There’s a relatively new addition to the world of web development out there, and that new addition’s name is CSS 3.  CSS 3 is the newest version of CSS, with plenty of unique and exciting features.

As you are probably aware, CSS is an important web language that functions to help meet your creative needs when building a website.  CSS stylesheets and style elements help to determine everything from background image placing to hyperlink appearances to table colors.  While CSS will not get you anywhere without some good solid HTML code behind it, it’s still an important element in terms of aesthetics.  While HTML is the “meat and potatoes,” so to speak, CSS is the salt, pepper, garlic, and butter…you get the idea.

So why is CSS 3 so great?  Today we are going to give you a few examples of CSS 3′s new features, and you will have to agree with us that it can certainly help satisfy your web design needs!

First, let’s talk about the basics of what CSS has to offer:

• background image alignment and repetition rules: without this, background images would certainly be a headache
• link style for hyperlinks, visited links, active links, and links on “hover:” so you can venture out of the blue and purple link world
• font styling aspects including color, size, and font-family properties: for those times when you get bored of Times New Roman
• styling for tables including background color, and some border styling properties: it’s all about uniformity, folks
• styling for text area boxes including background color, and some border styling properties: again on the uniformity…it keeps things looking neat

Now, besides having all of the above, here are some neat CSS 3 features:

• multi-column layouts to create a newspaper-like look so that text continues from one column to the next: pretty useful if you are into the whole blogging thing!
• the power of speech: if you are using Opera, that is
• the ability for users to resize website elements: say goodbye to any pesky little scrollbars that are hindering the user-ability of your website
• the ability to create shadowed text: a little cheesy, possibly, but pretty neat all the same
• the ability to designate background pixel size: way easier than editing the image repeatedly in Adobe Photoshop
• the ability to use multiple backgrounds on one page: again, so much easier than edits upon edits upon edits of one image
• use of opacity in terms of colors: for example, you could make red text fade to pink in precisely the same warm-toned shade
• ability to use an image as a border around tables: seriously, how cool is that?!
• a wider range of color options with the use of hue, saturation, and lightness numbered colors: it’s not all about hex codes anymore
• rounded border corners: simple, but this is an element that could certainly change the look and feel of your website!

So you get our drift.  CSS 3 has made some pretty snazzy additions to the CSS family, and chances are, you’re itching to try them out!  So we will get back to you next week with some more details on writing the CSS of your dreams.

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As you have probably concluded from the title, we’re going to delve into the realm of website development today.  We will talk you through some basic concepts and ideas to get the creative juices flowing, and then you’ll see some elaborations on the ideas in the next couple of weeks.  So let’s get started!

Say you’ve just started up a business and need to know a little bit about how to create a website that draws people in, gives them the information they need, and keeps them coming back.  It’s not necessary to build the most innovative website the 21st century has seen yet.  Today we will talk you through our list of three key concepts that go along with web design, as well as website management.

Quality Design

This is a pretty important aspect of your website, essentially, your website’s look and feel.  Just as it’s important to dress nicely for good impressions, it’s important to encase your website content in a wrapper that exemplifies professionalism and quality.  Now, although you may not be an HTML or CSS3 expert, there are plenty of services out there to help you design the look and feel of your website.  If you are taking the creative plunge to take on the whole project yourself, that’s great as well!  Keep in mind that there are a lot of things for you to consider: color palettes, visual aids (from photography to videos to diagrams, all depending on your content), as well as seemingly unimportant details like font face.  As far as graphics go, it’s important to develop high-quality graphics for your website with professional-grade programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Flash.  The bottom line is: be proud of your business and the work you have done with it; and make your pride apparent with an attractive website!

Clear, Concise Information

How you organize the information contained in your website is certainly an important aspect of web design.  Information given on your website should be clear and concise, so that potential customers can leave your web space with a good idea of the services and business that you offer.  Websites should be easy to navigate (no virtual mazes, please!), but still contain plenty of detail for those who need it.  Simplicity in website organization is often key to delivering necessary information to customers.  It is also important to keep information on your website up to date!  Outdated information is essentially useless to new customers.

Content Management

It’s often hard to manage all the content contained in your website.  WordPress itself con often be very helpful in helping to manage your website content, especially if your website includes a blog or news page. Drupal and Joomla are two open source content management systems available. Content management systems like Joomla or Drupal can help you manage all areas of your website content from photos to RSS-fed pages to customer help forums. Really, these tools are just a way to keep organization easier. Effective content management is important for any website owner to focus on.

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In case you missed it, we recently discussed Google Maps APIs and how they can helpful for a Denver online marketing company like us.

Today, we’re going to give you a few ideas to get those creative juices flowing — some cool features that the Google Earth API can add to your website.

The basic idea of the Google Earth API is that a big computerized globe sits all comfy on your page — pretty fun, right?  And from there, it only gets more interesting…

Pinpointing & Marking Locations Around the Globe

When you insert a Google Earth API globe into a webpage, one really useful feature is being able to track down and mark any location (and multiple location) around the world.  You can create your own “icons” to mark places (these can also be made to be dynamic, as in they can change on highlight or rollover with the mouse).  This place mark icon is created by pinpointing the latitude and longitude of the location of your choice; the place mark can be tagged with any assortment of descriptions or captioning of your choice.

Creating a Tour

It’s a tricky bit of coding, but if you take some time and have some patience, it is possible to create a tour with Google Earth APIs.  This way, a user viewing your page can be taken to a series of locations of your choice, marked with (as previously discussed) place marks with corresponding descriptions.

Layering

If you want to get fancy, Google Earth APIs have quite a few layering options for mapping out the globe.  For example, a border layer can be applied to allow the viewer to see divisions between cities, states, countries, etc.  Roads and road names can also be displayed in their own layer; trees and terrain can be viewed in a three dimensional orientation.

To sum it all up, Google Earth APIs allow you to design an interface in which users can explore the globe, guided by you.  If you’re interested in checking out some cool examples, visit the Google Earth API Demo Gallery.

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Photograph courtesy of ToastyKen, released under a CC by 2.0 license.

We’re in the third part of our series on the fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) — that is, the craft of building and populating your website in order to increase the likelihood of appearing prominently in the search results for search keywords that your target audience oftentimes uses in their searches.  In our first article, we looked at common SEO myths.  In our second article, we looked at the main criteria that search engine evaluate when ranking your website pages in their indexes.  Now this month, we’ll learn about some of the most important parts of your website pages’ content.

Not all parts of your web page are created equal

When search engines scan the content of your website, they actually assign different levels of importance to the different pieces of content.  For instance, headline text is given more weight than the text in your last paragraph of body text at the bottom of the page.  Now while the exact ranking algorithms that the search engines use to scan your site are secret (and constantly changing), there is general agreement that the following pieces of a web page are given high importance by the search engines:

1. The page title
2. The page URL
3. The page’s main headline

The page title

The next time you’re looking at a web page, look at the top left of your web browser window (above the website address box, and in the same bar as the minimize/maximize/close buttons).  You’ll notice that it contains a very short description of the web page that you’re on.  This is the page title.  A well-optimized web page will contain 2-3 well-chosen keyword phrases in this area.

The page URL

The word “URL” is really just a fancy term for the page’s address on the internet.  It will typically look something like http://www.yourdomain.com/webpage.  Like the page title, it is best to have a few keywords in this area as well.  For instance, if you run a real estate company, make sure your page URLs don’t look like this — http://www.yourdomain.com/index.php?id=273 — but rather, look more like this: http://www.yourdomain.com/denver-real-estate.

The page’s main headline

Headlines on your web page work very similar to headlines in newspapers: there’s typically one main headline — which is usually the biggest — followed by a few smaller sub-headlines interspersed with your paragraphs of text.  Your main headline, quite understandably, carries more weight than your smaller headlines, which in turn carry more weight than your regular paragraphs of text.  So make sure your headline text contains one or two well-chosen keyword phrases, just like your page title.

Trying to work on your entire website to improve your chances of ranking well in your targeted search terms can seem like an overwhelming task.  But by focusing on the three parts of your web pages discussed here — page titles, page URLs, and on-page headlines — you can ensure that you’re working on some of the parts of your website’s pages that will have the most effectiveness in improving your site’s optimization.

We’ll be back next month with another article on search engine optimization.  In the meantime, if you have any additional questions about this subject, or any other web design topic, feel free to contact us.

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Last month we started our article series on the basics of search engine optimization (SEO) by dispelling some commonly held myths and misconceptions.  Now that we talked about what doesn’t work, let’s continue by talking about what does work.

There are two main criteria that search engine evaluate when ranking your website pages in their indexes:

1. The CONTENT of the web page (the words on the page)
2. The LINKS pointing to that web page

Content:

This part is the most straightforward.  Search engine algorithms don’t see your page’s layout, design, or pictures.  All they see is a long string of words and text.  So how do they know what a particular web page is about?  By reading the words, of course. Suppose you had a website for a bakery company.  If the site pages have lots of words like “fresh bread,” “cakes,” and “chocolate chip cookies,” then they will be more likely to show up prominently when people search for those terms.  However, if the site was filled with text talking about the company’s history, equipment, employees’ bios, and so on, but doesn’t have much text talking about their actual baked products, then of course it will never show up in searches for specific baked products.  So make sure your website content actually talks about the subjects you’d like people to find you for!

Links:

When Google or the other search engines see two web pages with similar content, how do they determine which site is ranked higher for their corresponding search queries? Simple: whichever site has the most links pointing to it.  Basically, search engines don’t only look at your site content; they also look at links between sites to determine the relative importance of different websites’ content. For instance, if many different sites have links to one of your web pages that say something like “Bread Bakeries in Denver,” then that tells the search engines that your page must be a very important page about bread bakeries in Denver, and will increase your site ranking correspondingly.

Additionally, the incoming links to your website are weighted differently according to which website they came from. The search engines rank the importance and authority of the site linking to yours by — you guessed it — how many other sites link to them.  So a link to your site from CNN.com, for instance, is much more valuable than, say, a link from “Uncle Joe’s Crab Shack,” or some other small website.

So just remember:

• Links to your website = good
• Links to your site from high-profile websites = even better

With an understanding of these two key principles of search engine indexing, you’re well on your way to understanding how to increase your chances of featuring prominently on search results to your target audience.  Next month, we’ll discuss the most important areas on your website pages to focus your attention on as you optimize your website content to be search-engine-friendly.

In the meantime, if you have any additional questions about search engine optimization, feel free to contact us.

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