WordPress Themes dress up the blogosphere with functional good looks. I have been reading art blogs over the last few months and found that many artists can make real inroads to the internet marketing of their artworks with WordPress Themes on their blogs.

Art blogs also exhibit and discuss the work and news of the artworld. Internet marketing of galleries, art publications, art supplies, and art events are also well represented with WordPress Themes.

Looking for variety in a Wordpress Theme for marketing the arts on the internet I have run across many good examples. The WordPress theme shown below is just one of many very different designs that are available for $40-$80.

“Art Blog” WordPress Theme #13182 from Template Monster

The artist, gallery, or internet marketing group using WordPress Themes can get a different layout, color or column arrangement all depending on taste and style. Internet Marketing gets easier when it looks good, functions well and keeps costs low.

WYSIWYG,
Arthur Browning

ClickTrack’s John Marshall says that there are two basic types of click fraud.  Many people have misconceptions about them. WebProNews discussed this and other issues with Marshall.

Click fraud is a real to the success of Pay-Per-Click marketing. But, how prevelant is it?

Type one happens on the search results page. In this scenario a childish competitor clicks your ads, ad infinitum, until they’ve run out your budget, effectively removing your presence. Type two happens on a publisher’s site. Here, someone builds a site, populates it with ads, then employs a bot net to click ads and raise a profit at the advertiser’s expense.

Contrary to popular belief, type one is much more rare. According to Marshall, rule one of click fraud inoculation is, “follow the money. In the end, it irritates advertisers like you wouldn’t believe!” Thus, it stands to reason that (as their major source of income) search engines would like to keep them happy.

On the issue of progression within the battle on click fraud, Marshall points out our inequities and strengths, “There’s a fundamental problem… in that completely automated techniques to detect this are extremely difficult to develop. Since there’s a financial incentive on the part of click fraud perpetrator to make it happen. You have an arms race where any automated technique that you have ends up being defeated. It’s impossible for engines to completely rein in and detect this. There’s a certain amount that advertisers MUST do… (they) should be looking at the data.”

Even though it’s an unpopular theory, Marshall believes that no fully automated system will ever succeed… it’s the warning systems and human intervention that will make for a better solution to click fraud.

Just Like The Old Days,
Arthur Browning

Attractive, functional and affordable - these are the big three reasons to pick a designer for any webpage. Webpage templates have a place in design, especialy Mambo and Joomla systems. One of my favorite websites is based on Mambo’s Template with CMS features - Contemporary Art Gallery. There are a lot of great webpages in the portfolio of designer Joanne Glasspoole - one of my favorites there is Way Cool Cooking School.

Joanne has two websites, both display parts of her portfolio - Glasspoole.com and Indigo Creative Solutions . They are all attractive, functional and affordable. When I contacted Joanne about her websites I requested an interview to which she responded.

How did you get into web design? “In my previous profession, I was an executive assistant. When I went to work for the president of a small CPA firm, he asked me to develop a web site and an Intranet site for his company. That was in 1999. I took three HTML classes and started building my first web site. Web design became a passion. When our clients started asking my boss to help them build their web sites, my boss hired an assistant for me and I started to do web design full-time.”

Do you remember the very first site you designed? “It was for a small CPA firm called Brown and Company.”

You also do SEO and web developement, you offer an array of services? “I started my own web design company in 2003. I currently have more than 75 active clients. We do both web development and search engine marketing.”

Where do you get your art for these webpages? “It depends. Some of our clients select premade templates that we customize; other sites are done completely custom. I have two business partners that are graphic designers, so I usually have them working on concepting.”

What will be the next big development in webpage design? “I am currently working on six web site projects. In November, I finished seven web sites. Last spring, I built a web site for a foundation within the University of Minnesota; I am just about finished with a web site I am doing for a foundation within the University of California, San Francisco. My most well-known client is Mothers Against Drunk Driving.”

Have you ever worked with website templates? “Yes. A lot of the web sites we do today are built in the content management system Joomla. We work with our clients to customize their templates. We also do a lot of Photoshop templates that are converted for Joomla.’

What website template providers have you tried? “Several . . .
http://templateclub.mambosolutions.com

http://www.mambohut.com

http://www.joomlashack.com

http://www.Joomlart.com

http://www.rockettheme.com

What was your experience with them? “I especially like the Rocket Theme templates.”

What do you think about Flash technology? “Since a big part of what we do is build search engine friendly web sites, I never build web sites entirely in Flash. We use Flash in the banner or as a graphic accent.”

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Flash? “Search engines have a hard time crawling Flash. Web sites built in Flash pretty much hide all of their text and links within a graphic file that is not indexable.”

What are your sources of inspiration? “I own a huge library of graphic design books. We ask our clients to provide us with a list of web sites that they like. Template sites are also good for inspiration.”

What are your favorite website designs that you did NOT design yourself? “Hard to say. I see lots of beautiful sites.”

What was the toughest project or customer situation you’ve encountered? “We do a lot of ecommerce sites. These are always challenging, because software is never perfect ‘out of the box.’”

What are your interests and dislikes in webpage design? “I really enjoy what I do. I like helping my clients market their businesses using the web. It’s very fulfilling when I hear from them that they are getting leads and making sales from their web site.”

Thankyou Joanne, for your insights and the variety of great looks on your websites.

Getting Into the Christmas Spirit,

Arthur Browning

Internet marketing for bloggers can help you make your WordPress Theme a better place for visitors and spiders. Here’s 7 tips you shouldn’t overlook.

1) Title Meta Tag - The title tag is what shows on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). It’s also what shows in the top blue band of Internet Explorer when your site is displayed. Spiders love this! So when you are customizing your WordPress Template make sure you use your keywords wisely here. The title tag of your website should be easy to read, your main keyword phrase should be used toward the beginning of the tag. Don’t put your company name first, unless you are already a household name, like Victoria’s Secret or wal-Mart. People are searching for what you offer, not your name. The title tags should be written with a capital letter starting the tag, and followed by lowercase letters, some people capitalize each word.

2) Description Meta Tag - The description tag is the paragraph that people will see when your page comes up in the search results. It should be very attractive reading, with a call to follow your link. Without a description tag, search engines usually display the first text on your page. How does your first text read? The description tag is what people see below your title on the search results. Use good punctuation, use your subject.

3) Keywords Meta Tag - The importance of Meta keyword tags varies from month to month with different search engines. Keywords used in moderation help, especially with Yahoo. Don’t cram keyword metatags too full, use just keywords that apply directly to the content of that particular page.

4) Alt Tags - The small yellow box that comes up when your mouse cursor is placed over an image is called the ALT tag. Every relevant image should have an alt tag with your key words or phrases mentioned in the tag. Wordpress Themes should be optimized.

5) Header Tags - The text of each page is given more weight by the search engines if you use header tags and then use descriptive body text below those headers. Bullet points work well too, it’s not enough to BOLD or enlarge your headlines.

6) Relevant Inbound Links - Nothing gets your site ranked higher faster than being linked to by dozens of other relevant websites. It used to be that the quantity of incoming links mattered most, but today, it’s much better to have three highly relevant links to you from popular, related websites than 30 links from unrelated low ranked sites. If there are other businesses in your industry that you can trade links with, it will help your site.

7) Content - The content of your webpage must be relevant information that people want to read. Each webpage should be focused on one specific product or subject to rank highly for that search phrase. Ideally, each page should have between 400 to 650 words on it. Too few, and search engines don’t consider it to be relevant enough. Too many, and the search engine spiders can’t determine the subject or focus. Use keywords or phrases often and at the beginning of your paragraphs wherever possible. Don’t overuse them and make the page sound dumb. Write quality pages that appeal to the human reader and provide exactly the information about the exact search phrase.

Reality Isn’t That Bad!
Arthur Browning

Designer Furniture Showrooms and Stores need a web presence for local and regional sales. Shoppers for custom built or small-line furniture productions can let shoppers see the latest things available on an interesting and very revisitable webpage based on a Flash Template.

Flash template webpages are very good solutions for small local or regional businesses. National SEO is not paramount for a local or regional stores advertising or internet marketing strategy. These stores need an attractive and very revisitable webpage.

Flash Template #12835 from Template Monster

This template makes it easy to sell designer furniture and Template Monster has many more Flash Templates avaialble.

A Beautiful Mind,
Arthur Browning

The “small business website” accounts for a large portion of all new webpages. These small business webpages may be based on blogs such as with WordPress Themes or they be larger more complex sites using Flash templates. ECommerce is booming, but local and regional businesses need a webpage for internet marketing as well.

These small business websites look and function better every year - increased availability and functionality of WordPress Themes and Flash templates are only part of the story.

I like to see as many small business webpages as possible and I found a great portfolio by designer, Barb Raphael, at Raphael Webscapes. Have a look at her work. I asked Barb for an interview.

How did you get into web design? “I wanted a creative career working with computers so I took night courses at University of Delaware.”

Do you remember the very first site you designed? “Yes! I designed a series of sites for friends who had businesses (for free). I wanted to build a portfolio. They weren’t great but they got me started!”

You are doing a lot of small businesses - is this a specialization for you? “Yes, I find that I can provide multi-layered service to the small business owner. We help them organize their thoughts about their business which benefits all levels of marketing.”

Where do you get your art for these webpages? “We design most of the graphics ourselves. We get some photos from clients and some are stock photos.”

What will be the next big development in webpage design? “Back end content management for the small business client.”

Have you ever worked with website templates? “Not really–once a client found a flash animation that he liked but we changed and adapted it.”

What do you think about Flash technology? “It is fun, but should be used sparingly.”

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Flash? “You can be really creative with flash and it adds excitement to a page. However, it can take more time to download and it isn’t very search engine friendly.”

What are your sources of inspiration? “We take inspiration from everywhere. One of our favorite sites is CSS Zen Garden. We love the power of CSS. But minimalist print ads provide color and layout inspiration.”

What are your favorite website designs that you did NOT design yourself? “I like the Apple site. It’s visual, but not busy. It is easy to navigate and provides needed information without boring you to death.”

What was the toughest project or customer situation you’ve encountered? “Our toughest challenge is getting the data from our clients to complete the job. Everyone is so busy!”

What are your interests and dislikes in webpage design? “CSS makes web design a pleasure. PHP includes are great for large sites that need frequent updates. I dislike using poor quality photos or bad logo artwork in our designs. We encourage our clients to pay extra to get these elements done correctly.”

Road Tested for Excellence,
Arthur Browning

Blogging has become a major pastime in the USA and worldwide. WordPress Themes are becoming more original, more functional, more attractive every day.  The Blogosphere is a mix of personal and business websites with various raisons d’etre.  But there has emerged a set of rules - a system of etiquette in blogging.

Newcomers to blogging may not know or understand these rules - so try not to damage their youthful exuberance if they mistakenly break one of these rules.

When you communicate with a blogger do not waste their time on anything that is not relevant to their content.

Don’t use lowbrow language or four-letter words - whether it be comment or advertising proposition.

Everything you say to a blogger may be published and/or syndicated as well as read by top level journalists covering a topic shared by the blog.  (Another reason to have an attractive Wordpress Theme on your blog.)

Don’t criticize a blogger for not accepting comments at their blog. Contact them by email if they offer one.

Minor mistakes like typos are often not corrected by bloggers because a corrected post would go out into the RSS feed again. So don’t point these out.

If you want to offer the blogger a proposition - such as link or banner exchange, or writing an article on your merchandise/services don’t put it in the comments of a blog post. Send a personal email.

Target any propositions you might offer only to the interests and niches covered by the blogger.  Bloggers want nothing to do with content that is unrelated to theirs.

Do NOT send a mass mailing press release ( I know I did this once ) .  Any such announcement must be personalized and cordial.

Do not ask directly for links - just invite the blogger to review your material.(Well, blogs are a personalized public place)  They will respond if your ideas are right for their readers.

Try to develop a relationship with bloggers by reading and commenting on their blogs before you start making proposals.  Be diplomatic.

See who is talking about your blog. Search your area of expertise with the blog searches on Technorati.com, Blogsearch.google.com, and Google alerts.

Write your own blog to show other bloggers you “get it.” Use trackbacks so they know you’re commenting about them at your own blog before you make overtures. (Trackbacks are an automated blogging feature that notifies a blog when another blog talks about them.)

Offer good content. Don’t use sensational announcements about your product/service as if it was the greatest thing ever created. Instead explain how you can solve a problem for the blogs readers. Then mention your product/service.  And use a nice WordPress Theme.
Mister Congeniality,
Arthur Browning

Links are still very important to SEO and interent marketing. The importance of links will become less important as the search engines evolve. Incoming one-way links, nonreciprocal links, are still very important to the Search Engines - their spiders find them easily and they then evaluate these links for the other criteria of “goodness”. If the link to your website is from a well-ranked page, then the algorithms give it a heavier weight.

Links are also important for internet marketing because they have a growing significance within the new Web 2.0 social networks. Even small blogs can obtain notable rankings and good search engine report placements if their links and traffic come from “good”, established websites.

An incoming one-way link ostensibly signifies an altruistic act in the webworld that recognizes and rewards a “good”, appreciated website. This is usually called the “natural way” of building links. It presupposes that a visitor to a website who is impressed by the website (for whatever reason) will give it a vote of confidence by placing a link to that wonderful website in as prominent a way as possible. This positive endorsement is heavily weighted by the search engines.

And it is probably true that the search engines ignore one way links from “bad” websites - which prevents a negative campaign to bring down a website by putting links to the website from porn, drug sales, gambling and extralegal business-sites.

The three largest problems with the “natural” link building approach is that: 1) it mistakes altruism as a criterion for “goodness” 2) it ignores the objectivity and conciseness of a website in favor of the link 3) it conveys “expert” status (one “good” criterion) based on volume of content and links.

1) Altruism is wonderful. But, even well meaning altruism has been the death of many people, corporations, and nations. Altruism feeds into a sense of duty and goodness - often of the immature, the uninformed, the uninterested, the subversive, the preoccupied. Is altruism bad? No, but it is overrated. I should not need the endorsement of a well meaning individual to prove the value of my website. A well meaning link should not pass as a solid judgment between “good” and “bad”.

2) Links of any kind do not prove: objectivity, conciseness, real and necessary differentiation between the strong and the weak, real solutions. Many links are worthless, banal, immature, or self-destructive. This preoccupation with links allows the search engines to ignore the truly “good” criteria in favor of link recommendations. The search engines will have to judge by objective knowledge in the future. The incentives to improve, to transcend, to be carefully objective and concise shouldn’t be ignored.

3) “Expert” status that is awarded based on volume of content chooses quantity over quality. It avoids again the criteria of objectivity and conciseness. What is the point of reading from hundreds of related articles that repeatedly use keywords but do not give the most objective or concise version of the word or phrase that was searched?

Internet marketing will suffer through the evolution of the search system that is based on links. During this evolution the best thing to remember is that it will change. Today’s cloud of dust will give way to another, new, improved cloud of dust.

At present “good” links will help your search placement . “Good” content will help get those “good” links. The search engines are becoming more objective than they used to be, which means that successful internet marketing will have to become more and more sophisticated in its content and links. When search services finally become effective in judging content for objectivity and conciseness, rather than preoccupation with links and redundant quantity, then web pages with objective and concise content will finally be rewarded.

Getting It Straight,
Arthur Browning

Google’s new online payment service is named “Checkout”. The news is that Google’s checkout service has cut Paypal’s lead in that market in half - already. This is really amazing since Paypal is well established.

I would have to guess, however, that a lot of Google’s success in this market should be credited to Paypal’s many problems. Even though Paypal was the first well-known secured-socket-layer (SSL) third party payment system on the web they have major organizational and user-support problems.

Paypal is expectedly pushy, especially on their parent company’s Ebay site, to use their system. But, then the problems start. Paypal is inordinately slow and ignorant with any mistakes made in their system - yours or theirs. Paypal has lawsuits pertaining to their dealings with clients for several reasons.

Unhappily, Paypal gets targeted by every scam artist on the net. These criminals send out false statements to everybody with an email telling them to check in with name, pass or credit card numbers. Early on this scamming caused some real ripoffs. These ripoffs were not Paypals’ problem. But dealing with the aftermath was definitiely Paypal’s problem.

They were incapable of straightening things out with any customer who made a mistake or got bilked. Ebayers by the droves began refusing to use Paypal. Having been victim of this myself I recently checked with Paypal support, by email and telephone. The various support personnel I spoke to sounded unaware of my prior accounts financial records, even though they keep asking me back. They also said they had no record of past communications. And to a person sounded brand-new in the job.

Now, about Google. I would expect their market share to increase steadily until they meet the curve of their incompetence and their lack of real support takes its toll. Having done business with GoogleAds, Gmail and some other Google programs I have found them to be equally user-unfriendly and high-handed in all their automated transactions - and incapable of actual support.

In this day of jacking up a stock, jumping ship with the profits, and then letting the ship sink - I predict Paypal and Google are poised for rape. Techies and tech investors know that the lifespan of any tech is short, so why get all integrity-involved. These kinds of companies shake out easy - way too easy.

A company like MoneyBookers.com not only gets hacked and frauded less, they have not suffered any disability to do customer support that I have heard of, they are my pick for the next ten years.

When Google Checkout was just a rumor floating around the blogosphere eBay posted notices about not accepting payment services without a longstanding customer base. So, there won’t be any Google Checkout at eBay “where PayPal has always worked just fine.”(?) And judging from the rapid public acceptance, Paypal-Ebay knew they were big dumb sitting ducks.

However Checkout is already taking some hits from prominent Google authority, John Battelle, who posted a very negative review of the product on his blog. Who is casting out who?

It’s a Hardball Thing,
Arthur Browning

I was looking at some design sites last week and ran across a great looking portfolio. The designs have an excellent compositional look and they work simply and effectively. Linda White is the designer and I think you will like her website, Design by Linda. When I asked Linda for an interview she agreed.

How did you get into web design? “I was in college getting my Computer Programming Degree and had to take a required Web Design and Development Course. I found that I thoroughly enjoyed web design and changed my college curriculum to Web Design.”

Do you remember the very first site you designed? “The first web site that I designed professionally was for Farrell’s US Martial Arts . I am still the Webmaster for this company. The web site has been updated and redesigned several times over the past 7 years.”

You are doing a lot of small business web sites and custom shopping carts, is this a specialization for you? “Yes, I specialize in Small Business web site development and Custom Shopping Cart Development. My typical client is usually a small retail business or service type business with a limited budget for web site design. My other customer is the small business retail store that is looking for or needing a specialized shopping cart. Often this is a business that has tried and was unhappy with a pre-built shopping cart. I build all shopping carts from “scratch” using ASP to the clients’
specifications.”

Where do you get your art for these webpages? “I get art work from various sources – stock/clip art, graphic designers, or photos provided by my clients. I am not a graphic designer but I am able to do some simple custom graphic design for my web sites.”

What will be the next big development in webpage design? “I think CSS will continue to be the big thing. What I am seeing in trends are web sites actually taking a step back to more simplistic, clean designs. The flashy, glitzy web sites are becoming a thing of the past. I think business web sites are realizing that people come to their web sites for information and not for entertainment.”

Have you ever worked with website templates? “I do not work with templates. I find them too restrictive. I prefer to custom develop my sites.”

What do you think about Flash technology? “I think flash has its place. Using flash as an enhancement for your web site is great.”

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Flash? “Building a web site completely in Flash, in my opinion, is a bad move for many reasons – it is more costly to develop up front, more costly to edit; the search engines can not ‘read’ flash, so getting a good ranking will be much more difficult; the file sizes are larger causing pages to load slower (there are still people on dial-up). Flash makes a nice presentation for ‘rotating’ graphics. Movies also work well with Flash as most people have the flash player.”

What are your sources of inspiration? “I look at other web sites. I look at my client’s competitor sites. I also work with graphic designers.”

What are your favorite website designs that you did NOT design yourself? “Tiffany & Co. I love the elegant simplicity of this web site.”

What was the toughest project or customer situation you’ve encountered? “The toughest situation was the client who did not know what they wanted. This client provided no assistance in the design of the site. No matter what I presented, they did not like it, but they could not define what they didn’t like or what they would like. I finally had to give up as it was apparent that the customer and I were not a good match. Sometimes this happens and it is best to just let the client know that it is not going to work out.”

What are your interests and dislikes in webpage design? “I like it all. I really don’t have any dislikes. It always gives me a good feeling to provide a web site to a client that they are please with and that works well in their marketing efforts.”

Linda, I appreciate your point-of-view. I really enjoyed looking at your portfolio as well.

Ever Ready,
Arthur Browning