Rapid Web News

Google’s New Web Design

Jordan Hall — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:02:04 +0000

Google has recently released quite a tweak to its google.com web design to a select few users. Below are a couple of screenshots of the new web design from Google. Clicking the screen shots below will show the new web design, which features more squared off search button, a highlighted sidebar on search results and a change in default link colour to a significantly lighter shade of blue.

This also appears to be a slight re-brand of the Google logo as well. The Google logo in these screen shots are noticeably less bevelled than the current logo and is without the drop shadow on the existing logo.

Google Experimental New Logo Design – March 2010

New Google Web Design – Search Engine Results Page – March 2010

What is the ideal Keyword Density for SEO purposes?

Jordan Hall — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:50:18 +0000

About Keyword Density

In the context of search engine optimisation, keyword density refers to amount of times a certain keyword or phrase appears in web page content relative to the total number of words present within the content being analysed. The keyword density is usually shown as a percentage indicating the number of times the keyword or phrase, in comparison to the total number of words, but can also be expressed as a ratio of the same data.

Significance of Keywords for SEO Purposes

Keyword density was first introduced as a search engine optimisation tool in the early 1990s when, at the time, keyword density was one of the major, and in some cases, only factor contributing to the way search engines ranked their results. Currently keyword density is still of great importance to search engine optimisation, but is no longer the sole factor in increasing ranking. Other important factors include good site structure, unique, high-quality and regular content updates and strong, numerous and consistent back links.

The Ideal Keyword Density

Most search engine optimisation experts recommend a value of between 1 and 3 percent keyword density for any particular targeted keyword or key phrase. This value can vary dependant on the nature or format of the content, and also can depend highly upon the subject matter of the content itself.However, it is important not to over use the technique of putting keywords into content, as this results in a very high keyword density and is known as ‘keyword stuffing’.

Although keyword stuffing may produce high rankings for a brief time on highly unique content, it is likely to be diminished very quickly, and is not a recommended strategy for search engine optimisation. Due to keyword stuffing being a technique for writing for search engines, rather than for humans, this breaches Google’s web master guidelines and thus could, in a worse case scenario, result in a indexing ban from Google and/or other search engine.

Keyword Density Advice

If you want advice on keyword density or any other aspect of search engine optimisation, feel free to contact us. Also, please ask us about how we can search engine optimise your website and what the best strategy for your unique niche might be.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Tips

Jordan Hall — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:31:21 +0000

The most important search engine optimisation tips can be split up into three main categories. There are content, links and code optimisation. Ensuring your website is well adapted to these three main categories can significantly help with your website’s rankings in search engine results.

Content - ‘Content is king’ – ensuring your content has regular, up-to-date and unique quality content is vital for high search engine rankings.
Links - Links, both internal and external help map out the importance of various pages on your sites and increases its reputation in the eyes of search engine spiders.
1. External link popularity – External link to your pages help boost recognition of your website and helps define the keywords which are associated with your site and each individual page.
2. Internal link structure – The internal page links are very important to defining the overall structure of your site and the site wide important of the pages.
Code optimisation – The optimisations of website code can increase the rate and reliability at which search engines spider your website and can assist in emphasising the most important content on your web-pages.

Content

The common and highly cliché phrase relating to web-page and media content is ‘Content is king’ and that is certainly true in terms of search engine optimisation. Quantity and quality are both highly important in terms of SEO, along with the originality of articles also being highly important. In many cases, non-original or copied articles can be penalised in the search engine rankings due to duplicate content penalties.

Links

Linking is very important for search engine optimisation, with external inbound links being one of the most important and fundamentally measurements search engines use to verify and represent the overall importance of any individual web-page and website.

External Link Popularity

In the main categories list above, both the external link popularity and internal link structure are mentioned. In relation to external link popularity, each search engine utilises its own measures. The most noticeable and well known of these is Google’s Page Rank features. Page Rank indicates the importance of a page according to the Google Search engine, it uses number/popularity of inbound links, global rankings and other measures to determine this value via a proprietary algorithm held secret by Google themselves.

Internal Link Structure

In addition to the highly important external back link popularity, the internal link structure of your website is very important. The most important pages on your websites should be linked to from all other pages. Typically, this is done via a header, sidebar or navigation in the footer. If you are relying on Flash or JavaScript buttons in many parts of your site, ensure that text links (that search engines can easily spider) are also included to compliment these, either within a navigation bar or the page footers. In the same way that you should utilise important content-related keywords in external back link link text, these keywords should also be present in internal links as well to ensure search engines know the subjects and topics each of you web-pages relate to.

Code Optimisation

Code optimisation, in the context of search engine optimisation, refers to many improvements that developers can make to the HTML structure of a website. One of the most important changes that can be made is making code compliant with W3C standards, ensuring search engine spiders can easily navigate through and extract contents from web-pages. Additionally, web-page content can be rearranged to put main keyword rich page content towards the top of the page code, ensuring it is the first part of the page which is seen when search engines spider the pages. Reducing the code to content ratio can also be quite important in making sites easier to read by search engine spiders.

Another optimisation, which is in dispute regarding its importance now is the use of META tags. Dependant on the search engine spider itself, META tags containing keywords and description information, are used to varying degrees. It is commonly believed that Google utilises META tag content to a very small degree in determining the search engine results rankings, whilst other search engines such as Yahoo Search and Microsoft Bing have relied on these tags very heavily in the past.

More Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Tips

If you’re after some more, high quality, search engine optimisation tips or advice, for your websites, or in general, please feel free to contact us or read about some of our search engine optimisation services.

Social Networking and Your Website

Jordan Hall — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:03:33 +0000

While promoting your website via search engine optimisation techniques and Internet advertising campaigns, it is important not to forget the power of the social web for website promotion. The social web consists of blogs (or ‘web logs’), social networking, social bookmarking websites and micro-blogging services.

So, what are all of these social web elements? Let me explain.

Blog – A blog, also called a ‘web log’ is a series of articles called posts, which are written and published over a period of time to the web. Most blogs are provided in the format of many pages in which the posts are displayed in reverse chronological order, and are categorised and tagging by the topic or topics of the individual posts. Blogs can be informative, such as tips and ‘how-to’ guides, personal, in the format of a journal/diary, or corporate, giving information and news around a specific topic or range of topics. What you are reading now is an example of informational, corporate blog post.
Social Networking – You may already be using a social networking website already without realising it. Examples of very popular social networking websites are Facebook, MySpace and Orkut. Social networking websites allow you to keep it contact with your friends, family, acquittance and colleagues. Many are open to various advertising and marketing campaigns, commonly targeted to users via their age range, gender, location or interests.
Social Bookmarking – Social bookmarking websites, or social news websites, allow users to post links to other web content and share it with other users of the website. Examples of social bookmarking websites include Reddit, Digg and StumbleUpon. These social bookmarking websites are the perfect opportunity to promote engaging and viral content includes articles, images and videos to a large number of users at once.
Micro Blogging – Just like social networking, you may already be using a micro blogging website but not have heard of the social media terminology. Examples of micro blogging websites include Twitter, FriendFeed and identi.ca. Micro blogging is the same general idea as a blog, a reverse chronological listing of posts. The difference with micro blogging is in the name – the posts are deliberately small in size, generally under 140 characters. Micro blogging sites are used frequently, like social bookmarking websites, to share content via links to webpages or video clips, so are, again, a great social media website promotion tool.

If you want some help promoting your website via search engine optimisation techniques or social media, we offer quite a few great services to promote your website. Feel free to contact us about them!

SEO Strategies Used to Fight Terrorism

Jordan Hall — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 07:35:55 +0000

Islam is getting a little help from Britain’s Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism, which says it plans to train government-approved groups to “flood the Internet” with “positive” interpretations of that religion in an online fight against radicalization.

The OSCT plans to coach moderate Islamic groups on how to manipulate the Google rankings of their Web sites in order to boost the online profile of moderate voices in the Muslim community, reports The Register, a British online investigative newspaper.

(Credit: International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation )

It is widely understood that terrorists use the Web to radicalize and recruit the vulnerable and disaffected; search engine optimization, or SEO, training is part of the campaign to counter this, a Home Office representative confirmed to The Register. “In order to support mainstream voices, we work with local partners to help develop their communication, representational, and leadership skills.”

Source: cnet news article

This is a rather unusual and political use for search engine optimisation. It seems that the British govnernment is employers content writers and SEO experts to promote the positive elements of Islam, in an attempt to reduce the negative interpretation commonly associated with the Islam religion.

Search engine optimisation is generally only utilised for commercial purposes to promote e-commerce websites and other types of websites. If you’re interested in SEO strategies for your own website or websites, please feel free to contact us here at Rapid Web.

Valentine’s Day Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Tips

Jordan Hall — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:45:50 +0000

So, what is your business going to be doing this Valentine’s day?

With all hope, business will be booming as you stock many relevant red and pink Valentine’s day gifts. The problem is, in e-commerce, it is fine to stock plenty of unique and holiday specific gifts, but if you’re not getting any hits to your website, you’ll be low on leads and even lower on conversions. You need to get seasonal visitors to your e-commerce website, and that means doing seasonal e-commerce related keyword research.

Unfortunately, people have already been all over the standard keywords and phrases you expect for these holiday. So ‘Valentine’s Day’, ‘Valentine’s Day gifts’ and ‘Valentine’s Day presents’ are all highly competitive keywords, so you’ll need to try alternatives. A good idea here is localised keywords and phrases. If you are running both a retail store and an e-commerce website, you may wish to target localised keywords such as:

‘Valentine’s Day gifts Stafford’
‘Valentine’s Day presents Stafford’
‘Valentine’s Day Stafford’

Seasonal holidays are also a good time for some highly relevant link building. There are many seasonal holiday specific product listing and directory websites, that are designed to help people find gifts and presents for Valentine’s day and other holidays from a variety of different merchants. If you’re lucky, and the directory website is set-up appropriately, you may be able to set up a merchant account with the website and promote your products and gifts in-line on the website.

Whether it is Valentine’s day and love is in the air, or Christmas time with high festive spirits, your e-commerce site can always benefit, especially through link building and natural search engine traffic and rankings though search engine optimisation. Here at Rapid Web, we specialise in getting natural traffic to your websites via advanced search engine optimisation techniques.

Interested in how this holiday can help your e-commerce website? Feel free to contact us and have a chat. If you want, we have collated some consumer statistics for Valentine’s Day 2010 we’re happy to share.

Valentine’s Day shopping heading online this year

Jordan Hall — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 11:21:35 +0000

Valentine’s Day is one of 2010’s first large shopping day and should hopefully be a great boom for online e-commerce websites trying to promote their Valentine’s Day gift products.

Lovers will, as always, be celebrating their love and buying one another romantic gifts from a variety of places, hoping to once again win another part of their significant other’s heart.

In turns out that, according to a research company who has performed several survey’s leading up to this year’s Valentine’s day, the average consumer will spend approximately 103 USD (66.01 GBP) on tranditional Valentine’s gifts this year. This includes greetings cards, day’s out, flowers, jewelry and of course Valentine’s day chocolate. This is apparently, an increase of only 0.50 USD (0.32 GBP) from last year.

Strangely, although the increase in overall spending on Valentine’s day has not increased substantially, more and more lovers will be purchasing their Valentine’s day gifts online at various e-commerce websites. According the the Head of Research at Shop.org, online e-commerce shoppers are anticipated to spend approximately 68.81 USD (44.10 GBP) more than those shopping offline. That’s 171.81 USD (110.11 GBP) from potential e-commerce shoppers this Valentine’s day, rather than the lower 103 USD (66.01 GBP) expected from offline Valentine’s gift shoppers.

“o-morrow is Saint Valentine’s day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donn’d his clothes,
And dupp’d the chamber-door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.”

– William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 5

If you’d like to discuss how you’re e-commerce website will deal with and make the most of Valentine’s day, or any other large national holiday, please feel free to contact us.

However, if you want some more general e-commerce information, or are thinking about setting up a new e-commerce website, we have some great e-commerce related information on our dedicated e-commerce information pages.

Google Buzz Welcome Screenshot

Jordan Hall — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:01:53 +0000

In an update to our previous post on Google Buzz, we now have a screenshot to show of the Google Buzz interface within Gmail. The following screenshot shows the Google Buzz Welcome screen, as shown the first time you access Google Buzz.

Google Buzz welcome screen

Google Buzz – Google’s social networking

Jordan Hall — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:58:40 +0000

Google has tried social networking in the past, with ventures such as Orkut and Google Friend Connect, however neither have really become very popular. In fact, I imagine many of you reading this article may not have heard of Orkut at all. Google Friend Connect on the other hand is a API for web developers to put Google hosted social networking features directly into their websites via a iframes, JavaScript and AJAX.

Anyway, I’m here to talk about Google Buzz, which is a new social network that Google are releasing to all Gmail users. It combines elements of Twitter and Facebook and is integrated directly into the user interface of Gmail. Google started the launch of Google Buzz to a small selection of Gmail users yesterday (9th February 2010) and is continuing to release Google Buzz to more and more people over the next few days.

Take a look at this Google Buzz demonstration video. It is obvious from Google Buzz, that many elements of the service are inspired heavily by existing microblogging and social networking services, such as Facebook, Twitter and identi.ca.

Google Buzz on Google Apps?

Google has stated that Google Buzz is not yet available for users of Google Apps for Domains yet, but it is being worked on. Based on this, it can be anticipated that Google Buzz for Google Apps will probably be released within a couple of weeks, towards to end of the Google Buzz launch for regular Gmail users.

Google Buzz and Search Engine Optimisation

I may be discussing Google Buzz more as this service develops and is released to more and more users. As Google Buzz listing will appear alongside Twitter results in Google search engine results pages (SERPs), Google Buzz may also create a buzz in the search engine optimisation community.

If you’re interested in search engine optimisation for your website from a team who really know what they’re doing, take at look some of the search engine optimisation work we do and see examples on our live SEO results page. If you just want some more about this intriguing new product from Google, take a look at the official Google Buzz pages.

Facebook – New Web Design Changes

Jordan Hall — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:46:18 +0000

Facebook, one of the largest and most well known PHP powered social networking websites has made significant changes to its web design. Facebook have taken a more minimalistic web design approach in many respects, removing most of the bottom application and instant messaging bar, and moving to a left hand side bar. From a technical perspective, Facebook have increased their use of many web technologies such as JavaScript and AJAX in an effort to increase the speed of website loading and make improve the overall user experience. This certainly increases speed but can cause issues on intermittent or unreliable Internet connections, or on browsers with no or poor JavaScript support. However, Facebook has full support for Internet Explorer 7, 8, Firefox 3, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera.

The left sidebar of the new web design now features links to the news feed, friends, messages, friends and Facebook applications. These applications include both built-in Facebook applications such as Photos and custom made applications such as Rapid Wish List (in the Facebook screenshot above). The sidebar also includes direct links to the top online friends in your Facebook instant messaging, providing you are signed into Facebook’s chat system, which is not the case in the screenshot shown above.

Hopefully you enjoy the new web design Facebook has adopted, but as always there are many Facebook groups which heavily dislike the new changes to the Facebook web design. This is always the case with Facebook design changes it seems. What do you think? Do you like the changes or find that they make the website more difficult to use?

If you’re interested in a new web design for your website, whether minimalist like Facebook’s new design, or much bigger and bolder, please feel free to contact us. We do web design, web development, the creation of dynamic PHP-powered web applications and search engine optimisation and much more. Take a look at some of our other work.