Thu 18 Aug 2011 Content Writing – Fascinate Your Readers with Enticing Headlines

Creating interesting headline is a challenging aspect of content writing and web design. A catchy headline encourages visitors to click the page and read the content. If you do not opt for an enticing headline, there are high chances that your content will be lost amongst millions of others available in the Internet. An example will make the concept clear.

Recently an online news article that contained the headline’ New Report Ranks Top U.S. Cities for Bedbug Infestations’ attracted people’s attention. While millions of articles on the same topic have been published, what was special about this one? This headline highlighted an intriguing element-fear, which raised curiosity of the visitors. And for most people, infestation of bedbugs can be a frightening issue! Here are few tips that will help you to write engaging headlines.

Opt for brainstorming sessions

Yes, it is true.  Brainstorming sessions will help you to avoid using clichéd terms and come up with eye-catching headlines. Use creativity, intelligence, and basic knowledge to make your headlines different from others. Opting for clichéd terms will convince the visitors that you are a lousy writer and probably are not serious about making your articles interesting.

Use the secret weapon

Visitors usually look for good and valuable information in the Internet. With the help of creative headlines, you can convince them that your article contains useful information. For example, if you are writing an article on weight loss, using a clichéd title such as ‘How to Lose Weight’, may not generate much traffic. On the other hand, choosing an interesting headline such as ‘Secret Tips to Lose Weight’ can stimulate interest of the visitors. However, avoid using this technique on a regular basis.

Asking questions can be a good idea

A simple way to make your headline interesting is to ask questions. It gives an idea about the theme of the article and evokes curiosity of the readers. For example, instead of writing ‘Tips for Parenting Toddlers’, you can use the title’ How to Parent Toddlers Effectively?’ The latter title creates a powerful impression and convinces the readers that your article contains useful tips.

Short titles are effective

Research studies reveal that as compared to long titles, short ones are more effective in captivating interest of the visitors. Long titles can irritate people and discourage them from exploring the content. Keep your headlines short and simple.

Use command titles

Command headlines create a proactive image and urge the readers to take an action. In fact, it can be a powerful marketing strategy. A great example of command headline can be’ Opt for Eco-Friendly Products-Be a Hero’. This headline convinces the readers that the article explores environment-friendly products and reasons for buying them.

Though headline is a crucial aspect of content, one needs to pay attention to the body of the article as well. If you do not include valuable information in the text, there are high chances that the readers will not return to your site. Therefore, to garner maximum traffic, pay equal emphasis on title and body of the content.

Website Design Hyderabad
 
Levonsys is leading Website Design and Development Company based in Allen, Texas and Hyderabad, India. Levonsys Services includes Website Design and Development, Web applications Development,Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Optimization (SMO)

Email: sales@levonsys.com | Website: www.levonsys.com

Why Use HTML5 Features in Web Design and Development?

HTML’s latest version, HTML5, builds on the highly successful features of HTML4. Although, currently supported by only few web browsers and is not expected to complete before 2014, HTML5 features have already gained widespread popularity. Undoubtedly, the gen-next HTML can improve website design by adding many attractive and excellent elements. Also, because HTML5 builds on HTML4, web developers need not suspend the existing markups. An improvement on the old markups will be seen to allow the new features to better website appearance and usability.
Here’s a look at what the next generation HTML has to offer:

HTML5 Features

• The doctype specification that was used by HTML4 has been simplified for HTML5. Browsers will continue to render pages in standards mode.

However, with the simplified doctype  declaration, it is now only <!DOCTYPE html> to be used in the HTML5 syntax.
•  HTML5 provides outstanding support to   audios and videos. When all browsers fully support HTML5, it will be manifolds easier to add videos and audios to websites without using outside plugins.
•  HTML5 allows simplified content editing of your website. The ‘contenteditable’ attribute allows you to easily and quickly edit/change your text. All you have to do is add ‘contenteditable=“true”’ to change any element.

• HTML5’s canvas element is good news for web designers. This feature allows you to bypass Photoshop by allowing you to directly place 2D images in the code.

• You can still navigate web applications when offline by virtue of the HTML5’s application cache feature.

How the Use HTML5 can Help Web Designers

• Because it implements WebSockets, HTML5 loads quicker than HTML4

• For mobile phone companies creating applications for mobile phones, HTML5 could be the solution to faster applications that will be accessible universally across all mobile phones.

• HTML5 makes web development faster, easier and more flexible to modifications/changes.

• 
• With HTML5, the need for third-party software to write codes for media tools like audio, video and images, is obliterated. Media tools can now be directly written into the codes.

• The growing popularity and wide use of HTML5 is going to get better and faster with new features. It only makes sense that designers shift to this improved coding language to produce advanced websites.

• Together with CSS3, HTML5 can create designs that are smarter, more attractive, and load faster.

HTML5 can give your designing skills a serious boost. In a world where competition rules and online businesses are fighting to stay alive, a stylish website, combined with the correct SEO factors, can pull your business from the muck of competition to a place of distinction.

 Website Design Hyderabad
Levonsys is leading Website Design and Development Company based in Allen, Texas and Hyderabad, India. Levonsys Services includes Website Design and Development, Web applications Development,Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Optimization (SMO)

Email: sales@levonsys.com | Website: www.levonsys.com

Email Marketing-Enhance Your Business?

Email used one of the dominant mediums of communication on the Web. With the evolution of social media however, it has lost its sheen. Several companies and individuals have dropped email and started using their Facebook or Twitter accounts for communication. The question is, “is email really obsolete?”
The answer is: No! If used wisely, emails can still work wonders for online marketing.
Why People Are Losing Faith in Email?


Email is the oldest medium of online communication, and when compared to social   media features, is pretty dry. With social media tools, millions of people can communicate with each other instantly. Facebook and Twitter are probably the largest marketing platforms with billions of fans. Many big corporate houses have gained huge business success through social media. Email marketing is outdated because most consider it boring. In fact, teenagers, and most below 50, hardly use email these days to share events, activities, comments, pictures, etc.

• Social networks are mostly privately owned and have a market value worth billions of dollars. LinkedIn’s estimated market value is $10 billion and if Facebook goes public, it can earn a market share of $100 billion. Everyone wants a share in social media because it’s profitable. Email is non-proprietary. It doesn’t have a market value. Email is like air, its essential but you don’t pay for it.

• Another major drawback of email is you can’t get the attention of a huge audience at the same time. Email is private. You can send a mail to only those who you wish to or know ids of. When it comes to Facebook however, whatever you write on your wall can be viewed by thousands of people at the same time, with or without being on your friend list. Online marketers like to share their news fast, and with a large audience.

• Another major drawback of email is you can’t get the attention of a huge audience at the same time. Email is private. You can send a mail to only those who you wish to or know ids of. When it comes to Facebook however, whatever you write on your wall can be viewed by thousands of people at the same time, with or without being on your friend list. Online marketers like to share their news fast, and with a large audience.

Why Email is Still Important?

• Emails do not have the ability to share content with millions at once and create thousands of fans, but when it comes to number of users, social media falls behind. In USA, only 6% of people have never sent or received an email, but 39% internet users never used any social network. That means email marketing is your safest bet when you want to communicate with a large audience.

• You may have an account in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Myspace, Orkut, and in many other sites. But when it comes to email addresses, you probably have 1-2 email addresses. When people have too many social media accounts, they will overlook a post or tweet, but when they receive a mail in their inbox, the possibility of checking the message is much more.

• When it comes to direct marketing, 93% of email users have opt-in relationships with a consumer brand, compared to 15% on Facebook and 4% on Twitter. Facebook has realized the importance of email as a medium of communication and marketing. They have already launched a @facebook.com email address.

• Email attracts users’ attention. When people receive an email in their inbox, they read it most of the times. But when the same person gets a feed from Facebook, he overlooks it.

• When it comes to social media like Twitter, you have only 140 characters to express yourself. Email has no such limitations. You can write in detail about your product or service.

• Email does not irritate users. You can keep your inbox to zero. But Facebook and Twitter floods your profile with hundreds of updates every minute. How many Tweets can an online marketer send? No matter how many he sends, some new Tweet from another company will replace it, and the previous Tweet will go into oblivion.

• Email marketing is slow but steady. Using email, you can cultivate your brand image, advocate the reasons that make you the best and create a long lasting impression on the users’ mind. In social media, the PPC campaigns are like shooting stars. Once you stop PPC, people forget about you.

Things to Remember in Email Marketing

• When you send an email, write in simple language but offer valuable information. People forgive gibberish content in Facebook, but not in a mail they get from the same brand.

• Email gives you the freedom to write as much as you wish. Still, your content should be compact and coherent. Writing too much can bore your target audience.

• Categorize your customers and send message to them with a personal tone. You should not address the entire audience the same way. Also, do not address collectively, saying “hi all”.

Despite the popularity of social media, email has its own advantages. It reaches the target audience directly and individually. To start a successful online marketing campaign, you can’t ignore email.

We at Levonsys provide you our specialized Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaign Management Services for effectively and economically running your Adwords, Text-Ads and Banner Advertising campaigns on Google, Yahoo and their partner sites. Clients or Organizations willing to get their PPC campaign managed by us are encouraged to open their own Google Adwords account and get their own credit card registered with it to make arrangements for their advertising liabilities towards the respective search engine.
Website Design Hyderabad

Email: sales@levonsys.com | Website: www.levonsys.com

How to Write Better CSS in Easy Steps

A clean and proper CSS code can help create a website design faster and with more ease than when you are using tables. However, your first dig at CSS can be a little odd especially if you are comfortable using tables. Nevertheless, in the best interest of clean stylesheets and a more efficient output, here are 10 easy tips that will help you write better CSS:

1.    CSS Reset – is especially useful when you are writing the same code repeatedly to make your design displayable in different browsers. Using a CSS reset stylesheet would mean to build off browsers from zero and ensure your design is properly displayed in all browsers.

2.    Indent – Always indent your CSS rules so that when you are writing more than 500 lines of CSS codes, you don’t need to sift through the file to find id’s and classes, and strain your eyes in the process.





3.    Comment – These help keep your stylesheets structured. When you comment out blocks of codes, the scanning of classes and id’s become easier. Besides, when your clients go through your codes, they can change what they do not like without having to ask you.

4.    Keep it Clean – Always code one rule in one line and multiple rules in multiple lines. That way, not only does your stylesheet look uncluttered, but also it’s easier for you to find items, and change them as required.

5.    Consistency – This is not something you will notice as you work on a daily basis, but once you review your stylesheets, you will find a definite pattern you follow in the way you write specific lines of code. The idea is to maintain a single style of coding throughout your stylesheet, and those you will write in future, so editing becomes easier and takes less time.

6.    Separate – the CSS hacks and conditional elements from your main stylesheet so their modification or editing can be done without affecting codes in your main style.css file.

7.    Shorthand Code – Shorthand increases your speed of writing and also helps keep your stylesheet clean. Follow the clockwise format so each numeric value rightly corresponds to its quality.

8.    TOC – A Table of Contents at the top of your stylesheet will allow you to easily find items in your code.

9.    Easy to Follow Names – CSS id’s and classes should follow a proper naming structure so they are easy to understand.

10.    Alphabetical Order – Following this in your CSS rules will make it remarkably easy for you to pick out specific lines to edit in your code. Haphazard alphabetization means you will have to scan you codes a while before you find a specific line and change it.

Website Design Hyderabad

Levonsys is leading Website Design and Development Company based in Allen, Texas and Hyderabad, India. Levonsys Services includes Website Design and Development, Web applications Development,Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Optimization (SMO)

Email: sales@levonsys.com | Website: www.levonsys.com

15 Check Points Before Website Launch

Your website is complete and ready to be launched. But before you make it live, stop and think: are you forgetting a few necessary checks in your eagerness? Here’s a list of 15 things to check before making your website public:

1. Titles and Meta Tags – Page title is not only important for SEO, but it tells the user what a page is about. Page titles should ideally change with each different page and must relate to that page’s content.
   Although meta keywords and meta description tags have little importance in SEO for major search engines, they should still be included. Meta descriptions must be different on each different page and relate to that page’s content. Meta descriptions are important because search engines often display the description in search results.
2. Proofread Content – Check your content one more time before launching your site. Get someone to read it, preferably someone who doesn’t yet know about your product. There will always be something to pick up on from his/her feedback. Revise content and see if you can make modifications, reduce, break, or add text to make your idea more comprehendible to first-time users.
   Check dynamic texts on your website too.
3. Check Functionality – Test your site thoroughly before making it live. Do your contact forms, subscriptions forms, shopping carts, search functions, member log-ins and registration areas, etc, work correctly?
4. Graceful Degradation – Check if your site works with JavaScript turned off, because personal computers often have JavaScript disabled for security reasons. Also test any AJAX features on your site.
5. Links – Search engines hate broken links, and users find them frustrating. Don’t just assume all your links will work because they are in place. Check them before you make your website live. The last think you’d want is for users to click on a call to action link and be redirected to a 404 error.
   Make your links prominent to users by using link colors that stand out against your page’s background. Make sure you code a different color for visited links; you don’t want users clicking on the same links repeatedly. Also, avoid underlining text that is not a link.
6. Defensive Design – A 404 page will be displayed if your users request a page that does not exist. By providing a 404 page that directs the users to your home page or suggests another page, you are stopping users from exiting your site.
   When you are validating your forms, check by submitting information that is unusual like letters in number fields and vice versa, lots of characters, etc. If there is an error on submission, error messages should help users fix incorrect entry.
7. Sitemap – Don’t forget to add the sitemap.xml file to your root directory before website launch. Sitemap.xml points major search engine crawlers to pages of your website, thus helping search engines easily index your site. Your sitemap.xml should be uploaded to a location in your root directory so it appears as www.abc.com/sitemap.xml.
   If you are using WordPress, install Google XML Sitemaps plug-in to automatically update your sitemap whenever you post new write-ups. Uploading your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools tells Google you have a sitemap.
8. Validation – Neither users nor search engines care much for validation because web pages will still be displayed perfectly without validating codes. However, it’s still a good idea to validate your pages. They not only help debug your codes but also improve the overall quality of your work.
9. Analytics – An analytics tools help measure statistics to determine how successfully your site is performing and converting. Google Analytics is a favorite among web owners. Other analytics tools like StatCounter, Kissmetrics and Clicky can also be used.
10. RSS Link – If your website has a newsreel or blog, make sure you have an RSS feed for users to subscribe to. Conventionally, a RSS feed icon in the browser’s address bar works, although sidebars work too. To include the RSS feed in your address bar, include this code between heads:
    <link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”Site or RSS title” href=”link-to-feed” />
11. Cross-Browser Compatibility – Always check your website on popular browsers like I.E 6, 7, and 8, Chrome, Opera, Safari 3 and Firefox 3 to ensure your website design shows up correctly.
    Most web designers you know are trying to combat cross-browser incompatibility and their designs from appearing dislodged across browsers. But cross-browser incompatibility is a disease of the web that isn’t going to get cured anytime soon. Therefore, while your design does not have to be pixel perfect across all browsers, it should at least show up correctly on all browsers.
12. Optimize – Optimization is a process that multiplies in practice after you have launched your website. However, by ensuring you have employed the basic rules of SEO to your site, you have helped it foray in the right direction.
    Make sure your page titles, headers, keyword-rich content, image alts and CSS styles are in place so you can build up on them, along with other SEO practices after your site has been launched.
13. Back-up – A back-up strategy is crucial, especially if your website runs on database. For a WordPress website, make sure you have installed a WordPress database Backup.
14. Print-Style Sheet – Create a print-specific style sheet so that if users want to print your page’s main content, they are able to directly print from your web page without having to copy and paste main content into a text document to avoid navigation and design elements. Use the following code between heads:
    <link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”print.css” media=”print” />
15. Fevicon – A Favicon brands the window or tab your website opens in, in a user’s browser. This branding icon is also saved as bookmark when you favorite a web page for quick future access. Some Favicons will be saved in the root directory as favicon.ico depending on your browser. To ensure your website’s Favicon is picked up all the time, use the following code in your head tag:
    <link rel=”icon” type=”image/x-icon” href=”/favicon.ico” />                                                        Website Design Hyderabad 
    
    Levonsys is a 10 year old – Website Designing and Website Development company in Hyderabad, India and Texas USA. We cater and collaborate with a wide client base and business partners across the globe and offer a galore of services relating to all the sectors in the IT Industry.
    
    
    Email: sales@levonsys.com | Website: www.levonsys.com

web marketing-Competitors Analysis

Competitor analysis is the first of the 6 steps to web marketing success because understanding how your competitors have succeeded online can help you avoid the costly trial and error of testing strategies that do not work. After we disassemble your competition’s web marketing we will outline in clear detail what they have done right to be worthy of your scrutiny.
In this analysis we typically analyze a minimum of three competitor websites in order to see if any trends are developing. This intelligence will play a critical role in creating the custom web strategy that will serve as your map to online success.
Our competitor analysis reports include the following information:

Section 1) Link Popularity Analysis

How the number of links pointing to your competitor’s website(s) may or may not have contributed to their ranking success. In addition, we will provide additional commentary should something of particular interest arise.

For example, we may find a number of websites that provided link popularity to the competition but would be willing to link to your web site as well; with little or no work on your part. In one instance this meant a rare opportunity of finding a PR9 website willing to provide a link for a client; links such as those are more valuable than gold.

Section 2) Search Engine Friendly Analysis

How search engine friendly is the structure of your competitor’s web site? Have the search engines found a large percentage of the pages that actually exist on their website(s)? If so, it could be that their web site structure is helping them win online. We will outline our findings and provide live online examples wherever applicable.

Section 3) Search Engine Optimization Analysis

How well has your competitor’s web pages been optimized for search engine rankings? We will carefully pick apart the background programming (source code) of their home page and other major pages in their web site to determine what they may have done correctly to assist their success.

Section 4) Keyword Analysis

What keywords are your competitor’s focusing their marketing on? Using a variety of analytical and statistical methods we will put together a comprehensive list of the keywords for which your competitors chose to focus advertising dollars.

Section 5) Competitor Summaries

The findings for each competitor will be revealed in this section.

Section 6) Summary Recommendations

The competitor analysis will be concluded with summary recommendations for your website based on the effective tactics discovered.

Our SEO Professionals team at Levonsys performs marketing research, suggest the best search engine marketing channel like SEO, SMO, Google sponsored listings (paid listing) and how to make a SEO friendly website for your online business.

Website Design Hyderabad 

Email: sales@levonsys.com | www.levonsys.com

Are Traditional Search Engines Failing?

Is Google doomed? According to interviews with Stefan Weitz, traditional search engines are failing users. Indexing keywords and checking backlink quality is a flawed 12 year-old concept which no longer works on the modern web.
So who is Stefan Weitz? He’s Bing’s director.
The more cynical among you will conclude this is obvious marketing spin, but Weitz raises a few interesting points:

1. Search engines have difficulty understanding keyword context. When a user enters “jaguars” are they interested in the big cat, the car manufacturer, or the Jacksonville football team?
2. Search engines are relatively slow to index dynamic real-time data such as tweets or Facebook comments.
3. Search engines index web pages but people often want the underlying data, e.g. stock prices, flight times, weather reports, etc.

In an attempt to make results more relevant, Bing has integrated Facebook recommendations. If a trusted friend of yours ‘likes’ a specific restaurant, it’s position will be raised when you use an associated search term.

Backlink Breakdowns

Google and Bing analyze backlinks to rate the importance of a page. If someone links to your article, it’s a ‘vote’ for that content. The vote is given more weight if the link originates site which receives many backlinks itself.
The Search Engine Optimization industry attempts to manipulate this metric. Techniques range from link baiting — creating good content which encourages backlinks — to more dubious methods. Most of us have experienced blog spam comments or useless automatically-generated link farm pages in search results.
Google, Bing and other search engines work hard to restrict black hat SEO practices with varying levels of success.

A Social Network Solution?

Microsoft owns a small share of Facebook so it’s not surprising they want to utilize that data. Google has implemented it’s own experimental “+1″ feature which allows users to rate the relevancy of a search result.
While I’m sure it will help some queries, the technologies raise a new set of problems:

Sign-in shenanigans

To receive rated results you must have a Bing account, a Facebook account and be signed into both. This slashes the potential audience — especially when many corporations ban Facebook in the workplace.

Most people are data consumers

The majority of people rarely publish content. Only a small proportion ever click a ‘Like’ button or send a tweet because it takes effort. In most cases, only those who have a strong positive or negative opinion will rate a product or write a short review.
It may be possible to collate some information by analyzing a user’s actions, but assessing their emotional attachment is far more difficult.

People are fickle

Facebook may be the most popular social network today but you would have said the same about MySpace a few years ago. Bing’s data is only as relevant as the users who remain on that system.

Not all content is rateable

While it’s easy to rate a website, page, product or service, how can you assess the quality of the underlying data. You might ‘Like’ a sunny weather report but that doesn’t stop it being wholly inaccurate when snow starts to fall.

Social networks can be manipulated too

Search engine positions are directly related to revenue so it’s only a matter of time before SEO experts discover new ways to exploit the social networks. Any number of psychological or technical tricks can be employed to make people ‘Like’ specific content. It occurs now so you can expect more companies to take advantage of the techniques.
It’s early days for social networking search integration so time will tell whether it improves results. But sorry Mr Weitz, I remain skeptical about any claims it will supersede backlink metrics.

Usefull links for Web Developers

Here are a number of useful links I’ve discovered recently which could ease your development burden when you return next week…

copypastecharacter.com

If you don’t know your &raquo’s from your &rdquo’s, copypastecharacter.com is a great tool which could help you find the right HTML entity. Click any symbol and its character or HTML code is copied to the clipboard.
If you require something a little more sophisticated, the XHTML Character Entity Reference provides a categorized list of characters with their HTML entity code, numerical reference and unicode representation (useful for JavaScript).

Easy File Sharing with Ge.tt

Do your clients often try to send you videos or other large files from their AOL email account? Save their sanity and suggest they use Ge.tt.
While there are many file sharing systems, Ge.tt is one of the easiest I’ve seen. It’s free, there’s no need to register and there are no file size limits. File links can be sent to others via email, Twitter or Facebook. Your data is retained for 90 days, you can access download statistics and the developers are creating an API.

Support Details

It’s Friday, 5.30pm and your phone rings. It’s ClientX and they’re not happy. “My site doesn’t work.” they claim, “It’s broken and I want it fixed now”. You load the URL and everything seems fine.
A long conversation follows as you try to identify the problem. Unfortunately, the client doesn’t know what browser they’re using — they don’t know what a browser is. It’s futile to ask about their OS, screen resolution, color depth, version of Flash, or JavaScript state.
Fortunately, supportdetails.com can answer many questions for you. Ask them to visit the site and enter your email address to receive a report about their system. They’re probably running IE3.0 on their Great Aunt’s Windows 3.1 PC.

Convert PNGs with 8bitalpha.com

24-bit alpha-transparent PNGs are great. However, Fireworks users know that 8-bit PNGs are smaller and work in more browsers. If you don’t use Fireworks, 8bitalpha.com may help. Simply drag your 24-bit masterpiece into the page and have an optimized 8-bit version returned.

Install and Update Software with ninite.com

Have you recently received a new PC? How long did it take to download and install your vital software, developer tools, browsers, media players, runtimes, virus checkers and utilities? How long does it take to find, download and install updates?
Save those lost hours with ninite.com. It’s easy: choose your applications, download the installer, and let it do the hard work for you. The installer can be run again when you want to check for updates.
ninite.com is primarily for Windows users who don’t have the luxury of a built-in package manager. That said, a Linux version of ninite.com is also available.

Bonus Link: URL Hunter

Are you fed up with fancy 3D games? URL Hunter is possibly the simplest browser-based game ever devised. It’s played in the URL bar and your task is to shoot the ‘a’ characters. It’s hardly Call of Duty, but it’ll give you a few moments pleasure and no one will realize you’re enjoying yourself.

Website Design Hyderabad 

Levonsys is a 10 year old – Website Designing and Website Development company in Hyderabad, India and Texas USA. We cater and collaborate with a wide client base and business partners across the globe and offer a galore of services relating to all the sectors in the IT Industry.

Email: sales@levonsys.com | Website: www.levonsys.com