Thursday, July 12, 2007

SEO Primer

The objective of this tutorial is to educate and update webmasters and website builders with search engine optimization techniques. The ultimate objective of all webmasters and web developers is to get a good Google page rank. This tutorial will help achieving this objective by explaining and implementing SEO techniques. The techniques explained in this tutorial are the most comprehensive and efficient. The aim of this tutirial is to help webmasters and web developers do their own search engine marketing using these techniques in the best possible way.

This tutorial is logically organized page by page and each page deals with a specific topic concerning SEO. The pages are arranged in such a way that the flow is exactly like the process flow of SEO implementation. This in itself is a guide to what is to be done after what in SEO implementation.

This tutor assumes that there is a plan to build a website and it needs to be optimized using SEO techniques. However, complicated issues like flash and frames are covered towards the end of the tutorial. These complications are best handled by SEO experts than the users themselves. Our sincere hope is that the webmasters and developers going through this tutorial would enjoy the process of SEO and put it to good use. All the Best,

SEO begins with building your website. It is important to understand and implement a few SEO techniques while you are still building your website, instead of waiting for it to finish and start editing it again. Once you are thorough with planning your website complete with blueprints, SEO implementation begins by segregating your website into two different and distinct criteria – On-Page and Off-Page. Both these criteria are equally important from SEO point of view and no partiality is to be shown. On-Page criteria are those that one can see on the webpage. They are Title, Headings, Meta Tags, Content, Keyword etc. This will be elaborated at a later stage. Off-Page criteria are links coming to and going from your webpage. They include anchor text, reference tags and attributes. You will learn these in detail at alter stage. The Off-page criteria are weighed and analyzed by Google page rank. So the importance of off-page content is not less then that of the On-Page.

Step by Step approach to building an Optimized Website Embarking upon building a website is preceded by some necessary ground work which will help plan the site properly and as per the target audience. Your website will showcase your products and services, so you are in the best position to know what will be the basic persona of a target visitor. A target visitor is a visitor who visits your site with a genuine intent of buying, difficult to visualize, putting it in SEO terms a targeted visitor is the visitor who has a very high chance of buying your products or services. So when you plan your website do not get into techniques of high traffic generation or using hot terms. Instead, build it using targeted terms and an objective to attract targeted traffic. This is getting a little too complicated, let me explain.. High traffic is of no importance if none of the traffic converts, but targeted traffic is bound to have a good rate of conversion. High traffic is not going to generate high sales; it will certainly generate higher bills due to bandwidth.

Optimizing your site for your products, services and brands only, do not generalize. The fine balance between your product descriptions and general ones in the industry should be maintained or your site could end up generating traffic to you competition. Similarly hot terms means the industry jargon that you use in daily life everyday, you don't expect your customer to understand that, do you? Targeted terms are terms used for the industry generally. So knowing your target audience is of prime importance.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

The Holy Trinity of SEO - Three factors to Success

With the SERPs (search engine results pages) being the new High Street - you didn't think it would be easy to achieve height in the rankings did you? Settle your mind - the easy days are gone - they weren't much good anyway. Only geeks bought from the web a few years ago. Now it's essential to be on the web for most companies because only now is when people buy services and goods through the medium. See TurnerDow for the full 27 methods to optimise your company in it's online incarnation, covering PPC, SEM and SEO. Most of these are cyberspace common sense, not doing them will incur potential penalties. Assuming these are all OK - here is the holy trinity of search engine optimisation.

The Father. Title Tags

This is the easy one - though completing it should be preceded by signifcant pondering. It's promotional but you need to make it nice for search engines too. It's the heading that will appear in the SERPs when your site gets returned in it's listings. Work hard on it. Look at how succesful sites (those returned highly for phrases you'd also like to be returned highly for) use the tag noting the anatomy. Just a few words, but an essential part of the seo success trinity.

The Son. Make a Great Site

If you build it they'll come. Take xe.com the currency conversion site. It's one of the most popular sites in the world. YouTube, Alibaba, MySpace, About and many more. These sites are places people want to come, they don't need links but get them anyway. If you have yet another laptop sales site, you have your work cut out - but if you have figured out a way for people to get cheaper diesel for their cars, are you going to need to request links? Nope. Somewhere in between these extremes is your site. Realistically it isn't likely to be in either category - but be sure to make your site fully featured but intuitive, simple but useful, a good visitor experience - and your work of getting back links is much easier. If the site is one of many cookie-cutter sites, well, why should anyone link to it? What's the point? But if they get there and they see something others would like to see - something they enjoy - they'll link in time, even if you have to request it. Natural links will come too, something the search engines will see and like.

The Holy Ghost. External Links

You saw this one coming huh? You were hoping there was some way around gettng backlinks, but knew in your heart that it had to be there. One could almost invoke the estate agents mantra: Location, Location, Location, replacing it of course with Backlinks, Backlinks, Backlinks. But the other two points of the sacred triangle have to be present too. Getting backlinks is the webmasters curse. It's so effective because it's so difficult - the search engines know that other sites get link requests continually and unless there is some reason not to, junk them. Carry out the second in this list well and the task will be much easier. If your site is good, they will link. Well allright - with a little encouragement from you. How to get links? Locate the right sites, request a link (not reciprocal) after a little flattery of their work, and provide the html for their ease. Be respectful but not pleading. Be brief but not curt. Expect no more than 5% success rate. It's the holy grail of the holy trinity - the bit that everyone hates doing, but the part that is the most essential of the three.

Work on your title tags, get inbound links, make a useful, enjoyable site to get success in your SEO. That's the SEO Holy Trinity. Now to work!

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

How to Leverage Other People's Lists to Build your own list

List building should be the main priority of any online business. Having your own in-house list of opt-in subscribers allows you to send marketing messages or recommendations via email to your prospects many times over, increasing your chances of making a sale, or making multiple sales if you're an affiliate marketer.

The tricky part is actually building a decent sized list to begin with that you can start profiting from.

In my experience the best way is undoubtedly by using other people's lists. What I mean by this is simply finding other marketers who have a good sized list, finding a way of accessing that list, and persuading them to join your list.

These people are the ideal people to have on your list because they are already familiar with the concept of receiving email messages from online marketers. Also if they're already subscribed to one marketer's newsletter, and are prepared to join yours as well, then they are, in all probability, happy to not only receive offers from you, but to spend money with you as well. In other words, they're the perfect subscriber that every marketer wants on their list.

So how do you access these other marketers' lists?

Well my preferred method is through writing articles, like this one you're reading at the moment. Writing good quality articles and submitting them to as many article directories as you can will result in a lot of people reading your articles, and subsequently clicking on the link to your site (where your own opt-in page is located) which you should include in the resource box.

More importantly, however, is the fact that these article directories are used by ezine and newsletter publishers to find content for their subscribers. If they pick up your article and include it in their next edition, then your article could potentially be read by several thousand subscribers, who may then click through to your opt-in page and sign up to your newsletter.

To increase your chances of your article being included in ezines, you should also submit your articles directly to the ezine publishers themselves, rather than relying on the off-chance that they will find your article in an article directory.

You should now start to see why so many marketers are using articles to promote their business and drive traffic to their sites. You can get a lot of good quality, targeted subscribers very quickly just by using this method alone, however there are other ways that you can get your site seen by other marketers' subscribers.

One free way is through finding ezine owners who allow their subscribers to place adverts in their ezine for free. This is obviously not as effective as writing articles as less people tend to take any notice of the free ads section of ezines. However, it's free so you might as well use it, even if it's just a one-time offer to new subscribers. You may only get one new subscriber from it, but you never know how much money you could potentially earn from that one person in the future.

A more effective way is by actively purchasing prominent ads in ezines. These cost more simply because they get seen more. Prices vary depending on where in the ezine you want your ad to feature. Writing articles is my preferred method of ezine advertising (albeit an indirect form of advertising), but when I do pay for advertising I don't tend to use positional ads, but instead opt for solo ads. These have constantly got me the best results, and the most subscribers, because they are sent separately from the ezine, so each subscriber only sees your message.

To conclude, there are many ways to build your list that I haven't even touched upon in this article. However, if you want a quality list, ie highly targeted opt-in subscribers who are likely to spend money with you, then advertising, either indirectly through articles, or directly through free or paid advertising in other marketers' newsletters, will deliver the type of subscriber every marketer wants.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Boost your Business with E-Mail

Emails are quite a powerful marketing tool, if not misused. Misusing electronic mail is an actual trend. It happens to us all on a daily basis. You've received them: the very inviting email that suggests to visit a certain website where a wonderful Russian lady awaits to become the perfect bride, or to read news from a Nigerian magnate that wants to give us a few million dollars, etc…

These are really annoying Spam emails, but these are not the only emails that are Spam. Even legitimate companies perform a type of less insistent Spam to sell their products. As a matter of fact they do not really Spam, but send unsolicited commercial emails. Because people don't really know the definition of Spam (unsolicited bulk email) they tend to treat this type of Internet marketing approach aggressively and lose trust and respect for the companies practicing it.

If you are serious about Internet marketing you cannot use emails to spam people trying to make a sale. You should use emails to communicate with your clients and business partners. Writing a business email is not as easy as it may seem. When you send out a business email you send a message that represents your company. If the email is not properly written the clients will doubt your professionalism. It doesn't matter what business you are in. Sending a properly formatted email shows respect for the receiver. Just consider emails your online stationery. Treat an email as you treat that perfectly designed piece of paper you use to write business letters on.

When you compose an email you notice that there is a subject line. Don't ignore it. That's the most important part of your message: type in a short summary of your message. This is how the reader will know how urgent or interesting your message is. For example, if you write a message as a follow-up for a phone conversation, write that in the title. It will remind your client or business partner that he or she was expecting a message from you. Don't assume that people will just remember who you are and what you do. Unless you already have a long-term partnership, understand that they are busy too, and don't waste their time.

When you format your email, keep in mind that plain text is still the best email format. Some people disable html. If you are a huge fan of HTML, send your email as plain text and HTML, allowing your readers to make the choice. Keep your lines and your message short and clear. Don't “stuff” your message with words. Remember to respect your client's time: get to the point. Use line breaks to separate paragraphs and ideas. The reader should be able to follow your message easily.

Last but not least, don't forget your email signature and the disclaimer. The email signature is a very good promotion tool. Business signatures start with a brief, serious courtesy, followed by your name, your function, a brief description of your website or business (that will act like a sales pitch) and a link to your site. Don't forget the http:// in your link, as many email programs fail to identify www.yoursite.com as a link, forcing the readers to copy-paste it in their browsers instead of conveniently clicking on it to see your site.

The disclaimer is also very important, especially when you send attachments, for example: “Although reasonable precautions have been taken to ensure no viruses are present in this email, (your company) cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage arising from the use of this email or attachments.”

Remember: any document you send out of your company, whether in electronic format or paper, needs to respect your corporate identity standards. As an online entrepreneur, you'll be sending emails every day. So build up a strong business identity and BOOST YOUR BUSINESS by sending out professional emails.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Link Building in a Nut Shell

Search engine optimization – or SEO – is a method of fine tuning a website to suit the search algorithm of most of the search engines so that it gets listed amongst the top few search results most of the times (hence better page rankings as well). When that happens is that websites will get an increased visibility - a crucial aspect that is necessary for almost all online businesses to succeed in the cyberspace. Else, what business without having enough people even knowing about your website?

But SEO is not that simple as it transpires. It includes a multitude of factors - from website designing to keyword arrangement and density – of which link building is an important step. As the term suggests, link building is the method of pepping up one's website popularity by making other websites refer to the current website by means of exchanged links. But, again it is not that simple a concept, but one that requires meticulous research and planning, something you will realize as you read ahead

As mentioned above, the best way for link building is through link exchanges, or more precisely reciprocal exchanges. The advantages of doing so are three. First thing, it is easier as almost every webmaster returns the favor as it will benefit their websites as well, and secondly, by adding/receiving links to/from other quality sites, the fame and quality of one's own website will also skyrocket. Finally, it will provide a user friendly way for the netizens to know or access other quality related websites, from the website they started their surfing with. It is only logical to think that if a website is providing links to other quality websites, its patronage is only bound to increase, provided the quality of its contents is good.

But here, it must be kept in mind that the links one includes in his/her websites indeed points towards a good enough website. ‘Quality' matters a lot in the eyes of search engines, and if that does not happen, it is bound to invite trouble than any real advantage. Hence it is important that one may research a lot regarding the quality/popularity of the target website before offering one's own links to them or exchanging with them. It applies the other way around as well and hence one's own website must also carry relevant contents that are commensurate with the website's purpose or goal. Else, no second person will be interested in exchanging links with your website. Remember, search engines won't tolerate lack of quality!

Now, from a business perspective, while link building, take care not to provide too many outgoing links for keeping the netizens locked in one's own website is also important. If there are too many outgoing links, chances are there that they might click on one of them and leaves the present site forever, the last thing any online business would want to happen. Hence, ideally, the number of links pointing to other websites must be lesser than the ones coming in. This is all about striking a right balance between the one-way and two-way exchanges.

Tail Piece: When other sites link to your website, make sure that they are all text links and that includes your keywords/product name in the URL. This way, a website could get links from other sites to its other pages as well, other than the home page.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Understanding Colors

Varying colors have different denotations. Moreover, colorful environment means meaningful world.

Color is so powerful that it can persuade, motivate, inspire and touch people's soft spot - the heart. This is the reason why understanding colors is pretty crucial in relating and communicating with other people. Not only that, it is also important to businesses in order for their business to sell.

There are many uses of colors. Here are some of the many:

1. Commercial Offset Printing. In the commercial printing industry as well as the online printing services interface, colors are essential to ascertain the efficiency of the printed materials. Usually, printing companies use four-color printing, two-color printing and Pantone which is also known as PMS.

Four-color printing also known as full color or 4 color printing is a process of creating colors using the CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) colors. Instead of physically mixing the colors, four colors mix a spectrum of colors using CMYK in order to create the colors desired.

Two-color printing is a color printing process which uses two colors only. This is especially applicable in printing 2-colored logos and postcards. This process is one of the cheapest among the printing processes available these days.

Pantone or PMS (Pantone Matching System) is a color system of mixed inks. If you want a specific color for your company logo this is the right color printing process for you. PMS is capable of finding the exact color that you need. Nonetheless, this may be a little costly compared to the rest.

2. Colors in the Computer Monitor. In order to create colors in the motor, it uses three base colors with full spectrum ? Red, Green and Blue. By simulating these three colors, other colors are formed. Each base color has 0 or no light emission to 255 or full light emission.

Computer monitors can also convert RGB to CMYK colors. The need is to ascertain the equivalent color of RGB to CMYK so that the print results are similar to that displayed on the monitor.

3. Paints. Industrial paints need specific colors to complement fixtures and designs. Usually, industrial paints are matched using the Pantone Matching System. To do this, choose a PMS color first then your choice of paint. That way it will be easy to pick paint colors.

4. Desktop Printers. Use the four-color printing system to reflect an accurate color for your documents, pictures and graphics. What you see on your monitor may not appear exactly as printed. This is because computer monitors are using RGB color system.

Now, you can zero in on your color preferences. Good luck!

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

How to Design and Publish your Site with Nvu

Nvu is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web editor based on the built-in Mozilla Composer web editor that comes with the Mozilla Suite. It has far more features than the Mozilla Composer mentioned in my Mozilla Composer Tutorials , and like the latter, it runs under Windows, Macintosh and Linux.

This article guides you through the steps of creating your first web site using Nvu.

(In case you're wondering, "Nvu" is pronounced as "N-view".)

What You Will Need

You will need the following for this tutorial.

  1. You will need to have Nvu (obviously). You can obtain it free of charge from http://www.nvu.com/download.html . There are versions of Nvu for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. Get the appropriate one for your system.

  2. You will need a web host to publish your pages to. For the complete beginner, a web host is (loosely speaking) a company which has computers that are permanently connected to the Internet. After you design your web page(s), you will need to transfer your pages to your web host's computer (called a web server), so that the rest of the world can see it. There are numerous web hosts around.

There are other things involved in getting your first web site up and running, such as getting your own domain name and promoting your web site. This tutorial however does not deal with those matters - it is strictly about designing (creating) and publishing ( uploading ) your website using Nvu. You can find more information about the other issues by perusing the articles on thesitewizard.com.

Overall Goals of this Tutorial

By the end of this tutorial, you will have set up a working website with multiple pages, including a main page, a feedback form, a Reciprocal Links page, an About Us page, and a Site Map. Your pages will contain images, multiple columns, a form, links to other pages within your site, links to other sites, text in different font sizes, etc. In other words, you will have a fully functional website.

More importantly, you will know how to use Nvu to create, design and publish your site so that you can design new sites any time you want.

Goal of this Chapter

In this chapter, you will learn to create a rudimentary web page and publish it so that it can be accessed on the Internet. By the end of this chapter, you will be viewing your web page on the Internet with your favourite web browser.

Note that this is a hands-on tutorial. To benefit from it, in fact, to even understand it, you need to follow the steps as I describe them. The practical nature of this guide makes it difficult to follow or understand if you're not doing the things mentioned.

Creating A Simple First Web Page

To give you an idea how simple it is to create a web page, first start up Nvu.

You will be greeted with a window that contains a menu (the top line of the window that says "File Edit View Insert..." etc), a few lines of toolbars (containing buttons like "New", "Open", etc), a left panel with a heading "Nvu Site Manager", and a large pane on the right-hand site that has a tab called "Untitled". This large pane is where you will design your web page.

Type the following into the Nvu. You don't have to do anything special - just start typing. Note that you can type whatever you wish - I'm just furnishing you a block of text as an example. For ease of explanation, though, I will assume that you have typed the text here in the rest of the tutorial. Don't let that stop you from being creative, though.

Shakespeare's Website

Double, double, toil and trouble; fire burn, and cauldron bubble. Fillet of a fenny snake, in the cauldron boil and bake; eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog, adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, lizard's leg and howlet's wing, for a charm of powerful trouble, like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

When you type, you are typing into Nvu's "Normal" mode. You can see which mode you are using by glancing at the series of tabs at the bottom of the Nvu window.

To see how your page appears in an actual web browser, click the "Preview" tab to enter Nvu's "Preview" mode. Return to the "Normal" mode before continuing. I shall assume that you are using the "Normal" mode in this tutorial unless otherwise specified. The "Normal" mode is Nvu's WYSIWYG editor mode. When you type text in this mode, Nvu converts it into a HTML web document behind the scenes so that web browsers can recognize it as a web page. If you want to look at the HTML code that is generated from what you just typed, click the "HTML Source" tab at the bottom of Nvu. Remember to return to the "Normal" mode when you've finished admiring the code.

Now save the page onto your hard disk. Do this by clicking on the "File" menu, then the "Save" item on the menu that appears. A dialog box should appear asking you for the Page Title.

Note: For convenience, in future, I shall refer to this sequence of clicking on the "File" menu, followed by the "Save" item simply as:

File | Save

This means that you are to click on the "File" menu, followed by the "Save" item on the menu that appears. There are shortcuts to saving a file in Nvu, as there are for the many commands given in this tutorial. I shall, however, leave the discovery of minor things like that to you and concentrate on the main task of creating a web page.

As mentioned earlier, when you use "File | Save", a dialog box will pop up, asking you to give a title to your page. Since this is the main page of your website, you should enter the name of your website here. For example, if you are publishing a personal web page, you might want to name your website "Shakespeare's Website" (without the quotes) if your name happens to be Shakespeare. If you are publishing a company web page, the site name should be your company's name, such as "XYZ Company" or the like.

Once you've finished with the title, click the OK button or simply hit the Enter key.

A new dialog box, prompting you for a filename, will appear. Navigate to a directory (ie, folder) on your computer where you want to save your page. Type "index.html" (without the quotes) into the file name part of the dialog box. Do not accept the default name given in the dialog box. Do not use another name. Do not use capital letters in the name (ie, uppercase). Most web hosts expect the main page of your website to be called "index.html". If you change it, you may find that your website does not work as you expect.

After you've saved the file, you will be returned to the Nvu main window. Look at the top of the window to the window's title bar. Notice that instead of the words "untitled", the title that you typed in earlier now appears in the window title bar.

Uploading or Publishing Your First Web Page

Before we proceed to polish the page so that it looks at least half-way decent, we need to publish the page to your web host. One reason we're going to do this now, even before we've finished the page, is that Nvu needs the information about your actual website's address (or URL) before it can correctly handle things like links and images on your web page. So even though the page is probably an embarrassment to you at this stage, please complete the following steps, or you will encounter problems later.

Don't worry about the page being so plain. If you've not advertised your website's address (URL) to anyone, no one will even know your site exists, so this preliminary version of your page will be seen by no one but you. People will not visit your site out of the blue just because you happened to sign up for a web hosting account today. It's not that easy to get visitors.

Another reason that you're publishing your page at this time is so that you can get familiar with both the major stages in the design of a web page. Once you get this hurdle out of the way, and you know how to get your web page from your computer into your web host's computer, you have mastered what is arguably the biggest technical challenge a newcomer is likely to face. Don't let this scare you though - it's actually quite easy!

To publish the page, go to "File | Publish" (ie, the "Publish" item on the "File" menu). A "Publish Page" dialog box will appear asking you for more details.

  • "Site Name" is the name that you want to give your website. Use the name that you gave to your website when asked for the title earlier (ie, "Shakespeare's Website" or "XYZ Company" or whatever). This name is only used by Composer internally, to refer to your site, but it's probably best to use the real name you ultimately wish to give to your site to minimize any confusion later.

  • The "HTTP address of your homepage" field specifies the actual web address (or URL) of your website. If you registered a domain name like "example.com" for your site, enter "http://www.example.com/" into this box. This field is required because Nvu will use this information to form links on your site. Be sure to enter the "http://" prefix as well.

  • "Publishing server" is a bit more complicated to explain. When you signed up for your web hosting account from a commercial web host, you would have been given a whole bunch of details by your web host. Among these is something known as your "FTP address". FTP, or File Transfer Protocol, is the usual means by which you transfer your web pages from your own computer to your web host's computer. Transferring your pages from your computer to your web host's computer is known as "publishing" or "uploading" your pages.

    For the purpose of this tutorial, I will assume that your web host told you that your FTP address is "ftp.example.com". You should substitute your real FTP address everytime you see "ftp.example.com" in the examples below.

    Before you enter that address though, you will need to know which directory (or folder) you need to put your web pages. Some web hosts require you to put your web pages in a directory named "www". Others require you to put it in a "public_html" directory. Still others say that you are to put your web pages into the default directory that you see when you connect by FTP. And so on. Find out the directory where you're supposed to upload your web pages to.

    Once you've got all the details, you're ready to form the address you have to enter into the "Publishing address" field.

    If your FTP address is "ftp.example.com", and the directory that you're supposed to upload to is "www", enter "ftp://ftp.example.com/www" here. Notice that you have prefixed "ftp://" to your FTP address ("ftp.example.com"), added a slash ("/") and followed it with your web directory name ("www"). If your web host tells you to simply upload it to the directory you are logged into when you connect by FTP, then just enter "ftp://ftp.example.com" here.

    If you happen to use the same web host as me , you will have to put "ftp://ftp.example.com/../www" into the field (where "example.com" should be replaced by your domain name). Note the presence of two full stops (periods), "..", in the example given.

  • The "User name" and "Password" fields in the dialog box refers to user name (or login name) and password that your web host assigned to you. It is needed so that Nvu can connect to your FTP account and upload (publish) your pages.

When you've finished completing the information, click the "Publish" button. Nvu will proceed to connect to your FTP account on your web host and upload your pages. There will be a dialog box that pops up to tell you it is uploading your page. The box will automatically disappear when Nvu has completed its task.

Testing the Web Page

Before you proceed further, you need to test the version of the web page you have uploaded. This way, you will know whether you've made any mistake when entering your details earlier.

Start up your browser. Type the URL (web address) of your website. This is the address that you typed into the "HTTP address" field earlier. For example, type "http://www.example.com" if that is your URL.

If you've entered the "publishing server" earlier correctly, you should see the page you created earlier in your web browser.

If you get an error like "No DNS for www.example.com" or "Domain not found", it probably means that your domain name has not yet propagated to your ISP. Put simply, this means that you probably only just bought your domain name. It takes time for a new domain name to be recognized across the world (usually 2 or more days), so it's possible that your ISP has not yet updated its name servers to recognize your new domain. Some web hosts give you a temporary address which you can use to access your website in meantime. If you have that, use the temporary address to check that your site has been uploaded properly. Otherwise, you'll just have to wait.

If you get an error like "404 File Not Found" or you get your web host's preinstalled default page, you may need to go back and check your "publishing server" field. You may have published your page to a location that is not recognized by the web server as the default page to show when only your domain name is entered.

You can change the settings that you have just entered by accessing the "Edit | Publishing Site Settings" menu. Then click the name of your website in the left pane, under "Publishing sites". One possibility for the page not showing is that you did not specify the correct directory on your web site to publish your index.html page to. A more remote possibility is that your web host requires that your page be named something other than "index.html". This is very rare nowadays, so explore this last possibility only when you've ruled out all others. At worse, ask your web host's support department or check their documentation for help.

If you get no errors at all, but see the page that you've designed earlier, congratulations! You've created and uploaded your first web page. It may be a rudimentary page but you have successfully walked through all the essential stages of designing and uploading a web page.

Monday, June 4, 2007

Logo Glossary

Abstract Symbol
Abstract symbols usually represent images in a stylized, simplified manner - sometimes with representational images that can be deciphered. The abstract symbol does not clearly refer to the organization it represents and will elicit associations only after the public has been exposed to it for a while. When a business concept is abstract or complex and the name is also non-descript, it most often calls for an abstract logo reflecting the most important attribute(s) of your business.

Alpha-Glyph
Also called a lettermark, an alpha-glyph is similar to a glyph, but uses a letter or letters from the name of a company to represent the company. (Honda, Accura, Mazda, and Hyundai.) Anagrams and monograms are glyphs.

Alphanumeric
An alphanumeric logo is the name of a company or brand spelled out, literally, with a unique typographic treatment that is unique unto the name itself and can therefore be trademarked and treated as a logo. ( Kellogg's, FedEx, Microsoft, Sony, Ford) Letter-spacing, color, font choice, word relationships and other factors play into the creation of an alphanumeric logo. Also referred to as a typographic symbol or wordmark.

Anagram
Literally, this means the letters of a word are read backwarrds. Can also refer to the change of one word into another by the transposition of letters. Often, the letters of a word read out of order to discover hidden meaning.

Brandmark
A simple but strong graphic symbol, often an abstract symbol, that complements an aspect of a business or service and represents a company by association.

Combination Mark
Combination marks are also referred to as iconic logotypes, or descriptive symbols . A combination mark generally combines a brandmark symbol with a wordmark.

Descriptive Symbol
A mark that relates a company's products or services representationally. This type of symbol works best when it suggests the character of the organization, rather than showing products. Also referred to as combination marks or iconic logotypes .

Glyph
A glyph is symbol, icon, pictograph, etc., that is used as a graphic representation of a company. Glyphs are most often used for secondary communication devices however, such as signs and instructional devices.

Icon
Refers to a mark without words that represents a company by association.

Iconic Logotype
Iconic logotypes are also referred to as combination marks or descriptive symbols. An iconic logotype generally combines a brandmark symbol with a wordmark.

Lettermark
Similar to a wordmark, a lettermark is a typographic symbol, usually involving initials or abbreviations. Monograms and anagrams are lettermarks. The representation of the letter(s) essentially become a symbol of the company. Also referred to as an alpha-glyph.

Lockup
A lockup is the final form of a logo with all of it's elements locked in their relative positions.

Logo
A logo is a graphical, illustrative or typographical representation of a company's identity. The word "logo" is short for "logotype."

Logotype
A logotype is a typographic symbol that is a powerful visual representation of a company and forms the basis of it's corporate identity. The word "logo" is short for "logotype," referring to a company signature or mark. It is a name, symbol or trademark designed for easy and definitive recognition. A logotype refers to a broad group of designs commonly used as corporate signatures including symbols, glyphs, logos, marks icons etc.

Mark
A sign made in lieu of a signature. A corporate logotype.

Monogram
A typographic symbol that is composed of one or more letters, typically the initials of a name devoid of any containing form.

Pictograph
A pictograph is a symbol that is used to wholly communicate a simple message without words, such as in traffic signs and restroom door signage.

RGB
The three colors of a monitor, Red, Green & Blue.

Signature
A distinctive mark indicating identity. A corporate logo.

Seal
A word, group of words or initials designed to fir within a form. A typographic symbol.

Symbol
Refers to a mark without words that represents a company by association.

Tradedress
Color(s) that are strategically selected to reflect the brand attributes of a company. The final colors applied to the lockup of the brandmark and typography ultimately define the trade dress of the logo.

Trademark
Any corporate mark, when registered and protected by law is referred to as a trademark.

Typographic Symbol
A typographic symbol is often text only with unique typographic treatments. Most often however, the company name is incorporated together with simple graphic treatments to create a clean, simple identity. The representation of the word essentially becomes a symbol of the company. Also referred to as alphanumeric or wordmark.

Wordmark
A wordmark is often text only with unique typographic treatments (Microsoft, Sears, Yahoo). Most often however, the company name is incorporated together with simple graphictreatments to create a clean, simple identity. The representation of the word essentially becomes a symbol of the company. Also referred to as alphanumeric or typographic symbol.