Winnipeg Web Design

Fifteen Reasons To Use Video For Your Business0 Comments »

1. According to a study by the (University of Pennsylvania) Wharton school of Business, prospects are 72% more likely to purchase a product or service when video is used and they make their buying decisions faster. After seeing a video, most prospects will have a greater understanding of the subject or product.
89 percent of consumers will review a video the same day it is received, and about 94 percent of those people will share it with a friend or relative. Industry reports suggest the response rates for video promotions are six times greater than those for printed direct mail pieces.

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Top 5 WordPress SEO Tips3 Comments »

There are dozens of specific effective search engine optimization tips for your WordPress site. To a newcomer in web development and publishing, these ‘help’ lists of 100+ SEO techniques are daunting and sometimes out of reach. These Top 5 WordPress SEO Tips are a great first, valuable step.

1. Content. Content. Content. Creating interesting, genuine and sometimes controversial content is the first step in having visitors return to your site. Don’t just use the plug-and-chug method of loading poorly written articles with keywords. Instead, write content worth reading while consciously including keywords.

2. Keywords are key. Be selective and specific when choosing keyword phrases. Keyword phrases should at least appear in the title and in beginning and ending paragraphs. Putting keyword phrases in your title tag and page title, as well as in your HTML code (META tags) are beneficial for SEO.

3. Use clean URLs. URLs that are easily readable by humans are also more easily accessed by search engine spiders.
Ditch the www.fakeseocorp.com/=3365d9647b?&category=tipsandtricks style, and adopt the much more aesthetically pleasing www.fakeseocorp.com/tipsandtricks.

4. Link your site internally. Linking different pages within your site is one of the simplest SEO techniques. By linking visitors around your site, you are increasing individual page traffic, increasing PageRank, and allowing spiders to access all pages on your website.

5. Spread the word. Create social media accounts, such as Twitter and Facebook, for your website. Also, submit your website to social news sites like Digg, discovery engines like StumbleUpon, and reputable search engines. These all allow search engines to find your site more readily and will increase traffic.

There’s an enormous amount of SEO tips, tricks and tools available on the Internet. It’s important for a web development newcomer to realize that SEO is not a set one technique, five techniques or 500 techniques. SEO is a varying, synergistic structure, with a strong base of simple techniques.

Think of this Top 5 WordPress SEO Tips as the necessary starter kit for an evolving search engine optimization toolbox. When implementing more complicated SEO techniques, it is beneficial to consult an SEO specialist or veteran web developer.

5 Questions To Ask Before Choosing a Web Developer1 Comment »

Web developers have different levels of expertise. While two different web developers may claim five years of experience, one might be more capable and match your needs more closely. In addition to the usual interview questions, try asking these questions to find the right web developer for your next project:

1. What is your keyword strategy?

If you’re practicing search marketing, you need to have a web developer who will work with you to make sure their back-end SEO strategy matches the work you’re putting into optimizing the site’s content. If they don’t have a solid strategy for making your keywords work, you should look at other candidates.

2. Do you have a portfolio?

All web developers should have a portfolio, so not having a professional portfolio put together is a sure sign that you should find someone else. Their portfolio should give you a good idea of their aesthetic and whether or not their coding is up to snuff. Ask them to bring the complete code for one of their recent projects (not just a few snippets). This will give you an idea of how clean their code is.

3. What are your favorite websites? Least favorite?

You can get a good idea on how current the candidate’s knowledge is by asking them about their favorite and least favorite websites. This also helps you learn more about their aesthetic, as well as where they draw their inspiration.

4. Do you follow current web standards?

Any good developer should follow current web standards to ensure that the site works on every OS and across multiple web browsers. This is a great time to find out how well versed they are in HTML – all developers can write HTML, but some can’t work without a reference manual. If they make simple errors or oversights in writing HTML, they may not have the level of detail and knowledge you want in a web developer.

5. Do you typically work on larger websites or smaller ones?

You’ll want to get an idea of the scope they’re used to working in. If they typically create larger websites, and you want a smaller one, they may miss some of the little details. If you’re looking for a large site, and they’re used to smaller ones, they may not be capable of taking on a larger project. You want to make sure your web developer’s experience level matches the project you’re working on.

When choosing a web developer, it’s important to make sure they’ll be a good fit for your company or project. Asking just a few simple questions can help you weed out the worst candidates – and find the best person for the job.

Scaling WordPress for High-Traffic0 Comments »

Here is a nice talk by Ryan Allen. He gives you a ton of great tips on how to allow your blog to receive high traffic. Isn’t that what we all want for our blogs?

IE Cleartype (Blurry Text) Solution4 Comments »

The Problem

Have you ever made a dropdown menu using JavaScript and found your text to be real ugly in IE? Well the problem probably is caused by cleartype.

ClearType attempts to improve the appearance of text on certain types of computer display screens by sacrificing color fidelity for additional intensity variation.
- Wikipedia

Turns out animating text causes this issue; functions like fadeIn() and fadeOut() in jQuery are usually the cause.

// This causes the cleartype problem
$("#message").fadeIn();

The Solution

How do you fix this issue you ask? Well all you have to do is remove the “filter” attribute from the troublesome element.

$('#message').fadeIn(function(){
    this.style.removeAttribute("filter");
});

If you are doing animations outside of jQuery you would use this raw JavaScript:

document.getElementById("#message").style.removeAttribute("filter");

Before Fix

After Fix

You can notice the difference in the “CARDIO” text the most.

Hopefully this helps you out! Let me know if it worked…