Back in the day when web designers built their website by hand, it was very easy to make a mistake in the coding. However, now web designers are lucky to have the many tools that they have that no longer makes HTML and CSS validation such an issue that it used to be.

If you don’t know what HTML and CSS validation is, you have probably noticed it when it didn’t take place. If you have been to a website that looks odd, where items are falling off the side of the page, strange coding appears, or there are missing graphics, that is probably because no one took the time to validate their code.

When you build a website, you need to use HTML and CSS validation for the following reasons:

1. Not everyone uses Internet Explorer. Some people are still using old versions of Netscape and AOL, while others are using Firefox or Safari. You need to build your website so that it appears properly on all of these browsers.

2. Not everyone is on a PC! Some people are viewing your website from an Apple, others from their phone or even their television. Your website needs to appear properly there, too.

3. You may find that you need your website to be ADA-compliant. This means that readers for the visually-impaired will be reading the text. So, if you are going to utilize a lot of graphics, there needs to be “alt” tags in place so that the reader can “read” them, too.

By using a quality HTML or CSS validation program, many of which are found online for free, you can make sure that your website is fully accessible to everyone, no matter what kind of computer they are using, or even whether they can actually see the screen or not.

The success of any website is going to be determined by the amount of traffic that it can generate. If you want your blog to generate more traffic, you are going to have to utilize SEO Techniques. But what is SEO, and how can I use it to bring my blog traffic?

Search Engine Optimization. These three words should be on your mind every time you write a new pose. SEO blogging is all about giving search engines the opportunity to find you. But how do you make your site more visible to the search engines?

If you want to be found by the search engines, and you want your site to be ranked high on their list, you have to use keywords. Keywords are basically the search terms that people will use to find your site. When you use a site like Google, you type in a search term. Google, then finds all of the sites that might pertain to your search. SEO blogging means that you write keyword heavy articles that will allow your site to be found by the search engines.

But what are the right keywords? You can use an a program to analyze your website, and find out what keywords are working for you, and what keywords are not working for you. Another way to determine the appropriate keyword, is to think about the subject of the article. What is it really about? For instance, if you are writing about a person, make sure to use that person’s name. Do not use clever nicknames, or refer to them as him or her. Google doesn’t know him, or her. They know the person’s name.

So what’s the key to SEO blogging? You have probably heard of ‘writing for an audience,’ before, but now you have to ‘write for the search engines.’ Because, after all, that is how you are going to build your audience.

As a website owner or developer, you probably already spend a lot of time trying to get your website to the top of the listings on all the major search engines. Yahoo and Google are, of course, the most popular and effective places to be seen. However, there are others as well which you may not heard of. One of the oldest search engines, and one that is significantly different than the others is DMOZ.

Originally known as Mozilla, DMOZ is a project that is completely run by volunteers and is an attempt to catalog the web in a way that makes sense and is fair to everyone. Because all submissions are evaluated by a human (rather than crawled by a “spider”), there is no real way to bluff it. You can’t force your way to the top by submitting over and over again, because every time you submit, you are put to the end of the line.

One of the biggest concerns with DMOZ for most web developers is that it can take weeks or even months to get your website listed. This is a long time in the internet world, and if your website is timely or related to a news event, it may not be listed in time.

Although it should not be at the top of your marketing plan, DMOZ should not be omitted when you are submitting to search engines. You will probably not get a lot of traffic out of it, but your presence on the site will show up on the other search engines. Your best bet is to spend your marketing efforts and programming time working on getting your web site to the top of Google, Yahoo, Bing, and the other more mainstream search engines, so that you can get quality traffic that brings in sales.

Socal Media provides the traffic sprint to draw attention to your new content.

Let's face it, Search Engine Optimization takes time to provide top search engine rankings. This can be frustrating, especially when you have to wait for the traffic from those keywords to get noticed through the search engines.

If you want more traffic to your website now, then you need a Social Media Strategy. The concept goes by many names, Social Media Optimization, Social Media Services, Social Media Strategies, SMO and so on. No matter what you call it, >Social Media is one of the most critical ingredients for your website to succeed.

While Search Engine Optimization puts your website at the top of Search Engines - it only works when your target audience is actually using a Search Engine.

More people are spending hours on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter so it would be a mistake to neglect those sites from your marketing efforts. So you need to broadcast your company message across all of these different web channels. Not only is it important to do this, just to make your business known, but also to begin a conversation with your potential clients and customers.

The problem then becomes - how do we generate enough content on a regular basis to engage our clients on all of these sites? If you think about it enough - that problem is immense.

If you are blogging, at least you have some content to broadcast. However, it is easy to run out quickly as the demand to fill channels such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Bebo, Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, LinkedIn, etc. becomes overwhelming.

To keep up on Twitter alone, you need to broadcast nearly 100 messages per day, and that is not even reaching the point of optimal saturation. Each Social Network requires a different approach and if your business is about selling products, providing mortgages, plastic surgery or anything else, you just don't have the time to manage it all.

ROI - The key to your success.

While Return On Investment for Search Engine Optimization is measured through organic traffic and organic search keyword placement, seeing the return takes several months.

The return on investment for a Social Media program is almost instant. Provided that your website has some sort of blog or interactive content, we can begin to drive traffic to your site right away.

Social Media is taking the internet by storm. In many ways social media is just overwhelming. We can help by coordinating, directing and executing your social media strategy.

We provide the systematized approach required to make sure that your marketing message gets plenty of attention.

Social Media has been shown to provide the following results:
Branding
Lead Generation
Marketing
PR
Traffic
Search Engine Optimization

Social Media and SEO go hand in hand. In many ways the two marketing strategies are interdependent.

Here's how Social Media Marketing works:

We sign you up on 30 major social networks. - If you're already signed up on those networks great! We'll work on promoting those profiles for you.

Next we create content on a regular basis so you don't have to.

We create typed blog posts, photos, videos, you name it. We want to keep the fresh content pumping into your blog and social network profiles so that your business looks like the most informed outfit around.

We're happy to create that content for you so that it is Search Engine Friendly out of the box, and so that you can use it to get traffic coming back to your own website pronto.

We can send you the content on regularly scheduled intervals. If you like and approve the content, you just publish it. Or just approve the content and we'll publish it for you. You always have the final say about what content goes out under your business name, period.

Why Landing Pages? If you aren't a regular in the affiliate marketing or internet marketing world, you may not be familiar with the term 'Landing Page'. A Landing page, also known as a sales page - is a website page made specifically to sell someone something. Usually it sells just 1-4 related products and nothing else. There is little doubt that you have run across landing pages yourself while browsing the internet.

You may recognize the "long sales letter" this is one of those landing pages that is packed full of words and advice about some amazing product or service - and the design makes you scroll down 8 screens worth of gibberish in order to find out is it available for the low price of $499. Needless to say, that specific type of page isn't my favorite.

In the search engine optimization industry, we get plenty of clients who say, I have great search engine rankings, now what about my sales, or what about my leads?

Landing pages solve that problem by either selling a specific product at that moment or converting sales leads so that you can get those visitors back to your site and have them buy when they are ready.

If you have had me consult with you one on one, you know that I am a huge fan of Wordpress. So a few weeks ago, I set out to findthe best landing page theme for Wordpress. I'm keeping in mind that this would basically solve the problem of not having enough flexibility. If set up correctly, my clients could leverage this system to sell insurance one day, and sell workout videos the next day.

I was about to make some landing pages for a PPC campaign. I needed a way that I could quickly change those landing pages without starting from scratch. I find that when I make landing pages from scratch they turn out inflexible and can't be easily changed. I finally found Affiliate Theme which looks like it is right on target for my needs. It appears to come with a bunch of graphics and that is a huge timesaver for me. I don't mind getting down to the nuts and bolts to do the programming, but in this case, time is money and my time is best spent optimizing sites, rather than building landing pages from the ground up. It is great that they offer to install the entire setup, but I think I'll just save the $100 and do it myself. That part is easy enough.

So now I just have to get our PPC Experts on board with this idea, but with landing pages this easy, will they even need us? DOH!

You may think that there is a new search engine in town – Bing. They have advertised online, on television, and even in magazines, as being the next big thing in search engines. But, if you have around awhile, you recognize who they are. They are MSN Live. The Bing search engine is actually a reincarnation of Microsoft Network’s original Live search engine which has been around for over a decade.

Because of the new name, people think that Bing is new. In a way it is, because of the technology that is used to bring results to the consumer. It is not based quite so highly on paid advertising like Google is, and it is not littered with ads like Yahoo is. The results are presented in clusters, with less advertising, making it very effective for people with limited searching skills.

As a website owner or developer, you probably think you should spend all your time concentrated on getting listed on Yahoo or Google, and yes, you have to cover those. But, you should also consider working on getting your site listed on Bing, too. Because of the amount of advertising that that Microsoft is doing, and the fact that so many people who buy new computers have their browsers already set to Bing, you should make sure that your website is submitted to the Bing search engine.

When you go about working to get your web site listed, be sure that your content is completely new (rehashed content will get you rejected from the listings), your pages are free of errors in the code, and your navigation works correctly. These will all help you to get listed easier, more often, and closer to the top – without ever having to pay any money to be there.

There are many parts to a good website and a successful online business. The most important is a good product or service, one that people can trust, one that has value and one that fits into a particular marketing niche. Even the most perfect product or service will not sell if people can’t find it. Nowadays, people won’t be able to distinguish you from your competitors or even find you at all if you don’t have a good knowledge of keyword tools and how they are used to get you high up in the search engines.

SEO – or search engine optimization – is a means of building your website in a way that the search engines will find it attractive and rank it high for a particular list of keywords. Determining what the appropriate keywords for your product are, can be one of the hardest things you do, you shouldn’t just pull them out of a hat. However, there are now many keyword tool generators available that can help you find what exactly people are searching for when they are searching for you.

For instance, if you are a Realtor, your keywords need to be a lot more specific than “real estate”. There are a million Realtors online and you want people to find you who are looking for a real estate agent in your area, with your particular skills or expertise. If you specialize in foreclosures in Phoenix, for example, you might use keyword tools to determine that “Realtor”, “buy foreclosure”, and “Phoenix” are the best words for you to use.

Knowing what keywords to use for your particular site is one of the most important things that you should spend time on because it is what really drives people to you. These are the people that will fit your niche and are the most likely to buy what you have got to sell.

When was the last time you had a good look at your website? Not just look at the design and the color, but had a look at how the search engines see it. Is your website full of tables and unnecessary coding that confuses search engines? Is it dependent on Flash or JavaScript that prevents it from being seen by the search engines? A good SEO audit will tell you all of this and more, and help you to get your web site to the top of the rankings.

There are many companies that offer free SEO audit services as a means to selling you their SEO optimization services down the line. You should be aware that some of these are scams, and some of them may try and sell you services that you don’t really need. So, before you hire a company, just take a look at how your site currently ranks in comparison to your competitors.

A good SEO audit will review all of your code on all of your pages, ensuring that it is up-to-date and compliant with all the latest browsers. It will also help you devise alternatives to any Flash or Java technology that you may be using for navigation (these can prevent you from ranking high with the search engines).

Perhaps the most important part of an audit will be to determine what your keywords should be. A good SEO company will be able to give you precise details on what keywords will work for you, and what ones won’t. By learning your correct keywords and how to place them throughout your web site, you will have a better chance of ranking high without having to pay for placement. Getting all your clicks and impressions without paying for them is the best way to make your business a success. Get a FREE SEO Audit today!

Here is one for the WTF books: Google just changed their search page slightly to make it very 5-year old friendly. You'll notice the flattened quality of the main Google logo, the extra square buttons on the main search page, and the extra large appearance of everything. In addition to that - Search Engine Results Pages have an entirely new look as well.

Preliminary tests show that this is only a cosmetic change and that actual search results remain unaffected.

Check it out