Tuesday 15 December 2015

Why Grammar Matters Online

While the grammar of "olde" might have seemed stuffy and pretentious, there
is a way to tap into that school of grammar rules that will greatly benefit
your online writing pursuits today.

It's not enough to know the difference between affect and effect anymore
(although it's a great start). In order to be a credible, valued, popular
online writer with a wide variety of job offers and a formidable sense of
expertise, you need to be perceived as intelligent and credible, which is
tough to do if you've cast the grammar rules to the wind.

Although most fifth grade grammar rules are out-dated in today's writing
environment, you still need to employ great grammar in order to produce good
writing.

It's that simple.

What You Need to Know: Grammar 101 For the Modern Day

Parts of Speech

Do you remember diagraming sentences? Us too. Although we promise we won't
make you do that now, it is important to have working knowledge of what goes
where and how it all comes together to form cohesive thoughts that your
readers love to share.

Nouns

We all remember the old refrain, "a noun is a person, place or thing." All
you need to do to update this oldie but goodie is to remember that a "thing"
can be a jar of ketchup or existential philosophy. It's all the same when it
comes to nouns.

Verbs

Verbs are action words that describe a state of doing or being. Although
most people remember the "doing" part (as in "I am running with Pam"), most
forget the "being" verbs, as in "I am confused by grammar." Since "am" is a
state of being, it qualifies as a verb.

Pronouns

Pronouns step in for nouns when you want to keep it short and sweet. Instead
of "When Ryan Gosling wants to know what his fans think of his 'Hey Girl'
memes, he will ask his fans what they think of his 'Hey Girl' memes" the
sentence, using pronouns, could become "When Ryan Gosling wants to know what
his fans think of his 'Hey Girl' memes, he will ask them about it.

Pronouns are an important tool for people who tend to be wordy in their
online writing, as they can often shorten and clarify sentences.

Prepositions

One of the helpful things Mean Mrs. van Staden did do is teach students that
prepositions can best be remembered by the fact that they illustrate a
relationship between a noun or a pronoun and another piece of the sentence.
In other words, think of a little mouse named Pre. A preposition is anything
that Pre can do or (wait for it) any position she can be in. Therefore, Pre
could be under, over, atop or behind a box. Got it? Good. Try not to end
sentences with prepositions and you're well on your way to being a grammar
king or queen.

Conjunctions

A conjunction serves to connect elements of a sentence. Examples include
for, and, but, or, yet and so. For example, "Lois wanted to purchase a new
house but couldn't locate a relator."

Interjections

Interjections are what you use when you're in the midst of a heated argument
about grammar rules. "Yes!" or "No!" or "Wait!" all qualify as examples. By
definition, an interjection is a stand-alone exclamation that acts as filler
in casual conversation and often serves to convey emotion or feeling.

Determiners

The verdict is still out on determiners — sometimes considered parts of
speech and sometimes not, these little guys serve the important purpose of
introducing nouns. For example, "My mother once told me that only the best
online writers master grammar rules."

Punctuation Rules: 5 Things to Remember for Online Writing

Punctuation is important. Most writers have seen this infamous example:

Grammar

With that in mind, and with a concern for all of the grandmas in the world,
it's important to get your punctuation down pat, especially when your
writing will be spread all across the Web.

1. When to use the Semicolon: Use the semicolon to connect two sentences
that could stand-alone but don't want to. For example, "John was angry; he
knew that the horse had bucked him off on purpose."
2. When to use a Colon: A colon should only be used for two reasons: One is
to introduce a quotation, explanation, example, or series and the other is
after a salutation in a formal letter, as in "Dear Mary:" The third,
somewhat obvious, use is to separate the hour and minute when writing times,
as in "12:15 pm."
3. When to use Periods: Use them at the end of declarative sentences,
complete statements and abbreviations, such as Mrs. and Dec.
4. When to use a Comma: The comma is an oft fought over piece of punctuation
but is properly used to separate ideas or elements in any given sentence.
The comma is a complex punctuation piece and should be used when a sentence
contains an introductory phrase, when a brief pause is meant, when one main
action takes place at the beginning of a sentence and after conjunctions
such as like, or, or but. Additionally, commas can be used to separate lists
of items numbering two or more.
5. When to use Apostrophes: Apostrophes are used to indicate that letters
have been omitted, such as in contractions like "don't," which is a
shortened form of "do not."
5 Rules for Quotation Marks: What Goes Inside, What Goes Outside

Quotation marks, much like commas, are a difficult form of punctuation.
Although most writers know that quotation marks are used to denote quotes or
spoken words, there are other uses for these pesky apostrophes-wannabes that
evade most online writers.

1. When Citing, Use Quotes Around the Titles of Short Works: Quotations are
used to set off the names of short works, like poems, songs, book chapters
(such as The Brothers Karamazov's "Grand Inquisitor") and short stories.
Long works, such as full books, are italicized.
2. Use Quotes (and Start a new Paragraph) Every Time the Speaker Changes in
Dialogue: This rule is designed with the reader in mind as it can be almost
impossible to keep track of who is speaking when this isn't observed.
3. Periods and Commas go Inside Quotes: In the United States, periods and
commas go inside of quotes.
4. Colons and Semicolons go Outside of Quotes: In the interest of clarity,
colons and semicolons go outside of quotation marks. For example: That's the
thing about Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood"; even if you've listened to it a
million times, you always want to hear it again.
5. Question Marks and Exclamation Points Depend Upon Context: Question marks
and Exclamation Points go inside quotes if they are part of the quote itself
but outside if they are part of the sentence as a whole. Clear as mud?
2 Creative Punctuation Rules for Online Writers

Creative punctuation is where your fifth grade English class fails to apply
to online writing. Punctuation and grammar, although established studies,
also allow for some wiggle room and writers often take advantage of this
slack in order to convey meaning and customize their writing. In many cases,
creative punctuation can actually add depth to writing and heighten the
narrative, making for a fuller reader experience and a stronger piece.
1. Ellipsis Points For Hesitation: Ellipsis points (the "…" often used to
convey pause) can be used to convey hesitation in writing and may come in
handy in dialogue or blog pieces.
2. Long Dashes for Abrupt Transitions: Long dashes (also known as em dashes)
may be used to signal abrupt transitions or showing that someone has been
cut off in mid sentence.

What to do With Numbers

Last, but not least, are numbers. Opinions vary widely on this but the
general convention is to spell out any numbers from zero to nine and use
numerals for numbers 10 and higher. Additionally, any number that starts a
sentence should be written out.

The Case for Modern Grammar

Online writers can't afford to be sloppy with grammar and punctuation rules
and these helpful tricks will ensure that, no matter what you're writing,
you're making the grammarians of the world proud. Although many grammar
rules are somewhat fixed, the entire construct of grammar and punctuation
continues to shift to accommodate the modern writer. Nowadays, there is more
play in grammar than there has ever been before and, with loopholes for
things like creative punctuation, it is possible for today's online writer
to take some liberties with grammar and punctuation rules while also staying
true to dear Mrs. van Staden, wherever she may be…

my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave anything for tomorrow that can
be done today."

Regards Gerald Crawford

Stellenbosch South Africa
E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws


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Sunday 8 November 2015

Choose the Right Colours for your Website

Choose the Right Colours for your Website

Using appropriate colours in your website's design can help it set the right
tone and convey the message to the visitors in a more precise manner.

Here's how you can go about choosing the right colours for your website:

Start by familiarizing yourself with the colour wheel. Choose colours that
allow for a harmonious colour scheme.

Colours may have different meanings in different cultures. Also, they tend
to evoke different feelings. Do be mindful of this when selecting colours
for your website.

Consider contrasting colours as they will prevent your website from turning
into a visual mess and help the text stand out against the background.

Use few but enough number of colours to make your site look appealing.


my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave anything for tomorrow that can
be done today."

Regards Gerald Crawford

Stellenbosch South Africa
E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws


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Monday 9 February 2015

Social Media Marketing

Social media increases the overall exposure of your website and is also a
fundimental part of quality link building strategies. Additional
opportunities include:

proving your position as an expert in your industry,
rectifying problems and creating goodwill by responding to posts and
conversations,
referring content and links back to your site,
gaining new contacts with partners.

FaceBook, the clear leader in social network sites (there are nearly 500
social networks), with it's massive user base, is a must to have in your
social arsenal package for all reasons mentioned on this page.

Community building forums strategies are great for building contact with
communities that have a direct interest in your company, product and
services.

Twitter is good for communicating directly with customers that show interst
in your company, offering .

You can send tweets with links directly back to your blog or website, if
retweeted by the client your exposure multiplies considerably.

LinkedIn provides a profesional network for people that are associated with
the type of interests and products your company supplies.


my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave anything for tomorrow that can
be done today."

Regards Gerald Crawford

Stellenbosch South Africa
Cell: +27-0720390184 (mobile)
E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws


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Understanding SEO

The term SEO stands for search engine optimization.

This entails the process of getting free traffic from the following sources:

organic listings on search engines, editorial links from reputable web sites
and listings from web directories.

The major websites are Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

These search engines distribute links in different forms ranging from web
pages, images and videos. Search engines rank theses web pages according to
relevancy, which is most relevant to the search term posed by the internet
user.

These listings are called organic in search engine optimisation because the
listings are generated free and not using paid listings such as Google
adwords etc.

There are two types of search engine optimisation, on page optimisation and
off page optimisation.

On page search engine optimisation

is everything that can be adjusted on the web page, if your search engine
optimisation company is worth their salt, your web page should be scoring
well above 80%.

Off page search engine optimisation takes some more time and is largely
built up by generating quality links (link building) from other reputable
web sites.

This takes patients and time, but is well worth it because every reputable
link that is built secures your position in your search engine optimisation
rankings on the top search engines.

Other off page search engine optimization includes:

- Social media marketing
- Blog posts
- Press releases
- Article submissions


my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave anything for tomorrow that can
be done today."

Regards Gerald Crawford

Stellenbosch South Africa
Cell: +27-0720390184 (mobile)
E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws


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Here follow SEO tips and tricks for beginners

Please note that this list is in no particular order. These tips and tricks
are just some seo techniques. Please contact SEO South Africa for an website
audit.

Content is king, so make sure you have unique, up to date relevant content.

Do keyword research, make sure your keywords have got high search volume,
ideally with low competition for the key word.

Focus on keyword phrases rather than single or short keywords, long tail
keywords will get you found easier.

Use the keywords in your text links (anchor text) the more relevant the
better the results.

Make "http://www.yoursite.com" your preferred site. in other words redirect
"http://yoursite.com" with a 301 redirect.

If you have any home page links, index.html, point them to
http://www.yoursite.com

Frames and Flash are best not to be used on any pages you planning to
optimise, if so make sure you have credible content on the page.

Blog, Blog, Blog, especially if your website content does not change often,
spiders love fresh content.

Link building is long term and is all about quality and not quantity check
the reputation and page rank of websites you looking to get links from.

Make sure your website is easy to use.

Create CTA's, without call to action pages your seo efforts may all lead to
nothing

Add "ALT tags" to your images - make sure your images are named to optimise
seo image searches.

Understand how social media marketing works, its a big part of seo
development.


my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave anything for tomorrow that can
be done today."

Regards Gerald Crawford

Stellenbosch South Africa
Cell: +27-0720390184 (mobile)
E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws


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Online Company Branding

Company Branding is a division that does some careful planning and deals
directly with the key players in your company.

Online company branding has to be well planned out and in line with the
whole company policy. This would include future goals and targets to be
reached within the near future and a five year plan.

Online Company Branding will dictate all other divisions of our SEO South
Africa company. This is the most important division and we encourage any
company new or established to make use of this facility as this will save
time and money for you.

Having a clear vision of your company goals, implementing and being able to
set out these goals and marketing targets on schedule will enable SEO South
Africa to make all campaigns for our clients a huge success.

Online reputation management is a big part of this division, search engine
optimization plays a key part in this as negative search results or keyword
phrases will damage the authenticity of your company and it's Branding.

Online company branding is spread across the whole spectrum of the internet,
with the inclusion of social media, blogs, forums, interactive product
reviews and more.

Monitoring what is being said about your company and keeping track of
reputation and opinions is very important, these metrics have to be
monitored.

Listening to your customers is very important and has to be included in
monitoring user generated content. This is a good thing as it gives you
real-time insight as to what is being said about your company and also
finding out what your company can do to improve its, service product and
reputation, which all contributes to online company branding.


my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave anything for tomorrow that can
be done today."

Regards Gerald Crawford

Stellenbosch South Africa
Cell: +27-0720390184 (mobile)
E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws


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Internet Marketing

Internet marketing is exactly what it states, marketing products, services
or information on the internet.

Online marketing would qualify under the same terminology.

Internet marketing is way beyond what the average person or internet user
may think.

Internet marketing is more than just having a web address with a website up
and hosted by some company, there are millions of web sites set up like this
on a daily basis.

An internet marketing strategy and campaign is critical to obtain desired
goals in a very competitive internet or otherwise online market. It is worth
finding your place in this very competitive internet marketing environment,
options can be almost limitless.

Using the internet as a platform you give yourself or your company the
opportunity to reach clients way beyond the restrictions of your physical
location, you can literally access anyone around the world.

In general there are four avenues of marketing on the internet:

SEO - Search engine optimisation obtained by organic searches on search
engines and other web directories.
SEM – search engine marketing, which a paid version is amounting to costs
per click (cpc). These are the sponsored ads which come up on search engine
results.
Affiliate marketing is another option where you offer rewards to other
websites for bringing people to you website.
Social media marketing – is one of the most popular and fastest growing
internet marketing options available today.

Social sites like Facebook and Twitter carry a lot of weight, because of
users trusting recommendations from other friends. Facebook having a
following of over 700 million and nearing ever closer to the one billion
mark is a huge market sector, also remembering that this is an instant
customer base (not like search engines which may take months to get the
desired results).


my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave anything for tomorrow that can
be done today."

Regards Gerald Crawford

Stellenbosch South Africa
Cell: +27-0720390184 (mobile)
E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws


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Website Content Development

It is very important that website content is updated at least every 12
months.

Both search engines and your website visitors will find more relevant
information this way.

All product and service pages should be current and up to date, ensuring
that all you get are good reviews.

Getting started with developing web content

Step one is to determine the type of site you want to develop and
additionally to have a good understanding of why you developing the website
and what your goals are going to be.

The content of a website is what drives your website, draws and keeps your
audience. Identifying your website purpose and audience will create the
composition of your content for your website.

The process or trick is to prepare a set of content features that relate to
your audiences activities, interests and concerns.

Identifying as many viable options for top quality content is very important
for the following reasons:
Giving you the option of completely new content strategies,
giving you options for capitalising on new markets.

With all the research and analysis done you can determine the best content
relating to relative keyword research and determining which content will
give you the best KEI.

We use a 3 step strategic content web development process

Information

We take a step back and research and evaluate the possible future of where
your niche or industry is heading. We then identify where your company can
benefit and your potential customers by supplying unique fresh content.

Ideas

This may sound bizarre, but it sure gets the desired results. We do a
"change nothing analysis", and ask questions like;
What opportunities are you currently missing out on?
Are you achieving your objectives?
What is your competition doing right or wrong?

we then assess where your ROI should be coming from.

Identifying where there is a gap in the market that your competition may not
be focusing on and maximise that opportunity.

Action

Our idea of action and content is physically creating it, putting it on
black and white.
we create alternative variations of content focusing on different keyword
scenarios.
We assess there feasibility, relative keyword research and KEI.
With all this information, we determine how many viable options or scenarios
we have available. We then take the options that make the most sense and
find deliverable ways to execute them.


my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave anything for tomorrow that can
be done today."

Regards Gerald Crawford

Stellenbosch South Africa
Cell: +27-0720390184 (mobile)
E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws


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Competitive Analysis

This is possibly one of the tougher divisions of Seo web development.

There are many variables making up a companies competitive web analysis and
if possible, if you in the position its s best to do the competitive web
analysis as one of your first priorities.

Either way it is something that has to be addressed especially if it was not
part of you initial web development process.

This could have far reaching results within your web development
architecture and structure, but rather do it now than later.

We check the top ten positioned competitor websites on search engines,
relative to the keywords describing your company and industry fields the
best.

We then do an in depth competitors analysis on the top ten competing
websites. This will include detailed attention to their landing pages and
overall design. we will check how many and who links back to them.

The five steps we implement with Competitive Analysis

Identify the competitors
Analyse the keywords the are targeting
Analyse the competitor back links and page rank
Get the competitors traffic analysis
Analyse there popularity with social media and the internet

We need your assistance to gather market intelligence about your
competitors. You know you business and sector best. You also know who your
closet competitors are. The more data and information you can supply us, the
more effective we can be.

There are three types of competitors to consider:

Direct competitors - those in the direct market producing the exact same
product or services as you.
Indirect competitors- those supplying the same sector with alternative
options to your product or service.
Future competitors - to be aware of new competitors entering the market and
analysing their marketing tactics.

What we find out about your competitors

Are they implementing a rapid growth strategy? What marketing tactics are
they using?
Are there competitors with struggling finance who are limited with cash flow
presently? A perfect opportunity.
How do competitors assume the current market place? Where are the
opportunities?
How will competitors respond to your competitive threat?


my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave anything for tomorrow that can
be done today."

Regards Gerald Crawford

Stellenbosch South Africa
Cell: +27-0720390184 (mobile)
E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws


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Thursday 29 January 2015

Prices increase for South African internet domains

South Africa's ZA Central Registry has informed registrars about a price
hike for .ZA domain registrations and renewals. Registering or renewing
co.za, org.za, net.za, and web.za domains will cost more from 01 March,
according to MyBroadband. ZACR CEO Lucky Masilela said the wholesale price
of registrations through the extensible provisioning protocol (EPP) system
would become ZAR 45, while legacy registrations would increase to ZAR 90.
Currently. EPP costs ZAR 35, while legacy registrations cost ZAR 65.88.

These price increases were approved in November 2014, and were originally
set to take effect on 16 February. Further price increases to legacy
registrations of ZAR 10 per year will be implemented annually from 01 March,
until the price reaches ZAR 130 in 2019.


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