An important statistic made available by the Australian Bureau Of Statistics today.
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Define holistic – relating to or concerned with wholes or with complete systems rather than with the analysis of, treatment of, or dissection into parts.

Often when I speak to web designers about SEO, most web designers tend to have a negative view of search engine optimization. Web designers approach SEO as much of an after thought after the project has been completed, or worst yet ignore SEO all together. This is a phenomenon I witness time and time again, when talking to web designers and also clients who approach me for SEO work.

The problem seems that most web designers have blinkers on when it comes to the topic of SEO, they see search engine optimization as voodoo magic – something undesirable, scammy or like popup ads.

I’m here to tell you that, SEO is an essential part of web design in this day and age where Search Engines such as Google and Bing play a very important role in the performance of a website. Especially on a business website where the main objective is to generate sales and leads.

Lets not forget, most web sites are for business purposes, a virtual showroom on the internet to put it simply. Your showroom not only needs to look fantastic but also customers should be able to find your showroom. Think about the millions of showrooms on the internet, how do you get customers to visit yours? The simplest way is through search engine optimization.

SEO like search engines / internet is a fairly new industry, which I am happy to say I have grown up with – watched the highs and lows, the boom and busts.  SEO has just grown past its teenage years, where it was all about the quick bang for your buck solutions and now it has reached its maturity, the SEO industry is energetic, well established and researched. People have now finally caught on SEO can be highly beneficial for their website and business survival.

Unfortunately, most web designers have not grown up to accept this. The reason? Well I believe there are still tensions and misunderstandings between SEOs and web designers and I am here to tell you I have experience sitting on both side of the fence.

As a web designer, I use to cringe everytime a client would tell me that their SEO wanted to make changes to their website – such as replacing images with text or adding more text.

As an SEO, I used to cringe everytime a client would come to me with their uber designed website that isn’t generating sales for them because their designer was more concerned with the design rather than the basics of search engine optimization or worst yet designers who think that stuffing the meta tags with keywords is SEO.

The solution, is a holistic approach to web design and SEO – Where search engine optimization is factored into the design process and real business objectives are identified prior to any HTML coding is done. A holistic approach will save you money in the long run, because you are building a solid foundation for your website to grow and perform.

Think about building a showroom with no signage, it would cost a lot more later to ask a new builder to install signage, rather than having it done at the same time your showroom was been built. Most business owners wouldn’t dare build a showroom without signage, the same could be said about a website with no SEO!

When you speak to me about holistic web design and SEO, I will help evaluate your business goals and help you understand and identify opportunities for your website on the internet. This may involve a combination of an attractive website design along with a keyword and search engine optimization report, to give you a clear understanding and expectation of how your dollars will be spent and how you will benefit as a result.

The current trend in profile pictures is illustration / cartoon style. So I thought I’d hope onto the bandwagon and design one too! Here is the result. ( clicky for full size  )

Self Portrait illustration

I tried to keep it as original as possible without giving myself a face lift / make over. What do you think of this new trend? Does it work well for all scenarios?

Web design has always been my passion and I am glad to announce the launch of a brand new XHTML design for a new web design client.

new web design - lowprofilelinks.com

The initial concept for the website design was first laid out in Photoshop CS3 with layers grouped as main Div wrappers. I find that if I visualize this in the mock up process it really helps to speed things up when it comes to the HTML slicing stage.

Main DIV elements such as menus, template areas and content editable areas should be all grouped individually. However I try not to get too pedantic with the hierarchy of it all; as long as its neatly named and if another web designer happen to need to update it in the future they can easily figure things out.

Screen shot of the web design layout in Photoshop

Since this design is for an SEO business, the final HTML needed to be clean and images needed to be kept at a minimum. Due to this requirement I opted to use SiFR for the main heading texts to add a little bit of glam to the overall design. Sifr allows web designers to embed font’s that would be otherwise considered not web friendly while still allowing the search engines to crawl and read the text. I had this in mind already when designing the concept, so I was free to use the font on the design ( which is Trade Gothic Narrow )

Once the concept was signed off by the client, I move onto the task of constructing the basic HTML framework for the web design. This is where the nicely formatted photoshop layers come in handy, basically I start with the main wrappers which have been grouped already. Once the main positioning has been done, its time to move onto the individual elements inside the wrappers.

SIFR in action

By structuring my workflow like this, I can keep the CSS stylesheet for the web design nice and neat, using IDs as the parent CSS style and adding classes from there.

The final stage of the design involves adding the content and the last thing is to validate the HTML. I know some designers like to do this during each step of the web design process, but I find it too time consuming. By validating the HTML as the last step, just works for me.

So that’s a little insight into my web design work flow for this project, this is how I work on basic XHTML designs, however processes and work flows generally change if we start involving web applications, PHP functions and databases.

Working as a Brisbane web designer can sometimes be quiet challenging as some businesses and consumers in Brisbane are still behind in grasping the power of the internet and how it can help their business. Brisbane is a growing city and I do believe that soon we will see a change. This change is brought forth by countless people in the internet marketing and web design industry in Brisbane, we are a small group no doubt; but the passion is there and with passion will always come success.

another new set of logos I recent designed

Im very happy to announce today I have achieved the Google Analytics qualified individual certification.

• Click here for my PDF certificate
• Click here to verify my certification online
  

A Google Analytics Qualified Individual is proficient in the following; ( Full list available here )

• Determine what Google Analytics can do for your business or website
• Best practices to setup and create Google Analytic accounts
• Best practices to create and manage profiles
• Best practices to implementation Google Analytics tracking codes
• Best practices for Goal and Filters creation and customization
• Best practices for E-commerce tracking
• Campaign tracking and Google Adwords Integration
• Tracking of custom PPC, Banner, Email campaigns
• URL tagging
• Event tracking and virtual pageviews tracking for JS, Flash and downloads
• Use of Google Analytics to generate and customize reports
• Interpreting reports
• Best practices for analyzing data and trends
• Revenue metrics analysis

The certification givees you the confidence in me to have the ability in structuring detailed web analysis reports and also the ability to analyze the data within the report to help you achieve greater results in conversion, traffic and PPC effectiveness.

PS: I am very proud of obtaining the certification, however there are some advanced areas such as using Reg EX and setting customer visitor segment variable which I need to refresh myself on. If you fancy taking the certification yourself, head to http://google.starttest.com/

So whats been going on the past few months? A lot actually. After two and a half years with the Brisbane web design firm Diggy, as a E-business manager looking after everything from web design, internet marketing, sales, account management and billing, it was time for me to move onto a more creative and personally fulfilling role.

I am currently the chief editor, creative director and web designer for Little Engine a search engine optimization and internet marketing blog based in the USA. Taking on this role has given me the creative flexibility that I desired while also learning and sharing my knowledge of SEO with others.

We have big plans for Little Engine and the past few months we have been taking the right steps to achieving that goal. We have broken many top SEO stories such as the launch of Google’s next generation search platform code name Google Caffeine, Bing’s brand new visual search and Bing Wave updates, released several in-depth SEO guides and developed very useful SEO tools.

Some of the challenges I have been facing are;

• Lack of sleep from working with US hours
• Sharpening up my writing / blogging skills
• Keeping up with the latest news and developments in the SEO industry
• Keeping distractions away while working from home
• Developing a healthy lifestyle
• Too many coffees and Redbulls!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank my previous co-workers, it has been an interesting 2.5 years and one that I will experience from and my new partners for given me the opportunity to work with you.


I would also like to thank my previous clients for trusting and giving me the opportunity to work together, I know there are some happy clients out there! ( you know who you are! ) and wish you the best for the future.

Many of you might not know in my spare time I am also a electronic music producer and DJ under the alias DJ noobdles. If you are interested in checking out some of my productions and mixes click on the full story to listen to some new tracks and mixes from the past few months.

September Liquid Drum n Bass Sessions by drumnbass

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Here are some new Logo Designs I have been working on of late… I’m always keen to take on new logo / branding work, prices range from $200 – $500 aud depending on your requirements.

Photos from the dust storm in Brisbane and Sydney today. I took these photos around lunch time.
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You can now view a portfolio of my web designs here ( or hit the Portfolio / Clients link in the top menu ). Clicking on each thumbnail will reveal a larger screen-shot.

Yacht Share

Precision Doors and Windows

Chatabux voip phone services

If you like any of the designs or have feedback, feel free to leave a comment for me. Most of the designs have been customised to work with our companies Content Management System and may include shopping carts and product databases.