Web Design and Development

Learning Basic HTML

2006-11-07T15:55:00.000-05:00

by: Robin M Powers

Ok, no getting around it, you've got to learn some HTML! You don’t have to be great at it, but you really do need the basics. Even if you choose to write and format everything in Word and use PDFs for your ebooks, white papers, articles and the like. You will still need to be able to change headlines on your website, create or change ‘thank you’ and ‘sales’ pages, and add things quickly to your website.

There is a wonderful membership website that I once enjoyed. The site is filled with Internet Entrepreneurs who are successfully running an internet business. There are a series of detailed interviews discussing how each of them got to be successful. Without exception, every single business owner said ‘you have got to do your own website’. The number one regret by those who hired others was the money they spent on web designers. They all learned HTML in the end.

Now I am not saying that you will be stuck building your own websites forever and ever… in fact, I encourage everyone to have "propellerheads" on their team. Its just that even when others are building the sites for you, you will still want to be able to gain access and do some minor changing of copy, colors, font sizes and the like.

HTML is the language of websites. You use HTML to make your fonts large, change colors...

Start a new paragraph, insert a picture…

I am not the best source to teach you. However, Annabella is! She has a wonderful website where I learned HTML. It’s located at:

http://www.annabella.net/html.html

Once you get through Annabella’s site here is a handy HTML reference guide:

http://www.devx.com/projectcool/developer/reference/tag-table.html

Here is one more great learning site:

http://www.utoronto.ca/webdocs/HTMLdocs/NewHTML/htmlindex.html

There are other languages that have been created after HTML. Java, php, and others. However, you will find that for most needs, a bit of HTML is all you need. Anything more complex is best handled by your propellerhead, unless you have plans to really master this area of web design.

At some point you will need an HTML editor. This is a handy tool that lets you see what it is you have created. Let’s take a quick look at the most popular ones.

Microsoft FrontPage® is very popular. It has a lot of great functionality allowing you to build a site from scratch. It’s a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor that lets you graphically design your web pages. It’s one of the easier ones to learn. Though you will still spend a week or two banging your head trying to figure it all out (assuming you are a beginner). One of the things I like about it is the ability to “split” the screen and see the HTML code along with what the web page looks like.

Dreamweaver is supposed to be the best. It’s the high end program that does everything but the dishes with regards to website design. The learning curve is high. And frankly, if you aren’t going to be building sites right along, it’s expensive.

There are website builders out there that take all the pain out of building websites. You provide the copy and the graphics, and they manage the rest. The one we like at the moment is XSitePro. It is relatively easy, quick and inexpensive as these things go. They also don’t appear to leave a “footprint”… something that the search engines look for to see if your sites are mass-produced.

Check out our resource page at http://www.BizRecipes.com for this resource along with our many, many favorite things.

I have used a little free HTML editor that is quite delightful.

You can download it at: http://www.evrsoft.com

It’s called 1st Page 2000 and we used it for several years before moving to FrontPage®. I always like to include a free tool wherever possible for those who must be extra careful with their dollars.

What can I say? You just have to sit down in front of your computer and do it. This is one of those skills that you will have forever. And you will be very glad you learned it.

About The Author
Robin M Powers makes it easy to get started making money on the Internet. For more information and to claim your free 7 day eCourse, "Learn the 7 Critical Steps to Your Internet Marketing Success", go to: http://www.BizRecipes.com/.

How To Find The Best Domain Names

2006-11-03T14:49:00.001-05:00

by: Tom Takihi

Registering a domain name is a pretty straightforward matter. You find a web hosting site, register with them, look for a desired domain name, select one that suits your business or personal fancy, choose what’s available and then you will be on your merry way to building the website’s innards. Easy, right? Not exactly because there is more to it than just getting a name that is appropriate for the business or a personal preference. The steps mentioned earlier would result in an ill constructed site that is going to be nameless in the world wide web and will be doomed to failure on the get go. This crude way of doing things will get you nowhere fast. Now why would anyone want that?

There is a better approach in making a name for your business or yourself on the net. It will be a presence that will be felt and sensed by your target audience whether they are your customers, prospective clients or a particular group of people. It’s easy enough to do this. You just have to know the right place to go on the web for help. Searching for the right domain for personal use or for a business is job best suited for professionals who understand the significance of internet jargons like keyword density, key phrases, search engine optimization, ranking and tags. What all these means is basically to have your site primed for search engines to find when people put in a search that concerns the subject, business identity or personal matter of your particular website.

Websites that exist for the sole purpose of locating or creating a new domain name for you are very reliable in terms of achieving their goal of increasing the likelihood that your site will come up on top of the list of sites when search engines spews out seek results. These so called domains finders are essential in any enterprise that is bent on achieving an online presence immediately. It is an established fact that search engines churn out sites that have been around for years. In other words, the age of a site does count when it comes to search results. How does this concern your site?

The domain finders are in the know as to which existing domains would not be reregistered or renewed by the current owners. Just imagine if your business coincides with a domain name that has been around for years. You’ll have first dibs with that domain name through a domain finder, in effect, they’ll claim it for you resulting in a well positioned new website with old rankings that will put you on top as quickly as when your site is ready. Another advantage of having a domain finder in your corner is that you can consolidate your entire site building needs from creating or finding a domain to the theme and content of your site. This would mean lesser legwork and lesser expenses since their comprehensive service would cover everything so you won’t end up paying more.

About The Author
Tom Takihi is the owner of the Domains Finders website. To gain more information, please visit http://www.domainsfinders.com

Site Development: Extreme Online Marketing

2006-10-31T11:08:00.001-05:00

by: Scott Lindsay

The key component to the web's best sites is ‘content’. These netrepreneurs understand the need to provide a professional site that is well developed, informational and error-free. For top websites quality content is essential.

If you have a pit in your stomach as you try to come to terms with how you might develop content for your site there may be a solution.

In the world of online marketing you have to consider the end goal. Once the goal is established, you can either learn the skills to help you reach the goal or bring others alongside to assist you in reaching the goal.

There are certainly plenty of webmasters that can assist in building your website to provide proper function and design. These professionals can provide instruction on how to integrate software applications that may be useful in attaining your goal.

A secondary area of consideration is the development of content. This is increasingly outsourced to the freelance writing community.

What a freelance writer can do for you . . .

1) Listen to you to help gain a clear understanding of what you want your website to achieve.
2) Provide ideas that may help you reach those goals.
3) Integrate content to compliment the overall site.
4) Provide informational articles that are optimized for search engines while still allowing the articles to connect with your visitors.
5) Work with you to develop meaningful product descriptions for your site.
6) Work to provide a comprehensive site tutorial for clients if needed.
7) Work to develop an e-course or e-book that helps inspire a level of trust and interest in your products or services.
8) Develop a series of articles for an ezine or autoresponder.
9) Can provide press releases for developing additional interest in your site.
10) Can provide visitors with the vision for your website through either a 'history' section or an 'about us' section.

A website is a terrible thing to waste. The time and attention you might expend on a business plan is no more important than the execution of your online business.

If you are in need of content for your site and you lack the budget for original material, the use of a free-to-use article service is another means of gaining quality content from experts in your field of interest. There are stipulations for use and more than one person can use the article, but this can be an additional means of providing relevant information to your visitors on a subject of mutual interest.

About The Author
Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. HighPowerSites is the easiest do-it-yourself website builder on the web. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with http://HighPowerSites.com at: http://www.highpowersites.com.

Website Building Mistakes You Should Avoid

2006-10-30T14:53:00.001-05:00

by: Chris Walker

If you happen to have a website (or plan to build one shortly) this is a must-read. A website should offer customers with useful information that can actually help find solutions to their problems. When I used to search for home businesses, I got sick and tired of poorly designed websites shoving awful products and countless links down my throat; there was no explaining on their behalf and no advice given… all I saw was an “order now” button. A website should offer customers value and convenience because that is what they are looking for.

So you must keep in mind that you are designing a website to help people; not to deprive them of their time and hard earned cash. Many people make the mistake of not having high quality content on their site—and instead they litter their site with links and clunky banners.

Bottom line… quality information comes before all.

Questionable Navigation

Too many sites have dismal navigation setups. This is a huge mistake. Never make the error of having poor navigation on your site that would even make Sherlock Holmes scratch his head. It makes it confusing and hard to surf through (most likely forcing the visitor to leave). Just take a look at my website; it may not have fancy graphics or a slew of irrelevant pictures, but it gives you what you need: valuable information presented with a simple setup. Simplicity ultimately allows visitors to easily find what they are looking for.

I was once (and still am) a customer, so I know what it feels like arriving on a website flooded with link after link… you just don’t know where to click next. You feel paralyzed and never find what you’re searching for.

Unnecessary graphics

You should also try to avoid using graphics unless they are absolutely necessary. Fewer graphics soak up less bandwidth, allowing for faster load times. So unless you absolutely need it, don’t place too much graphics on your page. While heavy pages may not be a problem for those who have broadband, you can’t assume everyone has broadband services--some still have high-speed dial up, and for them it is a pain.

Make them come back for more

Give the customer a reason to come back to your site. You must make every reader of your website remember your site’s uniqueness. Show your personality and make it a great experience for them. Avoid the mistake of coming across as being “too formal” and “boring.”

Other common mistakes Web designers make that should be avoided…

It’s important for you not to spam—this can get you banned from the search engines. You should also keep good records and remain well organized. Always make sure your income (i.e. affiliate commissions, reseller sales, Google Adsense) exceeds expenses (Internet bills, pay-per-clicks, the cost of the computer you own, products you buy to grow your business, web hosting, domain name, etc.).

Never lie to your readers: honesty is the only option.

About The Author
Chris Walker is the owner of: http://www.ultimate-home-business-advice.com. Get all the best advice on great home businesses that really work. Gain access to essential tips and resources. He is the owner of all said material in this article. You can distribute his material on a non-exclusive, royalty-free basis, while he retains full rights to his work. You can use his article as long as you do not change any of the content without his permission.

Ecommerce Site Design: Tell Me What You Really Think

2006-10-29T11:47:00.000-05:00

by: Scott Lindsay

Site design is a primary determinant in online shopping. If your site looks dated or relies on inferior site design methodology it may be the reason your sales have not grown. Perhaps existing customers are used to the site, but what about new prospects? What impression do they have of your site? What would compel them to come back?

Take some time to research your competitor's websites. What seems to work on their site? What have they done really well? How does this information stack up with your site? What have you learned?

Many ecommerce sites will phase in new site designs every two years or so. There are always new techniques and software applications to assist in the development of something that catches attention and is highly functional.

There is one area you should resist and that's moving forward with a new site design that has been hastily put together simply to give your site a new look. Test the links and the functionality of the site design. Have friends and associates try a beta version of the site to bring to light any flaws in the design. There is nothing worse than pushing a new site design that is riddled with flaws and broken links.

Many sites have enjoyed using Flash design in site development only to discover search engines don't access the information in Flash. While the functionality of Flash is a positive for visitors it may be best to develop a Flash and Non-Flash version of your site so search engines can read your site content.

The use of flashing text or multicolored text should be avoided. The text may get noticed, but generally for very negative reasons. Simple, compact text will provide the best means for visitors to understand what your site is designed to provide. Another reason content is so important is to keep all of your customers in mind. You may have both visually challenged and portable device customers that may use technologies that have space constraints. Many new site designs keep these limitations in mind.

Anytime you are developing an ecommerce site enlist the help of several trusted individuals who are willing to tell you exactly what they think of the site. Honest feedback is important when considering something with as much potential as an ecommerce site. A traditional businessman wouldn't construct a building without consulting an architect so why should online business not strive to enlist the help of others in site development techniques, design and site appearance?

About The Author
Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. HighPowerSites is the easiest do-it-yourself website builder on the web. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with http://HighPowerSites.com at: http://www.highpowersites.com

What Makes a Bad Website?

2006-10-28T16:18:00.000-05:00

by: Corazon Padol

When you're surfing the Web, you probably only think about one thing when you look at a Web site: whether or not it's fun. Some of the website authors are wondering why there is a few visitors visit their site.

Here are some tips to avoid you from creating a bad website:

Before developing the website you have to planned first. Make a story board that will be your guide in developing the site. You must arrange the hierarchy of the most important links in the main page.

Most importantly, you must create a home page that presents a professional image to the world. Your home page would be the gateway to your site. It must look like a road map, the index and the table of contents that tells the visitors where to find the information they need to make them stay at your site. It would be the mirror of your company or organization. So, if the design is not good, that will be the the first impression to your company.

You have to figured out what are the important elements should be included on the page. It must have a unique and interesting content. You have to know who are your target audience and what are the things that will get the attention of your visitors. You have to think of something new and unique on your content to convince your visitors to stay.

Put significant informations in your site to give them a useful information that is appropriate in your site. You should be able to tell why a website exists, and what information it's trying to provide. If the purpose of the website is confusing or unclear, that's a good sign that you should look for a different site. The word must be spell correctly.

The design must be clean and stunning look that will impress your visitors. The design must depend on the kind of services that your site are offering. Avoid using of blinking text that will irritate the eyes of your visitors. Avoid also many graphics or images that will take long to load your page because some visitors maybe bored in waiting for your page to load. Use the text color that will be visible to your readers.

Your site must be easy to navigate. The buttons must be consistent on its size and design. Using buttons with different colors and sizes looks unprofessional. Make sure that when you put the buttons on top of the home page, they're on the top of every other page.

The site must be indexed by the search engines so you have to consider the successful page optimization so that your site will be given the chance to rank on the search engine. In order for your site to be sited by many client or visitors your site must get a rank from search engine. Read some information about Search Engine Optimization(SEO) to have an idea on what will you going to do on your site.

You must have a quick response to your client or customer and give them the service that they needed. Apply good relation with your customer. Give them a word of Thanks for giving you the opportunity to work together with their company.

Always update your home page so that the visitors will always see new stuff or different from your site when they visiting your site. This will cause them to visit your site frequently.

About The Author
Corazon Padol, SEO for Webworksfirst, the best choice for your professional web design and other web development needs. For more information visit http://www.webworksfirst.com/.

Is Your Website Design Professional?

2006-10-27T15:31:00.001-05:00

by: Isaac Chu

In business world, you need a professional image, a professional sales team. Similarily, as one of your company member, is company website performs in professional fashion? Company website is your online sales team, do you know how professional it is?

#1 You have a beautiful website background?

In personal website, we can always find some beautiful background image or eye-catching background color. In some company websites, they also use some company photo, factory photo or product photo as the website background. Actually, it is not the right way to do. The right way is "Make it simple".

You will never find a background image in Yahoo, Google. People visit your website is looking for information not the beautiful background. Moreover, the background image have disadvantages: loading time will be longer and distract the visitor attention. Think again what information the background image can bring to your customer? If no, take it off.

#2 Full of image

Dont make your webpage in full of image. Use image only if image can present more clear than text. For example, you can use image to present the order process. Size of those images should be small enough, you can take a look on the article about "Image Optimization".

Remember, company website is not a comic.

#3 Page Frame

Many websites use frame to make the navigation easier. However, more and more website designers dont use frame in the design. It is because frame will distort the whole design and also make the visitor confused and difficult to find the information. Also, using CSS or Javascript can provides similar effect but can keep the design consistency.

#4 Visitor Counter

Put a visitor counter on the web site. This can let visitor know how many people visit the website before, get their attention and build up their confidence. This look true, but we suggest you to take it off.

Actually, these counters are not accurate and can be trigger manually, no one will believe these counters. Why don't put a testimonial with a real customer name instead of this counter?

#5 Under construction

Have you see those "Road Construction" image? Or those "Under construction, please come back later"? Dont waste your visitor time. If your webpage has not finish, take it away. I can't remember have I try "come back later".

If you really need to put this "Under Construction", we can give you some suggestion. You can package it to become a re-visit event, for example:

- On which day the web page open, the first 100 visitors complete the registration can get a free gift or discount.

- Raise the visitor curiosity, tell them what surprise they may get once the webpage open.

- Make it like a fiction. Everyday you put some additional information on it, make the visitor re-visit. This can greatly encourage the visitor to visit again.

Remember, no one like those boring "Under Construction". Turn it into a marketing event.

About The Author
Isaac Chu is Project Director of Evinco Solutions Limited. Evinco provides innovative business software, include emarketing web solutions, email marketing software, e-catalog publishing software, invoicing software, and electronic cheque writer. Visit: http://www.evinco.com.hk.

Locating The Right E-commerce Provider

2006-10-25T22:35:00.000-05:00

by: Akhil Shahani

E-commerce refers to the buying and selling of goods and services on the internet. The term is interchangeably used with e-business and refers to all forms of business activities such as e-tailing, B2B commerce, intranets and extranets, online advertising or an online presence in any form that is used for some type of communication such as customer service.

As a business owner, you need an e-commerce provider to enable you to do business online. There are a zillion companies out there which provide e-commerce solutions such as web designing and hosting services. Quite likely, all of them will claim to be the best at their jobs!

This piece is intended to help entrepreneurs like you who have a problem choosing the right e-commerce provider. Using the following guidelines will help you make a better decision.

Seek professional services: Don’t depend on Do-IT-Yourself tools, as you risk wasting time and money, and the results are not guaranteed. At present, there are so many professional service providers that you are sure to find one to suit your needs and budget.

Choose a 2 in 1 provider: You might get stuck in a situation where your website requirements need hosting services support. Hence, the company you choose should be able to design your site and host it as well. Selecting such a firm will save you time and frustration and might possibly work out cheaper. You can even benefit from some design firms that offer discounts on hosting packages.

Look for models: Have a look at some of the previous sites designed and hosted by the company you are talking to. If the company has worked on websites for your type of business or industry, chances are that they will be able to work on your project with relative ease.

Assess capabilities: Sometimes your e-commerce provider may not be able to provide support for everything you want to accomplish through your website. For example, they may be unable to provide a payment gateway or a merchant account to your shopping cart. Or they may not have equipped your online store to accept credit cards. In such cases you might be forced to take help from another company, which is not an optimal situation.

Ask key questions: If you’re satisfied with the technical capabilities of several vendors, consider the following questions before deciding on the e-commerce provider:

 Is the company reliable?
 Do I get satisfactory answers to my business questions?
 Do they actually pay attention to what I’m trying to do online?
 Can they add real value by providing guidance and suggestions for improvement?
 Can we sustain a relationship over the long term?

If at least one of the vendors fares well on the above questions, then you’re on the right track; else step away and try other companies until you get what you need.

The internet is helping businesses with marketable products reach a much larger audience at lower cost, and you can’t afford to be left behind. Getting the required support from your e-commerce provider is therefore vital to your online strategy. Remember to choose yours wisely.

About The Author
Hi, I am Akhil Shahani, a serial entrepreneur who wants to help you succeed. Over the years I have run many successful businesses & made many mistakes on the way. I have created http://www.aykya.com to help you benefit from all I've learned on my journey. Please visit us & download our special 'Freebie of the Month' as a thank you for your visit.

Why HTML Is Better For Web Design

2006-10-25T13:12:00.000-05:00

by: Chris Lowden

Why HTML is better for web design.

Flash and heavy image websites may look good, they often do. But how effective are they? Not as effective as you may think. Most people think once a website is created it is going to found by everyone on the internet. They couldn’t be more wrong. This article will talk about why HTML is a key to a website and its success.

HTML is the only language search engines can understand, anything else is like a foreign language. Search engines cannot read flash. They cannot read JavaScript. They cannot read images. That is why you are going to want to find a web designer who is going to be able to create a strong based HTML website.

Now I am not saying that if your website is heavy in flash, JavaScript and images it’s not going to be found. You still have you Meta tags, you did remember those right? Search engines work on keywords, word that people are going to use when finding your website. If you have read my article on Better Goggle Rakings you will be familiar on this, if not, I would suggest reading that next. If your website was developed in flash, you will still have the Meta tags working for you, but those can only take you so far. Websites that are heavy or well balanced in content are better. When a website is made in flash the text is imbedded in the flash file, the swf or it is loaded externally. It is not directly in/on the page for the search engines to find. Same goes with JavaScript and images. With images you have a little lead way, the alt tag. For those of you who are unfamiliar with HTML code, the alt tag is what you code into an image. So when you hover over an image, you will see the popup with the title written in it. But if you content is on the image, forget about getting a good ranking. A general rule of thumb, websites should have about 200 words of content, rich with keywords and unique content.

HTML is great and all, but there are a few things it cannot do for you. Animations, sometimes good, but are often used wrong. Floating menus, animated menus and drop down menus. Again, these can look very good if done well, but they are invisible to search engines. Links are a big thing to them too, search engines love to see a lot of links, incoming and outgoing to websites. If you are linked with websites of a higher page rank thank you is can be better for you and help your page rank. Now with that said here are some things that HTML will give you that other languages cannot. Keyword related navigation, again, back to the links. The links on your website should relate into what they are taking you too. Sounds obvious huh? You wouldn’t believe the amount of links I have seen taking me somewhere else other than what the menu said. Real text; keyword rich, unique content that will bring your customers to your page along with good page rank from Google. Lastly, with HTML, the page is your canvas, free to do anything you want and still have it be effective enough for your customers to be able to navigate you site.

So what’s a website with out any images? Not a whole lot in my opinion. But you just said websites shouldn’t have images on them. Wrong. I said that a website with heavy imagery is not always good. Take my website for instance, images all around you, but the pages are balance with my content, content that is keyword rich. So read some tutorials on Photoshop, slice it up and put some quality content in it and you should have a pretty effective website. Just keep in mind all of the above. Websites that look stunning are not always a good thing. Your website should look good, but it should be effective and smooth for the user to navigate through.

Having your website created by me will not only guarantee you a strong design and strong functionality. It will rank well in Google, keep your customers coming back and they will not be getting them lost in the navigation.

About The Author
Chris Lowden

I have been doing web design for a number of years now. I have always loved the internet, so I decided to pursue a career in it. You can visit my website here.

http://www.chrislowden.com

Good Search Engine Ranking

2006-10-24T14:47:00.000-05:00

by: Chris Lowden

So you want to rank well on Google? Who doesn’t?

Search engines have become a lot smarter from when websites first hit the market. You can’t repeat the same keywords over hundreds of times like you used to. Google and other search engines will see you as a spammer and ban your website from the engine. People used to trick search engines with gimmicks and tons of computer generated incoming links. This means, your website actually has to be a use to people in order to get ranked well.

So now you are asking yourself, if I don’t need gimmicks to get me ranked, what do I need? Money, right? No! You don’t need money either. When people use search engines, they don’t just type in something random. They type something specific, something that they are looking for. So when your website has quality and unique content, that is what will get you ranked well. When your content is unique, it makes it stand out from the crowed and found easier. Let’s say you are looking for a salt water fish tank, you aren’t just going to search "Pet Supplies" or "Aquariums". You are going to search exactly what you are looking for, "Salt Water Fish Tanks." Makes sense right? Same premise for your Meta tag keywords, if your company is selling fish tanks, you keywords may include, "Fish Tanks", "Salt Water Fish Tanks", "Fish Supplies," "Home Aquariums." See how it all works now?

Your website or company depends greatly on search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Yes people are going to find out about your website via word of mouth, but not everyone is looking for the same thing. For example, if I were to find baseball spikes, I wouldn’t go tell my friend who plays tennis. I am going to tell people who play baseball. My point is that while word of mouth works and is great, it is very slow. By having your website optimized correctly to be found on the internet makes it easy to be found, found very fast. So more baseball players will find the spikes they are looking for and buy them from your site.

Let me guess, you just had a website made? Looks pretty good, full of graphics, maybe some flash and just enough content for your customers see what you are all about. Am I right so far? While those websites aren’t great, they do get the job done, but they aren’t helping you at all. Websites with a lot of flash and imagery are never really good. No you scroll up and look at my website. Was I right? While my website does have a lot of images, it is well balanced by my content. Search engines cannot read images or flash. They can’t read those floating JavaScript menus or the menus that move up and down as you scroll. They may look nice, but they will not help your rank with search engines. Search engines need to be able to go through your website and follow your navigation from page to page. Search engines never forget, they store your information in their databases and index your pages so that when someone is searching they can see your information displayed. Without text there is nothing to index, images and flash cannot be indexed which means they cannot be found by your potential customers. Here’s a free tip, a general rule of thumb, every page on your website should have a minimum of 200 characters of text. It’s better if it’s content that is unique, unique means it will stick out from the crowd and found easier because it is original.

Now you’ve learned a little about how search engines work and what they look for. On to exploring the few vital things you can do for your website other than avoiding what we already talked about in the above paragraph.

# Meta Tags – Key words for finding your site, descriptions that will show on search engines.

# Title Tags – The text that shows up in the top left of your browser’s windows.

# HTML Coding – Good, clean HTML coding, none of that extra stuff FrontPage tosses in.

# HTML Navigation – Text navigation, simple for the search engine to follow, simple for your clients to read.

# Affiliation – Search engines love to see link exchanges. Links to higher ranked pages may in turn help your rank.

# Keyword Focused Content – The more words in your text that people search for, the easier your site is to find.

Let’s talk about IMDb.com, I know they aren’t selling anything, but they are huge. Their website is pretty simple, no large images throwing your eyes away from content. Clean HTML coding, HTML navigation, very focused content. As far as their website goes, it’s very easy for the developers to generate a page when a new movie comes out. All they have to do is throw in the content and update the page. IMDb has thousands of pages, which search engines also like to see. The more pages your website has the more important it looks to them. That is when you search something related to movies; IMDb is going to show up as one of the top contenders. Not to mention how long they have been around and their reputation for having so much unique content. Search engines also like to the age of the website, the older the website, the better. To them, if the page has been around for awhile then people must like it and it must offer some pretty good information.

If you or your company specializes in more then one thing, it will be a little bit harder for you get achieve good rankings in more then one field. If you are specialized in unique fields it may be a little easier on you. If you are a web designer or into computer graphics, it is going to be a lot more of a competitive market for you. Anyways, back to your company, it will probably be in your best interest to try and rank in one specific field instead of all of them. So if you sell tools, hardware, but the market is too competitive for hammers and screwdrivers try and rank for drills or wrenches. Something else in your market that is popular, but not as competitive.

I know all of this sounds good, if you can get it all to work to your advantage, great. But if you are not the type of person to do all of this for yourself and you need to hire someone, there is going to be money involved. For someone to get the whole package like we have been talking about it is going to cost a lot of money, but it doesn’t have to. You are already at a web designer’s website that specializes in all of the above. I am only a small freelance designer, but I do big projects without the cost of corporate firms. If you are interested in my services and already have a website, send me an email with your existing URL and tell me what problems you have been having or what you would like to accomplish. If you are looking for the entire package head over to the contact page fill out the form.

I hoped you learned something by reading this and if you skipped down to the end, head back up to the top. It’s a lot to remember, but if you can apply it, you may see more traffic. Keep in mind, all of this is not going to happen over night. Search engines index pages at different times, if you don’t see anything different after two weeks, try submitting your page manually.

About The Author
Chris Lowden

I have been doing web design for a number of years now. I have always loved the internet, so I decided to pursue a career in it. You can visit my website here.

http://www.chrislowden.com

Professional Web Design

2006-10-22T10:57:00.001-05:00

by: Bradley Glen Smith

Professional web design is becoming more important in today's ever-chaging marketplace. Whether you are trying to establish yourself as an online presence or acquire more clientele, professional web design has become crucial. What is it that distinguishes you from your competitor? How often do you find yourself wishing you had an online presence? Are you an entrepreneur? Would your business be better served by professional web design?

So, how do you think your business could be better served by professional web design? Could it be one of the following reasons:

* Flash Environment--Interactive WebPages
* PHP Environment--Dynamic WebPages
* HTML Environment--Static WebPages
* Search Engine Optimization
* E-Commerce Development
* Sales Page
* Video Tutorials
* Product Launch
* Affiliate Program
* Lead Capture--Acquiring New Clientele
* Recreating a Professional Look
* Creating A Link Directory

eYouCanDoIt, Inc. realizes the importance of professional web development and what it means to your business in terms of deadlines. That is why we strive to complete your professional website in two weeks. After gathering the necessary information to complete your website, we give ourselves a deadline of two weeks. This helps us ensure that your professionally-designed website is completed in a timely manner.

Professional web design and focus on your website is important to us. For that reason, we limit ourselves to five projects every two weeks. After your website is completed, your professional web design comes with one full year of support on operating and adjusting your website.

About The Author
Bradley G. Smith is a freelance Professional Web Designer. He designs web sites for entrepreneurs and small businesses. View his portfolio at the following link: http://www.eyoucandoit.com

Good Copy, the key to successful sites

2006-10-21T18:13:00.000-05:00

You can design a great site, but without the right words you'll never sell anything. Learn to write copy the right way and increase sales and revenue.

The 4’Cs of Affiliate Marketing

2006-10-21T14:13:00.000-05:00

by: Jason Hulott

If you currently run or are thinking about running your own affiliate program, then this article is for you.

There are 4 major things that each and every affiliate program needs to have if it is to be a success. Luckily for me they all begin with C so it is easy to remember.

Commission, Creative, Consistency, and Communication

Let's take a look at each one in turn. To the affiliate this is the correct order of importance when joining a program. However, as the affiliate program manager this needs to be slightly altered but we will get to that later!

Commission

The biggest differentiator to the affiliate is money. How much will they get paid for selling your product or service? How you structure this is really dependent on the type of product or service you are offering but really you have 3 options. Pay Per Sale, Pay per Lead or Pay Per Click. There are other options but to be honest these are the main ones.

When deciding on what commissions to pay, be realistic. If you don't really know how much you can afford to pay out then air on the side of caution. You want to pay out what you can afford to. Running a program for 2 months and then realise you have to reduce your commission payments to affiliates can be a program killer.

Creative

How many times have you joined an affiliate program only to find there are no creative to promote the program? How are they going to promote your product or service if you do not help them. You must provide the affiliates with everything they need to sell your product. If you had a real sales force, you would give them marketing materials in order to sell the customer, so the affiliate program is no different.

Banners, buttons, text links, HTML email, text email, classified ads copy, content, articles, and product reviews are all things that you can us to give the affiliate the creative they need to sell or pre-sell your product or service.

Consistency

Whenever you commit to running an affiliate program, be consistent, if you are sending out updates or updating creative on a regular basis make sure you remain consistent. If you want make it a certain day of the month. Affiliates will then get used to expecting things from you at a given time of the month. They can then almost factor that into their workloads. Remember affiliates can have two jobs, two hundred websites to manage so try to accommodate that in your thinking.

If you lose consistency, it will show the affiliate that you don't care about there efforts. They will switch off you like a shot. Remember there will always be someone else out there running an affiliate program in a similar space to you. An affiliate will show loyalty if you treat them right.

Communication

Perhaps last but no means least is Communication. You need to communicate to affiliates for two main reasons. Firstly, to update them on any new product changes, new creative, new commission structures. So in effect , to keep them informed with what's going on with you and your business that will help them drive more sales.

Secondly, you need to keep in touch will affiliates to make them feel important and to help train them. If you stay in touch on a regular basis and provide them with tools and training materials, they will learn more about driving traffic and sales to your products. They will be much more switched on to you for helping them.

Now I know some of you will be thinking that they will take your knowledge and help and use it elsewhere. Yes they will. But there will be lots of affiliates out there that will be joining an affiliate program for the first time or do not know who to do certain things and will feel loyal to you.

This is the most important C for Affiliate Program managers, building relationships and loyalty with affiliates through Communication. Think of it as an insurance policy so when a competitor comes along with the same product and offers the same commission or even in some instances a higher commission you will find you will keep your affiliates.

Running an affiliate program is a hugely rewarding project, get it right and you make a large sum of money for not just you but your affiliates too. Always remember the 4 C's when constructing a program or revisiting a program which isn't working that well.

Good Luck!

About The Author
Jason Hulott is an Author, Affiliate Program Manager, and creator of “Affiliate Communicator”, a new tool which allows the user to create Affiliate Marketing newsletters at the push of a button. Auto loaded with articles, products tips and useful Resources, Affiliate Communicator is THE tool affiliate marketing managers can’t live without! Visit http://www.affiliatecommunicator.com.

How to Put Video on Your Website

2006-10-21T10:25:00.000-05:00

by: Bob Dean Stanford

Maverick Marketing™ Series

Do you want to increase your website sales, web-traffic, or start your own online TV talk show? Would you like to broadcast your newsletter articles or videos over the Internet to others? Has this seemed impractical because video loads too slow, takes to much web space or just seems to hard to understand. We’ll welcome to the NEW world of instant loading, user friendly web video.

You may have noticed that a large number of websites are now featuring videos, everything from music videos, to online training. News is a popular use for presenting website video. You’ve probably heard a lot about RSS (Really Simple Syndication), a format designed for sharing web content like news headlines. RSS will be covered in a future article.

Did you know?

That there are so many new advancements in online video and audio in the last year, almost anyone can have their own online radio or TV talk show, radio or television station without high fees, advanced technical knowledge, and no FCC (Federal Communications Commission) intervention or regulation. Just build a website, install your audio and/or video files, advertise, and you’re in business. You can even broadcast your audio and video files through RSS feeds (we’ll explain in a moment) to websites worldwide and Joint Venture (JV) with other website owners to include your video on their websites.

Why would you want to put video and audio on your website?

There are many reasons. We are now in the 21st Century and 2006 is said to be the year of online video. Video is a premier sales tool. You’ve heard that a picture is worth a thousand words. How many words is a video with audio worth? A LOT! More than ever, people today are in a hurry and easily distracted, and even sensitively attuned to watching television many hours a day. TV is losing some of its ground to web-surfing.

Give the people what they want, video. Entertain, inform and educate them the way they are already trained for. Now it’s easier than ever to do this. Here, we are focusing on adding video / audio to your website for various purposes such as, marketing, training, V-Blogging, video sharing and etc. New technology has made it easy to add fast loading (called Streaming) video content to your website.

Until recently, between slow dial-up Internet connections and older technology, adding video wasn't practical for general website usage. But since over 60% of individuals online now have broadband access, and the new streaming technology, audio and video files can now be viewed online with little or no buffering. Buffering means to make the video viewable to your computer (the simple explanation). Therefore, video is now a feature that can be efficiently used online. There are still size and quality limitations to consider, but the industry is making progress in this arena almost daily.

The other problem hindering website video use was its complicated installation process. It’s been very difficult for the average individual to add video files to their websites. Windows Player simplified this process but still had limitations. It played a few formats, but not the streaming .swf (Flash) files and you had to know how to install their player on your website to play the video. You needed to know html webpage code or have a program like Microsoft’s FrontPage to install the player and video on a webpage.

Now there are a few new solutions that make it easy for the average person to install video on a website without needing too much computer or webpage knowledge. If a person knows how to cut and paste a simple code into a webpage, they can ad existing video files to their site. The tutorials even teach how to do this for the absolute beginner.

The latest software is an integration of several individual modules assembled as one user friendly software package that permits anyone to convert most of the existing video formats into fast loading, high quality, and streaming website videos. This software even enables you to customize your video player, video size, and quality. There is no player or software for your website visitor to download since the player is built into your webpage and loads almost instantly.

There are many software programs available that claim it’s easy to install video on your website. Most don’t work as promised. One good suite is Camtasia, but it is complex to use and cost several hundred dollars. A good user friendly, beginners’ level, feature-rich software should cost less than $100.

Video Content

Making video for a website is very easy today. A mass amount of people now have low cost digital video cameras. Many have video still cameras. New software makes it easy for non-technical individuals to create automatic training videos and presentation from still pictures. We’ll cover this feature in the next article in this web-video series.

Digital video and still cameras easily connect to your computer to upload the pictures from your camera to your computer in a digital format. One simple conversion to the new streaming format, making a video or audio player, and pasting the new code onto your webpage and you’re in business.

Windows XP even includes “Windows Movie Maker” for editing your videos in your computer. This is beginner level software but makes high quality edits. Your video cam can give you the ability to immediately create training videos, have your own TV talk show and etc. You simply record your video on your computer, edit it if necessary, and save it in the new streaming video format. Do a series of these and you have prerecorded videos viewable by anyone with Internet access. If you would like additional information on this subject, visit my website or email me as referenced in my signature line below.

About The Author
Bob Dean Stanford

Subscribe to the FREE "Maverick Entrepreneur" Newsletter to learn how to setup and operate your own Internet business, "THE RIGHT WAY."

Learn how to add FAST LOADING audio and video to your website, even if you've never done it before. Webmarketing is as much of an artform as it is a science. It should be made "User Friendly" for everyone.

The newsletter is a weekly support newsletter for the TV Show, "The Maverick Entrepreneur," Hosted by "Maverick" (aka Bob Dean Stanford), targeting home businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs.

It presents cutting edge, state of the art small business marketing tips, insider information, quality low cost solutions and resources. The newsletter is entertaining, educational, and uniquely informative presenting many "Tricks of the Trade."

http://www.webvideopros.com
http://maverickentrepreneur.com
http://maverickpros.com
http://magnumrecords.com

http://mavericktips.com

Benefits of Having a Web Site

2006-10-19T21:09:00.000-05:00

by: Wan Assad Aziz

Many have heard countless news of the downfall of Internet era that caused millions of loss to big companies. However, there are lots of advantages when it comes of having own web site. Think of having a business. Having a website will give a business the ability to reach thousands of potential customers through out the world, with a fraction of cost. These are but a few key benefits of owning a website:

Improve business image with online presence.

Many people today believe that businesses with websites provide superior products or services to those that don't. Think of a website as an online brochure where person can show examples or products and services. Websites provide companies with large customer bases the ability to communicate more effectively. Properly planned, designed and implemented a website should pay for itself and providing a return on investment.

Cost-saving to your business expenditure.

Buying advertising space, whether it's a newspaper ad, billboard, or radio spot, can be very expensive. Adding to the burden are the hours spent trying to figure out the perfect set of words to say everything needed within the constraints of an ad. By advertising business through a website, potential customers have the opportunity to learn more about products and services. A person can instantly publish that same information: new product announcements, employment opportunities, contact information, job openings, surveys, coupons, and investor’s information, almost anything, without material or delivery costs. The customers are able to learn about it instantly just by visiting the related web site.

Unless a company has a very large advertising budget, there's a limit to how much a person can say in the print ads. By including a website address in these ads, potential customers can easily look into the business up on the net. Think of a business card as a print ad.

Unlimited geographic market.

With a web site, a person can easily attract new customers not only locally, but nationally and internationally. By implementing online presence, the person can reach to a market that may have been difficult or expensive to reach through traditional advertising. A website provides these opportunities by allowing him/her to publish who and what is the business all about in a powerful and attractive manner.

24/7/365 Business Hours.

There is no other medium for being available 24/7/365 that even compares to a website. With the modest cost of developing a website and making it available on the Internet, there is nothing even close to being as cost effective. In addition, printed materials are easily misplaced. Television and radio commercials air at preset times. A website can be visited at a time that is convenient for the visitor, and they will have more interest because they want to be there on that particular website.

About The Author
Wan Assad Aziz - Administrator and editor for online presence. More articles related web site creation can be found at http://www.directpins.com

How Colors Affect Your Website

2006-10-19T21:00:00.000-05:00

by: Amber M. Miller

Since people associate particular colors with different emotions, the colors used on your website can have a psychological effect on visitors to your site. By using specific colors geared towards the emotion you want to invoke, you can actually increase product sales.

Here are some colors along with the emotions and symbols they stimulate:

1) WHITE- purity, innocence, peace, perfection, chastity, sterility, cleanliness. In general, white creates a cool and refreshing feeling.

2) BLACK- night, space, authority, sturdiness, reliability, power, constancy, prudence, wisdom, classy, elegance, submission, mourning, demons, witches. Black is a controversial color as it can symbolize both good and evil.

3) RED- love, excitement, warmth, heat, fire, blood, passion, power, aggression, action. Use red as an attention grabber. It works better as an accent color rather than a background one.

4) PINK- romantic, affection, sensuality, tenderness, calm, soft hearted, softness, femininity. Pink tends to reduce aggression.

5) BLUE- sky, ocean, water, temperature, ice, coolness, mist, shadow, travel, freedom, truth, solitude, wisdom, trust, loyalty, peaceful, calmness, intelligence, dedication, masculinity. Different shades of blue convey opposite meanings. Light blue is peaceful while dark blue is depressing.

6) PURPLE- royalty, dignity, luxury, wealth, sophistication, feminine, passion, romance, sensitivity, coolness, mist, shadows, mysterious, mystic.

7) GREEN- money, calm, envy, greed, nature, life, youth, renewal, hope, vigor, fertility, rebirth, freedom, guilt. Different shades of green have different meanings. Dark green-cool. masculine, conservative, wealth. Emerald green- immortality. Olive green- peace. Green is the easiest color on the eye.

8) Yellow- light, purity, understanding, brightness, warmth, playfulness, creativity. Lemon yellow is the most eye fatiguing color. Yellow can increase irritability so yellow should not be used as a main color, only as an accent. Yellow enhances concentration.

9) ORANGE- autumn, youthful, fire, warmth, contentment, fruitfulness, wholesomeness, strong, generous, endurance, strength, ambition. Orange is the color most associated with appetite so it would be a good color choice for a website selling food products. Orange also makes a product seem more suitable for everyone and more affordable.

10) BROWN- wood, comfort, strength, earth, solid, reliable, credible, maturity, humility, conservancy. Light brown conveys genuineness.

11) GRAY- exclusivity. Enhances the psychological response of other colors.

In general, red, orange, and yellow are exciting colors while purple, blue and green are calming ones.

Use the color that symbolizes the emotion you want to convey as the primary color on your website. Add 1-2 other colors to reinforce this emotion. The colors used for your background, header, graphics, text, highlighting, headlines, etc. will all contribute to your website's influence on your visitors.

About The Author
Amber Miller is a Virtual Assistant and President of Smart To Finish Office Solutions. She partners with small business owners who realize the importance of working on their business – not in their business. She can be reached online at http://www.smarttofinish.com.

Web 2.0 Programming

2006-10-17T10:48:00.000-05:00

by: Kirk Jensen

In this article the term Web 2.0 programming is defined as well as the difference between Web 2.0 programming and Web 1.0 programming. The advantages and disadvantages of Web 2.0 programming are explained. Finally an opinion on Web 2.0 programmingis given.

The term Web 2.0 was coined by O’Reilly Media back in 2004 to mean a network to span across all network devices. It delivers software on a continually updating basis, where unique users can go in and post information on the fly and it is updated automatically to the web.

The following list is a general comparison of between Web 2.0 and Web 1.0 this will be broken down into specific comparisons.Web 2.0 and Web 1.0

The first comparison will be with Double Click and Google Adsense.

Double Click was the pioneer of the Internet ad service, where the users profile was created by their activity on the web. Consequently banner ads where generated this way as well. A major disadvantage was that Double click required the use to have a former sales contact with the company which limited this technology to larger companies. Overture and Google saw a need and improved upon an existing product thus Overture and Adsense was born. It was a format in which virtually any site could be catered to in terms of having a banner ad on it, which in turn offered consumer friendly text advertising. The lesson here is to create a customer self-service management system that reaches out to the entire web and not just the core. Other companies that have used this technology are eBay and Napster.

The second comparison is between Akamai and BitTorrent.

Akamai provided global Internet caching meaning a client browser requesting a specific file when is then sent to another website which gives you the index page of the source site of the file. From the source code you can parse it into your site as an image, video or audio file. The disadvantage here was the hoops one had to go through in order to get a file, plus the fact that they could only use the servers provided to them. Now take BitTorrent, every client is also a server, hence the more popular a file is the faster it can be downloaded because more clients or servers in this case that host the give file. Again the lesson here is to give the power to the people.

The next comparison is between personal website and blogs.

Now one should know what a personal website and what a blog is, but what classifies a blog as a Web 2.0 technology? One is the use of RSS feeds, what RSS stands for is “Real Simple Syndication” or “Rich Site Summary” depending on whom you ask. Basically you can put a remote blog or syndication on your site using an RSS feed for example the following RSS Feed, which is referencing another website’s syndication. Another factor that separates a blog from a personal website is the use of permalinks. A permalink is the specific URL for a given blog and/or syndication. Thus referencing this URL to another blog and/or syndication will automatically create a link to that blog or syndication, which in turn built reputation between bloging communities.

The difference between static and dynamic generated web sites.

With Web 1.0 technology the term WYSIWYG or What You See Is What You Get becomes very apparent. Then JavaScript came along and became the breaking scripting code to bridge the gap between Static and dynamic pages. Web 2.0 uses Ajax programming or (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) meaning JavaScript and XML coding work in unison with each other to create rich, dynamic web pages, CSS is also thrown into the mix.

The 7 Core Competencies of Web 2.0

The 7 core competencies according to O’Reilly Media are:

* Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability

* Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them

* Trusting users as co-developers

* Harnessing collective intelligence

* Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service

* Software above the level of a single device

* Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models

Companies that are considered to be Web 2.0 are shown in the following list.

It is safe to say that many sites now days use a combination of both Web 1.0 and 2.0 technologies. A perfect example is gameznstuff.com that has a combination of both static and dynamic pages that use a content management system of Joomla that is considered to be more Web 2.0 based then Web 1.0. Connected to gameznstuff.com is the blog site as well as RSS feeds and a separate forum site as well.

So Web 2.0 based technology is gradually making its way as the prefered mainstrean tools to produce rich, dynamic generated web pages and online content.

To see more articles like this one go to http://www.gameznstuff.com/blog

About The Author

Kirk Jensen - Owner of http://Gameznstuff.com, http://Gameznstuff.net

Domain Names and Search Engine Optimization

2006-10-17T10:47:00.000-05:00

by: Halstatt Pires

There are a lot of factors involved if you are considering building out a site with search engine optimization in mind. Your domain name is just one, but an important one.

Domain Names and Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is simply an effort to get pages on your site to rank high in the natural or organic listings on various search engines with Google, Yahoo and MSN being the most important. Taking this approach to online marketing requires a lot of planning, patience and work. Unfortunately, many people get off on the wrong foot when the pick their domain name.

Selecting a domain name is often viewed as a simple process. Most businesses will simply use their offline business name or something off the top of their head. Others will try to pick something that is catchy, so visitors will hopefully remember the name and come back to buy more. If you are planning on pursuing search engine optimization, the approaches will not kill you. That being said, there is a better way to pick your domain.

One of the interesting things about most search engines is they put a significant amount of value on the words in the root of a domain name. By root, I mean the words between www and the dot com, net or whatever you are using. Simply put, even a moderate optimization effort will usually lead to the site appearing high under the phrase in the domain name. Given this fact, it is important to think long and hard about the domain you use.

One approach used by many people doing search engine optimization is to match keyword phrases and domains. The idea is to research keyword phrases being used by people in your particular field and then buy domains matching those phrases. For a simple example, consider the fact that many people search for “puppy names”. If you want to build a site about puppies, you would ideally want to buy the domain puppynamesdotcom. Such a site could be optimized and obtain fairly high rankings with a moderate amount of effort.

Obviously, keyword phrases with tons of traffic have already been taken. This should not discourage you, however. Work your way down the phrases identified by whatever research tool you are using. You will be surprised to find that many of the phrases are available. Build a site on one of the domains and you should find your optimization efforts leading to successful results.

About The Author

Halstatt Pires is with http://www.marketingtitan.com - providing internet marketing services.

Now On Technorati

2006-10-15T17:07:00.000-05:00

Web Design and Development blog is now on Technorati!

Technorati Profile

PHP Logic

2006-10-15T13:28:00.000-05:00

by: Izzat Youssif

If else statements

Let's look at an example

if ($lesson = "html") {
echo "Welcome to html";
}

The above statement tells php to display Welcome to html if our Lesson variable is equal to html.
The condition is always stated next to the if in () . The results are stated after the { and } tells php that you are ending the if statement.

Next let's look at an else example

if ($lesson = "html") {
echo "Welcome to html";
}
elseif ($lesson = "php") {
echo "Welcome to php";
}
else {
echo "No lesson chosen";
}

Else statement came after an if statement. Notice else came in elseif and else formate. Elseif looks for other conditions if they existed. Else is the result as a last resort, if no other option is available. Both elseif and else follow the same structure as if statements.

Next , we'll talk about loops statments

The first type of loop statements are while statements

Let's look at an example below

$ls = 0;
while ($ls <>echo "$lesson" ;
$ls++;
}

While statement are used to loop through a collection of records or data. The above statement simply at the number of our $ls variable and from that number prints the chosen lesson. Again following the same structure as if else statements, condition next to the while and condition below { and ending with . The only differences is we incremented the variable within the statement.

Next we'll discuss for statements

For statements are used in the same essence as while statment, expect more emphasis is put on the variable as you'll in the example below.

for ($ls=0;$ls<$totalls;$ls++)
{
echo $ls['lesson'];
}

The above example, declares the ls variable again and compares it to total numbers of lessons. While ls is less than total number of lessons, we tell php to increment. Again following the same structure as if else statements, condition next to the for and condition below { and ending with } .

About The Author
Izzat Youssif is an online web designer and developer offering low cost website design and development service, as well as free website design and development. visit http://websitedevelopmentanddesign.com for more details!

The Web's Best Kept SEO Secret

2006-10-15T00:30:00.000-05:00

by: Richard Quick

Did you know there's a way to get 100s of inbound links to your site - and improve you Google ranking - for free?

Message board seeding is the technique nobody's talking about - because they don't want you to know about it!

In this article top web designer Richard Quick uncovers the secrets of this powerful technique.

What are message boards?

Message boards are websites, or sections of websites, where people go to chat, usually about a single subject. There are message boards about everything from pop stars to politics.

The way they work is simple, people write messages, or posts, which appear online. For example, they might post a question ("How do I add a link in HTML?") or an opinion ("The new Tom Cruise movie is awesome!"). Other people can then reply.

How does this help me?

The obvious way to try to increase traffic to you website might be to post to a message board promoting your site. Don't do this - ever. People treat these kind of unsolicited adverts as spam and get very angry with people who post them. You're likely to get angry emails, abusive posts on the board or even complaints to your ISP, asking for your site to be shut down.

So what can I do?

Well, while people don't like their message boards being spammed they always welcome new members. If there's a subject you're interested in or knowledgeable about then you can join a few popular message boards and join in with the discussions.

Most message boards allow their members to have a signature, with a link to your website.

How does this help me?

Message board seeding, as this technique is known, will help you in two ways. Firstly, people on the boards will come to know and trust you. Some will look at your site out of interest and next time they need a service similar to yours they may contact you.

Secondly, and much more importantly, every time you post on a message board you will be creating a link to your website. This will improve your page rank and help push you further up Google.

How to link to your site

When you link to your site, make sure the link text (or anchor text) you use contains your main keywords. If you own a Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn your link text should be Chinese restaurant Brooklyn not The Golden Lotus.

Share the love

Posting 100 messages to 1 message board won't have the same effect on your Google position as posting 10 messages on 10 different message boards.

Where to post

Make sure you choose message boards that closely match your business. If you run a golf course near Miami, you should post on message boards about Golf or Miami - not on message boards about web design or orange juice.

About The Author
Richard Quick is the author of the forthcoming book "Web Design in easy steps". He has a background in designing websites for multinational companies and works as a freelance web designer in Cornwall (http://www.thepasty.com), England. Richard also runs a site selling Cornish Pasties (http://www.thepasty.com).

10 Things To Think About When Considering Frontpage Web Hosting

2006-10-15T00:28:00.000-05:00

by: Charles Waters

It’s not hard to find Frontpage Web Hosting. Just do a google search and you’re likely to find hundreds of sites that provide it. But there are some things that you’ll want to look for and consider.

1) What version of Frontpage are you using? This is important because Frontpage features are implemented through the use of Frontpage Extensions and those extensions are different between each version. So you’ll need to make sure that the Frontpage Host you select supports the Frontpage extensions for your particular version.

2) Do you really need a site that supports Frontpage extensions? This may seem strange, but you’ll find that there are two primary hosting types; Linux based and Windows based. The Linux based hosts are generally a bit cheaper than Windows based hosting. If you have no plans to take advantage of Frontpage extensions, and you’re only using Frontpage to create HTML documents, then regular Linux hosting will do fine.

3) Don’t use Frontpage Extensions if you really don’t have to. These extensions will give you the ability to do creative things (flashing text, calanders, etc) that don’t really add value to your website. Consider this risk… as Microsoft updates its software, they may change a Frontpage extension in such a way that your websites may not work. If this happens, you would have to rewrite your web page with updated references to extensions to make it work again.

4) Is the host reliable? There are literally THOUSANDS of Frontpage Web Hosting providers on the market. All you need to set up a web host business is a Windows based server and an Internet connection. You, the home users, really have no idea if the host is reliable or not. For this reason, it’s a good idea to check Frontpage hosting providers ratings before making a selection. Use a service like:

http://www.webhostingratings.com/ or http://www.hostcompare.com/showcases/frontpage.html

5) How long do they want you to sign up for? Typically, a web host will have a monthly contract with price breaks if you prepay for longer terms. You don’t have to be crazy and buy 5 years. 1 year will do. Also, along with your Frontpage hosting account, you’re going to have to purchase a domain name. Generally, I do this through the same company, but you don’t have to do it this way. For example, on occasion, a domain name registrar called RegisterFly will offer .info domains for as little as .60 per year. Normally you would expect to pay about $5.00 per year, so this is a great discount. I’ve purchased hundreds of domains through RegisterFly and am very happy with them.

6) Does your Frontpage Web Host have a simple to use web front end for administering your site? This makes things much easier. You will undoubtedly be creating a directory structure, uploading files, changing file permissions, etc, while you develop your site. Having a convenient web based portal for administering these changes makes things nice.

7) How many e-mail accounts will your Frontpage Web Host provide? Normally this is a non-issue, but if you’re setting up a website for a business and they need e-mail addresses to go along with their web hosting service, then you’ll want to confirm that enough e-mail addresses are provided by the host. Lately, I’ve noticed this number going up and up and up. A few years ago, 5 e-mail addresses was normal. Now, I’ll get hundreds per domain (which I never use).

8) How much space will your Frontpage Web Host provide? Again, this number is going up and up and up. But don’t be caught off guard. Make sure they will provide enough space for your needs. Typically, you’ll see 100 MB or so for cheaper accounts. Unless you have a vast database that will be part of your site, this is generally more than enough.

9) Will your Frontpage Web Host put a cap on the amount of bandwidth you can consume? If you expect to get lots of visitors to your website, make sure your hosting provide will supply the bandwidth. I recently ran into a problem with on of my accounts because a graphics intensive page was referenced by a very popular authority site, I consumed my allotted bandwidth for the month, in 2 days. They kept my account operations, but I had to pay extra for the bandwidth consumption. Other sites have been turned off due to excessive bandwidth consumption.

10) Finally, will your Frontpage Web Host allow you to register domain names privately? This is a feature of Domain Registration where your private information remains private. When someone performs a “Whois” on your domain, they would see the contact information for the web host. This is nice if you plan to put up many, many sites and want to avoid any spam.

I would say that choosing a Frontpage Web Host is only slightly more difficult than choosing a Linux Host. If you check some of those review sites that I mentioned above, you can be confident that you’ll find a Frontpage host that will provide excellent service to you. You can find out more about Frontpage Web Hosting here -> http://www.frontpagewebhosting-site.info

About The Author

Charles Waters has been developing web sites for several years as part of his Affiliate Marketing strategy. In the beginning, he used Frontpage extensively, but over the last few years has migrated to the cheaper, more ubiquitous Linux hosting. See http://www.frontpagewebhosting-site.info for more information.

The 8 Golden Rules to Web Site Optimization

2006-10-12T22:56:00.000-05:00

by: Harrold Swalve

There are several reasons why you should make web site optimization one of your main priorities and why you should make sure to take this serious. A web site which takes ages to load for example will make your visitors leave before they even had the change to see what you’ve got to offer.

That’s why I want you to take some of your valuable time and check out the 8 golden rules to web site optimization which I have listed here. I can assure you that it will proof valuable to those of you who want to give their visitors an experience they will remember in the positive sense.

1. Content is King

You probably have heard this before but I can assure you it is true. The main reasons why you want to offer decent content is to stand out from the rest. People who visit your website will be presently surprised with the quality of your content and will spread the word for you.

2. Load Time of Your Web Pages

Even though a lot of surfers have access to high speed internet connections you will be surprised what percentage still uses a phone connection and modem to go on line. At least for these people you should make sure your web pages load within 30 sec. using a 56k modem. Don’t forget that most people are impatient and won’t wait for your web pages to load.

3. Create Killer Titles for Every Single Web Page

Your main web page might be the most visited page of your web site and also the one which comes up in the search results most often but you certainly don’t want to forget your other pages.

Imagine you are lucky enough that several of your other web pages show up in the search results. What good does it do if nobody clicks it because of a lousy title. Make sure to include your main keyword of that particular web page into your title.

4. Create a Description Explaining the Content of the Page.

What goes for the title also goes for the description meta tag. You should make sure that every single page has a clear description through which search engine traffic will immediately understand what the web page will be about. Keep in mind that not all search engines display the description in their listings but you still want to get this right for the ones that do.

5. Make Sure Your Internal Links Work.

Nothing is more annoying when visiting a web site then internal links which don’t work. Download links which are not functioning any more, links to internal pages where you get a 404 error message, these are things you absolutely want to prevent at all times if you want to be taken serious.

6. Refresh Your Content on Regular Bases.

Once you have created a web site which invites people to pay you a return visit because of the quality of your web site, you want to make sure that you refresh (update) your content on regular bases. I don’t mean that you should rewrite your complete web site but for a decent web site optimization you might want to include automatically refreshing content like a guestbook, forum, or an RSS feed with articles.

7. Use Only Two or Three Main Keywords Per Page.

A perfectly optimized web site will have every single page optimized for only two or three main keywords. Use these keywords between h1tags, make sure that the keywords (or similar keywords) appear on every two paragraphs of your web page, and make sure your last line of the body text will have at least one of the two keywords embedded.

8. Get as many One Way Inbound Links as Possible.

Reciprocal linking still works but isn’t as valuable for your search engine ranking anymore as it used to be, If you really want to be found in the search engines you need to take your web site optimization to the next level. You’ll have to become the one way link king.

Write articles and submit them to every single article directory you can find. Make sure to place the article on your web site first and slightly change it before submitting it to the article directories.

Submit your website to every single directory your can find. I would advise only to use the ones which accept free submissions. Keep in mind that this will be an ongoing job and that it might take several weeks before your site gets included.

Be inventive and come up with ideas which will help you to get your web site link on other high traffic web sites within your market. Not everything has to be copied; you are smart enough yourself to come up with ideas.

Well, as you probably realized by now, web site optimization truly is an ongoing job and should be taken extremely serious when you want to get listed on the first pages in the search engines and receive all that free traffic.

About The Author

As one of the youngest regional managers ever in the U.K. Harrold Swalve already achieved one success story. After a couple of years in the online industry he again achieved great goals and successes. These days he is a well respected and much sought-after online business expert and has already published a online business bestseller Profit Shockdocs which is available at http://www.Profit-Shockdocs.Com. To learn more about how Harrold can help you achieve your goals with your online business, visit him at http://www.pocketmoremoney.com and start your own Moneymaking at Home Business.

Importance of Building Backlinks

2006-10-12T22:53:00.000-05:00

by: Rob Ferrall

Getting other websites to link to yours is an important part of your website development. There are many reasons why a website will survive and flourish, and also a lot of reason why your website might die a premature death and have no visitors. Steady, strategic link building can help you maintain your website traffic and cause your visitors to increase as well.

Now, don't get me wrong: getting thousands of random websites to link to you might not always be a good thing. Search engines like it when a link to your website is contained on a page where the page content is relevant to your website. For instance, if you have a website about cat food, you might not want to pursue a link from a website about Indian tea recipes. Your link will not likely be seen as helpful (or relevant) to the visitor of the Indian tea recipe website, and search engines will also view this linking as non-relevant. Please understand I am not saying that non-relevant links will hurt you, only that they are not the types of links that you should pursue.

How can you get backlinks?

You can obtain backlinks for your website using a number of methods:

* Posting in forums with your website URL in your signature

* Writing reviews of products that allow you to post your URL

* Responding to blog postings

* Writing articles and submitting them with your website link in your resource box

* Submitting your website to classified ad sites

* Submitting your website to directories

* There are many more as well

What is the purpose of building backlinks?

There can be great benefit for your website with a proper link building strategy. Building backlinks to your website can:

* Cause your website to be indexed and crawled by search engines

* Increase your visitors from strategic placement of your website link

* Increase your overall search engine position for keywords or phrases

* Increase brand awareness for your name or business name. . .

Building backlinks, if done properly, can increase your website traffic significantly. It doesn't have to be hard, simply do a little at a time and you may be surprised with the results over a short period of time.

About The Author
Rob Ferrall has a website directory submission service that offer SEO Friendly website submissions at an affordable rate:
http://www.directorysitesubmit.com

5 Easy Ways To Turn Visitors on Your Site Into Customers

2006-10-09T11:03:00.000-05:00

by: Caren Jacob
Turn visitors into customers

The sole purpose of a website is to sell. Thus no matter how much traffic your website gets and how impressive its rankings are, it all comes to a naught if your sales numbers are not as positive. In fact, this is the most serious ailment that most e-commerce sites suffer from ¨C the matter of conversions.

Conversions are about turning visitors into buyers. The process is not simple and there are numerous factors affecting the outcome.

In fact, the e-commerce scenario is fast changing and you need to be in tune with the latest developments to remain competitive.

An e-commerce website is not just an online catalog. There is more to it than efficient shopping carts and secure payment gateways.

Buying decisions, whether online or offline, are regulated by extra- rational factors. So the important question to ask is whether you¡¯re set up evokes the desire and the trust in visitors required to complete an online transaction.

If you wish to improve your site's conversion rate, here are a few tips -

1. Distinguish your offerings
If you are the only one selling what you are, you have it easy. But if you are not, then you have to create a distinct identity for your business. Give the visitors a convincing reason to choose you over your competitors. Your marketing campaigns have to emphasis this aspect too.

2. Target your traffic
When it comes to traffic, huger numbers might be impressive but not necessarily effective. While most of the sites hover around a conversion rate of 3 ¨C 4%, a conversion rate of around 8% is not very unusual. In fact, the best of e-commerce websites have a figure as high as 18%. It's up to you to decide which figures are for you.

But if you are looking for high conversion rates, then advertise accordingly. Your advertisement should be very specific to your offering. Broad keywords get you bigger traffic but result in lower conversion rates too.

3. Get the content that converts
The copy on your website has to speak business, it has to tell the visitor clearly and categorically what you are selling and how it's different from other similar products in the market. Emphasis the benefits of buying from you. The visitor is in a hurry and has numerous other options. Show the carrots to him blatantly; let it not be a puzzle for him.

If you are using landing pages, then make sure that they have attractive product descriptions, pictures and very prominent 'call to action' buttons. Compare your product with those of others; there is nothing more convincing than fair comparisons.

4. Gain the prospect's faith
When you walk into a superstore, you already have a fair idea about the store's reputation, customer service and availability of goods. Successful e-commerce websites function on the same principles. You read about them in forums, shopping comparison websites; get impressed with their website's design and content, hassle free navigation, easy loading etc. They will have a toll free number to call on, probably live support, customer testimonials, and real address on the Contact Us page. If you have any news items or press releases have a separate section for them too.

5. Assure & Secure
Online business is not new for many. But most of your visitors might have compunctions about online transaction. These are the fears that your privacy policy should allay. Assure your visitors that the personal information that they share is totally secure, tell them emphatically that the privacy policy statement is important to you.

Another major concern in online transactions is security of payments. Therefore, use a payment gateway that is widely trusted and evokes faith. This is reason why Verisign is one of the most well known signs in the online world.

E-commerce is an elaborate subject and this article does not cover all aspects of it. However, these are the bedrocks without which an e-business can't prosper.

About The Author

Caren Jacob makes it easy to provide ways which would gradually increase your site conversion rate.To recieve your free part-mini course visit the http://www.firedandinspired.com

This article is written by the E-commerce specialist at Fired and Inspired UK. Fired&Inspired is renowned London web design company also offering graphic design and SEO services in UK. Reproductions of this article are encouraged, but must include a link pointing to http://www.firedandinspired.com/

Part 1 Of Your Free Guide To Buidling A Website

2006-10-09T11:01:00.000-05:00

by: Nick Leech

Summary

In this article we’ll be covering how to use the Webeden to build a website, how to add realtime chat, message boards, galleries and more from the file library

You want to build a professional looking website that’s individual without the hassle of learning HTML. Welcome to WebEden.

Introduction

What do you do if you want a good looking website, but don’t want to have to install and learn complicated new software? Previously the answer was either to pay someone else to create the site for you, which was very expensive, or to choose a wizard driven online site builder. These create generic, drab looking sites that are very restricted in terms of functionality and in terms of how much you can change them. WebEden is a new service that provides the next generation of website building.

What is excellent about WebEden is the scope of the offering. Starting at only £2.99/month, cheaper than some standard web hosting packages, you get a hosted website together with an online website creator that makes generating a site and updating it, from anywhere in the world, a walk in the park.

Best of all, WebEden grows with you, so you can start out knowing nothing about creating a website and the system is intuitive that you can have your own new website up and running in half an hour. If you just need a site that looks presentable and offers the right information that you need, then simply use the wizard to set up a site. Even in its most simple form though, it’s better than other wizard driven sites, as you can choose the type of site you are after so that the right pages are created, and then a basic template for the design and then the colour scheme you want as well.

These tick box driven decisions by themselves mean that your site will have an individual look about it, but will look better than 90% of the hand created sites you see online. As you get used to the WebEden system though, you can edit the site and change any part of it that you want, all through the online interface. And we don’t just mean changing the colours, fonts or the graphics, the whole layout of pages can be controlled easily through your browser. The system can even password protect parts of your site and add Message Boards for interactivity. If this sounds interesting, then the good news is that you can try WebEden for free as they have a 14 day free trial, so you can play with the system all you like without any risk. Go to www.webeden.co.uk and sign up for free now.

Get started with WebEden

How to sign up with WebEden and get your first website ready for visitors in half an hour

Step 1

You can try out WebEden by clicking on the 14 day trial icon on the home page and starting the wizard. The wizard takes only a few steps and you don’t need to enter any credit card or financial data to try out the site, only a valid email address which is used to validate your WebEden account. The first step of the wizard gives you a set of options for the purpose of your website. By selecting the purpose, you decide the number and titles of the pages on your site, so for example you can have a home page with a music page, links, message board and hit counter, or a site for a club you may run with club news, events and photo gallery. You can see the different pages for each purpose by clicking on the relevant button – the list of pages will appear above. If none suit your purpose, you can choose a Blank purpose and add your own pages later. The next step will allow you to combine the pages titles you’ve chosen with a design template.

Step 2

WebEden has many advanced features which we’ll look at in later tutorials, but for now let’s look at one of the key ones, which is the menu editing feature, which is the key to great website building. The menu changes you make in the site organiser are automatically site wide, so you don’t need to worry about making sure changes are replicated across pages. You may also decide that you want a part of your menu to be a category for new pages, rather than a link to an individual page. Create the new pages and then drag them up so they sit under the category link. Click on the arrow next to the page number in the Organiser and it will make the page a sub-page of the one above it.

Now the website builder knows what type of site - and therefore what pages - are needed, it will combine these with the design template. Again there are buttons which when you click on one the preview will be shown above. The difference here is that as well as choosing the basic template for your page’s design, you will see there are three colour buttons under the preview. Once you’ve selected a template, click on the colour button you prefer and you will see the colour scheme applied to the template. Note that there are two pages of templates to choose from.

Step 3

Once chosen, you can move on to final step which requires you name the site and enter an email address. You can then create your own website and you will be taken to a view of your new site.

That’s it!

What’s next?

Now you have the site, simply click on any area that you wish to change and you will be able to edit it. Start with the basics, which is entering the text you want on your website.

By single clicking on an item you will see the bounding box that surrounds any item. This is like the boxes you will find in any design package on your PC, so you will find control boxes at the corners and mid-points of the bounding box. You can use these to stretch or shrink the object. You will also see that the floating Editor dialog changes as you select different objects on a page. This dialog allows you to change the dimensions of an object or the location of it by entering the pixel data. If the object is a text object you can double click on the object and you will now be able to change the text itself. If you already have the text that you want to appear on a web page written in a Word document, then you can copy it into your pages by opening the document and selecting the text and copying it to the clipboard by pressing Ctrl-C. Then go into WebEden and double click on the text box you wish to edit, then select the text by wanding it in, and press Ctrl-V to paste over it. When you have finished entering the text for a page, you can click on the Save icon to save it, or if you click on a different page in the menu, you will move to edit that page, and WebEden will prompt you to save the page automatically. As long as you don’t simply quit the browser, there should little chance of you inadvertently losing any changes you make to pages. Clicking on the pages in your site menu may take you to the individual pages so you can edit those, but how do you edit the menu itself to rename pages or add pages to your site. Website Builder makes this easier than any other method we’ve seen. Simply go to Pages / Organise pages and the dialog there lists the pages currently in your site. To change the order of pages in the menu, click on a page in the Drag column and move it up or down the list. Type over the page’s name in this dialog to change it on all pages, and click on the “Add a new page” to add one to the menu. See below for sub-menus.

Editing objects in WebEden

The beauty of building a website with WebEden is the speed with which you can edit pages or make site wide changes. Here’s 6 Menus to Basic Editing of your webeden.co.uk website

1. Edit menu
This allows you to operate on the currently selected object. Everything you see on a page is an object and to use it, you simply click on it and drag it around the page, or click here to edit it. You can delete objects from the Edit menu, send them to the back (as you can put objects on top of each other, like using layers in DTP programs), or change some more generic settings. For example, you can change the settings for the current page here, so you can set it as a private page that only registered users can see. The Edit menu also allows you to manage who is registered on your site and send them emails if you have chosen a package that includes this feature. Many of these features are not normally available in low end hosting packages or in normal HTML, but are possible because of the unique delivery system WebEden uses.

2. Pages menu
This menu lists the pages on your site, so you can jump to one to edit it. It also allows you to organise the pages and set which is the home page, etc. a great way to create your own website.

3. Insert menu
This is a very powerful menu as it allows you to add all manner of elements to your pages. As well as text and images, you can choose File, which brings up the File Manager. We’ll look at this in detail in the next part of this series, but you will come to love it because it gives you access to the WebEden library, which includes polls, animations, frames, games and much more.

4. Design menu
You can change the fonts, background, and the “Page Master” which is the template that contains elements that are on every page, like the menus. This menu also allows you to change the overall dimensions of your pages.

5. Active object
The currently selected object on a page will show a bounding box, a real help when you make your own website.

6. Editor dialog As you select different objects or add ones, this editor changes to offer options.
When you create your own website with WebEden you can have interactive elements like polls added easily, as well as your own images, all added to the existing template.

DID YOU KNOW?

When you create your WebEden account, you simply step through the wizard as described on the next page and select a subdomain, like tutorial. webeden.co.uk, as your web address. If you want to have a “proper” URL, you can register a web address and simply get it to forward to your WebEden address automatically.

That’s all for now

Check in for part 2 to find out how to carry out advanced editing to make it even easier to build your own website with Webeden

About The Author
Nick wants to make is easy for anyone to build their first website. Have a go for free at http://Webeden.co.uk

5 Website Design Common Mistakes You Should Avoid

2006-10-09T11:00:00.000-05:00

by: Mark Tse

Websites disappear from the internet everyday. Do you want your website to be one of them?

Of course not.

Then how can you avoid your website's failure?

The answer is - understand the common mistakes other websites made and avoid doing them in your website.

Here are 5 of them, which you should try to avoid at all cost.

1. A slow loading website.
Most visitors are impatient to wait for a website loading for more than 10 seconds. In building your website, try not to use any enormous graphic files. No, you do not need a high resolution images. No, you do not need lengthy movies or flash animation. No, you do not need appealing music. You need a website that deliver the information strict to the point at fast as possible, and for this reason, you should focus on functionality first, design second.

2. A complicated and difficult to understand navigation system.
do not make your menu bar too complicated, otherwise you will end up pushing your visitors away from your websites. Therefore, you need to make it easy for them to explore your website. Your pages must be linked in a logical way, and this connection should be easily navigable through an simple interface that even a 10 years old boy or 60 years old grandma will be able to understand. Place your navigation links either at the top of the page right below the header, or at either side of the page in a separate column.

This is where your visitors' eyes tend to look once they want to visit the other pages in your website.

3. Low quality content.
Content is the king on the net. People use the internet to search information they need, and information is shared through your content. If your content is poorly written, who will have the patience to read it? Or if your content is not unique, why will people choose your website over others? In brief, there are two requisites for good quality content: excellent presentation and originality. Without either of this, your website will be in trouble for retaining repeat visitors.

4. Poor choice of keywords
Keywords are the terms that people search for when they're looking for information. They drive traffic to your website. If you targeted the right keywords, quality targeted visitors will come. If you targeted the wrong keywords, your website will have low traffic. Therefore, you should research the right keywords before you start building your website and content.

5. A website without focus.
Focus is the key in designing a good website. Why would visitors who are interested with cats be interested with computer? There is no direct connection between the two subjects, it will just confuse your visitors and kick them away. So generally you should build your website on one main theme.

Now I have shared 5 common mistakes that you should avoid. Your online business success depends on how well your website designs.

So it's your time to think about how you can properly build your website. Take care.

About The Author

Mark Tse shares free tips, articles and downloads in his Internet Marketing Blog. Why do not visit his blog to get more great marketing related content? Click here to visit now: ==> http://www.marktse.com/blog/

An Introduction To Website Analytics

2006-10-09T10:59:00.000-05:00

by: Akhil Shahani

You recently revamped your firm’s website or are planning an online marketing campaign, but are not really sure what you’ll gain in return? Website analytics is a science whose aim is to answer such questions.

In this piece, we’ll take a look at the benefits of web analytics and ways to optimize its tools.

Bet you’re already thinking this is geeky stuff! But if we get rid of the jargon, website analytics simply means the study of the impact that a website has on its users. For example, what are the pages that most visitors spend time on? Which products sell best online? Is the registration process a turn-off?

But that’s not all. Web analytics software can provide a whole lot of information in fine detail, thereby bringing valuable insight to marketers looking to refine their online strategy.

Things you can do using website analytics

Understand visitor behavior: Monitor the number of visitors and where they come from, understand how they navigate your site and what keywords they like, or get a feel of whether your site is meaty enough to hold their attention. An extreme example would be a study of visitor behavior on BBCi Search Service, which found that 1 in 12 search terms were misspelled!

Study advertising effectiveness: The U.S. online advertising market is booming, and set to cross US$ 16 billion 2009. That is almost twice what it was in 2004! Sooner or later, you’ll find yourself contemplating an Internet driven campaign. Website analytics will enable you to find out how your website shows up in organic and paid searches, which banners are being clicked on the most and which affiliate sites work best. It could also help you review the performance of different keywords and judge whether you need to tweak those that haven’t delivered.

Evaluate online sales: Let’s face it! Your ultimate objective is to drive sales, and you’d rather put your money elsewhere if your online initiatives are not turning the cash registers. Your web analytics software will create reports that can tell you what kind of sales are being generated, how many customers return, who are the prospects and so on. And from that, you can calculate the ROI of your campaign.

On the flip side, website analytics may also tell you if your competitor is inflating your advertising costs by repeatedly clicking on your “pay per click” banner!

How to make the most of your web analytics reports

Choose carefully: Identifying an appropriate analytics vendor is paramount. Check their credentials – while there are lots of free sites, they might provide nothing other than visitor counts. Quality suppliers offer a basket of products – tailored to clients’ specific business needs.

Ask why: While analytics software can be a very effective tool, it’s important to know how to use the insight that is generated. That’s no different from say, a supermarket, where candy is placed near the checkout, because experience has shown that customers will buy it on impulse. Let’s assume for a moment that your analytics report says that lots of people drop out before reaching the “buy now” page. Could this be due to a technical error which makes the page unreadable on some browsers? Or is it just too cumbersome to complete a transaction?

Take a second opinion: It is a good idea to have your website analyzed by a professional (in case you don’t have the expertise) to see if the analytics reports suggest the need for a change in site layout. Often, a format that facilitates intuitive browsing will work better than a rich but intricate structure.

Know where you’re headed: Most important, clearly define your website’s objectives.

Do you want it to provide information or prompt a specific action? Are you looking to generate leads or close a sale? The answers to these questions will determine the depth of your requirements. Only when you’re sure of where you’re going, will website analytics be a useful navigator!

About The Author

Hi, I am Akhil Shahani, a serial entrepreneur who wants to help you succeed. Over the years I have run many successful businesses & made many mistakes on the way. I have created http://www.aykya.com to help you benefit from all I've learned on my journey. Please visit us & download our special 'Freebie of the Month' as a thank you for your visit.

Ok You’ve Got Yourself A New Website, Now What?

2006-10-08T19:27:00.000-05:00

by: Craig Bucknall

Many businesses spend lots of money setting up a new website what with Domain Name Registration, Website Hosting and most importantly the Website Design; some customers can be out of pocket thousands of dollars.

The role of the website designer is to construct an eye catching and appealing website backed by good programming and W3C compliance. If your designer is any good, they would hopefully construct your site pages with Search Engine Optimisation in mind even in cases where it hasn’t been explicitly applied for. In other words instead of naming your Company Information page file as ‘about.htm’ being a little more creative with SEO in mind and name it ‘business_lawyers_sydney.htm’ for a Business Law Firm in Sydney, therefore capturing keywords in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPS).

Anyway getting back to our topic, you have spent hours compiling information and images for your new site and your designer has pieced together the puzzle and you now have a brand new website online and raring to go…..now what!

Many businesses wrongly presume that once their website is online they can sit back and watch the dollars and clients roll in as they are now ‘online’. Well let me tell you it isn’t that simple (we all wish it was!), but the truth be told this world wide web of ours is truly that WORLD WIDE and with millions of websites all competing for your clients hard earned dollars you need to make sure your website is seen and visited by as many as possible.

Don’t panic, this task may be easier than it seems with only a few easy to apply changes to your current business practices you can make your site a popular spot for web surfers which will lead to future business prospects and customers and their all important dollar.

Domain Email

I am surprised by the number of businesses still using a hotmail, gmail or aol free email account for the main business email contact. You’ve paid for a new domain name and hosting for your business why not put it to good use and create a email address for that domain.

Plenty of my customers don’t want to part with their @free_email as ‘everyone knows my email address’. Well heres a tip, people are smart and if you tell them you have a new email address and only use that new email account to send emails etc, they will start using it to reply to your messages too. I’m not saying get rid of your @free_email account all together but to use your new domain email as the primary contact for all outgoing correspondence.

What’s the difference I hear you ask, well those people that don’t know about your website or maybe even your business, will have an easier time finding your site when your domain name appears after the @ symbol. You’ll be surprised the amount of times emails are received and the first thing someone wants to do is check out your site for more information, well here’s one way which will help.

Email Signatures

You know the ones, those easily programmed options in Email programs which add your name and phone number at the bottom of the page for every new, replied or forwarded email. Well how about adding your website URL Address to this signature as well, that way every email sent will be advertising your website address.

Email Blast

By now you would certainly have amassed a large contact list of customers and associates, so why not notify them of your new website and ask them to comment on its design and ease of use, you never know you may actually get some more business or sales just from this simple email.

Business Cards

You must hand out 100’s of these little cardboard cards every time you meet a new business associate or prospective client so why not add your website URL Address here as well. I can’t tell you the number of cards I have received which don’t feature the business website; it seems criminal that there is such an omission.

Signage

Be it moving or stationary, signage advertising your business is paramount to getting your name, brand or logo out into the public consciousness. So why not add your website to your current signage or even on the rear window of your car, truck or van and become a moving billboard.

Competitions

Think about running regular competitions on your website where visitors must find certain information contained ‘somewhere’ within your site. Using letter drops, print media or email blasts, ask your customers and associates to enter and forward the email onto their friends so they can enter as well and offer a prize worthy of peoples time while visiting your site.

For Example: Your site may be selling Ladies Fashions and the competition stipulates that visitors must find and name three brands of clothing available to enter the competition, thus ensuring those who visit will be aware of your product line and may even purchase someone if they like the range.

RSS Feeds

Are you prepared to write articles on your specialised service and products? Well if you answered yes then you should consider implementing an RSS Feed into your website. RSS or Really Simple Syndication allows you to publish relevant information to the WWW community. With dozens of News Aggregators around ready to pick up new feeds, your information and website URL will be published on numerous sites adding to its popularity with Search Engines and your customers.

News Updates

Websites can quickly become stale and tired when nothing changes, so along with your RSS Feeds why not establish a news information page with headlines on your home page to constantly update your customers with latest happenings.

Newsletters

You can create a simple HTML newsletter based on any Word Processing document which will look attractive to your customers and encourage them to click through to your website. You can easily paste this into an email editor and send to your customers and encourage them to forward or pass on the email to their contacts etc.

If you apply at least 1 of these rules you should be able to increase the popularity of your site almost immediately. Don’t forget that site promotion and popularity is an ongoing task to keep your website in your viewer’s consciousness, so if updating via a Newsletter works well, make a note to produce it monthly.

About The Author

Craig Bucknall is the owner and Managing Director of the Sydney based Website Design studio Bullie Graphics. See their website for more information about website design at http://www.bulliegraphics.com.au also checkout the http://www.bulliegraphics.com.au/blog website design and seo tips blog.

10 Web Site Design Tips Guaranteed To Attract Visitors And Get Them To Spend More Time On Your Site

2006-10-08T19:25:00.000-05:00

by: Anthony Hamill

Marketing through a website is different in some ways from other forms of marketing yet there are many aspects which are virtually identical.

It's different in that the technical requirements of the medium itself are different but that's where most of the differences end. The basic principles of marketing remain the same and, of course, the objective is the same – to entice people to buy your product or service.

What Every Web Site Needs To Do

When Marketing through the Web you should remember these five words: Attraction, Interest, Desire, Action and Satisfaction. Your website should be able to fulfill each of these concepts in order to not only entice visitors to your site but to keep them there and turn them into customers.

Web site design is more than simply finding a cool photo you like and a color that works with your company's logo. It also incorporates readability, functionality, and usability - all of which lead to your most desired outcome: making your website work for your business.

Burn These 10 Tips Into Your Brain

It's impossible to compile a list of 10 web site design tips without mentioning at the beginning that it's only a partial list of the things you need to do to make your online business succeed. There are literally scores of important web design considerations, and we'll talk about them later in this article but, first, we need to explore some basic principles of good design without which none of the others will matter.

1. Aesthetics-only May Not Click With Your Visitors

When people search the Internet they are looking for information, not beautiful web sites. Unfortunately, too many web designers are preoccupied with aesthetics, or "coolness". They forget that effective web site design requires that you incorporate certain fundamental elements that will make your web site work for your visitors.

So keep this fact in mind: Fancy graphics and the latest cool animations, sound, etc, most likely will annoy your visitors.

2. It's All About Readability

Make "readability" a fundamental part of your web site design. If you want a professional-looking web site that encourages visitors to read about your business, products, or services, the first thing to do is make sure visitors can, in fact, read what's on your pages easily.

Stay away from all capitals in your writing and use common fonts that are easy to read. The standard fonts that most web surfers are used to are Arial and Verdana. Don't try to be different.

3. Let Logic Prevail

Organize your content into logical sections. This takes some planning but it's key to a successful website. Make it a snap for visitors to find the information they're looking for.

4. Browsing Is Not The Same As Reading

Incorporate headlines into your web site design. Web users will browse more often than read. Because of this it's important to use headings and subheadings to give visitors a quick idea of what your page has to offer.

Someone in a hurry should be able to scan your headings and subheadings to quickly understand what products, services, benefits, or other information they will find on the page. Put your most important phrases in bold letters, too.

5. Use Bullets To Hit The Mark

Grab your visitors' attention by including:Bold Words

Bullet Points

Section Titles and

Short Paragraphs

The visual experience on a web site is quite different than on a printed page.

6. Eliminate Background Noise

Never, repeat, never use patterned or distracting background images as part of your web site design. Your content will be "lost" in the noise.

7. Easy on the Eyes

Don't use bright text with bright background colors. Make reading easy on your visitors' eyes. Basic text colors (read "black") and a white background work best with the many different ways your pages will look on different monitors and with different browsers.

8. Consider Color-blind Visitors

Approximately one in ten people (95 percent are men) have some form of color-vision impairment. Effective web site design, therefore, considers color-blind visitors. Certain combinations of colors, usually shades of red and green, may be invisible to some of your most potentially valuable customers.

9. "No Graphics" Mode

Always bear in mind that some of your visitors may have "graphics" turned off (yes, they can do that to your beautiful web site design). Therefore, always use ALT tags to label graphics with descriptive text.

10. Use An Appropriate Font Size

Find a happy medium between too big and too small. Typically 10-12 pt fonts work the best.

What Else Do I Need To Consider?

These 10 web site design tips are implemented in all effective web sites but they are by no means the only ones you need to consider. At Web-Host-Watch we've compiled a list of 100 web site design tips that go well beyond the basics and provide insight into the design secrets used by the pros who make their livings from web marketing.

We provide this comprehensive list of web design tips for free to all visitors of Web-Host-Watch.Com because everyone benefits from web sites that work!

About The Author

Anthony Hamill is the founder of http://Web-Host-Watch.Com which helps online business owners master the basics of web hosting. Get all the facts you need to find affordable web hosting plans including tutorials, tips on avoiding common mistakes, a glossary of web hosting terms, and a web hosting review that profiles the web hosts who provide the best overall value in each hosting category.

Don't Go Without Telling Me Why!

2006-10-08T19:24:00.000-05:00

by: John Taylor
Are you running a website and just not getting the sales you were hoping when you first put it up? Are you wondering why people are not buying? Are you wondering what you can do to improve your site and prompt people to start buying your products? Are you starting to think that maybe you are not offering the right products or enough products? If any of these questions apply to you, you are reading the right article. This article will tell you how you can find out the answers to these questions.

The first thing you need to do is to make sure that you have a great website and a reliable host. It is important that when you are creating your website and pricing your products that you keep your customers in mind. There are many reasons a customer may not be purchasing from you at that very moment. For instance, they may find the price you are currently charging is too high. They may also be simply doing some comparison shopping before making a final decision, if you have great service, products, and prices they will likely return to you. They may have questions that your sales copy doesn't address.

You also need to keep your websites updated and maintained regularly. Make sure you never have any broken links or images; this can seriously hurt your credibility in visitor’s eyes. You should never have any out dated offers or special on your page either. Make sure that all offers are kept current and fresh, right along with your website. Remember your whole goal is to get visitors and to turn them into paying customers.

Now, if you do all that regularly great. However, if you do that and you still are not producing sales you will need to implement another strategy. This strategy means asking your visitors outright why they are not buying. That is right; you can implement this technique into your website and take the guessing out of trying to figure out why people are not buying and what you can do to change your website or products to cater to your traffic.

You are probably asking, How can I possibly ask my visitors why they are not buying? No, you cannot physically contact them or speak to them to ask the questions, not that you would feel comfortable in doing that anyways. No the key here is make use of an exit survey. This is an excellent technique many websites are using, to improve their services, websites, or find out exactly what their visitors are looking for.

The survey is perfect, because if a visitor leaves without making a purchase, upon exit they will be prompted with a survey that asks them specific questions. You have the ability to define the questions and ask your visitors exactly what you want to know. You can ask questions about specific products; after all, it may generate interest. You can also ask the visitors what specific areas of the website appealed to them. This will give you a good idea of what areas of your website appeals to other people.

About The Author

John Taylor Is A Testing & Tracking Junkie! He Will Take You By The Hand And Show You The Exact Results Of All The Internet Marketing Strategies And Tactics He Tests And Uses Every Single Month. Click Here Right Now To Find Out More: http://www.MarketingConfidential.com

Website Design For A Company

2006-10-08T19:23:00.001-05:00

by: Himanshu Sareen

The Internet presents business with an enormous opportunity. Millions of people are already connected and the number is growing every second …

Any company’s objective should be to enable its customer's profitability through building web solutions that work for them. To fully exploit the capabilities of the Internet you need a great deal of imagination and entrepreneurial spirit. Extensive web design and development skills, expertise and experience is needed to establish your Internet Presence.

Whether you are developing a website for the first time, or an existing one, it is imperative to plan. Planning at the early stage can save time, money and stress! a crucial blend of expertise including creative conception, brand sensitivity, and technical and interactive architecture skill and design execution takes your website to hights.

One must be able to deliver a site that will enable you to provide a quality service to your customers. In todays website building custom solutions that run on your very own business logic is a must. Reason being that ‘Customer Is The King’ and will always be a king. The designing company draws on the latest web technology and knowledge to develop web-based solutions to overcome the company’s business challenges.

To reach out to the global market, to increase your business' exposure and gain new customers, it is important to utilize professional eCommerce Packages. If you opt for professional and cost-effective eCommerce Solutions and Online Payment Solutions, your success is virtually ensured.

About The Author
Himanshu Sareen
Webmaster
http://www.Developmentindia.com

Professional Web Development

2006-10-08T19:21:00.000-05:00

by: John Argy

As every Internet user knows, web site traffic is a primary concern. Anyone with their own web site would like to increase traffic, get more visitors, and increase their ad revenue. But, as the field of web design grows more and more complex, web development only gets more complicated. Web design is now so complicated that simply building a web page can take hours of study and work.

Because good web design is so important to page views, and yet so hard to achieve, some may consider using professional web development to design their web pages. Getting outside help may sound difficult and even expensive, but professional web development doesn’t have to cost you a thing.

Anyone can still have great web design on their site, using professional web development. The basic elements of a good web page are text, graphics, and links – all things that search engines and your human visitors are going to be looking for and at. If you know where to look, it’s easy to find professional web development for your site.

There are many different sites out there that offer free web content or very cheap web content. Content is a very important aspect of professional web development, as content is what search engines look at first. Without enough content, your site will not get a high ranking with the search engine – which translates directly into fewer visitors. Finding great content is key to professional web development.

By using the search engines yourself, you can find all sorts of graphics for your web site. You can always find free professional photos, backgrounds, font styles, buttons, guestbook, and any other element of your site that you need for free on the Internet. It may take some searching to find exactly what you want, but you can find all that you need with free sites. Professional web development is fabulous, but more so when it’s free.

Many professional web development software and web sites are out there nowadays, because the Internet is so hugely popular and web sites so extremely important. By making use of these sites, you can get the professional, high-quality sort of web design that you want and need. Professional web development will bring you increased traffic, repeat visitors, and a high ranking with the search engine – which is exactly what you need to increase revenue and business for yourself. The best part is, professional web development isn’t expensive – though you may have to devote some of your valuable time. In the end, it’s worth it. Professional web development makes you and your site look better, which is a good reflection on your business. In today’s one-click world, you have to do something to stay ahead of the competition.

About The Author

John Argy has been involved with web site development, promotion, maintenance and hosting for more than 12 years http://www.cyberdias.com/.

If You Want To Go Broke As A Web-Developer Let Me Tell You How….

2006-10-08T19:20:00.001-05:00

by: Serena Murphy

If you want to go broke as a web-developer let me tell you how….

Early on in my web development career I tried to re-invent the wheel… I set up everything from scratch including my customers! I wasted about 5 months and about $20,000.00 on collecting content from them. I heard all the excuses……I will have the content to you by Monday. When Monday would roll around I would hear…my kids had soccer games all weekend and I just couldn’t get to it….I promise I will have my logo’s and word docs to you on Friday.. When Friday came around and I would call, .Oh…It has been such a busy week…I am so over worked right now I promise I will get it to you next week sometime!

I tried to stay faithful to get that original content and graphics from them. Till I was almost short on making my payroll! Then it all came to a complete stop! I decided to hire and farm out the content. Also I implemented a content management system! Genius….and the bank roll came back.

If you are in the web development game let me help you out here….Save your self some time and money…Farm out the content to a content writer for a couple of hundred bucks…It will save you about $2000 in time and expenses. Forget about the emails and the follow up calls and gas over to your clients and the disappointment I guarantee you will always get when it comes to content. Customers don’t have time! When they originally are trying to save costs on web-development and “think” they can cut corners. The only thing that they cut is your profit margin in half! ©

Sept 21, 2006

Serena Murphy

http://www.webcarrots.com

serena@webcarrots.com

Las Vegas, Nevada

1-866-840-5505

About The Author

Serena Murphy is owner and operator of http://Webcarrots.com a web development company that specialized in dynamic web development and online marketing of websites in Las Vegas, Nevada

Professional Web Design

2006-10-08T19:18:00.000-05:00

by: Bradley Glen Smith

Professional web design is becoming more important in today's ever-chaging marketplace. Whether you are trying to establish yourself as an online presence or acquire more clientele, professional web design has become crucial. What is it that distinguishes you from your competitor? How often do you find yourself wishing you had an online presence? Are you an entrepreneur? Would your business be better served by professional web design?

So, how do you think your business could be better served by professional web design? Could it be one of the following reasons:

* Flash Environment--Interactive WebPages

* PHP Environment--Dynamic WebPages

* HTML Environment--Static WebPages

* Search Engine Optimization

* E-Commerce Development

* Sales Page

* Video Tutorials

* Product Launch

* Affiliate Program

* Lead Capture--Acquiring New Clientele

* Recreating a Professional Look

* Creating A Link Directory

eYouCanDoIt, Inc. realizes the importance of professional web development and what it means to your business in terms of deadlines. That is why we strive to complete your professional website in two weeks. After gathering the necessary information to complete your website, we give ourselves a deadline of two weeks. This helps us ensure that your professionally-designed website is completed in a timely manner.

Professional web design and focus on your website is important to us. For that reason, we limit ourselves to five projects every two weeks. After your website is completed, your professional web design comes with one full year of support on operating and adjusting your website. For more details, visit the following link: http://www.eyoucandoit.com

About The Author

Bradley G. Smith is a freelance Professional Web Designer. He designs web sites for entrepreneurs and small businesses. View his portfolio at the following link: http://www.eyoucandoit.com

2006-10-08T19:14:00.000-05:00

The Top 3 Easy Search Engine Optimization Secret Tips You Can Implement Today That Most People Overlook

by: Kevin Smith

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the technical term for the process of improving your website visibility in the natural listing results in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN etc…. What is meant by the natural listing is the results for example in Google that are in the middle of the page, not the sponsored listings on the right side.

Ranking high in any search engine is the goal of all website owners. In order to achieve that, the website needs to look professional, have appropriate content and size and easy to navigate. To achieve a high ranking status is not about having a website that has flashing graphics and visually appealing sections. The search engines do not place as high a priority on that as they do content-rich, relevant data to index. The website will climb the search engine results pages as time, content and relevancy increase.

Online search engines are one of the best ways to attract the targeted traffic you seek to sell your product or services. The ultimate goal in a high ranking website is an increased number of people finding your website and increased sales and lead generation. You may loose about 95% of your targeted visitors if your site does not appear somewhere in the first three pages of the results. Most buyers who search and shop via the Internet do not go beyond three pages to find the product or service in which they are looking.

There are many search engines available today but none are larger or more pertinent to your website success than the “Big 3”. They are Google (commands at least 50% of the market), Yahoo and MSN. It is recommended to start with Google to get high and relevant rankings. The only way you are going to achieve this is to get into the search engine indexes. If this is addressed properly, you could see your first listing anytime from 2 to 4 months for some pages and as long as 2 years for certain keyword phrases. You have to keep in mind that overnight success will not be realized. This is a work in progress with a focus on the long-term result.

To simplify this process and make it a little more practical, below are three main secret tips that most people overlook or even don’t think about when starting the process of optimizing their sites. You can start implementing these tips today.

Secret Tip #1 – Be knowledgeable of basic search engine results/action facts:

As stated before, search engine optimization is the process of improving your website visibility in the natural search results. Your goal is to have your web pages appear at the top of the search engines for target keyword requests. Ultimately, you want your website listed in the top natural search results because 4 out of 5 total clicks visit the natural search results as opposed to only 50% of search engine users visit the sponsored (paid) ads. Of those, only 20% of those actually click.

Secret Tip #2 – Know your competition

No matter what type of business you are in, you are likely to have some sort of competition. It is beneficial to be aware of what they are doing and what edge they may or may not have over you. Most people miss this most important step. You have to gauge your success against those that are in the same market.

Here is a little tool to help in your research of the competition:

Yahoo offers one of the most helpful tools for evaluating the competition. Yahoo has developed the View Bids Tool(http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/), which allows you to see the bid (price per click), and the position for all of the advertisers for a keyword. Using this tool will also allow you to see who your competition is for the specific keywords you use.

The Google AdWords Keyword Tool is very useful for evaluating the competition on Google. The tool can be found at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordTool.

Secret Tip #3 – Educate yourself to the search engines

Search engines have webmaster guidelines available for you to become familiar with. It is highly recommend you read these webmaster guidelines, especially those of Google, Yahoo and MSN. As you read through them, you will find them to be quite helpful.

Optimizing your site to be exposed in the natural listings should be your ultimate goal. It means more visitors and potential customers. These three secret tips are awesome tools to have in your toolbox. If you start implementing them today, you will position yourself to be well ahead of the curve to having your site well placed in the search engine results. Just remember, it’s not going to happen overnight but doing your due diligence with SEO can pay big dividends down the road.

About The Author
Kevin Smith has been helping people succeed online for over six years and has dedicated his life to Internet Marketing. Visit his website and learn:
"How You Can Be Mentored By A 'Guru' Who Did $3,224,842.32 Online in 27 Months!"
Click Details FREE==> http://www.EZWealthStrategy.com
(Article available for reprint)

4 Steps Away From Your Own Website

2006-10-08T19:12:00.000-05:00

by: Josh Green

In the last decade, the Internet has become one of the most important and effective platforms in which to promote yourself and your products. But if you’re not an experienced webmaster, getting such a project underway can seem a bit overwhelming. However, this article will show you how such a project can become both a fun and an enriching experience for anybody who wants to create his or hers own website. You will learn how to built and maintain a practical and efficient website for all your visitors to enjoy.

The Plan:

The first and undoubtedly most important, but often forgotten, step is drawing up a plan. In this stage of the process, it is the time to lay out the details of your website project. Of course your website is a work in progress, and you will most likely change many things along the way, but if you do not have a clear idea of the direction you want your project to go in, you may find yourself overwhelmed by the magnitude of such an ambitious project and give it up all together. Here are a few things I strongly suggest you do not overlook when planning for you Internet project:

Give yourself a deadline:

Of course this is not set in stone and there are no consequences for not finishing in time. But it is a good idea to set deadlines in order to maintain some sort of order in your project.

Make a list of people who can help:

We all have that friend or relative who is good with computers or even an old college buddy who has a knack for writing articles. You can ask them if they can help you in any of the aspects of your project.

Make a budget:

How much are you I willing to invest is an important question you must ask yourself at this stage. You will have to do a bit of research at this point. Again, none of the decisions you take on are set in stone, but having a good idea of how much designing your website, registering you domain name or hosting you website will cost is an important part of the first step.

Define your website:

A few questions you should ask yourself at this point are what will the overall theme of the website be and who is your intended public. A good idea for a first website would be to build it around a passion of yours.

Plan the overall look of your website:

Without getting into specific detail, such as logos, pictures or color scheme, it is a good idea at this stage to have a clear idea of what you want your website to look like. Depending on the overall theme and nature of you website, you will have to decide on the look you will want to achieve. For example, a site talking about your favorite sport or television series will not have the same look as a website promoting business related books.

Decide how much time you want to put in:

Finally, in this step you will have to take some time and think about how much of the work you would like to do yourself and how much of it is going to be done by professionals. There are certain aspects of a website that are more time consuming than others, so you will want to spend your time on the things you deem most important.

If you’re having problems with this stage, don’t get discouraged. Like I said earlier, it is without a doubt the most difficult stage in the process. While you can have professional do things for you in subsequent stages, deciding the overall look and theme of your website is a decision you have to take all on your own.

The content:

The next step in creating a popular website your visitors will consistently come back to is to offer them the information they need through useful and up-to-date content. If you have already defined a clear picture of what your website is about in the first step of the process, you can now easily understand what your potential visitors are looking for. You should also decide at this point, in what way you would like communicate this information. Articles and tutorials are a great way of offering free and compelling information to your visitors.

There are numerous website that offer articles you could use on your website. You can browse through an extensive collection of articles and add them to your website. As long as you follow the guidelines set by the website and the respective authors, you may use these articles on your site as a way to offer compelling content for you readers. There are several of these article directory websites out, such as goarticles.com, easyarticles.com and articledashboard.com just to name a few. It may also be a good idea to write your own articles. This isn’t as difficult as it may seem, especially if your site’s theme is based on a subject you’re particularly passionate about. You may even share your articles on these article directory sites. In return, your article may be published on other websites with an active hyperlink to yours.

You may also have a product to sell or to promote. Even though this part of your website is indented to get you a profit, this does not mean you can’t offer any relevant free information to your user. In fact, offering the reader a good and honest review of both the pros and cons of purchasing such a product can be a great way of concluding sales.

Another great way of helping your visitors in their search for answers is by redirecting them to other websites that offer complementary information. You should however note that asking for permission to link to these websites is highly recommended and is the ethical and acceptable way of doing things.

The Design:

Graphic design:

As important as the content is in getting your readers to come back to your site, the graphics and overall appearance of the website is just as important in creating a great first impression. Everything, from the color scheme, the graphics used, such as your logo, to your picture selection all work together toward achieving the look you ultimately want your website to have. The important thing is not to get carried away with the graphics on your website. If you take a look at any corporate website on the Internet, you will notice they have a nice clean look, relying on nicely positioned photos and carefully selected graphics. You should also try to remain fairly consistent in your overall layout. Essentially, every page on you website should look the same. This will maximize your sites usability, allowing visitors to navigate with ease throughout your website.

One option can be to use templates that can be either found for free on the net, or that come with software you may purchase. It should be noted that this will require some form of coding skill to add the content you need for your website. You must also realize that finding a template that perfectly matches your needs may be hard to find, but remains a viable solution for your first website. Now for those of us who want to create a customized website that will suit our requirements, hiring a professional designer is another possibility. Of course, this can cost a considerable amount of money in the long run, especially if you plan on creating more than one website. Therefore, learning how to create simple graphics for your website is a great way of saving money that could eventually be spent more wisely on a good hosting company for example.

Mastering a photo editing program such as Photoshop may take several years, but creating simple graphics such as a logo, a banner or a content box is possible with a little help and practice. A great way of learning to design graphics for websites is with the help of tutorials. You can find loads of free tutorials on sites like tutorialoutpoust.com, pixel2life.com, good-tutrorials.com and many more. With a step by step visual approach, you’ll be creating beautiful graphics in no time.

Coding:

With your content and graphics now ready, you can now move on to the next step of creating the actual website. You must code everything into a language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language) that Internet browsers can recognize. Now any experienced programmer can manually code HTML using a text editor such as Notepad. You may try your hand at manually coding a website if you’re up for a challenge. You may be able to code a simple website using free online courses such as the ones we find at w3schools.com.

Of course, these days they’re exists a multitude of software such as Dreamweaver that can help you program entire websites quicker and more efficiently. Like Photoshop, it may take a while before you get the hang of this program, but you may easily create a simple and appealing website that fits your immediate needs with the help of free online tutorials on websites such as pixel2life.com and many more.

Another option would be to have a professional programmer create a website to your specifications, but again this can be quite costly in the long run. It all depends on your budget and the nature of your intended website. If it’s a commercial website, you may feel that investing in a designer and programmer may be worth it because there is a possibility you may make the money back fairly quickly.

Get up and running:

At this stage of the process, you are just one step away of realizing your dream of having our very own website. Once your website is ready, it is time to get your pet project out there to the World Wide Web, for the whole world to see.

Web Hosting:

This is the time for you to choose where you are going to put your site. There are multitudes of hosting services available for you to choose from, but it is important to do so according to your requirements. There are many places on the web where you can host your website for free. Of course, there will be some conditions imposed on you in return, such as adding an advertising banner.

If you have an Internet connection, your Internet Service Provider will most likely have a space where you could place your website for free. Although limited in space, this can be a viable second option for your very first personal website. You could also use this space to test out your website. If you plan on operating a commercial and professional looking website, you will have to purchase space from a hosting service. Depending on your needs, there are an endless amount of hosting packages that will be offered to you. The size of your website and the amount of visitors you expect are some of the factors you must consider before signing-up with any hosting service. I recommend using Godaddy.com’s hosting service. They offer several packages to choose from, all of which are relatively cheap and reliable.

Domain Name:

This is also the stage where you must register a domain name. Your domain name will be unique name (address) that will best represent your website. A good tip is to keep the name relatively short, so that your viewers will remember it the name next time they want to visit your website. For personal websites, a good idea would be to use your name. As for business related websites, this stage may be a bit trickier because a lot of the best domain names have already been taken. This is where your creativity comes into play. Once you’ve done your research and have come up with a good name, I once again recommend visiting Godaddy.com and learn more about their offers.

Maintaining you website:

After all that hard work, you finally have your website up and running. At this point in the project, you can take a breather and be proud of what you have accomplished, but you also have to keep in mind that it is crucial to your website’s success that you maintain your website. In fact, maintaining your website is perhaps the most important aspects of running a website. Some of the steps you will have to take are: making sure your links remain functional and keeping your content up-to-date. Aside from the fact that frequently updating your website’s content will help you with your ranking in search engines; it will also benefit the lifeblood of your website, your users. Offering useful and up-to-date information to your visitors will inevitably keep them coming back for more.

About The Author

Josh Green is a senior editor for http://associateinsider.com. Visit http://associateinsider.com/buildwebsite.html today for this and many more informative articles, stunning web design tutorials and reviews of the best tools available.

Keyword Selection and Website Optimization

2006-10-08T19:10:00.000-05:00

by: Chris Haney

Marketing and optimizing a website for search engines is a broad topic. There are many factors to consider when heading out with the goal of improving your website’s visibility and ranking within various search engines. In part one I will discuss the highly requested topic of website keywords. In follow-up articles I will cover additional topics such as page ranking, pay-per-click advertising campaigns, the marketing techniques to avoid, and the latest analysis technologies including eye tracking software.

Choosing the right keywords for a website is an important and informative research task. In the process of improving your website you’ll learn a lot about your industry and your competitors.

Keywords are one the main factors that come into play in the algorithms used by major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Windows Live Search. If a web surfer is looking for home decorating tips and types ‘home decorating’ into a search engine, it will search its database for websites that contain that phrase and those individual words.

Selecting the correct keywords

If you are an expert in your field, you know what your customers are looking for. Specifically, you know many of the words and phrases your customers would use to describe your products and services. Start with what you know.

Write out a list of phrases and words that describe your business. If you have a home decorating business you may think of words like ‘interior design’ and ‘furnishings’. Sort your list so that the most common phrases are on the top of your list.

You will now want to cross-reference the list of keywords that you have compiled with other lists generated for your industry. This will bring to mind other keywords that you may not have thought of. I recommend using a popular web-based keyword research tool named Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com). Wordtracker helps identify additional keywords and phrases and offers a free trial of their service. It provides only a limited number of related words, but is still a great starting point. Searching for related keywords for ‘home decorating’ with Wordtracker produces a list of keywords like 'home', 'decor', 'decorating', 'home decor', 'furniture', 'design', 'interior', 'interior decorating', 'art', 'wall', and 'fabric'.

Other keyword tools, which produce similar results, are also available. These include, among others, the web-based tools provided by Yahoo (Overture) (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/), and Google (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal).

After compiling and merging the various lists of keywords, you’ll be ready to move on to the next step.

Using the correct keywords on your website

Now that you have a clear picture of which keywords web surfers may type into their search engine to find your business, you need to be sure your website contains these important keywords.

A strategy is required when updating your website to include the keywords in your list. Starting at the top of your list, quickly review the keywords. Think about which keywords would naturally be present on your website and which keywords you probably wouldn’t use. Using the first list of keywords, you may now start reviewing the different sections of your website.

Your selected keywords should be placed in various areas of your site with the proper frequency. Your website content should focus on making sense to your visitors, not fed with keywords that will hopefully improve your search positioning. Search engine algorithms can detect the over use of keywords, which can negatively affect your positioning. Let’s now look at different areas of your website.

Website Title

Every website has a title. This is not a website logo or a bold heading found on the top section of a website. The website title is displayed in the web browser’s title bar. This is the top most area of the window located to the far left of the window’s minimize, maximize, and close buttons. The website title is also the text that is displayed in search engine search results, which is often in a larger font and underlined. The website title is the first thing that a web surfer sees when performing a search. Web surfers quickly scan through search result website titles to evaluate which website will meet their needs. This is your first opportunity to grab their attention.

A website title should contain as many of your keywords as possible, while maintaining easy readability. This will do two things for you. First, the search engine will find your website in its database and display your website in their results. Second, the website title will catch the surfer’s interest as they see their search criteria matching your website title. Over-stuffing the title with keywords makes the title difficult to read and may be seen as abuse by search engines. The website title is updated by changing the text located between the opening and closing title tags, in the header of the HTML code (Page Title). The title length should be kept to handful of words. The website description allows more space for describing your products and services.

Website Description

As with the website title, the website description should also contain a variety of keywords. Unlike the website title, the website description is not visible on any part of the website itself. The description is the summary information you see in search engines results, displayed below the website title. The website description gives you a little more space to describe your website and your products and services. Again, be sure that your description is easily readable for your visitors, in order to attract them to click your site title. The website description can be updated by changing the text in the description meta tag, in the header of the HTML code ().

Website Keywords

Along with the title and description entries in the HTML code, there is also an area to define a set of keywords that you’d like to associate to the page. This is called the keyword meta tag. Keywords are entered as a comma separated list, as follows (). The industry consensus is that the keyword meta tag is currently of little or no use with today’s major search engines. However, search engines continue to recommend their usage.

Website Content

This brings us to the meat of our website, so to speak. Our chosen keywords should be used throughout the website content where it makes sense. Again, over-stuffing page content with keywords so that the message is unnatural can be detected by search engines. A good practice is to use the keywords to make the page content more descriptive. For example, a pet store may sell a variety of pet foods. This can be written in a descriptive manner, such as, ‘dog food and cat food’, instead of using ‘dog and cat food’. In this example the keyword ‘food’ is used twice.

Headings and Hyperlinks

Special attention should be given to the usage of heading (This is a Heading) tags and anchor tags (click here). Keyword usage in page heading is more valuable than keywords used in a paragraph of text. The same can be said with anchor tags (a.k.a. hyperlinks). Using keywords as the clickable text of a hyperlink is very valuable.

Keyword Density

Keyword density refers to the percentage of occurrences of your keywords compared to the other text on the web page. Keyword density tools such as Webconfs.com’s Keyword Density Checker (http://webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php) provides a visualization of the main theme or message on a chosen page. This tool counts the number of times each word is repeated on the page, which is a good test of how you’ve done at inserting keywords to optimize the content. It is also a good representation of how search engines will see your page. ‘More is better’ is not the most effective keyword density goal. Although the optimum keyword density is much debated, having some balance is definitely in order. A density below 1% makes it difficult for a search engine to understand your main message, where a density over 5% will start to make the content appear unnatural. At this stage in website optimization, the page content can be continually edited while the keyword density is being re-checked. Continue this process until your keywords are among the words with the highest density.

Conclusion

Choosing the correct keywords for your website is a must. Website keyword optimization is not rocket science, but it must be implemented carefully. By using the correct keywords, not only will your site be positioned well in search results, but it will draw visitors to your website.

About The Author

Chris Haney is the founder of The Coding Studio (http://www.TheCodingStudio.com), a custom web site development company serving businesses in Calgary, Alberta, specializing in dynamic, data-driven web sites, ecommerce solutions, web-based applications, and search engine optimization.

Take Advantage of Cheap Web Hosting without Sacrificing Quality Service

2006-10-08T19:07:00.000-05:00

by: Chris Robertson

You've probably read the ads promising very cheap web hosting. They promise web page hosting at dirt cheap prices, but are you really getting a bargain at these low hosting prices? Let's find out. Here are some great tips on finding low cost web hosting without sacrificing quality service.

Avoid the Freebies

Websites that offer free web site hosting usually aren't really free when you consider the benefits you must give up. Most free web site hosting offers give you free space on another company's website, but you are not getting actual domain hosting. You're getting one or a few of your web pages displayed on someone else's domain. Therefore, you can never fully promote your website or help it to reach its full potential. If the company is shut down tomorrow, your site will shut down as well.

Another disadvantage of free web page hosting is you will probably have advertisements on your web pages. At the very least, you'll have an ad for the company that is providing the hosting space. This can cause your visitors to click out of your website before buying your products.

Even some cheap web hosting services offer similar services as the free hosts. The only difference is they charge you for poor hosting service!

Compare Virtual Host Packages

When shopping for cheap web hosting, be sure to compare web site hosting packages - not only prices. Some key features to look for are the amount of web space you're getting for the money. You might not need much web hosting space at the start, but as you expand, the website will grow much larger. So, you'll most likely have to purchase more web hosting space if you don't purchase enough at the start. In comparing low cost web hosting packages, you might be surprised at the differences in amount of web space you get when paying only a dollar or two more.

Other things to look for when comparing cheap web hosting packages include customer and technical support availability, multiple email accounts and auto responders, detailed control panel such as cPanel or a similar program, password protected directories, etc. If you need special web design integration with PHP, MySQL and databases, be sure the virtual host offers these features. Also, if you plan to resell hosting to your customers, be sure the virtual host offers reseller hosting as well.

Decide on Web Design First

Before choosing a cheap web hosting package, decide on how you will design your website. What programming language will you use in your web design? Will you need to integrate a shopping cart and/or customer database? How will you handle your customer emails? All these questions should be considered before choosing a cheap web hosting package.

Take some time to find the web site hosting service that will meet your needs, both today and in the future. Keep in mind that you will probably use your web host's services for many years to come. Taking time now to find the best possible cheap web hosting with all the features you need will save you from many headaches in the future.

About The Author

Chris Robertson is a published author of Majon International. Majon International is one of the worlds MOST popular internet marketing and internet advertising companies on the web. Visit their main business resource web site at: http://www.majon.com

To learn more about subjects like cheap web hosting please visit the web site at: http://www.avahost.net

For more information and informative related articles and links about this subject matter and content, please visit Majon's Internet directory: http://www.majon.com/directory/Internet

Website Design

2006-10-08T19:04:00.000-05:00

by: Chris Chenoweth

Trying to promote a badly built website is a pointless exercise in frustration. In order for you to be successful at promoting your website, you must have a site that is clear, clean and full of original, interesting content. You can spend a fortune on marketing and generate hordes of traffic, but no one will buy your products if your website does not inspire confidence and trust.

Read the following tips for building a site that will draw visitors and make sales. Remember, your website represents you and your product. How do you want to be seen?

GOOD CONTENT IS ESSENTIAL:

Before you begin to build your website, make sure you have chosen a topic that you are familiar with and have an interest in. If you choose something that holds no interest for you, your visitors will be able to see that and judge your site to be worthless.

Building a website around topics that you are not familiar with will be a constant aggravation for you to update. Make sure, however, you make your website interesting to other people. Explore what other people are interested in. If you can find something that matches your interests, try building a website around that topic.

Once you have decided on the topic of your website, it’s time to start writing. Always use a spell checker! No matter how brilliant a writer you are, you will still make typos. You want to make it look professional and easy to read. The text should flow naturally and be divided into easily read paragraphs.

Your visitors want good quality content and they want a lot of it. Fill your site with articles (including other people’s articles as long as they fit your site’s theme), tips, and details of all the products and services on your site. Remember, the key to building a good website is content, content, content.

DESIGN AND LAYOUT:

Your first objective is to make sure your visitors can easily navigate your website and quickly access your content. Use a simple, no fuss style and layout with easy to find, well-marked links. If possible, don’t make them use more than one click to move from one page to another.

Sites that are full of graphics and are complicated to maneuver around do not work. Keep it simple. By keeping your graphics to a minimum, your site will load much quicker. If it takes too long for the pages to load, your visitors may not wait. We have all seen websites that are so full of blinking banner ads and other graphics that they look cheap and unappealing.

META TAGS:

Learn about META tags and add them to all of your pages. Meta tags are little lines of code that are placed between the HEAD and the /HEAD tags in your site's HTML code. Unlike normal HTML tags, meta tags do not affect how the page is displayed.

Instead, they provide information such as who created the page, how often it is updated, what the page is about, and which keywords represent the content of the page. Many search engines use this information when building their index. These tags are not displayed to humans visiting your site, but they are used to influence the way your website appears in the search results.

THE DESCRIPTION TAG: META name="description" content="A search engine displays the content of this tag below the title of your website when it shows up in the results."

The contents of this tag are extremely important. When someone does a search on a search engine and your listing comes up, the description is displayed right below your title.

Since your goal is to encourage people to click on your link, make sure your description will grab their attention and make them want to know more. If no description tag is found, the search engine endeavors to create its own description and often fails to describe your page properly.

Create description meta tags that are short but informative. Why should they be short?

The search engine only displays a small part of the description in the results list. If the tag contains too many words, the extra words are cut off. You want to try to avoid that. Try to place the relevant information near the beginning of the description.

THE KEYWORDS TAG: META name="keywords" content="hot dogs information recipes"

The keywords tag contains words and phrases relevant to the website. Commas, spaces or both can separate the words. This tag does not appear to the visitors at your site, nor do the search engines display it in their results. However, many search engines read the keywords tag and give a small increase to the ranking for the words that are mentioned in it.

You should only include words and/or phrases that are relevant to your page and you should never use a word more than three times. Try to keep the length to around ten words.

REVIEW YOUR SITE:

Once your website is finished, make sure you go over it with a fine-toothed comb and correct any typos, errors, or broken links. Nothing is more frustrating than clicking on a link and the link is broken. Visitors to your site will assume that you do not care enough to keep your site working properly and, therefore, will leave.

You need to constantly keep an eye on your website, particularly the links, especially when you make changes that require you to change filenames. A good method for checking broken links is to use an automatic link checker. There are several free programs that do this.

Make sure your main page contains your contact information. Always list your name, your email address, and any other pertinent information. When visitors see that you are available to contact, they will be much more likely to trust you and click on your links!

About The Author

Chris Chenoweth writes articles pertaining to health and nutrition, budgeting, and online business. If you would like information regarding techniques that will promote your new website and deliver an unstoppable flood of traffic and sales, read about BUTTERFLY MARKETING! http://www.ezniche.com/data/article.php?l=283