Top 4 Dangers That Hurt Your Google Rankings

Written for myfreelancedesign.com by John Siebert, a Tampa web design master of the web with over 10 years experience in web marketing.

I have created what I know to be four of the worst SEO factors that can positively hurt your chances. As an example, we will examine the top results for the search term/keyword “personal injury lawyer”. Surprisingly, the cost per click on Google Adwords is over $20 for each click! 550,000 searches in one month. Imagine the monthly Google Adwords bill, Yikes! Rest assured that they did the best SEO practices to get to the top free spots in Google. Enlisting the help of SEO experts, their website(s) steadily rise to the top each, valuable term. I will help you grasp and understanding of how to get your site to rise.

#1 Poor Content

Though, visual effects such like photos are nice, text is where your money is. Have you ever noticed that the top ranking sites actually are full of text? Not just any text, it can be either real informative or engaging text. Page content is recommended as 500-1000 words.

The top 5 listings per Google’s rank, for the highly desired keyword “personal injury lawyer” contain the following respective word counts: 664, 265, 1910, 1477, and 600. See what I am getting to? That’s right, add text. Just for fun, add up your word count and see where you stand in comparison. Also, another tip when creating your content, keywords are most effective in the 150 words closest to the top of the page. The aforementioned top 5 sites conform to this rule.

#2 No Inbound Links/Poor Quality Links

It’s all about links! Inbound links are the most influential ranking factor, when it comes to Google. Taking into consideration that Google uses what some refer to as a voting system to rank terms, links and content are where the money is. Back to our example term, “personal injury lawyer”, you’ll see that there are roughly 12.5 million web pages with that term in it. So which one should Google put as #1? One of the ways Google decides is by using inbound links as “votes” for your site. If more sites link in with the search term then Google moves the site towards the top.

Those same top 5 sites have a ton of other sites linking in. According to MagesticSEO.com’s tools, the number of links in the top 5 sites are; 47k, 360 mil, 233 mil, 6k, and 4k. That’s fantastic. To achieve such a desirable term you can see they’ve gone above and beyond to insure they have plenty of links to their site. This is where networking comes in handy. Quality links is what you will need.

Google is not dumb; they know how SEO experts try to artificially move their listings by building links. This has made the process a little more painful when building links. On the plus side, Google works extremely hard to weed out poor quality links. Google has devalued many links for their unworthiness. It is important that your links appear on quality websites from real webmasters. Poor quality links are from sites that are computer generated or have no real value and will devalue your own work. Poor quality site can be identified if content doesn’t make much sense or is not to one particular niche/topic. For example, a site about web design is talking about casinos, mortgage rates, and free guitar lessons, catch my drift. If not, here’s another… at the end of this article you will find a recipe for delicious blueberry muffins. Makes no sense right? I wouldn’t come to this type of site, looking for that. By the way, you won’t find that here but boy does that sound good! Real sites can be spotted by Google and moved up in the ranks with great quality content and good backlinks. It’s simple really. You’re human and here learning right? Use what you learn and avoid looking like an autobot website with no real value. If you don’t value your content and links, who else will?

#3 Poor Keyword Optimization

Keyword optimization is crucial. Back to the poor content and poor links, your keywords have to be articulately sprinkled throughout your content. However, Google does have certain areas they like to “see” your keyword used. Keyword placement is not difficult but can seem tricky at first. Placing your keywords in key spots, will help you rank with Google for that keyword. It should be in the title tag, meta description, alt image tag, heading tag, and bold.

You can test your web site with sites such as SEOMoz’s On-Page Report Card or websitegrader.com. Remember those top 5 sites? Yep, you guessed it; they followed this rule by these percentages respectively: 75%, 95%, 95%, 95%, and 95% (as determined by SEOMoz’s tool).

#4 Lack of Keyword Research

I can not explain how important keyword research is to your business. The first step is to determine the proper terms to target. Focus on targeting 2-3 keywords that meet two qualifications: Search volume (amount of potential visitors) and Keyword effectiveness (amount of visitors that will turn into sales). I know you won’t believe me but, there is such a thing as too much. If you pick long-tailed (not that they don’t work) or too many keywords, it can knock your rank go down. It’s about consistency and common sense. Think about when you search for something. How many people do you know that will look for “Fun things to do outside in Florida during the summer months”, not too many that I know. We would search for “Summer fun in Florida”, “Outdoor fun in Florida”, Florida Outdoor fun”.

Search volume is relatively easy to calculate. There are a number of search volume estimators. I prefer the tool by the source, Google. The Google Keyword Tool easily tells you the amount of searches from last month. If you’re trying to decide whether to target “personal injury lawyer” or “personal injury law firm” you can test using Google’s tool. You will notice “personal injury lawyer” has 673,000 searches where as “personal injury law firm” only gets 135,000 monthly searches. That’s almost 5 times as many searches for the previous term.

The other requirement in keyword research is the keyword effectiveness. This depends on how much you’re willing to put into your SEO campaign in efforts to hit that #1 spot. Ask yourself, how much each lead is worth to your business. For example, as with our sample terms you might want to go with the lesser search volume term because maybe that term fits your target audience better or even simpler, less competition. This is where you take over the web! The search volume becomes less relevant if you’re not converting visitors into sales. If the first term has 10,000 searches per month and the second term has 5,000 searches per month it seems obvious to target term one. But if term two converts into sales three times better than term one then it actually makes more sense to target the term with the lower search volume.

Whether you are doing this yourself or enlisting the help of an SEO Expert(s), keep these key points in mind. If you have existing work up on websites that doesn’t hit some of the points, simply go back and recreate. Google likes makeovers. There is nothing wrong with a face-lift. Most importantly, if you find that you would not enjoy looking or reading at what you have posted, chances are no one else will either. Happy SEOing!

Web Design Effect - Use of Background Music Makes Website Really Attractive

Every website owner wants to develop a website that attracts every visitor. In every means a visitor has to feel that his time is not wasted visiting a site. And in accordance to this thought the site owners are ready to do anything. Among many a web designs effect, background music is one of the effective ways to make a visitor feel at home.

While working as a freelance graphic designer, I come across situations while clients ask how among many a web design effect, background music can be a good choice to make websites soothing. I advise them to use background music properly so that it can really make a website engaging to the visitors. Here are some advantages of using background music:

• Welcoming approach: In few websites you would find an ‘intro’ with background music for welcoming the visitors to the site. It is really nice to include the background music (the rhythm must be matching with the nature of the business).Having background music as one of the parts of design and development effects in your site is always good.
• Helpful in creating environment: While a good choice of background music welcomes the visitors, it does work in favor of creating a great environment in the website. Whatever the site is for product selling or providing services, good background music always acts as one of the great supplement of other design effects.
• Supplements animations: In various cases we find the use of animations. Whether it is flash effects or others web design effects the background music would always make the animation effects livelier. Sometimes the music is indispensable part of animations.
• A part of marketing efforts: In a few marketing efforts we find out the use of useful background music and that makes the initiative more appealing to the visitors or the viewers. But here we have to keep it reminded that the marketing efforts have to be matching with the web design effects.

Well, these are some of the advantages of using background music in websites. But here we have to keep it remembered that everybody may not like to listen to the music. So you should be careful in keeping the option to stop the music if a visitor feels irritated. Even there may be an option to select form the specified music. In this way mixed with other web design effects background music can really work good to keep the visitors stuck to a website. However at the time of selecting the designers or the developers do not forget to check his or her graphic design portfolio or development portfolio. If you choose best of people then you would get the best development and web design effects.

What Are the Current Web Design Trends in 2012

We are eagerly waiting for the New Year day to welcome another year which is supposed to bring for us boundless happiness in our life. Different people think differently – while a businessman would ever eye for more business. Well, here we are typically concerned about increasing business. It is undoubtedly true that better online business the interface or the website of a business has to be very much attractive. A business has to find out what are the latest web design trends 2012 to understand what people would like to look at. If any means a website cannot impress the visitor with its first look, the business potentiality from the coming visitors would decrease day by day.

Well, you must be thinking how before the arrival of the 2012 the web design trends 2012 can be predicted! Well, it is all about prediction man! If you are a freelance graphic designer or web designer and in this field for a decades long, you can easily say what is going to be the web design trends 2012. Simply if you take the Christmas campaign, what idea we can get about that? Quite a few months before businesses begin the campaigns. Same way it is not feasible that trend will be set after arrival of 2012. For grabbing the attention of the internet surfers from the very fast day of the New Year businesses give new look to their website or some businesses create new website following the probable web design trends 2012. Now let us try to find out just few trends:

• Single page design: Gone are the concepts of designing multi paged website layout! Now the designers are trying something that is called single page design. It is turning one of the favorite web design trends 2012. The concept is built up from the dropping desire of a visitor against clicking through different pages to know or get the information about the product or the services. So the designers try to sum up everything about a business just in one page.


• Big & bold typography: one of the worth mention web design trends 2012 is bold and big typography. It was a time when users used to scan pages and find out what they are in search of. But day after day the tendency is changing. Now businesses have to show of put forth the message to the visitors within just a few seconds. So now web designers try to use bold and big type face or the fonts to throw the main message into the users’ mind.


• CSS3 & HTML5: For some worth viewing animations to the web layouts Flash is used. But there are some drawbacks of Flash (slow loading and compatibility issues and etc.). So now the web designers like to use HTML5 for its ease of use and development. At the same time CSS3 is also being used for its rounded corner, mega drop down menus, multi background and other effects that make layouts fantastic to look at. So in the coming year one of the web design trends 2012 will be this one for sure.


• Infographics: Nowadays the days giving preference to images and texts separately has gone. It is infographics (images with text information) that rule the present webpage designing. With proper use of images and the texts the whole message is depicted against simply description. So this is one of the major web design trends 2012. Businesses find this really helpful and users useful to understand things better and faster.

Well, these are just a few top web design trends 2012 to note down. But whatever the case may be one thing is for sure – you have to find out one of the best web designer or the graphic designer to present for you one of the best web layout that does not only attract the eyes of the visitors but also push the message across. But before the selection of the designer you need to look into the web and graphic design portfolio to ensure if the designer has the ability to present you one of the web design trends 2012. Best of luck!

10 crazy holiday advertisement ideas

On this Christmas every business would be trying to gather attention from people. Everywhere we can see the innumerable advertising displays (both offline and online). Nowadays it has gone tough to recognize or differentiate a single ad from another (if both are on same type of product or service)! Well, this does not mean that advertisements have ceased to attract people or you should stop thinking or spending a little on general or the holiday advertisement! In other words if you like to attract great number of people to your business then you need to do something crazy! In the design of the ads there has to be something special that attracts eyes or forces your grey matter to keep it remembered.

However, in making a simple business address special the media can be anything but the approach has to be special. While you are trying to design holiday advertisement you need to put some elements or symbols, images portraying the holiday spirit. Let us now find out 10 crazy holiday marketing ideas:

• Crazy logos: We have to mind the logo and its branding power on the holidays. You can easily remember how the Google Doodles come to us pretty acceptable in several occasions. Same way you may do something crazy with your logo! If you can infuse some amusement related elements in the logos, then it will be different to people and help them remind your holiday advertisement efforts.
• Brochures: It is very important that you are having a special holiday brochure designed. On the holidays you would certainly have some seasonal products or services. Just like your thought others will do the same! But how would you make people read and keep your brochure with? Simple – you need to design your brochure in a way that it attracts the eyes or help people recognize your business. Remember this time you are using your brochure as a part of holiday advertisements so make it crazy with holiday elements that arouse holiday urge in people.
• Giving a new & trendy touch on web layout: While you are trying several means to market your product or the service on this holiday, you need to think about the look of your existing site. It is not feasible that people landing on your portal to see a normal layout that does not meet to the holiday craze! So you have to bring twist in your existing site layout to match it with the trend of the holiday advertisements. An unconventional layout with the holiday elements (off course focusing your product or the services) needs to be created to make people aware that you have something special for them on this holiday.
• 
  Banners: If you carefully look at the banners, you will find that those are basically used for adverts. So if you are planning for holiday advertisements then you need to design banners. But don’t you think that your banner advertisement should have something crazy to make people stare at you? Yes, you can do so with unusual color use, animation and graphics that forces people to look at your banners.
• E-card designs: All of us know that e-cards have their mesmerizing power! They can nicely convey any marketing idea to people. But don’t you think why people would prefer to download your e-card? There are so many e-card designing companies who sell or free distribute the e-cards. Simply your e-cards need to make a craze in people with the design and theme. If you can do so, your holiday advertisement campaign is going to see great success!
• Flyers to fly high: In various offline or on-field marketing purposes the flyers act really nice to brand the identity or advertise the product or the services boldly. But how would you make it sure that people are finding your flyers different on these holidays? Simply design flyers in such a way that inevitably people keep your business remembered and your flyer get successful as holiday advertisement tool.

• Crazy cover designs: In holiday seasons you would like to bring out some booklet, catalog or the book that elaborately describers your product or the services. These will certainly work as one of the successful media of holiday advertisement. But again on those covers there has to be some crazy look to make people pick up those while in display. The core message has to be clearly shown.
• Postcards: While just above the mention of e-cards is there, you may be thinking why then postcard! But you would love to know that people still love to receive a postcard with greeting or some message! So you may easily use the postcard as one of the media for holiday advertisement. Well, the design has to be someway nice enough to tend people keep the cards preserved at least through out the holiday season.
• 
  T-shirt design: Among so many holiday advertisement ploys putting your message through the t-shirt can be a good strategy. But there has to be some attractive design so that your t-shirts are chosen by people and openly your holiday advertisement goes place to place.
• Business cards: lastly the business cards also take part in your advertising campaign. However, some would say it is not feasible to change business cards now and then! But on holidays if your business card has some crazy thought applied on to them, people would understand that you have specialties on holidays. So you may try trendy design to use your business card as one of the holiday advertisement tool.

Well, if you carefully look into the above holiday advertisement ideas, one certain point comes to the fore that the designs have to be crazy! Now who is going to give you the crazy designs? Simply an experienced designer from a web design company or a freelance graphic designer. So you have to find out the right partner for your project to make every step of your holiday advertisement campaign successful.

Onlinewebmedia launches festive advertising campaign

Hi folks! The Christmas has already knocked on the doors and the shopping has begun! Every business has got their bouquet of offers for the consumers. If you have a business then you must have some specialties in store for your potential customers also. But how is your festive advertising campaign? Have you made it sure that your ads are shown in proper places? How affordable is your chosen ad package? Do you get any assistance from the ad service providers while you could not decide the best place to put those? How is the support from them? Do you get business lead from those ads? Have you tried the best festive advertising options from Onlinewebmedia Corporation?

Now having thrown these questions at you what I am trying to prove? Very simple – I am benefitted from proper placement of festive adverts and like to tell you one real story. As you know I am a freelance graphic designer, I never think or can afford to place so many ads in several places! So I have to choose the best festive advertising option that comes under afford, yet all sort of facilities are provided with good business returns. Believe me when I came across the Onlinewebmedia network of sites and its pledge to serve its customers with best of opportunities, I had to choose them.

Well, you would like to know what those facilities are! Let us have a look at some of the lucrative options provided by Onlinewebmedia Corporation network (OCN) for placing festive advertising:

• Various ad options: The first thing that comes in mind of every advertiser is the type of ads. What I mean to say is simple – how would be the ads – banners (with images or with simple texts), text based ads and etc. When I searched OCN festive advertising modes I could find out all sorts of ad types for running successful online ad campaign. I just have to choose one that best fits my requirement.
• Suggestion on ad placement: While I just became little confused on which position I must display my festive advertisements, the service provider came to my help. They took all the details about my business and my budget. And just with a few hours they suggested the best way to advertise. I can assure that you would not find a single service provider to suggest you about festive advertising placement in this way!
• Lucrative discount & offers on bulk ad: Now the moment I decided to place my ad according to my choice, I could not resist myself in throwing one very usual question – will I get some discounts if I wish to run festive advertising campaign in a bulk through OCN? You would be amazed to know that they not only informed me of bulk discount even they showed me discounts in individual ads. All the ads are just irresistible to grab before OCN stops those!
• A great support system: Well, it is very common that the service providers would help you until your payment is made. When they have bagged your money, you will be forgotten by them. But believe me or not choosing OCN the case is completely different! From payment problem to any other issues later on you would get instant support from OCN. I myself had an issue in sending the ad materials to them for updating the ad content. I just mailed my issue and they solved it quickly. I can say they are just proactive.

Well these are just a little glimpse on why I chose OCN for my festive advertising purpose or as the best partner in my holiday advertising campaign. There are lots of surprises may be waiting for you (the way I got the opportunity to find my business promoted through their own blog and newsletters). So contact Onlinewebmedia to find out what festive advertising opportunity is waiting for you. Remember the popular web directories provide targeted customers. Cheers friends!

Christmas wallpaper design - Top 10 killer tips

This Christmas do not leave a single opportunity to brand your business! And in branding your business you can easily use one of the popular marketing techniques - free distribution of Christmas wallpapers. To zeal up with the Xmas fervor people like to download computer desktop wallpapers of different types. Simple they want to feel amused and you could use this sting or instinct for your business promotion purpose. Just create or keep beautiful Christmas wallpaper design in your website for free download. You would certainly see an increased traffic to your site. At the same time you have the option to promote your brand through those wallpapers silently. But here you have to mind some design issues which always help making Christmas wallpaper design attractive enough to people who are in search of such wallpapers.

As a freelance graphic designer I know how to create some really worth downloading and praising Christmas wallpapers. So here I am presenting for you top 10 killer tips:

1. Christmas color: The first thing, I think, each Christmas wallpaper should have as one of its greatest characteristic – use of Christmas colors (red, green, golden and white). Without these four colors the eyes of onlookers can never be dragged towards your wallpapers. So balanced use of colors give the attraction deserved by wallpapers.
2. 
   Christmas symbol: There can hardly be even an imagination of Christmas wallpaper without Christmas symbols like pine tree, reindeer or Santa. These symbols do symbolize Xmas and without these any Christmas wallpaper design can justify itself as made for Xmas.
3. Warm message with tags: A design should not be without the space of messages or taglines. These small and precise texts infuse life in every Christmas wallpaper. So you have to either include readymade message and tag or keep space for placing customized one.
4. Slick & optimized design: Well when you would be preparing any Christmas wallpaper designs you have to take care that the designs are slick and optimized for easy access or download. The files have to be light weighted. If this does not happen then people would feel unease and never come back for more.
5. Tactful use of logo: In the Christmas wallpaper design there may not be an open opportunity of using your own logo! So you have to use the logo intelligently in small size and perfect placement to at least grab the attention once for sure.
6. The size issue: Sometimes it is found that Christmas wallpaper designs create size issues. I mean to say the designer create wallpapers either of bigger size or small one. So it is always better to keep two default size of “1024 X 768” for square desktop and “1366 X 768” for wide ones. This solves the size problem to a great extent.
7. Compatibility factor: While you would be asking for Christmas wallpaper designs make sure those are compatible to several operating system. Sometimes for use of several design issues like fonts the design deteriorate, these points have to be kept in mind while creating the designs.
8. 
   Design piracy: While you are asking or buying the Christmas wallpaper designs from any designer or company do confirm there is no image or graphics theft from any where! At the same time there can be some precaution (like water mark or like so) to save your unique wallpapers being theft and used without your branding.
9. Multiple versions: With progress of time it is found that people now do not like the static Christmas wallpaper designs. They like the animations and presently the High definition wallpapers. So it is better that you try designing your wallpapers in static and other versions. At least the best ones should be like that.
10. Wallpapers for smart phones: last but not the least, Christmas wallpaper designs for smart phones should be in your mind. I am keeping this separate because people are using smart phones like iPhones or the Blackberry in huge proportion. So if you design wallpapers and trying to grab these people then your desktop wallpapers would not do! You have to design separately. These wallpapers have different design factors.

Well these above points hopefully help you know how should be the Christmas wallpaper designs! But remember you need the expert designers to offer these designs to you. While you are selecting any designer for designing this huge number of wallpapers for free distribution, do check the design portfolio to know how is his or her Christmas wallpaper design. At the same time you should mind the pricing. If you search the internet, you could find out affordable designs for you. Hope you find the right design partner!

Christmas marketing ideas – how to give your business a mega boost

This Christmas everyone is trying to earn some extra bucks! Hopefully if you have a business, you must be trying the same! Well, I have brought here some tips or Christmas marketing ideas for you that are going to help in boosting your business! The ideas may seem to you footling but those are effective in bringing you business. Whatever return you get over offline marketing can not be compared to the huge returns of the online if the process is proper. You can hardly imagine the power of a newsletter (designed effectively) or the discount coupons floated over internet. It can bring you so many visitors or the customers!

I am a freelance graphic designer and ever try to present my blog readers and the customers with some highly effective tips. So here are some Christmas marketing ideas to boost your online business:

• Seasons free products or services: There cannot be any other attraction than a free gift or service! Just imagine if you can offer your customers with any sort of free services (it may be given after the customer buys product or service from you). Everybody would appreciate the effort. But you have to highlight one of this best Christmas marketing ideas properly in your website or other promotional places. You may have to create small banners (text or image based) to gather the attraction of the visitors.


• Limited discount coupons: On this Christmas season you can throw discounts on your products or services. You can arrange automatic coupon delivery from your site. People would appreciate of this highly feasible Christmas marketing ideas. You just need to implement the system asking your web developer to do so. You may also float attractively designed coupons through several ad campaigns.


• 
  Varied greetings cards: Once you make a deal with someone, you begin a customer and seller relation. And for future business generation you should maintain this relation. This Christmas make use of all your contacts. One of the best Christmas marketing ideas will be to send cards and e-cards. As a freelance graphic designer I design several ecards, post cards even layouts for printed greeting cards. And report says – not only the relation becomes strong, even good business is generated through these cards.


• Effective newsletters: Sending Christmas newsletter is one of the best parts of Christmas marketing ideas. But here are some big factors to consider. One is the text of the newsletter and the other one is the overall look of the newsletter. You have to take initiative in getting one of the nicely designed newsletter layout. Not only the layout will encourage the onlooker to read the text message but it will also showcase the offers directly through the images. Have a look at one of my newsletter designs.


• Making full use of social media: In this present era you would certainly keep several social networking profiles for sure. These media keeps you connected with millions of others. Then why not use social media as one of the parts of your Christmas marketing ideas? Continuously promote your products or services through social networks. Create small and attractive banners to post & share in your profile. These types of promotions do bring huge traffic and help in sales conversion.

Hopefully from the above Christmas marketing ideas you have understood how in this Christmas season you can boost your business. But at the same time it should be clear to you that making offerings attractive you may need help from designers. So while choosing one of the designer, you have to check his or her web & graphic design portfolio for sure. This helps you know the potentiality of a designer for providing you the best of designs to make Christmas marketing ideas successful.

Cutting Edge Website Design – A Key to successful online presence

Every time I come across each client, they ask me to provide a ‘cutting edge website design’. And I must tell you that the demand is not to a freelance graphic designer but from every website designer! There are several themes, trends shown on the internet but the clients ever look something different and unique. It may be breaking the convention and designing to evoke a typical sense of emotion. On the other hand use of infographics, multi-header or priority to review can give your website layout an edge other others.

Now let us find out so factors that make the website layouts really cutting edge website design:

• Design has to evoke typical emotion: Just simply designing a layout for your site you may never get the edge over others. In other words you have to make your site just unique than others. The look of your site has to evoke a purposeful emotion to the visitors about your products or services. Place the best of images, trimmed texts and everything to turn a simple design into cutting edge website design.


• Proper use of ‘call to action’: This happen typically to product or service oriented sites generally that the site owners are eager to “drag” the users to some specific pages from just anywhere! Ok, let me clear, a visitor might be reading some valuable information from the site but all in a certain he finds attractive call to visit a page through clicks. It may be irritating to visitors. But it does not mean that you should avoid this! Rather put the call to action phrases at the bottom or ending part of all valuable info. It will then rather prompt the users to stick around your site. You are going to find that your website is have one of the cutting edge website design quality isn’t it?


• Multi-headers & infographics: As I told at the very beginning that your website has to be different or edgy from others! So in the design multi-header increases chance to put more useful links at the home page and some infographics (graphical presentation of information) makes the understanding of anything better. In other words you could see that your website is having one of the cutting edge website designing trends for sure.


• Keep space for reviews: Last but not the least - now people have really too less time to look into your content. For an example even Google has started to show Google rich snippets with the links in its SERP so that visitors directly see through the review or ratings of the site’s reputations. So don’t you think that keeping priority to the customer reviews in your layout will give you and edge to your site? Certainly keep the reviews in way in the home or other valuable pages and make it one of your cutting edge website designing factor for sure.

These are some of the points that can give your website a cutting edge over others. But here you should keep one point in mind that innovative designing or something unique can never be provided by any novice designer! So while you are seeking cutting edge website designing from a designer, do look at the web & graphic design portfolio to know how expert or experienced he or she is. If you fail to choose one of the best designers, you would find that your website has ultimately got another conventional design not the cutting edge website design!

Bilingual Website Design: how far relevant in this multicultural world

Every one of us wants to build a great website for our business! Here with the word great I mean to say a website that returns higher than its investment! And it is same way true that we are ready to do anything for better businesses! It is a common factor that a website is built in a single language. The language is generally English for its high popularity! At the same time, Spanish, French and other languages are popular though. But have you thought about bilingual website design? Again you may say for the globalization of the trade and commerce you have to reach the multicultural world in their languages and in this kind of situation a bilingual website designing is not feasible! But it can be practicable for a few good reasons – specified business location, priority in specific search engines, and certainly the budget issue!

Well, while working as a freelance graphic designer, I have come to such typical question of feasibility of bilingual website design. I like to answer the question through the following points:

• Business may limit to a specific location: It is not always possible to spread a business to so many locations. So you may have to limit your market to a specific business zone and certainly the language of the location has to be the language of your site! Say the language is French for the targeted location then the primary language may be French for the website. While you may go for a bilingual website design keeping English as the other language. It will increase the chances of business with those people who know English. At the same time some products (cosmetics for special temperature zone) or the services (pest control for specific insect prone zone) you have to pursue people in their own language!


• English is not the only language: Till date the convention of web design is of building the site in English. Yes, it was true that once English was a highly popular language. But there are other languages like French, Chinese, German, Spanish and so many others which are getting popular. If you would like to grab the attention of the users who speak one of those languages, you have to think of bilingual website designing. In addition to local language keep English as secondary language to give your site a global attitude.


• Priority to specific search engine: Do you think it is possible to optimize your site fast and easily for varied foreign search engines. Yes, I am talking about Spanish, Japanese and other search engines. Why don’t you begin with a bilingual website designing. It is always easy to rank high in foreign search engines if your website language is same of that. When you have gathered considerable business via one of these SEs catering to your local market, you may try other languages. But for start-ups it is always recommended that they start with bilingual website designing.


• Money matters: Last but not the least is the investment of money! You may easily go for multilingual website designing as there are some added benefits. But do you think the cost of building such site is easy to bear? Especially for the start-ups? If no, then go for bilingual website designing. Having two languages – one being English and other catering to your local market, you have the opportunity of grabbing the world market.

Well, these are a few points that try to prove that a bilingual website designing is still relevant in today’s multicultural world. But at the same time you have to remember that building a bilingual website is not a child’s play! You got to get help from the expert. An expert web and graphic designer knows how to technically build a bilingual website. If you just assign the work to Tom, Dick and Harry, you will find all your investment has gone to sea. So select the web or graphic designer after you have carefully looked into their web or graphic design portfolio and satisfied yourself about the ability of the designer. Hope you choose the right person and your initiative of bilingual website design gets successful.

Infographics blog creation: What is the funda all about!

We know what a blog is! We have also come across the new term “infographics”- a combination of information and graphics. Well what is then the punch “infographics blog”? In plain words we can say that we like to create blog to express our thoughts and share knowledge with the world. It is found that nowadays we have little time to read a lot. Then is there no use of texts? Who says so? But some texts punched with images or graphics can catch our attention or let us understand things better. With this concept kept in mind now people are turning towards creation of infographics blogs. However, it is not that easy to create such a fantastic blog! From use of graphics to punch of text there has to be hands of great expertise of a graphic designer.


Yes, I am a freelance graphic designer and people come to me with the urge of creating infographics blog. And they do want to know how graphic designers like me work in this matter. I simply tell them the following things followed by any graphic designer. Find out how a blog owner also comes as indispensible:

• Visualization: To create an infographics blog the first thing is visualization of the thought or subject you are trying to present to the visitors. Without proper visualization it is impossible to express anything with graphics and text. In this regards if you cannot imagine the representation you may take help of the designers with creative bent of mind.


• Cutting edge design: It is not that you take up a template to create a blog where you would keep some places for text input! An infographics blog is a sheer balance of purposeful images and texts. So the work of design in this matter has to be cutting edge – every image or graphics has to be associated with proper text explanation. Performing this task the look should not become a mess of elements. Yes, you are to rely on your graphic designer but never hesitate to express your opinion every time you feel a mismatch.


• The power of words: It is fine that you are taking help of graphics to visually strengthen your thoughts in your infographics blog! But you should not forget that the associated texts with the graphics have great importance. If you do not use concise, to the point text with the graphics, you could hardly make out your thoughts to the visitors. So you have to carefully write the small copy or take the help of professional content writers.


• Search engine friendliness: While you are creating a blog you must have a goal – to deliver your thoughts to the world. Again you may be trying to promote your business through blog! Whatever it may be, you have to keep one thing in your mind – if search engines cannot understand what your thought is, people would not find your infographics blog! But if you represent your blog topic as a big image, no text is found by the search engines, then your blog would never come in a better positions of search engine results pages! So what should you do? Simply keep the texts in the code of the layout with proper user of keywords. In this regards a professional graphic designer or coder will certainly help you.

Well these are some of the factors that you need to take a look at while finding your infographics blog ready. Hope from the above points you have understood that you need to take the help of expert graphic designer who would not only help in the design but also help you visualize everything. Even giving suggestions on content write ups too! So while selecting a graphic designer, it is essential that you look into the graphic design portfolio of the designer to whom you would provide the responsibility of creating your infographics blog. So get your latest blog ready to grab more visitors fast.