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While the grammar of "olde" might have seemed stuffy and pretentious, there is a way to tap into that school of grammar rules that will greatly benefit your online writing pursuits today. It's not enough to know the difference between affect and effect anymore (although it's a great start). In order to be a credible, valued, popular online writer with a wide variety of job offers and a formidable sense of expertise, you need to be perceived as intelligent and credible, which is tough to do if you've cast the grammar rules to the wind. Although most fifth grade grammar rules are out-dated in today's writing environment, you still need to employ great grammar in order to produce good writing. It's that simple. What You Need to Know: Grammar 101 For the Modern Day Parts of Speech Do you remember diagraming sentences? Us too. Although we promise we won't make you do that now, it is important to have working knowledge of ...

There is no call that strikes fear in the heart of a business owner quite like the one where your friend calls and asks, "Um, have you looked at your website recently? It looks like it might have been hacked." Ugh. What do you do when you realize your website was hacked? Website Hacked Have backed up your site recently. Yes, I realize it is a bit odd to start this list with an item in the present perfect tense. But, I am assuming most of you reading this right now haven't been hacked yet. I have caught you in time! Before it happens, get in the habit of backing up your site regularly. Your options are much better and trust me, the pit in your stomach won't be as deep if you know there is a recent backup of your site that exists in the world. There are many good options for WordPress plugins that automatically back up a WordPress site on a regular basis. One that Spring Insight uses for its clients is ManageWP. This service allows us to run ...

Create Effective Content Website design plays an important role in building trust with users. However, this doesn't mean you focus only on the design and compromise on the content. Informative, fresh and unique content is of great significance when it comes to attracting traffic to a website. Do invest sufficient time in creating great content. Also, make sure to carefully consider the words you use, especially on your call-to-action buttons. According to ZippyCart.com, the words you use on call-to-action buttons impact your conversion rate greatly. Moreover, using the word 'free,' when asking people to sign up for or download items, has been shown to increase conversions by as much as 4.2 percent. my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave anything for tomorrow that can be done today." Regards Gerald Crawford Stellenbosch South Africa E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws --- This email has been checked for vi...

Choose the Right Colours for your Website Using appropriate colours in your website's design can help it set the right tone and convey the message to the visitors in a more precise manner. Here's how you can go about choosing the right colours for your website: Start by familiarizing yourself with the colour wheel. Choose colours that allow for a harmonious colour scheme. Colours may have different meanings in different cultures. Also, they tend to evoke different feelings. Do be mindful of this when selecting colours for your website. Consider contrasting colours as they will prevent your website from turning into a visual mess and help the text stand out against the background. Use few but enough number of colours to make your site look appealing. my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave anything for tomorrow that can be done today." Regards Gerald Crawford Stellenbosch South Africa E-mail: gerald@webcraft...

Navigation is the backbone of a website. If your website is challenging or perplexing for users to navigate, it will undoubtedly reflect in your conversion rate. A lack of accessibility can never be OK and presents the risk of alienating a large section of your audience. An intuitive site structure, on the other hand, will encourage users to continue browsing. Here's what you should follow for effective navigation: Don't overwhelm users with too many links and by overcrowding the page with chunks of text. Keep it simple. There is no need to add dozens of pages either — that can make it difficult for users to find what they're looking for. Organize your content in a way that can be easily understood by the users. Make sure that the information presented is factual and consistent. Choose appropriate orientation so that it makes the overall site look balanced, tidy and clutter-free. Technology is constantly changing. You can opt for responsive ...

Imagine the website www.YourCompanyName.sucks in the wrong hands. With new generic top-level domain (gTLD) .sucks being rolled out soon, companies are advised to ensure their trade marks are adequately protected. Donvay Wegierski, trade mark specialist at Werksmans Attorneys, said .sucks, which is aimed at creating online space for consumers to share opinions about businesses and brands, creates risks for businesses beyond giving unhappy customers a space to share negative opinions. Another danger comes from cyber-squatters, a term that describes opportunists who register domain names in bad faith. Cyber-squatters can include competitors, extortionists and opportunists who use misappropriated domains to point to other websites containing illegal or inappropriate content. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees the internet domain naming system, creates new gTLDs to increase competition and choice in the domain name space. A...

If you want a web page in one of the top ten search engine positions, you need to perform your SEO on a keyword or key phrase that does not have too much competition. You don't want to take on keywords that the big guys are throwing a lot of money at or ones that too many people are competing for. It's not that you couldn't get to page one for these keywords, but achieving, and maintaining, your ranking would be more difficult. First, you want to get to page one, then you want a good chance of staying there. There is one method of analyzing key phrases that is not foolproof but may give you an edge. Choose keywords and key phrases that match the following criteria:: 1. Find key phrases that get more than 1000 searches per month on Google. You can check this using the Google keyword tool. 2. Go to the Google search page and search on your key phrase with the word 'allintitle:' in front of it (remember to include the colon). So for the key...

As was stated earlier, searches on mobile devices tend to be more conversational in tone and long-tailed phrases are often used. Searchers are also more apt to use voice search on mobile, leaving inquiries longer than the average search since it is generally in the form of a question. Mobile users are also often seeking local results. Capitalize on this knowledge by including geographic identifiers in your content to assist in localized results, and additional content peppered with keywords to answer routine questions that are frequently posed by your audience. my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave anything for tomorrow that can be done today." Regards Gerald Crawford Stellenbosch South Africa E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com

SEO marketing campaigns all share this similar trait; optimizing content and use of keywords plays a pivotal role in being successful. When Google crawls a website (mobile or otherwise) the site's content is being swept to determine its relevancy for that particular search. This is why it is important to know your audience, understand what they are looking for, and use the keywords associated with the information your site is trying to convey. Strategically place related keywords throughout your websites content (but avoid the old "stuffing" trick; it doesn't work.) Density isn't critical, but keyword accuracy is. If you are having trouble actualizing these keywords, tools like Google Keyword Tool and Ubersuggest can help you identify the right phrases for your audience. my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave anything for tomorrow that can be done today." Regards Gerald Crawford Stellenbosch South A...

You will want to scatter your key phrase throughout your web page's content. Keyword density is usually measured as a percentage of the total words on a page. So, if your web page contains 100 words and your key phrase appears three times, your keyword density should be three percent (assuming your key phrase is just one word). You might assume that the higher the keyword density, the better it is for onpage SEO, but this is not necessarily the case. Too high a keyword density will get your page penalized by the search engines. Besides, overloading your content with your key phrase will make your content less readable and therefore less appealing to your readers. There's no point getting people to your web page just to see them leave again out of boredom or frustration. A keyword density of around three percent is ideal, but a density anywhere between one and five percent is fine. The caveat to all this is that it should read sensibly so don't get...

Once you have chosen the key phrase that you want your page to rank for, you need to apply some onpage SEO techniques to it. The search engines will look for the pages that best match the search term that the user enters. Hence the need for 1000 searches a month or more. It's no good optimizing for a search term that nobody searches on. Once you know that a fair number of people are searching for your chosen key phrase, you need to make sure your web page makes good use of that key phrase. Here are seven onpage SEO techniques you can use to make sure the search engines take notice of your page for that search term. 1. Buy a domain name that matches your key phrase. For example, if your key phrase is 'yoga poses', the ideal domain name would be yogaposes.com . If you can't get an exact match, try using hyphens to separate words or add a word as a suffix such as yogaposesexplained.com . You could add a prefix word but suffix words tend to rank ...

According to itnewsafrica.com , the ZA Domain Name Authority (ZADNA), the regulator of .ZA, which is the ccTLD for South Africa, says the number of registered .ZA domain names has reached and exceeded 1 million for ths first time this week. .ZA becomes the first country domain in Africa to reach 1 million registrations. The bulk of registrations continue to be in co.za , which accounts for a little more than 971,000 registrations as of 19 February 2015, and continues to grow by a few thousand new registrations every month in the last few years. Org.za comes second with a little more than 28 000 registrations. According to the story there are around 50 million South Africans, 24 million of whom have access to the internet. my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave anything for tomorrow that can be done today." Regards Gerald Crawford Stellenbosch South Africa Cell: +27-0720390184 (mobile) E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws ...

Social media increases the overall exposure of your website and is also a fundimental part of quality link building strategies. Additional opportunities include: proving your position as an expert in your industry, rectifying problems and creating goodwill by responding to posts and conversations, referring content and links back to your site, gaining new contacts with partners. FaceBook, the clear leader in social network sites (there are nearly 500 social networks), with it's massive user base, is a must to have in your social arsenal package for all reasons mentioned on this page. Community building forums strategies are great for building contact with communities that have a direct interest in your company, product and services. Twitter is good for communicating directly with customers that show interst in your company, offering . You can send tweets with links directly back to your blog or website, if retweeted by the client your exposure mu...

Please note that this list is in no particular order. These tips and tricks are just some seo techniques. Please contact SEO South Africa for an website audit. Content is king, so make sure you have unique, up to date relevant content. Do keyword research, make sure your keywords have got high search volume, ideally with low competition for the key word. Focus on keyword phrases rather than single or short keywords, long tail keywords will get you found easier. Use the keywords in your text links (anchor text) the more relevant the better the results. Make " http://www.yoursite.com " your preferred site. in other words redirect " http://yoursite.com " with a 301 redirect. If you have any home page links, index.html, point them to http://www.yoursite.com Frames and Flash are best not to be used on any pages you planning to optimise, if so make sure you have credible content on the page. Blog, Blog, Blog, especially if your web...

Internet marketing is exactly what it states, marketing products, services or information on the internet. Online marketing would qualify under the same terminology. Internet marketing is way beyond what the average person or internet user may think. Internet marketing is more than just having a web address with a website up and hosted by some company, there are millions of web sites set up like this on a daily basis. An internet marketing strategy and campaign is critical to obtain desired goals in a very competitive internet or otherwise online market. It is worth finding your place in this very competitive internet marketing environment, options can be almost limitless. Using the internet as a platform you give yourself or your company the opportunity to reach clients way beyond the restrictions of your physical location, you can literally access anyone around the world. In general there are four avenues of marketing on the internet: SEO - Sear...

This is possibly one of the tougher divisions of Seo web development. There are many variables making up a companies competitive web analysis and if possible, if you in the position its s best to do the competitive web analysis as one of your first priorities. Either way it is something that has to be addressed especially if it was not part of you initial web development process. This could have far reaching results within your web development architecture and structure, but rather do it now than later. We check the top ten positioned competitor websites on search engines, relative to the keywords describing your company and industry fields the best. We then do an in depth competitors analysis on the top ten competing websites. This will include detailed attention to their landing pages and overall design. we will check how many and who links back to them. The five steps we implement with Competitive Analysis Identify the competitors Analyse the ke...

South Africa's ZA Central Registry has informed registrars about a price hike for .ZA domain registrations and renewals. Registering or renewing co.za , org.za , net.za , and web.za domains will cost more from 01 March, according to MyBroadband. ZACR CEO Lucky Masilela said the wholesale price of registrations through the extensible provisioning protocol (EPP) system would become ZAR 45, while legacy registrations would increase to ZAR 90. Currently. EPP costs ZAR 35, while legacy registrations cost ZAR 65.88. These price increases were approved in November 2014, and were originally set to take effect on 16 February. Further price increases to legacy registrations of ZAR 10 per year will be implemented annually from 01 March, until the price reaches ZAR 130 in 2019. --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. http://www.avast.com