But there’s good news on the horizon. CSS 3 is currently being drafted, and is providing some awesome animation and graphics tools to web designers. The best part? CSS code allows HTML to be animated, but can be fully indexed by the search engines.

What does this mean? It means that the gap between a great looking site and a well optimized site is slowly becoming smaller. Safari and Google Chrome for example already support some of the most popular CSS3 drafts. If you have the current versions of one of these browsers, check out: http://www.zurb.com/playground. ZURB interactive has been playing around with CSS3 and has come up with some really cool stuff.

My personal favorite is the CSS3 dock. It imitates the Mac OS X dock for navigation. It looks really awesome and allows search engines to index the navigation just like any other set of links. This is a really exciting development.

There are some issues however. First off, the most popular browser of today is Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer has a long history of not adopting the W3C’s (World Wide Web Consortium) standards. (It is the only major browser not to). This means that web designers will have to design their sites in such a way that it still displays ok to Internet Explorer users. (And maybe show them a message that they are not getting a full internet experience.)

Another problem is hardware. These new features are resource intensive. The browsers need to have efficient display engines to display these effects, and probably should have hardware acceleration (which most browsers do not).

These are really the only issues, and I am looking forward to the CSS3 changes coming to the market. So get your hands dirty and start learning some CSS3!

Google tags costs $25 a month, kind of steep for a little yellow tag (see above.) The question is, will Tags allow you to make more than $25 a month. If so, then Tags is worth your investment. If not, it is probably not a good idea.

How do you know if you will bring in more than $25 a month from Tags? This depends on your business. For example, say you sell sandwiches. If you give a 10% off coupon through tags, and you spend $25 a month, you will need to sell at least $25 worth of discounted sandwiches to break even. If your sandwiches are around $5, then you will need to sell at least five sandwiches throughout the month, solely from Tags to break even.

Other businesses may fare better. For example, say you paint houses. If you give a %10 off coupon on Tags, and you normally charge around $1000 for an average house, then you will make a profit. The cost of Tags and the cost of the discount still means you are getting $875 for that sales, and then minus the labor, supplies, etc, you will still be making a profit.

Tags is a great opportunity for businesses to get more visibility in Google Maps, but this alone will not get you more sales. You should have an appealing product/service, and having a website that sells will also help greatly. I would recommend you try the Tags free 14 day trial, and see if you get a response. If so, keep using the service and refining your methods. If not, then you will really have to think if Tags fits into your business objectives, and if you are selling effectively.

Firefox is a great browser, and one of the things that makes it so great is it’s wide selection of add-ons. Some of these add-ons are great for SEO work. We’ve compiled a list of 5 SEO add ons that you can get for Firefox:

1. RankQuest SEO Toolbar
   RankQuest SEO(Search Engine Optimization) Toolbar provides you quick access to more than 30 intuitive SEO tools. Alexa Rank and Page Rank provided by Alexa and Google respectively ensures the popularity of the site.
2. SEOpen
   SEO services: Track sites placement at Google and Yahoo for any keyword. Watch Google PageRank (PR), Backlinks, Saturation over time. Graph and table presentation of the data.
3. SEOQuake
   Seoquake is a Mozilla Firefox SEO extension aimed primarily at helping web masters who deal with search engine optimization(SEO) and internet promotion of web sites.
4. Foxy SEO Tool
   Foxy SEO Tool offers tools for search engine optimization (SEO), web traffic and page analysis for webmasters and web professionals.
5. Keyword Spy
   KeywordSpy SEO/PPC Plugin – Do your competitive research in SEO & PPC right from your browser! Download the revolutionary plugin which will change the way you do keyword research & competitor tracking, while you browse on Google, Yahoo in Real-time.

Polls (surveys) are a well known, effective way of measuring information/opinions. More formally known as opinion polls, polls ask various groups of people questions related to a certain topic. In the past, polls were only done through mail or telephone, however the power of the internet has brought new methods of polling as well as new types of polling altogether.

A poll using the internet is known as an online poll. Here are some of the many advantages to using a poll to capture opinion, especially an online one:

1. Information is Provided Directly by the User
   Because the user interacts directly with the poll, there is no need for a middleman. This reduces costs, and ensures that the data is as close to accurate as possible.
2. Cost
   The cost of an online polling system is extremely low in comparison to a phone based or mail based polling system. This is because there is not a high requirement for employees to complete tasks such as recording information, compiling information, etc, because it can all be complete by a computer.
3. Size
   The size of an online poll can be as large, or as small, as you want it. The survey will only run however long you want it to collect data.
4. Sampling
   Online surveys allow you to target the survey to whichever demographic you see fit. Here is an example, someone may fill out some preliminary information, such as their age or location, and then the software will determine if their answers match the demographic you are looking for.
5. Results
   Survey software is automatically able to compile & analyze the results, both while the survey is running and when it is finished. Because the analysis is done by a computer, there is no need for a statistician to analyze the results for you, so you save both time & money.
6. Incentive
   Many times you can offer an incentive to a user for completing a survey, such as being entered into a drawing to win a coupon, gift card, etc, which gives a better chance of people giving information.
7. Speed/Timing
   Because computer transactions are instant, you are able to see instantly the results of a survey, as well as the exact time the survey was filled out. Also, the creation and use of surveys is extremely short when they are online.

Now that you know some of the benefits to online surveys/polls, here are some of the companies that provide online surveys:

• Survey Monkey
• SurveyGizmo
• PollDaddy

Go to one of these sites, sign up, and then create your first survey and spread the link. Some sites will spread the link for you. If you aren’t sure of the best way to create and manage a survey, let a company like RP Design do it for you.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a format for laying out html content, commissioned by the W3C. When HTML was first created, it was a format for documents. There were ways to format text, (making it bold, changing the size, color, etc.), there were ways to insert images, but there wasn’t really a way to layout a page. People who really knew HTML began using tables to lay out pages, since it was the only real way to control page layout. Tables were actually designed for putting tabular data into pages, but that didn’t stop anybody. It wasn’t until 1996 that a standardized way for laying out web pages was developed (CSS 1.0), and even then it wasn’t adopted, mainly because the standard wasn’t fully supported by any browser until three years later in 1999 (CSS 2.0 was released in 1998.

CSS has slowly replaced tables for web design, but not completely. There is still a long way to go. Many modern websites (and their designers) fail to adopt CSS for their designs, and continue to use tables. In this post, we hope to explain the advantages to learning CSS, and using it to lay out HTML content instead of using tables.

There are many advantages to using CSS to lay out pages. Here are the most prevalent:

• Speed: CSS takes much less code than tables, therefore pages tend to load faster.
• Interoperability: CSS code can be altered and re-used rapidly on new sites and pages, because it is separate from the content of a page.
• Compatibility: Because CSS is a standardized language, code written for one browser will (if written properly), look the same on all browsers supporting the standard.
• Features: CSS has many ways of laying out a page and its elements, and therefore pages utilizing CSS can look more appealing than pages laid out in HTML.
• Modularity: CSS defines the style of certain HTML tags. Therefore parts of a CSS file can be re-used on new CSS with no changes necessary.

These are just some of the advantages to designing a page/site using CSS. To get started learning CSS, we recommend you try the W3C’s CSS tutorial (http://www.w3schools.com/css/)

The next standard of CSS that the W3C is working on, CSS 3, is going to have some great new features. Many of them are leaning toward cool visual effects. So if you adopt CSS now, you will be ready to utilize the new features of CSS 3 when it is released. Here are some of the things that the W3C is cooking up:

• 2D Transforms
• 3D Transforms
• Transitions
• Animations

If this article confuses you, or you don’t want to do any design, try hiring a web design company like RP Design to design your next web site.

• Pages do not display correctly in browsers, which can cause a whole number of problems.
• Search engines cannot index your pages due to them not being able to read badly crafted code.
• Modern design software cannot edit your pages correctly due to invalid code.
• Adapting your pages to updated code standards becomes more difficult if you do not keep up with them.
• Creating mobile versions of pages is very difficult with invalid pages to begin with.

So how do you check if you pages are valid? First off, you need to check your HTML code. Use the W3C’s Markup Validator Tool. Just enter the URL of your sites, and look at the results. Next you should probably check for broken links. Using the W3C’s Link Checker, you can find broken links in pages, invalid links, etc. Last, but certainly not least, you need to check your CSS code to ensure it is valid, and will display correctly on all browsers and platforms. Use the CSS Validator to ensure that your site meets the W3C CSS standards.

These tools will:

• If your pages are valid, inform you of the standards that your pages meet, as well as give you embed code to put a badge on your site demonstrating the validity.
• If they are not valid, it will give you a list of things that are invalid, so you can get to work fixing them.

Fixing invalid pages will allow your site to benefit greatly, but perhaps you are not skilled enough to fix them yourself. A web design company such as RP Design can fix the issues for you to ensure your pages are validated.

In a traditional market it is good to balance out your push/pull marketing. However in a market like the web, you want to have a much greater emphasis on pull marketing than push marketing. Here’s why. When someone gets on the computer, they choose where they are going to go. If they don’t want to go to your website, they aren’t going to go. Therefore, if you attempt push marketing on the majority of internet users, you’ll find that you will not much a response. An example is your website. If you put a website up online, and then market it using push tactics, not many people are going to go. They don’t want to be sold. They’d rather be on sites like Facebook, YouTube, or CNN. However if you make your site attractive, and give users a reason to go, you are using pull marketing, and you will see an increase in visitors to your site.

Although this defies some marketing convention, it actually makes a lot of sense. Think about it this way. A traditional medium is something like TV. Someone wants to watch their favorite show, but during that show, they are going to be served advertisements. They may not enjoy watching these ads, but they will do so to continue watching their show. This is push marketing. On a new medium like the web however, users choose what they see. Software exists to block advertisements, and people decide on whether they are going to click on them. In other words, most users don’t even need to look at ads to see the content they want. This is why a push marketing strategy will be largely unsuccessful on the web. The Internet is a democratic environment, so the users are going to decide what they see.

So how do you market to this new medium? Pull marketing. It is extremely effective on places like the web, mainly because of the ways the web works. Pull marketing on the Internet is highly related to Social Media and Viral Marketing. When using Social Media to market, you need to utilize the network so that users are attracted to what you are presenting. This is pull marketing in a nutshell. When using viral marketing, you need to create something that will attract users solely because it is something that will benefit them, instead of just advertising your brand.

Here are some ways that you can take advantage of pull marketing on the web:

• Perform extensive Search Engine Optimization on your website, so that when someone is using Google, your listing “pulls” them in.
• Use Google AdWords to serve ads to users that will pull them in.
• Create a new blog with useful content. Give users tips, news, opinions, ideas, etc. Use the blog to link back to your main site sparingly, but always focus on having the blog be beneficial to users.
• Commence a comprehensive Viral Marketing strategy. Come up with things that you can offer users that they will be attracted to due to the benefit they will receive. Then lightly brand the useful content, objects, etc before they are delivered to users.
• Utilize social media networks extensively. Post update about your business, or things you think may be useful on microblogging sites like Twitter. Create a page for your business on Social Media sites like Facebook.
• If you are a web related company, do something useful for the web community. Examples: release a free website template. Work on the development of an Open-Source project such as WordPress or Drupal. Provide industry insight.
• Offer something for free. Nothing sells, or pulls better, then the word free.

Now that you have some ways you can take advantage of Pull Marketing, get to it. There is a whole range of ways to get started. Not exactly sure how? Need some help? Want someone else to do it? Perhaps you should contact RP Design. (Or you can click on the banner to the right.)

The following video is a small introduction to the internet.

Now that you have a bit of an idea of the history surrounding the internet, I will explain the way the internet works today.

First off, let me explain a couple of key terms. A server is a computer that holds some type of information on the internet. It could be the page you are trying to access, or simply information for your computer.

A client is a computer that connects to a server and makes a request. Your PC is a client.

The internet is what’s known as a centralized network. This means that it runs on a client-server setup, where computers such as your PC makes requests to servers on the internet.

Let’s talk about the basics of the internet. The internet is essentially a massive grid of clients and servers, interacting with each other. Each computer, whether it be a client or a server has what’s called an IP Address. This address is similar to the street address of your house. It allows other computers to connect directly to your computer, and vice-versa. Remembering the IP address of every computer you wanted to connect to would be difficult, so we have what are called domain names.

When you type a website into your browser, say google.com. Your computer has no idea where google.com is. There are servers that work kind of like directories for your computer. These are called DNS servers. So your computer asks a DNS server what the IP Address of google.com is. Once the DNS server responds, you computer connects directly to google.com using the IP Address.

If you think about a website like a house, think about if it has a bunch of doors for different purposes. This is the equivalent of ports. When you access a website, it is usually on port 80, which is designed for HTTP, which is the transfer of HTML pages. Other ports exist however, and are used for different purposes. I will not go into detail regarding other ports however, since there are nearly 50,000 of them in use!

Once your computer has the IP Address of google.com. It establishes a connection on port 80. Your computer then makes a request to download the home page of google in HTML format. Google’s server responds by sending you the homepage in HTML format.

The other main way to traverse the internet is through the use of hyperlinks. These are essentially parts of a webpage that guide your browser to other destinations on the internet. The following image gives you a good representation of first, the networks of the internet, and second, a minute portion of hyperlinks on the internet.

This should give you a slight glimpse into the relative size of the internet. Now that you know the basics on how the internet started, and how it works, it will help you in your future SEO endeavors. If you head is spinning from all this information however, perhaps you should consider clicking the banner on the right, and hiring RP Design.

Any Web Marketer worth his salt knows that you can’t be successful without goals. And you can’t set goals without being able to measure them. So how do you measure goals in something as obscure as web marketing? Simple. Web Analytics. Web Analytics is technology that tracks how your website is being used. For example it can tell you how many visitors you have, where they are coming from, and what they are doing on your site.

There are two main types of web analytics softwares, server based, and client based. Server based software periodically scans the server logs to determine who was accessing your site. One of the most popular forms of server statistics software is AWStats The overview of AWStats is shown below:

As you can see, AWStats gives you an overview of information, mainly the number of visits organized by the time. There is a lot of other information that AWStats gives you. For example, The specific pages that were accessed, the countries of the visitors, their operating system, etc.

The second type of web analytics software is client based. What this means is that instead of the software running in the background on the server, it is activated every time a visitor accesses the website. This software can either be hosted on your site, or hosted externally. The most popular client-based analytics software is Google Analytics. Google Analytics works by embedding a small tag on each page of your site. This tag activates javascript hosted on Google’s Servers, which then retrieves data and information for analysis. The overview of Google Analytics is shown below:

As you can see, this overview is more intuitive than AWStats. It shows information in a more visual way, and is able to tell you if your traffic is coming from referring sites, or search engines. Google Analytics allows you to set up goals and conversions so you can get a detailed look at the traffic to your site(s).

This video should give you a nice overview of the Google Analytics Interface

As you can see, Google Analytics is very detailed, powerful software. However I would recommend you use both for your analytics needs. They each have their own pros and cons, so using them together is a better way to harness the power of the software.

Now that you know the basics of using analytics, here’s why you should:

• Gives you an overview of how many people are coming to your site.
• The only way to be successful is to measure success, and web statistics allows you to do so.
• Allows you to better focus your marketing efforts on the worst-performing parts of your site.
• Let’s you see the most popular keywords that people are hitting your site from.
• Allows you to set goals based on your traffic, so you can have measurable marketing results.

To get started with analytics right now:

• AWStats: Talk to your administrator or contact your web host to see if you have AWStats currently enabled.
• Google Analytics: visit http://google.com/analytics and sign up. Insert the provided tracking code into all of the pages of your site.

If you ever took a marketing class in school, you learned that word-of-mouth is the best kind of marketing. Wikipedia defines word of mouth marketing as:

Word of mouth is a reference to the passing of information from person to person. Originally the term referred specifically to oral communication (literally words from the mouth), but now includes any type of human communication, such as face to face, telephone, email, and text messaging.

In this article, I’m going to discuss how, when utilized properly, Social Media networks are the foundation of a new type of word-of-mouth. This new marketing is different than old marketing. Mainly because of the time it takes for one person to make a recommendation to someone else over an existing social network. We see this all the time, we just don’t know it. A great example is product reviews on things like blogs. One person posts the review on the blog, and people read it. This is word of mouth marketing, just in a different form.

The reason word of mouth marketing is so effective is because its personal. Humans are the most social creature on Earth, and this is directly reflected in marketing. Remember, word of mouth marketing doesn’t mean that it has to be someone that a person knows who is passing them information, just that it be a personal exchange. Either face to face, over the phone, etc. Information like this is passed in huge numbers all of the time. In fact, according to Internet Retailer Magazine, Facebook is now more popular then email.

Whenever you pass information on to someone using the internet, whether it be email, a blog post, a forum, or even something like Twitter, that is word of mouth. Now the question is, how do you take advantage of this enormous advertising potential? Simple, you pass on information. Write blog articles about your business, post comments on blogs, send emails, post in forums. Actively participating in social media is the only way to take advantage of it. Once you participate in the community, you become part of the community, and then you have the ability to spread your message throughout the community.

In essence, like normal word of mouth marketing, social media marketing is the hardest path to undertake, but the most rewarding in the end. By tapping into resources like facebook, blogs, etc however, your job can be a little bit easier.