Tag Archives: Search Engine Optimization

Why you need SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

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The online business is all about traffic to one’s website. The traffic which you will be receiving from search engines is a free organic traffic. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a quality methodology which increases a site’s reputation and ranking in popular search engine results page. SEO is very vital for the success of a website campaign. The benefit of SEO is that, even a small player can make its brand popular and visible on search engine results. It is extremely important to rank high in search results as more than 70% of online consumers start their quest for a product or service using a search engine. It was found in a recent survey that about 46% of visitors come through Google, whereas 22% come through Yahoo and 18% through MSN. Now one may easily calculate that 86% of unique visitors made their search through these three Search engines. These netizens go directly to these search engines immediately upon being online to find what they are looking for. Therefore one cannot afford to be missed from their search engine rankings.

There are over 1200 million websites on the World Wide Web. Nowadays every small business should get SEO services to highlight their site into the search engines. The idea is to use popular keywords from several search engines so as to advertise the website among prospective clients at a very low cost.

One must look at the following 10 tips to ensure a successful website campaign-

1.Always hire a Search Engine Marketing Professional before designing your website, so that you get adequate help to choose the apt domain name and to guide you in the writing process.

2.  It is a smart idea to take out a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign while your website is coming up on the organic searches.

3.Always take that extra effort to include lots of original articles in your website, so that the search engines find your website relevant.

4.You should always make sure that your search engine marketer adheres to Google’s guidelines.

5.Choose a permanent hosting company. The SEO may crash if you change your hosting company, because the IP address will no longer be the same.

6. If there is heavy competition in your field, go for video marketing.  Video marketing will help your rank high on the top page of Google within just a few days.

7.Always choose the right keywords for your website. You must research on the possible keywords which the online users use to search for your products and services.

8. One must always keep track of the competitor’s progress. You should be aware of the changes your competitor makes in the websites for his/her website campaign.

9.Build a lightweight and search engine friendly structured website so that when the users search for products and services, the search engine may be lured to choose your website.

10.Build quality backlinks from sites related to yours. This helps you rank higher in the search engine results.

Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing is the most effective way to publish one’s products or services not only in local market place but also in the global arena in an inexpensive and reliable way. An excellent SEO strategy gives your website the edge over your competitors by getting top placements in search engine rankings at a low cost. By relying on a renowned SEO service provider you can receive great benefits:

• Enhance your business through the internet with the SEO campaign services.

• A popular SEO service focuses on your SEO campaign and related activities while you focus on your core business activities.

•Get superb SERP (Search Engine Result Pages) within a short time.

•Logical and sensible keywords to receive vast unique visitors.

• Receive smart promotional strategies for your keywords.

• Getting thousands of prospective customers at your website.

•Advertising globally with the best SEO optimization techniques.

•Uplift your local business into global internet marketing arena.

 

Google Tools

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Among the plethora of tools offered by the search engine giant Google; there are a variety of tools that help in optimizing one’s website for high ranking in search results. It is clear that Google is not really against SEO. Most of the SEO tools are good for keyword research and on-page SEO. The following is a list of free Google SEO tools that everybody should use –

1.         Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster tools acts as your mechanic for your website. It helps you identify broken links, malware and other issues as well as find out what search queries can lead to your pages even with click-through statistics. It even examines your website speed and tells you why it’s too slow.

  1. Sitemap submission
    1. Look for bad links with sitemap warnings
  2. Change address
  3. View Crawler statistics
  4. Change crawl rate
  5. Manage Sitelinks
  6. View Search Statistics
  7. View links to your site
  8. View keywords that Google thinks about your content
  9. View Target pages via internal links
  10. View Crawl errors
  11. View HTML suggestions

2.         Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a top-class web analytics tool that gives you excellent insights into your web traffic and marketing efficiency. Some SEOs don’t use it due to the fear of being controlled by Google. You have to decide by yourself what’s more important -  a very useful analytics tools or the fact that Google can monitor your progress.

3.         Google Website Optimizer

This is a free website testing and optimization tool that allows you to increase the value of your existing websites and traffic at a cheaper cost. With Google Website Optimizer you will be able to test different versions of your pages. This way you can settle on the best converting ones. It’s called A/B split testing or multivariate testing and is the latest trend in the SEO circles and beyond.

4.         Google Zeitgeist

“Zeitgeist” means, “the spirit of the times,” and this spirit can be seen through the aggregation of millions of search queries Google receives every day. Google Zeitgeist is not a tool in the strictest sense but you can use it for keyword research nonetheless. In fact it shows the most popular queries so it’s a good starting point in your SEO campaign. Take the Zeitgeist popular keywords and then test some key phrases containing them with the other tools that will follow in this list.

5.         Google Trends

With Google Trends one can compare traffic for popular search terms and websites. This way, you can determine whether a topic is rising in popularity or not. Google Trends works great when combined with Google Zeitgeist and Google Insight for Search.

6.         Google Insights for Search

With Google Insights for Search, one can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties. You can look up most keywords here, even those that aren’t popular at all. Compare up to five keywords and their resulting traffic.

7.         Google Traffic Estimator

The Traffic Estimator is a tool designed to give you keyword search traffic and cost estimates at a glance. This is a classic tool. It says “Adwords” but you can use it to find out the probably number visitors a keyword can bring to your site.

8.         Google Keyword Tool

The Keyword Tool is similar to the Traffic Estimator but from a different angle. All you need to do is to type in the word or phrase. Google will provide you with a list of keyword ideas plus data showing how often words are searched and their ad bid competition. You’ll want to check both the traffic estimator and the keyword tool to make sure you’re on the right track with your keywords.

9.         Google Search Based Keyword Tool

This is a very useful tool will allow you to find out related keywords to a site or existing keyword or rather both. It’s connected to Google Insights for Search is a very useful service.

10.       Google Ad Planner

Google Ad Planner is like Alexa and SpyFu in one. One can use it to screen popular sites or your competitors for keyword intelligence or both.

11.       Google Chrome SEO Extension

This is a wonderful SEO extension that plugs into the Google Chrome browser that can give you very valuable information like pages indexed, where a website is hosted, and how old the domain is.

12.       Google Alerts

Google alerts are very useful and can be set for anything a user may want. But one may monitor the trends in an industry or a brand and understand what is pulling traffic now. Also, Google Alerts can help you stimulate your blog writing skills and update you with new information.


PPC- Pay Per Click Advertising

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Pay Per Click (PPC) is an online advertising model that is used to direct traffic to websites and target potential customers who actively search the internet for products and services offered online. Under the PPC advertising, the advertisers only pay when the users actually click on the advertisement and visit their website. PPC is highly cost-effective and offers great flexibility in targeting and scope. Prior to the start of a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign, one must consider the following:

  • One must define the target audience who may be interested in the services.
  • One should also decide on when and how long the advertisements are to be activated.
  • The keywords used must be re-analyzed to check if they are still popular in renowned search engine’s ratings.
  • One should check the advice from major search engines on setting up of campaigns and the tools to be used.
  • The campaign landing page should be well designed such that, the user is directed to the sought product at a single click itself.
  • PPC campaigns require strategic thinking and careful management to be successful.

One can choose from the two primary models for determining the cost per click: flat-rate and bid-based.

  1. Flat-rate PPC

In the flat-rate model, the advertiser and publisher agree upon a fixed cost that will be paid per click. Advertisers typically bid on keywords that are useful to their target audience. Publishers usually have a rate card that lists the PPC rates. These various rates are often related to the content on pages. Content that generally attracts more valuable visitors have a higher CPC than content that attracts less valuable visitors. The rates are usually minimal, and advertisers may pay more for better visibility.

  1. Bid-based PPC

In the bid-based model, an advertiser will sign a contract that will open the gates for competing with other advertisers. A private auction is hosted by the publisher or the advertising agency, where each advertiser informs the publisher of the maximum cost that he or she is willing to pay for the ad spot.

In the case of ad spots on search engine results page (SERP), an automated auction is triggered whenever a search for a keyword that is under bid occurs. Various factors like the searcher’s geo-location and the day and time of the search are then evaluated, and the winning bidder is determined.

Advertising Standards Compliance

One must ensure that the claims made for a product in its advertisement complies with a number of advertising standards to guarantee fair trade. The following terms and conditions of the PPC must be followed responsibly by the advertisers:

  • One must not use any copyrighted content without the permission of the copyright holder.
  • One must not advertise products that are replicas of some popular designer goods.
  • One must avoid information that can be considered discriminatory or offensive to any particular group.
  • One must also comply with regulations that protect the intellectual property rights and registered trademarks of the copyright holders.

Tracking

The major search engines offer online analytical tools so that one may track the progress of one’s pay per click (PPC) campaigns. One can also prefer a search marketing agency to perform these critical tasks and provide real-time reports about the performance of the PPC. These tools will gather information like, how visitors find the website, how they navigate, and how they convert into customers. One may analyze this information and improve the online results of one’s PPC campaigns.

For example, with the Google analytics tool, one can analyze the conversion rates in different regions; find out the geographical data of the potential customers, analyzing and optimizing the landing pages, and assessing the steps taken by a visitor to become a customer.

Benchmarking

Benchmarking is the process of comparing one’s performance with a preset performance standard for identifying rooms for improvement. After the analysis of the statistics portraying which approaches get the best click-through rates and conversions, one may use these measures as a benchmark to analyze the success of future PPC campaigns. One may also compare the campaign’s performance to that of the competitors’ and identify areas for future improvements.

Writing

Above all, writing is the most critical aspect of a PPC campaign. One must impress the targeted leads with barely 100 characters. The copy must be compelling, and it must attract buyers who are interested in one’s products or services. The following key points must be considered while writing an advertisement:

  • include the selected keywords
  • use phrases that relate to the keywords
  • be specific about which city you serve, and include it
  • offer exciting benefits
  • make the keywords part of the URL
  • keep the lines simple

Calculating PPC budget

One can calculate the PPC budget in terms of ROI. ROI or Return on Investment is the ratio of the cost of advertising relative to the profits generated from leads in sales. The ROI projects the overall value of the business gained in return for the cost of the PPC advertisements.

The ROI can be calculated as follows:

ROI = [Contribution] / [Cost]

So, to calculate Contribution for a PPC campaign:

([Your average profit per sale] x [Estimated number of Conversions]) – [PPC Spend]

To demonstrate more fully, let’s take the following example:

Monthly PPC Spend:                    $1,500

Average Profit per Sale:                 $50

Number of Conversions (Sales) per Month:  75

Thus the Contribution to Margin of the PPC campaign is:

($50 x 75) – $1500 = $2,250

And the resulting ROI would be:

$2,250 / $1500 = 150%

 

One can also find a number of online PPC ROI calculators like,

http://www.metamend.com/seo-tools/ppc-roi/

http://www.ppccalculator.com/ppc-calculator

http://www.1on1business.com/loveland-colorad/ppc-calculator.php


Internet Marketing Strategies

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The internet is believed to be the most significant invention by humankind since the wheel. It has nullified the significance of physical distance between people and brought them together under the single virtual umbrella of websites. It has also transformed the way the companies conduct their marketing and has become the most popular tool for business in the 21st century. Internet marketing is one of the best ways to market a successful business.

People have started using the internet for almost everything. According to a survey, over 77 percent of North Americans use the internet. There were over 16.6 billion searches performed in the U.S. alone in October 2010. According to the study, almost 70 percent of people have used the internet to find local businesses.

The success of your business is built on being found by people looking for your products or services. People use popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and others to search for these products and services. If your company’s website can manage to come in on the first page of search results, more potential customers are likely to visit the website. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a powerful internet marketing tool that optimizes your website to improve its relevance and ranking in the search results of search engines.

Google is still the leader in search traffic. According to a survey, Google accounts for 65.45 percent of all search traffic in February 2012 followed by Yahoo and Bing with 14.78% and 13.29% respectively. Google Adsense is another initiative taken by the search engine giant for advertising. Adsense is one of the most profitable ways of internet advertising. It is a program that allows publishers to advertise sponsored products and services ads in sites related to the search. These ads can generate revenue on a pay per click or impression basis. With Google Adsense, your Cost-Per-Click can be as low as .01 cent per click. Google charges an average of $9-$10 per click depending on the keyword competition. Adsense sometimes do not help the popularity of a product or service even if it gets several clicks a day. Non-serious clicks are definitely a disadvantage as clicks can be expensive and return little in the was of revenue. Of course you are looking for a strong customer response and revenue from a successful advertisement.

Organic SEO is widely popular in the internet marketing business. Organic SEOs is a natural and ethical way to gain high search engine ranking. They take a lot of effort both on-site and off-site to optimize correctly. Search engines like Google, store almost all websites on their databases. Once all the content from a site is in their database (called indexing), they can easily search for websites according to the term that was typed into the Google search field. Then the search engine will use a formula, or algorithm that will determine how the relevant websites will be displayed on the search page. The beauty of this system for a business with a website is that only people that are interested in something relating to your website ever click to view your site. They are effectively pre-screened by Google’s algorithm, ensuring that they are somehow interested in products or services that you sell. There are several organic SEO companies offering variable hourly rates in different countries. The hourly rate of $76-$200 is the most commonly preferred.  Start-up companies may be charged around as low as $40 to $60 per hour for the SEO services. More experienced and sophisticated SEO firms may charge $100-$200 or more. However, this is often times the cheapest and most cost effective form of marketing and advertising available. This is particularly true of companies that use TV, radio, and print advertising.

Google Places is another internet marketing tool which is offered by Google. Those registered with the Google Places have the option of displaying their business address, telephone number and local map location in the natural search results. The verification process for Places page is very simple. An authorized Google representative will call, email or send a post card to your place of business to verify the information in your listings. You just need to answer the call and/or type in the PIN number provided on the screen. This is for brick and mortar businesses that benefit from local customers trying to find a particular product or service in their area.

Online marketing is generally much more cost-effective than other marketing techniques like billboard advertising, television advertising, radio advertising, yellow pages and other off-line techniques. The cost of billboard advertising ranges from about $700 to $2,500 a month. For Television advertising, the rates may vary from $1000 to $350,000 per commercial, that’s not counting the Super Bowl ads. For radios, the rates are about $350 to $500 per commercial. Internet has changed the way the world viewed advertising. Compared to other advertising techniques, online marketing is an extremely cheap and cost-effective method of advertising directly to those, and only those looking for your product or service.

Publishing a video advertisement on YouTube is also a very effective way of presenting your products and services to a large, pre-screened audience. An innovative advertisement will definitely attract many eyes, and the number of views tends to improve as your company gains popularity.

One can choose from different Internet marketing techniques. Whatever the strategy you choose, the secret of online success is the presentation and content of your advertisements and website. A good advertisement will surely take your products and services to the prospective customers. Internet marketing is the center of every business across the globe. A novel and effective internet marketing strategy will surely take your enterprise to soaring heights.


Essential Aspects of Search Engine Optimization

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Your website can get prime rankings on major search engines with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO enhances your website ranking beyond thousands or millions of other websites that have similar content as yours. When someone searches for particular information on the web, they believe that sites that appear in the first page of various search engines will have the relevant information as their search results. Hence, they are likely to visit your site if it ranks in the first page. As a result, they will look into your site for the required information.

  1. Local Search and Google Places pages

    As a free Web marketing service, Google Places pages are used by businesses to describe their products and services, as well as list their hours of operation, business address, phone number, email address, and website URL. Photos and videos are an added advantage for your Places page for your customers to leave behind their reviews.You will find Google Places pages appear at the top or near the search results in the case of a localized search query. Thus, your business appears in a local search result with the category and location. A red push pin is accompanied with the Google Places pages that appear in the search results. It indicates the location of business on a map. Google users can click for the search results to go directly to the website of your business, access reviews, or go through the Places page of your business.

    You can improve your Google Places Page by creating a listing for your Google Places page to help you rank higher in the local search results; adding keywords to your business description; creating a Google Places page for each location in the case of multiple locations; using standard categories to describe your business when required; not adding a keyword to your  business name for the Google Places page, if it’s not actually part of the name for your business; encouraging existing customers to post their reviews to your Google Places page; spacing out reviews as much as possible; getting your business listed in appropriate online business directories; adding images and videos to your Places page; and monitoring the analytic of your Places page.

  2. Organic search results

    Organic search results are the natural or ethical results of SEO. It improves the natural or unpaid listings of your website in major search engines. Based on keyword searches, it helps in getting genuine traffic or visitors to the website. Organic search results can be of many types, such as web, image, video, and business search. Paid traffic does not help in the case of large websites to index all the pages or build traffic for each product in the case of e-commerce websites. Hence, organic search results can be used to index all the pages and products. It also facilitates management of business listings, email marketing, search engine sponsorship, affiliate marketing, classified ads, etc.Organic search results depend on natural link building. Spammers and faulty link builders can be recognized by search engines as they use automated software or spam without focusing on the quality of content. Natural link building is necessary for providing quality back links with informative content that seem genuine. Some of ways for natural link building involve social bookmarking submissions, directory submission, forum posting, content blog creation, article creation and submission, effective use of RSS directories, and social media sites.

    According to SEO, organic search results optimize the website naturally through on-page or off-page optimization. It is nothing but a way of generating better back links for organic listings with the help of HTML and web content for specific keywords on search engines. Organic search results are focused on to ensure organic SEO work is provided as affordable services. An SEO plan is customized, wherein it can be looked up, analyzed, and researched to perform organic search for objectives and business requirements. For off-page optimization of organic SEO, methodologies, such as forum postings, article writing, submission and distribution, press release writing and distribution, online reputation management, social bookmarking submission, directory submission, RSS feeds, etc., can be used for effective local search results.

    i. On-page
    On-page optimization for SEO affects your website or web page listing through factors related to organic search results. You can control these factors, or it can be controlled by coding on your page. For instance, on-page SEO involves HTML coding, meta tags, keyword placement and keyword density.

    ii. Off-page
    Off-page optimization for SEO also affects your website or web page listing through factors related to organic search results. However, these factors cannot be controlled by you or by the coding of your page as they are off-site. As a result, they include link popularity and page rank.

  3. Google AdWords and PPC

    Internet marketing, especially search engine marketing, slates PPC as an important aspect of making money online. You can increase productivity and sales of your online business with appropriate traffic directed to your website with an effective PPC campaign. Google AdWords have efficient tools for organising pay per click ad campaigns, through which you can easily understand, employ, and manage online advertising for your website. It’s always good to learn from your mistakes, and Google AdWords makes it easy with simple tracking features to see whether or not the targeted keywords result in conversions. Hence, to use Google AdWords, you need to, initially, create a Google account, and then, move ahead to promote your website with PPC advertising.Small businesses consider Google AdWords as a trendy form of pay per click advertising, due to the popularity of Google and expense control for daily maximums set up for each ad. Pay per click advertising mechanizes, when someone clicks your ad to visit your website, and you pay for it. Ads can be placed on pages that show search engine results or on websites that relate to the targeted keyword. Your payment of each click depends on your will to bid for your selected keywords, as well as on your quality score in Google AdWords. The higher your bid or quality score, the more you will have chances of listing your ad on top of the ads displayed on a page. As a result, PPC advertising attracts potential customers to your website and converts them to paid customers.

Resources:


Ways to Optimize Small Business Internet Usage

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As a small business owner myself, I often have to take a moment to evaluate the ways that my company currently uses the internet, such as, email, a website, searching for products or services, searching for information, purchasing, selling, communicating company news, employee collaboration, advertising etc. Your company probably uses many of these, yet most small companies don’t view these as part of their overall internet strategy. Most small business owners see these as individual tools and not part of a whole.

It wasn’t that long ago when small companies had a web site on the internet.  It looked very similar to their brochure but the company owners did not understand the potential value that using the internet possessed.  You could add some key words in the head section of your web site and tell Google and Yahoo about your page and they would tell everyone you existed. Those days are long gone. The big companies that have taken full advantage of the internet are now common names. Amazon, eBay and others are aware of  internet usage on the time of  their foundation.

Although your company is probably not one of those “internet companies”, like Amazon, it doesn’t mean that, with the right mind set, there is much more of the internet that you can take utilize. Companies are focused on Internet marketing and with good reason. This field has exploded with the advent of more secure eCommerce technologies. You can now buy anything from cars to groceries on line. Initially, the fact that the internet gave the same visibility to Mom and Pop’s Bookstore as Barnes and Noble, showed the internet as the great equalizer. This is still the case to a limited degree.  Today, getting your company great visibility depends on your competition for search terms, ability to structure your web pages, on-page content, and staying away from underhanded SEO (Search Engine Optimization) companies that can actually cause your web site to be banned in Google, and by getting links back to your web site.

Maximize your company’s internet impact

Ok, so what do you do if you find yourself in the position of playing catch-up with your internet strategy?

Well, as I mentioned above, first take a look at what internet tools your company is already using. Make a list of those tools and grade their effectiveness from 1 to 10.

  • If for example your company uses email for all its communication between employees, give it a 10. After all email is absolutely vital, right?
  • But if your employees send too many emails to each other to cover their rear ends, lower the rating.
  • If they are using it to send too many personal messages, lower the rating.
  • If they are spending time wading through countless spam, lower the rating down even more.

You are trying to rate the overall effectiveness of the internet tool.
Do this for all the internet tools that your company uses.

Turning back to our email example, let’s say that you have rated the use of email as a 6. Most people initially think that this is a critical and irreplaceable tool for the company business. Well, you are not looking to replace email; your goal is to make it more effective.

Options to increase effectiveness by trimming the “fat”

So the next thing you do with the list is to write down options that increase the effectiveness of email. This probably means trimming the fat of how these tools are used.

For example, if you scored email low because all your employees are sending (and reading) too many emails about business activities to each other, consider a central location they can deposit their work that others can access. Databases are great tools for this kind of work. If your employees are at several locations, consider taking the database on-line.

I find that most companies have a lot of “fat” that they can trim, and all companies have some. Additionally, most of them complain that they never have the time to get everything done that needs to be done. I recommend that all small business take a good, hard look at both email and web usage. If you have people that you know are using Facebook on company time and you justify it with, “well she always gets her work done so I allow her to do this”, I strongly recommend that you have her updating your company blog instead of her Facebook account. Remember, you are paying these people to work toward the company’s interest. There are many ways that you can get them to accomplish that.

Time to “Invent” the wheel? NO!

Look to the big companies that have plenty of money to invent the wheel. Research what they are doing with the internet and find someone to help you get a scaled down version. You will find that the large companies are using the internet far beyond just “internet marketing and email”. Remember, most of you don’t compete with those large companies, you are probably competing against other small companies that are in the same position that you are.


Optimizing Images in Fireworks CS5

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Fireworks General Discoveries

I very rarely open Fireworks since I do most of my graphic work in Photoshop and Illustrator. That is why I decided to take a peek at the Lynda.com videos Fireworks CS4 Essential Training with Jim Babbage. I watch and read a lot of web developer tutorials. Many of these give some reference to Fireworks so I decided to take a look. I thought that I would include in this post something about Fireworks. Since compressing/optimizing photos is such a critical part of web design and it is somewhat different in Photoshop, this post is going to be all about optimizing photos in Fireworks.

The first thing to note about Fireworks is that it integrates optimization tools right in the main workspace of the program. Additionally, it has an optimize panel which was turned on in my program and visible from start-up. That alone suggested to me that I may have been missing the boat on keeping this program buried within my Adobe directory. Once I really started looking, the program is obviously created with web development in mind. This is in stark contrast to Photoshop, which is very much geared towards photographic manipulation, and Illustrator which is geared towards print.

Optimizing in Fireworks (Exporting)

All of the general optimization principles that apply to Photoshop also apply to Fireworks. In other words, JPG’s are still generally the best choice for photographs and graphics with gradients and millions of colors. GIF is still the file type of choice for flat color images. You still do the major tuning for JPG’s with the quality setting, and the major tuning of GIF’s with the number of colors.

Fireworks does not have a Save for Web & Devices option like Photoshop. Instead it has an optimize panel through which you export the native PNG file to some other file format. Save As in Fireworks has more options that the optimize window with respect to the number of file types you can save. The main idea with Fireworks is to export a flat file using one of several techniques that I will go through below.

The Original, Preview, 2-up and 4-up views are accessed from the top of the workspace right in Fireworks proper. This is much different that having to go to another window like in Photoshop. You can view the optimizations simply by clicking one of these button directly from the main workspace.

Export Wizard

One way to export and optimize is by using the export wizard. The export wizard walks you through the process of exporting PNG files to other, web ready formats.

File > Export Wizard...

The export wizard allows you to specify a target file size and it will assist in the optimization to maintain the target file size.

Additionally, the wizard will ask you what you want to do with the file. You can choose “the Web” and it will tell you that it recommends either GIF or JPG. Then it will show you its best shot at those two formats. It will preview both GIF and JPG side by side for comparison of the file size and the quality.

Once you see the previews, you can then click on one of them and further optimize the image manually in the options tab. Once you are satisfied with the optimized image, you then just click the export button and save it to the desired location on your computer.

Image Preview

Fireworks also has an option for exporting that looks very similar to Photoshop’s Save for Web & Devices dialog box. It is called “Image Preview”.

File > Image Preview...

This will get you to the Image Preview as shown above. The Options tab in the Image Preview gives a very similar view to Photoshop’s Save for Web & Devices dialog box.

There is another tab called the file tab that allows you other options like scale down the image and export a specific area. This is cropping on the fly when you export the image.

The last tab in the Image Preview window is the animation tab. If you have an animated GIF, you can change things like the timing of the animation and looping settings.

Export Area Tool

In Fireworks, you can export specific areas of your file, or page. You don’t have to crop the area and export; you can simply click the Export Area Tool, which is in the tool bar with the Crop tool. Just click and hold the crop tool and you will see a fly out that shows the Export Area Tool.

You use this tool like the crop tool, by drawing out the area that you want to export. Then you either double click on the area or press enter and the Image Preview dialog box will appear with only the selected area in the preview. At this point you can optimize and export just as you would with the Image Preview.

Overall, I have been missing out on some very cool features by not using Fireworks. That is not to say that I am going to immediately give up on Photoshop and Illustrator, but I will use it for quick edits to web elements and I expect that my usage will grow as I move forward.