A few months ago there was a hotly-debated issue regarding high rankings of spammy and low-quality websites in the top search engines. The main question was, how bad quality websites with terrible customer service could still be well-ranked at the top in the search engines when Internet browsers searched for a particular item or service. The related issues touched upon the practices that are acceptable to build effective websites and be not penalized by Google. So here’s an overview of the debate.

If the search engines don’t like the link schemes on websites, how much can you actually build out links without breaking the rules?

It’s not a bad practice to pay someone to put your website in the list of a link directory. But what’s important is to realize what you’re paying for. Do you have some editorial judgement or you’re just paying for the link? If you intend to be linked on other websites, you should make sure there’s something there that is going to interest and attract visitors. Having a good and frequently updated content will make people want to link to your site. That’s a good way to obtain a brilliant professional reputation and desired credibility in your business. Link-building is known as an excellent marketing tactic. If all the links are proper and relevant, website success is in the bag.
Link exchanges is another effective practice to increase the efficiency of the site in the search engines. However, this practice can be quite complex, therefore think twice before using this type of service.

Is website age important?

Yes, website age is important for such search engines as Google and Bing. Google, for example, takes “age factor” as a reputation aspect of the entire algorithm. However, age is not the most important component that determines good search engine optimization. Recently created websites can be well-ranked too accordingly to the relevancy of the topic to the search query, URLs, tags and keywords.

Do Google and Bing actually bring more results from social networks?

Google and Bing have social search functions, although they work slightly differently. All the links that are shared across your networks can influence search results. However, this type of tool is comparatively young and is not always effective. For example, your users may easily start sharing links on topics which aren’t relevant to your business.

What elements make a website look and perform great? Would you want to find out the primary ways for creating a top-rate website? What important elements should you think about when designing a web page? Would it not be great to have a web resource that could be noticed by your visitors and look special in the Internet marketspace? A website that could constantly entice new potential customers. In a nutshell, a website that would be effective and unique on the Internet.

The following design features will help you to create a nice-looking and effective web page.

1. The keywords. That’s the main conception. If I had to compare website construction to the process of building a house, a selection of keywords would be considered as a foundation. Don’t start to design a web page unless you’re done with the keywords and key phrases. That’s basically the crucial factor which determines the future of a website. The research on the keywords has to be properly done. There are many many tools to use for the research, for example, GoodKeywords, Wordtracker.com or even the whole research software such as Brad Callen’s Keyword Elite. But make sure, you check the competition for each keyword you’ve picked and their density on every web page.

2. Simple design. Simplicity is a key. Make your website look professional and clear. Check your website for spelling and grammar mistakes. Minor oversights can easily damage your website reputation. It would be worth checking how your web page looks in different browsers. The information on each page should be relevant to the search queries.

3. Easy navigation. A great website has to have an easy-to-use and coherent navigation system. A lot of web designers locate most of the links at the top or the bottom of their pages so that their visitors can feel confident navigating through the site. Make sure all the links work properly. Broken links will worsen your rankings in the search engines and lower your business credibility.

4. Updated content. One of the most common “diseases” that I find with the websites today is a “build and forget it” syndrome. In other words, a lot of website owners create a site and don’t make any alterations to it for the next few years. A decade ago it was enough to use the information from your print brochure on a site and run a business successfully without changing the content, however, today it’s not a possibility. If you want to see your business website on the top of Google and other major search engines, you need to make sure that your writing is really good and that you update your content frequently, at least, once every few weeks. What’s also important is to avoid spelling mistakes. Such errors damage overall impression about the site.

If you plan to use ads on your website, it’s essential to know how and where to put them on a site. If you don’t give enough importance to the placement of advertisement you might end up with losing your customers. On the other hand, if you place the ads in the right areas, you can get successful and start making regular profits. The following article is going to reveal a few essential algorithms which should be considered when placing the ads on the website.

• a number of ads on the page

One of the common things that people ponder over is the amount of pictures they want to place on a site. Some people litter their sites right up with numerous ads, thinking that the more they put, the more effective the site will be. Others want to have a clean look so they put just a few ads. Which option is the answer? In all honesty, neither is. Too many or too few ads can result in reducing the sales and traffic flow and hence, in losing customers. The average amount of ads should be about 20-25. That’s a sufficient number of ads to have on a website, however, if you’ve got more and they all work out for you, just keep it up and slay your competitors!

• advertisements for content

Sometimes, ads can serve as a content itself. It’s advisable to place the ads which can arouse similar interests in visitors which they had in the first place, browsing the Internet. The ads should be really fascinating and intriguing so that even you would want to respond to them. Such holidays as Valentine’s Day and Christmas could become a good excuse to add more gift adds up. On the eve, people tend to surf the Internet and search for the ads willing to purchase certain presents directly from the web. That’s why a bigger number of ads during this period of time won’t make any harm; in fact, by doing so you can greatly boost your sales.

• duplicate ads

There’s absolutely no sense in duplicating identical ads throughout the website. If you think about, if a visitor has ignored your ad once, is he or she going to react at it on the other few pages? It’s very doubtful. Therefore, the usage of duplicate ads would be nothing more but a waste of time, effort and money. Besides, presence of ads on a site can be quite irritating on its own. The main rule to succeed is to keep the ratio of ads sensible, which would be about 20-25 ads, as was mentioned above.

Let’s view the most prominent reasons why the usage of music on a site is totally undesirable.
Almost everyday you run into websites which automatically play background music or video clips. Surely, music or audio can be quite an effective and useful tool but only when used wisely on the website (“play” buttons, for example), but in reality, most people just put background audio sounds that cannot be steered by visitors. Obviously, that’s the worst scenario when you have no sensible reason for playing background music.
Ok, let me list the most prominent reasons why you shouldn’t use music on your website:

1. There are many many people who browse the Internet at work. Picture a situation. You’ve got a potential buyer who is ready to click a link to your site whilst being in the office. Now the site loads and unexpectedly the audio starts to auto-play attracting attention of all the other working staff. What do you think is going to happen next? Of course, your potential buyer will quickly close down the page and move to another website. That’s the easiest way to stop music blaring loudly.

2. Well, you may have a possibility to play music on the site, but should you? That’s the question. For example, you’ve got a template that gives you an option to switch on background music on a site. You’ve gone through the list of tunes and nothing really impressed you, but you still decide to put music on. That’s totally wrong! If you’ve got an option to use music, you don’t have to. Simple as that. If you were a non-smoker and your new posh car were equipped with a nice ashtray and a lighter, would it mean you had to start smoking? Of course, it’s just an example, but at least you can see what I mean.

3. What about people with no speakers? If you believe that your music is really so important on the site, how can you know if all the users had a chance to listen to it? This is where it is really important to have a button “play” instead of auto-play.

4. Playing audio files slows down the downloading time of the site. The more stuff you put on a website, the longer it takes for your potential customers to open a site. You can’t afford to lose your clients for such reason. Therefore, first thing first, think of your website functionality and its effectiveness.

5. But the most important thing is to remember about the whole purpose of having a website – to make money. All the items of the website should help your visitors to click the button “order” or “buy”.

Do you know if your website is effective? Does it help your business benefit? How do you know that it’s time for a website makeover and clean-up?

Well, you can start with your own analysis. Take a closer look at your website. Are you satisfied with it? Is the information not outdated? Have you made any recent changes to the website so that the visitors would want to come back to your site? Are all the links working? Are there no broken images on the website? You could have already lost customers because of poor usability of your website, complex navigation system, obsolete information on the site, etc.

Keep on analyzing your site and take into consideration the following aspects:

• Is the purpose of the website obvious? That’s the first and the most important aspect that web designers should consider when they take on a new project. As a business owner, you also need to understand the purpose of the website, what are its objectives. Try your best to make sure that  the message you want to convey is clear to the targeted audiences.

• How good the information on a website is. Is it useful for the Internet browsers? Is it actually relevant to the initial queries? Quite often, small business owners put all possible information about their company on the site as if the visitors really need to know when your working staff leaves on a vacation, etc. Publish only that information which conforms to the purpose.

• Has your website got a nice appearance? It takes only a few seconds for random customers to decide whether they find a website worth their interest or not. Mostly, their decisions is based on website appearance.

If you’ve been honest with yourself and genuinely answered all the questions whilst analyzing your website, you can get an idea whether your website is doing well or not. An effective website is the best tool to run a business properly, therefore make sure that it works for you.