For many business owners, putting together a website on their own is a great way to save a few bucks. However, because an online presence is so valuable these days, you may be unknowingly costing yourself money if you aren’t sure of the best way to optimize your page, or how to use the right keywords and get the proper code to text ratio. Because the last thing anyone trying to make money with a website wants in these tough times is to lose money.

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Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most important aspects of any website. SEO corresponds directly with ranking on the major search engines, which is how people find your site and therefore, your product or service. Part of creating a higher ranking on the search engines has to do with creating keywords. Keywords are the terms or phrases that people generally search when looking for sites in your industry. For example, if you run a florist business, one of your keywords would obviously be "flowers", since you want your site to show up whenever people search under the word "flowers". However, this may be unrealistic due to the daunting level of competition for the term "flowers".

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Consider the following image:



It incorporates rich imagery. There are multiple directions of movement—The orange, glowing core commands your attention and, from there, your focus wanders. Motion also follows an elliptical course and seemingly revolves along the canvas.

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This week's links dabble aimlessly across the pallet of design and social media.

• Social Media Marketing (SMM) and tracking ROI are not necessarily the most synonymous of concepts. Learn how to make Social Media work for your company.

• WAIT! Don't click that 'publish' button. Scan over this checklist before every post you make. Print it off. Study it. Memorize it. Practice it. Blog by it.

• Good copywriting is good interface design.

• Typesetting wasn't phased out with the printing press. '5 Principles of Setting Type on the Web'.

Two websites I've been really digging lately:

• NEWWORK Magazine
• Muxtape

Ladies and gentlemen the winners are in!! You are probably thinking to yourself “what winners?!” And right about now you are going through the list. It’s not time for the Oscars or the Grammy’s and unfortunately it’s not time for the elections yet either (although only 7 month to go so lets stay strong!) So what winners were announced? Ok ok don’t panic I’ll tell you; it was the Webby awards of course. So you may not know about them yet but one day these awards will be just as highly anticipated as any of those other award shows (maybe even more so).

Now I bet you want to know what the Webby awards are. Well here it is in their own words: “The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. Established in 1996 during the Web's infancy, the Webbys are presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 550-member body of leading Web experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries and creative celebrities.” They also have a voter’s choice award from each category. They give awards for websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile. And each of those categories has many subcategories.

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Meet Melanie, our new Intern. She's 19 and migrated all the way from Quebec to THAT Agency. It's her first day and she's already posting blogs. The following is her take on achieving a chic and effective Web design.

These days it is all too easy to forget that Web design is actually a form of design, which should follow the same rules and principles found everywhere from art and clothes to magazine pages and architecture. Elements of design are important to consider when creating a website, because the way a Web page looks is just as important as its content. I say this because the design of page is the first thing people notice about a website and if the design is horrible, the reader may not even go on to read what is on the page.
So what are the five main elements of design to be considered when building a web page? They are: Balance, Proportion, Rhythm, Dominance, and Unity.

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