As for any content that is placed online, whether we are talking about articles, guest posts or even photos, YouTube videos can also get some push if properly optimised. This video channel is very popular nowadays and can definitely be a good method for scoring some laser-targeted visitors to your website.

Here are some tips for optimising YouTube videos:

1. Use keywords in title and description

This does not mean you should stuff keywords and go on the darker side, just make sure you are using a title that gets some searches and use the keywords in your description as well.

2. Always use the URL in description

Using URL in description will not only get you a backlink pointing to your website but it can also get some clicks/visits if your video is worthy.

3. Always use keyword-rich tags

Do not forget that tags are still a powerful way of ranking in YouTube search and not only. Use them wisely and you will get some benefits from them as well.

4. Video name

Before uploading your video to YouTube make sure video’s name is made of the keywords you are targeting. Instead of having a generic name like video003.mpg change it to something more search engine friendly.

5. Backlinks

There are two main camps related to building links to a YouTube video: some say it helps, some say it does not. However, many voices claim that building links to videos helped them achieve page 1 rankings thus getting some good visitors through those. A definitely must try trick!

Many people are wondering nowadays how can they create a successful blog and how to maintain its success for long time. From corporate blogs to personal blogs, this article will highlight the most important aspects of blogging.
1. The biggest mistake someone can do when creating a blog is by choosing a niche that he/she has no clue about. The second biggest mistake is not choosing a niche at all and just writing about general subjects that burst into your mind. Niche-targeted blogs are the most read ones, that is a fact.

2. The next question is how often the content should be updated. This only depends on what kind of blog it is, what kind of information you will deliver and a few other aspects. For example, you could write only twice a week and have a tremendous amount of readers or you will have to write 1-2 posts daily, depending on where your content is syndicated, where does your traffic come from etc. In the end, more is always better.

3. Stay up-to-date with any news, rumours and gossip related to your niche. You will always find out new things to write about.

4. Always keep it simple when it comes to social bookmarking or any other sharing method, whether it is Twitter or Facebook. There are plenty of plugins to help you achieve this, just upload-install and you are ready to be syndicated.

5. Always communicate with your readers; from replying to comments to adding different polls or any other interaction methods, make your visitors feel welcomed and start building online relationships.

A recent CNN study for how news is shared and consumed revealed that “shared news matters more”, in translation, social media is the most frequent way for sharing news online. The study was conducted on 2,300 people and the results were that 43% from the online news used sharing via social media, through popular networks like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and MySpace. Other 30% got to sharing through emails, 15% to SMS and 12% to Instant Messaging.

Other interesting results from this study say that 65% of shared content is regarding ongoing stories, 19% for breaking news and 16% is related to “funny” content,  however let’s discuss this a little more first. Why is social media the preferred method for news sharing?

A simple and logical answer would be that social media is featured nowadays on almost all online sites. Just think about how can you share a story on Facebook? Click on a “Like” button and the story gets on Facebook in a blink of an eye. For Twitter the same patterns apply. By being accessible on each and any news website, as well as being so easy to share stories through a single click, it’s no wonder why people choose to share news through social media instead of logging in to their email accounts, add the people for sending the news, copy/paste link and so on. Sharing through social media is indeed, a hassle free way of making news popular.

As top UK website designers, WebCreationUK is also very familiar with the social media wave so you can easily follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

The world’s top search engine, Google, has been preparing the launch of Google TV for some time, but until now the details about this new product have been kept under lock and key. Although mobile Internet seems to be extremely popular among people all over the world, Google TV seems to be one of the most important new chapters in the history of Internet.

As we said before, few details have been released until now, when they recently wrote on their official blog a few more “ideas” about this project and here is the summary.

First of all, Google TV is designed as a platform that will combine TV and web into a single fantastic experience for users as well as programmers and developers. Secondly, it seems that lots of potential partners are contacting Google to find out information about, yes, you guessed, how to best monetise and distribute their content through this new technology. On their latest blog post, the guys at Google TV released information about some of their content partners and we find through them large brands like:

HBO – planning to bring HBO GO, a feature that will allow people to access HBO content in an enhanced website

 NBA – with their newly developed NBA Game time an application for NBA fans

NBC Universal – teamed up with Google TV to deliver CNBC Real-Time for what they say “best financial news”

Amazon – Amazon Video On Demand will offer access to over 75,000 titles for rent/purchase

This is not all. Google TV also teamed up with large media companies to optimise their content for this new platform, companies like The New York Times, VEVO, Napster and of course, the most popular micro-blogging platform, Twitter.

In addition, they also announced that this month “powered by Google TV” devices will be launched from Sony and Logitech. The last one already showcased their “companion box”, a $299 device that comes with Google TV software.

Although Google have managed to climb its way through the ranks as the best search engine available nowadays, it seems they are not going to stop there. First they announced the affinity for becoming a “green energy provider”, now the Google TV. The UK’s top website designers will keep an eye on future news related to Google TV so keep an eye on our web design blog for more details.

Goo.gl url shortener is opened for the public, have you used it yet?

Goo.gl has just been opened for public use! While with its launch, it was available through the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner, now by visiting the Goo.gl website anyone can use its features without any hassle. This is a “to keep an eye on” move while it comes as a competitor product for Bit.ly and TinyURL, but how many people will switch to Goo.gl and most important is why?

The great thing is while using the shortened URL from Goo.gl, important statistics related can be find out, like:

-          Referred data

-          Browser and platform

-          Country

-          Total traffic received through the shortened URL

Other great features are, this shortener is using 301 redirects and it comes with spam protection from phishing and spam.  An advantage that Bit.ly has over this Google product is the possibility to customize the shortened URL, but the tech heads from Google might see this as a future improvement to be added.

Goo.gl was first developed for Google’s own products as a fast and secure product, but lately the guys at Google saw this as a great possibility to offer another fantastic product to people searching for it. Although anyone could use this service without having a Google account, for checking the statistics for each URL shortened one, the user must login to their Google account.

Stay in touch with WebCreationUK’s top UK website designers for more news and tech information.

Even though IE users are still higher in numbers than Firefox ones, the fact that web developers are using Firefox browser while it offers much more functionality is well known. With the plethora of add-ons available to download for free, what starts as a simple Internet browser can easily become a great tool every website designer or developer may find handy.

It is almost impossible to make a list of all the Firefox add-ons web developers could use for daily tasks, so the website designers at WebCreationUK thought to share four of the top ones they are using on a regular basis.

1. ColorZilla

As our fellow colleagues say, this is not only useful for web developers but also for any person trying to adjust the Adsense ads on a blog/website while picking the right colour to match the entire website. Using this extension’s “eyedropper” no one should have difficulties when choosing the exact value of a specific colour from the website. It also features a colour analyzer, an online palette viewer, measurable distances between point A and point B, page Zoom and many other goodies.

1. Web Developer

This is solely for website designers and offers lots of tools for coding and troubleshooting. Editing CSS has never been so easy before with this great extension, from trying different fonts and sizes to different borders or margins. Basically this extension gives you the ability to change options related to CSS and see the changes in a blink of an eye. Using CSS a lot? Then definitely install this Web Developer add-on.

1. Abduction!

This one allows users to take screenshots from different parts of a website or even of a whole web page and store it as images for different purposes. Again, great extension for designers.

1. Firebug

Firebug has so many features it would take a big blog to describe each one. As with Web Developer, it comes with a multitude of development tools that simply give developers the possibility to do anything from editing to debugging on CSS, HTML and Javascript while still browsing with Firefox. What is even greater is the fact that every change is made instantly so every tweak/edit will be seen in real time.

As we said in the beginning of this article, there are literally hundreds of useful extensions for web developers, this is only a small piece of the puzzle, but follow our web design blog and who knows, maybe in a short space of time an impressive list might be posted here…