Florida Website Design and Marketing

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2010-05-01T21:50:00.001-07:00

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Hit Counters For Your Website (are useless)

2010-04-13T10:58:00.000-07:00

Well some of them are anyways. I recently had a potential client brag to me about how many "visitors" he had visiting his site.

At the time of this writing, his "visitors" had reached a whopping 30,863! Wow! Awesome right?

Well it would be if that number was accurate, but alas, that figure is WAY off.

Look folks, hit counters are useless, pointless, and unnecessary. Don't bother. The only thing they show you is how many times your page has been loaded.

"What do you mean dude?" Let me show you by example:

I created a copy of my homepage and installed a hit counter here: Copy of Home Page with Hit Counter

Go there and refresh / reload the page (F5 for my fellow shortcut keyboard junkies out there).

The number goes up each time you refresh the page! Basically, as one single user, you could theoretically refresh the page 100 times and the counter would appear as though 100 people have visited your site!

Now I hear some of you say "well that will make my site appear popular, thus giving my site credibility". To you I say "dude, there are about 100 other things that will increase the success of your website, hit counters make the site look tacky, and can distract your potential customers/clients from your website's overall objective (i.e. clicking the checkout button, of filling out an important form)".

Now I'm NOT saying that numbers are not important. However, how many times your page is viewed (refreshed or reloaded) is much less important than statistics such as where people are coming from, what search terms they are using to arrive at your site, how many UNIQUE visitors are going to your site, and even what page they are leaving on!

Look into installing practical statistic keeping software. I have been using statcounter.com and I LOVE it. It's free. Not only does it impress the hell out of my clients, but the information is actually USEFUL when it comes to tweaking the sites pages so that the website makes more money!

google analytics is probably the most popular utility although I have not used it much. I recently installed both on a website so that I can compare the accuracy of the numbers, but I will save my comparison analysis for another blog!

What is the best size to make a website?

2010-02-08T09:50:00.000-08:00

As of 2010, the best size to design a website would be 975px wide. As far as height, I would put your most important content no lower than 530px which is "above the fold", or the portion that can be viewed without scrolling down.

Here is why:

To date, the most popular screen resolution is 1024px wide by 768px tall. Keep in mind that this information may be out of date in as little as 1 or 2 years.

As you have probably already noticed, when you open a browser window, you immediately lose a sizable amount of height due to the title bar, the menu, navigation buttons, tabs, and, often times extra toolbars such as google's or yahoo's search bar. In my former career as a computer repair technician, it was VERY common to see one or 2 extra toolbars in addition to the default functions located at the top of popular browsers. The most common anti virus programs like to install their own toolbars at the top of Internet Explorer, and have all too many times seen yahoo's toolbar being "piggy-backed" on top of several software applications. Then, of course on the right side you almost always have a scroll bar which also removes some width from your common 1024x768 screen resolution

While visiting family, I found that the computer they used appeared to be a perfect representation of what I thought would be your average novice to medium tech savvy person's computer. I noticed that almost every website I visited was just a little bit too wide! As most web designers know, having a horizontal scroll bar is a big no-no! I created this website to measure screen resolution of a web browser so that I could see how much "screen real-estate" their browser contained. I was VERY surprised to find how little space there was!

Using the link above, the red box in the upper left corner shows you where a web page would "start". When I opened it in Mozilla Firefox, I noticed that it immediately moves a web page about 5 pixels down and 5 pixels to the left.

I checked on my laptop, which is currently set at 1440px by 900px resolution and I have about 1400px by only 725px using my browser! And this is with a minimum of toolbars and functions opened!

Anywho, I hope this is of use to someone else besides myself.

Keywords for Search Results

2010-01-23T12:43:00.000-08:00

I was emailing a potential client today on the subject of keywords for search results. This is just one branch of what is called SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

One thing that I thought I should mention to everyone out there, is that keyword SEO is mainly for sites that contain products or services that a substantial number of consumers are already searching for on google. Put simply: if your website offers a product or service that is relatively new and/or very few people know about, people will not be searching for it on google! If this is the case, you need to either explore other options (going viral on facebook or youtube and/or blogging), OR optimize your site for something similar.

For example, I have a local client that offers an less expensive alternative to marble sinks. Let's say the product is called "Widget Sinks" and his site is "widgetsinks.com". We did a quick keyword analysis and found that hardly anyone was searching on google for "Widget Sinks", and that there were several thousand people a day searching for "Pensacola Marble Sinks". Since nobody knows about his product, we have to develop his site around the key phrase "Pensacola Marble Sinks", so that those searching for the real, more expensive marble sinks will stumble upon his site!

I hope this helps someone!

Customizing Your Twitter Page Background

2009-12-22T15:25:00.000-08:00

Many people today are using Twitter for personal use, business, or both. When you first sign up for Twitter you are given the standard baby-blue background that is generic and many people use. This boring look is common, but there is something you can do about it, if you haven't already figured it out.

In the Twitter settings inside your account you can select from a variety of pre-defined backgrounds. This will help spruce up your Twitter page. You can also upload your own design to give it a unique look or match it to your existing business colors and logo. This will help with branding.

The way you do this is really simple. First login to your Twitter account. Next click on "settings" at the top right corner of the page. Once you are on the settings page then click on "design". From the design page you'll be able to select a new "theme" for your page.

There are several different designs for you to choose from. If you don't like the ones provided, you can upload your own. To do this, scroll to the bottom of the "design" page right below the themes. Click on "change background image". From there you can upload a picture from your computer.

Here's an example of a custom background that Fritz did for my SEO Company and I uploaded directly to my Twitter page : FloridaSEOPro

Also right next to the "change background image" link is a link that says "change colors". This is where you can choose different colors to your current theme or new theme selected. The colors you can change on your Twitter page are the color of the background, color of links, text, sidebar, and sidebar border. Of course if you upload your own custom background, then not all these colors can be modified.

Well, there you have it. The simple way to create or enhance your custom Twitter page. If you would like to have your own unique Twitter background designed for your business or just for personal use, please contact us. We can create a nice design or background image that you can use for your Twitter page.

Scott
Website Design in Pensacola

Horizontal Menu Displaying Vertical In IE

2009-12-14T20:02:00.000-08:00

I had a fun website design issue with HTML and CSS today. Well it really wasn't the HTML at all, it was the CSS. I recently changed the menu on my Florida SEO site, to a horizontal drop-down menu using CSS. Well I though everything was fine & dandy until Fritz noticed a problem.

You see I only checked my site using Firefox 3.5, I made a rookie mistake of not checking it in Internet Explorer (IE) which is very important to do. Sometimes us people in the tech world forget that around 80% of normal people still use Explorer and not Firefox! That's why Fritz is the design expert and I stick with SEO mostly.

In Internet Explorer 7, my horizontal drop-down menu that looked so good in Firefox, was vertical! In Explorer 8 it was horizontal but the longer titled list items links were running into an extra line and creating an extra box which made it look bad. After doing a couple of small revisions to the CSS stylesheet the problems were fixed and the menu once again looked good, except this time it looks good in the past and recent versions of both Firefox and Explorer!

Because older version of IE and Firefox only accept display:inline-block only on elements with a natural display:inline, this was causing the issues. All I had to do to edit the stylesheet was the following:

ul.nav,
.nav ul{
left:0;
top:23;}

added to
ul.nav>li{
float:left;
margin-right:4px;}

Of course, your code will vary depending on several factors..and this is not the whole code on the stylesheet items, just what I had to add to them. CSS and stylesheets are great for website design, but there is a little learning curve. However, once you learn it and apply it to your website, it is great. However i think I'll stick to my seo duties and let Fritz handle the design more!

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

Christmas Time and Business Offers

2009-12-11T13:53:00.000-08:00

While Christmas is supposed to be about giving and sharing time with family, business take full advantage of the holiday season to create promotional offers. I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with that, as a matter of fact if you are in business you may as well use this time as an opportunity to increase sales through some kind of Christmas special or sale.

I fully support the true meaning of Christmas and how things use to be before our commercial industry took it over. I don't see any harm in businesses using the holiday season to promote their products and services as long as individuals we still remember what the season is about.

As a matter of fact, let me take this opportunity to present our Christmas Season special! Right now we are offering 15% Off any website service that we provide from now until January 15th, 2010. Okay, didn't you see that one coming a mile away? Offers like this are all over the place and why not use the discount or savings if you were already looking for the service anyway?

Just make sure to mention to us that you read this blog article and the savings when purchasing from us and we'll be glad to honor the discount. We wish everybody a very happy holiday season. We'll still be posting blogs between now and Christmas, but the holiday spirit is out in full effect today and this topic seemed appropriate.

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

HTML Design Software Programs

2009-12-03T20:48:00.000-08:00

If you are trying to design your own website there are several different software programs that you can use to build a site from scratch. You don't even have to know HTML (hyper text markup language) to build your own site, but the software will write the HTML code for you. While learning HTML is not a requirement to use these software programs, learning it will be highly beneficial to understanding how your website works and how to edit it easier in the future.

One of the oldest HTML programs out there was made by Microsoft and is called 'Front Page'. They discontinued their software in late 2006, but several people have old versions that they still use to this day. Front Page 98 and Front Page 2003 were very popular programs that were used to build websites. When Microsoft discontinued Front Page they announced the then future release of 'Office Sharepoint Designer 2007' and 'Expression Web'. One downside to Front Page and many other HTML software programs is their tendency to add extra, unneeded code which creates larger than normal file sizes.

Dreamweaver is another very popular design tool used to build very nice websites. Dreamweaver is very powerful software that helps create CSS stylesheets and Java Script to aid in the design process. While you don't need to understand exactly how CSS, Java, and HTML work to use this program, again it does help to have a basic understanding. There are several free tutorials online to introduce yourself to these website, computer languages used to design websites.

Dreamweaver and other similar programs can cost a couple hundred dollars or more. If you are in need of free web design software, then just do a Google search (or your favorite search engine) for "Free HTML editor" or "Free HTML software". You will find several good free options, although you may have limited capability or have a branded logo stuck on your web pages that you don't want. One good free website design software that I've used before is called "Page Breeze". I find the code produced by Page Breeze is a lot cleaner than Front Page and others.

These types of software programs are also known as 'WYSIWYG' (what you see is what you get). Basically if you can use Microsoft Word, then you can use a WYSIWYG program to build your own website. However there is a learning curve and not everything will go perfect. You may experience complications with your design, but that is all part of the learning process.

At Teknek we do the coding for most our websites from scratch using Notepad. This is the cleanest way to design browser friendly sites that load quick without bogging down your computer with unnecessarily large file sizes. If you are just doing a simple site for yourself and family, then one of these programs may be a good way to go. When hiring a designer to build a website, find out how they do their coding. If they depend heavily on and HTML editor or software program, you may want to ask if they 'clean up the code'. If not, then you may not want to hire them. It is best to have your website design done by someone who can either write the code from scratch or not be too dependent on programs.

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

Email TIp: Add Hotmail Account to Thunderbird, the easy way

2009-11-28T22:23:00.000-08:00

There IS an addon called webmail that will do the trick but I wanted to set it up without. After an hour of trying, (including searching all over the internet), I have found the solution of how to set up hotmail on thunderbird. Enjoy:

Account name: youremailaddess@hotmail.com

Your name: whatever you want
email address: (duh!)
server name: pop3.live.com
port: 995
username: also the email address
Security settings -
SSL and make sure "use secure connection" is unchecked

At the bottom left of thunderbird's account settings add a new outgoing server, the settings of which are below:

description: something easily recognizable
server name: smtp.live.com
port: 25

security and authentication:
username and password unchecked

use secure connection:
TLS, if available

Make sure you go back to the hotmail account you set up and change your outgoing server to the outgoing account.

When I first attempted to set it up I was getting the following message: "sending of password did not succeed. mail server pop3.live.com responded authentication failed". I'm not sure what I had wrong so I deleted the account and started over. This is mainly for ME to find later being that I had so much trouble finding the solution on the internet. I hope someone else finds this useful! Let me know if I'm missing anything.

Pop3 hotmail settings for thunderbird on Windows Live Help website

Fritz
http://teknekwebservices.com/

Web Design and Turkey Day

2009-11-27T10:28:00.000-08:00

So, we finally took a break for web design yesterday to celebrate Thanksgiving. Instead of doing the traditional turkey day feast at home or a family member's house, we went to a place called "Harbor Docks" in Destin, Florida. The Habitat For Humanity did an excellent job of providing great food for everyone and did not charge a set fee, just accepted donations.

I think this was a great idea for multiple reasons. First of all it helped raise money for a good cause. Secondly we had no mess to clean up, that's a big change from the normal Thanksgiving routine! Even though this sort of breaks away from tradition, sometimes it is time for a change.

We have several things to be thankful for in our lives and yesterday was a great day to reflect on that. Of course, we should constantly give thanks for our blessings, not just one day a year. Most of us in this country are blessed with so many things that we take for granted. Even those with lower incomes have much more than some people in other countries.

We at Teknek hope that everyone has a great holiday weekend. We are work-a-holics here and it is hard to even take a break from website design for one day, but that is because it is our passion. When you are passionate about something, it shows in your work. When you work for yourself or run a business you pretty much never get a day off. However, we are very thankful for everything that we have been blessed with.

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

Estimate Value Of Website

2009-11-25T20:44:00.000-08:00

So today I messed around with trying to find a site to evaluate the true value of a website. I found several different tools to help calculate this value. What I found is that these tools are nice in theory, but there are just too many factors that are not being taken into consideration on each tool that I tried. This makes for a very bad or inaccurate estimate on the value of the site.

Other than the tools, I found a couple of formulas that seem to beat out each tool that I tried. The basic info that I found to be the most helpful and correct in determining value was to take an average of the last three years profit and multiply that number by 3. So for example, let's say your average profit for the past three years was $31,000 per year. Your business or website's potential value is $93,000. A potential investor could make their money back in about 3 years, or most likely sooner if the business is improved and 'tweaked' to perfection.

Another few sources use the average profit multiplied by 2.5, or even up to ten times (10X) the gross profit! Check out this site for a few examples: Entrepreneurs-Journey. This site contains a very good article, as well as several good points about before, during, and after the sale of your website. It talks about additional things to consider such as web hosting, training the new owners, the financial transaction ( I recommend Escrow.com), and other information about the website sale.

Evaluating the value of a website that actually makes profit is similar to evaluating the price of a brick and mortar business. Cash flow and profit are the most important things. Nobody wants to buy a business in debt or without positive cash-flow. People want to buy a business that works. Of course, who would want to buy a job?

I found myself determining the value of one of my websites today for a potential buyer and in the process discovered a few things. One of those things is that I found that I am more emotionally attached to that website than I ever realized. While the money is enticing, it is hard to put a monetary value on the blood, sweat, and tears put into something. But sometimes you have to know when to let go and the time seems right for me on this particular site that I'm talking about. Sorry for being so cryptic here, I just want to keep the identity of the site I'm referring to hush-hush for now.

Those so-called website evaluation tools that I found are mainly based on Alexa rank and back-links, but take into consideration sales from products or ebooks, or anything like ad revenue from Google Adsense. This flaw provides for huge discrepancies in either under-valuing or over-valuing websites. But, they can be fun tools to mess with.

If you are trying to discover the true value of a website, you need to crunch the numbers yourself and you need to cold hard facts to do so. Even that formula is slightly flawed, especially when using the prior two years numbers when the economy has gone down so much. I expect the sales for next few years to climb back up and beyond they were back in 2006 & 2007. If you need help determining the value of a website, feel free to contact us.

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

Website Design Tip: Firebug is awesome

2009-11-24T20:26:00.000-08:00

I somehow stumbled on to an amazing firefox addon called firebug. This addon is a web designers dream! I have not yet unlocked all of its amazing features, however, there are a couple/few features that have already saved me time and headache!

Once it is installed, you can pull it up with the F12 key. Although it is useful for inspecting code on other peoples websites, I have so far found its usefulness in inspecting websites that I am designing.

With firebug open you can press Ctrl + Shift + C. This is where magical things happen. Highlight any part of your website, and firebug automatically highlights the corresponding code! If you click on a part of the webpage, firebug will keep the corresponding code highlighted, until you activate Ctrl + Shift + C again (I believe its technically called the "Inspect Element" tool).

This is especially useful for troubleshooting. Once a piece of code is highlighted, you can easily view which parts of your style sheet are affecting it! I had some fonts that were not behaving properly on a website. I was easily able to see that this was because of an inherited style from a parent element! It also shows you which rules are canceled out from nested divs and such.

You can also mouse over divs within your code and the webpage highlights the corresponding section, showing padding as well as margins! Dang I can't wait to unlock more of this addons features....

Fritz
Pensacola Website Design

SEO Friendly Shopping Cart Software

2009-11-23T13:58:00.000-08:00

What do you think the most seo friendly shopping cart software is? There are a ton of choices out there, but we've found only two that match up to our rigid quality criteria. They are Volusion.com and Sunshop by Turnkey Web Tools. Both of these software programs are geared toward friendly search engine optimization, something that not all programs of this type have taken into consideration.

PHP is a very good programming language for shopping cart software and allows for great flexibility and options when running any kind of e-commerce website. Sure, there are a ton of other software programs out there for you to choose from and there may be some that even match up to the capability and user-friendly feel of these two programs, but we have not found them yet.

When selecting a shopping cart software to use for your website you want to make sure that you have flexibility in payment options. You want to make sure that you can connect to Internet Payment Gateways that allow you to accept all credit card, debit card, and ACH bank draft payments, along with Paypal as well. Many people use Paypal because they don't want to expose their credit card number to multiple sites and they feel secure with Paypal because of their reputation.

No matter how you look at it, you need to make sure that your web pages are designed so that they can be picked up and found by the search engines, basically seo-friendly. If you don't you may find yourself spending a ton of money and time for a fancy site that nobody can find. There are other marketing methods other than seo, but a customer finding your site through the search engines is one of the best ways to gain a person who is ready to buy.

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

A Visit From My Uncle The Search Engine Guru

2009-11-21T19:58:00.000-08:00

Tonight my Uncle Tommy (the search engine guru) and Cousin Cherri just drove into town here near Fort Walton Beach, Florida all the way from New Haven Connecticut! They just spent two days in a car, with 23 actual driving hours. My uncle said that would have flown, but he hasn't gone on a road trip in a long time, however he said this one was enough to remind him to fly next time.

Tommy started and SEO firm, Keyword Perfomance back in late 2003 or early 2004 and has acceled in his chosen carrear. I'm not at liberty to discuss certain matters, but I will say that the man knows his SEO and I am proud to be his nephew. I really look up to him. He is a self-taught man just like myself. But any "self-taught" man knows that he learns from everyone he possibly can around him and I am not exception.

I'm probably going to bug the hell out of Tommy while he's on vacation here by picking his brain and get every possible seo tip from him that I can! I know he is supposed to be on vacation and away from work, but I just can't help but to talk about search engine optmization with him. He's a work-a-holic much like myself, so I'm sure he won't mind too much.

I am following in Tommy's footsteps as I aspire to understand and dominate the search engine's as he does. I also plan to do as much SEO business as he is currently doing within the next couple of years. Until I am at the level he is at I will be working with the smaller companies and one man businesses with smaller budgets. Even once our business, Teknek Web Services, gets to the level of Keyword Performance, we will probably always make some room for the little guy and smaller businesses because we know the pain and feel the struggles that all smaller busineses deal with.

So if you want to take advantage of a growing SEO company and get the top level services that Fortune 500 companies get, do business with us here at Teknek. We have the personal knowledge and top level contacts to produce big results for your business and your website.

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

The Difference Between SEO and SEM

2009-11-20T05:04:00.000-08:00

If you have been Internet marketing for any period of time or if you've read any of my blog articles than I'm sure you know that SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization". However, another term that I haven't really mentioned that much is "Search Engine Marketing". You may be thinking to yourself, "aren't these two the same thing?". My answer is "NO, they are not." So what exactly is the difference between SEO and SEM?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of adjusting your site's content, code, and getting links to help increase your natural search engine results. Search engine marketing (SEM) deals mainly with the pay-per-click side of search engines and ad buying in general. Pay per click is where you pay a certain amount of money for each click generated through an ad or link to your website.

Both have their advantages and disadvantages. With SEM you can literally get your website on the first page of search engine results within minutes of starting your campaign. With SEO the process can take several months before you start seeing any results. But the downside the SEM and PPC is that you are going to have to pay for every single click you receive from these sponsored listings. With SEO, once you get to the top, every click that comes through those links are FREE!

A complete marketing strategy normally includes a balance of both SEO and SEM. Using pay per click methods can be amazing, but if not done properly you can loose a lot of money very quickly. Dollar for dollar I still feel the SEO is the best of these two. Even if you have to spend a couple thousand dollars and several months waiting to get your site ranked high, once you do you will reap the benefits for a long time to come. With SEM, once you quit paying your results are gone. You could easily spend up a couple thousand dollars in no time with PPC depending on your market.

Long term usually beats short term. One thing that I do like PPC for is to test out different landing pages. I don't mean landing pages in the 'old-way' with hardly any content and no where to go except one link, I mean a quality landing page that is part of a complete site (you don't want to suffer the dreaded Google Slap.) By utilizing SEM and PPC you can see which key-phrases and pages work the best to maximize your ROI (return on investment) and then spend your time or money focusing on natural SEO for key-phrases and pages that work!

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

Graphics Design: Layer Mask Basics - Prevent Painting on an Image Layer

2009-11-19T05:03:00.000-08:00

If you know anything about Photoshop, then you’ve at least HEARD about layer masks and how they are used hide or show certain parts of an image.

Being that I was self taught, it took me a long time to figure out the importance of using layer masks versus erasing part of the layer. (Keep in mind that I am extremely slow, haha, so maybe you have/will figure out layer masks sooner than I did)

You see, when you erase parts of an image, followed by 100 other steps, and then you realize "shoot, I want part of that layer back but I erased it", well folks, you are out of luck! The “undo button” (my favorite button in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE) will only go back a certain amount of steps! The only way to get part of the layer back is to reinsert the original layer into your layers palette, and start all over from scratch!

Using a layer mask is sort of like putting a piece of transparent film over the top of an expensive painting. When you want to hide a part of the expensive painting without DESTROYING it in the process, you can take a black dry erase marker and scribble on that piece of transparent film that is sitting on top of it, thus hiding part of the image beneath it. Since you used a dry erase marker, you can easily remove the black if you decide you don't like it.

The same is true with layer masks. When you click the layer mask button, the first thing you see is a white mask, sitting next to your image. This indicates that no part of that layer is hidden. To "erase" a part of the image, make sure the mask is selected, select the brush tool, make sure you have black as your color, and "paint" on the canvas to remove parts of your layer. You can ONLY use black, white, or shades of gray on a layer mask. Shades of gray only PARTLY hide a layer. For the sake of this article, we’ll just stick to black and white. The image below shows an example of an alien’s eyes that have been “erased”. I simply painted black onto the layer mask, which tells photoshop, “hey! Make the alien’s eyes transparent! Hide that part of the layer!”

But, OH NO! Hours later, I realized that I only wanted ONE of his eyes transparent, not both! That’s an easy fix! Since I used what we call “non-destructive” editing, I am able to go back and show his blue eye again! (we could also refer to this as UN-erasing his eye, which I usually do call it that because it sounds way cooler). Simply click the little double arrow, which switches your primary color from black to white, make sure the layer mask is still selected (not the image itself! I'll explain why later) and paint over his eye to reveal the original portion of the image! Below is an example. As you can see, I missed a spot!

Let me go back and make both eyes transparent again for the project I’m working on. Wait! What happened?!! Drats! Something’s not right! What’d I do? I’ll tell you what I did, the same thing I’ve done over 350 times!

As you can see from the thumbnail in the layers palette, the image thumbnail is selected instead of the layer mask, and I accidentally PAINTED HIS EYE RED instead of painting the layer mask BLACK!

It’s hard to see with a red background. Here, let me remove the red background, and put a green background to show you what I mean:

“What happened Fritz? I thought you were the man?”
When you select the layer mask, your foreground and background colors automatically switch to black, white, or shades of gray since a layer masks purpose is to show or hide parts of the image, NOT to color them!

When you select the image itself, instead of the layer mask, the foreground and background colors go back to what you had originally chosen, in this case it was red and white, because I had previously created a red layer to help me see the layer mask I was creating.

Since I preach and practice non-destructive editing, this will not work, because I just destroyed the image by painting red on it!
So, how do I prevent this from happening EVER AGAIN? The answer is simple, it’s called LOCK IMAGE PIXELS! WOOHOO! (insert noisemaker sounds and confetti here). With lock image pixels, I am able to move the entire layer around wherever I want, and transform it, but not to paint on it! The best part, is that lock image pixels ONLY locks the image and NOT the layer mask, so I can paint on the layer mask to my hearts content!

Try it for yourself, lock the image pixels of one of your layers and then try to paint on it, I DARE YOU!!!! You get a message saying “Could not use the brush tool because the layer is locked.” Right? RIGHT? HA! I knew it!

Now, I don’t have to worry about painting all over my image when I’m just trying paint on the layer mask! (insert heavenly sound of angels here)

Fritz
Pensacola Website Design

The Struggles Of a New Internet Business

2009-11-18T05:13:00.000-08:00

Starting a new business can be a very rewarding task. It can also be a very difficult process to get going, especially in a competitive market like website design and Internet marketing. We offer more than one service, which is good because it leaves more options available, but we make sure that we only offer the services that we are best at. Still even with more than one service being offered, the struggle of getting a good client base established can be a frustrating process.

Even though our business is new, we are not new to the business. Fritz and I have about ten years of experience each in our respective fields. We actually do currently have a lot of website design work because everybody wants a website, but the marketing side of the business is a little slow because not everybody realizes that they need marketing. It's only a matter of time before those with new websites realize that just designing a site, getting a hosting plan, and throwing that site up on a server is just not enough.

Most people in Internet businesses start in a similar way. They focus all their energy and attention on the design of the website. They become so engrossed in the design, look, and feel of the site that they either forget about, or put off the website marketing. I hate to upset all you designers out there, including my partner, but SEO and marketing a website is probably the most important part! Okay, some people may disagree with that statement, but think about it for a minute.

You can have the biggest, flashiest, most beautiful website in the world, but if people can't find it it's useless! I believe my partner Fritz said something about how it's like building a huge, fancy gas station in the middle of the desert with no cars and no roads little to it! There are several other metaphors that I've read on this topic, but they all boil down to the same point. The point is without proper website marketing, you are doomed to fail.

On the other hand you could have an ugly looking site that is poorly designed, poorly laid out, but if it is properly optimized your website could be flooded with traffic and sales. Google-bot and the other search engine robots don't care about how your site looks aesthetically. They care about the coding of the site, the content in that site, high quality links, and several other factors that have nothing to do with beauty. In business what matters at the end of the day is sales.

Of course we strive to attain a balance between 'beauty' and 'brawn'. I'm using 'brawn' to refer to the positive optimization or the 'muscles' of the site. The 'beauty' of the site is the design layout, the color scheme, the graphics, the navigation, and the overall 'feel' of the website. The end goal is to have a website that is has a professional appearance, is easy to navigate, and ranks well for its' important keywords or key-phrases rather.

We anticipate to have a steadily increasing amount of marketing work as our business matures. Many businesses struggle in their beginning, but those struggles don't have to last long. In this economy some businesses may have a harder or slower time getting off the ground than normal. However, in the long run determination, perseverance, and hard work will always conquer no matter what the circumstances.

There are always going to be things that are out of our direct control, so it is best to not worry about those things. Focus on what we can control and let everything else fall in place. This is not my first business and probably won't be my last. I have had past success and past failure, but I'm not afraid to admit that. We all learn as we go and it is the failures that teach us the most sometimes.

If you are struggling with a new Internet business or any business for that matter, remember that you are not alone. Your hard work will pay off if you stick to it. The biggest mistake most people make is giving up too early. They start out motivated and let that motivation slowly slip as time takes its' toll and the sales are few and far in-between. I urge all you other entrepreneurs out there to keep at it and follow your dreams! No one can stop you, except for you. If you ever need some business advice or just a fellow entrepreneur to talk with, our lines of communication are wide open. Good luck!

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

Professional SEO Consultant

2009-11-17T05:27:00.000-08:00

If you are one of those people who like to "get your hands dirty" so-to-speak, then you may be interested in doing your own search engine optimization. While SEO is a combination of art & science, it is a topic than can be learned by those willing to spend the time and hard work. If you do decide to do your own search engine optimization, than I recommend at least getting some advice from a professional SEO consultant.

SEO consulting has become increasingly popular over the last few years due to the increased demand in Internet Marketing and online business and in general. An SEO consultant can give you as little or as much advice as you require in order to do your own natural search marketing. Some companies charge by the hour for this service, while others charge a flat rate. No matter how they charge, a professional is normally worth they money.

We like to do a custom quote for each project as every individual situation tends to be a little different. Each market, website, and circumstance tends to be unique and requires a planned approach in order to be efficient and meet your goals. Also, we understand that not everyone needs the same level of help or attention. You may be up to speed on most search engine topics and only require very specific information to help improve your current website rankings.

On the other hand, you may be brand new at marketing your website and require a full "hands on" approach that starts with the very basics of SEO. No matter what your unique situation may be, we are willing to work with you. No job is too big or too small for us at Teknek Web Services. We are ready and willing to work for a Fortune 500 company selling stock, or for the little old lady next door selling yarn.

Could you use a little help with SEO? How well is your website ranked in the search engines? Please feel free to contact us at anytime to discuss your particular website marketing needs. This may sound a little cliché, but here at Teknek Web Services we do what we love and we love what we do. Our passion shows in our work and we'd love for you to benefit from our knowledge and energy. Give us a call or fill out our contact form.

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

Average SEO Prices

2009-11-16T06:07:00.000-08:00

Doing business on the Internet has several advantages over "brick and mortar" businesses. One of these advantages is the ability to quickly compare the prices and services of your main competitors. We offer several website services, with one of the most important ones being seo (search engine optimization.) To keep our prices within the industry standard, we routinely check around to stay current on the average seo prices that professionals are charging.

There are several different aspects to an seo project and "one size fits all" is definitely not applicable to this industry. Many factors determine the amount of time and hard work that it will take to properly optimize a website and get it to the top of Google and other search engines. We occasionally get asked why we do not post prices on our website and the reason is because of the uniqueness of each project.

However you do need a baseline or a start for comparison, especially if you are new to purchasing seo services. Many companies make you sign a 6 month contract minimum and this is because proper seo takes time and there is no "overnight solution" (except for PPC). A lot of the big optimization companies charge prices so high, that they are basically refusing to work with the "little guy." It is not uncommon to see prices of $500 - $1,000 per hour or $3,000 per month with a minimum 6 month contract. We started this business with the "little guy" in mind so that they can have a chance to succeed too, so I can assure you that our prices will blow these guys out of the water, while still achieving the same results!

We do business a little bit differently than the norm. We don't require an upfront contract. We normally work on a one-time upfront fee and than after you see the results that we get for your business, we'll offer the monthly maintenance contract to keep your listings strong and at the top. Customers seem to be very comfortable with this pricing model as they are not committed to a strict contract from the very beginning...if they don't like what we do, they are not obligated to stay. However, we always over-deliver on what we promise because we want to keep you as a customer.

I actually read a nice article about average seo pricing at:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-pricing-costs-what-should-you-charge-how-much-should-you-pay
It seems as if we are on the "low end" of his pricing structure and even a little lower in some situations. As I said before, we customize bids because of how unique each situation, market, and website may be.

When you hire us to do a website marketing / seo project we are dedicated to providing you with personal service and the best results possible. We normally only focus on one main SEO project at a time, at the beginning phase of a project a time so that we can dedicate our full resources to getting the website off the ground and listed in the search results. One of the things that makes us so successful in website marketing, design, and all the services we offer is that we are doing what we love. This really doesn't even feel like work most of the time (don't tell my wife that because she may get jealous.)

When you hire a company it is important that you feel comfortable with them. We pride ourselves in providing big company results, at small company pricing. Won't you appreciate knowing that the guys working on your website and search engine results love what they are doing? You can be assured that we are putting our whole heart and soul into each project that we take on. We will do so while staying within or lower than average seo prices!

With that being said, we don't take every project that comes our way. We always do a free analysis, or free E-quote to determine if we can and want to work on a particular project. If we don't truly believe we can over-deliver on the results promised to you, we just won't take the job. This way you know that if we take your project, we are doing so with full faith in our abilities to give you the results that you need.

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

Elmer's Glue & Website Marketing

2009-11-15T09:25:00.000-08:00

So, my wife started a new night job recently where she is working until 6am in the morning. She gets home around 6:30AM and the kids were still asleep as was I when she got here this Sunday morning. I got up, made the kids something to eat and then went upstairs to check emails and do my daily website marketing routine for my websites.

Well, when I decided to take a break, (which just so happened to be when my 7 year old son was yelling out something) I came downstairs to find glue all over my 42" plasma TV! Well, what happened is that my 3 year old son found a bottle of good old Elmer's Glue and decided to smear it all over the TV and furniture around the living room! Good times!

My wife is gonna freak when she wakes up! I just spent the last hour cleaning up the mess (yes it has taken me that long.) I learned that on some surfaces it is easier to let the glue dry and then peel it off, instead of smearing around wet glue, a little tip I learned from doing a search on Google and thank God it appears as if I'm not the first one to experience this.

I sure love me kids, but it's easy to freak out during moments like this! But I've got to take a step back and realize that the little man is only 3. I shouldn't have left him by himself long enough to do that! I thought my 7 year old and him would stay entertained with the activities I started them on (no those activities had nothing to do with glue) but he's only 7, I can't blame him.

Instead of getting all upset, I did calm down and then explain to the kids why this in not good behavior! I obviously have to take the responsibility here because it happened on my watch. Lesson learned...I cannot yet leave the kids alone for too long and be upstairs working...I need to transfer my website marketing work to my laptop and hang out around the kids so that this kind of craziness doesn't happen again! I sure am getting my payback from the things I did to my parents!

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

“How Much Does A Website Cost?”

2009-11-14T06:33:00.000-08:00

Well Ladies and Gentlemen,

You will be happy to know that this is my very first blog! YAY! (Insert sound of party noise makers here)

What topic shall I choose?
My first instinct was to write at lengths about one of the many things you can do to frustrate your graphics designer, however, I will save a whining and moaning blog for another time!

“How Much Does A Website Cost?”

What a great start because this is the first question I get asked when I tell people that I design websites.

Let me tell you, they cost EXACTLY $738.97! ha! No, but seriously: asking how much a website costs is like asking how much a car costs.
By that I mean, you can buy a car for $200, or you can buy a car for $2,000,000!

I typically answer this question with SEVERAL questions, partly because I need to know, mainly because it annoys the heck out of people! muahaha

1) What is the purpose of your website?
Do you intend for people to call you or email you after browsing your site? Is it just to share information? Without a purpose, your website will just end up floating around in some solitary corner of cyberspace, not fulfilling it's destiny!

2) Are there other websites on the net somewhere related to what you have in mind?
There is nothing wrong with getting inspiration from others! In the end, your site will have all of the elements you want, yet it will look completely different than anything else and be its OWN UNIQUE SITE! I like to hear things like: “I want the top of my site to be kind of like blabla.com, but I like how gluggalug.com put a flash banner on the right, oh and piccapicca.com has a good color scheme”. This is a GREAT start for your web designer. This will set them on the right track, right frame of mind, and “driving” in the right direction.

3) How many pages?
This question is tricky for those who are not computer savvy. Optimally, you will have a nice neat flow chart or something very organized showing which links you want on what pages. I have yet to see this! (Even in creating our own website!) The best advice I can give here is refer to #1; find a site that has similar navigation to what you have in mind.

4) What features are you looking for?
Shopping Cart? More money. Interactive features? More money. Crazy custom flash animations? You guessed it! More money!

5) How much are you willing to spend?
Using this figure, we can either try to squeeze in as much of your website’s features into the budget as possible or recommend possible additions that may help.

In short, make sure you have your stuff together before you ask this question!

Fritz
Pensacola Website Design

Difference Between Direct Mail and Bulk Mail

2009-11-13T21:07:00.000-08:00

Every so often I have someone ask me, "so what's the difference between direct mail and bulk mail?" Well, the answer to that is "Nothing Really." The two terms are pretty much synonymous. Different industries may use one of the two terms as opposed to the other, but in the end they both describe the same thing.

Both of these terms mean the process of sending something like a brochure or advertisement directly to a prospective customer. This is done in "bulk" where a business will mail out thousands, tens of thousands, or even more quantity in order to get a profitable response. The smallest a direct mail campaign will be is usually 500 to 1,000 minimum. Many direct mail campaigns are done very inefficiently and could easily be improved or tweaked with just a few minor changes in the beginning.

A lot of big companies approach bulk mail with the main objective of sheer quantity. An example would be a company like Home Depot doing a mail-out to every homeowner in the zip code 32501 (just an example). Let's say they mail about 50,000 advertisements at the cost of $0.39 per mail piece. That would cost them approximately $19,500. If just 1% of customer respond to the ad and buy $100 worth of merchandise, they just created $50,000 in sales (500 people X $100). Please don't hold me to these numbers, they are strictly for an example.

If the results in the above actually happened, Home Depot would have just created $30,500 in net profit from the one direct or bulk mail campaign! You are probably sitting here thinking something like "That's great for Home Depot, but I can't afford $20,000 in mail!" Do not worry, you don't have to spend $20,000 to do a direct mail campaign. Depending on your market, one can be done for as little as $500.

Several different factors dictate the prices such as design cost, printing cost and actual USPS mailing cost. You may have thought I was crazy for putting only $0.39 for the total cost of one mail piece because the cost of a stamp is more than that, but bulk mailers actually get a discount and do not pay the full price of a regular stamp!

My last personal experience with bulk mail was very successful. I ran a landscape irrigation company and I spent about $1,200 and made $7,000 in sales. I gained 20 (twenty) new yearly customers at $350 per year from a mailing of about 2,500 customers. The $1,200 investment proved to be a great move. Also most of these customers I kept for more than one year which really boosted the long-term profit!

If you are thinking about a direct mail campaign we can help you out. Our personal & business experience in this market allows us to think about and cover many different factors. This experience helps ensure that we create a profitable bulk or direct mail campaign for you and your business.

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

SEO Secrets - There Are None

2009-11-12T14:17:00.000-08:00

You know when I see people trying to sell advice or some magical e-book about SEO (search engine optimization) secrets it really makes me sick. Are you ready to discover the absolute truth and top secrets about SEO? There are none! There really are no secrets! There is no magic pill. Everything you need to know to get a website ranked to the top of Google, Yahoo, or Bing is out there and available for everyone to learn. Okay, do you really want to learn a secret about getting top search engine rankings? Well, here it is: Time + Hard Consistent Work.

While there is no secret to SEO there are little tricks and techniques that you can only learn from experience. Now you can learn this from your own experiences or from other people's experiences. Most everything else is out there already. I could sit here and write a blog or article about the top 10 things you could do to optimize your site, or 30 strategies to get your website ranked to the top of Google, but all of these things already exist.

Everything you'll ever need to know is out there and published. As the rules change, the information will stay updated from people like me who live search engine optimization. You can access this information from top sites and guys who have been in this business since the dawn of the Internet. Don't ever get tricked into buying something from somebody who says they know some "secret formula" to get your site ranked high.

Now I'm not saying not to pay for SEO services. Even though all of the information is out there for you, it does not mean you have to or should do it yourself. For example; All of the information for me to change my transmission is available, but you won't catch me trying to do that myself! Just because I could do it doesn't mean that I'm going to do it. The same should be true for you and your business.

It really comes down to simple economics. We get maximum productivity if everyone does what they are good at. If you are good at SEO, than by all means do it yourself! However, if you don't know the difference between a one-way link and a reciprocal link, than stay away from it. Use your time more wisely and focus on what you are good at. Focus on your main business, which is selling and improving your products and services. Focus on customer service. Hire a good SEO company or person to properly optimize your website. When everybody does what they are good at, we get more results as a whole which is better for everyone.

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

SEO Price Quote

2009-11-11T18:15:00.001-08:00

So last night I finished a price quote for an SEO project and it made me think about a few things. I had to review this guy's site and found several things that he could be doing differently to help increase his search engine rankings and gain some exposure for his website.

I really don't want to reveal the exact name or website for this gentleman's privacy, but I can let you in on a few details to help explain the story. We'll call the guy John and let's say that his sells 'blue widgets'.

Okay, first of all John has got the right idea as he has started blogging about experience with 'blue widgets'. However, the way that he is categorizing his blog archive and articles is not exactly search engine friendly. Part of the price to optimize this site will include re-organizing these pages.

Secondly, the title of John's pages are numbered instead of named. This won't necessarily hurt search engine rankings, but it definitely won't help them. In order to get maximum value from each blog article it is important to name the pages instead of numbering them. Again, in the price quote I have allotted time to work with his existing content and renaming the numbered pages.

John also uses his main index page for the main blog page. Now I have read, seen, and experienced mixed results with this method as far as SEO goes. It could be beneficial, but from a sales point of view it is not that good. I believe in using the main index page as your main sales page. Let the main blog page be a separate page linked from the index page.

Yes Google does love fresh, unique, and updated content but this does not mean that your blog has to be the main index page to get SEO value. I have one website that has been at the top of Google for dozens of keywords for years with very little updating or changing of the index page; however the site as a whole is constantly growing and being updated to maintain dominance of this market.

SEO is an ever-changing field that keeps you on your toes. The rules of this topic are never set in stone and can change in the blink of an eye. Unethical SEO guys will try to use black-hat techniques or 'tricks' to get a site to the top, which may even work in the short-term, but are doomed to failure in the long run.

Ethical search engine optimization takes time and hard work, but the end results are worth the effort. When getting an SEO price quote for your website make sure that whoever you hire only uses white-hat techniques or acceptable tactics to gain good search engine rankings. Really no matter what changes in the search engine world, there will always remain two key factors that help determine top position; unique content and quality back-links.

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

Website Devlopment

2009-11-11T07:42:00.000-08:00

Website development is the process of planning and designing a website from start to finish. A lot of careful planning and preparation go into creating a great website. Just throwing up a simple landing page just will not cut it in today's Google Slap Happy World.

You need to develop a good website if you want customers to find you and come back to you. You want to educate and inform people about your products and services, as well as entertain them as much as possible. Too many business owners miss the importance of a good website and what it can do for their bottom line.

In reality a website is never really "done". It is a constant game of improvement and updating to meet the changing needs of the site's users. In this fast paced world we live in, it is easy to fall behind the times if you let anything just sit and become stagnant.

We are in a never-ending quest to improve and sharpen our website so that people will know that we mean business and understand what we are talking about. If you want to dominate any market, be it global or local on the Internet, you need to understand a few important rules to succeed with your website and business. The main rule is "never stop learning and doing". This applies to almost any business model Online or Offline.

If you are looking for personal attention and a website development plan that meets your specific needs then you have come to the right place. We are here to take you by the hand and walk you through this complicated maze that we call the Internet. With a little bit of help from the right people you can succeed online with your website and business. Give us a call or fill out our "Online Business Request E-Quote" form today.

Scott
Pensacola Website Design