When you want to start or take your business online, it is very important to consider and make your website SEO friendly. It will help others to find your website and can increase your revenue into many folds than conventional business methods.

1. SEO Content Will Increase Traffic

SEO copywriters will craft the contents in such a way that it will read well for humans but is also perfect for the search engine robots. The keywords are phrases that people will type into the search engines and the algorithm will determine which content is most relevant. Don’t think twice to hire an expert SEO writer to write the contents for your site.

2. Better Quality SEO Will Increase Traffic

When SEO is done with proper guidelines, the content will be found on search engines. This means that more people will be able to find it, so there is an increase in traffic. This is the best thing for your business, since more traffic will mean that you increase your business prospects. This will help to keep your business alive and out of trouble.

3. Helping with a Local Search

There are some people who will search for local businesses, which is something that SEO can help you with. SEO shall also be done with geo-tagging and localized phrases. This is something that search engines will pick up on when someone types the localized phrase in the search bar.

There are many ways that you can make your site more localized – one of those is by using Google Pages.

4. Letting People Know About You

If you have just created an online business, your name will not be recognized. This means that people will not know who you are to search for you. The good thing is that SEO will help you with that. The algorithm will look for the most relevant information and as long as you have followed the good SEO practices, you stand a chance of gaining a higher page rank.

Of course, this is something that will take time and something that you will need to work on over time – but you will gain from the benefits and SEO

5. SEO is Free – but Experts Know how to do it Effectively

As just stated, SEO is free and is a form of marketing. This is great for an online business, which is likely to have a small marketing budget. You should use as many free options as possible so that you can spend your money on other aspects of your business – such as development and the products that you offer. But when you want to see greater results, it’s better to hire a SEO consultant and provider.
 

Gone are the days when the main stream and governmental media corporations reigned supreme. The internet and the social networks have taken over. It is the complete empowerment to the individual. No longer do we need to get spoon fed and brainwashed by a few. Now it is up to you to choose what you want to learn, want to see, want to explore. And there is something for everyone on the web, you just need to find it. (ok, there is also a lot of cr*p on the net aswell)

Life is and always will be a peoples’ game, in every single way.  Every project, every success, every dream and even every failure results from the interactions between people. With the help of the internet the ease of interaction with more and even international people from all over the world has increased drastically. A quick google search reveals the contact details of anyone in the world, the CEO of this company, the marketing director of that organization, etc. You get the point. The whole world has just gotten a bit smaller.

So in order to realize your idea or dream, you first of all need to follow it, have faith, courage, and never back down, but you also need the help and interaction with the right people. However, it has become easier to find the right people. It has also become easier to paint a picture about someone by looking at his website, Facebook profile, photos, previously accomplished projects, videos and other links. This can be good and can be bad. Good if you have an awesome website, awesome pictures and it looks like you are having a blast in life. Bad if it’s the opposite.... Which means that in order to be successful in these times, and you rely on the marketing of your idea via the www, it is very important what your digital media presentation looks like. If you have an awesome project, but a crappy website, you are more than likely to hit resistance along the way.

My buddy Nicholas Louw and me, are in the process of hosting an adventure roadtrip through Namibia and South Africa. We are inviting 6 people (skydivers and B.A.S.E. jumpers) from all over the world to join us on this mad roadtrip, which includes the awesomeness of travelling, a ton of skydiving, some BASE jumping and a whole lot of other crazy stuff. The trip is called Footloose in Africa, check it out at www.footloose.com.na and tell us what you think.

We have put in a lot of effort to create the website, so that we can attract people from all over and that they have faith in the project and one can immediately get a feel for what the trip is about. Without the internet, this project would almost be impossible to pull off, and so far the worldwide feedback has been very positive. Ok but I have to admit, that to create awareness for your site is a mission in itself. Don’t expect to have a massive amount of hits on your site just because it looks great.

But this is where Nico Lourens and Ardi Cotzee from Namhost Internet Services can help you and can tell you all about getting that part down, it’s their area of expertise. Their domain hosting is also superb, professional and quick. Keep it up guys.

As for our designer, a very big thank you for hooking us up with this mad artwork. You are a genius.

I wish all of you awesome holidays, and a successful start to the year. Make use of the internet, keep on dreaming and don’t let anybody keep you from following your dreams.

Our team of experienced and talented web designers have the skills and ability to give your web site that special touch by using any of these 5 nifty jQuery techniques:

1. jQuery lightBox Plugin

Overview: http://leandrovieira.com/projects/jquery/lightbox

Download: http://leandrovieira.com/download/7

Lightweight simplicity overlays the image on the current page while darkening the background and without slowing down the page's load time. This plugin is simple yet elegant, giving your page a more professional look. It is a no-hassle, unobtrusive web design technique that many users enjoy.

2. jQuery Suckerfish Plugin

Demo: http://be.twixt.us/jquery/suckerFish.php

The Suckerfish plugin creates drop down menus, much like the DTHL drop down menus that were coded with large amounts of javascript, easily corruptible and not always compatible with all browsers. The major difference is that the Suckerfish plugin is much smaller in size, more easily modified and cross-browser compatible. The design is aesthetically pleasing and user friendly.

3. jQZoom

Demo: http://www.mind-projects.it/projects/jqzoom/demos.php#demo1

Download: http://www.mind-projects.it/projects/jqzoom/archives/jqzoom_ev-2.3.zip

The jQZoom plugin helps you utilize smaller spaces when you have large images to display. It is a tool that allows you to magnify any image as you hover your cursor over it. The script can be modified for a number of different zoom effects such as standard, standard with thumbnails (as shown above), reverse, drag, inner and more.

4. jQuery Cycle Plugin

Overview: http://jquery.malsup.com/cycle

Download: http://jquery.malsup.com/cycle/download.html

The jQuery Cycle plugin creates a slide show effect using an order of consistent components that are not limited to only images. The coding allows for customization of transitional effects from one slide to the next. You can display more content in a smaller space while still being stylish and visibly pleasing.

5. Orbit jQuery Image Slider Plugin

Overview: http://www.zurb.com/playground/jquery_image_slider_plugin

Download: http://matt.zurb.s3.amazonaws.com/orbit-1.2.3.zip

The Orbit jQuery plugin allows you to create sliding images with multiple customizable elements for each individual slide. This powerful tool can display a larger amount of content while taking up around only 4 kb of space.

Feel free to request a quote from our team of web designers here!

Designing your own website is becoming much easier. There are now plenty of Content Management Systems available, such as Drupal, WordPress and Joomla, to be able to do everything without having to know the code. The trick is to know the best ways to design a good website, which will have people coming back for more. Here are 5 simple tips that anyone can follow.

Tip #1: Know What Your Website Is About

The first thing that you should do with web design is know what your website will be about. Are you setting up a business website or is this a personal online calling card? This will determine the basic design of your site as well as the amount of pages that you will need.

Take your time to decide on your needs for your website before you start designing. A home page is required for all types of sites, but you will also need to determine other pages that you need – do you need a gallery for photos? Do you need a shop for your products on sale?

Tip #2: Avoid Distractions

While you may think that the animated banners at the top of the screen work well and show off your talents, there are high chances that they will be distracting to your viewers. You want to avoid anything that could turn people off, including bright colors and scrolling text.

Tip #3: Don’t Use Popup Windows

When you go to a website, do you get annoyed at popup window? There are high chances that the answer is yes, which mean that others will be annoyed at popup windows. So, do not use them on your own website!

Tip #4: Make Your Menu Easy-to-use

When it comes to navigating around your website, you need to make sure that the website design is simple and user friendly. Avoid having different menus on different pages and lots of different extra pages. Keep everything simple with just one menu bar that leads to what the titles say so. This will help your users find exactly what they want.

Make sure that this menu is available on every page and that it is always possible to get back to the home page.

Tip #5: Keep Your Images a Reasonable Size

People hate the horizontal scroll bar and this is usually created due to images being too large. Another problem with large images is that they take a long time to load up. To make it much easier for your vistors, consider the image size in your website design. Keep them reasonable so that anybody can load them at a reasonable time – no matter how slow their connection is.
 

The purpose of this blog post is to create a resource where you can easily submit your site to directories and search engines. There aren't 100 just yet, but this will increase over time.

Current total ways: 3 (Last updated: 12 Dec 2011)