WSpider.com

There’s A Plugin For That…But Be Careful!

· Want to add a social media widget to your website? There’s a plug-in for that.

· Want to add visitor tracking to your site? There’s a plug-in for that.

· Want to add third-party images or content to your site? There’s a plug-in for that.

You guessed it—pretty much for any idea you might have for your website, there’s a third-party downloadable plug-in that can add the functionality you’re looking for. Most are even free.

So What’s The Catch?

Piecework equals bad design. Patching together multiple plug-ins and apps can really lead to an in-cohesive look and feel for your website. It goes against the principles of good design. An ideal design process incorporates all required features and functionality in the beginning with balance in mind—adding things one by one later on can cause clutter and confusion.

Conflicts and crashes can be expected. Just because a given plug-in might work perfectly on its demo site doesn’t mean it will work perfectly (or work at all) with your own site. Code conflicts are fairly common, and getting everything to work together is a small miracle as it is—add random plug-ins and the problems can easily begin.

Free is not always better. Just because you can get an app for free doesn’t mean you should. It might be a buggy pet project or hobby—who knows. But one thing is certain, you shouldn’t experiment with someone else’s hobby on your site unless you can put up with the possible problems and bugs that follow. Do you want your site to come across as unprofessional?

Do you really know what’s being installed? This the other huge catch—even when a plug-in looks and works completely perfect on your site, there’s always a chance that it could actually be a front for spyware or other malware. Unless it’s provided by a completely trusted and reliable source, who knows what could be wrapped into that app…

It’s always best to ask your web professionals first before trying to add any apps or plug-ins to your website. In fact, here at WSpider, we’re always eager to share our favorite “apps” and plug-ins…those we’ve tested and know will work well, exactly as promised. We’ll even be happy to install or build the plug-in into your website.

The bottom line? Be extremely careful—never trust random 3^rd party plug-ins or apps. The can cause tons of damage if not done right.

Looking For Affordable Logo Design (From A Web Design Company)?!?!

There a lot of misconceptions out there on what a web design company actually does. Not that there is anything wrong with it. After all, the lines between web design and graphic design and those between design, development, and marketing are just plain blurry in most cases. Confusing and convoluted at best!

We’ll start with a fairly common request for web designers. Usually goes something like this:

Customer: “For my new site, I’d like to stick with something simple and clean design-wise. Keep the colors green and white for the most part.”

Web Designer: “Okay, think I’ve got it…anything else?”

Customer: “Oh, yeah—for the logo, can you create a symbol of my business location’s building and superimpose my business name over the top?”

Web Designer: “Ummm…we don’t really do logos, but we’ll be glad to help connect you with a great graphic designer who specializes in logos.”

Customer: “How much will that cost?”

Okay, okay, forgive us for the silliness above—it’s just meant to be an example. But nonetheless, it’s usually true, isn’t it?

Here’s the thing. Unless your web designer specializes in more than just web design, it’s probably not accurate to assume that they handle logos and other very specialized fields of branding. That doesn’t mean they can’t help you though, but referring you to someone that can assist with the request.

Web Design is unusual in the concept that it so often encompasses not just website design alone, but also:

· Graphic Design – Getting the graphical elements of the site ready to be incorporated into the web design.

· Logo Design – Okay, sometimes, but not always, a web designer will be willing to do logo work too. Just know that this is a specialized field of design.

· Web Development – You mean there’s a difference between web design & web development? In short, the answer is yes. Design is the layout and visual experience; development is the code and software that makes it all work.

· SEO, SEM & Online Marketing – Indeed, these web marketing tactics are highly specialized fields, and don’t necessarily automatically go with what a website designer practices; the trades do tend to overlap a lot though.

· Offline Marketing – Well, for this, you’re going to want to work with someone that is an expert with traditional media. Not all web marketers are great offline marketers (and vice-versa).

So the point this post sets out to make is not that you need to reach out to twenty different providers to get the new website launched with success—in fact, as a full service web provider, here at WSpider, we take a team approach that ensures we’re very proficient at most of these website related tasks. Rather, the point is that it’s best to check and make sure you’re working with someone who knows and understands the field well before committing. On the surface, it would seem that all of these components and trades are similar and cross-compatible with one another; however, when actually getting down to business, the fact of the matter is that every web “designer” has their own specific areas of expertise.

5 Important Questions To Ask A Search Engine Marketing Service First

Thinking about hiring a search engine marketing service (SEM) to help you take your small business website to the levels of traffic you demand? Hey, it’s a good idea for the most part—a reputable search engine marketing service (like WSpider) can fully manage the traffic generation process on your behalf, generating a positive ROI for the hard earned dollars you spend on your web marketing plan.

There are a few important questions you should ask any search engine marketing service, though, before you make a final decision:

1. What is included with the SEM service?

You should definitely be looking for search engine marketing that combines organic SEO, high-ROI pay-per-click (PPC) for targeted traffic, and of course these days, some type of high-energy social marketing strategy. These are the vital 3 components of quality SEM—the sky is the limit when it comes to additional value-added options.

2. What is your experience doing SEM?

Look for a company that has experts on staff that have extensive hands-on knowledge and experience with all of the vital components of a search engine marketing service. In other words, they need to know exactly how to integrate SEO with PPC with Social Marketing to create a perfect balance and synergy that couldn’t be achieved when these three components stand alone. Our passionate experts here at WSpider in San Jose can help you!

3. What is your SEO philosophy?

Since organic search engine optimization, SEO for short, plays such an important role in any quality search engine marketing campaign, this should be a real focus when selecting an ideal provider match. Look for SEO experts who focus on quality, white hat SEO only; it is so important to play within the confines of the search engine’s guidelines and rules. No tricks or sneaky tactics permitted.

4. Can you show me proof?

There are lots of SEM services out there that claim to be the best. The truth of the matter, however, is that many are just start-ups or fly-by-night “artists” that have never done a day of search engine marketing yet. Thus, it’s very important to ask for proof. Testimonials from previous customers and references are a good place to start.

5. How long is it going to take for real results?

Don’t be misled when it comes to the time it takes to achieve excellent SEM results. It doesn’t happen overnight. That said, the PPC portion of SEM does kick in over the short term quite nicely to help fill the gaps that occur before longer-to-realize-results SEO really begin to snowball. Social media marketing can have appreciable short term results as well. Be sure you’re on the same page with your search engine marketing service when it comes to accurate, honest, and realistic timelines.

Web Design Standards…Why Do They Matter?

There are a lot of different ways to make a web design work. You can force it, tweak it, rig it, and you can find dozens of additional ways to make the design and its code work as you’d like it to. But then, there’s the right way to do it…to actually build the site up from the ground using standards-compliant code and cross-browser compatible principles.

Rule One: Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise—web design standards do matter.

Sometimes it’s just easier and cheaper to rig the site so it works. A little bit of code manipulation here, a patch or two there, and before you know it, the site appears to be perfect. But that’s just it, when manipulating a site like this, it’s only about appearance, and definitely not ensuring proper functionality and usability for all of your visitors.

Following standards means that your site fits within the blueprints specified by all of the major browsers. There are differences, and each of the browsers has its own quirks and incompatibilities—but all in all, by following a strict-standards approach to web design, you’ll ensure the greatest cross compatibility possible.

And perhaps most importantly, your site will appear as you’re seeing it (and as you approve of it) on all of your visitors’ web browsers. And yes, when “rigging it,” it might end up looking just fine on your own system, but appear horrendously on other systems and devices.

Have you tried pulling up your site from a variety of different systems, browsers, previous versions, and different locations? If not, you should try it. You might be (unpleasantly) surprised to find out your site is not coming across the way you desire whatsoever. Or, if standards have been followed, it might be absolutely perfect across the board. One way or another, it’s important to find out.

Rule Two: Accessibility & Usability are reliant on standards compliance.

Do you want to ensure your visitors all have a uniform experience when they visit your site? Well, here again, standards compliance is the key to success.

But there are a couple of additional factors to consider—by following standards guidelines, especially when it comes to promoting accessibility, you’ll have a website that is usable by all. This is very important (and is even the law in some places).

Also important is the fact that most search engines will give preference to websites that are clearly aiming to follow standards guidelines. They know it makes your site better organized and will also help provide a better experience for the visitors they refer to your site. It’s a win-win for all involved.

Need assistance in making sure your website is standards compliant? We can help you here at WSpider. Just give us a call anytime with questions or for additional advice.

Web Page Design Tips…What Not To Do

For today’s installment here on the WSpider blog, let’s take a look at some web page design tips…from a different perspective. Carefully consider these “what not to do” web design tips when planning your next new website development…

Don’t Do Flash Introductions. Surprisingly enough, some people still want to use these search and visitor distracting website introduction animations. Please avoid at all costs.

Don’t Do Auto-play Video Features. Our list of “what not to do” web page design tips would be remiss if we didn’t include this one right up at the top of the avoid list. Probably 95% of visitors despise videos or other multi-media features that start playing with audio automatically upon page load.

Don’t Do Tricky Navigation. Coming up with new and innovative features during design phase can be fun from an “artistic” standpoint. But don’t do artistic at the peril of your visitors. This is especially true with navigation elements—keep it simple, and keep it standard for usability.

Don’t Do Odd Scrolling. You probably already know all about keeping your most important content “above the fold” so visitors don’t need to scroll down the page to find it. But something that seems to be happening more and more is requiring visitors to scroll horizontally. Don’t do it…most visitors won’t get it, or simply won’t like it at all.

Don’t Do Overloaded Web Pages. Keep it simple. Don’t do content, widgets, and other features that only add to clutter without delivering any real value. Simple, clear web pages outperform cluttered, confusing pages time and time again.

Don’t Do Huge Page Loads. With this web page design tip, let’s look beyond the obvious. Yes, it’s true that most high speed connections can handle larger file and web page sizes these days. But it’s not true that an ever-growing reliance on mobile device use comes with the same assumption. Keep pages quick-loading and snappy or prepare to lose visitors.

Don’t Do Clashing Colors. Fact: reading text on a computer monitor is much harder on the eyes than reading a book or traditionally printed copy of any other sort. Visitors won’t stick around long if we magnify the problem even further by using hard to read text colors overlaid on difficult background colors. When in doubt, use plain black text over basic white background. It’s hard to go wrong with that.

And, that’s it for today’s installment here on the WSpider blog. Be sure to contact us at any time if you have any questions on your website design or could use some additional web page design tips and professional advice. We’re happy to help!

WSpider Success Tip: Link Outside The Box!

When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), one of the single biggest factors that determines whether a website’s got it or not is the site’s link profile. Specifically, the quantity, quality, and relevance of incoming links to the site—often referred to as backlinks—can make a huge difference in the overall popularity of the website with the search engines and human visitors alike. This is why so much attention and effort is typically given to creating a rock-solid link program for a website.

Now, here’s the thing—if you’re reading the advice given by most websites or offline articles regarding the topic of building links, you’re going to see the same tired suggestions over and over again:

• Comment on forums and leave your link as part of the comment;
• Seek out link exchanges with other websites;
• Buying backlinks from websites with a high PageRank;
• Use blog commenting to create scores of links to your site;
• And so on and so forth…

Not that these are necessarily bad things to do—but the overall impact these typical strategies have is greatly reduced from what it once was. Using these link “tactics” alone is really not going to get you to where you need to be. And if done incorrectly, with the wrong sites, or too extensively, these link building ideas will actually hurt your site’s SEO…beware!

These days, if you want your linking efforts to have a positive impact, to make a difference in the overall quality of your website’s link profile, you’ve simply got to “link outside the box.” Pardon the pun, but it’s true.

What does it mean to link outside the box?

Well, you’ve just got to take advantage of great backlink development opportunities where you see them (and where others don’t). Most of the time, the best quality links come from opportunities that are natural and totally relevant to your visitors…or in other words, they’re not forced or coerced in any way whatsoever. These are the juicy SEO-positive links that you want to focus your time and energy on obtaining.

Here are a few “linking outside the box” suggestions to help you get started:

Schedule an email interview with an expert in your industry. Write a quality article featuring the interview, post it on your website or blog, and share with the interviewee. Chances are very good that they will link to the article from their site.

Look for links where they already exist. Search for your site’s domain and find out if there are any mentions of it on other sites or blogs that are not active links (this is the case more than you might imagine). Kindly ask the owners of these sites if they might turn the text wording of your domain into an active hyperlink.

Seek out educational and government links. Some of your local institutional sites have business directories that will be more than happy to link to your local business just for the asking. Of course, if you can make it work for your site, one of the best ways to attract natural links from a local agency, or perhaps a local school, is to write a great feature article about it on your site—if they like it, they’ll link. These kinds of links will help round out your natural link profile naturally.

So in conclusion, the sky is the limit when it comes to linking outside the box. You can pound your head against the wall all day long trying to bribe and force link exchanges or think of non-spammy ways to comment on yet another blog post to gain a “no-index” backlink. But be creative and you can build significantly better quality links with much less effort. Now that’s a concept that’s easy to love!

7 Reasons Why Businesses Choose An Outsource Website Design Company

To hire an outsource website design company or use in-house staff (or an advertising agency) to create your new website…it’s the question of the day. Here are 10 reasons why businesses and organizations are choosing outsource website design companies time and time again instead of the alternatives.

1. Outsourced web designers are specialists. When choosing a company like WSpider here in San Jose, you’re getting the expertise of true web professionals—not just the opinion of someone from an ad agency that might know print marketing, but really doesn’t get web development and design at all.

2. Outsourcing saves money. Compared to paying an in-house web designer’s salary plus benefits for 40 hours per week—when they’re in reality only putting a fraction of that time into design—outsourcing web design just makes sense.

3. Quicker turnaround times. Having an entire team of knowledgeable web design pros working on your project offers a much quicker turnaround time from start to finish when compared to having just one or two employees working on said project.

4. Fresh, up-to-date mindset. Choosing a busy outsource website design company also comes with the benefit of having access to the very latest design and development skills for your project. Because professional outsourcers are generally designing all the time, they’re always aware of the latest design and web technology trends and standards.

5. Peace of mind. Knowing that the pros are aptly handling your web design project offers a certain peace of mind…it’s just being taken care of. No need to manage, oversee, and micro-manage in-house employees. All of that hierarchy is gone—it’s just a matter of choosing reliable, trustworthy web professionals and letting them do what they do.

6. Access to more diverse skill set. Can a potential employee web designer also handle the SEO in addition to design? What about the written web content? There’s a lot more to a successful, balanced web project than design alone—working with a team brings a level of diversity in expertise to the table that might not be possible with a single employee approach.

7. You can rely on an outsource website design company in the future. Having an in-house designer do a proprietary design is great—until that person leaves the company and takes the specific knowledge of how the site was constructed and how it all works with them. On the other hand, professional outsourcing companies will be more likely to around in the future for and needed support.

And these are just a few reasons why businesses are consistently choosing to work with an outsource website design company instead of the alternatives. Please feel free to give us a call to learn more about how outsourcing might work for you.

WSpider Managed Search Engine Marketing Services: What’s In It For Me?

Choosing fully managed search engine marketing services might seem a bit overwhelming at first for many needing to promote their website. Common questions and confusions begin with knowing just what exactly “managed search engine marketing services” are in the first place.

Let’s take a look at managed search engine marketing.

First of all, search engine marketing (usually referred to by the acronym SEM) is essentially the practice of combining SEO (search engine optimization), PPC (pay per click advertising), and sometimes additional web marketing strategies in order to create a maximum stream of targeted traffic for a given web presence. It’s all about being a comprehensive, all-in-one service that strives to bring the main sources of traffic together with a certain degree of synergy for improved overall traffic and conversion results.

Organic search traffic and paid traffic—usually in the form of PPC—sometimes overlap when used together, but the strategy of an optimally managed search engine marketing service would be to research and implement an SEM campaign where organic traffic is optimized to its fullest extent, and paid traffic is strategically used to fill in the voids that organic SEO isn’t able to reach. All in all, the overall goal should definitely be to reach traffic goals, while at the same time, producing an attractively positive return on investment for web marketing dollars spent.

Now for the “what’s in it for me” question…

Essentially, by using fully managed search engine marketing services like those offered by WSpider’s expert web marketing team, as a website owner, you are saving time, energy, and money. Our strategy tends to be a little bit different from the usual SEM provider. We deploy our proprietary, patented technology to model and maximize the very best possible results before launching the campaign. And once the campaign is launched, our system keeps everything perfectly on-track and fully-managed to achieve preset goals within budget.

You’ll save the time and significant expenses that are ordinarily experienced when new on-staff experts must be brought on board and up to speed in order to establish an in-house SEM campaign. By relying on outsourced managed search engine marketing services instead of in-house, the time to bring the campaign fully up to speed is often a fraction of what it would be before an in-house employee learns the ropes and individually implements a strategy. Needless to say, by outsourcing, extensive payroll and benefit expenses of hiring an expert employee to do the job are eliminated all together.

Our approach is always to aim for positive ROI—we want our campaigns to create more sales, leads, and profit for you. In this regard, effective managed SEM services are considered a profit-producing investment rather than an advertising expense. And that is something any business or organization can appreciate!

How Do You Define Search Engine Optimization?

Define search engine optimization. Chances are good that your take on the practice commonly referred to as SEO is similar to that of others. Probably the biggest variations from one definition of search engine optimization to the next involve a person’s individual perspective on SEO. With that said, we’ll go ahead and share our version of the definition of SEO here at WSpider.

What Is Search Engine Optimization?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of organizing and preparing a website or web page to show up optimally and organically within the search engines when searchers search for specific search terms. Again, SEO is organic—meaning that it should help a website show up in the main body of search results, not within the “paid-for” side columns of the search engine results page or highlighted top ads above the actual organic search results. In this regard, SEO helps achieve free search engine listings.

What Techniques Does Search Engine Optimization Utilize?

Well, there are the good guys of SEO and the bad guys. These two different practices are commonly referred to as “White-Hat” SEO and “Black-Hat” SEO. Here at WSpider, we define search engine optimization and the way we practice it as white-hat…we’re the good guys and play by the detailed rules and guidelines set forth by the search engines.

Some of the SEO techniques that mesh well with our unique definition of search optimization include the following:

· Great keyword-focused content.

· Clean, error-free website coding.

· Focused, clear web design.

· Usability and standards-compliance.

· Visitor and search engine friendly link profiles.

· Optimal website navigation and inner-site linking.

· Attention to using Meta-data the way it is supposed to be used.

Of course, these are just a few white-hat search engine optimization techniques utilized. All in all, our definition embraces the fact that optimizing a site should be about organizing and presenting that site to the search engines in the exact format that they specify within their guidelines. To try and trick or deceive the search engines is risking penalty; and regardless, it’s also bad for visitors. Which leads us to the next point…

Good SEO Should Be Defined As Creating A Better Visitor Experience.

The whole point of optimization in the first place is to attract targeted visitors to the website. By maintaining a visitor-first approach to SEO—giving the visitors what they expect and want to see when they click on a search link—a site is much more likely to gain favor with the search engines. And this alone pretty much wraps up how we define search engine optimization in a nutshell.

Keeping Design Simple – A Winning Or Losing Proposition?

Designing your new website? Tempted by the idea of including all kinds of attractive features and widgets? Hey, most are—it is just the way of the web this day in age. But what about trying to keep your website design as simple and minimalistic as possible…ever given any thought to this idea?

Who are you trying to emulate?

This is a good first question to ask yourself before any web design project. What other sites are giving you inspiration and ideas for your own design? What user experiences are you trying to bring to the forefront for your own visitors?

And now for the most important question to ask yourself here…why? That’s right…why are you trying to follow this particular design model as inspiration?

What works for one site might work badly for your site.

Here’s the deal—finding design inspiration from a number of different sites as you strive to develop your own website’s concept is a great idea. It will definitely help you clarify your specific design goals, whether they happen to be very similar to these inspiration sites, or whether they happen to be polar opposites.

But going back to our “why” question, you’ve got to give quite a bit of introspective thought to the reasoning behind one web design concept compared to the next. For example:

· Are you trying to draw the visitor deeper into your site?

· Is your primary goal to get the visitor to read & understand your message?

· How will all of the extra widgets and functionality actually go to help serve your cause?

Many have the goal of going after one design concept just because “everyone else seems to be doing it.” This is not a very good reason—in fact, it could end up significantly impairing your abilities to reach your own unique website/visitor goals.

Keep it simple.

All too often, the goal is to appear bigger than reality with a website. To look like a major e-commerce site or to appear to be a Fortune 500 company are both very common design requests. But unless there’s a legit reason for coming across as just big, then is this really the right thing?

Keeping it simple with design, following clean & minimal design and layout principles will better serve most small businesses and organizations by a long shot. Bigger is not always better, and when it comes to presenting your message, being bigger and having more features & widgets embedded within your site only serves as a serious distraction from being able to share with your visitors what you really want to share with them.

The winning proposition? Well, here at WSpider, we believe in keeping websites as simple as possible in order to better achieve results. Please feel free to contact us at anytime to learn more about our web design philosophy.