Tehse are beautiful and effective websites, read the end of the blog to go to article, as we blogged about this on our SEO blog, enjoy:

We just wrote this on our Free Blog and Create a blog platform, enjoy and while at it, why not buy our Internet Marketing Book?

blog baby blog.. and Top 10 Web Sites

I rankings for the keyword “SEO” have fallen from #11-#14 to #33 this week.  Same with our other Major Keywords “Free Blog” from #8 to #11, “Create a blog” from #6 to #11.  How can this be, I thought we wrote a marketing book on SEO and power of blogs?  It bothers me a lot, because we claim to be SEO Experts, but has our traffic fallen dramatically or at all? 

The answer to that question is no, but I am sure for those keywords it has dropped.  One of MyTypes SEO and Free blog clients RentExpert.com went back to #4 for “VRBO” so that is good news.  But, one of the other clients “Website Design St. Louis” provider Artworksdesign.com dropped to #14 from #6 for the keywords “web site design St. Louis“.  What bothers me most is not our rankings, well for “Free Blog” and “Create a blog” do bother me, and actually so does “Wordpress SEO“.  But other keywords, i can deal with.  So back to what can we do about it.  Blog, silly blog.  It’s not Drill baby drill, it’s blog baby blog.  If you don’t write on your content, your traffic will drop, so will your SEO rankings.  Do check out this and all of our tips in our Marketing book, and keep up on my new Internet Marketing 2.0 free blog on Wordpress.com.

We have been looking at “Web Design” stuff lately and wanted to share this article from Imediaconnection:  http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/20565.asp

Here is a quick summary, but go to the link above to read the full thing and check out the pictures of these great websites too:

Published: September 17, 2008

10 killer websites worth watching

By Nanette Marcus

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Introduction

A quality website is more than just a pretty homepage. But what exactly does it take to keep consumers coming back for more?

We asked brand marketers to share one of the sites they’re most proud of, along with one they wish they’d done. They highlight some of the tricks of the trade and what catches their critical eyes. They point out what’s unusual and effective about each site and how it fits into and complements the overall brand strategy, in addition to how the site could be improved.

Find out what your brand could learn from these 10 sites.

today It’s all about design and inspiration for the non artistic folk ahem… or design impared. I would consider my self a hack at best when it comes to web design. When at all possible I like to leave the design to the to the designers, AND sometimes I feel like putting myself through the torture of creating a logo from scratch, or a complete web design for friends and family. Let me tell you after ending up looking like this guy a few times I decided there has got to be a better way to come up with foder to fuel my design …. Here are a few trips and trick I use to create designs

Design Inspiration

Where do designers get their inspiration? Talking to clients, using current trends in design, from the project parameters, or maybe right off the ether.

I go to a few sites:
For Logo inspitation check out - http://logopond.com/

For complete web design inspiration check out - http://www.designshack.co.uk

For More in depth design information check out - http://webdesignfromscratch.com/

lastly if you need a color palatte take a look at - http://www.colourlovers.com/

GOT Graphics?

Now That you’ve been inspired the design and creative juices are flowing…or at least trickling where are you going come up with graphics? the subtle aspects of a sites design that add that extra touch. Hell lets bust out the Wacom tablet fire up adobe illustrator and start drawing! oh you don’t have a wacom tablet? Ohhhhhh riiiiiight, how about a graphics editing program? No? Ok forget the wacom tablet too much hassle. but the graphics editing program is essential. I personally I would choose adobe illustrator and photoshop. The reason being is that it’s the industry standard. If you want to go the Open source route use GIMP a great photo and image manipulation app. now that you’ve got an editing program lets go find some images and graphics
For vector images check - http://www.freevectors.net

for Free photos check - http://www.freephotosbank.com

Don’t forget to google as a resource, to find similar sites there are many out there. please provide attribution the authors of images and photos when appropriate.

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