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ScienceDaily (Jan. 14, 2009)

A new study in the journal Psychology & Marketing investigates the influence of website design on children’s information processing. Results show that the type of interface used can significantly affect how children process and retain information; age strongly affected this relationship.

Researchers used a sample of around 200 boys and girls between the ages of 7 and 13 to examine how website design and age affected how children processed information.

Four experimental websites were constructed, which differed in terms of their navigational aids and learning cues. Specifically, websites were designed with either a map, a content list, a map with learning cues, or a content list with learning cues. Learning cues were pop-up windows designed to reinforce specific information as one exit a Web page. Children were randomly assigned to one of the four Websites.

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The Rochester Hills based award-winning experiential marketing firm EEI Global has formally unveiled its new corporate Web site, www.eeiglobal.com.

The new site reflects the company’s brand evolution in both its design and content. The firm, formerly known as Exhibit Enterprises, launched its EEI Global brand in the spring of 2008.

The Web site’s “Change Your Experience” interface allows visitors to quickly highlight and access company information, creative portfolio examples, and case studies that are most relevant to their business needs.

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DMOZ provides lots of search results for most of the top search engines and directories, including the biggest of them all – Google. It’s important to understand that DMOZ is NOT a robot based crawler like Google but a large, human edited directory of the Web. There are 5 steps that need to be followed in order for your DMOZ submission to be successful:

Step 1)

You need to make sure your full contact information is displayed on your website. By this I mean your physical postal address. A website without a postal address or worst still no contact details at all would almost certainly be rejected by a DMOZ category editor.

Step 2)

Do not under any circumstances become impatient and start spamming the directory. You should only submit your site once and then you can forget it for three or four months. DMOZ recommend that you submit your site to only one category – the most relevant one to your site. masters degrees online cases I have seen big sites that cover multiple topics listed in multiple categories but these are in a minority. Submit your site only to the most important category

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Businesses with an online presence should ensure their web design engages customers and gets them excited about their brand, it has been claimed.

According to web hosting and e-commerce solutions provider Hostway, the main aim of graphic design is to keep consumers interacting with the site.

Thomas Herbert, product manager at the company, said: “You’ve got to provide the content that will allow customers to see your product as close as you can and also to try and introduce them to other products and get them excited about your brand.”

He went on to cite the example of clothing firms, which are starting to provide close up shots of their products so that would-be buyers can get a clear idea of the product they are about to purchase.

The Deloitte Christmas Survey 2008 revealed 57 per cent of people have no intention of changing their Christmas buying patterns this year despite the current uncertain economic climate.

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Although network neutrality is an issue that could affect everyone, it seems that people are either not concerned or simply unaware of its potential. One industry that seems to be completely blinded by its capabilities is surprisingly, the search marketing industry. In the above video Cindy Krum of Rank-Mobile discusses what would happen to search marketers if net neutrality is not preserved.

According to the nonpartisan and nonprofit advocacy organization Common Cause, the definition of net neutrality is as follows:

“Network neutrality is the principle that Internet users should be able to access any web content they choose and use any applications they choose, without restrictions or limitations imposed by their Internet service provider.”

If net neutrality is not preserved, sites that we use and depend on everyday such as Google and Facebook would not be here. If you remember, the Federal Communications Commission recently cracked down on Comcast for throttling content from BitTorrent and ultimately called it a matter of free speech.

Now, how does all this affect search marketing? If you have a lot of rich media content on your site that is being throttled by broadband providers, you will have to pay more in PPC because it will decrease your quality score. Also, if your content is throttled, the load time will be slow. Your load time affects SEO and PPC meaning that it will drive your costs in PPC up and drive your rankings and SEO down. Does it seem relevant now?

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Want to get your Web site to appear high up in the results when someone is looking for the kind of stuff you sell? There are two ways to appear when someone types in “keywords” into a search engine:

1. Search engine optimization (SEO) — designing and writing your Web site to naturally rank high in search engine results.

2. Search engine marketing (SEM) — paying for a listing adjacent to keywords that you choose.

SEO and SEM are increasingly important, as they drive highly motivated prospects directly to your Web site. Moreover, with SEM, you pay only for those who actually “click through” to your Web site, so it makes search engine advertising particularly attractive to small companies.

With both SEO and SEM, the most important step is to clearly identify which “keywords” searchers are likely to use when looking for the types of products, services, or content you offer. Then you must make sure you’ve “optimized” your site for those keywords by using them over and over throughout your site in your content, headlines, page names, additional Web pages and more.

If you want your site to appear high in results without paying for ads, choosing which keywords to use throughout your site is critical! Choose the most narrowly defined terms appropriate to your products, services or content.

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