Android
All indicators suggest that Web Giant Google will be releasing version 3.0 (Honeycomb) of its Android OS sometime this week (possibly Wednesday 2nd Feb).
It is believed that Google provided some software developers a “sneak release” last week.
The very popular operating system that found its feet on Smartphone devices has had an upgrade and has been optimised specifically to run on
Tablet Computers.
Motorola’s Zoom is expected to carry Android version 3.0 (Honeycomb).
Debbie from The Wedding Dress Designer has launched her new content managed website, helping more customers find the wedding dress of their dreams.
Staffordshire’s premiere bespoke Wedding Dress design company will help you plan the dress of your dreams and then hand make your dress to order. The Wedding Dress Designer team can also provide you with bespokely designed and handmade-to-order evening attire, bridesmaids dresses, and even beautiful hand made Prom Dresses.
As Debbie says on her new website, “Welcome to the Wedding Dress Designer where all your Wedding Day Dreams come true.”
A totally classic and elegent website design was felt to be the most appropriate for this project. Rake Mark, who are website designers in Stafford, used pale creams and greys with dashes of pinks to create the simple and elegant look.
With word of mouth marketing and recommendations is an important part of any business and with this site it was recommended that a Testimonials page would highlight the satisfied customers that the Wedding Dress Designer has. The final touch was the easy to update photo gallery of some of the creations.
The website was developed using popular content management system and blogging software from WordPress. “Wordpress is a great system that is really easy to use, helping website owners to keep their sites updates”, said Rake Mark’s Sarah Brassington.
Sarah continued, “Many new website owners are unsure about content management systems. They either don’t know about them or they think it’ll be to difficult or time consuming to use. I always tell them, if they can use Microsoft Word, they can use WordPress.”
The web and internet trends are always on the move and it is a continuous battle to keep up with what to do, what not to do and who’s doing what! According to comscore.com we are seeing significant changes in the use of Social Media Marketing (Blogs, Facebook Business, LinkedIn etc) at a rate that have not been seen for 15 years, and this isn’t just businesses jumping on the band wagon its businesses providing what their users demand.
2009 -2010 was all about Social Media awareness, uptake and letting business owners know the benefit of user content and possibilities for such a marketing tool. Now in 2011 we are very much veering towards ‘Use It or Lose Out’
Comscore.com reports that surveys conducted show 48% of people searching the web in 2010 did so using a mobile device and with an increase in both interest and usage of mobile surfing this is sure to rise throughout 2011.
So if your marketing your business online make sure you have all your bases covered, because you can be sure your competitors will be.
Is your website getting searched as well as it should be?
Almost everyone is familiar with the term SEO and if you’re not it simply stands for ‘Search Engine Optimization’. The very basics of SEO and organic (or natural) listings are inexpensive and most website design and development companies should implement as standard but if they have not been, their absence will have a dramatic effect on the effectiveness of indexing (searchable content) on your website.
Here are 5 totally free SEO tips from our very own SEO checklist to get you well on the way to organic listing heights.
1. Page Title – Use clear keyword rich content for your Page Title. Avoid using the same title in more than one page and try to use this space to entice the user as it will appear as a hyperlink in the search engine results page. Perhaps something along the lines of ‘Web Design Services in Stafford – Rake Mark Solutions’, this is to cover search terms such as Web Design Staffordshire. This is prime Web page real-estate that is often overlooked and not used to its full potential.
2. Meta Data – sits between the <head></head> tags on your website. Meta tags are used for Content, Description, keywords etc. Now these tags have taken a bashing over the years with some web bods saying “no need to use them as Google doesn’t look at them anymore” while others say “always use them”. I’m recommending that you DO use them and the reason for this is that within Google’s Webmaster Tools it clearly lists your keywords, from your website so Google does know that they are there and does look at them, how much weighting they hold is an “unknown” but the facts remain, Google is still looking at them!
3. Clean Code – As web developers through and through we talk about ‘Tags’ as part of our everyday language knowing that all around us will understand, so let me firstly apologies for that, and secondly explain a little. Tags form the structure of your webpage (before it is displayed in your browser) its format is <head></head> or <body></body>. Anything that has an opening (<body>) tag MUST be closed with a closing (</body>) tag. This helps the Brower, which at the end of the day is just a machine, read your web pages, known’s where a section starts and ends and can correctly index the content of your webpage so that it can be ranked in the listings page. If the code is rough, unfinished or poorly written, while it might render (display in the browser) as expected the search engines will struggle to index your web pages correctly.
4. Header Tags – Use Header tags <h1></h1> (Not forgetting to close your tag) to define page organizational structure and simplify page navigation. Header tags go from H1 – H6 priority, use 1 as highest header priority. Text within these tags is indexed and given a greater weighting over standard <p></p> (paragraph) tag text. Use them wisely, they will serve you well.
5. Rich Keywords for content – Over the years there has been tips and tricks and big money to be made if you have the correct combination of SEO cheats – not anymore. Google (and other search engines) reward relevant content … Simple, not tricks, no gimmicks.
Google expects to see your keywords in the first paragraph (so put them in there), It also expects to see references/variations of your chosen keywords through-out your page. However more is not always better. Google expect the keywords density to be maybe 1.5-2% of your keyword within a section of text which could raise your ranking, however don’t keyword stuff, Google will punish you and your effort will be in vein.
So starting with the top of the page and Page Title, moving to Meta Data, Clean well structured XHTML code, Include your Header tags and then fill you web page with keyword rich juicy content, you should be in great shape.
Internet Explorer : 61.58%
Firefox: 24.23%
Chrome: 5.61%
Safari : 4.45%
Opera: 2.35%
Other: 1.77%
By the end of the year:
Internet Explorer: 57.08%
Firefox: 22.81%
Chrome: 9.98%
Safari : 5.89%
Opera: 2.23%
Other: 2.01%
With the Browser Leaders, Internet Explorer and Firefox both losing ground it has paved the way for Chrome to make the largest upward gain of 4.37%.
Points of a percentage may sound insignificant at first glance but when you look at the hundreds of millions of web users around the globe these figures represent real live users and you can bet that with the current competitive browser market the way it is, browser developers are watching every single point!
However, there is possibility that Internet Explorer will grab this back its share loss and may even gain ground with the release of IE9 with is currently in Beta but has already shown movement in the browser wars.
