You’ve heard all the hype about SEO and how important this is to guarantee a successful website. This handy guide will lead you through the first steps towards understanding what this is all about and how you can apply these new ideas to your web design.

I’ve broken down this blog into a sort of FAQ, so the material is a little bit easier to digest.

What does SEO mean?
SEO is an acronym that stands for “Search Engine Optimization”.

What does SEO do?
SEO is a strategy used to get higher rankings for websites during searches in search engines such as Google or Yahoo.

Do I need SEO for my website?
This strategy is used by many people who have websites and want to increase traffic and who want obtain better search results (meaning that people will find your website on first or first few pages of a search). This is really up to you and what your business needs. If you have a website that has information and you rely and obtaining clients and contacts through the web, then yes, it’s definitely a good idea to optimize your website for search engines.

Where do I start?
Start of with a coupe of simple things you can do on your own, which means you don’t have to pay anybody else to do it. Let’s use Google as our example since it’s the biggest and most used search engine out there.

1. Submit your URL (website address) to Google through their Add URL page.

2. Submit a Sitemap to Google. Like the name implies, this page that tells which are all the pages that are on your site, making it easier for Google to find and index your content. If you’re unsure how to do this, there are complete explanations and guidelines you can easily follow on Google’s Sitemap page.

Nobody can guarantee you the #1 spot in search engine rankings, so whoever tells you they promise you a top rank like that, watch out!

3. Choose a relevant domain name. Selecting a domain name that has the “keywords” you want people to find you with will help you boost your website ranking. For example if your business sells chocolate covered strawberries, it would be wiser to have at least the words “chocolate” and “strawberry” in your domain name. If your company has a name that is not related to these keywords, consider purchasing that name as well and re-directing it to the domain name that has the keywords. This is important if you have a new business that’s just starting to gain internet presence. If you own a business with a recognized brand name, then stick to the brand name for the domain.

Should I hire someone to do my site’s SEO?
There are many companies out there that offer SEO services. Some are good, some aren’t. I am not going to get into specifics about which one you should choose, but I will give you some tips on things to look for when it’s time to make your decision.

Hiring a company that claims to guarantee you the #1 spot search engine ranking results might cause your website more harm further down the road. Remember that nobody, not even Google can guarantee that. Irresponsible SEO is a problem fueled by abundant attractive online offers.

The best moment to hire an SEO firm is when you’re starting you website design fresh from scratch, or when you’re doing a total website redesign.

Ask for references, such as examples of current online sites and clients.
Become familiar with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, so you have an idea about questions the SEO firm might ask you. (If they’re not familiar with this subject watch out).
Demand clear and straightforward answers about their processes, expectations of results, and SEO techniques.
Ask for continuous feedback.
Ask people who have had their websites serviced by that particular SEO company.
Constantly review your website progress.

The automobile industry offers a very wide spectrum of choices to consumers. Economy cars, luxury cars, sports cars, specialty cars, and eco-friendly cars make up the spectrum of automobiles within our reach.

The Internet has become a very important tool in the marketing and consumer understanding for these automotive companies. That’s why we want to showcase today a list of 28 outstanding car website designs. Some feature wicked animations while others rely on simple CSS. They each envision what each car is about and permits us to get an up close view of the features and experience the thrill before even getting in the front seat.

Fiat – 500 Abarth
http://www.fiat.co.uk/500abarth/

Alfa Romeo Giulietta
http://www.alfaromeo.com

Aston Martin
http://www.astonmartin.com/

BMW
http://www.bmwusa.com/

Bugatti
http://www.bugatti.com

Chrysler
http://www.chrysler.com

Citroën
http://www.citroen.com/

Dodge
http://www.dodge.com/en/

Ferrari
http://www.ferrari.com/English/Pages/Home.aspx

Ford
http://www.ford.com/

GMC
http://www.gmc.com/

Hyundai
http://www.hyundaiusa.com

Infiniti
http://www.infiniti.com/global/en/home?r=CO#/inspirations/inspired-performance/introduction

Jaguar
http://www.jaguar.com

Jeep
http://www.jeep.com

Lamborghini
http://www.lamborghini.com/

Land Rover
http://www.landrover.com

Lexus
http://www.lexus.com/

Lotus
http://www.lotuscars.com/

Maybach
http://www.maybachusa.com/

Mini
http://www.mini.co.uk/

Peugeot
http://www.peugeot.com

Rolls Royce
http://www.rolls-roycemotorcars.com/

Smart
http://www.smartusa.com/

Subaru
http://www.subaru.com/

Vauxhall
http://www.vauxhall.co.uk

Volkswagen
http://www.vw.com

Venturi
http://www.venturi.fr

Has anyone come up with an equation to determine link erosion or seo efficiency, other than this which was suggested by one of our coders?

(Google Inlinks – Inlinks produced by category directories)/(bookmarks + one way links+ directory submissions) x 100 =  SEO Erosion or Efficiency

It seems that a website today isn’t complete unless it has a shopping cart of some sort. It makes sense of course to be able to sell products and/or services online, thus allowing you to expand your business and client base. This e-commerce process goes hand in hand with your web design and several things should be taken into consideration before choosing a software package. Below we explore five different companies and options, which allow several levels of integration into your website.

1. Core Commerce
http://www.corecommerce.com/

Core Commerce offers an effective and solid shopping solution that can be integrated into your own custom website design or you can use on of their professionally designed templates. Core Commerce also has additional services available which will complement your website project and make your life a little easier. They offer things such as a merchant account (that lets takes all major credit cards without application fees), domain name registration, SSL Security (this gives you and your customers peace of mind when shopping), online marketing (drive more traffic in), and a reseller program (earn up to 30% on commissions every month).

2. Volusion
http://www.volusion.com/

Volusion is a multiple-award winning shopping cart software for small, medium, and large enterprises. This complete software package is filled with useful features like SSL Security Certificates, domain name registration, merchant services, fraud score, professional marketing, and live chat for customers who need support. If you’re concerned about the web design aspect, Volusion offers great looking templates and custom layout design solutions.

3. Pro Stores
http://www.prostores.com/

Pro Stores’ Certified Designers will help you set up a successful and well designed e-commerce website. If you are in a rush and need a simple store to be set-up quickly, you can sign up for a “ProStores Setup Services” and receive your design template, payment processing, shipping and product entry. This will have your store available to customers in no time.

4. Big Commerce
http://www.bigcommerce.com/

Big Commerce is an easy to use shopping cart software solution. It allows you to have complete creative control (complete design customization), flexible photo display (upload unlimited photos in your gallery), automatic inventory control (automatic inventory reduction and low stock warning alerts), and search engine optimization (to help you rank in search engines). Sign-up is a breeze and a 15 day trial is available.

5. GoDaddy
http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/ecommerce/shopping-cart.asp?ci=9032

GoDaddy is mostly known as the place domain registration, but they offer a very simple and user-friendly Quick Shopping Cart. This solution is perfect for people who need to sell online and get their shopping cart up and running quickly. It accepts PayPal, credit cards, and offers shipping. It also works with QuickBooks. Three types of plans are available, determined by the amount of items permitted in the catalog. The Economy Edition allows 20 products, the Deluxe Edition allows 100 products, and the Premium allows unlimited products. The design of the shopping cart works on a template scheme, which you can customize by adjusting color combinations, fonts, background images, fonts, and navigation.

Web design is a broad industry and there are many options and ways of attaining results. Most of the time people hire a web design company or a freelance designer to create their site for them. For those that have some knowledge of HTML, a simple option can be to download a free template, especially if your site is just a personal project. Here’s a list of some cool places to get good quality HTML templates that will cost you nada!

1. Free Web Templates
http://www.freewebtemplates.com/
Free Web Templates makes web design a breeze over 5,000 free HTML templates to choose from.

2. Free CSS Templates
http://www.freecsstemplates.org
A sweet selection of free lightweight and table-free CSS templates. They’re all W3C Standards compliant and valid (XHTML Strict).

3. Template Basket
http://www.templatesbasket.com/
Template Basket has a bunch of templates that are conveniently sorted out by category, including arts & photography, communications, fashion, food & drinks, law, and real estate.

4. TemplateMo
http://www.templatemo.com
Another good site with loads of free CSS and Flash templates.

5. Wix
http://www.wix.com/
This unique site will let you build your own free Flash website. Instructions are given through an easy to follow video and customization is done right online.

Hiring a host can get confusing and frustrating with the millions of choices out there. It’s a necessary step that needs to be taken if you are involved in a web design project.
More important than having adequate technical specifications met, is to have customer service that actually works and responds when you need it.

Several surveys have been held in regards to hosting companies’ customer service, and around 70 percent of customers have reported disappointment due to long response times.

Problems with downtime occur daily, so we are not hailing that these companies are perfect, it’s simply part of normal hosting life. It’s good to know that they have your back, to help you understand what’s going on and what are the steps to take in order to get your solution. That’s why we have faithfully served as your hosting guinea pigs for the past several years, and have tried out and tested many companies. Here are our picks. We hope these will help you make a conscientious decision in your web design process.

1. GoDaddy

www.godaddy.com

One of the world’s biggest hosting companies, GoDaddy has 9.99% uptime, 24/7 support, and data centers monitored that feature monitoring and fire systems.

2. Media Temple

www.mediatemple.com

Media Temple is open 24/7 (they never close), they’re affordable, they pick up the phone in under 2 minutes, its data centers have the highest level design and engineering features, and are affordable.

3. ICDSoft

www.icdsoft.com

ICDSoft has customers all over the globe, its team is 100% dedicated to its customers, 24/7 customers service with response times guaranteed to be less than 1 hour, all with a great low fee.

4. InMotion hosting

www.inmotionhosting.com

InMotion has top technical support (in the United States), 9.99% uptime (independently monitored) and is easy to use and feature rich.

5. JustHost

www.justhost.com

Just Host has a 9.99% uptime guarantee, 24/7 phone and email support, as well as an anytime money back guarantee.

In one of our last posts we talked about 5 of our favorite design tutorials. Here we will give you our top picks of tutorial sites, where you can find all sorts of information for tutorials of all kinds. Some do a great job of updating weekly, which helps keep things fresh. Bookmark these sites, so you will always have a new and current outlook for your web design skills.

1. Computer Arts Magazine
http://www.computerarts.co.uk/tutorials

Published by Future, Computer Arts Magazine is a British mag geared towards pros in the fields of digital art and illustrations. The tutorials are very clear and well organized, and you can download supporting files for each respective one. Most of the material that you find on the magazine is found on the site, so you can have access to content no matter where on the planet you are. The tuts are divided into categories like Photoshop & 2D, Web and New Media, and 3D & Animation.

2. N.Design Studio
http://www.ndesign-studio.com

Run by Nick La, creator of Web Designer Wall, this site spills style and skills. It originally began as a personal project for him to showcase his work, and it bloomed into a much sough-after resource for web designers world wide. The Freebies section has Wordpress Themes, Wallpapers, as well as tutorials. The tutorials are directed towards Illustrator users, but their simple and concise techniques can be applied in many different types of projects if you use your imagination.

3. Blog.SpoonGraphics
http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/

Owned and run by web wizard Chris Spooner, Blog.SpoonGraphics servers an excellent source of information about Illustrator, Photoshop and other web design related techniques and effects. There’s a premium section with exclusive members-only tutorials, downloadable source files, and discounts and giveaways.

4. A List Apart
http://www.alistapart.com/

A List Apart, “For People Who Make Websites”, is a superbly written collection of articles that explore every part of the web design process. From visual web design to development, as well as the meaning of web content and web standards. The site is smartly split into the following categories: code, content, culture, design, process, and user science. Articles are constantly added and they give you great tips and different vantage points.

5. Nettuts+
http://net.tutsplus.com/

Nettuts+ specializes in delivering free and professional tutorials for web developers (newbies and advanced). The site sorts out its tutorials with the following categories: ASP.NET, CMS, Databases, Design, HTML & CSS, Javascript & Ajax, PHP, Plus, Ruby, Site Builds, Tools & Tips, and Wordpress. All of these tutorials are free, but there is also a premium section available for paying users which will give you access to download source files, bonus tutorials, and additional material.

Background images as patterns and textures, when used properly and tastefully, really make a difference in your overall design scheme. Here are a couple of our favorite hand picked sites that offer free background images and seamless patterns for your website design. Enjoy!

1. Template Yes
http://www.templateyes.com/web-backgrounds

2. GR Sites
http://www.grsites.com/textures/
A good list of backgrounds broken down by color and texture.

3. Kollermedia
http://www.kollermedia.at/pattern4u/
Awesome selection of cleverly designed background images including lined, dotted, squared, classic, dirty, funky, and real seamless repeats.

4. Grunge Textures
http://www.grungetextures.com/
High resolution photos that serve as backgrounds and textures for web designs.

5. 2Textured
http://www.2textured.com/main.php
Photos and textures split into categories such as fabric, wood, anatomy, animals, ornaments, metal, and ground among others.

6. Texture Vault
http://www.texturevault.net/
A collection of royalty free textures that include abstract, clouds, grunge, scratches, smoke, and wood.

7. ava7patterns
http://patterns.ava7.com/
Beautfiul site featuring a beautiful mix of patterns. A special color and shape picker on the top of the site allows you to search for your perfect pattern in no time.

8. Squidfinfers / Patterns
http://www.squidfingers.com/patterns/
Another lovely set of patterns to choose from. Over 150 patterns are available.

9. CitrusMoon
http://citrusmoon.typepad.com/
Free patterns, tiles and backgrounds.

10. Pattern Cooler
http://www.patterncooler.com/
A cool set of contemporary and retro patterns, perfect for your web design.

Starting a website from scratch can seem like a daunting task. After you have selected a web company to guide you through and create your website design, there are quite a few additional steps to take into consideration. Many factors influence the success of a website, not just the design itself. Things such as an initial brief, content, hosting servers, domain name, and target audience, are some of the main ingredients to this virtual recipe. Here’s an invitation to do like our Roman friends used to do way back then, “Divide and Conquer”, break up the pieces of the whole into smaller steps to make everything more manageable and clear.

1. Initial Brief
Well, you’re ready to get your website design rolling, are you sure you know what the exact purpose of it is? Do you just need a landing page with basic information? Do you need a site that drives real traffic toward it? Do you need a site where users and clients can interact? Do you plan on making money and monetizing your web enterprise?

Defining what your website is going to do, specifically, is the first and most important step. Let’s learn a thing or too from our friends in the advertising and marketing world. This first step is just like the initial brief an ad agency works on upon landing a new account. Here are a couple of tidbits to think about:

Website profile: Website name (domain name, which we will see in point number 2), mission, vision, and objectives. How long has your product/service been in the market for? Where is it located and how well positioned is it? Make sure you can tell which other websites are direct and indirect competitors.

Target audience: To whom is this material geared towards? We discuss this in point number 5.

Time and Budget: How much money and time are you willing to invest to bring forth this venture?

Examples and References: Are there other sites out there like yours? Are there sites out there that have exactly what you want? Are there sites out there that have exactly what you DON’T want?

This will make everything clear for your website developer and yourself, making the planning process more coherent because you will now know what tools and resources are needed and what direction needs to be taken.

2. Domain Name
A domain is your main calling card. This is how people will remember you and your company. It should be easy to remember and easy to spell. Try to keep it as short as possible and avoid using hyphens, as this may result in mix-ups with other similar names. When selecting a name, stick to your business name, or if that isn’t possible, try to use a word of a select combination of words that best represent your product, service or idea. This will help boost search engine results and will surely develop better memory retention for your target audience.

3. Content
Content is the fuel that drives web engines. If content is not relevant and kept fresh, then your website design, as snazzy as it might be, means nothing. Consider hiring someone to write for you if it’s not your cup of tea. A good way to organize this from the start is to plan out which site sections you will have in your site. (This influences the website design also.) Now you will be able to see and decide which sections of the site will be updated more frequently, so you can plan ahead on how you will be writing content and how often you will be uploading it.

4. Hosting
You need a place to put your files so they can go live and online, and this is where hosting comes in. There are many great companies that offer this services, so it’s a good idea to talk to friends or your web design company to recommend one for you. If you feel comfortable and know your way around this process, go ahead and purchase the hosting package (a yearly package is a good idea) yourself. If not, then your website developer should be able to offer hosting maintenance for a fee.

5. Target Audience
Ok, so you’ve defined what your website is going to do, what domain name to purchase, what content to create, and what hosting company to hire.

Who will be benefiting from all this stuff? Your product or service will give you the first hint (if you haven’t already defined this).
Where is your target audience located?
Age group?
Profile?
What interests are people after?
Motivation?
Where do they work?
Education level?
Hobbies?
Habits?
Lifestyle?
Negative attitudes and barriers your service/product might create?
Positive attitudes your service/product might generate?

Basically, make sure you ask yourself Who, Why, When, Where, and How.

By now you should have a good idea on how and where to start. Remember that planning is essential and is the most important step in everything including website design. It should never be skipped. This will give you the peace of mind to steer you through the process of creating a website.