshop video lessons.
What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
Posted by Jennifer Farley | January 30, 2007
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) means setting up web pages so that they can be found easily by search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. Making your web pages search engine friendly can improve your web site’s ranking which can result in thousands of monthly visitors otherwise you site may go the way of a Eurovision Song Contest winner i.e. lost in oblivion. There are so many millions of pages on the web now, that you need to make a big effort to be found. Search engines are used about 3.5 billion times a day to access information on line. Most users will only look at the top 20 results so it’s obvious how important it is to be ranked well.
Why search engine optimization is imperative for your site
Search engines have rules and by ensuring that your web page follows some or as many of these rules as possible, you can improve your “findability” on the web. If your web pages fit the criteria that a search engine considers the most important factors in terms of relevance, then it will reward you with a top ranking.
1. Keyword research
One of the ways that search engines rank your site is by determining how relevant it is for a particular keyword. You could think of the Internet a huge, mostly disorganised library – search engines are the librarians. They do their best to organise the content so visitors can find what they’re looking for with minimal effort. Because the internet is so huge and there is so much information to index, the search engines try to organise the information using keywords and links.
When you are writing content for your web pages one of the most important ways to optimise your site for search engines, is to write text based around the keywords you have chosen to focus on. You can demonstrate your relevance to the search engine by writing content that is rich in your chosen keywords.
Ok, that makes sense but you must be careful not to use your keywords so often that is sounds unnatural to a visitor reading the text. This in known as keyword stuffing and is severly frowned upon by the search engines. Not only will this alienate your visitors, keyword stuffing will ultimately damage your rankings.
So part of the search engine optimization specialist’s job is to make sure the Web pages target the keywords that people search for when looking for products, services or information related to what the Web page offers. The variety of keywords used to search for the same product, service or information is quite staggering.
You don’t have to pay someone to find the keywords for you, however, as there are several tools available on the web which can help you find out which keywords are popular and also help suggest keywords which are related which you may not have thought of before.
Try these sites:
Google Keywords - generate keywords.
www.goodkeywords.com - free downloadable software to help you track keywords.
www.wordtracker.com - take a free trial.
For example, today I did a search on Google Keywords for the most popular keywords phrases used by people searching for the word “ Ireland holiday”. This is what came back:
As you can see there are many variations used to search for information on the same topic.
Before Web pages can be optimised, it’s important to conduct some research to determine which keywords to target. This involves finding targeted keywords, determining their popularity, assessing the amount of competition, and then deciding which keywords to use in your Web pages.
2. Links
How link popularity affects your search engine rankings Link popularity refers to the number of links pointing to and from your site to related sites. It is another important method of improving your site’s relevancy in search engines.
Search engines assess the links point to your site from others when they place your site in the rankings. A link from another site is seen as a vote of confidence, based on the idea that others think your site is good.
There are three types of links that will increase the link popularity of your site. Let’s take a look at them now.
Internal links
Internal link popularity refers to the number of links to and from pages within a site. It’s a good idea to cross link your most important related pages. This helps the search engine spiders find and index your most important pages more quickly.
Incoming links
Incoming link popularity refers to links pointing to your site from other related sites. There are two ways of finding sites to link to yours. The best way to get other sites to link to yours is to ask them politely. And the best way to find likely candidates is to ask web sites that link to your competition. You can find out which sites are linking to your competitors by visiting a search engine such as Google and enter, “link:” followed by the competitors domain name. For example:
link:ireland.com
link:www.coke.com
To check the link popularity of your own sites, use your own domain name.
Once you have compiled a list of related sites, you can add a link to them in your site and then ask them will they provide a reciprocal link on their site. You can do this by email.
Another way of finding sites to link to yours is to find sites that accept site submissions. To find such sites, visit a search engine, such as Google, and search for:
“add url” “your keywords”
So for example if you are a photographer, you will find there are many photography sites which offer site submissions. They usually provide free links and you will get new visitors to your site through these links.
Outgoing links
The importance of outgoing links is still being debated but the idea is that search engine spiders will crawl your site’s outgoing links and determine that the content of the sites you link to are related to the content of your own site.
Link quality
The quality of the links is just as important, if not more, than the number of links to your site. The types of sites you should concentrate on getting links from include major search engines (Google.com), popular search portals (MSN.com), web directories (Yahoo.com and Open Directory Project - dmoz.org) and sites related to your site’s theme.
Link exchanges and farms
It’s important to avoid quick fix link schemes and automated link exchange software. Do not get links from link exchange sites and link farms. Link farms are networks of heavily cross linked pages on one or more sites, with the sole intention of improving the link popularity of those pages and sites. All of the major search engines consider such links as spam, so stay clear of these types of links. It is better to focus on generating links slowly and steadily. Spend a little bit of time each week working on your links and you will start to see the results. By keeping your optimisation techniques simple and working with the search engine guidelines you can improve your ranking and the number of visitors to your site.
Laughing Lion Design add all their clients sites to the major search engines and provide lists of suitable related sites.
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About
Hi, my name is Jennifer Farley and I am a designer and design instructor based in Ireland. Read more about Laughing Lion Design .
