Posts Tagged ‘multimedia’

For many, web design is a difficult challenge. If a company is well financed, it is probable they will just throw some money at the hottest design firm in town and get snowed and overpay due to their own lack of understanding of the process. But the vast majority of web design and web design needs stem from small business and personal web sites where money is absolutely of concern and for most the ability to produce a site on their own seems far from grasp.

But now with the help of programs such as Dreamweaver and iWeb, even a fairly technologically inept user can at least get “something” going web wise. But “something” is not enough for most of us, so how do we improve upon our existing sites when the knowledge base that created them was dealing in limited capacity from the outset? Why, 3rd party web vendors of course! And recently I discovered my new favorite for all things web design related.

A friend turned me on to GRSites.com a while back and I haven’t gone elsewhere for 3rd party design help since. The web design options they have available are extensive and robust. From buttons, textured backgrounds and fonts to unique font logos, menus and text boxes, they have virtually every type of wing ding available for download and use on your own personal or small business site.

Their online portal is really quite impressive. If you want a button for your site but they don’t have exactly what you are looking for, you can simply create it using a very simple to understand GUI that will kick out both a graphical display for your download and the html code that would create in an html editor. Simply phenomenal.

But simple text boxes are just the beginning of the possibilities. They have portals for every type of web wing ding imaginable. Create your own logo with blur, glow or crumpled paper effects just to name a few. Or perhaps you need some unique buttons, no problem, their GUI is there and waiting for you.

It is rare I take the time to write about 3rd party vendors I use but as the market becomes more and more crowded with garbage I think it is important to bring quality sites to the forefront. I hope other web consultants can benefit from the knowledge of GRsites web design tools as much as I have. Check it out for your next project.

Need web design help? Click the link!

Tweet This Post

We all have seen the research that has been pouring out all over the internet with regard to the growing popularity of online video content. Internet users are consuming online video content at a rate greater than previously predicted. And, consumers all over are learning to produce and share online video content. Video can often be a more effective means for a producer to get a message across than typical offline or online content. In order to take advantage of the opportunity that exists today with regard to online video, one must learn the tips and techniques that can be used to allow for greater discoverability of online content – this is called Video SEO or video search engine optimization.

1) All SEO specialists know that the search engines are built to index and rank text. Being that it is more difficult for the search engines to understand the content within a video (though they are working on it), it is a good idea to include as much text surrounding the video itself if possible. One excellent way to do this is to include a text transcript of your video alongside your video with keyword rich title and descriptions.

2) Don’t forget to encode the keywords you are targeting into your video. Try to use the word “video” as much as possible, make sure the word “video” is used in your title, description, meta data etc.

3) Just as with normal techniques for SEO, it is just as important that you develop links to your video for off-page search engine optimization. Try to get as many quality links to your video as possible. Perhaps submit to social bookmarking sites and friend’s blogs.

4) It is advisable to create a separate sitemap just for your videos in your site and try to keep your video files in one directory this would help the web crawlers to locate your video files speedily and effortlessly.

5) When hosting video content on your own, keep in mind that flash is next to impossible for search engines to read and understand. Try to work with a format that is not flash. However, the simplest way to enable video on your site is via the popular flash players. That being said, do your best to take advantage of the other tips for SEO so that search engines can easily understand what it is your video is about.

6) Create search engine friendly keyword URLs for your video pages. To do this, you can use mod-rewrite function or htaccess file so that the URLs are freely assessable and readable by the search engines.

7) More than anything, I have learned that the thumbnail that you choose for your video is one of the most important factors in terms of the number of people that choose to view your video. With that in mind, try to experiment with various thumbnails until you have a good idea which images attract the most views from the audience that you are targeting.
When hosting videos on your own site, keep your videos one per page and put all the pages with videos into one directory. This combined with a video sitemap will help search engines find and index all of your important videos.

In addition to the specific optimization techniques listed above, make sure that you also follow some common guidelines for online video content:

9) Always make sure viewers are searching for your targeted keywords regularly. If not, try to find the closest related keywords being searched.

10) Enable ratings, reviews, comments, and feedback on your videos. Research shows that allowing users to provide feedback results in greater views for your video in addition to the fact that users who provide feedback tend to be those users that act.

If you’re interested in learning more about online video marketing and SEO, we suggest that you visit ReelSEO. They are is focused on providing expert tips, tutorials, and advice onVideo Marketing & SEO. For a list of articles and additional resources, including more advanced tips on VSEO, visit ReelSEO.com

Tweet This Post