There are numerous benefits to having a blog on your website. Here are just a few:

• Increase your website traffic from search engines by publishing fresh, useful content
• Generate incoming links from people that like your content
• Use as low-cost marketing and communication device

Whether you have a blog already, or are considering starting one, here are some simple tips:

• Blog regularly
• Choose topics relevant to your target audience
• Direct your writing to your ideal customer
• Link to other websites and other pages in your site
• Include keywords in the blog title and content

For more information and great blogging tips, check out our May 2011 newsletter.

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NZS.com Answers is an online tool for finding and providing answers to a variety of questions. NZS.com Answers allows you to post a question to a wide, and predominantly New Zealand audience, many of which are experts in their fields. You can also browse the vast collection of questions already posted and provide answers and ideas based on your knowledge and expertise.

Anyone can use the NZS.com Answers feature, including businesses. In fact, it provides a great marketing opportunity for New Zealand businesses. If your company has a Site Profile with NZS.com, your company details and a screenshot will be displayed next to your answer, helping to increase your website traffic.

If you don't have a Site Profile with NZS.com, it's free and easy to set one up, and an excellent add-on for all NZ websites. Read our April newsletter for more information, or get in touch with NZS.com.

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If you got through today without any mysterious phone calls, sniggering colleagues or the shame of being caught out, then you're one of the lucky ones. For many, the 1^st of April is a time for practical jokes, laughter and competition. Of course, unfortunately, that means exactly the opposite for the gullible folk out there.

So you can be prepared for next year, Avatar has compiled a list of some memorable April Fool's jokes:

• Desktop Screen Saver. Ideal for the boss. Simply take a screen shot of their computer desktop and replace their desktop image with the screen shot. Now watch them sweat! (Be sure to hide their real desktop icons).
• Call Of The Wild. Perfect for someone who's on the phone all day. Find the number of your favourite zoo or wildlife park, and write down the number along with the name Mr Lyons and ask your colleague to call this important lead. One of our team actually fell for this one!
• Glad Wrapped. For someone who really deserves it. Open the lid of the victim's toilet, cover with glad wrap and close the lid. You can imagine their surprise...
• Sugar Swap. A classic. Swap the staffroom sugar with salt. Works a treat on those caffeine addicts!

What tricks have you played on your friends, family or colleagues? Did they work out perfectly, or are you still making up for it? Be sure to share it with us on our Facebook Page!

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Facebook Pages are a fantastic marketing tool for all types of businesses. They allow you to add general information about your business and the products or services you offer, as well as photos, videos and web links to any location. They provide an excellent opportunity for your business to develop an online presence and reach your customers on new, exciting levels.

Facebook has recently updated its pages with loads of additional features, and Avatar has jumped on board and embraced the new layout. Visit our Facebook Page, have a browse, and stay tuned for web design, web marketing and SEO tips, advice and company updates.

For more information on Facebook Pages and how your business can benefit from having one, view our March newsletter.

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Greetings,

Last week, we moved into our temporary office at level 1, 125 Wrights Road.

Although we've been cordoned out of our office, Avatar feels fortunate that we have the type of business that can be relocated. We are sad to see that some of our clients have been badly affected. Our thoughts remain with those struggling through this challenging time.

If you would like assistance with anything Web, give us a call on 03 365 2336, or visit us at our new location. Driving from Blenheim Road, turn down Matipo Street, go over the railway line and we're just on the right after the bend.

The Avatar Team

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Greetings,

Thank you to everyone who has contacted us following the disastrous earthquake in February.  Our thoughts remain with all Cantabrians who have been affected by this terrible event.

Avatar HQ and the Avatar team survived the big quake mostly unscathed, however, we have had to find alternative office arrangements. From Friday 11th March until the CBD is open for business, Avatar will be operating from 125 Wrights Road, Addington, Christchurch. (See map on the right for location details). Thank you to AuCom Electronics for generously providing us with office space. It's great to have Canterbury businesses offering support at this difficult time.

We are committed to assisting our clients with all their Web needs, so if you have a request, feel free to contact us. Our phone system is not fully operational at present, so email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you would like to discuss your Web site. Alternatively, call 03 365 2336 if you would like to talk through any email queries.

All the best,

The Avatar Team

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Many website operators spend most of their time trying to achieve great rankings and attract traffic to their site without giving enough regard for what happens when visitors get there. Fine tuning your site, so that you maximise your website's goal conversions, is an often overlooked area that can have a huge impact on your site's performance. A website conversion can be a number of things, for example, a visitor making an enquiry, downloading a free brochure, signing up for a newsletter or, of course, making a purchase.

To achieve this, your site needs clear, simple and compelling calls to action on every landing page. Try testing different offers or wording to see what generates the best response. Consider including a 'Live Chat' option on your site where visitors can immediately talk to one of your team online. If you suspect your site's layout and content is not hitting the target, then try the USD$39 UserTesting.com service to get someone else's opinion on what improvements are needed. If your goal conversions involve multiple steps, such as a shopping cart order process, then carefully review if your site visitors are dropping off too early before the conversion completes.

Google Analytics has become the default method of measuring and monitoring a website's key statistics, and enables you to monitor goal conversions easily. Make sure you put it on your radar to review the data at least once a month and develop some KPI's for your site that you continually work on.

Avatar focuses on creating web design and marketing solutions that achieve conversions, so talk to us if you'd like to discuss further website conversion ideas in 2011.

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The Avatar office will be closed from Friday 24th December 2010 to Monday 10th January 2011. If you have any urgent enquiries during this time, please call our main phone line 03 365 2336 for details and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

Thanks for a great year and we look forward to working with you again in 2011.

Have a very happy Christmas and holiday season.

The Avatar Team

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You can approach your online content strategy in the same way that a museum curator is a specialist responsible for the care and acquisition of content. Curating online content is about saving readers time by collating high quality content in an easy to use format. If you do a good enough job, it can be a great technique for link building because it will encourage other sites to link to you as an authoritive site.

A good starting point is to think about the needs of your target audience, find a niche and try to package up your content in a compelling way. Ideas on how to approach online content curation are:

• Establish a blog and update the content regularly
• Publish content that is relevant to your business and industry
• Collate other relevant sites in your posts and link to them
• Tell people in your industry about your site and suggest they link to it

If you're looking for an example, then our good friends running the NZS.com Blog nicely demonstrate a site that is curating stats and trends for its target audience.

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It's been a busy year in search engine land, with a number of big changes to the way search engines index sites and present their results, including Google's Caffeine update, Instant search and Places search plus the Bing Yahoo Alliance. As a result, search engine optimisation has become more complex than ever before, which has certainly been keeping us on our toes!

This week, Google launched another new search feature called Instant Previews which provides a visual preview of websites listed in the search results, allowing you to quickly evaluate a website before deciding whether to click on it. Google hopes this will speed up searches further by enabling you to quickly and easily select the right result from your search. But what impact will this have for your website? Firstly, let's take a look at how it works.

How Instant Search Works

A small magnifying glass should now appear next to the search results, and clicking on this shows a visual preview of the website to the right (covering the sponsored results). Once you have clicked on the magnifying glass, you can preview other results by simply hovering over the listing. Clicking anywhere on the preview takes you directly to the site.

In some cases Google will also provide a snippet of text with an orange border, highlighting the most relevant sections and search terms on the web page.

Google isn't the first search engine to introduce previews to the search results. Back in 2004, Ask Jeeves (now Ask.com) added previews using binocular icons, although this feature is no longer active. Last year Bing launched Quick Previews, which provide additional text-based information about a site when you mouse over the listing.

Implications for Your Website

Although Google have said that Instant Previews will not change their search algorithms or rankings, the previews are created by identifying relevant parts of each web page and 'stitching' them together to present a preview customised to the search. This makes having relevant content and targeted keywords on your key pages more important than ever.

Previews will also change how users respond to the results they are presented with, possibly resulting in fewer clicks, which will affect your traffic. On the flip side though, exploratory clickers increase your bounce rate, so this could come down and you may end up with higher quality visitors that are more interested in your content and more motivated to make a purchase or enquiry.

Sponsored Results

As the previews cover the sponsored search results (now called Ads) on the right hand side of the page, AdWords clients may be concerned that their click-through rates will suffer. Google is playing down the impact on paid results, pointing out that if searchers are interested in the organic results, they will tend to focus on these and will ignore the sponsored results anyway.

Website Design

The major impact that Instant Preview will have on your website will be in terms of design and layout. If your site is badly designed, contains lots of distracting features or has confusing navigation, you could put off potential visitors before they even click on your link.

Your site must be enticing to visitors, both visually and in terms of unique, relevant content, so make sure your design is attractive, pages are clearly laid out, your navigation is well structured, and your content focuses on your key selling points and relevant, highly targeted keywords.

If your website design is looking out of date or you want to ensure you get the best results from Instant Previews, contact our Web Design Team.

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