I am glad to be back to our blog and inform our readers of the new developments, tips and ideas in the website design and development, as well as search engine optimization and online marketing. We have been slammed lately with new projects and our entire team has been working hard to provide our clients with quality services, in a timely manner.

The latest news in the search engine marketing is that Yahoo!, Microsoft and their respective partners plan to merging their ad inventory into a new search marketplace by the 2010 holiday season. However, they “may wait until 2011 if we determine this will be more effective”, Microsoft says. The new alliance formed between the two giants will be called Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance. In this Alliance, “Microsoft will manage the technology platforms that deliver the algorithmic and paid search results used by Yahoo!. Yahoo!’s Sales team will exclusively support high volume advertisers, SEO and SEM agencies, and managed resellers, and Microsoft will support self-service advertisers.”

As for now, Google is still the only search engine that, I believe, is the most reliable in displaying quality search results for the searched keyword phrases. In spite of their attractive interface, Bing has not yet delivered the quality results for my searches and, in many situations, gave techincal errors or very limited results. Therefore, until Bing resolve their issues in this matter, I will definitely keep Bing as my 3rd option for my searches, after Google and Yahoo!, which I believe that many of the users will do as well. According to www.alexa.com traffic stats, Bing is way behind Google and Yahoo! in rankings. As for “How the new Alliance will help Yahoo!”?, we’ll wait and see. Will this be a preambled to an even bigger Alliance?

The majority of our clients, however, ask us to help them promote their listings to the top of Google organic search and local listing results and they are not as concerned about whether their listings are displayed in Bing. I totally agree with them in this matter, as their call volume decreased if their listings dropped out of Google search or local and they started calling us. At the same time, we did not hear from our clients if their listings dropped from Yahoo! or Bing. However, our purpose is to promote our clients’ listings and websites in all 3 big search engines on the Internet.

Your website was in the top 1 or 2 pages of google search organic results for some time, and one day, suddenly, your website cannot be found anywhere in google searches.

If no changes have been made to your website within the last 30 days or so, or if the changes made were “legitimate”, it is probably a temporary drop and things should get back to normal after a week or so, without you having to do anything. You may, in the meantime, verify whether your website is completely banned from google or not, by typing your website url in google search. If your website appears in the results, it is not completely banned and things should get back to normal soon.  However, if “black seo” technics were applied to your website, also known as “black hat seo”, you must remove them immediately and re-submit your website for indexing and update and re-submit your sitemap immediately.

Even if they do not seem to affect your website positioning in search engines immediately, black hat SEO “tricks” will be identified by google crawlers and, eventually, your website will be banned from google organic search results. I have tried one of them, thinking that I am so clever and genuine, since I could not find my idea explicitly listed in any of the “black hat seo” lists. Unfortunately, the bad results came within 2 weeks. My 2 websites tested dropped from page 1 to nowhere to be found in google searches. Therefore, I’d like to add to the list of known “Black Hat SEO Techniques To Avoid”, the technique of placing text in areas that are not visible on the web pages, such areas can be created with absolute divs. I used this method because it was so much more convenient to place “good” or quality text inside the web pages that was compiled from other sites, than spending 1 hour or more writing new texts. I figured that such text will be seen by the search engine bots, without being visible on my websites, since it was copyrighted text. Obviously, the bots did not like my method.

In my case, the damage was not “terminal”, but in the cases where the website is completely banned by google, you may want to clean your website and request Google to reconsider it for indexing. You may request “reconsideration of your site” from google by going to: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration. You should view the following video provided by google at: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35843, before submitting the form for your website reconsideration.

If you have any questions, use our contact form to write to us.

A custom designed website is one that is created from scratch based on each website owner’s needs and requests. A custom designed website starts with an analysis of the requirements that the owner of the website has, a graphic design is provided for review and approval which later is converted into web-pages. The number of web-pages may vary from one website to another, based on each one’s needs. The scripting used for each website can vary and is based on the type of website and operating system installed on the server. All web-pages that form a website should contain common elements, such as header, footer, menu area, background, etc. so a visitor will not feel like he/she left the website when navigating from one page to another.

With a custom designed website, the positioning of certain common elements can be chosen freely by the website designer, when in a template, such elements are fixed and, in order to be re-positioned, it requires a re-do of the website design or modifying the script, in most cases. When customizing a predefined or pre-designed template for a website, some changes requested by the website owners are not always possible, especially if no direct access to the website files is available. However, if full access to the hosting, and therefore to the website files, is available some changes to the templates may require modifying the script and that may result in additional charges that may bring the cost higher than having a new custom designed website. That is why the analysis part in building a website plays an important role in choosing between a template or a custom designed website, or between simple html or server side scripting.

Las Vegas Website Solutions provides custom website designs starting at $350, with full access to the domain name settings and hosting files. Domain name registration from $1.99* per year and hosting from $3.03** per month (up to 100 smtp email addresses included)

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* Limited time offer with hosting purchase only. ICANN fee of $0.25 applies
** Limited time offer. Minimum 12 months purchase

You have a very nice website, but nobody can find it. What to do? In order for your website to be displayed in the search engine results for the keyword phrases wanted, you must let the search engines know that your website is live. All of the major search engines provide forms for submitting new websites. Google also permits keywords to be submitted with each website. The submissions can be done manually, preferably, or automatically. Besides submissions to major search engines, your website content and the back meta tags play a very important role in promoting your website for the wanted keyword phrases. Additionally, quality link building is also very important and can improve your website ranking by sites like google and alexa, which, eventually will help your website get to the top of the search engines.

Las Vegas Website Solutions has several SEO projects going on. The latest sites we have been working on are: www.proturfncurb.com, www.amcoplumbing.com, www.fastcreditsolutions.net.

Just a note before closing this subject, SEO, i.e. Search Engine Optimization, is the process of promoting a website to the top of organic (not paid) results in search engines, and SEM, i.e. Search Engine Marketing, refers to the paid advertisement or pay-per-click ads and displaying them in the paid links areas, known as Sponsored Links. Paid links should not provide a direct links to your website and they are not helping with direct link building that is so helpful in ranking your website.

Las Vegas Website Solutions SEO services starting at $99* per month

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* Limited time offer with minimum $350 of other services. Limited to maximum 3 months. After the 3 months trial period, the regular rate will be $129 per month.

The latest custom website design project that we are working on is for a Florida Plumbing Company. You may see the work progress at: www.middlekeysplumbing.com. As soon as the website is completed, we will proceed with the SEO services to promote the website to the top of the search engines, such as google, yahoo, bing, etc and create local listings in order for the new business to be listed in google maps, yahoo local, bing maps. The SEO will be performed for keyword phrases targeting local customers and communities in the Middle Keys, FL service areas. We expect to promote the local listing to the first 2 pages of google maps within 3 weeks from activation and in the top 2 pages of google search organic within the first 8 weeks of website completion for the keyword phrases requested. That means new customers for Middle Keys Plumbing and a new happy customer for Las Vegas Website Solutions.

Las Vegas Website Solutions is dedicated to bringing you the best website services at affordable prices. Our web designers and developers have extensive experience in all aspects of website design and development, search engine optimization and search engine marketing. We are working hard to assisting our customers in succeeding in their goals for acquiring new customers via a professionally designed website, as well as, by promoting it to the top of the search engines.

As every customer’s needs are different, our goal is to provide customized designs and services that will fit within our customer’s needs and requirements. We will take the time to listen to your needs and provide the best ways to accomplish your online goals within your budget.