Pixel Portal Blog

Tips on Choosing a Registrar

Fri, 10 May 2013 02:39:00 GMT

Just recently, I saw an event that almost took a very large and popular website to its knees. Ben Hunt's Web Design from Scratch was down for two weeks due to issues with his domain registrar.

So how do you avoid this type of thing happening to your website?

1. Get reputable Domain Registrar! Check around - ask other site owners, look online. Ensure your registrar is ICANN accredited.

2. Read the fine print in your agreement, in particular, make sure you understand what's going to happen if you take action like moving registrars. need to move registrars or other complexities such as protection against domain name hijacking.

3. Price can vary a lot with some domain registrars offering discounts for multiple domains. Again, beware of FREE and cheap.

4. Length of registration varies from 1, 3, 5 and 10 years. Check in your contract if there are any time restrictions about transferring your domain should you choose to move registrars during your registration period.

You may not know that the company you buy your domain names from is sometimes not actually a registrar. The true registrars, who can actually directly register a domain name, license their services to multiple other agencies, who compete for your domain name business. So shop around to get the best service you can, ensure you understand your contract and if there are any limits.

Facebook Competitions

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 06:29:00 GMT

If you're up and running with Facebook you may have considered running a competition on your Facebook Business page. Competitions and Give-aways are a really easy way to attract new LIKES for your business page. However... be warned that Facebook have quite strict guidelines for running competitions on your business page. Failing to follow these can result in your page being totally removed from Facebook's site.

How run a Facebook Competition

According to Facebook's guidelines, promotions, sweepstakes, competitions etc., must be administered using Facebook Apps
You can't make it a requirement for people to "tag" themselves in a photo, "post" something to your wall or "like" a status or post a photo on your wall to be eligible to win / enter the competition on your Facebook page.
You can't make the entry to your competition be the Facebook fan simply "like" your Facebook Page – though you can set up the competition to have fans to "Like" your Facebook Page before being able to enter. You would need to do this with a Facebook App.
A full list of guidelines can be found on Facebook Pages Terms page. Refer to section E. Promotions.

Overall, it's not only wise to use an App, but it will give you easier management of your competition page. With easy to use sites like Shortstack to help you not only create your event, but to also track entries, make a draw, export entries and make it viewable on mobile platforms to name a few worthy features.

If you need help with setting up a Facebook competition, sweep, draw or give-away, contact us today.

I need help with a Facebook Competition!

SEO Checklist for new websites - DIY guide

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Got a new website and you need to know how to get it ranking? Or maybe your current website visibility needs improving? This DIY Check-list can help to get you started.

Accessibility

Make sure the site is accessible for humans and search engines — both need to be able to reach all the content on your site

No 404 errors
No 500 errors
No 302 redirects
No duplicate content
No missing title tags
No thin content

Keyword Targetting

To be found, you need to have the right keywords that are relevant to your site with good search volumes. Choose low difficulty, high volume searches that you know you can work on to build content like feature pages, blog posts etc.

Pick the right keywords to target and ensure they are on your pages
Make sure it's relevant to your site
Choose low difficulty and high volume keywords

Quality Content and Value

When your visitors arrive will they see will the page give them the answer they are looking for. Great content gives users satisfaction and your pages will love your quality content.

Choose the right keywords to target and ensure they are on your pages
Make sure it's relevant to your site
Choose low difficulty and high volume keywords

Design quality, user experience and site usability

Go with a simple design that will give a great user experience and the make site is easy to use. Like the point above about quality content, the site design and quality content almost go hand in hand with design quality and the user experience. If the site is difficult to navigate and your site visitors can't find the information they are looking the user will be frustrated with the site, which equals a bad user experience.

Social account set up

Because social and SEO are coming together like we have never seen before, Google is showing Google+'s, Facebook likes are shown on Bing, it really pays off to be using social media. Social signals help search engines better rank content, as well as having the second effect of user usage, branding, plus the overall impact of people seeing sites through social sharing. Set up these accounts as a minimum for social account using ~

Facebook
Google+
LinkedIn
Twitter

Link Building

Many site owners start off with the wrong method with their link building strategy. Ensure site back links are quality and trustworthy. Build a backlink profile over time and consistently.

Business contacts and customers
Guest posts and content
High quality resource lists and directories, industries associated directories
News media and blogs
Social media link acquisition — connecting with others
Content marketing

These are all great, safe ways but are not short term wins. They will require time and effort, authenticity in your marketing. Stay away from the rapid link building with reciprocal link building on your own site, low quality directories, article marketing and spinning, paid links, link farms and forum spam commenting.

Blogging regularly for your website

Sat, 02 Feb 2013 14:00:00 GMT

In today's electronic world, we're all publishers – Facebook, Tumblr and Pinterest are some of our biggest free publishing platforms where anyone who’s connected can share text, photos and video. Whether you're an individual or a business on the web, if you want to attract traffic to your website, blog or social media today, you’ll need to be a publisher or what is often called an 'inbound marketer'. If you’re really good as an inbound marketer, your content will help you get found online, build trust and educate your readers and lead them into your website.

One way to increase any website’s prominence on the web is with inbound marketing is through blogging. It’s no big secret in the world of online visibility that website’s that have a blog and use that blog regularly, get up to 55% more traffic than website’s that don’t. Content plays a vital role in every stage of the inbound marketing process on your website, from generating awareness about your company to helping convert leads into real customers.

Blogging will enhance your business. An effective online marketing strategy with consistent, quality content creation builds site content and therefore opens more keyword opportunities for your site to be found through Google and other search engines.

10 quick blogging tips

Create an e-book
Create a white paper
Write about your products or services
Share content from other sites
Follow industry news
Monitor social conversations so you know what your prospects are talking about
Re-purpose existing content from your website
Create video content
Reviews, top products, look-backs, best of features
Audit your existing site content and keep a list of ideas for new content for future writing – relevant, fun, helpful content for your readers.

Free download

"A practical guide killer marketing content" - from Hub Spot

Spammy guest blogging

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 14:00:00 GMT

Watch this video for advice from Matt Cutts of Google on guest blogging. Currently this tends to be one of the is the favourite activities of webmasters for link acquisition and as a result lots of spammy activities tend to follow like article spinning.

Free Course Power Searching with Google

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 14:00:00 GMT

Are you getting the best from your searches on Google? Maybe your are just trying to understand how to get faster results or interpret the page results?

Google Search Education offers this free "Power Searching with Google" online course.

COURSE CONTENT (All video)

Class 1 - Introduction
Class 2 - Interpreting results
Class 3 - Advanced techniques
Class 4 - Find facts faster
Class 5 - Checking your facts
Class 6 - Putting it all together
Power Searching with Search Experts Video
Hang Out with Search Experts Video

The full video course is conducted by Daniel Russell,Senior Research Scientist at Google, Inc.

Free website templates!

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 11:40:00 GMT

Business Catalyst gives you complete creative control over your design, with access to the HTML & CSS of every system feature. Upload your own JavaScript, or embed rich Flash content. With BC's range of powerful design and customization options, you can unleash your creativity and build beautiful websites, your way. To help you get started with the design process on your new website, we've loaded some simple templates for you to choose from through our online site builder. These are FREE templates that help you get kick started with your web presence.

QUICK VIEW GALLERY

{module_photogallery,25305,2,,12,250,250}

What can you do with these templates?

Customised with your logo.
Can be reskinned through CSS and HTML changes - this means colours, typefaces, images, icons and backgrounds.
If you don't know how to use HMTL or CSS you can use them in their current style.
Free with any online Business Catalyst sign up.

Take a FREE 30 Day Test Drive
Click here to start site creation

Geeky tools to help with Registrar, DNS and IP's

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 08:58:00 GMT

Sometimes it's necessary to dig into the super nerdy areas of a website to get details like DNS (domain name system details), to understand who your registrar is or to check on IP numbers with your hoster. Here's a a few really easy to use tools to help you navigate this plethoria of numbers and names. These tools come from NIrSoft and are currently at writing of this post, free to download.

WhoisTD

Get registrar information for a DOMAIN – e.g. yourdomainname.com.au
WhoisThisDomain is a domain registration lookup utility allows you to easily get information about a registered domain. It automatically connect to the right WHOIS server, according to the top-level domain name, and retrieve the WHOIS record of the domain. It support both generic domains and country code domains.

Website download

DNSDataView

DNS Data View shows you DNS records and reverse DNS records for a DOMAIN – e.g. yourdomainname.com.au

It allows you to easily retrieve DNS records (for example SOA, NS, MX, A) of the specified domain(s). You can use the default DNS server of your Internet connection, or use any other DNS server that you specify. After retrieving the DNS records for the desired domains, you can save them into text/xml/html/csv file.

Website download

IPNetInfo

Display IP address and hoster information for a HOST – e.g. www.yourdomainname.com.au

IPNetInfo is a small utility that allows you to easily find all available information about an IP address: The owner of the IP address, the country/state name, IP addresses range, contact information (address, phone, fax, and email), and more.

Website download

Google Personaling your search results

Tue, 15 May 2012 14:00:00 GMT

WHAT GOOGLE SAYS ABOUT SEARCH RESULTS

Google helps you find personal results that are relevant to you. With a single Google search, you can see regular search results, along with all sorts of results that are tailored to you — pages shared with you by your friends, Google+ posts from people you know, and content that’s only visible to you (like private photos from Google+ and Picasa albums). Personal results are part of Search plus Your World , Google’s search experience that blends personal results with universal results, and helps you connect with people you care about.

http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1710607

While this sounds quite reasonable and helpful, do you wonder what impact this has on SEO?

May cause you some grief for SEO if you are trying to see results that someone else may be experiencing
Another article with tops: Face-off - 4 Ways to De-personalize Google
If you're using a bundle of Google Tools — GMail, Chrome, GooglePlus, well you're leaving digital footprints in a number of areas that can be analysed to tailor results that Google think you want to see.

QUICK TIP: Switching Off Personal Web Search at Browser Level

Add &pws=0 to the very end of the Google query URL (“ &pws=0 ”).

Have you over optimised web pages?

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:00:00 GMT

Google once again is on the hunt for sites that have not followed SEO recommendations. Rand Fishkin of SEO Moz shares White board Friday "6 Changes Every SEO Should Make BEFORE the Over-Optimization Penalty Hits"

The 6 points covered in Rand's Friday Whiteboard

Page Titles Need to be Authentic — make them sound like a human wrote them. Don't overload and repeat keywords or variations of keywords
Manipulative Internal Links — keyword repetition on the page - in the content, footer, menu items, and sidebars. Remember the very FIRST anchor link really counts and the only one that will pass value. Don't use the same anchor over and over again on the same page. Use it once only.
Poor Link Filled Footers — Keyword and anchor stuffing does not work. If your website has large footer links, make them useful. Often we create footer links that help a user navigate to key areas on a website once they have scrolled down a long page.
Text Content Block built only for Engines — Keep your content interesting and helpful. Don't page keyword stuff. It does not help.
Backlinks — It's not always easy to control this you might just end up with some spammy links through no fault of your own, but if you're using tools to create back linking locations, hiring a company to get your site links, it's probably going to impact on your site rankings.
Large volumes of pages that target similar Keywords — We've all been clicking around these pages, you just go around and around in circles, not really finding any relevant information. Keep your user experience real; don't try to create other sites and pages that all send users to the same location or site pages. It's a clear link pattern that engines will detect.

Adobe Acrobat showing thick "L" and "I" characters

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 04:00:00 GMT

This is a really common complaint I hear from customers when they proof artwork via Acrobat PDF files. Some letters or characters in the PDF proof appear thicker. Usually this is the "L" or "I" character. This can be helped by making a change in your Adobe Acrobat preferences!

Untick "Enhance thin lines"

Ahh...so much better!"

Google Algorthim updates for Feb 2012

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 23:52:00 GMT

Google have made over 40 changes to improve search quality in February 2012.

Some highlights ~

Consolidation of signals for spiking topics -"We use a number of signals to detect when a new topic is spiking in popularity." Social signals are now very imporant and this will simply increase this year. Hot topics and social peaks can help increase your page ranking results.
Spam Update - "In the process of investigating some potential spam, we found and fixed some weaknesses in our spam protections." Sounds like a more robust link building profile watch - Google are looking for specific ways in which link buidling is carried out. Google are getting more sensitive to link building methods. They are looking for footprints and markers that many link builders leave behind.
Link Evaluation - "We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page, in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years." Google appear to be re-evaluating the way they look at the characteristics of anchor links and how these are valued for a website. This probably means the focus will shift back to linked content on the page. This has always been the best strategy - have relevant, interesting content.

Read the full list of updates from Google

Adobe Shadow for mobile app development

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:18:00 GMT

Really neat from Adobe Labs - Adobe Shadow, a new inspection tool available on Adobe Labs for front-end web designers and developers who work on mobile web projects

Downloads

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/shadow/

Market Place - Android

iTunes - iPhone, iPad App - Log into your iTunes.

Google Panada What Update?

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 05:27:00 GMT

A lot of clients as me about "Google Panda", what it is and how it impacts their website. Google Panada or the Google Panda algorithm is a alteration to the Google's search results ranking algorithm that was first released in February 2011. This algorithm dubbed "Panda" after one of Google's employees who created the new filter, was the first ever penalty applied to results aimed at targetting poor content that is considered "thin" or "not good enough". Released on February 24 2011, it saw a lot of sites like content farms (where content is duplicated from site to site) fall from high ranking positions. Since February 24 2011, there have been many updates to the Panda algorithm, however it's also worthwhile noting that Google updates their algorithm up to 600 times a year. Some of these changes are minor, but every few months a major change is rolled which can impact on search results.

Helpful Links

Google Inside Search - The Official Google Search Blog
http://insidesearch.blogspot.com.au/

Search Engine Land
http://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-panda-update-link-evaluation-local-search-rankings-113078

Excellent Timeline showing the updates to each release.

21 Essential SEO Tips from Search Engine Land

SEO Moz - Rand Fiskin

SEO Moz History of Google's algorithm changes

Rand from SEO Moz video from Whiteboard Friday

Stylish Business Cards from Moo

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:29:00 GMT

We have been using Moo business cards for a while now. They are really top quality and you can create your own design or use some of Moo's special pre-styled designs.Business cards can be a great a conversation starter - something to be kept and acted on. Don't let your cards let you down when it's so easy to make something great!

Thinking about re-ordering or creating some new business cards?

If you'd like to order and use us as a referral, use the link below:

http://www.moo.com/share/cwhws9

Pixel Portal Blog

Tips on Choosing a Registrar

So how do you avoid this type of thing happening to your website?

Facebook Competitions

How run a Facebook Competition

SEO Checklist for new websites - DIY guide

Accessibility

Keyword Targetting

Quality Content and Value

Design quality, user experience and site usability

Social account set up

Link Building

Further Reading

Blogging regularly for your website

10 quick blogging tips

Free download

Spammy guest blogging

Free Course Power Searching with Google

COURSE CONTENT (All video)

Free website templates!

QUICK VIEW GALLERY

What can you do with these templates?

Geeky tools to help with Registrar, DNS and IP's

WhoisTD

DNSDataView

IPNetInfo

Google Personaling your search results

WHAT GOOGLE SAYS ABOUT SEARCH RESULTS

QUICK TIP: Switching Off Personal Web Search at Browser Level

Have you over optimised web pages?

The 6 points covered in Rand's Friday Whiteboard

Adobe Acrobat showing thick "L" and "I" characters

Google Algorthim updates for Feb 2012

Adobe Shadow for mobile app development

Downloads

Google Panada What Update?

Helpful Links

Stylish Business Cards from Moo

Thinking about re-ordering or creating some new business cards?