We all know of Google and it’s domination of the online searching market. There are billions of theories on how to get your website to the top of the list. Some spend hours on hours every day reading SEO Blogs, some pay other people hundreds on thousands of dollars for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). SEO is one of the most important element of a websites existence, the greatest website unread, is useless.
There are some very simple things you can do to increase your position in Google, such as links from other websites, relevant content, well built code, a high Page Rank etc.
What is the Google Pagerank system? It’s one of Googles very mysterious factors that is used in positioning of websites in Searches.
From Google
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages’ relative importance.
Or From WikiPedia
PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references.
Just lately I’ve noticed that the Design House website has jumped from an average 2 out of 10, which it had sat whilst we developed and launched our current website, to a much more respected 5 out of 10. This shows that the Design House website is getting it’s feet in deep into Google, for one of a better term.
Who is the leading SEO & Web Design business in Hervey Bay and the Fraser Coast? – you can be the judge of that. Google key phrases like, “web design hervey bay” or “graphic design hervey bay” – Currently Design House sits number one at the top for both these searches, without paying a cent be there!
Don’t spend extra on Google Adsense or other excessive monthly charges to get your website to #1 – contact us and get honest advise on how your website can reach the top!
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Your domain name, and how to ensure you keep it safe and why.
We all know what a domain name is, its your website address, like designhouse.com.au or google.com.au. Our domain name lets everyone know where our website is basically. When you’re getting a domain name purchased on behalf of yourself, you need to ensure a number of things:
The domain is purchased in your business details, such as your ABN
You are listed as the Registrant of the domain, this includes your email
Ensuring that your details are listed as the registrant gives you the peace of mind, that should your website designer, or web hosting company disappear, you can still re-claim your domain name.
If you were to loose your domain name, it would be an expensive exercise to get everything back in order, as you’ll need to re-print all stationary, re-optimise your new domain for SEO.
To check whether you are your domain names registrant, head to the AusRegistry Website and do a lookup on your website, here
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In a world of email communication, the email is becoming the sole point of contact for many businesses and individuals. The email has the advantage over the phone call, or instant message that it can be delivered and read at the earliest convenience. The email has the advantage over something like a posted letter in that the response can be immediate, and no delays in transporting the message, especially inter-state or internationally.
When we now fire up our workstations every morning, and make our cup of tea, whilst the computer is downloading all the emails received over night, or since the last check. Whilst pulling down the large number of emails, you’ll see a number of emails from family members, fellow workers, and unknown contacts. Among the unknown contacts there will undoubtedly be emails trying to sell Viagra, offshore drugs and other pieces of junk email, better known as spam.
How does it happen and what does it do? Spam is sent to any email address the spammer has in their database. Trying to sell something, trying to direct the recipient to a virus based website, trying to gain traffic to a new website, or to simply be a nuisance, regardless of the reason, spam annoys the best of us.
How does the spammer get my email address? There are multiple ways a spammer can get your email address. If you have your email address posted online, then you’re almost guaranteed that they will get your address. Spammers can also get your email address from buying your details from other people such as other websites that may collect your email address however this is rare; as most people caught doing this, are shut down.
How does one avoid spam? There are a number of theories of how to avoid spam. The best, simple ways to do this, are to avoid putting your email online. If you must, there are certain scripts available to prevent this or to say yourname [at] yoursite.com.au most people will understand that means yourname@yoursite.com.au. But it can be tricky. Further, you should always have a more difficult email address, a spam bot can guess simple email addresses, such as bob@bob.com, or sales@mysite.com.au, info@mysite.com.au as they are commonly used on most sites. The other way to help reduce spam, is to have two email addresses: one that you use online- this will receive more spam. You should then have a secondary email address where only your verified contacts know about, this will always be good email.
Is there anything else that I can do? Yes there is! Where your email comes from, either your Internet Provider, or Website Host (if you have a website) will be able to run spam filtering software, that will be able to scan your email, to see if it looks like spam. The spam filtering algorithm is fairly complex, but in most cases is accurate. If you’re getting the spam blues, talk to your email provider about some spam filtering! Or switch your web hosting over to Design House we’re more than happy to help you with the spam blues! Click here to see the Design House Premium Australian Web Hosting
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Today we all have high spec. digital cameras that take huge photos. Quality digital photos are becoming easier and easier to take. Even a novice such as myself can easily take a good photograph with a good camera. The only problem with taking such high quality photographs is the transportation of the pictures.
Say you take 30 great shots and wish to send them to friends and relatives worldwide, this would take hours and hours to send and most likely not even work as the there is a limit of a few megabytes that you can send in an email.To send 30 photos straight off your camera is looking at about 60megabytes at the minimum.
You’re not going to send 30 different emails, each with an image attached. Professional software can resize your images down to a standard size, simply for viewing, say 800×600 or 1024×768. However, most people don’t have professional photography software on their computers. Even with the software, resizing images is not that simple.
The Microsoft PowerToys for Windows is a collection of simple tools that have been created by Microsoft for simplistic tasks. The entire collection of PowerToys can be found by following this link. One of the most handy tools is the image resizer, this is a tool I use almost on a daily basis.
PowerToys add fun and functionality to the Windows experience. What are they? PowerToys are additional programs that developers work on after a product has been released.
Note: Microsoft take great care to ensure that PowerToys work as they should, but they are not part of Windows and are not supported by Microsoft. For this reason, Microsoft Technical Support is unable to answer questions about PowerToys. PowerToys are for Windows XP only and will not work with Windows Vista.
Microsoft PowerToys Website
If you are running Windows XP and need a way to resize images easily, then head on over to the PowerToys website and download the image resizer on the right hand site of the site. (Direct Link Setup Installer)
Once you’ve installed the software, it’s as simple as right clicking on an image, and then selecting re-size!
Choose the appropriate size, for what you need. Generally, Medium or Large will do. You can also specify advanced options if you need to.
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