Ten ways to improve your Web Pages SEO.

There are many, many ways to improve a web page or websites SEO, but I don't know them all, so I'll focus on a few.

1. Using correctly formatted URLs will definitely help with Search Engines finding your site when people are on Google or Yahoo, and any other search engines. One way to make sure you URL is formatted is to have “-” (dashes) not underscores, as an underscore can sometimes cause Google to read the URL as one big word, and possibly ignore your site when a person does a Keyword search,

2. Avoid using common used or ignored words that search engines just remove from searches; like “it”, “I”, and “the”. These words are known as “stop words” and can cause a specific keyword search to overlook you web page if your keywords are riddled with these “stop words”.

3. Include a meta tag description in the “head” section of your HTML. Make sure the description is representative of the content on your page and accurately describes what the page is about. This description is still sometimes used when search engines are indexing your page, and will be used when a search is initiated and words in the description match the search.

4. Heading tags are your friend. We always wanna make the most important information stand out when it comes to clients and viewers visiting our page. But what bout the search engines. Well, Google will use words in your heading tags as partial keywords when people do a search, especially the “h1” tag. Also having your heading tags setup correctly on your page will help “searching” on your own page when people visit, as they can tell the where the main information and each section begins if they are headed with tags.

5. Don't fully rely on using Meta Keywords. It appears as if lately search engines are starting to ignore a large majority of keywords that are loaded into the keywords tag. Now, that doesn't mean give up meta keywords completely. But what you mostly want in the meta keywords tag is either; phrases about your page or main keywords that are content relative to what you web page is actually about.

6. Make sure all, I repeat ALL, of your images are tagged with title and alt tags. The title tag is simply there to help give your image a name. But its the alt tag that is really important here. It is the determining factor when it comes to a search engine finding your image when someone does an image search. So, no alt tag means none of your images will be found.

7. Just as the heading tags are used for finding “keywords” for your site and pages. Your web pages title is also used for keywords and used by search engines when doing a search. One way to help search engines locate your site based on the title is: use site specific keywords within the first few characters of the title, include your company name(or your name) if your not well-known, and if possible make the title informative; as if your site has the answer right away for what your viewer is searching for.

8. Use as many means as possible to get back links back to your site. These links can be posted on your blog, your Facebook, any other social media, or any other kind of site you think would be viable to helping get traffic to your site. This actually seems to be the main way of getting your page “ranked” within search engines now; by having the most “back links” to your site.

9. Use a Robots.txt file. This file helps tell search engines that the information included in this file is not to be indexed. This way search engines don't “read” your web page and start to consider repetitive information like from different files as duplicates, i.e. your archived files, tagged posts, or categories.

10. Have a Sitemap for your site. This way if a search engine is “keeping tabs” on your site through bots or crawlers, they will be “informed” or kept up-to-date with new information that is added to your webpage. This is especially helpful if your site involves a blog, or is a social media site like Facebook; with which new information is added and edited constantly.

10 things NOT to include in a Website

After viewing the WORST WEBPAGES of 2010 I've come up with an easy 10 things NOT to include in a Website/page.

(italicized words are the CORRECT ways for making a site "decent")

1. BEWARE of SEIZURE causing pictures, images, backgrounds and videos!!!!
2. Never include a website made ENTIRELY of a video/flash - make websites small and compact so they will load with relative speed, on even some of the slowest computers.
3. Keep your webpages lengths down to a shortly navigable distance - don't make your viewer have to scroll down forever trying to get to the bottom of the page. Use varying links if necessary.
4. Contrast is good on a webpage to help with emphasis and making content "pop". But, having a rinbow of colors that look like you grabbed every possible primary color out of a Crayola box and used that is not the way to make content "pop", instead its hurts the eyes and makes words very illegible.
5. Bad Grammar and spelling can kill a website for respectability and accessibility. Check spelling and grammar CONSTANTLY.
6. When including a "fancy" navigation system, i.e Zinc Bistro's of using the eggs as the hotspots, make the navigation buttons much more obvious to the viewer, not just suggested.
7. Simplicity does not include correctness or completeness, just means the website can be plain and uninteresting.
8. Non-working links, broken links, or just straight out, broken website should definitely NOT be included.
9. Making a webpage so that it includes a horizontal scroll-bar. These are aggravating and completely annoying, the basic vertical scroll is all that should be needed.
10. Making the ENTIRE website your only source of advertisement or marketing strategy.

Finishing My Days in Intro to Computers

So a month has gone by and I survived it. I learned a lot about how computers work, how photoshop works, and how to maintain creativity using C.R.A.P. After all the projects we did, it still amazes me how far and wide the Graphic Designer job can go; simply from doing a Travel Poster to a Movie Poster to a Business card; we have quite a broad field of view to look forward to when were finally done and have our degrees.

Making a Movie Poster of my Own

We now have done our third project in our third week of class. The project was to take an already made movie poster and recreate it with our own twist added to it. The Poster had to involve at least two visible faces, which we had to alter out and replace with faces of ourselves and fellow classmates. This was a fun and very thought out process. We had to take multiple photographs to try and get the lighting to relatively match that of the original then tweak it within Photoshop to make it make even better. To me, this was my favorite project we did for the month.

The Days after Finishing the Travel Poster

So during our second-ish week in school we got our second project to make the travel poster. I ended up deciding to do the club/nightlife of Rio de Janeiro. It turns out a Travel Poster is much easier, at first i tried to draw attention by using different pictures being, being a mix of Rio and Club life. After awhile though it started getting to crowded and my teacher came and helped me realize that just a few simple pictures that offer repetition, like color or style. Eventually i got the poster to a point I liked and it really draws attention with vivid, bright colors causing the eyes to constantly bounce back and forth, from the top to the bottom of the poster.

First week and Project at Keiser University

The Beginning Days of My Experiences at Keiser University

Our first Project we are receiving is to create a Travel Poster for a place we have been or want to go one day in our future, mine is going to be about Japan. I know a little bit about creating posters, to an extent, but I'm gonna be glad to learn more about how to make an effective poster, as to draw a certain demographic to the information I'm relaying.

What i do know about creating a useful poster is, you want to create a layout that flows; as to draw someone's attention to the most important information on the page. Also I'd want to use pictures that help support that information as much as possible, or to compliment a saying on the page. Besides this stuff, which seems like the basics, I cant wait to learn to how to fully express the message of why visiting a certain location is a great idea.