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10 Web Site Design Tips Guaranteed To Attract Visitors And Get Them To Spend More Time On Your Site
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!
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.
A Custom Google Search on your own Site is a Powerful Tool
by: John V. W. Howe As your website grows you need a tool to make it easier for your readers to search for information on the site.
A great solution for installing a search function on your site is available through Google. Google offers the ability to download a Google search box to your website to search the contents of the site. The results will be presented in the same format as the Google search engine results page. Google offers two options for the search function.
If you go to Google Free at http://www.google.com/services/free.html you can register to get the HTML code that will put the Google search on your site. This requires that you fill in information that is requested and the site will be customized for you. You can then preview the results, and if it is what you want, you copy the HTML code that Google gives to you and paste it into your web page where you want the search box to appear. It is fairly easy to do.
If you have a logo, you can insert it in the input information and the logo will appear on the search engine results pages. Click the following link to see the Boomer eZine example http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Boomer_eZine_Search.htm. Once the search page loads, enter SBI in the search box and search. The results will be all of the times SBI appears on the Boomer eZine site. Notice the Boomer logo on the customized search engine results page.
The look of this results page is attractive, but you have no control over the Adwords adds that are placed on the right side of the page with the results of the search. Ads for your competitor will appear on the results page and this may be unacceptable to you. The other option is to use Google Adsense for Search. This allows you to create a customized Google search for your website. This option has filters that you can set to exclude certain websites from being included in the Adsense ads on your site. The other benefit is if someone clicks on an Adsense ad, and purchases an item, you get a fee for the transaction.
If you want to sign up for Google Adsense, go to https://www.google.com/adsense. Click the “Click here to apply button” When you log on the Google Adsense site, you can choose to use Google Web search or Google Web search + Site Search. Select the Google Web search + Site Search.
On the page where you specify the options for the search function, enter the URL for your site and the other required information. You will be given the chance to review what it will look like and you can change parameters until you are satisfied. At the bottom of the page, there are three options for how the search results are displayed. • Open results on Google in the same window • Open results on Google in a new window • Open results within your own site
The last option is probably the best for you. This will place the search results on a page in your site with your own header and footer. It holds the reader on your site. Option one keeps them on your site, but they do not get that impression since all they see is a Google page. Option two opens a new window and sends them to Google. You might lose them at that point. Option three requires that you specify a web page for the search results, but that is easy if you specify the same page the search box is on. If you put the search input box and the search results below the search box, your page will function like Google.
On the next Adsense page you specify the color scheme for your ads, the country for the search, if you want to use Safe Search (keeps porn from coming up on the web search), and if you want to use a tracking channel. I recommend that you use channels for each different use of Adsense so you can see where your revenue is coming from.
On the next Adsense page, you will get two sets of HTML code. One set goes on the page at the location where you want the search box. The other code goes on the location on the page where the search results will be placed. Copy the HTML from the Google site and paste it into the proper location on your web page. View your page and see how it looks. The search box may be left justified and you may want it in the center of the page. If so, use the HTML center tags to center the search box and the frame on the page. ( Center tags are and the closing center tag is . After you have pasted the code into your page, insert the center tags just before and just after the beginning and ending Google comments.
The code for the search results location begins and ends with and ends with . Put the center tags before and after these comments. Upload your page to your site and put it to work for you. To see an example of the final results for a Google Adsense for search installation, go to the Boomer eZine website (see link below) and click Site Search on the navigation bar on the left. This will take you to the search page. Enter SBI as the search term and click the search button. The results will be displayed under the search box along with the Adsense ads at the top and bottom of the search results.
This is a handy tool to install on your site. It enhances your website. It does not cost anything and you can make money with it if someone clicks on an Adsense ad on the search results page. A real win, win deal! Good luck in the future
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.
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.
3 Benefits of Cheap Web Hosting to Get Your Site Up and Running
by: Chris Robertson If you're thinking of signing on with a virtual host for cheap web hosting, you might receive more long-term benefits than you realize. Cheap web hosting is more readily available today because there is so much competition in the web site hosting arena. You can still find great domain hosting for only a fraction of what companies once paid.
Even with low cost web hosting, the benefits are tremendous if you choose the right virtual host. Here are three benefits of cheap web hosting. 1. Save Money for Now and the Future When comparing cheap web hosting plans, you should carefully consider the cost of your virtual host payments. You'll likely be paying every month or year for many years to come if you plan to build a solid online business.
Therefore, you'll need a host that's dependable as well as affordable. The benefit of cheap web hosting is you will save money every month or year over a long period of time. If one company charges $9.95 per month and another virtual host charges $6.95 per month with similar features, then you'll save $3 per month by choosing the cheap web hosting. In one year, you'll save $36. In five years, you'll save $180.
It doesn't seem to be much, but from a business standpoint, any savings are worth the effort! You can also save even more if you need more than just basic web page hosting. 2. Minimal Overhead Costs with Cheap Web Hosting Where else but the Internet can you open a store for only a few dollars per month? Imagine opening a store on Main Street in your town. You could incur thousands of dollars in monthly bills (rent, water, power, repairs, etc.)
With cheap web hosting, you can open a store for only a few dollars per month and add pages to it any time you wish with very little or no increase to your web page hosting bill. It's the lowest overhead you could ever have, and the profit potential is tremendous. Even using features such as PHP and MySQL integration for databases adds very little (if any) extra to your monthly bill. 3. Reseller Hosting Benefits No matter what type of business you own, you might benefit by offering reseller hosting.
Reseller hosting enables you to sell cheap web hosting packages to your customers. You can sell all types of hosting, but be sure to narrow your ads to reach your target audience. For example, if you own a wholesale candy store, you can advertise to your customers (candy retailers) that they can have their very own candy website. Of course, they can choose a low cost web hosting plan from your site, and you earn hosting payments every month!
You might even provide web design templates they can use to get their site up and running quickly. The possibilities are endless. These benefits and more are valid reasons to search for dependable but low cost web hosting. Start saving with cheap web hosting today!
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
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.
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.
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'.
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.
How important is a logo for the success of your business? Opinions might vary but the importance of a logo can hardly be overlooked. It's a logo that first catches the eyes of the onlookers and lends a concrete identity to a business enterprise. Can anything be more satisfying than popular logo?
I guess not! A business or company logo creates the 'first impression’, which is extremely essential to attract its potential customers. Logos form an important parameter for the success of any business today. As such, its quality often decides the fate of a company. Poor quality logos hardly attract the attention of people and it is automatically concluded that the concerned enterprise offers sub-standard service.
Unfortunately, even some quality enterprises suffer owing to their neglect of promoting their business the right way. Hence an entrepreneur should never overlook his marketing strategies. Equal importance is to be placed on the quality of service provided as well as business promotion. Business or company logo services are provided by a number of quality logo design firms.
Certain well established logo design firms offer quality service at an extremely affordable and flexible rate. Few among them have come up with the unique concept of “Your Logo, Your Price” where the clients are asked to decide the price of the logos designed for them. For those who have just ventured into the field of business and need to promote their business rapidly, this can be the best they can get! It would have been a different question had ordering a logo been an expensive affair.
It's, therefore, advisable for every business enterprise to adopt a logo. A business or company logo mirrors its vision or objectives. Hence entrepreneurs should always make sure that the logo is relevant to the image of the company. A fast food chain cannot display logos relating to apparels or sports goodies.
Secondly, the logo should not be a mere jumble of multiple colors. It should have enough clarity to make the onlookers grasp its significance. Simplicity rules and logos that are simple yet powerful make the profoundest impact! Since logos have come to be associated with brand identity today, hardly any entrepreneur overlooks its necessity.
All he should do is to avail the services of a quality logo design firm that offers quality designs at an affordable price. Once this criterion is fulfilled, he can at least feel confident to have put the first step into the field of his business promotion rightly. With 'lady luck' by his side, he can even soar into the heights of instant popularity if his logo strikes a chord into the hearts of people!
Take Advantage of Cheap Web Hosting without Sacrificing Quality Service
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.
Web hosting is the backbone of your online business and it is one of the most crucial services that ensures your online presence. There are thousands of web-hosting service providers and all of them claim to be the best. Therefore, it is a difficult process to identify the right web hosting service provider. There are a few important questions that you must ask your web-hosting service provider before you sign up.
Normally, the first question people ask is about the cost involved. Though it is an important factor that will help you make your decision, cost should not be treated as the primary factor. There are other crucial factors that need to be addressed. You must first ask your web host about their average server uptime. Most of the hosting service providers advertise 99.9% uptime, but, in reality, it may not be so.
There are a number of server related problems that can keep the visitors off from your website. Second, you must ask your web host about the connection speed. You must have fast connections to give your website users an enhanced visitor experience. If the connections are slow, your website will take a long time to load and server connection will get disconnected before people can see your website, leading to annoying "The page cannot be displayed error." Third, you must know how much web space you get for the package you are signing up for. Most web hosts offer flexible packages.
You should be able to advise your web host on the web space depending on the nature of your requirements. There are web hosting packages that range from 10mb or less to several GBs. The greater the space the greater the price. Along with the allotted web space, you must also be clear about the data transfer bandwidth that is allowed for your package. If you anticipate high traffic, it is better to go with packages that have higher bandwidth capabilities. The next question will be on the number of email addresses you can configure.
There are many web hosting companies that offer unlimited email addresses. If you choose a lower end package, the number of email addresses may be limited to 5 or 10 or 25, depending on the web-hosting package you choose. You must also be clear about the nature of the database tools that are available and the database types supported by your web-hosting service provider. If your website is intended to sell your products online, it is important that you have a reliable shopping cart.
Make sure you check with your web host whether you have any built-in shopping carts installed and the procedure to customize them to your specific need. With the advent of the open source technology, web hosting service providers offer a number of free yet useful scripts for their customers bundled with the web hosting package. Check with your web host on the available free scripts, such as forums, blogs, chat support, web statistic tools, etc. The control panel should be highly user friendly.
Your list of questions to your web host must have a question about the control panel features. Above all, the customer support capabilities of your web host and the turn-around time to resolve server related issues and other complaints is very crucial. To stand the competition, most web hosting service providers offer 24x7 customer support service to their clients. Make sure that your complaints will be addressed during weekends as well.
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!
What is the difference between sponsored listing and natural search results? Google and Yahoo both accept advertisers to pay per click and bid on the keywords that the advertisers want to get to the top of the sponsored listing. We circled the sponsored listings using a red pen. Google and Yahoo will charge the advertiser from $3 to $10 or more for each time someone click on the site (depends on how rich your competitors are). The other results you see on the left side is the natural listing search results. Natural search results are free and is very hard to get a #1 position in Yahoo, or Google. You will need a search engine specialist to help you to achieve this very high ranking. We can help you to get a high ranking in Google and Yahoo, plus many more search engines. If you prefer the sponsored listing for your business, we proudly present to you our Pay Per Click management service
Search Engine Specialist What does it mean if I get #1 listing in Google and Yahoo?
"Getting #1 in Google, Yahoo will allow your business top pripority of all incoming leads. The more traffic you get, the more money coming into your pocket." Tom / Search Engine Specialist
General Question Why do I need a high end Flash Animation website?
"Flash Animation is beauty, attractive, and elegance. A high end Flash Animation website has all those features of gorgeousness embedded into it to bring out its purest form of luxury." Tom / Customize Flash Templates
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