bc designs Web Designer in Mesa, AZ 2009-12-22T16:07:40Z WordPress http://www.bcdesignsit.com/feed/atom/ admin <![CDATA[Get 45 backlinks in under a minute]]> http://www.bcdesignsit.com/?p=308 2009-12-22T16:07:40Z 2009-12-22T16:06:33Z Want to get some free backlinks to your website quickly and easily?  Go to http://www.megafoo.com/free-links/ and submit your homepage URL in the box. Your URL will then be submitted to 45 sites which includes Whois, Alexa, Robtex and other HTML validator sites.

Click on your directory page and you will see what sites your domain is listed on.  You then want to build some backlinks to that Megafoo directory page.  You can do this quickly by submitting to social bookmarking sites, commenting on forums or blogs or building profile links.

Viola!  After a few weeks, you should have some quality backlinks to your site to help you rise in the SERPs!

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admin <![CDATA[Google introduces “Browser Size”]]> http://www.bcdesignsit.com/?p=306 2009-12-17T20:19:41Z 2009-12-17T20:19:41Z If you want to understand how visitors see your website on different browsers, check out Google’s new tool called “Browser Size.”  Browser Size is based on a sample of data from visitors to Google.  Based on a given point in the browser, the tool will tell you what percentage of users can see it. This tool can help you when designing pages to make sure you minimize scrolling and that the important parts of the page such as a “call to action” button are always prominent.  For more information, click on the link below:

Browser Size

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admin <![CDATA[Free backlinks]]> http://www.bcdesignsit.com/?p=301 2009-12-09T16:19:44Z 2009-12-09T16:16:50Z Looking for a way to promote your business and get backlinks for free? Check out Article Alley, an article syndication site which offers free articles from thousands of authors for use on websites. Authors can post free articles with keyword backlinks to the directory database without any membership and those looking for Free Content can choose from thousands of articles on a variety of topics. Article Alley is a great way to generate more interest in your business, supply fresh content for your blog, and bring in more traffic to your site. To find out more visit: http://www.articlealley.com.

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admin <![CDATA[How to increase your online sales]]> http://www.bcdesignsit.com/?p=299 2009-11-19T22:22:04Z 2009-11-19T22:22:04Z You have just created your online store with thousands of products, beautiful pictures and keyword rich descriptions. But for some reason, you aren’t converting as many sales as you would like. It could be the product you are selling, but more than likely, your store does not have optimum usability. Here are some ways to make your store more user-friendly and increase your online sales:

1. Have a visible search box – Some people enjoy browsing through an online store, but the majority are “search dominant”. They want to find what they’re looking for quickly rather than browsing through hundreds of products. Make sure you have a simple and functional search box that is prominent and consistent on every page. Without it, your customers will immediately leave and move on to your competitor’s website.

2. Have helpful search results – There is nothing more frustrating than doing a search and getting a page of results that have nothing to do with a chosen keyword. Make sure your search results are accurate, support common misspellings and offer alternative search terms to make the user’s search as quick and painless as possible.

3. Make registration optional-not required – When a customer wants to buy a product, the worst thing you can do is to force them to register. This creates a barrier between the customer and the check-out page and can easily persuade them to abandon their shopping cart. Instead, show them the benefits of registering, such as convenience and increased security, while still leaving the choice to the customer. You will be surprised on how much your sales increase and how many of your visitors actually do register on your site.

4. Be upfront about out of stock items- If you don’t have an item in stock, let the customer know right away-not 2 days later through email. When a customer knows immediately that an item is on backorder, they may not be happy, but at least you avoid the possibility of that customer canceling their order or complaining to customer service. Not only being upfront about inventory, but notifying a customer when an item has been restocked, makes for an easier and more friendly shopping experience.

5. Have enough products on each page -  A great way to increase sales is to get customers to look at more products at any given visit. If you have 100 products and only 10 products per page, you are making your visitors do more work. Try to display as many products as possible, (without overloading them) or better yet, give the customer the option of how many products they want to view at once.

Ultimately, your shopping cart should be easy for your visitors to use and persuade them to be a repeat customer. Eliminating common usability problems from your website is the first step to increasing your bottom line.

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admin <![CDATA[Web Design Tips: 6 favorite .htaccess tricks]]> http://www.bcdesignsit.com/bcdesigns_blog/?p=151 2009-11-07T16:17:45Z 2009-11-07T11:20:09Z .htaccess may be a simple ASCII text file, but it’s a powerful tool used on an Apache Web Server which can alter the configuration of your files and directories. With some simple rewrite rules in your .htaccess file, you can do many advanced features from creating custom error pages to setting timezones and emails. Here are 6 of my favorite .htaccess tricks:

SEO Friendly 301 permanent redirects for bad/old links and moved links  (replace the link in the example with your own)

Redirect 301 /d/file.html http://www.bcdesignsit.com/r/file.html

Prevent Files image/file hotlinking and bandwidth stealing

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?askapache.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|swf|flv|png)$ /feed/ [R=302,L]

Block IPs – I have used this one in the past to prevent a stalker from viewing my site

allow from all
deny from 132.176.13.123
deny from 123.14

Rewrite underscores to hyphens for SEO: According to Matt Cutts from Google, dashes or hyphens are better to use instead of underscores for SEO. If your 200 page site uses underscores in the files names, this .htaccess rule can change that easily and quickly.

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule !\.(html|php)$ – [S=4]
RewriteRule ^([^_]*)_([^_]*)_([^_]*)_([^_]*)_(.*)$ $1-$2-$3-$4-$5 [E=uscor:Yes]
RewriteRule ^([^_]*)_([^_]*)_([^_]*)_(.*)$ $1-$2-$3-$4 [E=uscor:Yes]
RewriteRule ^([^_]*)_([^_]*)_(.*)$ $1-$2-$3 [E=uscor:Yes]
RewriteRule ^([^_]*)_(.*)$ $1-$2 [E=uscor:Yes]
RewriteCond %{ENV:uscor} ^Yes$
RewriteRule (.*) http://d.com/$1 [R=301,L]


Password Protect Directories and Files
:

# to protect a file

<Files secure.php>
AuthType Basic
AuthName “Prompt”
AuthUserFile /home/path/.htpasswd
Require valid-user
</Files>

# password-protect a directory

AuthType basic
AuthName “This directory is protected”
AuthUserFile /home/path/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
Require valid-user


Redirect an old domain to a new domain

# redirect from old domain to new domain

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

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admin <![CDATA[Get on the 1st page of Google quickly]]> http://www.bcdesignsit.com/bcdesigns_blog/?p=176 2009-11-07T16:17:10Z 2009-11-07T10:47:11Z Do you want to get on the first page of Google quickly with a certain keyword?  Of course!  Everyone does.  What many people don’t know, however, is that there are two main determining considerations you need to evaluate that will make or break your search engine optimization goals: # of competitors and strength of competitors.

When trying to choose keywords and determining whether or not you can rank for that particular keyword, you first must determine how many competing pages there are for that keyword.  There are several different tools on the market today that can do this for you quickly and efficiently such as Market Samurai.  Or you can go to Google, type your keyword/keyword phrase in quotes and see how many competing pages exist.  Ideally you want a keyword or keyword phrase that has good traffic and 30,000 competing pages or less in order to rank quickly.  If the keyword you are targeting has 1,000,000 competing pages, you will expend a lot of time, resources and money on trying to rank.

Once you have found a keyword that has few competing pages, you then want to determine the strength of your competitors.  Quite simply, you must size up the top 10 competitors in Google for that keyword/keyword phrase without quotes.  Factors you want to look at include:

1.  Page rank –Sites that have low page rank will be much easier to beat
2.  Title Tags – Google gives greater weight to those that have the keyword in their title
3.  Meta Descriptions
4.  Heading tags
5.  Keyword in URL
6.  # of Backlinks pointing to that url
7.  # of domain backlinks
8.  # of .gov and .edu backlinks
9.  # of DMOZ and Yahoo backlinks

You will also want to evaluate the page ranks of inbound links and the anchor text relevance of those backlinks, remembering that quality always outranks quantity with Google.  Finding out all of this information can be time consuming and overwhelming, so using software such as Market Samurai or Micro Niche Finder are wonderful tools for finding out this information.  Knowing your competitors inside and out as well as what battles you can win are key to getting your website ranked and becoming a force to be reckoned with.

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admin <![CDATA[Looking for free wordpress templates?]]> http://www.bcdesignsit.com/bcdesigns_blog/?p=186 2009-11-07T16:16:25Z 2009-11-07T10:38:54Z If you love blogging with Wordpress, then you are probably always on the hunt for the latest and greatest wordpress templates.  Here are my two favorite resources for free wordpress templates that have some of the most creative and professional designs I have seen:

http://www.ezwpthemes.com/
http://www.skinpress.com

Happy blogging!

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admin <![CDATA[Want free unlimited backlinks?]]> http://www.bcdesignsit.com/bcdesigns_blog/?p=196 2009-11-07T16:14:05Z 2009-11-07T09:58:51Z Here is a great way to get free unlimited backlinks to your site.  A growing number of blogs are using the “KeywordLuv” plugin that helps reward visitors who comment on their blog by separating their name from their keywords.

So for example, if I go to a blog that has the KeywordLuv plug-in and comment, I will enter: Belinda@Web Design Tips in the name field.  (@ symbol is required for the backlinking to work)  The title of the comment in the blog would now look like:  Belinda from Web Design Tips says:

This allows me to get a backlink for the term “web design tips”

If you want to find out which blogs are using this plugin so you can comment, click on the link below and change “keyword” in the search query to the keyword you want to use.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q…22&btnG=Search

Happy backlinking!

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admin <![CDATA[Debunking the Duplicate Content Myth]]> http://www.bcdesignsit.com/bcdesigns_blog/?p=192 2009-11-07T16:15:58Z 2009-11-07T09:42:22Z For years, webmasters have speculated that Google penalizes websites for duplicate content. Not so, states Greg Grothaus of Google’s Search Quality team who has posted a video on the duplicate content myth and gives ways on how to avoid ranking issues.

Grothaus states that Google does NOT penalize sites for having duplicate content and that even spam sites aren’t penalized by Google for duplicate content—they are being penalized for the spam itself.
Some webmasters will use several different URL’s that are different, but show the same content. You won’t be penalized for using more than one, but your link popularity may be diluted which can negatively affect your rankings. Backlinks pointing to several different URL versions of the same content will make it harder to accumulate link juice for one URL. Non-friendly URL’s in search results can also decrease usability and Google will spend more time crawling the same content and not index the content that really matters.

To avoid these issues, Grothaus suggests picking one “canonical” version of the url for each page and link consistently within your site. You can also use the rel=”canonical” link element, but only use it between pages that are on the same domain, and it can be used on https:// and for ports as well. Another option is to make all non-canonical URLs do a permanent (301) redirect to the canonical (or preferred) URL. You don’t have to use it, states Grothaus, but it’s just another tool in your arsenal that can give you better search engine results. For more on duplicate content and ranking issues check out Greg Grothaus presentation in the video below.

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admin <![CDATA[Does Google use the keywords meta tag in web ranking?]]> http://www.bcdesignsit.com/bcdesigns_blog/?p=194 2009-11-07T16:15:07Z 2009-11-07T09:39:28Z Does Google use the keywords meta tag in web ranking? In a word, no.  According to Matt Cutts of Google, their search engine hasn’t paid attention to meta keywords for over a decade because the tag became so abused with keyword stuffing.  This doesn’t mean that Google ignores all meta tags.  They still pay attention to the “description” meta tag for search results snippets, although they still don’t use this tag either when determining ranking.  But even though Google.com disregards keyword meta tags, other search engines do not, which makes them still relevant for basic search engine optimization.  To hear more from Matt Cutts on this subject, check out the video below:

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