Social media marketing is the new frontier in marketing for many businesses, large or small. There has never been a better way to reach a mass audience, already engaged and ready to receive information.

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Sometimes the best way to understand what to do in web design is by knowing what not to do. Here are a list of things you can be sure will anger your visitors; and remember angry visitors spend less than happy ones.

1. Pop-ups
There is not much need for explanation here. Pop-ups are just annoying; especially the ones that are impossible to close. Some claim that pop-ups are still an effective way of advertising, I have trouble understanding this considering most web browsers now come with pop-up blockers already enabled.

2. Slow loading pages
I have said this over and over again; most website visitors are not patient. If your page takes too long to load they will move on! It’s much better to have a page that is plain but loads than one that has too much on it and takes forever. A page should load in under 4 seconds.

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Search engine giant Google seems to be constantly coming up with ways to make surfing the Net a better experience for everyone. Consumers can find just about anything with the entry of a simple keyword and businesses, no matter what product or service they offer, can use the multitude of Google's advertising and promotions-based programs to deliver more eyeballs to their Web site. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the company's latest venture, Google Ad Planner, is anticipated to be a huge success.

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When it comes to Photoshop vs. Fireworks, many people will try to compare these two top-notch design programs, and with good reason. Both have amazing design capabilities and the ability to do similar things in terms of Image-editing, design creation and more. However, as a designer (and a Photoshop loyalist), I would have to say that they are each equally good at what they have been made to do; Photoshop can’t be beat for image editing and there isn’t a better program out there for Web design than Macromedia’s Fireworks (it should be noted that Adobe has owned Macromedia for the last two years).

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Increasing the number of inbound links to your website is a critical part of any SEO campaign. Since the search engines rate your website partially based on how popular it is (the number of backlinks you have), getting better and more backlinks to your website will help improve your rankings.

One critical element that is often overlooked in developing an inbound linking strategy is the importance of obtaining deep links to your website. A deep link is pretty much any link that goes to your website that does NOT point at the homepage. With deep linking, you want to build links to the important internal pages of your website. This will help improve the PageRank of these internal pages and the pages that they link to.

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There are probably a million web design rules out there and it can be really overwhelming when you are just trying to focus on what is important. So I explain the “Four critical web design rules” as stated by Nicolas LaPolla.

1. Make sure your page is easy to read
Most people do not actually go through and read everything on a page. They scan the page to find the information they are looking for. If a person cannot find what they are looking for in the first couple second they are on the site they will most likely move on to a different site. To make it easier for the reader try to break up your content. Use headers and sub-headers to make it simple to stop what you are looking for. Keywords can also help make it trouble-free to find information.
Font and background colors are important too. Make sure there is a large contrast between the text and the background and keep your back ground plain.

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A disadvantage of SEO is the time lag that occurs before you see results from your efforts. First, you need to build an SEO-friendly website, research keywords, write copy, build links, etc… Despite all your hard work, you won't likely see results for a few months. This makes testing new things and measuring results difficult. The advantage, of course, is the free traffic you get to your website.

Pay per click advertising, on the other hand, allows you to obtain instant results. If you decide today that you want to test a new landing page, ad copy and new keywords, you can have your ad in the #1 (paid) position in just a day or two. Testing and optimizing your paid campaigns can be done quickly and results are reported immediately.

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As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

- from 'The Metamorphosis' by Franz Kafka

What you'll need:

(1) Credit Card
(1) Mailing Address
(1) Week
(0) Insecurities

Like Samsa, it became me. Just pure, unbridled word-nerdery.

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Do you find that people are coming to your site but not doing anything while they are there? It can often be difficult to understand why your conversion rate is low. People are obviously interested in what you are offering because they have clicked on your ad, so why aren’t they going through with a purchase? Below I will discuss 9 tips that Michael Mattis at the Yahoo Search Marketing Blogclaims will improve your conversion rates.

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Tangible and the intangible—something you can feel, smell and taste versus a concept or an idea—it's the crux of some tired and drawn out debates. One I can name off the top of my head—religion—has probably claimed a few more lives than social media; but the question still remains, is it more engaging than the traditional mediums?

Well, yes and no...

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Granted, the title of this post is a little strange. This is especially true because this post isn't going to have much to do with Web SEO specialists in NYC. I actually think that a more appropriate title for this would be something like How to Find the 'Low-hanging Fruit' During Keyword Research. I’ll explain why I used this title in a bit. For now, I want to talk about the competition factor when considering keywords to optimize your website for.

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