Websites of any size and complexity can benefit from the use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). By using CSS, specifically external CSS files, our clients’ websites are more efficient in the following ways: 

Speed and Performance
Defining all site styles in an external CSS file greatly increases website performance. All modern browsers will download the CSS file and cache it for later use, meaning the entire site’s style sheet only needs to be downloaded once to be used for many site visits. This also decreases the size of each webpage. For those users whose browsers support Gzip or Deflate compression; even further performance could be noticed by compressing the stylesheet.

Manageability
Most websites consist of visuals that are repeated throughout the web experience. CSS allows a developer to name a specific element style and re-use that definition throughout the website. This makes it very easy to change the look of an entire website in a short period of time, with only few changes needed.

Standards Compliancy
Properly using CSS allows a website to validate against a CSS validator, creating a “valid” style sheet. Websites with “valid” style sheets are more likely to work correctly across multiple browsers, maintaining a cohesive look.   

Today we're finishing our series on keys to a higher Google ranking with the following three tips: 

Send Press Releases
If you think about it, releasing a press release online is genius. It is exactly what you want to say, on someone else’s site, linking back to you! The secret to press releases working for you is to do them frequently and make sure they include your target keywords. Send them out over Internet PR wires, which are cheaper than PR newswire for less important releases. If your management sees PR as primarily offline (print), retrain them! People under thirty aren’t reading your print article.

Share with Blogs
The popularity of blogging has given rise to a whole new form of PR. Go find people who are blogging about relevant topics, and include them on your releases. Because bloggers tend to be informal, sometimes just giving them a “sneak peek” a day or two ahead of your consumer email is spot on. Again, frequency, relevancy and relationship building are key.

Make a Video
There is a new-ish video camera called The Flip (www.theflip.com) that some are calling the iPod for video. It’s simple to use, and I think it will help continue the revolution of video on the web. More and more, Google will integrate video into its results. So you’ll want to rank high on videos too. Just make sure they are properly tagged with keywords, for optimal ranking. Consider putting up a tagged “trailer” on YouTube, which links to the video on your site.

Continuing with yesterday's topic, here are two more simple ways that you can increase your natural Google ranking. 

Develop Natural Content
Google rankings are also based in part on the amount of relevant content found on a website. Keyword rich, relevant and unique content will help your website gradually gain higher rankings on Google. Some ways to build natural content include forums, blogs, customer testimonials, case studies, news and articles (about your company or industry).

Evaluate Your Title Tags
The biggest “on page” factor to getting a good Google ranking is with your title tag. Put your keyword first in the title, not your company name. If your company name is in your URL, you’ll most likely rank first for that anyway. So make your title say “KEYWORD, brought to you by COMPANY,” which gives you a 20-30% keyword density that is optimal for titles. And vary them up between pages.

Click here to read the final part of this post. 

Looking for ways to rank higher among search engine results? Let’s be honest. We’re talking about Google, which now accounts for 68% of all searches – even higher in most places overseas. There are many facets to the Google algorithm. For the rest of the week we are sharing some simple ideas you can implement to increase your natural Google ranking.

Research Keywords That Get Leads
One of my least favorite calls is from a client saying they are number one on a totally obscure keyword! (And they often paid a shyster a lot of money to get it.) Then through research we find that the searches for that term are dismal.

Make sure you’re optimizing for the right terms. (WordTracker is a great tool.) If you’re doing analytics or PPC, make sure you’re optimizing for the words that not only get searches, but that actually get leads! It’s almost worth a PPC campaign testing various elements to get this info.

Build Links
Approximately 80% of what Google uses to determine how they rank you is “off page,” meaning factors that aren’t even related to the content on your website! The more quality websites that link back to your website the better. Getting links to your website is a great way to boost your Google ranking.

Research your competitors, finding out who links to their websites, and try to get links to your website from those sources. But make sure the sites linking to yours are high quality, relevant and use your keywords in their links if possible. If you buy traditional media, insist that they throw in an online link as a part of the deal. This costs them little and is a huge boon to your rankings.

The biggest thing you can do is have a good story that makes people want to link to you. Then tell people about it! What’s in a good story? Be funny! Newsy! A great resource! Controversial! Just get it out there!

Click here to read the second part of this post. 

As many of you may know, my wife and I just had our first baby and are in the thick of raising a 3 month old, while learning the trials and tribulations of all the gadgetry involved in doing so. Since her arrival, we’ve discovered that according to the baby stores, it takes no fewer than 47 batteries at any given moment to raise a healthy and happy child. The weekly trips to Costco are an all too clear display of how much we love our little daughter, and that we really missed our opportunity to invest heavily in Duracell. We’re rarely without a camera in our pockets to catch the first time she does, well, whatever it is she happens to be doing, because they’re all pretty much firsts!

The amazing part is that while she is entertained for short times by swirling monkeys and flickering lights, it’s no match for the simple times we spend playing with her ourselves, shunning the vibrating bouncies and automatic swings in favor of some good old fashioned peek-a-boo and some drool slathered sing-a-longs. While we want to capture every moment in pictures and videos, we’re missing the feelings and emotions of the moment.

For me, it’s a reminder that for all the joy, excitement and value we find in the technology we depend on to live our lives, it’s important to remember that the simple moments and personal interaction still can’t be beat. The joys from the smiles of a baby can’t always be appreciated through the lens of a camera. And the people we work with and the clients whose lives we make better are where the real happiness of our jobs comes from.