The Lost Knowledge Blog for Web Design

So what’s the headline all about, well I was doing my usual surfing about the internet and came across a site that has a lot of really good information on self improvement. No wait! before you think oh god it’s another site like… this one is really good it focuses on personal productivity, motivation, positive psychology, and self education.

The thing I like about it is that the people who comment are generally people who think about their answers and not just put up useless garbage. I’m not saying everything on the site is right, but there are a lot of ideas that makes you think and question yourself and your processes, so I put that down as a worthwhile site to revisit every now and then.

Here is the link to the site http://www.pickthebrain.com enjoy!

Regards
Alan Fair

I came across a site that does stock photos for websites in a completely different way. It has two options Pay per view, where like with Pay per click ads you pay every time someone views the image. Alternatively if you don’t mind some ads then you can get the image for free.

Here is the link for the site enjoy

http://gumgum.com

Alan

I’ve had some clients in the past ask me about the difference between SEO and SEM, so I thought that I would describe it as simple as I can.

SEO = Search Engine Optimisation
This process is where you make your site friendly to search engines and visitors.
Think of it like having a shop and you arrange the product on the shelves so that it is easy for you to restock or re-arrange them, but it is also easy for your customers to find the actual products they are looking for.

SEM = Search Engine Marketing
This process is where you concentrate on getting visitors to your website.

Think of it like making flyers and adverts or spreading a good reputation through word of mouth to get the customers to visit your shop.

There is one more that I use called:

SER = Search Engine Research
This process is where you study your competitors and keywords for your website.

Think of it like walking into another shop and seeing what everyone is buying and what stock they carry and how much everything is. This is to see if you match up or beat them.

I hope that helps explain it.

Kind Regards
Alan Fair
Contact Multimedia

I get a lot of clients asking how to choose a domain name for their website, so I thought I would give you my 5 top tips.

Sometimes you find the domain name you want isn’t available because someone else has bought it. You could buy it from them, if they’re not using it, but sometimes it can cost you hundreds, even thousands of pounds.

Alternatively go through the 5 steps below first and see if you can get a domain name that works for you.

1. Keep it short – typing a long domain name can leave room for error and be harder to remember.
2. Put two words together – combinations of short words often work well if they are distinct.
3. Make it easy to say and spell – you don’t want the person trying to remember some weird spelling because you though it was cool.
4. Use the .co.uk as your primary domain especially if you’re only dealing within the UK – you may want to purchase the .com or .net extensions as well for protection against your brand, site or for future expansion.
5. Think about keywords that are relevant to your business and incorporate them into the domain name if possible, this will help with Search Engine Optimisation.

One last bonus tip, when you want to check to see if your domain name is free or not, do not use companies who sell the domains to check them, why? Well some of them sell lists of popular searched domains to companies who buy and then intend to sell them at a huge profit.

So what can you do to safe guard your potential domains, well simply use the following sites to check if your domains are available as they are the main registry companies for domain names across the internet.

A. http://www.nominet.org.uk for *.uk domain names

B. http://www.internic.net/whois.html for most others

You can of course type in your potential domain name into a browser but this is not a good indication if someone else has bought the domain name or not as they may not be using it yet.

I hope that’s useful to you.

Regards

Alan