Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can seem like an overwhelming subject for anyone that is new to website development. SEO is one of the most widely, and hotly, debated topics and there is an overload of information ready to baffle any new webmaster.
But SEO need not be that complicated. As long as a few simple techniques are employed in the initial stages of a new website – that website has every chance of becoming indexed and ranked by a search engine.

Here are the 3 main SEO principles that should be followed when planning and building a new website.

1.    Keywords

Keywords are the important words, and phrases, that define a website. These are they terms that people will type into a web browser. Anyone looking for information online will perform a search query – this will normally involve typing a specific word, or sentence, into a search box (such as Google) and then being presented with a list of relevant results.
If a website specializes in selling exotic birds, they may want to appear in the search results for the query ‘African Grey Parrot’. To achieve this, a website will need to structure their website around that particular keyword phrase and then convince a search engine that the website is the best, or one of the best, places to find quality information on that subject.
Every time anyone searches for information, the results they receive are heavily influenced by the listed websites keyword choices and how well they presented these to a search engine using SEO techniques.

2.    Links

Links are how a search engine finds its way from website to website. If there were no links, the whole foundations of search would crumble. A good link structure is essential to the success of a website.
Links can be internal and external but serve the same goal – allowing visitors and search engines to locate the site and any relevant information. Internal links act as on-site navigation and guide people and search engine crawlers around the site. Poor link architecture will lead to pages not been indexed and visitors leaving in a hurry.
The link itself is nearly always simple HTML code that will be presented as either an ordinary textual link, a graphical link, or an image-based link. When clicked, or followed, this link will then take the reader, or search engine crawler, to a specified location – in the case of an internal link, this will be some place within the actual website.
External links point to other websites but follow the same format as internal links. These can be inbound and outbound links. Inbound simply means that another website has a link which points to your website. An outbound link is a link for your site that directs visitors, and search robots, to another website.
External links are judged by various factors, such as: relevance, authority of link referrer, whether the link is reciprocal (website A points to website B, website B points to website A) or if it is a one-way link (one website points to another without the link being reciprocated), Google PageRank and a few other factors.
Links should use anchor text and this should be based around keywords. This adds to keyword relevance and helps to convince search engines that the website is relevant to a particular topic i.e. the keyword. Anchor text means having a particular word, or phrase, as the clickable text – such as ‘African Gray Parrot’.
External links are seen as votes for a website and the more of these votes that a website has, the more important it will look to a search engine – especially if these links are form reputable, topic-relevant, authoritative websites.

3.    Content

This is the information contained within an actual website itself and has become increasingly important as search engines become more advanced. Content should be relevant to the keyword selection for that website – there is no point trying to rank for the term ‘African Gray Parrot’ if the website content is all about tropical fish.
Content should be good quality and updated regularly. Search engines place greater importance now on freshly updated content – especially now that some search engines use real-time updates. Primary keywords should be used within the title and sub headings of the content and also placed within the text, preferably in the first and last paragraph and a few times in the main body.
Keywords should only make up about 5-7% of the total word count and it can be advantageous to highlight these words by bolding or italicizing.
As far as the rest of the content goes, it should contain relevant information – that includes using synonyms, secondary keywords and good anchor text links to internal pages. The more quality content a site has the better. The home page should have at least 300-500 words contained within the page.
Content that looks interesting to readers is great, but be aware of using unnecessary graphics. Images can make a page look interesting, but overusing large image files, Flash and JavaScript can slow down the load speed of a website and search engines still have some trouble reading JavaScript.
The best practice is to keep content textual and ensure it includes a spattering of keywords in the right places. Make surer that the content is informational, and useful to visitors, and that the website is regularly updated.

These 3 factors (keywords, links and content) are the pillars of good SEO. By engaging in good research, planning and preparation a new website creator can avoid making simple SEO mistakes. Optimizing a website is much harder once it has been built and indexed – in some cases the entire site may have to be scrapped.
SEO should be factored in right from the start, even in the initial stages when only the idea for a website is being considered. Building a website around sound SEO techniques will offer that website the greatest chance of search engine success. SEO does not have to be complicated to begin with, by following the 3 pillars mentioned above any new website will be off to a flying start.

Social networking sites are massively popular, so popular in fact that many people feel the need to keep in touch, via the various social networking platforms, even when they should be working, or studying. The problem is, most employers, and educational facilities, frown upon this extra distraction and will try their hardest to block employees and students from accessing these sites.

This is usually achieved by restricting access through Intranet servers or by blocking the sites network-wide using a Windows host file. Fortunately, for all the Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Bebo addicts – there are a few simple manipulations that can allow access to your favorite platforms and the administrators and authorities will be none the wiser.

I want to make clear, that I am not preaching that you should waste your employers time on these social networks, but sometime Twitter or Facebook can inspire or even benefit at the work place. So if you need to get your daily social fix, here are 3 tips on how to beat blocked URL Addresses and Access Your Favorite Social Networking Site

Method 1: The Online Proxy Provider
There are websites that now offer a free online proxy URL service, that allow a user to access their favorite social networking platform via the proxy site. What this means is that a work, or school, server will only see a user visiting the proxy website. Any redirection to Facebook, Twitter or MySpace will be completely hidden and will stay under the administrator’s radar. As far as the server is concerned, you will still be on the proxy websites homepage, even when you are happily surfing the pages of Twitter and keeping up-to-date with your best friend’s latest blind date on Facebook.
The proxy website cloaks the URL address, and the red flag that would be the smallest mention of a social networking site URL, is safely masked behind the proxy URL. All that will be displayed in an address bar is the proxy website’s URL and a long string of random letters and numbers.
Simply perform a Google search (or Bing, Yahoo, or whatever search engine provider is used on the Intranet) for “facebook proxy” and you will find an array of free services that will offer a social networking proxy login.
The only factor to be aware of is that from time to time, administrators will become aware of some of these sites and block access to them. Don’t worry, there are new ones appearing daily that you can switch to, if your regular proxy site becomes restricted.

Method 2: Using the Opera Online Mini Browser
The Opera Mini Browser is designed for use on mobile phones. Helpfully, for social networking addicts, there is a free fully-functioning demo version available online and because the website is from a major software manufacturer, it is unlikely to ever be blocked.
Go to opera.com/mini/demo and you will find the demo version of the browser. The downside is that the demo is supposed to replicate a mobile phone, so the image is quite small. That being said, the demo is perfectly readable and has the added advantage of being discreet enough to remain obscured, should any interfering colleague attempt to peek over your shoulder and see what you are looking at.
The demo will display a search box at the top when opened and you can simply type in the website address of your favorite social networking site and be take straight to the home page. Rest assured that your Facebook, or Twitter, surfing will be 100% secret – as with the proxy method, all a server or admin will see is you visiting the Opera.com website.

Method 3: Use an IP Address and Go Direct
If the system administrator has been lazy and just restricted access via a Windows host file you can use this quick method to bypass their weak access-blocking attempts. To use this method you will need to find out the IP address of whatever social networking site you require.
One way is to use the command prompt function. If you have access to the command prompt you can use the following method:
1. Type in ping facebook.com (or twitter.com etc)
2. The IP address for that site will be listed underneath. Type in this IP address directly into the address bar of your browser and hit Enter. Hopefully, your social networking platform of choice will now open.
If you are severely restricted and do not have access to the command prompt, there is a nice little website that will find out any IP address for you. Here’s what to do:
1. Visit hcidata.info/host2ip.cgi and look for the section under the title “Convert Host Name to IP Address or Vice Versa”.
2. Enter the website address of your social networking platform in the Host Name box and click on the “Find IP Address” button underneath.
3. The IP address will be displayed in the box to the right. Enter this IP address into the address bar of your browser and click Enter. You should be taken to the homepage of your social networking site.

Nothing is Ever Truly Blocked
As they say, “When one door closes, another one opens.” Using these methods, anyone should be able to bypass over-zealous Intranet restrictions in the workplace. The key is to be low-key and not draw attention to your online activities - don’t start boasting to colleagues about how you ‘beat the system’ - it will only get back to the system administrators and they will plug the loophole. Keep it to yourself and enjoy unrestricted access to your favourite social networking sites.

Congratulations! You can now enjoy Facebook and Twitter from the comfort of your work desk.

1. Find out the exact yield of your online marketing efforts

In a competitive environment where everybody is involved in online marketing and a global economy where budgets and yields are continuously under pressure, efficiency has become the number one issue. Are you obtaining a maximum yield? What you need to do is compare your results to the objectives you defined earlier. This is true for all online efforts, including corporate websites, newsletters and web logs.

2. Do as your colleagues do

Imitating others may not seem an ideal way to achieve the best online marketing results. But we know from experience that there’s much to be learned from others. For example, one of the main concerns of professional marketers is to find an optimum method to measure the return on marketing investment. And it is essential for online marketing. By the way, you need not copy everything you see. You can stand out from the crowd by measuring actions your competitors have overlooked and by applying what you’ve learned to make your web analytics more professional and more profitable at the same time.

3. Get to know your visitors

No doubt you have a fair idea of the number of people visiting your website or reading your newsletter. However, the mere number of hits is quite meaningless in itself. Wouldn’t it be far more interesting to get to know the people behind these figures? And the answer to this question will, in turn, lead to other questions. Are you reaching the right target groups? Is your website affecting them the way you want it to be? There is so much to find out about your visitors’ behaviour and there are so many ways to take advantage of this knowledge. The possibilities are endless. It’s all a matter of web analytics.

4. Find out what your customers and prospects want

It’s one thing to know who your visitors are; to know what they want is quite another. By mapping out the behaviour of visitors to your website, if possible in relation to their profiles, you can find out a lot about their needs and wishes. And, hence, about the needs and wishes of your customers, prospects, and business partners. And what’s more, your website incorporates the easiest way – and the most cost-efficient way – to find out what your visitors want. Simply by asking them!

5. Obtain an overall picture of your communication efforts

Though terribly exciting, the life of a marketing professional is not an easy one. And, on the face of it, it’s getting more complicated all the time. Media are multiplying, while media consumption is becoming more fragmentary. And contact moments are increasingly diverse and varied. But it doesn’t have to be all that complicated. Web analytics is the single most crucial part of your overall approach to online marketing communication. And while mapping out the contact moments of customers and prospects, you will discover a fascinating world revolving around profit and efficiency on the web.

Adobe MAX 2009 was held in Los Angeles, California at the infamous Los Angeles Convention center (right next to the staples center were the Lakers play) The event was held from October 4th-7th.  Adobe Max brings everything from entry level designers to the highest level flex and air developers, no matter what your skill level your sure to enjoy the event.

Adobe MAX 2009

Keynote

The keynote is always fun because they introduce new technologies and showcase some new products.  Of course the big talk was flash on the iPhone but a couple other innovative items of topic were flash 10.1, coldfusion 9, air 2, and augmented reality.  Perhaps the biggest surprise was John Mayer (yes that’s right the singer) who showcased his Interactive Augmented Reality music video.  He did a very impressive job explaining the technology and had a great sense of humor as well.

Classes and Labs

Last year I enjoyed the sessions much more than the labs mainly because I found them more inspiring and useful in everyday situations.   Probably my favorite of the entire conference was the augmented reality class.  I went into it really knowing very little and came out feeling like I could develop something myself.  Jesse Freeman, Rich Tretola and James Alliban showcased some of their work which was very impressive.  Everything from creating music, going into space and fighting monsters.  I felt it was extremely helpful they talked about how you can start, how they started, and were it’s going.

Sneak Peeks

One of my favorite parts about the conference was the fact they have a sneak peeks session were adobe showcases what they have been working on.  Everything from the newest flex and air additions, to their newest projects such as browser labs and adobe ROME.

An extremely impressive project adobe has been working on is “browser labs”.  With so many different browsers and so many different versions testing is a nightmare for front end developers.  Well the project is still in beta (and free for now) it still boasts many features.  Unlike the typically browser compatibility service adobe browser labs lets you view many different browsers with the click of a button, no waiting around wondering when you’ll see results.  I definitely do my far share of front-end development so I was extremely excited to see this new service.  This is without a doubt the most impressive browser compatibility service I’ve seen to date.  The only downfall is that they only have around 7 browsers you can test in, but it is in beta and they plan to add more in the future.

Another item Adobe has been working on is an application that bridges the gap between developers and designers.  Often times designers will just hand over the psd’s to developers with very little communication on how they envisioned items to work and function.  Flash Catalyst hopes to bridge that gap making it easy for designers to showcase how the site should work with everything from roll-overs, drop downs, transitions and other functionality.  I must say I was very impressed with how easy it is to use and absolutely no code necessary whatsoever.  The only caveat is that it is mostly designed for flex, air and flash developers, but can still be used in the prototyping phase of the project.

MAX Bash

Perhaps the favorite among everybody at the conference is the “Max Bash” which is their annual party.  This year it was held at espn zone.  It was very impressive, open bar, free food, free games and a band.  It’s amazing how well they can accommodate thousands of people.  The party was incredible and I was able to talk to some of the biggest people at adobe including Ted Patrick and Ben Forta to name a few.

Conclusion

I came away from the conference feeling very confident about the industry where it’s going and how we all can help contribute to it.   More importantly I felt very inspired by many of the speakers and presentations and was glad to see how much I knew and how much I can know.

Aolani Home page

“We wanted to give the Aolani a fresh and hip look and feel.”, says Martijn Lap of Cofa Media. “When you open this website, you want to book this yacht.”

The website was built in PHP, features a word press blog, as well as a variety of social components, such as Facebook and Twitter.

“It just show once again how we can work together as a team, eventhough all of us have different backgrounds. The Guys as Evisibility understand the web, so that makes things easy.” says Edwin Lap of Cofa Media.
“Evisbility are experts in contest creation and management. They know how to maximize conversions.”

Mobile and Web Developers will pull an all-nighter with Samsung Mobile in San Francisco at our first Widget Developer Camp! Beginning on September 12.

If you are interested and have the knowledge and know how, then please sign up at https://samsungwireless.com/devcamp/.

CARLSBAD, CA–(Marketwire - July 15, 2009) - Web Design Beach and Cofa Media announced the launch of the new CSS Creme website today. These well-established companies in the fields of web design, web development and search engine optimization (SEO) wanted to give the CSS site gallery a new look and feel with added functionality, tutorials, website showcase and designer profiles.

css_creme_new_design

Edwin Lap of Cofa Media Group and Nikola Mitic of Web Design Beach recently acquired CSS Creme, a free gallery of the best looking and most original sites based on CSS technology. With these new features, they hope CSS Creme will serve as a valuable resource for inspiration when working traditional ad agencies.

“By improving website content and website usability, CSS Creme will enable us to showcase the best designs and websites, and connect potential clients, traditional ad agencies and anyone interested in good design,” said Edwin Lap of Cofa Media. “We focused on website showcase galleries, web designer profiles, tutorials, latest trends and news. We want CSS Creme to become one of the leading CSS galleries. It should serve as inspiration when you have no idea what to do with your website next.”

Nikola Mitic of Web Design Beach said it was a challenge to redesign CSS Creme, being that it was already an outstanding gallery from a look and feel perspective. “We’re involving all our departments, from web design and development to our SEO and SEM specialists, to provide more quality content and improve rankings and traffic,” said Mitic. “The new CSS gallery combines a website showcase, international designer profile, knowledge base and industry trends.”

About Cofa Media:

Cofa Media is a San Diego based firm with years of experience in web design and web development. Their interactive marketing and web design services have a proven track record with both small and large businesses from the medical field to the action sports industry. You would be hard pressed to find another web design agency with such a wide range of past experiences, yet such a keen look to the future of effective online marketing strategies and applications.

tobywells.org

The website is built in HMTL, CSS and PHP/MySQL and has our proprietary Photon CMS.

“This was a fun project and most of all a feel good project. We were touched by the whole back ground story and the positive attitude by the Wells family. Simply put - Great Karma.”

“It just shows that Non-Profit, does not always mean no money or boring. This project put a lot of things in perspective, what is important in life etc.” says Edwin Lap of Cofa Media.

“We love working on these type of projects, because at the end of the day, you can sit back and be proud of what you did.”

Cofa Media recently helped the International Hair Restoration Institute, another non-profit project, with their re-branding and re-design earlier this year.

The website is built in HMTL, CSS, Flash and PHP/MySQL and connected to the Burton store front, as well as all other dealers, whom sell the Anon Optics products.

“The guys at Anon were super easy to work with and even the guys at Burton were always there to help out.”

“This simply shows how well companies can collaborate with one another. There were no egos, no problems or issues, simply a project that went as smooth as possible” says Edwin Lap of Cofa Media.

“We simply love working with the action sports industry and enjoy to help, guide and grow these companies with their online business model”.

Cofa Media recently helped Taylor Steele launch the new PoorSpecimen website and worked hand in hand with Gravis Footwear to launch their new spin off brand IVSK8.

Anon Optics New Site

I seem to get this question nearly every week from clients. It is just transferring files right? Well not necessarily. Sure some sites you can just copy the files from one server to another, but in this day and age of everyone wanting the latest technology and everybody having the new latest and greatest idea, those sites are few and far between. I’ve literally spent sleepless nights so called “just transferring files.” So why is it so difficult the client says? Well that really depends on multiple factors:

-   What platform are you on, Windows or Linux?

-   Is there a CMS or back end to your site?

-   What type of hosting service are you on, dedicated or virtual?

-   Who is your hosting provider?

-   What version of PHP/ASP are you running?

I could seemingly go on for days but I’ll stop there. For a smooth transition from one host to another both servers must be similar in at least most of if not all of these otherwise you’ll end up running into major issues.

To prevent this from happening I strongly suggest doing a little research before you even build the site. Find out the answers to all of the above questions and TEST TEST TEST before you move the site over to the new platform. This allows for a much smoother transition or lead to that dreaded conversation with the client telling them why they should have chosen a Linux server over the Windows one they just purchased.