Tryangled Solutions web designing tips tricks

2007 will be remembered by most webmasters and SEO’s as the year that Google publicly started the paid link crackdown.

2008 will be the year that this crackdown really starts to have an effect on the sites that consumers see when they perform searches on Google.

Google is getting better and better at detecting paid links. They have removed the ability for thousands of sites to pass PageRank and even reduced the ability of some sites to rank for their own names. 2008 will see every site that continues to publicly sell links receive harsh penalties in both search engine rankings and PR passing ability.

The knock on effect of this will be that sites who relied on paid links will gradually slip further and further down the rankings and be replaced by sites that spent 2007 carrying out aggressive viral marketing to build natural links. As these natural links start to age and gain trust and the top ranking sites lose links by the thousand we will see rankings change dramatically.

Most high quality sites will have been attracting links from mainstream media sites in 2007 so we won’t see many big names missing from the rankings, the knock on effect being that consumers will be remain happy with Google.

I also see the reliance on domain trust being turned back up a notch in 2008 as Google gets better at assigning trust to domains. Previously the fact trust was based on link age meant that newer sites struggled slightly and Google was forced to introduce the Query Deserves Freshness algorithm to improve results for topical searches. With paid links removed from the mix Google can assign trust based on links gained over the past year with a much greater confidence than ever before resulting in higher quality results and happier webmasters. A win win situation.

In 2007 we saw sites that regularly publish news and blog posts being granted almost instant spidering and extremely quick indexing. Trusted domains could get rankings for fresh keywords within an hour of publishing a new article. Google struggles to update it’s search results in real time and in 2008 I see the search results for breaking news queries almost mirroring the results seen in Google News.

The current reliance on domain trust is very good at removing spam but isn’t always very good at giving relevant results. Is Wikipedia always a useful result to have? Google thinks so, even if the article is useless. During 2008 I expect Google to increase the integration of toolbar and social bookmark data as well as link data on a page by basis to decide whether individual articles on sites like Wikipedia and mainstream news websites are worthy of good rankings. An article on the BBC would normally outrank a Daily Mail article thanks to internal links and domain trust but if the Daily Mail article has links from thousands of high quality blogs and 50,000 social bookmarks Google should be able to tell that this article is a more popular and useful result.

The Most Useful Design Tips of the Year

The Internet is changing with the development of Web 2.0, and the changing marketplace reflects a need for increased usability, easier functionality and design that is visually appealing but that still lends to an easy to maneuver, content-rich website. The following is a list of ten top website design tips that made a difference in 2008.

1. Know the audience: The design of your website should cater specifically to your target market both in the visual sense, and in usability. It is critical that the design of your website reflect the values that your potential customers will hold.

2. Personalize: Even if your website is designed by the greatest professionals in the business, if you do not allow your customers to get to know you, or to believe in you, you will have difficulty selling your ideas.

3. No uncertain terms: Clearly identify what the purpose is for your website, and ensure that every facet of your website focuses on this goal. Are you conveying a message, selling a product or offering a service? Make this obvious from the beginning, and keep your focus until the end.

4. Keep it quick: You have between ten and thirty seconds to capture the attention of your customer, so keep graphics small in order to minimize the time it takes to load your website. Compress images when possible, so that your loading times stay low.

5. Design is important, content is more so: Good content is what sells your ideas and products. Is your copy delivering the message you intended for it to? Grammar and spelling ARE important; so proofread everything you write before it goes live.

6. Map your Site: You can make your website’s navigation much more easy and intuitive simply by creating a site map, or a directory web page. If your customer cannot navigate your website quickly or easily enough to find what they came for, they will go elsewhere for solutions.

7. Strive for consistency: Your website should be consistent in the design, the look and the feeling. Colors, themes and ideas should stay constant throughout every page on the website to make the best impression on your visitors.

8. Keep track of links: You should make sure that your site is fully functional at all times, which means checking out your website links on a fairly regular basis. If you have dead links on your site, there is no telling how much of a negative impact will transfer to your search engine page ranking, or the opinion your visitors have of your website.

9. Make a simple start: When you begin your site, take everything one page at a time, and optimize each page for the best results before moving on to the next. This means that you should make sure that every page is perfect before leaving it for the next one.

10. Optimize: The top search engines are responsible for helping more than 85-percent of all web users to find exactly what they are looking for. If you want to be one of the websites that is considered when users look for similar products or information, you must make sure that your pages are designed to maximize your search engine placement.

The homepage of Google China now links to a special map showing china eartquake information. Translating the homepage text results in: “New! Google launched an emergency situation in the earthquake map, view the latest situation in earthquake relief”.