DESIGNING IT

You first have to start out with a design which is made in a combination of programs. Although Microsoft Publisher can be used to send files to be printed, it is not recommended. Designers like Photo Graphics use professional editions of Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Indesign to create the artwork. Creating artwork in these programs ensures quality output (usually at 300 dpi or dots per inch).

FILM, PLATES, OR STRAIGHT TO PRESS!

Once the artwork is ready it can be output to film, plates, or sometimes directly to press! Film is used to expose light sensitive plates. Most large printers today go directly to the printing plates. The plates are mounted to the press. There is material on the plates that attract “water” and others that repel it. This way the ink on the press can only be in the image areas like your logo for instance. Speaking of image areas, images are made up of small dots called halftones that trick the eye into seeing full continuous tone images.

ON PRESS

On press there can be many stations (sometimes 8 colors or more!) with different ink colors. The colors create images, logos, and graphics. The ink is usually pigment based and transparent. An example of how transparent ink works is by adding equal amounts of cyan and yellow together will yield green. Using different sized amounts of ink together yield different shades of colors. Full color in printing terms usually means CMYK. Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black ink colors can combine on press to create thousands of colors.

Ink and water are brought to the plate with rollers that make the consistency more even yielding a more uniform ink coverage. When the ink hits the plate and separate image areas and non image areas. Ink and water have to be at the perfect balance or there will be problems on press. The plate hits a blanket(made more of rubber material) which will then hit the paper going by just as the blanket makes it pass. The paper continues on the path through all the colors and to the delivery unit. Once the paper is printed, it is trimmed down to size at the crop marks and doing this takes advantage of the bleeds which make the finished piece look like the ink goes all the way to the edge.

Post press techniques include folding, die cutting, embossing, foil stamping and more!

That is the basics of Offset lithography, I hope it helped your understanding.

I’ve decided to define elements of search engines and some tactics to help drive traffic to your website.

#1 way to get on top of Google: Have the most relevent content on your subject and have lots of it!

There is a reason big company’s get on top, and it is because they have massive amounts of relevant information on their website. As a result, other websites start linking to the site because it has the best content and that increases the sites performance even more in Google’s search.

Ok..what does “On top of Google Search” actually mean? (see picture)

GOOGLE ADWORDS PPC (pay per click):

Contrary to belief, you can get on top if you pay enough. It is through Pay per click advertising. For example I know of a company in my area of Greenville, SC that pays around 3-4 dollars for the keyword “homes in greenville sc”. They consistently are in the top 1-2 spots for that keyword.

GOOGLE LOCAL

Depending on what you are searching Google might display the Local Search which is FREE to your business! Click here to sign up: Google Local Sign Up

GOOGLE ORGANIC SEARCH:

These results are what is put through the Google Algorithm and spit out as the most relevent. As you can see from my screen capture sometimes it actually isn’t the TOP.

WHAT CAN I DO TO GET PEOPLE TO MY SITE:

Just like investing, you want to diversify. Set up your advertising budget and advertise on Google Adwords or Yahoo’s PPC service.

There are many articles on being Search engine optimized. Why not get info from the search engine you want to get results from GOOGLE! Click here to read what they say. With the information you read, apply it to your website. Get your webmaster to submit a site map to google so you site will be included in Google’s search index. Get in local search directories like Google Local and Yahoo Local (Also: do a search for “local search directories” and sign up for all the free ones).

Advertise your website on your product, cars, business cards, letterhead, logo, signs, anything you want to drive “direct” traffic to your website.

Is google the only search engine I should advertise on?

It does have 80% of the searches. Yahoo!, Microsoft’s Live.com, Ask.com and others make up the rest. If you are ok with advertising to 80% of the searches then its up to you. I would advise using at least Yahoo! as well.

If you need help with submitting your site to google or want me to set up and control your PPC campaign, contact me.

MORE RESOURCES:
I just found this site today by Quickbooks and it is a good SEO resource: http://www.onlinemerchantnetwork.com/