Thursday, August 23, 2012

The Evolution of a Search Marketer

Today I thought it might be fun to look at the stages people go through in their quest for SEO knowledge.

As with anything you set out to learn in life, you don't get from point A to point Z without touching upon all those letters in between. This is why every day for the past 7 or 8 years I see the same search engine optimization questions asked over and over again by people in the various stages of learning. The search engines may change through the years, but people just finding out about SEO all tend to go through a similar growth process.



The Submittal Stage



Generally you get interested in search engine marketing after you have a Website created; you've got something looking good and open for business. You pay your designer, and suddenly it hits you...now what? How do I get people to actually find and use my site? So you turn to your designer who directs you to your server control panel, which comes with an automated search engine submit button.



The Meta Tag Stage



The next day <grin> you wake up and still have no visitors. So you do some research and find out that you need to add keywords to something called Meta tags. You find some automated Meta tag generator online, add its output to your site, and then crank up the automated submissions.



Then you wait, and wait, and wait some more.



Hmm...you still have no hits to the ole hit counter (except the daily one from your checking it, and the one from when you sent your old college roommate to see what a great site you have), let alone any sales. So you email your designer again with more questions.



The "It's Impossible" Stage



Now the designer starts to get all defensive and says, "Oh....you wanted high rankings in the search engines? Well sorry, that's just impossible, and out of the scope of my services."



You are nearly ready to give up at that point, but you're no quitter. You decide it can't really be impossible since somebody's gotta rank highly in the engines; so you begin your quest for more information. You look up "meta tags" and "submitting to search engines" at Google (because you figured you probably just did yours wrong), and find all kinds of articles that talk about something called "search engine optimization," aka SEO.



The Confusion Stage



Problem is, you have no idea what these articles are telling you. One of them says you need to make sure you use Meta tags, and another one says that Meta tags are dead. You read that you need high-quality links to your site, but you don't even know what that means or how you can get them. One article says you need keyword-rich content, but that means about as much to you as the linking thing. Some advice says you absolutely have to pay to be found in the engines, other stuff says it doesn't cost a thing.



The Trick-the-search-engines Stage



The more you read, the more you start to think that there must be some sort of trick to this whole SEO thing. Somehow you have to force the search engines into pulling your site up. You have learned that you need to think about keyword phrases as opposed to keywords, but you're still not clear about what to do with these phrases.



You remember reading about "keyword-rich content" and suddenly it clicks that you need to actually put your phrases on the page somewhere. But you have found so many phrases that you want to rank highly for, and can't quite figure out how you can get them all on your home page. You wonder if you should just list them somewhere. At the top? At the bottom? In a tiny font size, perhaps? Maybe you should make them blend in with the background of the site, because you really don't like the way it looks with all those phrases listed like that.



At this point, you're starting to think you're pretty smart for figuring that little trick out, and decide to tell some people you met on an SEO forum. Ouch! Apparently, you were not the first to think of this trick, and you got called all sorts of names, like "spammer"! You didn't even know there was such a thing as search engine spam, but you know that spamming anything can't be a very good thing to do!



So you start thinking that maybe tricking the search engines isn't the best way to attack things.



The Learning Stage



You decide to brave the forum again, to see if you can learn what other people do if they're not tricking the engines. By now, you've become intimately familiar with many of the terms people use, and some of the stuff they tell you is beginning to actually make some sense.



What you learn at this point is that you don't need to put all 50 phrases on the home page, just two or three! Now that seems doable. You also learn that you should use your phrases "naturally" when writing about what you do on every page of your site. Slowly but surely, things start making more sense, and each new tidbit you learn builds on the last one. You learn that the Title tag is also a good place for keyword phrases, and are embarrassed when you look at yours and see that it says, "Welcome to Our Home Page."



The Quick-fix Stage



You also learn that the search engines prefer to rank the most "popular" sites before the least popular ones, and you learn that they figure out which sites are the most popular by how many sites are linking to them. It makes perfect sense.



You really have no idea how you will get other sites to want to link to yours in order for it to be popular, but you know you're going to have to come up with some sort of a plan for this. You're a bit disheartened to think about how much time and effort it's going to take to become a popular site, so you ask your forum friends if there's a way to speed things along a bit...like maybe you can all link to each other's sites?



Ackk...they yell at you again and call you a link farmer.



The Hard-work Phase



Eventually, you reconcile with the fact that you're gonna have to work hard, just like you did when you first built your business offline. So off you go to make your site the best it can be for the search engines as well as your visitors, and a mature search engine marketer is born!

Top 10 Costly Link Building Mistakes

Link building is one of the most important SEO activities but this certainly doesn't mean that you should build links at any price ? literally and figuratively. Link building can be very expensive in terms of time and money. There are many costly link building mistakes and here are some of the most common:

1 Check if backlinks have a “nofollow” attribute
Link exchanges are still one of the white hat ways to build backlinks but unfortunately, there are many unscrupulous webmasters, who will cheat you. One of the scams is when you pay somebody for a backlink, it suddenly disappears or has the “nofollow” attribute. That is why you should check from time to time if the link is still there and if it doesn't have the “nofollow” attribute.

2 Getting good quality links but with useless anchor texts
It is great when PR of the site you are getting links from is high but when the anchor text is “Click here!” or something like that, such a link is barely useful. Keywords in the anchor text are vital, so if the backlink doesn't have them, it isn't a valuable one. Analyzing the anchor texts of links takes time but the Backlink Anchor Text Analyzer tool can do the hard job for you.

3 Getting an image link (when a text link with keyword is possible)
Sometimes when web masters hurry to get backlinks, they skip minor details, such as anchor text. Yes, an image link is great and it could even bring you more visitors than a text link (if the image is attractive, of course and users click it) but for SEO purposes nothing beats a keyword in the anchor text.

4 Not using ALT text if image link is the only possibility
Image links might be the worse option than text links but if an image link is the only possibility to get a backlink, don't reject it. However, make sure that the ALT text of the image link has your keywords ? this is more than nothing.

5 Getting backlinks from irrelevant websites
Now, this mistake is really a popular one! When hunting for backlinks, you should concentrate on relevant sites only. If you have a dating site, getting links from a finance one is not valuable. It is true that it is not easy to find relevant sites to get links from but unless your site is in a very narrow niche, chances are that there are hundreds or even thousands of relevant sites you can get a backlink from. If you need a list of such sites for your niche, try the Backlink Builder and see what suggestions it can give you.

6 Getting backlinks from sites/pages with tons of links
A backlink is more valuable, if it comes from a page, which is not cluttered with tons of other backlinks. Many pages have 200, or more links and if your link is one of them, this isn't a great achievement. On the other hand, many directories put the “nofollow” attribute on nonpaid links, so actually even if there are 200 links on page and most of them are “nofollow” (but yours isn't), this still counts.

7 Links from pages spiders can't crawl
A link might look perfectly legitimate (i.e. keywords in the anchor text and no “nofollow” attribute) and still it might not be a link. This is especially an issue with link exchanges because you put a link to the other site but the other site doesn't do the same for you. Links Google can't index can be placed on dynamic pages or simply on pages, which are not indexed by Google because robots.txt bans it. That is why it doesn't hurt to check from time if the pages your links are placed on are accessible to spiders. The Search Engine Spider Simulator tool can help you do this in no time at all.

8 Explicitly selling links
There is hardly a web master who hasn't heard that paid links can hurt your rankings but still many web masters don't miss the chance to make a few bucks. If you really want to sell links, you'd better use the specialized link selling services, such as Backlinks.com because they are more discreet. However, have in mind that while some of the paid links networks try to hide the fact that the links are paid, the rest are not that discreet. Also, maybe the worst gaffe you can make is to include phrases in website like “Buy 5 PR links for $10”or any other hint that you are selling links. You can include “Advertise here!” or similar messages and still de facto sell paid links but this is not as explicit as listing your prices for links.

9 Linking to sites with poor reputation
Linking to sites with poor reputation, also known as “bad neighbors” is one of the worst mistakes you can make. When you link to such sites, for Google this means that you endorse them and this results in penalties for you. That is why you must absolutely always check the sites (and their reputation) first before you link to them. Even if you are offered a lot of money to link to a site with poor reputation, you'd better decline the offer because otherwise your rating with search engines will suffer and this will cause you a lot of problems.

10 Linking to good sites gone bad
Even if you check carefully the sites you link to, sometimes it happens that a site, which used to be more or less decent all of a sudden starts publishing porn ads or other objectionable content. That is why it doesn't hurt if you check not only that the outbound links you have are not broken but also where they lead to.

Links are very important and that is why you should pay attention to what links you are getting. It is not a waste of time to monitor what's going on with your links and in addition to the tools listed in the article, you can also try the Backlink Summary tool.

What is S.E.O

I. Introduction – What Is SEO



Whenever you enter a query in a search engine and hit 'enter' you get a list of web results that contain that query term. Users normally tend to visit websites that are at the top of this list as they perceive those to be more relevant to the query. If you have ever wondered why some of these websites rank better than the others then you must know that it is because of a powerful web marketing technique called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
SEO is a technique which helps search engines find and rank your site higher than the millions of other sites in response to a search query. SEO thus helps you get traffic from search engines.
This SEO tutorial covers all the necessary information you need to know about Search Engine Optimization - what is it, how does it work and differences in the ranking criteria of major search engines.
1. How Search Engines Work

The first basic truth you need to know to learn SEO is that search engines are not humans. While this might be obvious for everybody, the differences between how humans and search engines view web pages aren't. Unlike humans, search engines are text-driven. Although technology advances rapidly, search engines are far from intelligent creatures that can feel the beauty of a cool design or enjoy the sounds and movement in movies. Instead, search engines crawl the Web, looking at particular site items (mainly text) to get an idea what a site is about. This brief explanation is not the most precise because as we will see next, search engines perform several activities in order to deliver search results – crawling, indexing, processing, calculating relevancy, and retrieving.
First, search engines crawl the Web to see what is there. This task is performed by a piece of software, called a crawler or a spider (or Googlebot, as is the case with Google). Spiders follow links from one page to another and index everything they find on their way. Having in mind the number of pages on the Web (over 20 billion), it is impossible for a spider to visit a site daily just to see if a new page has appeared or if an existing page has been modified, sometimes crawlers may not end up visiting your site for a month or two.
What you can do is to check what a crawler sees from your site. As already mentioned, crawlers are not humans and they do not see images, Flash movies, JavaScript, frames, password-protected pages and directories, so if you have tons of these on your site, you'd better run the Spider Simulator below to see if these goodies are viewable by the spider. If they are not viewable, they will not be spidered, not indexed, not processed, etc. - in a word they will be non-existent for search engines.

Spider Simulator
Enter URL to Spider



After a page is crawled, the next step is to index its content. The indexed page is stored in a giant database, from where it can later be retrieved. Essentially, the process of indexing is identifying the words and expressions that best describe the page and assigning the page to particular keywords. For a human it will not be possible to process such amounts of information but generally search engines deal just fine with this task. Sometimes they might not get the meaning of a page right but if you help them by optimizing it, it will be easier for them to classify your pages correctly and for you – to get higher rankings.
When a search request comes, the search engine processes it – i.e. it compares the search string in the search request with the indexed pages in the database. Since it is likely that more than one page (practically it is millions of pages) contains the search string, the search engine starts calculating the relevancy of each of the pages in its index with the search string.
There are various algorithms to calculate relevancy. Each of these algorithms has different relative weights for common factors like keyword density, links, or metatags. That is why different search engines give different search results pages for the same search string. What is more, it is a known fact that all major search engines, like Yahoo!, Google, Bing, etc. periodically change their algorithms and if you want to keep at the top, you also need to adapt your pages to the latest changes. This is one reason (the other is your competitors) to devote permanent efforts to SEO, if you'd like to be at the top.
The last step in search engines' activity is retrieving the results. Basically, it is nothing more than simply displaying them in the browser – i.e. the endless pages of search results that are sorted from the most relevant to the least relevant sites.
2. Differences Between the Major Search Engines

Although the basic principle of operation of all search engines is the same, the minor differences between them lead to major changes in results relevancy. For different search engines different factors are important. There were times, when SEO experts joked that the algorithms of Bing are intentionally made just the opposite of those of Google. While this might have a grain of truth, it is a matter a fact that the major search engines like different stuff and if you plan to conquer more than one of them, you need to optimize carefully.
There are many examples of the differences between search engines. For instance, for Yahoo! and Bing, on-page keyword factors are of primary importance, while for Google links are very, very important. Also, for Google sites are like wine – the older, the better, while Yahoo! generally has no expressed preference towards sites and domains with tradition (i.e. older ones). Thus you might need more time till your site gets mature to be admitted to the top in Google, than in Yahoo!.

How to Pick an SEO Friendly Designer

A Web designer is one of the persons without whom it is not possible to create a site. However, when SEO is concerned, Web designers can be really painful to deal with. While there are many Web designers, who are SEO-proficient, it is still not an exception to stumble upon design geniuses, who are focused only on the graphic aspect of the site. For them SEO is none of their business and they couldn't care less for something as unimportant as good rankings with search engines. Needless to say, if you hire such a designer, don't expect that your site will rank well with search engines.
If you will do SEO on your own, then you might not care a lot about the SEO skills of your Web designer but still there are design issues as we'll see next, which can affect your rankings very badly. When he or she designs the site against SEO rules, then it is not possible to fix this with SEO tricks.
When we say that you need to hire a SEO-friendly designer, we presume that you are a SEO pro and you know SEO but if you aren't, then have a look at the SEO Tutorial and the SEO Checklist. If you have no idea about SEO, then you will hardly be able to select a SEO-friendly designer because you won't know what to look for.
One of the ultimate tests if a designer is SEO-friendly or not is to look at his or her past sites – are they done professionally, especially in the SEO department. If their past sites don't exhibit blatant SEO mistakes, such as the ones we'll list in a second and they rank well, this is a recommendation that this person is worth hiring. Anyway, after you look at past sites, ask the designer if he or she did the SEO for their past sites because in some cases it might be that the client himself or herself has done a lot to optimize the site and this is why the site ranks well.
Here is a checklist of common web design sins that will make your site a SEO disaster. If you notice any or all of the following in the past sites your would-be designer has created, just move to the next designer. These SEO-unfriendly design elements are absolute sins and unless the client made them do it, no designer who would use the below techniques deserves your attention:
1 Rely heavily on Flash

Many designers still believe that Flash is the next best thing after sliced bread. While Flash can be very artistic and make a site look cool (and load forever in the browser), heavily Flash-ed sites are disaster in terms of SEO. Simple HTML sites rank better with search engines and as we point out in Optimizing Flash Sites, if the use of Flash is a must, then an HTML version of the same page is more than mandatory.
2 No internal links, or very few links
Internal links are backlinks and they are very important. Of course, this doesn't mean that all the text on a page must be hyperlinked to all the other pages on the site but if there are only a couple of internal links a page, this is a missed chance to get backlinks.
3 Images, not text for anchors
This is another frequent mistake many designers make. Anchor text is vital in SEO and when your links lack anchor text, this is bad. It is true that for menu items and other page elements, it is much easier to use an image than text because with text you can never be sure it will display correctly on users' screens, but since this is impacting your site's rankings in a negative way, you should sacrifice beauty for functionality.
4 Messy code and tons of code

If you have no idea about HTML, then it might be impossible for you to judge if a site's code is messy and if the amount of code is excessive but cleanness of code is an important criterion for SEO. When the code is messy, it might not be spider able at all and this can literally exclude your site from search engines because they won't be able to index it.
5 Excessive use of (SEO non-friendly) JavaScript
Similarly to Flash, search engines don't love JavaScript, especially tons of it. Actually, the worst with JavaScript is that if not coded properly, it is quite possible that because of the use of JavaScript your pages (or parts of them) are not spiderable, which automatically means that they won't be indexed.
6 Overoptimized sites
Over optimized sites aren't better than under-optimized. In fact, they could be much worse because when you keyword stuff and use other techniques (even when they are not Black Hat SEO) to artificially inflate the rankings of the site, this could get you banned from search engines and this is the worst that can happen to a site.

7 Dynamic and other SEO non-friendly URLs
Well, maybe dynamic URLs is not exactly a design issue but if you are getting a turn-key site - i.e. it is not up to you to upload and configure it and to create the links inside - then dynamic URLs are bad and you have to ask the designer/developer not to use them. You can rewrite dynamic and other SEO non-friendly URLs on your own but actually this means to make dramatic changes to the site and this is hardly the point of hiring a designer.
These points are very important and this is why you need to follow them, when you are choosing a SEO-friendly designer. Some of the items on the list are so bad for SEO (i.e. Flash, JavaScript) that even if the site is a design masterpiece and you promote it heavily, you will still be unable to get decent rankings. SEO-friendliness of design is a necessity, not a whim and you shouldn't settle for a SEO-unfriendly designs – this can be really expensive!

How to get traffic from Pinterest


Pinterest is the latest social network to take the world by storm. While social network skeptics will call it just another site, the fact is that it is different from the other countless similar sites. What is more, you can use Pinterest to successfully promote your business.

What Is Pinterest and How It Is Different from Other Social Networks?

Pinterest defines itself as “an online pinboard”. It's a place where you pin (mostly) images and other stuff you find interesting and share them with the world. Similarly to the other social networks, you follow people and have followers. Also, other users can repin your pins, thus spreading the word.
While there are no limits on the type of stuff you can pin, Pinterest is not suitable for all kinds of brands. It works best if your product/service can be presented in a visual way (i.e. clothes, furniture, etc.) and in this case the publicity you and your products get on Pinterest could do miracles for you.

Tips to Make the Most Out of Pinterest for the Benefit of Your Business

In order to make the most out of Pinterest rather than waste your time or even worse - do damage to your brand, you need to know how to use it. Here are some tips to help you with this.

1 Be Active on Pinterest

As any social network, Pinterest is a huge thief of time. You need to spend time on it daily in order to be able to follow what others are pinning, to comment on it, etc. You can't expect benefits from Pinterest, if you are not active on it on a daily basis.

2 Use High Quality Images

Pinterest is about visual appeal. This is why you can't go with crappy images taken with your 10 year old mobile. You need images with professional quality because otherwise you will be doing your brand more harm than good. This doesn't necessarily mean you need to hire a professional photographer - with the right equipment and some skills you can create the images on your own.

3 Post in Series

When you keep your followers interested, they develop the habit of visiting your board every now and then. One trick to keep your users interested is to post in series. In other words, if you have 10 images you want to post, don't post them all at once but post them one a day in the course of 10 days, stating that this is image 1 of 10, 2 of 10, etc.

4 Add a Pin-It Button to Your Site

If you want to get repins, you need to make it easier for users to do it. One way of doing it is by adding a Pin-It button to your site. Check what Pin-It buttons are available for your platform (i.e. WordPress, Joomla, etc.), pick one of them, put it on a visible place on your site and begin counting your pins/repins.

5 Post Interesting Stuff Not Limited to Your Products/Services Only

People are hardly coming to your board to see your products, so post other interesting pictures that will attract users (or keep them, if you already managed to attract them). This helps to attract new users to your account because when they see a cool pic somewhere on Pinterest, chances are they will visit your profile and have a look at your products there. If you post only images of your products, you won't be able to attract random visitors that much.

6 Write Interesting and Meaningful Descriptions

Photos are the bait but even the most unambiguous photo will benefit from a good description. Additionally, a good description will help your images rank better with search engines, which means more traffic for you. Be concise and precise in your descriptions and your users will certainly appreciate it.

7 Use Hashtags (Wisely) and Categorize Your Boards

When you use hashtags and when you categorize your pins, this makes them look more organized and they will be easier to find. On the other hand, don't use hashtags at large - i.e. add a hashtag only if you really need it because otherwise your pins will look spammy and users will skip them.

8 Follow Users with Large Followers Groups

When you pick whom to follow, consider not only if their pins are interesting but also if they have a large group of followers. When you follow such users, and especially if they decide to follow you back, their huge follower base is an undisputed advantage when they decide to repin something you have posted. With such power users one repin can bring crowds to your board!

9 Repin Interesting Stuff

Like any social network, interaction with other users is key on Pinterest. Because of this, it makes a lot of sense to like and comment on other people's pins. These give you more visibility, not to mention that in return you can get some repins, likes, and comments from other users. However, as with hashtags, you do need to have measure - i.e. don't repin, comment, or like every single pin you see on your screen, because this devaluates your contribution.

10 Use Videos, Charts, Infographics

Pinterest is not only about static stuff, there is a video section as well. Of course, this is not YouTube but if you can create a cool video about your business, don't be shy to post it. Also, in addition to images, you can use various charts and infographics - these are especially popular among users.
Pinterest is an interesting place and you will hardly have to force yourself to use it. Of course, its main advantage for you is the publicity you get. You might not be able to make a sale on Pinterest but the exposure and the traffic to your site are valuable prerequisites for making more sales, so if your products are suitable for the Pinterest format and audience, don't hesitate but promote them there.

Sunday, August 19, 2012

50-Gov-Websites List And 40 DoFollow Auto Approved .EDU Backlinks site list


50-Gov-Websites List And 40 DoFollow Auto Approved .EDU Backlinks site list .

http://www.dhs.gov/journal/leadership/
http://www.ncptt.nps.gov/
http://forum.webcontent.gov/news/
http://ahc.ehawaii.gov/openedit/blog/
http://blog.gallegly.house.gov/
http://www.volunteerlouisiana.gov/blog/
http://www.nysenate.gov/markup/
http://www.rib.uscourts.gov/externalkb20/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
http://www.tsa.gov/blog/
http://teens.drugabuse.gov/blog/
http://www.geostor.arkansas.gov/G6/Home.html
http://townhall.virginia.gov/L/Forums.cfm
http://blog.pittsburghsummit.gov/index.php/site/index/
http://www.majorityleader.gov/blog/blog.cfm
http://www.connectcontest.state.gov/contests/change-your-climate-change-our-world
http://cce.nasa.gov/
http://blog.library.ca.gov/
http://your.kingcounty.gov/votes/
http://www.burton.house.gov/posts
http://www.nlc.nebraska.gov/system/republican/
http://ideas.cio.ny.gov/
http://blogs.loc.gov/
http://tokyo.usembassy.gov/zblog/e/zblog-emain.html
http://libraries.idaho.gov/blogs/anne-abrams
http://www.news.hs.utah.gov/
http://blog.epa.gov/blog/
http://skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov/blog/
http://change.gov/open_government/yourseatatthetable
http://roberts.senate.gov/public/index.cfm
http://www.arts.gov/bigreadblog/
http://www.muskegon-mi.gov/videos-of-muskegon/
http://gis.lacounty.gov/eGIS/
http://republicanleader.house.gov/blog/
http://blog.citizen.apps.gov/yourvoicematters/
http://library.blogs.delaware.gov/
http://dgdc.blogs.delaware.gov/
http://www.kpl.gov/teens/blog/
http://www.usrsaustralia.state.gov/blog/
http://agblog.ok.gov/
http://blog.pittsburghsummit.gov/
http://weblog.sba.gov/blog-advo/
http://dcnr.nv.gov/
http://www.eereblogs.energy.gov/
http://media.csosa.gov/blog/
http://blog.aids.gov/
http://fdatransparencyblog.fda.gov/
https://blog.pnl.gov/so_what/
http://blogs.mo.gov/cybersecurity/
http://www.natcapwg.cap.gov/abovethecapital/

Tips for Beginner Logo Designer

Logo design is one of the most complicated spheres of graphic design. It is not always an easy thing to come up with something simple like a mere symbol which would incorporate certain idea, business mood, value, feel and look. It is important to find the golden mean to make a logo concept look neither too abstract nor excessively intricate or sophisticated like an illustration as well as to make it memorable and standing out from competitors. If you are a talented but yet not experienced graphic designer who wants to be a success in the logo design business, you should, first of all, follow current logo design tendencies and recommendations of logo design gurus. In this article, I would like to sum up basic tips many logo design experts consider to be important to follow for an effective logo design work and the designing process organization.

Tip 1
The world most recognizable logos do not actually show what company is about. For example, Mersedes-Benz logo does not show a car or even a part of it, likewise the Apple logo says nothing about computers and other such gadgets. There are a lot of well known logos which seem not to convey any idea about the business nature like McDonalds, Nike, Shell and many others. Some of famous logos are just cool text like Google, Ebay, FedEx. Therefore it is not always necessary to beat your brains out trying to incorporate tools of trade into a logo, as a good logo can bring more subtle idea which sometimes even makes the brand more interesting and stimulates customers to learn more about the company and logo history. However, if you can clearly show the company’s activities through a creatively designed logo, it’s OK. You just shouldn’t be fixed on this idea.

Tip 2
As I have already mentioned above logo is just a symbol which should be simple enough to be easily memorized by prospect customers. Furthermore, logo is often used in various dimensions and it must look recognizable even in smallest size like on business cards or gift items. That is why logo must be as simple as possible without too wild colors. And of course, constant communication with the client and discussing design ideas are a key to design the “right” logo.

Tip 3
Here I reiterate importance of effective communication with the client. Every design expert points it out as one of the most essential issue to consider. And even if you think that the client’s idea is not the best one you have the chance to establish yourself as a creative logo designer. However, you should first do exactly what the client wants to be done (at least an initial sketch) and only after this you can introduce your suggestions on how to make the logo better looking. If the client finds your ideas interesting he/she is likely to come back to you with new projects knowing your creativity potential.

Tip 4
Freehand drawing for sketching initial logo concepts can streamline the logo designing process. It is easier to use sketches as a guide for further logo design using special software. You can draw a few sketches comparatively quickly and show them to a client to choose from.

Tip 5
Be cautious of promising to deliver work by certain date unless delivery date is specified by the client. If delivery date is not set, try to ask some more days for the assignment fulfillment since it is always better to deliver before the agreed date than after. You never now whether you will have problems with inspiration or not, whether there will be circumstances preventing you from working quickly or whether the client will need some revisions and redesigns. That’s why adding some extra time to the estimated turnaround period will not only let you be on the safe side but also have a chance to exceed expectations of the client and create positive impression if the logo is delivered before the promised date.

Tip 6
There are hundreds of thousands logos and brands all around the world and, of course, almost any logo designer checks out a lot of logo ideas to draw inspiration before proceeding with his/her own logo design project. However, it is important to create something original and unique and to avoid the evident copying of existing logo elements and original ideas. Even if you try to create something really non-conventional, you can start a new tendency in logo design if you make it tastefully.

Tip 7
Logo is not that art which requires using a lot of colors. Most logos are actually used in black and white for some printing purposes even if they were initially designed in color. That is why logos must be designed in black and white first to make sure it looks good. If you want to apply more colors to a logo, you should restrict their number to maximum of three colors.

Tip 8
Logo is specially designed to reflect mood and value of the company. So you must take into consideration the company’s activity and target audience. When designing logo for a hospital you cannot make it funny, but if you create logo for a company which manufactures stuff for kids, you can deploy your skills in funny and cartoony logo design and even design a cartoony mascot character which will be a part of the logo. I believe it’s a quite clear concept even for beginner logo designers.

Tip 9
You should always remember that logo is something the company places almost everywhere beginning from gift pens, mugs, business cards to trucks, airplanes and buildings. That is why you should learn how to create logos using software which makes a logo scalable (vector logo). The most popular software used for vector drawing are Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw. So make sure you learn how to use those software applications properly and effectively for logo design purposes.

How to create Meta Description Tag

The keywords and phrases you use in your Meta description tag may not affect your page's ranking in the search engines, but this tag can still come in handy in your overall SEO and social media marketing campaigns.

What Is the Meta Description Tag?

It's a snippet of HTML code that belongs inside the <Head> </Head> section of a web page. It is usually placed after the Title tag and before the Meta keywords tag (if you use one), although the order is not important.

The proper syntax for this HTML tag is:

<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Your descriptive sentence or two goes here.">

If you're using a content management system (CMS), look for a field to fill out that's called Meta Description, or possibly just "Description."

Many years ago, the information contained in a Meta description could slightly help a page rank highly for the words that were contained within it. Today, neither Google, Bing, nor Yahoo! use it as a ranking signal.

In other words, whether you use your important keyword phrases in your Meta description tag or not, the position of your page in the search engine results will not be affected. So in terms of rankings, you could easily leave it out altogether.

But should you?

There are 3 important ways that Meta descriptions are being used today that make them an important part of your SEO and overall online marketing strategy:

They can be used as the description (or part of the description) of your page if it shows up in the search results.
They are often used as part of the descriptive information for your pages when Google shows "extended sitelinks" for your site.
They are often used as the default description in social media marketing links such as Facebook and Google+.

Let's look at each of these in more detail.

1. Meta Descriptions in the Search Results

People often think that whatever they put in their Meta description tag will be the default description that the search engines use under the clickable link to their site in the search results. While this is sometimes true, it's not always the case.

Currently, if you're searching for a site by its URL (for example www.highrankings.com) Google tends to use the first 20 to 25 words of your Meta description as the default description in the search engine result pages (SERP). However, if you have a listing at DMOZ, also known as the Open Directory Project (ODP) and are not using the "noodp" tag, they may default to that description instead. (Do a search at Google for www.amazon.com to see an example.)

Bing and Yahoo!, on the other hand, don't always default to the Meta description tag for URL searches. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. A search for www.highrankings.com at Bing or Yahoo! shows content from my home page as the description rather than the contents of my Meta description tag.

Of course, real people aren't typically searching for a site by URL, so what the search engines show for those types of search queries is not as important as a true keyword search. So don't get hung up on what you see when you search for your site by its URL or if you're doing a "site:command" search to see how they're indexing your pages.

Instead, go to your favorite web analytics program and find the keyword phrases that are currently bringing you the most traffic. Then see what your description looks like at Google when you type in those keywords.

And surprise! What you'll find is that your search results description will be different for every search query! You may see any combination of the following used:

Your entire Meta description tag text as the complete description (typically if it's highly relevant and contains no more than 25 words).
A full sentence pulled from your Meta description tag, but not the entire Meta description (if it contains more than one sentence).
Text from one part of your Meta description mashed together with text from another part of it (if it's more than 25 words long).
Some text from your Meta description mashed together with some text from the page.
Some text from your page mashed together from some other text from your page (nothing from the Meta description).

Some of the circumstances that cause Google to not use text from your Meta description may include:

The information in the Meta description tag was not specific to the page it was on.
The search query used some words that were not in the Meta description, but those words (or some of them) were used in the page content. This includes words that Google considers somewhat synonymous, such as "copy" and "copywriting" or "SEO" and "search engine optimization."

But even the above are not hard and fast rules. Google doesn't always use all or part of the Meta description even when the exact search phrase was contained within it – especially if the search query is also contained within the content of the page. Suffice it to say that there are no hard and fast rules for when Google will show it and when they won't.

My recommendation is to always use description tags on any pages where you get search engine visitors (or hope to get them). Make them very specific to the page they're on by describing what someone will find when they click through to the page from the search results, while also using variations of your targeted keywords.

Because Google will show only show around 20 to 25 words as your description, many SEOs recommend that you limit this tag to a certain number of characters. In reality, however, you're not limited to any specific number. Your Meta description tag can be as long as you want it to be because Google will pull out the relevant parts of it and make their own snippet anyway.

For instance, if you're optimizing a page for 3 different keyword phrases, you could write a 3-sentence Meta description tag, with each sentence focusing on a different phrase. You could probably even insert more than 3 phrases in those sentences if you're a good wordsmith. The idea, however, is not to stuff this tag full of keywords, but to write each sentence to be a compelling marketing statement – a statement that naturally uses the keywords people might be typing into Google to find your site.

2. Meta Descriptions and Extended Sitelinks

These days, Google often uses the first few words from your Meta description tag when they create the "extended sitelinks" for your website. But this too is not set in stone and is highly keyword dependent. You'll see different sitelinks and different descriptions showing up depending on the words a searcher used at Google.

As an example, if you do a search for "High Rankings" at Google, you'll see my sitelinks for that search query.

Google Sitelinks for High Rankings

At this moment, Google is showing my home page as the top result with 6 inner pages beneath:

Forum home page: Description is from DMOZ/ODP. This page has the generic Meta description that is on every page of the forum.
Link building forum home page: Description is content pulled from the page that uses the words "High Rankings" in it.
SEO articles page: First part of Meta description.
Newsletter home page: First part of Meta description.
SEO/SEM resources page: First part of Meta description.
SEO classes page: First part of Meta description.

For the most part, they're using the first part of the Meta description as the sitelink snippet, but not always. You may have noticed that I optimized those Meta description sitelink snippets that are showing by front loading them so that the first 5-7 words or so are a short description of what the page is all about.

But here's the rub. Do a Google search for "Jill Whalen SEO." You should still see sitelinks, and you'll even see some of the same ones as with the previous query, but some of the descriptions are different:

While the forum home page shows in both, this time Google has pulled text from the page rather than using the DMOZ/ODP description. This is likely because this search query had the word "SEO" in it while the other one didn't. The SEO articles page also shows up here, and it is using the same Meta description snippet as the High Rankings query. The other sitelinks are different from before, with 3 out of 4 using the Meta description.

As you can see, while you do have some control over your sitelink descriptions via your Meta description tag, Google might not always use them (just as Google does with their regular search results). Your best chance of having them show is to use, close to the beginning of your description tags, the words that you know pull up sitelinks. Also, be as descriptive as possible within the first 5 to 7 words.

3. Meta Descriptions and Social Media Marketing

Ever wonder why some Facebook links have great descriptions and others don't seem to make any sense? It's because some site owners have taken the time to write a summary of the article and place it into their Meta description tag, and some have not. If your article has a Meta description, Facebook and Google+ will default to that when you share a link on your profile or "Page." If there's no Meta description, you'll usually see the first sentence or so from the page being used as the default.

While anyone can edit the description that Facebook defaults to, most people don't. And at this time on Google+ you can't even edit the default description. You can either leave it as is or delete it all together. Let's face it -- most of the time the first sentence of an article is not a good description of the rest of it. It's not supposed to be, because that's not what a first sentence is for!

Therefore, I strongly advise you to always write a compelling 1- or 2-sentence description for all of your articles and blog content that may be shared via social media, and place it into your Meta description tag. This will give you a big jump on your competitors who haven't figured this out yet, making your social media content much more clickable because people will know what the article is actually about before they click on it.

Overall, the Meta description tag gives you a little bit more control over what people might see before they click over to your site. The more compelling it is, the more clickthroughs you should see. If your Meta description tags can help with that, then it's certainly worth the few minutes of time it takes to create interesting, keyword-rich tags that sum up what users will find when they arrive!

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