Get Good Ranks through Search Engines

There are a few points you need to focus on if you want to get good ranks in the search engine.
In order of importance, here are what you should focus:
1. Keyword research
The idea is to find low-competition keyword phrase with good demand. Many people, especially newbies, try to optimize for competitive keywords and wonder why they never get to the top 10 in the search engine.
A simple approach is to type in a keyword phrase into Google and check how many results it returns. If it returns less than 500,000 results, you will have a good chance to rank well for that keyword phrase.

2. Link building
Link building is almost the "everything" of SEO.
If you are not a newbie, you would have read everything about link building.
article marketing
social bookmarking
web 2.0 sites
website directories
blog comments
press release
RSS
LinkVana
The game of search engine optimization is a game of link building, and the game of link building is a game of time vs money.
If you have all the time in the world, it is possible to do everything yourself. Else, you will have to spend money to get the chore done.
That's why I said link building is a game of time vs money.

3. SEO friendly website
I just want to quickly give you a checklist of things you need to take note in onpage optimization.
Use keywords as your domain name.
For every article, make sure that the keywords are in the title, first sentence of the first paragraph and inside the last paragraph.
Keywords in the title and keyword meta tags.
You should use the filename of the article as the filename of your webpage.

4. Unique content
Is it a must to rewrite the articles? My answer is no. But contrary to my answer, 95% of my websites are created using rewritten articles. I don't want Google to wake up one day thinking that they want to penalize duplicated content and suddenly my income becomes $0 overnight!

5. 'Beauty' of the website
Many people don't focus on this. What happen is Google measures the duration a visitor stays on your website. If the duration is long, Google will think your website has good content and it will reward you with better rank.
To get good ranks in the search engines, you need to focus on all the 5 points. Search engine optimization is not a rocket science. It's purely hard work and leverage. Most of the work are tedious, but if you know how to outsource and buy tools that can simply the work, you will greatly cut down your time on search engine optimization.

Good Web Design Tips

There are a few design elements that must be present if you want your website to encourage visitors to stick around and eventually make a purchase. These elements include using appropriate colors and designs, great graphics and pictures, a clean design, easy to read fonts, a contact form and good, informative text. Below, we will discuss good web design tips in more detail.

Graphics and pictures help to personalize your website and make people feel comfortable. They also aid in building trust. When people see pictures of people smiling, looking pleased or excited, this warms them to your website and product. They get the feeling that they are actually dealing with people and not a webpage.

Easy to read fonts are something that a lot of marketers and companies don’t give a lot of thought to. However, it is extremely important that the font that you use, the type and the size, is readable. If you use a font that is too small, readers will be forced to strain their eyes to read your text and may eventually give up. If your font is too big and decorative, this can also be a turn off. This is one of the many good web design tips that too often gets ignored.

You want to make sure that your website design is uncluttered. A messy design is annoying and confusing. People won’t spend much time at cluttered sites. This potentially means less sales for you. The longer that you can get someone to stay at your website, the more likely they will make a purchase.

Providing good information is also a vital element of good website design. A potential customer should be able to learn just about everything that they need to know about you, your product or service from your website. Your site should inform and give you a good opportunity to close the deal.

Providing contact information is also extremely important. One of the major reasons some people don’t’ make purchases at specific websites is that there is not contact information listed. Individuals want to know that if they spend money with you, they will be able to contact you if there is a problem with your product or service. You have to prove that you are not some cyberspace scammer. Therefore, it is very important to provide some type of email, phone or instant message contact information. Visitors may even want to ask you questions prior to making a purchase. Make sure that you respond very quickly or you risk turning away customers. Your website’s email should preferably be an email address that is connected with your domain name. Using a free email account might raise suspicion and hints at unprofessionally.

Use appropriate colors and design. Your colors and design should fit your niche. If you have a real artsy niche then it is fine to be a lot more creative in your graphics and colors. However, if you have a business website where your customers are more conservative, you will want to use graphics and colors that they would be most comfortable with.

Building a good website requires that include certain elements. The information given above are just a few of the many good web design tips that you can use to increase the conversion ratios of your visitor. Remember, to use appropriate colors and design, readable fonts, an uncluttered design and provide your visitors with a method to contact you.

CSS3

CSS-Only form

A great example of a table-less form created by Jeff Howden. A real time saver for web developers:

http://jeffhowden.com/code/css/forms/

Link Thumbnail with CSS

A great way of previewing what the link you are about to click is about. Why send your users to a website they dont wanna go? Let them preview it through a thumbnail:

http://lab.arc90.com/2006/07/link_thumbnail.php

CSS Submit Buttons

Almost every single website has a form of some sort. Here’s a good way of treating your beloved form submit button. Great article:

http://www.ukthoughts.co.uk/journal/css…

Star Ratings

You see theese more and more. Mostly on CSS Galleries, Netflix, etc. Here’s a looooooong but very interesting article on how to put stars on your already-rocking website:

http://www.komodomedia.com/blog/2005/08/…

Target WHO?

Let users decide if they want to open a link in a new window or not. A good article on the subject:

http://webdesign.maratz.com/lab/new…

Oh yeah, the link above opens a new window :)

You will never ask about round corners again!

A massive set of techniques to create rounded corners with CSS. Some use images for the corners, some dont. Try the different methods and see what matches your preference. I personally think: The less images the better, but it all depends on what you are trying to create. Enjoy:

http://www.smileycat.com/miaow/archives/…

Photoshop-Style Drop Shadows with CSS

I was recently working on a project that required each uploaded image to have a drop shadow blow it. After searching all over the place, I found a really simple and comprehensive solution to the problem. Check this out:

http://theshapeofdays.com/….

CSS Tab Menus!

A great set of CSS Menus created by exploding boy. Take a look at the source code and notice how each menu code is segmented so that it’s easy to follow.

http://exploding-boy.com/images/cssmenus/menus.html

About CSS3.com

WHAT IS CSS

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are the modern standard for website presentation. When combined with structural markup language like HTML, XHTML, or XML (though not limited to these), CSS provide Internet browsers with the information that enables them to present all the visual aspects and elements of a web document. CSS apply things like borders, spacing between paragraphs, margins, headings on images, control of font faces or colors, background colors and images, textual effects like underlined or strike-through text, layering, positioning, and a number of other presentational effects. CSS controls the presentational aspects of a web page’s design, whereas HTML, XHTML, or XML control the
structure of a webpage, which means more than determining that certain text is a heading, other text is a paragraph, other text os a list of hyperlinks, and so on.

By using modern standards like CSS and XHTML, you can dramatically reduce the cost of building and maintaining a website when compared to legacy HTML-only pages. You can also greatly reduce the amount of physical bandwidth and hard disk space required, resulting in immediate long-term benefits for any webmasters and web visitor

CSS TUTORIAL

Cascading Style Sheets, commonly referred to as CSS, is a simple design language intended to simplify the process of making web pages presentable. Put simply, CSS handles the look and feel part of a web page or a whole website. With CSS, you can control the color of the text, the style of fonts, the spacing between paragraphs, how columns are sized and laid out, what background images or colors are used, as well as a variery of other effects and styles explained here.

The term cascading in Cascading Style Sheets refers to a specific way in which browsers determine which styles to apply to a specific part of the page. This method is called “the cascade”, and it’s from the cascade that CSS takes its name.

CSS3.com’s new style.

What do you think? approve? disapprove? Love it? Hate it?

I like the way all properties were easy to reach before. I will add a list of each one of them to the side menu very soon.

Also, Ive noticed I should have made each one of the properties a “page” and not a “post”. Is there a way to easily change that on wp?

Design Principles

Web Design Library is proud to bring you Weekly Report.

This week the following hot articles have been added:

Design Principles (1 material):

Ten Of The Most Common Mistakes Made In Web Design

Designers can keep more of their website visitors by avoiding common mistakes. The following list describes some of the most common design errors associated with websites.

Read more

Photoshop Tutorials (38 materials):

Singh Ray Blue Gold Polarizer in Photoshop

We will discuss how to the singh ray blue gold polarizer to help accomplish very high contrast black and white digital photo image.

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Remove Background using Pen Tool in Photoshop

In this video tutorial learn how to remove a background from a photo using the pen tool.

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Photoshop Tip using the Quick Mask Tool

In this photoshop video tutorial learn how to use the quickmask took.

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Remove Unwanted Objects in Photoshop CS3 Extended

In this Photoshop CS3 extended video tutorial learn how to remove unwanted objects from a photo using a very cool feature.

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Retro TV

Editor's Pick of December, 2008
Television is gradually loosing the role of the most powerful mass media, so making TV-set themed web design would look really stylish and classic as well as a bit nostalgic.

Read more

Leather Notes

Draw nice looking leather notes in Photoshop.

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Discoball

Make nice looking discoball.

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3D Shining Text

Draw 3D lighting text in photoshop.

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Fireworks CS4 Photoshop Integration

For CS4, Adobe has been working hard to integrate Fireworks with the other apps, especially Photoshop...

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Making Photos Come Alive - Cutout

In this tutorial you will learn how to add a unique effect to your photos to make them come alive.

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Create a Dream Design with 3D Typography

Editor's Pick of December, 2008
Emotion and idea expressing fonts can keep your web design one-topic focused thus make mood and thoughts of your visitors most appropriate for the content perception of your site.

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Creating a Christmas Bauble Decoration

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a Christmas Bauble for your festive graphic decorations.

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Greeting E-card Drawing Tips (Exclusive Tutorial)

Editor's Pick of December, 2008
Creating a unique layout of a greeting card is a bit time consuming, but you can make it look and feel indeed the way you want it to be.

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Reflection in Broken Mirror

How to make a broken glass in Photoshop.

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Web 2.0 Text Logo with Gel Effect in Photoshop

This video tutorial will show you how to create a web 2.0 text logo gel effect using Adobe Photoshop.

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Learn How to Create a Smoke Brush in Photoshop

This video tutorial will show you how to create a smoke brush in Adobe Photoshop.

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3D Quick-Look in CS4 Extended

Get ready for an incredible 3D experience, as you view this quick-look at some of the new 3D features in Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended.

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3D Metal Text

Draw nice looking 3D metal text.

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Photoshop Stamp

Draw perfect stamp with your own symbol.

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Simple Glossy Navigation Bar Design in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you how to design a modern glossy navigation bar in Photoshop. This is a beginner tutorial with a just few simple steps, aiming to help beginner web designer for making their first-ever web page.

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Design an Awesome Starry Text Effect In Photoshop

In this tutorial, I am going to show you the steps I took to create this awesome starry text effect in Photoshop. The inspiration of this text effect comes from the EA game "Dead Space".

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Background with Photoshop and Illustrator

This Photoshop video tutorial experiments with a current design trend of creating techno backgrounds.

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Create Stunning Ruby Text Effect with Photoshop

Learn how to create this stunning ruby text effect with Photoshop.

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How to Create Matte Reflection with Photoshop

Learn how to create a very professional looking product presentation including creating the background, matte reflection, perspective lighting, and more.

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Create Space Scene Planet and Stars in Photoshop

We will walk you through creating everything in this space scene, stars, planets, lighting, coloring and more in this in-depth Photoshop video tutorial.

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Learn How to Change Eye Color with Photoshop

Here is a way to change eye color.

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Creating a Christmas Star

In this tutorial, we are going to show you how to create a Christmassy Star for your festive graphic decoration. We will be creating the star from the basic star Custom Shape in PhotoShop.

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Colorful and Dreamy Scene

Learn how to turn an original picture into a colorful and dreamy picture.

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Paper Curl

A detailed Photoshop tutorial that shows how to create a paper curl.

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Design a Dark and Crimson Forest Scene in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you the processes I used to transform an average forest Photo into a Dark and Crimson Forest Scene, inspired by the Japanese Survival Horror Playstation game "Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly".

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Business Layout #3

In this tutorial I'll show you how to make a really simple clean business layout.

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Create a Matrix Poster

Learn how to create a matrix poster.

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Blue Glow Portrait Effect

Make a blue glow portrait effect by using some color blending techniques.

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Create a Website Layout in Photoshop

Learn to create this entire dealership website from start to finish.

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Enhance Photography & Cool Border with Photoshop

Learn how to enhance many aspects of your photography such as saturation, contrast, sharpening techniques and finish of the final presentation with an extremely slick border.

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Create a Cool Spark Beam

Learn how to create a product presentation with flare!

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Create Fake Mist and Sun Rays Beam with Photoshop

In this Photoshop video tutorial learn how to create fake mist, god rays (sun beams), and creating rich black and white images.

Read more

Christmas Glass Balls Drawing Lesson (Exclusive Tutorial)

Editor's Pick of December, 2008
On-line Christmas Tree decorating may be somewhat as fun as a traditional one. Though Photoshop sets no limits on your creativity and you can go as far as your imagination lets you.

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CorelDraw Tutorial (1 material):

3D Euroleague Logo

Give 3D effect to the 2D logo.

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Illustrator Tutorial (1 material):

Patterns and Shapes in Adobe Illustrator (Video Tutorial)

This tutorial is based on an advertisement that uses patterns and shapes to create a unique design effect.

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Flash Tutorial (2 materials):

Rotating Billboard

One easy to make rotating billboard on Time Square. It's very easy tutorial for everyone.

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Flash CS4 Deco Tool (Video Tutorial)

Having fun experimenting with Flash CS4's Deco Tool.

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3D Tutorial (1 material):

How to Create Explosive Typographic Effects in Cinema 4D

Editor's Pick of December, 2008
Stunning tutorial on how to create an attention-attractive 3D logo and make it the most eye-catching element of your web design.

Read more

HTML Tutorial (1 material):

Redefined HTML Tags

This tool in Dreamweaver allows users to redefine an existing component of HTML.

Read more

Domain Names (1 material):

What Kind of Domain Name Should you Choose?

Domain names are unique on the Internet, you can't have two the same, no matter how you try.

Read more

New Version of HTML Launched.....HTML5

Abstract

This specification defines the 5th major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web: the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). In this version, new features are introduced to help Web application authors, new elements are introduced based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and special attention has been given to defining clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability.

Semantics

Elements, attributes, and attribute values in HTML are defined (by this specification) to have certain meanings (semantics). For example, the ol element represents an ordered list, and the lang attribute represents the language of the content.
Through scripting and using other mechanisms, the values of attributes, text, and indeed the entire structure of the document may change dynamically while a user agent is processing it. The semantics of a document at an instant in time are those represented by the state of the document at that instant in time, and the semantics of a document can therefore change over time. User agents must update their presentation of the document as this occurs.
HTML has a progress element that describes a progress bar. If its "value" attribute is dynamically updated by a script, the UA would update the rendering to show the progress changing.

Structure

All the elements in this specification have a defined content model, which describes what nodes are allowed inside the elements, and thus what the structure of an HTML document or fragment must look like. Authors must only put elements inside an element if that element allows them to be there according to its content model.
a. Space characters
b. Text nodes
c. Inter-Element Whitespace
d. SVG specification

Kinds of content

# Metadata content
# Prose content
# Sectioning content
# Heading content
# Phrasing content
# Embedded content
# Form control content
# Interactive content

Metadata content

Metadata content is content that sets up the presentation or behaviour of the rest of the content, or that sets up the relationship of the document with other documents, or that conveys other "out of band" information.

Elements from other namespaces whose semantics are primarily metadata-related

Prose content

Most elements that are used in the body of documents and applications are categorised as prose content.

As a general rule, elements whose content model allows any prose content should have either at least one descendant text node that is not inter-element whitespace, or at least one descendant element node that is embedded content. For the purposes of this requirement, del elements and their descendants must not be counted as contributing to the ancestors of the del element.

This requirement is not a hard requirement, however, as there are many cases where an element can be empty legitimately, for example when it is used as a placeholder which will later be filled in by a script, or when the element is part of a template and would on most pages be filled in but on some pages is not relevant.

Sectioning content

Sectioning content is content that defines the scope of headers, footers, and contact information.

Each sectioning content element potentially has a heading. See the section on headings and sections for further details.

Heading content

Heading content defines the header of a section (whether explicitly marked up using sectioning content elements, or implied by the heading content itself).

Phrasing content

Phrasing content is the text of the document, as well as elements that mark up that text at the intra-paragraph level. Runs of phrasing content form paragraphs.

All phrasing content is also prose content. Any content model that expects prose content also expects phrasing content.

As a general rule, elements whose content model allows any phrasing content should have either at least one descendant text node that is not inter-element whitespace, or at least one descendant element node that is embedded content. For the purposes of this requirement, nodes that are descendants of del elements must not be counted as contributing to the ancestors of the del element.

Most elements that are categorised as phrasing content can only contain elements that are themselves categorised as phrasing content, not any prose content.

Text nodes that are not inter-element whitespace are phrasing content.

Embedded content

Embedded content is content that imports another resource into the document, or content from another vocabulary that is inserted into the document.

All embedded content is also phrasing content (and prose content). Any content model that expects phrasing content (or prose content) also expects embedded content.

Elements that are from namespaces other than the HTML namespace and that convey content but not metadata, are embedded content for the purposes of the content models defined in this specification. (For example, MathML, or SVG.)

Some embedded content elements can have fallback content: content that is to be used when the external resource cannot be used (e.g. because it is of an unsupported format). The element definitions state what the fallback is, if any.

Interactive content

Interactive content is content that is specifically intended for user interaction.

Certain elements in HTML can be activated, for instance a elements, button elements, or input elements when their type attribute is set to radio. Activation of those elements can happen in various (UA-defined) ways, for instance via the mouse or keyboard.

When activation is performed via some method other than clicking the pointing device, the default action of the event that triggers the activation must, instead of being activating the element directly, be to fire a click event on the same element.

The default action of this click event, or of the real click event if the element was activated by clicking a pointing device, must be to fire a further DOMActivate event at the same element, whose own default action is to go through all the elements the DOMActivate event bubbled through (starting at the target node and going towards the Document node), looking for an element with an activation behavior; the first element, in reverse tree order, to have one, must have its activation behavior executed.

The above doesn't happen for arbitrary synthetic events dispatched by author script. However, the click() method can be used to make it happen programmatically.

For certain form controls, this process is complicated further by changes that must happen around the click event. [WF2]

Most interactive elements have content models that disallow nesting interactive elements.

New Version of HTML Launched...HTML 5

Abstract

This specification defines the 5th major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web: the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). In this version, new features are introduced to help Web application authors, new elements are introduced based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and special attention has been given to defining clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability.

Browsable version-control record of all changes:

What Is CSS 3?

CSS 3 is the next version of the CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) specification, and a current working draft by the Wirld Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The draft attempts to monularize the specification to allow easier updating in the future. Here's the abstract of the current draft (retrieved December 10th 2007):

"The members of the CSS&FP Working Group have decided to modularize the CSS specification. This modularization will help to clarify the relationships between the different parts of the specification, and reduce the size of the complete document. It will also allow us to build specific tests on a per module basis and will help implementors in deciding which portions of CSS to support. Furthermore, the modular nature of the specification will make it possible for individual modules to be updated as needed, thus allowing for a more flexible and timely evolution of the specification as a whole."

Major Updates in CSS 3

In addition to modularization, there are several other major additions or changes in CSS 3. Here are the ones that should be most interesting to web designers.

• Multi-Column Layout
• New Selectors
• Improved Color Control

Multi-Column Layouts in CSS 3

The multi column layout module in CSS 3 adds functionality to flow the content of an element into multiple columns. This will be important in designing CSS layouts, because the space on wide screen resolutions can be more effectively used without forcing long lines of text.

Firefox has partial support of the functions of CSS 3 multi column layout: It supports -moz-column count, -moz-column width and a few other CSS attributes. They work like column-width and column-count in the CSS 3 draft module do.

CSS 3 Selectors

In addition to the selectors found in CSS 2, many additional selectors are added. The most useful of the many new CSS 3 selectors are the attribute selectors [a^=v], [a$=v] and [a*=v], and the nth-child selector.

With the attribute selectors, targeting only some elements is easy without the need of adding classes. Targeting all images from a certain location, all links with a certain relationship, etc. is very simple. The newest browser versions support these selectors, though some incompletely.

The nth-child selector allows highlighting of every other row in a table, of every other paragraph in a long piece of text, or many other meat tricks. The selector is supported partially by the current version of Firefox.

Color Improvements in CSS 3

The most widely supported and the most interesting addition to color handling in CSS 3 is alpha support. This functions both through opacity, and the new RGBA color values. Opacity works in all major browsers except Internet Explorer. RGBA colors are currently only supported by Safari 3 and Firefox 3 beta.