Google is king of the search engine market but there are other search engines – namely Yahoo and Bing – that businesses should be taking into consideration.

Bing keep their search engine cards close to their chest, so it’s not easy to know what they are looking for in terms of boosting a website’s ranking. However, Bing guru Rick DeJarnette has recently shared some “dos” for link-building for Bing.

Like Google, Bing places major emphasis on “good quality” links to determine its rankings. But this doesn’t happen overnight, warns Rick. Successful link building requires effort an a long-term commitment

Here’s what to do:

* Encourage relevant industry experts, reviewers, bloggers etc to find and use your site.

* Get involved in relevant chats on blogs or forums and refer back to your site’s content if applicable

* Publish to-the-point and informative press releases on-line

* Publish expert articles to on-line article directories

*  Create an email newsletter with notifications of new content

* Launch a blog or forum on your site

* Aim to become a trusted expert voice for your industry (while also promoting your site).

Much of this advice is the same as for Google, but it’s worth knowing that the other search engines rank quality and relevancy just as highly.

Buttons might not seem like the most important part of web design but they can play a major role in user interaction and navigation of your website.

Here’s a top tips list for perfect button design.

How it looks: It doesn’t really matter what shape or size the button is, within reason, just so long as it looks “clickable”. Don’t put visitors off with anything too simple looking or too fancy. A button should do what you think it will.

Use of icons: An icon on a button is likely to improve visibility, which helps visitors to navigate the website. For example, an arrow makes a great button icon.

In action: A button should have a hover and an active state as this can go a long way to conveying the appearance of the button. So perhaps in hover mode the button appears a shade darker, while in active mode it appears brighter. Or the button may look like it’s being “clicked in”, like on an actual device such as a TV on/off button. This help visitors to know the where they are at with the clickability of the button.

Size matters: In some cases you might want to draw a visitor to a particular part of a website so make this click-through button bigger and brighter. It will be a natural instinct to navigate towards this button.

Learning curve: High quality blogs with well-researched content are more likely to be read by visitors to your website – and to gather a larger following. And because you should be blogging about topics relevant to your business, the more you research for a blog entry the more you will learn. So blogging equals greater learning.

Better use of time: You could blog all day long but that means you won’t get your actual work done. So set deadlines on writing a blog – and learn to stick to them. This will no doubt help with better time management across a range of your daily tasks.
Info on tap: A blog with properly bookmarked articles acts as diary of info and research. Now that’s useful for every business.

Write on: The more you write and communicate through blogging the more likely you are to improve your skills. Practice makes perfect, as they say. And every business owner knows how important effective communication skills are for marketing their company.

Marketing matters: A blog can act as a great point of reference for clients and customers and show that you know your stuff. Refer clients to a previous post on a relevant topic. And a blog is a great form of networking – the more followers you have the more likely it is that word will get out about your business or company.

Now get blogging!

David                                                                                                                           Neil

At WebCreation UK we like to work hard and play hard, whilst creating stunning website designs!

With the festive period approaching I (David Gray, Sales Executive) thought it would be the ideal time to start introducing you to some of our team and find out a bit more about them.

This week I questioned one of the newest members of the WebCreation UK team, Neil Grant, who has recently started as a Junior Sales Executive.

Q: Have you ever googled yourself?

A: Yes! I offer gardening advice to the BBC and I am a writer!!

Q: What is your favourite website design by WebCreation UK?

A: It is close between www.queensburymedia.co.uk and www.monni.co.uk.

Q: What is your favourite thing about working for a web design company?

A: It is a very active job, and always varied due to the nature of the different projects we take on.

Q: What was the last thing you bought online?

A: A badminton racket for my mum for christmas!

Q: What three websites do you use the most?

A: www.skysports.com | www.facebook.com | www.hotmail.com

Q: Finally, what do you spend your time doing outside of work?

A: I play a lot of football, like to watch films, see friends and play xbox. Especially Modern Warfare 2, so look out for Ngrant007!!

Look again in the new year when I will be questioning another member in the office about all things life and website design!

Have a great Christmas and a happy new year!

Does typing a blog seems like too much hard work? Then you’ll be delighted to hear about a new service that allows bloggers to post voice files to Twitter.

Kirusa’s Call-n-Tweet is free and simply posts a recording of a voice message on to its website and then a link to the user’s Twitter feed. This is different from rival, paid-for services that transcribe the recorded voice.

The service is easy to use. All you need to do is register a mobile number and Twitter account with Kirusa, which then uses CallerID to identify incoming messages and posts a suitable URL to be heard by your followers.

Now there really is no excuse for not joining Planet Blog.

We all know that Twitter is a great tool for driving traffic to your site. And there are ways to measure how much traffic is coming your way. But, in fact, you might be getting a whole lot more traffic than you thought.

According to the experts, some 70% of referral traffic from Twitter could be going unmeasured by analytics services.

It seems the problem is not with the web analytics tools, but with the Twitter applications such as Tweetdeck and Twhirl that are not based in an Internet Browser. When a user clicks through a tweet link, those applications do not register a referring URL that can be picked up by the destination website.

So what can you do? One piece of advice is to install a Twitter app, such as Tweetdeck, and click through the URL in a tweet, then look at the referrer.

And once you become aware of how much Twitter traffic you are actually driving, you may well want to know how to drive some more.

And here are a few tips for improving your Twitter traffic:
* Include a Twitter button on your content.

* Tell everyone about your Twitter presence throughout your site, in email signatures, on business cards, etc.

* Spend time on Twitter chatting and making conversations

* Share your content on other social networks. It will often find its way to Twitter by other people.