Why Learning PHP Web Development Is A Good Idea

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IT and web development, in general, are currently among the most sought-after professions. Knowing how to code can bring you a steady job and an excellent salary. This is why so many people of all ages try to learn at least one programming language, hoping that they will be able to make a successful career switch. PHP is one of the most popular front-end web development languages. It powers lots of important websites and content management systems. WordPress is perhaps the best example of PHP-driven CMS. This article takes a closer look into some of the applications of PHP web development, to demonstrate that learning this programming language is a very good idea.

First of all, PHP can help you achieve things that would be difficult to code using other languages. Flexible and dynamic, this server scripting language is used by all major web hosting companies out there. Thanks to PHP, websites can be interactive and customized to match the needs of their users. Whatever function you may be able to imagine, you can create it with the help of PHP. This makes it a potent tool, a must-have for all web developers who want to stay on top of their trade.

Some may think that PHP is becoming obsolete, as new languages enter the market each year. While it is true that web development is an extraordinarily dynamic and fast-moving industry, the fact is that PHP is going to be around for quite a long while. Even if all websites would shift to other languages, there’s still going to be a need for legacy applications support. After all, almost all the web is based on PHP, so it can’t disappear just like that in a matter of years. Taking all these into consideration, we can safely assume that learning PHP web development is still one of the best decisions a programmer could make. Imenso Software, a leading PHP development company in India, recently mentioned that, “If you are on the verge of starting a PHP course, you should go ahead and take it. You’ll realize how easy it is once you’ll acquire the basic concepts of this language. “

The other reason why learning PHP can be a good idea is that the learning curve is not that steep. If you have basic coding knowledge, you’re going to have an easy time at understanding the principles and the syntax of PHP, so you’ll be able to master your skill within a relatively shorter time span. This is something you can’t ignore. The faster you learn, the sooner you can start searching for a job as a web developer. It makes sense to learn something that’s easier to grasp, to enter this industry as quickly as you can. Once you find a job, you can try to expand your coding knowledge by learning other languages in your free time. Besides, you may have the opportunity to be part of a welcoming and experienced team of coders. Some of them will be happy to share various tips and tricks with you, so you’ll improve and learn new things as you go. Learning something new while also getting paid is one of the best things that can happen in one’s professional life.

Other languages may require you to take paid courses to be able to learn them properly. If you don’t have the money to do that, you’ll be pleased to find out that there are lots of excellent PHP learning resources available for free. Some websites teach you to code in small and effective lessons you can take at your own pace. You’ll also find apps that will enable you to practice your acquired skills. You’ll have one window to write your code, and another one to see the result. This type of learning is extremely effective, as it allows the student to see all mistakes right away.

If you’d instead become a freelance web developer, you need to know PHP, as most websites of today rely on it. Imenso Software is actively hiring many PHP developers in order to scale their web development business. You may still be able to find clients who are happy with HTML websites, but chances are you’ll never make a proper living out of this. Most clients want to be able to add pages to their websites without having to pay a developer every time. They want to be able to make changes to the text by themselves. In other words, most clients want CMS-driven websites. If you don’t know PHP, you’ll have a difficult time offering them what they want. This is one solid reason for starting to learn it right away.

As you can see, PHP is one of the most popular server scripting languages available today. Used by millions of websites, it can help you build a successful career in the IT and web development industry. It can also provide you with the skills required to handle just about any website and web application. Easy to learn, PHP is your best chance to become proficient in web development sooner rather than later. This could translate in more employment opportunities, as you’d be able to apply to most job openings in the IT sector. If you take a look at a few of the most important job boards out there, you’ll notice that most web development job openings require good PHP knowledge among other skills. All these are good reasons to consider learning PHP web development rather than other languages.

4 Reasons to Invest in Local SEO

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Can’t figure out why your website isn’t attracting targeted traffic? You may have invested in high-quality website design and development, but you shouldn’t forget to factor in search engine optimization. Over the years, SEO has proven to be one of the best and most cost-effective ways to increase traffic and brand recognition. If your goal is to grab the attention of prospective customers in your area, then you should be particularly concerned with local SEO. It’s a more specific field that involves the promotion of local businesses, something that would pad your bottom line.

You probably know how popular search engines are. Google takes a commanding share of the entire market, processing billions upon billions of search queries every single day. There’s a good chance that prospective customers are using Google at this very moment to look for your products or services. However, what happens if your website isn’t optimized for the local search listings? It only means one thing: you’re losing money to your competitors.

If you’re still ignoring the power of local SEO in this day and age, you’re not doing your business any favors. Here are four benefits of local SEO to convince you to start investing:

1) It doesn’t cost as much as traditional advertising methods

Have you tried traditional marketing techniques such as print or TV advertising? If you answered yes, then you know how expensive they can be. What’s worse is that the results you get, if any, prove immensely challenging to measure. This is precisely why marketers have shied away from these techniques and made their way to the world of SEO.

Improving your organic rankings is an excellent way to increase brand recognition without costing a fortune. Yes, SEO isn’t free. You have to build a website, publish great content, and work with a reputable SEO company to help set up an effective strategy for improving your rankings. However, the total cost is usually much lower compared to what you’d have to shell out for print or TV ads. When you use local SEO software from TribeLocal it makes the tasks much simpler and cost-effective.

Moreover, thanks to analytics platforms, tracking important data has become easier than ever. You’ll find out how many visitors come to your site daily, what percentage stays for a given length of time, and other vital metrics that tell you whether or not the SEO plan works.

2) It drives targeted traffic

When it comes to generating traffic for your website, you should understand that not all traffic is the same. Imagine 1,000 people visiting your site every day, but not a single one of them buys your products or services. This can prove to be frustrating. However, when you use local SEO software like TribeLocal, you’ll start driving laser-targeted traffic which is exactly what you want for your business.

Targeted traffic means that the visitors coming to your site have a good chance of converting. After all, they are the ones who entered the keyword on Google. It’s up to you to optimize your website, so you show up for the search terms used by your target market. Driving more targeted traffic ultimately means more sales.

3) It boosts conversions

When talking about SEO, most people think that it’s all about climbing up the search engine results pages. Keep in mind, however, that first-page rankings are of no use if none of your visitors make a purchase. What’s interesting to learn is that nearly 80% of local searches conducted on mobile devices result in a purchase, whether offline or online.

This highlights the significant impact of SEO on brand recognition. Studies show that consumers trust businesses found on the first page. By improving your organic rankings, you make your business more trustworthy in the eyes of potential customers. This alone should be reason enough to start using local SEO.

4) It works for the long-term

Plenty of marketing techniques may provide your business with instant exposure, but the minute you stop spending money, all of the traffic goes down the drain. A prime example is pay-per-click advertising. As you can imagine, this can burn your marketing dollars quickly. Local SEO, on the other hand, provides your business with long-term exposure to your target audience. There’s no need to continually shell out money to hold on to your rankings, especially if you’re not in an ultra-competitive industry.

This is the biggest reason why many digital marketing specialists consider local SEO so cost-effective. Of course, you need to spend money upfront, but once the strategy has brought your website to the first page, all it takes is a bit of maintenance work to ensure that your competitors wouldn’t outrank you. This includes the continuous acquisition of quality links and publishing fresh and informative posts. Just remember to take advantage of the targeted traffic you’re getting once your website is already on top of the search listings.

How To Do Search Engine Optimization Step-By-Step

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If you can’t afford to hire an SEO company or expert just yet, you should know that you can do your search engine optimization by yourself to a certain extent. This brief guide is going to show you what to do in order to improve your visibility in search. While the results will depend on your niche and your targeted keywords, you can rest assured your efforts are going to be rewarded sooner or later.

Keyword research is the first thing to do, as it will have a direct influence on your progress. Ideally, you should target keywords that have a good amount of traffic and a fairly moderate to low level of competitiveness. If you pick easy keywords with low traffic volumes, you may be able to rank quickly, but you won’t get enough traffic to make it well worth it. If on the contrary, you target tough keywords, you won’t be able to surpass your competitors. The reason is that you can only acquire inbound links at a certain speed. Do it too fast, and you may get penalized by Google. This is a process that has to replicate the natural patterns of acquiring links, so you can’t speed it up without risking to lose your website. If you can’t afford premium keyword research tools, you can either sign up for their trial versions or use some free ones.

PixelChefs.com – search engine optimization company in Orlando, FL recommends that once you have found your keywords, you need to develop your website around them. Assign each of the keywords a dedicated page, and make sure the copy includes the keyword and some of its synonyms. Search engines are smart enough to make proper use of Latent Semantic Indexing, so you should take this into consideration when writing your content. Don’t forget to add your keywords to the title tags. Also, invest some effort into writing compelling meta descriptions, because these are the snippets search engines display when they list your website on their search results pages. These snippets should entice search engine users into clicking on your result rather than on the other nine on the page.

Beware of over optimization, as search engines are trained to recognize and penalize it. Avoid a too high keyword density, as anything over 2% may get you in trouble. Use synonyms and related terms rather than repeating the same keywords over and over again. The longer your copy, the better. Think of your words as gates for search engines to find and index your website. The more gates you open, the higher your chances to be found for more search strings.

Develop a coherent website architecture, with clear navigation and with a solid internal linking system. This sounds more complicated than it is. All you have to do is to link back to one or two of your older pages each time you write a new one. This is the best way to ensure the optimal authority flow throughout your whole website.

The hardest part is yet to come. You need links from other web properties in order to boost the authority of your website. You can’t purchase these links, as this is against Google’s terms of service. You’ll need to use your creativity and find ways to persuade other webmasters to link to you. Writing guest articles is a strategy that works, so you should try it by all means. However, keep in mind that you need links from websites on topics that are similar or related to yours.

Social media signals are also important. Identify one or two channels your target audience prefers, and try to gather a community of loyal fans and followers on these networks. Position yourself as an authority in your niche, and your followers will be likely to recommend your website to their peers. This can boost your authority and your organic rankings.

Last but not least, closely monitor your targeted keywords and your SEO activities. You need to keep track of your progress, in order to understand what works best for your website. Tracking your positions in the SERPs can also help you stay motivated. SEO is a long-term endeavor, so you’re going to need something to help you keep your motivation intact until you see some noticeable results. Search engine optimization is an ongoing process. Even after you’ve reached your desired positions in the SERPs, you still have to stick with your link building activities, as this is how you can maintain your visibility. Your competitors aren’t sleeping, so you can’t afford to slow down and allow them to overtake you.

This is a brief step-by-step search engine optimization guide. By following it, you should be able to drive a steady flow of targeted search engine traffic to your website. Nonetheless, you have to be aware that the above-described process requires sustained efforts and an awful lot of time. If you can’t do it, you should rather outsource it to an search engine optimization company.

Web Design Help For Beginners in Norwich, Norfolk

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Being a good web designer is not something that happens overnight. If you are new to web design, then you might feel a little overwhelmed with everything that you need to do and all the information that is out there. However, there are certain aspects of web design that you should focus on as a beginner and this will help you overcome your fears.

Practice

The saying practice makes perfect is one to remember when looking at web design in Norwich. It is important that you continue to practice the different types of coding and learn how to use the related software. The languages you need to start with as a beginner include HTML 5, CSS 3 and JavaScript. You should also look to learn systems like Photoshop and Corel.

Start With Simple Designs

You may have an excellent and intricate design planned out in your mind, but this should not be where you start. In fact, many web design Norwich companies recommend keeping your designs as simple as possible. Adding simple graphics to a website can bring visitors in just as quickly as an intricate design. You should also remember that intricate designs are harder to create and to maintain.

Small Graphics

The graphics included in the design should be kept small. Of course, they should not be so small that your viewers are unable to determine what the picture is. It is best to experiment with image sizes and placement before you set the site live to ensure your user is getting the best experience possible.

Communicative Graphics

The graphics that you use on your site should add something to the content. This could be to give your viewers an idea of the content or to show something in a visual manner that is being described in text. However, you should not put too many graphics on your site as this increases the load time and could make the page appear cluttered. Balance is necessary for all parts of web design, particularly when it comes to graphics.

Have A Standardized Theme

When designing a website never change the theme across the different pages. Keep the pages consistent as this helps your visitors when they use the site. Having different page structures could complicate the site usability and can lead to users leaving prematurely.

Optimize The Design

Search engine optimization is important in all aspects of website management and design. When you create a design, you need to ensure that it can easily be optimized for the business that uses it. Some aspects that you should consider are how easily the meta tags can be changed and how the title will be read by search engines.

Compatibility

When considering the compatibility of your web design, you need to think about browsers and devices. There are some users who will view the website from Chrome while others will use Safari or Firefox. It is important that your design is compatible with all of these browsers otherwise, it could warp and make it difficult for some viewers to navigate.

More and more people are using mobile devices to access the internet and browse the web. This means that you need a website that is compatible with computers, tablets, and phones. There are some Norwich designers who offer mobile versions of their sites while others just allow the site to be read as is on a mobile device. You need to consider which would work best on your website and what a mobile version would offer.

Follow But Don’t Copy

When you start designing, you should look at the designs that other professionals in Norwich area are using. However, you should not simply copy the design and change a couple of aspects. You need to follow the trends that they use, but also, make it your won. To become a successful web designer,, you need to learn from and be inspired by others, but not copy their work.

Be Passionate About Your Design

When you deign a website, you need to be passionate about it. If you are designing something that you do not feel excited about the outcome will be poor. Making the design your own is a great way to inject the passion that you feel for web design into what you are creating.

Ease Of Use

When creating a design you need to think about how easily everyone can use it. This will include the viewers of the website and the owner if you are going to sell this on. Each of these people has certain needs that should be met when you plan the design.

The owner of the website needs to be able to add content and make adjustments fairly quickly. Ensure that your design allows for easy addition of content and aspects like titles and navigation can be easily changed.

Regarding the viewer, the primary aspect to think about is how easily they can navigate the site. Any navigation should be at most three levels deep. You should also ensure that everything is easy to locate when viewers land on the site.

Basics of Website Design with Well Web Development Team

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Welcome to WellWebDevelopment.com

My name is Regina Wood and I am the founder of Well Web Development. I believe that to master any skill, the foundation or the basics must be very strong. The entire idea behind WellWebDevelopment.com is to teach the basics of website design and also search engine optimization to young designers.

The biggest mistake that any budding designer does is that they directly jump to advanced level of web design without understanding the core rules and semantics.

In the future posts, I’ll be posting beginner lessons for website design that will help you build the much required foundation.

Feel free to get in touch for any website design or SEO related queries.