Low quality websites are filtered

Google released many updates in ranking algorithms recently which tried to filter low quality websites from their search results.

Scraper websites or any website which has low quality content does not get high ranks anymore. Because of these changes in the latest Google algorithm changes, some sites have experienced a traffic drop of  70% or more.

To do: don’t try to promote your website with quick-fix solutions. Quality is more important than quantity.

Search has become social

Social impressions like the amount of Google +1 clicks, tweets and Facebook mentions now influence the position of websites on Google search result pages.

To do: add social sharing buttons to your website and encourage your website visitors to mention your website on social networks.

Search results are more than just links

most of the web pages shown on Google shows more than a list of 10 web pages. Search results not includes images, news and local information etc..

To do: use a holistic approach to promote your website: optimize the content of your web pages, get good backlinks to your website, offer local services, submit videos about your business to Google to make sure that your website gets listed in all possible places on Google’s result page.

Page speed has become a ranking signal

Web surfers tend to be more happier if they get what they want quickly as possible. Even though website speed is only a minor factor in Googles ranking algorithms, it makes sense to optimize the loading speed and performance in your website.

To do: make sure that your web design and web development is done properly to load as quickly as possible.

It’s not just Google: Yahoo/Bing is getting more important

Although we all know that Google has the biggest market share, Yahoo and Bing has a combined market share of 33%. So if you are not getting 33% of traffic from Yahoo and Bing you should start to optimize your website for these search engines as well.

To do: if you want to get 33% more visitors, optimize some of your pages for Yahoo/Bing.

A lot of things have changed recently and we continually update our optimization techniques and be up to date with the latest search engine algorithm changes.  If you need help to optimize your website feel free to contact us at info@extreme.web.lk or call us at +94773155222 to speak to one of our seo consultants.

Typically sprites are used for small images — like icon sets or small logo images — though you can use them for larger images as well.

The only problem with sprites is that creating them can be a hassle, particularly if you need a rather large sprite, say all the icons in an online game. Opening dozens of tiny icon images and pasting them into a single document is time-consuming. Fortunately there’s the CSS Sprite Generator, which takes a zipped file of all your images and gives you a single image sprite.

The CSS Sprite Generator even has options to fix a bug in older version of Opera, resize the width and height of the input images and generate CSS classes to apply your sprites to the right elements.

Users visiting the admin section of WordPress.com with IE 6 will now see a message to upgrade their browser (the same message will appear in the self-hosted WordPress 3.2 when it is released in June). The WordPress blog says it’s dropping IE 6 because, “it has required increasingly complex code trickery to make the WordPress dashboard work in the IE 6 browser, which was introduced 10 years ago and does not support current web standards.”

WordPress is just the latest in a long list of sites that have abandoned IE 6, including Gmail, YouTube, Basecamp and hundreds of others.

Indeed you’d be hard pressed to find a web developer who wants to keep supporting IE 6. Even Microsoft has set up a website that essentially dances on the grave of IE 6 (after WordPress announced it would drop IE 6, Microsoft actually said “thank you WordPress“).

However, according to Net Applications, IE 6 still has almost 12 percent user share worldwide. In the U.S. the number is just under 3 percent, but in China it’s still nearly 35 percent.

Compounding the problem are the number of corporate intranets that require IE 6. Microsoft is hard at work trying to convince large corporations to upgrade — if you’re still using IE 6, that means you haven’t upgraded to Windows 7, which is Microsoft’s real goal with the kill IE 6 campaign — but for Microsoft’s biggest customers, upgrading means investing millions of dollars in new infrastructure.

While developers may enjoy dropping IE 6 because of its subpar support for web standards, for end users that’s generally not a concern. What is, or at least should be, the bigger concern for users is that IE 6 is less secure.

If you’re part of the tiny segment of users that can — but haven’t — upgraded from IE 6, we suggest doing so. Grab a copy of Firefox or Chrome and join the modern web.

The end result is a sliding series of animated transitions which moves and fades in and out as you click menu links. All this is done with pure CSS without a single line of JavaScript used.

But of course it has a catch – This example works only on Opera Browser…!!

The biggest issue with the :target option is that a problem in WebKit prevents it from functioning on Chrome and Safari web browsers. The opera tutorial has a solution to this with a media query that unfortunately applies to Gecko, so the example really works only in Opera.

While that is more than enough to stop the majority of developers from using:target, this tutorial is nevertheless a good glimpse of what will be happening in the very near future. Bu the good thing about :target is that it really forces you to put more attention to the hierarchy of you HTMl code and for that alone operas tutorial is well worth reading.

At Extreme web, we use modern HTML and CSS standards to develop websites which are cross browser compatible, If you need your website to be designed by well experienced web designers, contact us at extreme web designers sri lanka 0094 11 5050939 or email us at info@extremewebdesigenrs.com

Thanks to virtual machines, testing across web browsers has become much easier. But if you’re looking for an even easier way to see what you site looks like in, say, Internet Explorer 6, check out Browserling, a new cross-browser testing tool that embeds any another browser inside your browser.

Browserling relies on Amazon-hosted virtual machines to do the embedding. The result is a real-time, fully interactive look at your site in virtually any Windows web browser, (Yep, it only works in Windows). It’s a step up from other web-based browser tests which just offer screenshots of what your site looks like in other browsers.

Unfortunately, as cool as the concept is, Browserling has a few drawbacks. The worst part of the service is that, for now anyway, you’ll be waiting in the queue for some time. To keep resources under control, Browserling severely limits the number of users connecting to the service at any one time. You’re also limited to how long you can use Browserlings VMs — 90 seconds is all you’ll get without creating an account. If you sign up you’ll have five minutes, which gives you a better chance to check out your website, but is hardly enough time for real testing.

The site advertises paid plans, which promise to let you ditch the queue and time limits, but at the moment the paid option isn’t actually available.

Our other main gripe is that while Internet Explorer is well represented — you can test in versions 5.5 all the way up to IE9 Beta — older versions of other browsers are scarce. While it’s true IE is probably what most developers are interested in, it would be nice to see older versions of Firefox, Safari and Opera supported as well.

While it would be premature to delete your own virtual machines, Browserling has potential. If Browserling can work out the kinks — we experienced numerous errors, crashing VMs and other problems, but it’s probably just getting smothered by hugs — it may eventually help take some of the pain out of cross-browser testing.

Pages often returned as not available can also impact your rating with today’s ultra-clever search engines who are also in a race of their own to beat their own competition after all, a customer returns to good service.

Why is reliable web hosting a requirement? I immediately thought of your peace as a factor. Think of being ready to update your website and not being able to because the server isn’t working. Customers expect good service and will not return to a website that does not offer it. Obstacles have to be dealt with as soon they have been identified, to avoid repeating the same mistakes which cause companies to fail.

When is it critical to have one? It’s important anyway, very important unless you have a website you aren’t too concerned about people seeing. Today’s new search engine methods mean that reports are made each time a URL is inaccessible and this can lead to a drop in search engine rankings after so long.

If your company includes a significant web presence, you must have a good hosting service. In today’s market you need to have at least 99% uptime, there are some companies that even exceed this.

Picture this: if you have 20% downtime, this means you are loosing up to 20% of potential customers. This is affecting your earning ability, thus losing you potential revenue. As with any employee, the webhost should not make you lose money!

Is there a way I can check to see if my webhost is the best one for my needs? You don’t, not at first. There are many methods that can be used to find out their reliability. The free tools on the internet that are used to monitor up and downtime are becoming more popular in the search for the top search engine.

Many now realize that it is essential to minimize server downtime ,if you get poor communication from the webhost you use, tools like these could be a lifesaver. A responsible webhost will most probably inform you in advance of possible problems or planned downtime either via email or a portal on its own website. Beware of webhosts who hide performance information as they are afraid that they will scare off potential customers.

Do you need hosting for your website? Extreme web hosting provides premier web hosting and many more solutions for all business needs. Contact us at 011-5050-939 for more information.

Check the following six points to find out if your website turns enough visitors into customers:

1. What is your website about and what’s in it for the visitor?You have only a few seconds to keep a visitor on your page. If the visitor is not convinced within seconds that your site is worth reading, he’ll go away.Clearly tell your website visitors which problem your product solves and why your solution is better than other solutions.

   This piece of information should be presented as prominently as possible.

2. Is your website trustworthy?Tell your visitors who you are and don’t hide your address. If possible, show customer testimonials. Show your website visitors that you are a real company and that you can be trusted.Are you a member of an industry organization? Has your company received awards? Tell your website visitors!
3. Does your website look professional?Another way to create trust is to use a professional website design. Avoid clutter and extreme colors. Use a clear design that makes it easy to read your web pages.

   If your website displays ads, consider if they distract your website visitors too much from the real content. Your website visitors might also wonder why your site shows ads for other companies.

4. Make it as easy as possible for your website visitorsTell your website visitors what you want them to do: “Download the free demo”, “Create a free account”, “Download the free white paper”, “Subscribe to our newsletter”, etc.

   Focus on a single task. Don’t ask the customer to subscribe to your newsletter or to download the demo or to request more information. Focus on a single task and tell the visitor in great detail why it would be good for the customer to complete that task. Of course, you can use different tasks on different pages of your site.

   Add user instructions to every task. The less your website visitors have to think about how to complete the task, the better.

5. Make it a risk-free experience for your customersEmphasize your respect of privacy and remove unnecessary fields from your sign-up forms. Avoid registration forms or make the forms as short as possible. The more fields a form has, the less people will fill it out.

   Offer money back guarantees and other guarantees that show your website visitors that it is risk-free to complete a task on your website. Always deliver on your promises!

6. Give search engines what they want while pleasing your website visitorsThe title and the major tag line on your web page should contain the main selling proposition of your website and one or two good keywords.

   When a searches sees your website in the search results, the title will show the searcher that the he has found a good match. The content on your web page should confirm and clarify this with more detail.

   Increasing the conversion rate of your website is an easy way to increase your revenue without increasing the number of website visitors. The more visitors of your website become customers, the more you will earn when your website is listed on Google’s first result page.

   If you need help in optimizing your website contact us at extreme web.

There are 7 primary strategies which will improve ranks of a website in search engines. The first strategy which the company needs to fulfill is in relation is to allocate approximately 30% of their total budget for SEO. The budget which is allocated for SEO should cover both ongoing expenses and on site costs. The company will have to pay for the optimisation online and they will also have to research the best keywords to use.

The next strategy which a company needs look at the locating the best developer who is aware of what needs to be done in relation to SEO and ecommerce. Its probably best to go for a company who has a good reputation and also strong experience related to ecommerce sites. Its also a good idea to locate a company who has the ability provide a range of services as this will save you time.

Its very important for the company to select the best ecommerce platform because this will enable the company to make use of the open sources. The best open source platforms include Joomla and OSCommerce. There are a number of benefits of using sites like these and the benefits include low site development costs, greater level of portability, vast amount of add ons and plugs in and also a wide community support base.

It is also a good idea to make use of the custom built platforms, as these are able to provide some of the best flexibility and customisation options, which are currently available. These customisation options will enable you to be separated from your competitors. The downside of these platforms is the high cost for development and also some search engine optimisation companies will find it difficult to work with this system.

Another strategy that is very useful is to look for a good service provider who works within the SEO world. Part of the planning for SEO is to select a SEO company who has a strong name and also experience within this sector. Its very important that the SEO company has the ability to work with the selected platform which you wish to use. The selected company should also feel comfortable using long tail SEO and content generation.

Another very useful strategy is to have the ability to recognise the competitors. In order to be successful you must have the ability to recognise the competitors of the business. When you starting out at first its more important to look at the local competitors. The search engine optimisation provider that you chose should have the ability to create the list of local competitors for the company. It is very important to remember that SEO companies are not magicians and the amount of money that you have available will greatly influence your performance within the world of SEO.

The final strategy that you should look at carefully is the content of the website. In the case of search engine optimisation the content on the website is very important.

Extreme web designers Sri Lanka specializes in e-commerce SEO and conversion optimization. For more information on e-commerce SEO services, visit www.extremewebdesigners.com or call us at +94773927028 for more information.

What is HTML5?

HTML5 is HTML’s latest major revision,which has a whole load of new cool features and exciting attributes.

For most of the HTML coders the understanding of these new cool features might be overwhelming and at first it might look unnecessary, but when you dig in deeper into a new and exciting list of features will open up, not for just HTML web developers and web designers but for web users as well..!

Below is a publication by Focus.com which is a infographic designed for the uninitiated to get a better understanding of HTML5 and to be a quick reference for web developers, you can view the infographic below (click the image for the source and to view it full-size).

[Source]

If you are thinking that spending thousands of dollars on your brick and mortar store will take your business to the next level, then you might be missing a big trick..!! the modern online customers are flocking from retail outlets to online ecommerce stores and this is where you can improve your sales and get better profits. The latest ecommerce technologies will assist you to be more competitive and help you to increase sales by driving online traffic to your website resulting in a good ROI.

Ecommerce solutions in Sri Lanka is an emerging trend and most of the physical retail stores are migrating to online ecommerce stores where their customers can browse through the internet and purchase products of their choice from home at their convenience.  This has totally redefined business strategies and forced companies to rethink their existing strategies. With an ever increasing business volume being generated through the Internet, the companies are waking up to a new opportunity which is knocking on their doors in the form of online business. Of course they realize that the first and foremost step towards this journey is developing an exceptional website which offers a common platform to integrate various technologies at one place.

Ecommerce has added a fun element in shopping and tries to simulate the effects of real shopping. The introduction of innovative concepts like shopping carts adds in a unique element to online shopping and makes it appear very real. However, integrating so many capabilities within a website is an involved process and requires a detailed understanding of various processes. A professional and in depth knowledge is important to ensure that your website meets the expectations of your customers.

To get your website an extra edge over rest of the competitors in Sri Lanka, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services can also prove to be very effective. These services will ensure that your website ranks high on search engines which will provide higher volume of traffic. SEO services will make your website highly capable and take it to a higher level and take you to a broader international global market place.

Ecommerce offers various benefits over traditional mechanism which is helping it to grow in popularity. One of the most important benefits offered by ecommerce solutions is the reduced operational costs in terms of labor and paper work. It also allows you to reduce errors and achieve higher capabilities. Ecommerce solutions eliminate the need for spending huge amounts to set up brick and mortar infrastructure and just require you to develop an efficient website. Your website should be your most powerful point of communication for all your future business.

Extreme Web (Pvt) Ltd, provides you with end to end ecommerce solutions including web development, web designing, content management systems and offers various sophisticated software with a highly competent team to make sure that your website meets the expectations of your customers. You can visit us at www.extremewebdesigners.com for more information and feel free to contact us at 0094 112 5050 393 or 0094 7739 27028 for your Shopping Cart Website Development in Sri Lanka.