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7 Websites to Learn HTML and CSS for Novice Web Designers


Learn HTML and CSS for Novice Web Designers

learn html css

Learning the very basics of HTML is not as difficult as it seems, plus you do not need any sort of decompiler if you have a computer with a Windows operating system. In fact, for really basic HTML programming you only need the notepad that comes with all Windows operating systems. Once you get to grips with the basics of HTML, you are going to find CSS a lot easier too.

If you want to move over into programming software then starting with HTML concepts is a good place to begin understanding how we may communicate with our computers, since HTML is just another way of communicating with a web browser.

1. Shay Howe’s “A Practical Guide to HTML & CSS,”

Find it here: http://learn.shayhowe.com/html-css/

This is a website that helps you learn how to code with HTML and CSS. It is great for beginners and offers you help in creating your first website. It teaches many of the fundamentals and teaches you some of the things you will need if you want to move on to a more advanced series. It goes over a lot of the common elements involved with basic design and development.

2. Site Point

Find it here: http://www.sitepoint.com/html-css-beginners-guide/

This is a programming website that will teach you how to make a website. It has been around a long time and they now have a lot of resources to help you write and develop your website. There are books, articles, courses, a private course and tutorials that you may use to learn the basics (for beginners). There are a lot of resources within this website, and they have made it beginner friendly.

3. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

Find it here: http://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/htmlcss

This is a website that shows you all about website standards. They are good to learn if you are really going to bite the bullet and take on website design from the ground up. There are a lot of elements that go into making a secure and stable website and the fundamentals of this may be learned on this website. It is the most up-to-date authority on HTML, which also includes the most recent HTML5. It is better if you get a handle on HTML before you start exploring. A HTML novice is welcome, but an absolute beginner is probably going to struggle. This website represents the people who work to improve the standard of HTML, and people check their websites against their rules to see if they are making the most of their web coding.

4. Mozilla Webmaker

Find it here: https://webmaker.org/en-US/

This is an interactive toolset that you can use as a beginner. There are code editors that are interactive to help you learn and some of the tools have been made to be fun so that it takes the grind out of learning how to write a website. There are tutorials you may take and there are functions that let you peek at the web code of other websites to see how they do it. You may also start a little deeper with a template if you wish. This tool can be fun for people to use and learn from.

5. Code Academy

Find it here: http://www.codecademy.com/

This is a website that hosts interactive programming lesson. Within this website you are able to learn HTML. You have to sign u profile an account, but when you do you are able to start enjoying learning about programming for free. You may also learn Ruby, Python, JavaScript and PHP. Learning JavaScript and PHP will also help you if you want to really get into learning website design. This website is one of the better known websites on this article when it comes to learning how to write websites.

6. HTML Dog

Find it here: http://www.htmldog.com/guides/html/beginner/

This is a website that teaches you CSS, HTML and JavaScript. They have broken up the courses to make it so beginners may use it. The website teachings are broken into beginner, intermediate and advanced, which obviously means you may move up as you learn more. You can also go at your own pace as you learn.

7. Code Avengers

Find it here: http://www.codeavengers.com/web/1

This is a programming website that offers you tutorials online. The tutorials are interactive in order to make the whole process easier, and it teach you how to program with HTML and CSS. They also teach JavaScript and have three interactive levels that you can advance as you learn more. They also teach you how to build apps and games from scratch.

Author’s bio:

The guest post is written by Sonia Jackson from cool-essays.com. She helps you in writing essays and research papers on different topics. Feel free to approach.

One Page Websites Designs for Inspiration


One page websites have been trendy for a while now and still it’s amazing,

Sam Markiewicz

website design inspration

one page website templates

Lets Yep!

one page animation web design

web site design inspiration

Brave People

Animation website templates

animation web design samples

visionary vanguard

One-Page-Scrolling-Websites

One Page Scrolling website

Kaus

animation website design examples

animation web site design

Ullevi Preparty Area

one page animation website

one page animation website

 

 

 

 

 

 

Top 5 Free Html5 Responsive Frameworks


1. Twitter Bootstrap

html5 responsive frame works

bootsrap frameworks free download

Bootstrap Frameworks is a popular, modern front-end/UI development framework. It’s feature-packed and will have most of the things you’ll need for developing responsive sites and apps.

Download

2. Gumby

free responsive frameworks

gumby responsive framework

Gumby responsive frameworks uses a flexible, customizable, 960px wide grid, a width chosen by many web designers. It also uses SASS, aka Synctactically Awesome StyleSheets, an extension of CSS3 that adds nested rules, variables, mixins, selector inheritance, and more. Finally, Gumby is perfect to create clutter-free responsive site, no unnecessary stylesheet on the tablet version of your site.

Download

3. Foundation

free responsive framework

responsive frameworks free download

Foundation responsive framework provides you with a great, flexible grid that can easily be nested. It also focuses on mobile and lets you build sites that are mobile first, then add the stuff for other versions, making the mobile version really optimized and un-cluttered. It also works very well for rapid prototyping, making it a useful tool for more than just designing your site.

Download

4. HTML KickStart

free responsive frameworks

html5 responsive frameworks

One of the newest kids on the block, HTML5 KickStart Responsive Framework is a lean and mean package of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files that promises to save UI developers hours of work.

At about 300KB, HTML KickStart packs quite a punch: UI components like stylish buttons and navigation bars, scalable icons (using Font Awesome), a responsive grid layout, a touch-enabled slideshow component and so on.

Download

5. Skeleton

responsive frameworks free

free responsive frameworks

Skeleton responsive frameworks is a simple and clean responsive CSS boilerplate for HTML5 websites and apps. It’s got just the things you need, and nothing more.

Some notable features: a responsive layout grid, standard media queries for your device-specific CSS style properties, a CSS class for responsive image elements that scale with the layout grid, a PSD template for mocking up your web designs, and an HTML5 shiv for old web browsers. If you want to get started with responsive design quickly, you should look into this open source project.

Download

How to Boost the Domain Authority of Your Web Site


How to Boost the Domain Authority of Your Web Site

Boost the Domain Authority

There are many metrics the search engines used to rank Web sites. If you are aiming to have your site rank high on search engines like Google, it is important that you should not ignore these metrics. If you do ignore them, then your Web site might languish at the bottom of rankings.

One of the metrics that you should never ignore is your Web site’s domain authority. What is domain authority? What can be done to increase it?

According to creator Moz, domain authority represents its best prediction for how a Web site will perform in search engine rankings. It said that domain authority can be used to compare a Web site to another or tracking the “strength” of a Web site over time. Moz said that this metric is calculated by combining all of their other link metrics—linking root domains, number of total links, MozRank, MozTrust, etc.—into a single score.

In short, domain authority is the perceived power of a domain name as determined by different calculations, scores and metrics. But what can you do to increase the domain authority of your web site and be ranked higher on search engines?

Increase your backlinks

Backlinks are links that leads users or visitors on other Web sites to yours. Also called as inbound link, backlinks do increase your Web site’s domain authority. The more backlinks your Web site has, the stronger is its domain authority. The more backlinks your Web site has, the more visitors could be expected to come and visit it. You can increase your backlinks by posting comments on related contents published on other Web sites.

Connect with Popular Bloggers

The blogosphere is one wide part of the Internet world. However, there are a number of blogs or bloggers who managed to stand out among others. These famous and well known blogs and bloggers have made their names in the Internet world. If you want to compete against millions of new Web sites and blogs and achieve a good rank, then better start by connecting with those who have earned good reputations themselves.

Guest blogging on sites that have strong domain authority could as well increase your own site’s domain authority. You could start out by providing these famous Web sites and blogs with high quality content that they may publish. Such content, especially fresh and high quality ones, could attract the attention of visitors of other Web sites, and may push them to share it with others – thereby increasing the backlinks to your own Web site. No matter how many guest posts a Web site has, it would amount to nothing if they cannot entice users to visit your page.

Being Active on Social Media Sites

The power and influence of social media sites like Facebook, Google+ and Twitter cannot be denied. You have to acknowledge that these sites play an important role not only in making your Web site popular, but generating traffic. Through these social media sites, people can easily share anything, even contents on Web sites that may have sparked their interest. By being active on social media sites, you do not only attract people who may visit your Web site, you could also engage with them and actively build community for your site. This could greatly boost the domain authority of your Web site.

The author

Donald Rye is a part-time blogger who focuses on subjects like education and youth development. His blogs are not an essay writing service, but could be considered as academic writing guides.

Tips for Brand New Graphic Designers While Designing a Website


Tips for Brand New Graphic Designers

Graphic & webdesign tips

The graphic designer is a significant member of any web designer team. Most of the time we are mistaken in recognizing people who make the things look pretty. Graphic designer possesses a multitude of talents and skills beyond the abilities to make pretty things. While developing a website, graphic images are the first thing noticed by the viewers and for the similar reasons; the viewers are attracted to read the rest of the website. The majority of the time, the web designer is a graphic designer. The primary job of the web solution provider is to blend the graphics to design and develop an attractive web page to entice the readers.

If you have just begun working as a graphic designer where your majority of the job involves website designing then there are a few tips that you would like consider and they are:

What You Think Is “Easy” Is Not Always Seems To Be

It is easy when you talk like throw this term together or it is quite simple while referring the rounds of revision or edits of some graphic design for a web designing project. But, you might not be aware that this term “Easy” takes time to come to fruitarian. Finished designs, logo on the website looks clean and simple but it has taken hours and hours to get that finishing touché.

Take this tip into consideration when next time you are putting together a web site.

Think Deeply About the Point You Are Trying To Make the Audience To Reach

Have the vision for your piece. Think about the theme, colors, basic layout, logos, document size, images, and other info – the entire messaging that you are trying to put through your graphic designing. People are drawn towards visuals, vivid colors and pictures so no matter how interesting your content is but without good visuals your hard work is down the drain.

Know the Basic Designing Techniques

This helps you to communicate easily since you speak a graphic designer language. You are more likely to create and deliver the website design using the latest techniques and tools. When you are updated with the latest technology and tools of graphic designing you will be able to give better results and this overall helps you in designing a finest quality website design.

The Design Should Be Friendly and Fun

Even though you are working on the business blog, pick a design that is attractive and appealing. A corporate website or a business blog doesn’t necessarily have to be boring. Incorporate some laid back designs rather than serious nature one just because it carries serious information.

The job of the graphic designer while designing a website is to blend the graphics in such a way to attract viewers to go further and look into the website. Keeping in mind the above mentioned tips will help you design the best website and earn a good amount of reputation.

Author bio: Ellena is a dedicated web designer who works in a reputed website designing company in Mumbai. In her free time she also writes a blog online where she shares useful tips for new designers. 

What eCommerce Customers Want


Making money online is hugely popular right now. Every day, more and more online businesses are popping up. However, every day there are other eCommerce sites that are quietly going out of business.

There is a secret phenomenon in the online business world that is slowly making companies disappear. It is called a chargeback. A chargeback is a credit card refund. If a customer is dissatisfied with anything related to the credit card transaction, he or she can have it refunded. Chargebacks come with steep fines and drastic profit losses.

As a result, more than half of all online businesses fail.

Web Design, Customer Service, and Chargebacks…Oh My!
These three things are delicately woven together. Poor web design often means a dissatisfying customer experience which can result in chargebacks (if you don’t know what they are, you can learn more about the chargeback process here).

Running an eCommerce site is challenging. There is always some stressor demanding your time – backorders, problems in the warehouse, low sales months. Therefore, it is easy to forget about the actual site’s design. Once you got everything put together, you probably didn’t put much thought into it again.

If that is the case, it is high time you took a closer look at your website’s design and how it is affecting your customer service.

First Impressions
Have you ever walked into a store and been overwhelmed by the mess you found? Maybe it looked something like this?

First Impressions Your Ecommerce Site

Creative Commons photo found here courtesy of scurzuzu

Contrast that to a time when you entered a clean, spacious store.

Running an eCommerce site is challenging

Creative Commons photo found here courtesy of favarojr

What was your reaction to both of these stores? Both stores probably gave you very strong opinions about the management, quality of products and desire to meet the customers’ expectations.

When it comes to first impressions, there isn’t much difference between an eCommerce store and a brick-and-mortar store. Is your site’s design representative of shoes on the floor or a bright, cheery room?

Design matters. A good website design is interpreted as a good company.

Speedy Results

For most of us, our world revolves around instant gratification. Patience is a virtue few of us possess in spades. Therefore, it isn’t surprising to learn download speed affects conversions.

An upper-level exec at User Testing reported that increasing site speed increased his conversion rate by 78%. That sounds lovely, right?!

Readily Available

It is said that 58% of cardholders don’t contact the merchant before filing a chargeback. I wonder how many of those cardholders couldn’t contact the merchant. Where is your contact information? Is the link to your “contact us” page buried at the bottom of the homepage? I hope not!

You need to have a very thorough “contact us” page. More importantly, you need to make that page easy to find. Include as much information as possible – your email address, phone number, physical address and anything else that will be helpful to your visitors. If you have different departments in your company (accounting, sales, shipping, etc.), list those individual email addresses.

Then, take that contact information and slap it on every page on your site. Put it in the same place on each page so the customer can always grab your pertinent information the moment they need it.

Not only will this information help you prevent chargebacks, it will also help build trust with your customers. Shoppers want to do business with people they trust. If you are hiding behind your invisibility cloak, the shopper can’t get to know you. But if you are upfront and honest about who you are, you’re more likely to make the sale.

Clear and Concise

Make sure your return policy is clear, concise and easy to understand. Also, make sure it is easy to find. Include a link to your policy page in the product descriptions. Share the link in the last stages of the checkout process. Include it in the confirmation email you send.

High Quality

Only provide the best products and services available. If you avoid shoddy products, your customers won’t be able to find anything to complain about. You’ll reduce the risk of chargebacks and hang on to your well-earned money.

Also, make sure your product descriptions actually describe the product. Provide as much information as possible – height, length, width, weight, construction materials, etc.

If you haven’t put much thought in your eCommerce website design lately, I encourage you to take a second look. Really analyze your site. Are you meeting your customer’s needs? Is your store littered with discarded products or is the floor so sparkly you can see your reflection?

Take the necessary steps to improve your design today. Don’t be like the eCommerce majority. Rise above the potential chargebacks, hang on to your profits, and continue to provide excellent products and services to the masses.

How Standard Is Your Web Design?


Your Website Standards

Your Website’s Standards

Are you the real owner of your site?

By this I mean, did you just buy your site from someone else and let others maintain it? Or, you are the owner “per se” of an internet site but you hire someone to do all the admin and technical things for you? It would be a great risk if you let all essential and confidential stuff being done by someone with you having zero knowledge on the stuff around.

Nobody likes being fooled nor scammed. That is true whether or not you are running a business of your own. Truth be told,  most if not all companies online are having to pay more than a hundred of dollars (usually) to avail a  web design services.
The million dollar question is, do you have the quality one or the poor one?
Testing

The good news is, you can answer this question using a fast and simple method. There are already a number of tools online that will give you an assessment in terms of how standard is your web design. You can also jump into http://validator.w3.org, key in your site address and then click the “Check” button.

This is the thing, when the result of the test says “unsuccessful validation” in red-colored writing, you will need be needing to talk to your internet designer. The more red you have, the more you need to do something.
Determining Your Website’s Standards

If something’s is good enough, it should a standard on its own. In fact, almost anything (especially profession) has a standard. In the world of medicine or law, you’ll need to do many requisites and meet the criteria of practice even before you start doing the work. Other industries, like food processing or construction, aren’t so strict about academic qualifications, however they will have standards that has to be met – like safety and health.

There is no academic qualification before you will be able to become a graphic designer. Admittedly though, there are people out there who can make the work done because they have really have studied it formally.

You just need a pc with access to the internet and also the confidence (or in some instances arrogance) to yourself to become a graphic designer.

In the other hand, a lot of people (and many designers) have no idea on what are they really to face and meet in order to construct a quality and standard website.

Knowing Web Standards

Websites are designed utilizing a computer language known as HTML. There is a proper way to program HTML and there is a wrong way. The proper way to program HTML is known as “Web Standards,” the other ways of doing it is wrong.

The main difference between your right and wrong method to program an internet site is technical. If you are in the World Wide Web to do business and be an entrepreneur, don’t worry, you need not to memorize coding and all the technical stuff. At least now, you know, you can do the test if your web design is on a right track.

However, you need to realize that in case your web design service has not used Web Standards this would mean that:

  • Your website will likely to do worse in the search engines – which means you will get less site visitors
  • It will require a longer time to be able to download – so you’ll lose a lot of site visitors you need to have
  • It might set you back more to keep the page up
  • It’s harder (and much more costly) to create changes towards the website

As much as 40% of individuals may not have the ability to call at your website correctly simply because they use different kind of computer or internet browser than your internet designer.

Obviously, you will possibly not have these complaints in case your web design service has not used Web Standards.

Take Note:

The website design validator given above is really a helpful tool for checking in case you woule like to check if your site uses high-quality HTML. There are many sites out there you can still go and visit. It is good to try one and some others for validation.

A company who do not know the web standards should not be entitled to be tagged as a “professional” web design service.
You will find sometimes that there are an acceptable cases wherein a page does not need to make use of non Web Standards approaches for logical reasons, however it needs to be an educated decision.
AUTHOR BOX
This article was contributed by Andrew Hiddleston, internet entrepreneur and business coach. Andrew is the founder of iConnect Media, a professional and affordable web design company also offering web developer hourly work packages.

Getting the Most Out of Your Website


Give Your Website the Best Chance of Success

Give Your Website the Best Chance of Success

Not too long ago, most companies used more traditional advertising in order to generate sales. From outbound sales efforts to traditional advertising such as print and television ads, companies utilized more of a “push” strategy to gain market share. In a short period of time, advertising methods have been completely flipped upside down – thanks to the internet. With more and more people actively searching out products and services online each year, the Web has become one of the strongest marketing channels for growing sales. In fact, some would argue, depending upon the dynamics of your particular niche and industry, that online marketing is the best channel to drive company sales. Despite these undisputed realities, many companies are missing out on valuable opportunities because their website and online marketing efforts are nothing more than a glorified online brochure – stale and stagnant. Most frequently, this is due to a lack of knowledge of how to appropriately structure and effectively market their website. So what should you do if you don’t know where to turn to get the best return on your website investment? Take a look at the top five tips below to start maximizing your website sales and potential.

Give Your Website the Best Chance of Success

If your website doesn’t give prospects the best chance of success in terms of completing an action (such as calling you by phone, purchasing a product, or submitting a form), then prospects will leave your website and find another company that better meets their needs. And aggressively pursuing online marketing when your website isn’t set up for success will only lead to a highly trafficked website and little or no website sales. The good news is that there are a handful of “best practices” to optimize your website so that people will actually take an action instead of hitting the dreaded “back” button. Use the following guidelines to optimize your website:

Make sure your website has a professional look and feel (even color changes can make a difference)
Create great content that provides value to your prospects and customers
Focus on the customer and their pain points

There are a host of more subtle changes that you can make on your website, such as adding a prominent call to action, making sure that contact information is easily accessible, providing clear terms and conditions to sales, among many others. You can use the Web to search for these “best practices” or enlist the help of a website optimization specialist to implement and test these strategies and tactics.

Give People a Good Reason to View Your Website

One of the biggest mistakes that people make when executing a website strategy is to assume that everyone that accesses their website is “ready to purchase.” People will be at different stages in the sales cycle when viewing your website, so it is highly beneficial to try to target these different stages effectively. Some may simply be researching, while others may be comparing pricing among the various alternatives. By providing content geared towards these distinct stages, you’ll be able to address the needs of these diverse visitors.

Choose Your Marketing Efforts Wisely

Now that you have a website that is structured to meet the needs of your prospects and customers, you’re ready to start marketing. But be careful before you jump in with both feet. Most importantly, it’s mission critical to understand all of the different forms of online marketing so that you can most appropriately choose the best channels. There are many options when it comes to advertising online, including organic search engine marketing, paid search marketing, affiliate advertising, display advertising, among others. The best way to determine the most effective channel for your business is to research each of the available options and then choose the path or paths that fit your business the best.

Don’t Be Fooled by Promises of Gold

Because SEO (search engine optimization) is so popular, we thought it was important to give a tip or two regarding this marketing channel. SEO companies are notorious for taking advantage of companies by promising the moon and the stars. So be careful when anyone tells you that they can quickly get you to the top of the search engines and that you’ll instantly receive enormous traffic. If done the right way, SEO takes time. There is simply no quick fix. Furthermore, not every company is going to get to the top. You have to have a compelling reason to achieve top results on the search engines, which takes a good amount of time and effort to achieve.

And in order to achieve top results without getting penalized by the search engines, use time tested strategies and tactics. At the core of these time tested methodologies is the creation of extremely valuable content (articles, posts, pages, videos, images, etc.). By creating great content, you’ll not only be providing prospects and customers with the information they need, but you’ll also give other websites a great tool to offer on their websites, so they’ll be much more likely to link and share your information which will help propel your website to new heights in the search engines.

Network with Relevant People

Keep in mind that, although websites and search engines are new technologies, they’re mostly just new ways of doing the same things done in the past. At the core of marketing your business is the process of building your brand and sharing your offering with others who, in turn, talk to their network of friends and acquaintances about your product or service. Don’t lose sight of the enormous opportunity offered by social media. Because there are so many different social media channels, many people get overwhelmed and therefore ignore this rich channel. So to guard against this challenge, simply choose one social media channel and learn as much as you can about it and engage with others. Meeting with new people and promoting your content and offering will lead to further exposure that can propel your business to new heights.

Guest Post written by Will Schneider, President of insightMedia, Inc. a company that helps businesses find the best pick and pack services and fulfillment houses.

Most Common Mistakes When Designing an eCommerce Site


common mistakes in ecommerce web design

Creative Commons image found here courtesy of dingler 1109

Whether your eCommerce site is a stand-alone store or part of your brick-and-mortar enterprise, you need to pay special attention to the design. You can’t just throw some shopping cart software on a website and hope it does the trick.

ithout attention to the website’s design, you don’t stand a very good chance of making any money. Here is a list of the most common mistakes that are made when designing an eCommerce store. Avoid – or fix – these blunders and your business will see significant results.

1. Playing Hard to Get

You need to put your contact information front and center. Don’t try to hide it – or look like you are doing so. Slap your phone number at the top of every page. Then, create a specific “Contact Us” page. Include a contact form so customers can air their grievances. Also, publish your email address, phone number, and physical address (if you have one).

If you expect customers to spend their hard earned money and share their personal information (ie: credit card number), you had better earn their trust first. One of the easiest ways to do that is to prove you are a respectable company.

2. Not Being Personable

Poor customer service is one of the biggest hindrances of generating repeat customers. Again, make it easy for customers to get in contact with you.

If they don’t like their product or there was an error with the order, customers need to be able to take the necessary steps to rectify the problem.

Have a thorough, easy to understand policy page. Share your return or exchange policy. Give contact information for each specific department and connect the customer with the person who can help. For example, a customer might want to talk to someone about a technical glitch on your site. They might have a question about returns. Or, someone might have an issue with shipping.

Also, it is a good idea to include a FAQ page so customers can get all their questions answered without contacting your company directly.

3. Being Demanding

Don’t force customers to create an account before they place their order. This could potentially turn people away.

Instead, let them order with a guest account. When they finish the order, ask if they would like to create an account and save their information. This gets you the data you desire and makes life easier for them.

4. Not Being Search Friendly

Sometimes, customers don’t want to sift through all the amazing products you have to offer. Not everyone is a window shopper. Some people come to your site with a specific product in mind. Make it easy for them to find what they want.

Have a very thorough search feature. Let customers search by keyword or product item number (if they know it). Then, let them use filters to sort the results as they see fit. They might do that by arranging the products by size, color, brand, price, etc.

5. Not Providing Enough Description

In a brick-and-mortar establishment, customer can touch the product. They can feel it, weigh it, and examine it. Online, the customer must rely on the information you provide. Make sure each product has a very detailed description.

Remember, you are their eyes and ears. Give them all the information they could possibly want – the weights, the measurements, information about the materials used, production details and anything else you can think of.

6. Sharing Lousy Images

Again, the information you provide is the only information the customer will receive. Don’t throw little, tiny images on your site. Customers won’t like that. They want to actually be able to see what they are buying. In a perfect world, you would provide large images. If you can’t do that (and even if you can), include a zoom feature.

Likewise, it is foolish to think a single image will suffice. Take a photo from every angle. Zoom in on special features. Show the item in all the colors available. Try to get four or five different shots of each product.

Learn from the mistakes of others. Don’t create the common blunders when you design your eCommerce site. Design wisely and you’ll experience maximum profits.

Ron Barraza works for a local marketing firm. He recently helped set up the product page of official cornhole boards for Custom Corntoss. He took his own advice into consideration when helping the client draw customers to their custom cornhole boards. If you want to talk about web design, cornhole supplies or eCommerce success, look Ron up on Facebook or Twitter.

5 Tips for doing keyword research before composing blog posts


keyword research before composing blog posts

blog post tips

Does keyword research really matter anymore these days? Well that depends upon the aim of your blog. It is very possible (and marginally easy) to rise highly through the Google search engine results without doing any keyword research at all. That is because keywords occur naturally in your text anyway (also known as appearing organically). For example, if you are writing a blog post about the mating habits of the Blue Footed Booby from the Galapagos islands (it exists, look it up), then there is a good chance you will use the words “Blue Footed Booby” and “Galapagos islands.” Both of which are suitable key-phrases to use in a blog post.

If you wish to attract a certain type of reader to your blog post, then a little bit of keyword research is going to be required. When targeting a certain reader, it is not enough to simply write unique content with organic keywords. You need to figure out exactly which keywords your target audience is going to type into Google or Bing/Yahoo, and then ensure that those keywords are present in your blog post.

1 – Check the keywords that are tagged in similar blog posts and articles

You should look at the keywords stored on other people’s blog posts. You will find that many of their tagged keywords will apply to your blog too. Look for blog posts that are similar to the blog you are going to write. Look for posts that are on the same theme and on the same topics and then use the keywords that they have put in the tagged keywords section. Then have a look at the blog post’s source code and have a look at the Meta keywords. You should steal those too if some of them differ from the tagged keywords.

2 – Use a keyword counter tool on similar blog posts and articles

This is a very clever little move where you copy the whole of someone else’s blog post and past it onto a keywords counter. Again, the blog post must be on the same theme or topic as the one you are planning to write. Firstly, you need to set your counter at one word. It should produce a list of words. The most commonly used words will be at the top of the list, going all the way down to the words that were used just once.

The words that were used as many as two times may be deemed keywords. You simply go down the list and pick the ones you want. Then you set the counter to two words, and three and four. Don’t forget that the relevant key phrases need only be mentioned twice to be viable keywords.

3 – Use the Google AdWords keywords Tools

This is a great little tool where you type in your keyword and Google will tell you how good it is. It will tell you how popular your keyword is and will come up with a massive selection of other keywords you can use. It will also tell you how popular they are.

4 – Use the Google trends function online

There is something called Google trends when you can check how good your keywords are. You type your keywords into the program and it will tell you if they are popular or not, and how popular they were in the past. It will also show you how popular they are around the country and the world. It is a good way to check to see if the keywords you have come up with are actually any good.

5 – Do a market research study into your target audience

If you understand the way that your target audience thinks, then you can anticipate the things they are going to type into Google. You will also be able to use the other things they like as a way of reaching them. They may have other interests besides the ones that relate to your blog.

Author’s bio:
My name is Sonia Jackson. I represent the Australian web-site www.essay-bag.com. We’ll help you to solve all problems with writing different essays and research papers according to the rules of the universities and colleges in Australia.