The Top 10 Dumbest Web Site Decisions

By Kalena Jordan

Having worked with web sites for the past eleven years, I've seen a LOT of errors, poor judgment and embarrassing gaffs on the web. Sometimes they are the fault of the client, the web designer, the IT Manager, or the SEO, but human error is always to blame. The saddest thing is that the problems are usually preventable.

Here is a list of what I consider to be the Top 10 dumbest web site decisions ever, in reverse order, David Letterman style :

10) Misspelling a Domain

Back in the glory days of the late 1990's when I was working for a large Internet agency, the web designers had responsibility for the registration of domain names on behalf of clients. One particular designer had a face to face meeting with a major client, during which the client asked him to register CarTuneCentral.com (or so he thought!). The staffer did a check and was delighted to see the domain available. He made the purchase and proudly emailed the client.
An hour later his boss called him in to his office to say that he'd had a call from a very frustrated client who *actually* wanted him to register CartoonCentral.com. Needless to say the desired domain wasn't available and the whole office dined on his mistake for months.

9) Letting the Domain Name Expire

Now what type of company would allow their domain to expire a month after site launch? A very large one, that's who. I'll save the company some embarrassment and won't reveal their name but the site was offline for a total of 2 days while they scrambled to pay their registrar, sort out DNS propagation and cover their tails.

8) Flashing your Cyber Underpants

One of the most common web site management platforms provided by hosting companies used to store the site statistics in a common folder called /statistics/. You could password protect this folder, but the default was to leave it open to the public and so many unwary webmasters unwittingly published full traffic data for their site on the Internet, open to any person who knew where to look.

I learned this the hard way in a public forum from a member who said he had just reviewed my traffic for the previous month and was very impressed. Publishing site statistics for all the world to see is what I call flashing your cyber underpants and I’ve never let it happen again!

7) Publishing Sensitive Company Information

Quite a few companies have been guilty of doing this, including AOL, who published a search data report in 2006 that contained the private details of thousands of AOL customers. Although the report was taken offline within a few days, it had already been mirrored and distributed across the Internet. The fallout eventually led to the resignation of AOL’s Chief Technical Officer.

Although not quite as serious, an ex-client of mine once published a page that had notes on it from the Sales Manager about the best way to strong-arm a customer into purchasing a higher-ticket item. Apparently the web designer didn’t realize the hand-written post-it notes were not part of the web page copy. Duh!

6) Using an Insulting 404 Error Page

I clash with the web design team of one of my clients on a regular basis. Earlier this year, my client completely re-designed their web site and so I recommended they ask their web design team to design a custom 404 error page in case visitors navigated to a page on the old site that no longer existed. Their web design team put up a message that read:

"404 Error. You've obviously typed in the wrong URL. Either that or the page you are looking for no longer exists."

That was it! No apology for the missing page, no recommendation to use the navigation to find what they were looking for, just an insulting message that accuses the visitor of being an idiot. Persons viewing that page would be clicking the "back" button as fast as they could.

5) Taking a Site Offline for Maintenance

I find it fascinating that very large sites run by intelligent people still get taken offline for maintenance on a regular basis. Search engines don't understand the "Back in 15 minutes" sign and the longer the site is down, the bigger the risk.

If search bots try and index a site while it is down, they will most likely assume the previously indexed pages have expired and remove them from the search index. This means that all your hard-earned rankings could be flushed down the toilet until search engines can successfully re-index your site. Surely a mirror site for maintenance periods isn't that difficult to set up?

4) Buying a Dot Biz When the Dot Com Was Available

Ok, I'm putting up my hand on this one. I'm not going to reveal the domain but yes, I registered a dot biz domain back in 2000 when the dot com was actually available. The dot com version of my domain was bought by Yahoo a short time later and turned into a product site. Ack! My excuse is that, at the time, dot biz sites were rumored to be the next big thing and all companies were being urged to choose them over dot coms. Ok, I was wrong!

3) Allowing a Customer Complaint to Remain on a Site for 12 Months

When I was working as a public relations consultant, I was given the responsibility of re-writing the web copy of a large real estate client. One of the areas I was asked to re-write was the welcome paragraph on the Customer Feedback page where existing customers of the estate agent chain could login and leave comments about their experience.

While writing the copy, I scanned some of the customer feedback and came across an aggressive message left 12 months earlier by an obviously unhappy customer. She had used some of the most colorful language I've ever seen (and some that I hadn't) and very detailed descriptions of how she was going to take her revenge on the company for allegedly allowing a tenant to destroy her house. Nobody in charge of the web site had even noticed the comment and I still wonder how many potential customers would have been put off from using the estate agent after reading it.

2) Switching a Web Site Off for a 3 Week Christmas Vacation.

Yes, many moons ago, an ex-client of mine decided to take her entire web site offline (without telling me!) while she was on a 3 week vacation over Christmas. Only a month earlier, she had paid me $5,000 to optimize it for search engines.

It had just achieved some impressive top 10 results and all the carefully optimized pages were attracting good traffic when she shut it down and replaced the entire site with a 1 page sign that said “closed until after Christmas”. I noticed the traffic and search ranking declines in her stats and was completely flabbergasted when I found the site gone. Her response when I confronted her? "Why didn't you TELL ME this could happen?"

And the dumbest web site decision I've ever witnessed?

1) Promoting a Domain Name You Don’t Own:

My Alma Mater, the University of Newcastle, have spent thousands of dollars on television advertising here in Australia, marketing their new site for online post-graduate coursework: GradSchool Dot Com. There's only one problem. The domain for this site is actually Gradschool.com.au. They don't even own Gradschool.com!

Sadly, this glaring marketing error seems to have totally escaped them and they are happily referring to their brand as Gradschool.com on all their marketing material and throughout their .com.au domain. It's tragic to think of all the potential students typing in Gradschool.com expecting to find the University program. I see that whoever purchased Gradschool.com has slapped up some AdSense code on it so at least somebody will reap the benefits of those thousands of advertising dollars wasted by the University.

Don't let any of these web site tragedies happen to you. Make sure that your site decisions aren't in the hands of dummies!


About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

Web Host Services: What You Can Get

By Bill McNulty

When searching for a web host you may want to look into the extra services that are offered. Although some web host companies do not offer anything more than the basics, this is not the case with the majority of them. Since there is so much competition in this industry, every web host is looking for a way to distinguish themselves. And through extra web host services they can do this without any problem at all.

As a buyer, you need to know what is available to you as far as web host services are concerned. Sure, you know that a web host company is going to offer you web hosting for your site. But in addition to this, you want to also look into the many web host services that you may be able to get along with this. In most cases, you do not have to pay for any of these extras. As long as you host your site with a company, they will be more than happy to give you these add on services free of charge. As you can imagine, this can make your time with your web host much more enjoyable. Anytime you are getting something for free you will usually have a good experience.

So what web host services out of the norm are available to consumers? This is a question that has many answers, because as mentioned above, each company has their own way of doing things. You owe it to yourself to look into a number of different companies, and then decide which web host services you are being offered. Obviously, if there are two like companies, you will want to choose the one that is offering you the most in terms of added benefits and services.

One of the most common add ons that you will come across is free domain registration. The moment that you sign up with a company offering this service, you will have the ability to register any domain name for free. While this may not be a big freebie, it is something that you will need nonetheless. This is a particularly good service to receive if you are a beginner. This way, you do not have to worry about registering your domain name with another service, and then taking the time and effort to transfer it to your web hosting company.

Another popular web host service is when the company offers free message boards to users. This may not sound like a huge deal on the surface, but being able to get in touch with other
people using the same service can be beneficial in a number of different ways. This will give you the ability to not only meet other people, but at the same time you can ask any questions that you may have. Although this may seem geared more towards beginners, even advanced webmasters can benefit from what message boards have to offer.

There are many web host services that will be available to you. After you find a few companies that offer the actual web hosting that you like, you will then want to begin to consider these extra services. They may make or break your final decision!

About The Author:

Bill McNulty loves everything tech, especially anything http://www.hostingref.com/ top 10 web hosting related. He writes for multiple tech sites on a freelancer basis and lives with his wife and 2 dogs in rural upstate New York.

7 Steps To Improve Your Website

By Bernadette Doyle

Begin by understanding the difference between direct-response websites and brochure websites. Brochure websites have a nice, safe logical layout of information but little, if any, clear
calls to action. Direct response websites are geared towards getting visitors to take action.

1. Tell them who it's for and what you can do for them in the first few seconds. Instead of simply having your name at the top of your website, use that space to announce WHO your site is for,
and WHAT you can do for them. That means that in the first few seconds you target visitors will have the reaction "Yes, this is for me". Of course, that will be at the expense of any untargeted visitors who will click away, but you didn't want them anyway!

2. Remove anything that does not support your MWR. MWR is short for 'Most Wanted Response' a term I first heard about from Ken Evoy, author of Make Your Site Sell.

What do you want people to DO when they first visit your site? Call to arrange a consultation? Request more information? Book a coaching session? Reserve a space at your next workshop? Have a clear MWR for each and every page of your website and then only include the content that moves visitors towards your MWR and strip away anything that doesn't.

3. Capture visitors' details. Less than 1% of visitors will buy on their first visit to a website, that's why it's important to capture their details so you can follow up with them.

4. Less is more. In many of the sites I critiqued today, it was almost like the site owners were thinking "I don't know exactly what I should say to my web visitor, so I'll just throw out a
load of things in the hope that SOMETHING grabs their attention". Unfortunately, just adding more and more options or information is simply going to confuse your visitor, and if they aren't sure what to do next, they will probably take the easiest option and click away...forever!

5. Personalize your site. Include your photo and a biography. Let visitors see the person behind the website. It's true that people buy people!

6. Use a mixture of 'towards' and 'away from' language in your sales copy. Some of the sites I reviewed today were for coaches who are very solution oriented in their approach and web-copy. The trouble is, this only works for visitors who have the same solution-oriented outlook and people with problems are typically... stuck in their problems!

7. Copywriter Robert Collier said that you have to "enter the conversation that is already going on in the prospect's mind" and sometimes that means you have to start with the problems that are preoccupying them. So show people that you can both solve pressing problems as well as achieve desired end solutions.

It is critical that your direct response website connect emotionally with visitors who are in your target market. You can do this by making them feel at home so when they visit your site they know they are in the right place. Remove anything that does not lead to your most wanted response, capturing their contact details, limit unneeded text and images, making your site more personal, using the right mix of copywriting that appeals to your target market and addressing the problem visitors are experiencing and explaining the benefits of working with you.

About the Author:

(c) Bernadette Doyle, 2008. Reprints welcome so long as by-line and article are published intact and all links made live.

Bernadette Doyle publishes her free, weekly Client Magnets newsletter for trainers, speakers, coaches, consultants, complementary therapists and solo professionals. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them then sign up for the Client Magnets newsletter at http://www.ClientMagnets.com today!

Why You Should Use HTML Web Templates?

By Sharon Housley

Web templates expedite the process of setting up a new website. The idea behind a web template is that it will save time with the creative design and layout process.

In the business world, time is money; hence, using templates can save money. It can be a challenge to find a web designer for hire, and quite often the designer's schedule will not always mesh with the needs of a small business. Time rarely controls a web graphic designer. Artists are, well, artistic, and don't necessarily work by the clock. Instead, they work when inspiration strikes, which can be problematic when there are deadlines to meet. Templates are ready-made, and can be easily edited, allowing you to instantly create a website.

In addition, webmasters that may lack adequate graphic or design skills can quickly and easily create a website themselves, simply by editing and customizing the existing HTML layout in a web template. And locating a themed web template takes far less time than attempting to create a layout and graphics from scratch. Web templates also remove any coding issues. This is especially helpful to webmasters who are just starting out and just learning HTML coding.

The bottom line is that webmasters who use web templates will have their websites up and running much quicker.

Where To Find Webmaster Templates?

Locating a web template that meets your business or personal needs doesn't have to be difficult. There are online directories and galleries, most of which are categorized into themes or by industries. For example, a variety of themed and generic templates can be found at Webmaster Templates: http://www.webmaster- templates.net .

Other web templates can be found HTML Templates Sources -
http://www.small-business-software.net/html-web-templates.htm .

What Is A Good Template, And What Is Not?

Differentiating between a good template and a not-so-good template can be difficult for an amateur. A beginner should have no issues editing the basic HTML layout, but some of the more complex graphic templates and web designs can be difficult for a novice to manipulate. If you are a beginner, stick with HTML-based templates, which can be edited with a common HTML editor, until you get the hang of web design.

How Can Templates Be Edited?

It depends on the format of the web template, but in most cases the web templates available online can be edited using common HTML editors such as DreamWeaver, FrontPage, or Web Express. The graphics can be edited in any type of imaging application such as PaintShop Pro, Gimp, or PhotoShop. Some templates will also use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to control and standardize things like font sizes and colors across all web pages. These CSS files can be edited using a CSS editor like TopStyle.

What Should I Look For In A Ready-Made Web Template?

Web templates should be editable in any HTML editor.

What Am I Allowed And Not Allowed To Do With The Templates?

Different templates are licensed for different purposes and with different restrictions. You must carefully read the licensing agreement on the template's website to determine how the template can be used. Most licenses allow templates to be modified and customized. Some licenses stipulate that the templates are for personal use only, and not for commercial use, so be careful there.

Web templates offer webmasters a great opportunity to minimize development time and get new sites on the web sooner rather than later. The structure of web templates allow webmasters to focus on the proprietary content development, and optimizing the website for
search engines, rather than struggling with layout and graphics.

About the Author:

Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for RecordForAll http://www.recordforall.com audio recording and editing software.

Online Strategies & Tips for Website Development

By Paul Majestyck

So you want to be an internet star? You have an idea or product or service to sell, or you simply feel you must have a website of your very own. And now that you've decided, you really have no idea where to start.

So you're casting about online for strategies and tips that will tell you how to build a website that is attractive and functional, one that really expresses what you are all about.

This article aims to give you just that, and more. Read on and you will not only find some great online strategies for your website, but also some great tips for moving forward with your online business marketing plan.

Building blocks of the website:

The first thing you want to determine is your niche market. You want to find a little corner of the net world that you can make all your own, or as close to your own as possible.

Try to hone in on a product or service that you think there is a need for, but one that isn't wildly popular. That way, you'll be creating a comfortable playing field for your website without too much competition, but with enough attraction to do you some good.

A very good suggestion might be to hang out in online discussion groups with an eye toward discovering your niche market. What do people want? What are they looking for, especially online? Ask them!

Now that you have your niche, figure out what makes your website unique. Think of at least one reason your potential customers would buy from you, and not others.

From this position, build your list of keywords and phrases, the tools you will use to be found by your potential clients. Always remember, it's easy to get swallowed up in the internet ocean. It's hard work to find just the right combination to make your ad come to the surface, thus providing the visibility your website requires to sustain itself and your online business. But it is those web marketers who do the hard part that take home the bulk of the spoils.

Prepare your marketing tools, as many as you can think of. The list is practically endless: web content, newsletters, autoresponders, blogs, articles, and banners...and anything else you can think of.

Don't forget the follow-through. Test your system to see if it works. Keep trying various combinations until you find the one that clicks.

And never forget: Do it right once, and you can do it again and again...a whole lot easier! Website marketing is not for the meek of spirit. But those who stay the course usually wonder how they ever lived without it.

About the Author:

Paul Majestyck is the publisher of Global Entrepreneur http://ibuildempires.wordpress.com/ EZ Affiliate Profits - 100's of Great Articles Top Notch Resources Product Reviews Free Downloadable e-Courses & Videos To Help You Shorten The Online Learning-Curve And Start Generating Income . Visit : EZAffiliate Profits
http://ezaffiliateprofits.blogspot.com/. Also be sure to visit The #1
Digitital program and product store on the internet eNetMall http://www.enetmall.net/

Web 2.Overwhelming: 22 Ways to Frustrate Your Site Visitors

By Kalena Jordan

Damian Conway is known as the "Mad Scientist of Perl" and he was my favorite speaker at Webstock 2008. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and until recently was an honorary Associate Professor with the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Monash University Australia.

A popular speaker and trainer, he is a former columnist for The Perl Journal and author of two books about Perl. He also runs an international IT training company which provides programmer training throughout Europe, North America, and Australasia.

Damian kicked off his presentation by revealing that his wife is responsible for him being at Webstock. A few months ago, she was trying to buy a DVD on the Internet and was yelling expletives. He went to help her and after several minutes of frustration he finally gave up. Her response was "Are they deliberately trying to make it impossible for non-geeks?" His reply was "Yes". Damian's impression is that mankind has evolved into two distinct species - typical web users / typical web designers.

Damian then showed the Irony Ahead symbol. The sad truth, he says, is that the web designers are losing the battle to the masses. There are now normal humans who can almost use web sites on a daily basis! His sacred promise is to protect your web sites from infiltration by the terrible general public.

In reverse order, here are Damien's top 22 web design ideas to fend off the non-geeks and prevent Web 2.0 from taking hold:

22) Use Zen: Confuse them with anime and odd artistic blobs that are a complete mystery. Is it a web site? Is it art? Is it impossible to enter?

21) Use yellow or black and yellow: This signals danger as in wasps and Star Trek uniforms.

20) Use xenophobia: Try geo-location as an instrument of torture. Show only products not available in their country or illegal in their country e.g. "show me products I can't buy with a credit card issued in my country".

19) Get a site that requires the "www" to work: This is known as a canonical URL to us normal people. Make the www necessary and confuse the heck out of them when they type in the domain name without the w's and get shown an error page.

18) Use variable navigational layout (VNL): Use the previous and next links as people hate them. Let's replicate it for the entire web!

17) Throw usability out the window: Navigability is the pre-requisite for usability. So let's create navigation buttons that don't go anywhere. The non-geeks will be occupied for at least half an hour. Use Javascript to turn the navigation into confusing shadowy arrows. Javascript your scrollbars so they don't look anything like regular browser scrollbars. Use back buttons that embed links that take you up a level rather than actually taking you back. Your visitors will get lost in the hierarchy. Inconsistency is important.

16) Terrorize them with typography: Most non-geeks don't care about typography. They don't even have a favorite typeface! If they do, it's comic sans. Or Impact! All they care about is whether they can read it. Therefore, typography DOES matter. Go with something unreadable! Go with Abduction 2 font or something just as annoying. Fonts are not toys people, fonts are weapons!

15) Make shipping a last minute surprise: Shipping is a powerful tool to dissuade purchasers. It delays their instant gratification. Don't let them calculate the shipping cost in the cart otherwise they can go and comparison check on other sites. Instead, use the W3-recommended 34 step method and make all these fields compulsory:

product selection
shopping cart
checkout
purchaser address
phone number
fax number
email address
social security number
payment method
billing address
shipping address
shipping method
shipping costs
income bracket
referral source
etc.

With any luck, they'll abandon the cart in total frustration.

14) Make them register and login before they purchase: They'll be naturally terrified and run off. Even better, make them register before they can even view the web site!

13) Reduce the quality of site search results: How can you minimize the quality? Don't provide site search facilities at all! Or make the options highly improbable. Don't let them search for the product. Make them search by date of manufacture, or the name of the manufacturer. Or, make them search for the type of person that they are. Or what type of person YOU think they are. Pure genius.

12) Add pages ad infinitum: Don't return more than 10 results for a search at one time, even if you have to list 250 pages of search results. God put the fold there for a reason. If you don't follow this rule, it can result in scrolling! Protect the kids from scrolling!

11) Delay their gratification or their dis-gratification: Show items that aren't in stock, services you used to provide, options that won't work for them. Only tell them a product is not available AFTER they click through to the shopping cart total. This builds up a sense of hope so you can dash it immediately.

10) Don't allow them to sort search results: This non-sortability of results preserves the natural social order. Sort things in random order. For example, don't let them sort by product type, or price. Provide an alphabetical sorting option only. Or sort according to the web designer's favorite items.

9) Use background music and lots of it: It's a sure way to irritate your users. Your music choice probably sucks if you choose it carefully enough. Don't provide a stop button. Make it restart again on every new page. They'll soon leave.

8) The little things count: Like tiny little font. It's the most effective deterrent for anyone over the age of 20. Damian finds size 4 or 3 point is pretty good. Government and news sites use it all the time to great effect. Some browsers have the ability to change text size. Thankfully, most web users Damian surveyed didn't know this until it was pointed out to them. But it's ok! Because 2 weeks later, they'd forgotten again. Tiny text is the web designer's ally.

7) Use Cute Kitten Aversion Therapy: There are some web sites that you don't want your kids to see, Damian says. One of these is the W3 HTML Validator. AAARGGGGHH! It means that solutions for non-valid HTML code could be discovered by anyone and you don't want that. So spread the message, every time you validate, someone kills a kitten!

6) Use J-version therapy: The non-geeks have a strong aversion to the letter J and things like Jscript, Javascript etc. These J languages create fear in the non-geek. Online security companies have scared them into avoiding sites with Javascript or other items starting with J because hackers use them to distribute viruses. If you're lucky, they're so convinced by these fears that they've turned off Javascript in their browsers. This means that if your site uses Javascript menus, they can't be navigated! Brilliant.

5) You can never use too many images: Encode your important data and text in an image so it can't be cut and pasted and make the images huge and dark so that they can't be printed out. Or they can be printed but they use up masses amounts of printer toner. It's a great way to scare off even the most persistent of non-geeks.

4) Play hide and seek with your site visitors: They don't like to wait, so make them. Information that is impossible to find is safe. Don't use a sitemap and make sure there is no rational hierarchy to your site. Hide your most important data on a page that has no links pointing to it!

3) Use gray: It's the new black and it goes so well with black or darker gray. When using gray, make it impossible to read. Use nano-text in gray or even gray text on white. The site visitors run away! Even better, use gray on darker gray - it's the low contrast approach. This is even more effective for site visitors with a color impairment. If all else fails, use intestinal beige. It's apparently the new gray.

2) Flash is very important in our defense against web-mortals: Clocksucking Flash they call it. Some non-geeks even have their Flash facilities turned off so make your site entirely in Flash. Once visitors arrive at your Flash page, they see - "loading 1%". This is delayed gratification at it's best! Also, don't provide a "skip intro" button. Or if you do use it, make the link move away from the mouse. Over and over again. If the visitor persists, then make it disappear entirely. If the visitor without Flash is determined to view your Flash site, provide the "You Need Flash" link. Then make them download an enormous file that maxes out their bandwidth limits. Even better, use a Flash-based installer that requires them to have Flash installed first.

1) Combine all of the above for optimum effect: This is Damian's number #1 best way to scare away non-geek visitors. His favorite example of this in action is the World Glaucoma Association. Scroll down and place your mouse over the eye for the full effect. [My own personal favorite is Fred Frap and Friends where the pink text on the purple background asks you to click on the non-existent image to enter. Nice!]

But seriously folks, Damian says, the non-geek level is the SAME LEVEL as the MAJORITY OF YOUR WEB SITE USERS. Remember this. The typical experience for web-mortals is bad. He's here to plead with us all to build software for how people really ARE. The non-geek users.

The single biggest mistake that web designers make is not doing accessibility testing on their grandparents. Your grandparents are the typical Internet users. Use the Grandma usability metric. It's not about what your client wants. It's about what your client's customers want. It's not about clever, it's about comprehension. It's not about style, it's about usability. It's not about searching. It's about finding. It's not about ambience it's about the outcomes for people visiting your site.

Web 2.0 is Web 2.0verwhelming for most people. So make their experience measurably superior.


About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

Planning for Web Site Disaster

By Kalena Jordan

When you have a business web site that multiple people work on, one of the most difficult tasks is to manage and allocate responsibilities. For example, you might have a corporate site where the content is written by various in-house staff members, the pages are managed by your freelance web designer and your outsourced SEO is responsible for ensuring the content and code is search engine friendly.

But what happens when communication breaks down between all the stakeholders or a miscommunication occurs? It's more common than you might think and it can result in disaster for your web site. Here's a true story of how it happened to one of my clients:

The site in question was being re-designed by the client's 3rd party web designers and the client asked me (as their SEO) to send them a list of instructions to follow during the re-design and launch that would ensure they didn't lose search engine visibility. Naturally I sent the client a list of the usual things to watch out for, including:

• Ensuring that any URLs being replaced or moved had 301 redirects placed on them to their new locations.


• Transferring the optimized title and meta tags to new page versions.


• Implementing a custom 404 page; and


• Building a replacement XML sitemap for Google and Yahoo.

So a week later the client tells me that the new site is now live and would I have a quick check to see if everything is ok? I opened the site and typed in each of the URLs for the pages I had carefully optimized months before. The first one came up with a big ugly 404 Not Found error. Not a custom 404 error page, but an ugly white server-generated one with no design, no branding, no apology and (more importantly) no links back to the main site. So I tried the next one. Same story - 404 error.

As I went down the list, I became more and more concerned. Less than half of the pages I optimized had been transferred to the new site. When I checked their site logs in ClickTracks, I noticed that around half of the page views generated since the site re-launch were 404 errors. Not only that, but a quick check of Google Webmaster Tools showed a small fraction of the original number of site pages as being indexed. Obviously Googlebot had been shown the 404 errors too and had promptly removed the old pages from the Google index. Disaster!

I contacted the client and told her to get a custom 404 page implemented as soon as possible and to double check that 301 redirects from their old page URLs to the corresponding pages on the new site had been put in place by the design team, as per my instructions. Turns out the designers never received explicit instructions about this from the client and didn't know that:

a) a custom 404 page was important

b) 301 redirects were necessary to ensure the continuation of search engine indexing.

I found this news quite shocking - what web designer/programmer doesn't understand the need to redirect old URLs to new ones?

Plus, we found out later that the few pages that the designers HAD successfully transferred to the new template did not have the carefully optimized Title and META Tags transferred, meaning that all the hard-won rankings we had earned for the client had now vanished. The designer's excuse? They weren't SEO experts so didn't know tag transfer was necessary. I found this excuse pretty flimsy considering they managed to transfer the rest of the page HTML code intact.

This started a chain of urgent emails back and forth between the client, the designers and myself, with the designers blaming the client and me for not providing clear enough instructions, me blaming the designers for not taking the initiative to protect the client's site traffic during the move and the client caught in the middle trying to appease everyone. The emails escalated until finally the designers admitted defeat and acknowledged that they should have paid more attention to the client's instructions.

It took a couple of weeks for the designers to upload a custom 404 error page and I still had to manually login to the client's CMS to replace the optimized Title and META tags. As this goes to press, the client site has started to recover in the rankings, the 301 redirects are back in place, the number of pages indexed by Google is increasing, but the site stats are still showing a large number of 404 pages delivered to searchers. I expect it to take upwards of 3 months for the site to fully recover from the disaster.

The whole saga just goes to prove that you can't assume your site is in capable hands. If you are about to make extensive changes to your site design or move it to a new domain, you absolutely have to have a rollout plan in place with crystal clear instructions and tasks allocated to a team so everyone knows who is responsible for what. Otherwise you will be paying the penalties for months to come.


About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

10 Reminders for Usability Web Design to Make Site Visitors Adore You

No matter how hard you try, there is always something wrong with your website. There is always a critic. I have a friend outside the USA who thankfully alerts me of my 404 error pages, which I appreciate, even though I told him over the weekend he was making me scream at my own inability to be perfect.

You don't want to be caught with your pants down when trying to present a professional site. Since my work permits me to see a great deal of websites and Internet applications, I can note common problems. This list is not about the common ones. This list is for repetitive web design practices that drive site visitors crazy because we keep driving them crazy.

Here's what we do:

1. There is not enough persuasive or value oriented information to convince visitors to stay on the page. I compare this to car shopping. Automobile's in a showroom have a sheet of paper taped to the window that lists every detail you could possibly imagine about that particular car. How often do you actually stand in one spot, directly in front of the window, squinting to read the tiny words on the page? Usually you are spotted by eagle-eyed car salespeople who leap to your side and begin telling you all the reasons why the car is cool. They ask what you had in mind too, and from there, start to narrow down matches that fit your requirements. Write as if you are a car salesperson for your homepage. Cut a deal. Introduce the manager. Offer a test drive.


2. Don't place 100 links to the inside pages from your homepage. It is not a playground where you run screaming out onto the area trying to beat the first person to the swing set. A homepage should be married to your site requirements and especially your visitors' top tasks. This could be price checking, searching for part numbers or clearance items, finding your contact information or finding the only baby items that are not pink or blue on the planet.


3. Quit talking about yourself so often. Nobody cares how great you are. What they do care about is what you have for them that's worth their time and money. If you're the All Powerful Oz, you can slip that in, but just remember that even OZ lied to Dorothy. If you need help with your ego, try the We We Monitor.

Feedback and email newsletter forms are some of the funniest things I've witnessed on the web. Why would you demand a phone number from someone who is just letting you know your links are broken? If you want general feedback or better yet, sales leads, your form should scream trust. Start by trusting that if site visitors want you to call them, they'll enter their phone number. Requiring one is something managers tell you to do. Ignore them. Consider your prospects that desire email contact only or impress them with customer service clues with a choice of either email or phone contact. Never require a phone number for free newsletter signups, but if you insist on this unheard of practice you invented, offer a sample of the newsletter that requires that phone number and by all means, tell us why you want to call us.

4. If your navigation only goes forward, you didn't learn to dance properly. The actual steps are:
   
   
   • Move forward
   • Move back if your partner doesn't like that move
   • Continue forward if your partner really liked where you landed and trusts where you want to go next.
   
   In other words, don't rely on the "Back" button to go backwards. Guide your visitor's steps backward, forward and side to side with breadcrumb navigation, embedded text links, buttons or links that continue a task's forward momentum. Design navigation to be fluid and effortless. Your visitors should be able to glide along the dance floor and not get lost or spun around into dizzying loops.


5. Application functionality. If you only knew what exists out there in web site land. For example, there was a travel site for camping that only lets you book hotel rooms because the campgrounds weren’t programmed into the options anywhere. There was the application with many parts in the process, however, no matter what link or button was pushed, it only landed on one of those parts. An application is only intuitive if you program its brains properly.


6. Mystery links confound visitors. Non-descriptive labels force us to guess where we will end up. While I love a good game of hide and seek as much as the next person, when I think I know where you're taking me and you take me somewhere totally different, I stop letting you drive.


7. Related to this are Absolute Shock Links. These are navigation links that take you to PDF files without any warning. Since it takes time for the computer to go pull Adobe out of the kitchen, rev it up, load the file and then I swear you have to resize the thing from 200% down to something that doesn't make you get the shakes reading, well, you can see how a little warning is appreciated. The other form of visitor link shock treatment is linking to a totally new domain, with new layout and brand new navigation and no way back because it opened up a new window and cut off all ties to where you were. At least, if you plan on dumping your visitors off somewhere new, work out a nice little warning system and arrange visitation time with the Mothership site.


8. If you want to capture someone's attention, do it above the page fold. Large monitors didn't signal the end of browser laziness. We still like an incentive to use the mouse to scroll, hover or click. If half the page is needed to describe how to use a contact or sales lead form, what is doing business with you like?


9. If you have a FAQ, there had better be a good reason for making your visitors go to a page that displays a long list of questions and answers. They want you to answer the question when they have the question. I remember when I used to show horses and entered jumping classes that required me to memorize the course I'd need to guide my horse around. I could never understand why they didn’t put directions inside the show ring itself that said "Turn left here", "Weave around these scary high jumps" and "Slow down, the judge usually stands about here." A FAQ is nice for backup if you have a complicated process, but user instructions during the actual task are far more considerate and easy to remember.

Finally, don't despair. Web site surfers are often the most incredibly patient and forgiving people, especially if you offer something they want. Just remember to show them where you put it.

About the Author:

Usability Consultant, Kimberly Krause Berg, is the owner of UsabilityEffect.com (www.usabilityeffect.com), Cre8pc.com (www.cre8pc.com), and Cre8asiteForums (www.cre8asiteforums.com/). Her background in organic search engine optimization, combined with web site usability consulting, offers unique insight into web site development. Copyright 2007 Cre8pc.com. All Rights Reserved. Reprint rights by Permission of the Author

Hand Visitors the Keys to Your Web Site

Recently, I wanted to use my car but couldn't find my car key. The last I'd seen it, I was handing it to my daughter, two days ago.

First, I 'texted' her in school, so she wouldn't get into trouble for having a cell phone with her. She typed back, "u hv." Then, I called my husband, who has amazing psychic abilities an hour away from home. He has no idea where my car key is. Fortunately, I had a spare key and of course, later in the evening, my daughter found the original key sitting by her computer, buried in the world's scariest Teenager's Room.

It took all day to solve the missing car key mystery. I stuck with the search because I like my car and like to drive it.

Do you ever hope your web site visitors feel the same way about your web site? Have you driven it around the countryside before offering them the keys to it?

I've Come to Drive Your Web Site

I recently visited a web site that was redesigned. It looked professional and attractive. It was ready for visitors, but perhaps not me. My goal was to find out where the products were and secondly, how to order them. However, the first big whammo! object on the page was a video of a person talking about a product.

This isn't a bad thing. But I'm new. I've just nestled myself into the homepage car seat. I want to look around, play with the radio, adjust the rear view mirror, figure out where they'll let me put my coffee mug and by golly, is that a sale item over there?

I don't want to watch a video yet and their's takes up a huge chunk of homepage real estate, above the page fold. I'm sure it's very nice and I'm sorry for scrolling past it. I came with a mission in mind. Did they build a site for me to carry out my task?

Farther down the page, I finally discover the Way To Our Products click path. I click the link, which takes me to another page with a search function and after a few tries at getting the right search criteria down, I finally arrive at a product I'm interested in. It's been 10 minutes, but YES! I've made it down their web site driveway.

It's a good thing I want to drive their web site because after 10 minutes of figuring out where they put everything, I'm thinking I want to drive a sports car.

Navigation for web sites, especially large sites, is never easy to map out. It takes planning and consideration for visitors’ goals. It has to help visitors complete a task. On this particular web site, which was very attractive, they didn't put a "How to Order" button or link on the product page.

I had no car key. I couldn't start their web site engine. All I was able to do was play "pretend driver" and imagine I was doing something on their web site, because that's about all they designed it to let me do.

The moral of this story?

The next time you design a web site, its okay to take it for a joy-ride. You've earned that right. But, make sure you throw the keys to other drivers and let them take it on the highway or down the street to Starbucks. These people are your user testing hero's.

Trust me when I say that many of them crave bumpy roads and purposely love to drive web sites like maniacs, just to see what that baby can do.

But, remember to get your keys back when they're finished.


About the Author:

Usability Consultant, Kimberly Krause Berg, is the owner of UsabilityEffect.com (www.usabilityeffect.com), Cre8pc.com (www.cre8pc.com), and Cre8asiteForums (www.cre8asiteforums.com/). Her background in organic search engine optimization, combined with web site usability consulting, offers unique insight into web site development. Copyright 2007 Cre8pc.com. All Rights Reserved. Reprint rights by Permission of the Author

Usability and SEO - Red Light, Green Light

By Kim Krause Berg

Another article has appeared on the topic of SEO and Usability and how these two different skill sets benefit each other. The latest, Usability and SEO. Which comes First?, written for Search Engine Watch by Eric Enge, caught my eye because he wrote:
"What I want to emphasize here is one key point: Usability comes first, and SEO comes second."
It's funny to hear that statement coming from a professional SEO.

In the late 1990's, when I offered search engine optimization services, I didn't get the call for help until the web site was launched and swimming for dear life in the search engine pool. In those days, there were lots of search engines. SEO came last, after the design and after people were intended to use it. If they ever found it, that is.

During the past ten years, acceptance by companies to work search engine marketing techniques into their web site pages has vastly improved. User centered, persuasive design, on the other hand, are still whispers in the wind. Will it take another ten years for usability and accessibility to be as justified as marketing a web site property?

What opened my eyes was working in user interface design and discovering that usability came last, AFTER SEO. It was always a pleasant surprise to hear someone on the design team inquire about image alt attributes or fuss over page title tags. Unfortunately, I realized they only knew these things mattered because some of my design team mates owned their own personal web site businesses on the side. It wasn't something the company demanded for itself. They were just lucky the web site designers had their acts together.

User centered design still gets shoved around. As it makes its way into the world of search engine marketing, the experience reminds me of the game "Red Light, Green Light". The caller yells, "Green light!" and everybody runs forward, willy nilly, confident, trying to get to the finish line first. Then, the caller shouts, "Red light!" and suddenly everyone stops. Frozen. They have to hold their position. They can't breathe or giggle, as they wait for their next instruction.

Corporate Blinders

I was recently part of a conversation whereby a man was describing his company's future plans. Presently, they sell products online locally and are now moving into a neighboring country. After this, they plan on going global.

As he describes it, they have no usability person in the entire company. They have search engine marketers. But, they have no idea how to sell online internationally. They don't understand what browsers are popular outside the USA. They don't know how to make forms usable for global customers. User behavior and habits vary by culture, even down to how web pages are read. They assume their present website will work everywhere. I see this constantly and wonder how some corporations survive with such tunnel vision.

Usability is misunderstood and therefore, not even considered a worthwhile investment until sales stop or worse, a lawsuit appears by someone unable to use the site.

It's Not Who Goes First

Whenever I see phrases like "Usability is first, SEO is second" or "SEO is first, usability is second", or "SEO doesn’t need usability", I don't agree with the competition this sets up.
Both disciplines are vital to the air your web site breathes. They are equal sides of the same lung.

Usability, accessibility and search engine marketing practices are united partners because they're focused on the web site visitor. We can all walk up to these customers and shake their hand together.

About the Author:

Usability Consultant, Kimberly Krause Berg, is the owner of UsabilityEffect.com (www.usabilityeffect.com), Cre8pc.com (www.cre8pc.com), and Cre8asiteForums (www.cre8asiteforums.com/). Her background in organic search engine optimization, combined with web site usability consulting, offers unique insight into web site development. Copyright 2007 Cre8pc.com. All Rights Reserved. Reprint rights by Permission of the Author

Web Site Feedback as Your Secret Online Marketing Tool

By Kim Krause Berg

There's a small trick I do with my online order form that helps to identify one of the first problems a web site may have. I purposely don't ask for a business address or phone number right away. I don't want to know what these are. As a web site usability consultant, when I visit a client's web site for the first time, learning how to contact them is my first official task. If I can't locate this information, or it's a pain in the neck to find, I've discovered their first customer service issue.

I wouldn't recommend that you do this with your online business, especially if you are selling products. Your responsibility is to gather accurate information for your transactions immediately so that you can conduct business in an efficient, courteous manner. I, too, have reasons to be more formal, depending on the project. Both you and I have a strong desire to conduct business or provide information in a positive, productive way.

If we do not, how do we know when we've failed? How do we know when we've succeeded? If we don't make the effort to include customers' needs and desires in our interaction with them, and our competitors do, what message does this send? Are you inviting user feedback?

Dear Google, Your Application is Groovy

Search marketers know that local searches are a new arena for promoting online businesses. One way to do this is by informing Google Maps that a business exists. When Google has this information, with data provided by a site owner or their Internet Marketing Consultant, it is more likely a search for your product or service, in your town, will display your business.

I decided to enter my business into the Google Maps application (http://maps.google.com/). There are several steps to the application, with helpful user instructions to guide you. When I reached the end, I had several options for how Google could verify that it was I submitting the data, rather than someone not associated with my business. This extra effort towards accuracy signals a desire to be customer service oriented.

Since I believe in positive reinforcement, I would have liked to have sent a "high five" to Google because I had a good experience using their application. However, on the last screen, there was no place to offer feedback of any kind. I couldn't rate it. I couldn't recommend it to someone. I couldn't send an email. I couldn't answer a one-question quick survey such as "Did you enjoy adding your business to Google Maps?" or "Did you have any problems entering your business and if so, please send us your experience."

I know Google is user centric. This is a missed opportunity for user feedback. It's a missed opportunity to get a pat on the back for a job well done. We all like to hear about when we've done something a site visitor appreciates.

Feedback as User Generated Content

Online customer feedback seems to be tucked somewhere on the last page of site requirements. Forcing visitors to navigate their way through a thick forest of page elements just to locate how to communicate with you creates frustration. Worse, it's a lost opportunity to obtain user generated content for your web site.

User generated content can be a great marketing arm if you understand how to invite feedback and apply it.

I have a book addiction, so to help support it, I buy from Amazon's used book dealers who sell at discounted prices. Shortly after a book arrives, inevitably Amazon follows up with an email invitation to answer a quick survey about the service provided by their third party vendor. The survey is simple, often one or two easy questions focused on a rating scale, and in less than a minute it's completed. The only reason I even bother to respond to them is because I know Amazon issues very fast surveys.

They've earned my trust because I know what to expect from them.

Products are purchased from Amazon as well. I bought a herbal product through them that my doctor recommended after knee surgery. Amazon responded with an email containing a link to a product survey. This one permits user feedback in an interesting way.

"We invite you to submit a review for the product you purchased or share an image that would benefit other customers. Your input will help customers choose the best products on Amazon.com."

The survey is two questions. The first asks if you are over 13. The second is a rating where you can assign 1 – 5 stars. This is followed by an opportunity to enter a title for your review, and a huge comment field to write your review. Alternatively, there is a radio button that allows you to submit a video review.

Consumers can link to the product page in their review. You can "tag" your review with keywords or a category label for the Amazon search engine. Accepted reviews appear on the site in 48 hours.

By getting customers involved, a web site opens the door to user generated content. This is also another outlet for creative online marketers looking to place content and promote products.

Reach Out in the Darkness

By appealing to feelings and emotions, you'll increase a customer's desire to contact you. One sure-fire way of grabbing their heart is to suggest you'll take something away that they care about.

You can ask for feedback by presenting questions such as "Should we remove [insert beloved gadget or site pleaser here]?" One popular topic is asking readers if they mind if you include a few ads. The point is that you need not be afraid to take the initiative. Let your visitors know what you may be considering and offer them a chance to respond. If you strike a nerve, their feedback may be unwelcome if they blog about it, or if you're lucky, they'll send praise. Take into consideration whether you want feedback to be public or private.

Sometimes you won’t have a choice.

In the early stages of Danny Sullivan's new Sphinn site for search marketers, I blogged publically about the lack of a place to post usability topics there. My blog post caught the attention of Sullivan and his loyal band of developers. He responded in my blog, and our dialog became a news story. They added a Usability category because the resulting user feedback justified the inclusion.

It didn't stop there. Sphinn readers are encouraged to ask questions, submit ideas for new features and propose solutions to known problems, in the forum-like space. Danny or his staff responds publically.

By enabling most user feedback to be out front, they're creating content. Behind this content is an enormous message from Third Door Media that customer service is a top priority.

Free Candy for Your Feedback

A food shopping chain in my area places customer service directly on the opposite side of the cash registers, where we get fast help. I once had a vegetable my cashier couldn't identify and he yelled across to the customer service desk for help to verify what I told him it was. It used to be that retail stores stuck customer service in the farthest corner away from the action. Do you do this too?

You can turn feedback into a promotion device or funnel it into site enhancements.

1. Be there when they need you. Place your Contact page in your global navigation so that it appears on every page. Increase the font size of your toll-free phone number.


2. Provide a feedback form, but make it short. Be sure to clearly indicate your form is "quick". Some visitors will balk at polls, surveys or forms that require a time investment. Make sure your drop-down menu has an "Other" category. Don't require registration first. Be very clear with visitors about what you intend to do with the feedback.


3. Watch labels. Amazon calls their customer service page "Help", but that word conjures up a FAQ page, not user feedback. If you provide a form, say so with "Feedback Form" or "Your Fast Feedback".


4. Don't make anyone feel insignificant. Amazon has an option to sign-in before offering feedback and in smaller text offers permission for non-members to contact them. However, another link for "Express" feedback is for members. Not all feedback is created equal? Get permission to use any user generated content on your site.


5. Invite product reviews, guest blog writers, paid product reviews, video, audio, snapshots. Turn your customers into your personal sales force by establishing trust. Let them edit or remove reviews later. Link back and pass "link juice".

Lastly provide incentives such as coupons, free shipping, fee discounts and free samples to those who were unhappy with a product. Many companies truly loathe dissatisfied customers and will bend over backwards to please them. Show you want their feedback by encouraging creative opportunities for them to do so.

About the Author:

Usability Consultant, Kimberly Krause Berg, is the owner of UsabilityEffect.com (www.usabilityeffect.com), Cre8pc.com (www.cre8pc.com), and Cre8asiteForums (www.cre8asiteforums.com/). Her background in organic search engine optimization, combined with web site usability consulting, offers unique insight into web site development.
Copyright 2007 - 2008 Cre8pc.com. All Rights Reserved. Reprint rights by Permission of the Author

How to Build a Successful Website - Recommendations from Google Guy

By Ciara Carruthers

In a post on the 'Webmaster World' Forum, an ex-employee of Google, also known as Google Guy, provided the golden rules of creating a high trafficked website. The post, "Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone" is truly priceless and I personally thank anyone who gives their time offering us all such treasured knowledge.

In this post, Google Guy covers 26 separate points which he feels to be important in the world of Google.Here, I shall pick out some of the points which I feel to be the most significant and easily applied:

1. Four of the 26 pointers by Google Guy speak of adding content.

Add, add, add. Google loves it, and your visitors will love it. Assure it is quality content though. You are looking for quality over quantity here.Sure, you can turn out 5 mediocre articles in the time it takes to write one excellent article. However, once that excellent article is on your site, people will bookmark your page and recommend you to friends and online contacts.

2. Your website should be clean and simple.

The simpler the HTML that you have on your website, the more the search engines will like you. Also, the more simply your visitors can navigate and read your site, the more THEY will like you.How simple is the layout of Google itself? Yes, very simple. How popular is it? Very.

3. Keep your pages small.

Aim for between 5K and 10K. Many of your visitors will still be using dial-up connections. Don't alienate these visitors by building pages that load slowly.

4. Keep your content pages to no more than 500 words, generally speaking.

If it gets longer, that's fine. Assure, however, that it is not rambling, that it NEEDS to be longer. If you can make it shorter, do so.

5. Use your keyword in the following ways:

Once in the title, once in the description tag, once in the heading, once in the url, once in bold, once in italic and once high on the page. Don't aim for misspelled keywords. The search engines are getting smarter and now often correct spelling mistakes as people search for them.

6. On each page, link to one or two highly ranked websites which relate to your industry.

Assure that the links are in context with the rest of the article. Use your keyword in the link.

7. Create links from one page to another within your website.

In this way, you even-out the entire PR of your website, as opposed to having one page which ranks very highly and other pages which don't. So, for example, if when writing one article, you mention a point which is covered in more detail in another article, link to that article. Use the keyword for the other article in the link.

8. Make your navigation system usable; both for visitors and search engine spiders.

For your visitors, assure that it is a simple and clean system. For the search engine spiders, assure that your links go no more than 3 links deep.This means that no page should be any more than one other page from the home page. Cross link from articles as much as possible.

9. Submit your website to as many directories as possible.

Here you will find an extensive list of available directories - "Strongest Links" Many are free. If you can afford it, pay the extra cash to have your site listed in Yahoo and Looksmart.

10. Request link swaps from related website.

Better yet, join a quality link exchange program. I use the "Link Exchange program" supplied for free by SiteSell.com, with whom I host my other website, "Barcelona Explore"

11. Write good, concise content.

Keep paragraphs short and to the point.

12. If you are using your website to promote your off-line business, don't just put up an online flyer.

Provide your visitors with information that they can use, not just information about you and your company. Unless they are specifically looking for information about you, they will click away from your site.

13. Study the information provided by your website statistics.

If your web host doesn't provide a good statistic program, use a free one like "StatCounter". Analyze the keywords that people have been using to find your site. If any surprising ones come up, use them in your site.

14. Partake in forums pertaining to your website.

Absorb all the information that is on there, and more importantly, become part of it. The networking with other people in your sector is invaluable and will prove it's worth by increasing backlinks, viral networking and recommendations.

These points are what I have taken as being the most important recommendations from Google Guy. The entire post is to be found here - "Webmaster World Forum - How to create a successful website".

Following all these points will speed up your success. Success at any speed, however, is a guarantee if you focus on offering your visitors value, by providing excellent content.


About the Author:

Ciara Carruthers is a successful website content writer. Employ her services or read her many website related articles by clicking here.

Someone Stole My Site: How To Defend Yourself When Someone Plagiarizes Your Text

By Karyn Greenstreet.

I knew one day it would happen. Someone stole the text from my website and used it on their own website. Dirty rotten scoundrels!

According to the US Copyright Office website (http://www.copyright.gov):

"Copyright protection subsists from the time the work is created in fixed form. The copyright in the work of authorship immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work."

What Do You Do?

Here are some ways to discover which sites have stolen your text:

1. Find some text on your website that is so "you" that it's unlikely that anyone else would write a phrase or sentence that way. Go to http://www.google.com, and put that phrase or sentence into their search, within quotation marks. For example, one phrase that of my own that I searched on looked like this: "you'll end up struggling to make your business a success, and all your passion and enthusiasm will drain away." (Go ahead, type it into Google and see who's got my text on their site.) You have to put the phrase within quotation marks so that Google knows to search for the whole phrase with all the words right next to each other.

2. Make note of the sites that have the same text as yours. While it is completely possible in millions and millions of websites that someone might have written the exact same phrase, it's worth investigating every site that comes up.

3. Another great place to search for plagiarized sites is http://www.copyscape.com

Here are some steps to getting a site to take down plagiarized text:

1. Gather as much information about the offending site as you can.

2. Print out all pages from their site where the plagiarized text resides.

3. Try to find a contact name, phone number and email address from the site.

4. Go to http://www.internic.net/whois.html and get all their registration information. If they are not in the USA, go to Google and type in "whois" plus the name of their country. You should be able to find a whois site that can get their DNS record for you.

5. Go to http://www.alexa.com and find whatever information you can there.

6. Finally, write to the offending site owner and tell them that you found plagiarized text on their site. List the URLs of the offending pages along with the copyrighted URLs of your own pages. Give them two or three days to either delete the pages, or re-write them so that they no longer include your text.

This is not the time to play nice guy! Tell the offending site owner that you are copying their hosting company and domain registrar on the letter or email, and do so.

Make sure when you write this email or letter, you don't use any passive language, and do not say "please". Demand your rights. It is illegal and unethical for them to do what they did and they need to stop doing it immediately.

Another great resource is http://www.waybackmachine.org.

This allows you to check what their websites looked like throughout the years. You may be able to pinpoint the date when those people served themselves with a hefty spoon of your web content.

Someone pointed out to me that sometimes the offender is the website designer, not the owner of the site. If you are an owner of a site, and you did not write your own text, ask your designer where he or she got the text. Make it clear to them that you will not tolerate any plagiarized text and that you will hold them legally responsible in any charge or lawsuit that comes up over the copy on your website.

Some final notes:

Always put a copyright statement on your site. If it took you a long time to write your text, you should be the only one benefiting from it, not some unethical person who is looking for a shortcut.

If the site doesn't comply with your request, you might have to get your attorney involved. Only you can decide if the expense of an attorney is worth it for you.

I have written to the six sites that stole my text. Two have complied and taken down the offending pages within three days of my request. If the others don't comply, I will be posting their websites in my blog. I'm not afraid of a little publicity, but I bet they are.

About the Author:

Karyn Greenstreet is a Self Employment expert and small business coach. She shares techniques, skills and strategies with self-employed people to boost motivation, create clear goals and cohesive plans, and increase profits. Visit her website at http://www.PassionForBusiness.com

Internet Marketing - What Comes First?

By Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D.

Someone asked me recently, if I were to expand an existing professional services business onto the internet, what marketing steps would I take first: set up a web site, a shopping cart, a newsletter, or a blog?

This is a very good question. Five years ago most Internet marketing specialists would have all responded in chorus, "A website, of course!" Then they would recommend their services to create an elaborate website with lots of bells and whistles.

I had an interesting email this week from a reader who asked me about website design fees. This is not my area of expertise. But this reader is a very smart guy. Why? Because he knows from my ezines, blogs and web site that I've been online for a few years and making a decent living from it.

He's a rabbi who has many years experience counseling people. He now has made a wise decision to start offering coaching services to people, and wants to leverage the internet to find clients, sell ebooks and other programs.

The First Step - Ask Questions

He has many questions about what to do first, where to invest his marketing dollars, and how to get set up so everything works seamlessly and automatically.

While I don't profess to have all the answers to his particular questions, I want to emphasize what's important here. He is asking questions!

Many people just go with their gut or common sense. It goes something like this:

"I need a way to find people online. Ergo, I need a web site. Who can do a web site for me, that doesn't cost too much? Oh, you can? Only $1000. Okay, that seems reasonable. Do it."

It's only later on down the road when they want to start an ezine, or a blog, or sell an ebook that they realize they need more than just a web site. That's when the web designer kicks in with hourly fees.

I've never heard a programmer say they can't do something. They always say they can easily set up autoresponders, gather email addresses, send out a newsletter, create a blog on your site, and even create a secure payment system for sales. I'm sorry, but here's the real news: programmers and web site designers can do all these tasks with your web site, but they will charge you for it, and it still won't do everything automatically. And you will be tied to their hourly fees (and schedule) forever.

Back to the question asked of me at the beginning of this article.

While my partner and I recommend an all-in-one solution and setting up all the elements together if your budget permits, there are a couple of ways to get started.

Unless you have a database of prospects, you will not sell your services or products. Therefore, we recommend getting started the right way by building your database - by offering an ezine or free content to attract people to your business. And, you need a place on the Internet where people can find you and subscribe to your content.

The first two pieces then, especially if you're just starting out and have a limited budget, are a blog and a shopping cart program with an autoresponder system.

Third Party Shopping Cart Systems

A third party shopping cart system is where you get an account hosted online by a company that specializes in providing automated database management, autoresponders, email broadcasting, online merchant credit card and payments, ad tracking, and affiliate programs.

When you start out, all you need to do is deliver your ezine and automated emails through autoresponders. You can get a basic level shopping cart account. As your business grows and you develop products, you can upgrade to get more features on your shopping cart, such as affiliate program management and digital delivery.

There are many online email broadcasting services to manage your newsletter. But be aware that an all-in-one solution such as a shopping cart program will save you time and money in the long run.

We strongly recommend starting off with a shopping cart program that can manage your database and newsletters under one roof. It is better to have all your automated marketing functions with one service provider, than to separate your database and newsletter out to another external email service provider.

For detailed information and questions to ask about how to pick a shopping cart system, there are a series of articles you can review: http://snipurl.com/Pick_a_Cart

What's next?

You have your shopping cart system, now what? We'll explore the issue of websites vs. blogs in our next article.

About The Author

As the The Blog Squad, Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman have teamed up to work with professionals to maximize their marketing strategies by implementing blogs, ezines and
ecommerce tactics. They are co-authors of "Secrets of Successful Ezines: A Guide to Writing and Publishing an Ezine that Gets Results." Get The Blog Squad's free report on the "Top 10 Reasons to do an Ezine and A Blog": http://snipurl.com/Ezine_Blog

Search Engine Optimization for the Rest of Us

By Nowshade Kabir

When you have launched your website, whether it is an eCommerce store or a corporate promotional site, you must have set certain goals regarding the quantity of traffic you are expecting to have on your site. If you did not pursue your goal with specific web promotional marketing strategies, chances are there you are not very happy with the results you have achieved so far. Although, there are numerous web promotional methods available to your
disposal, optimization of your webpages for search engines is the uncontested leader in this field. If you sell products or services through your website, it is even more so for you. Consider this. Out of various possibilities which include: going to a shop, calling a shop, etc. the prospective buyer decided to search for the product online. Then he or she used certain key-phrase to make a query on a search engine and then among other sites, he or she chose yours to click in. As a seller this is the kind of visitors you need for your site! Search engines have more than twice the e-commerce conversion rate of other traffic acquisition sources. You can get these results for your site with the help of search engine optimization.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

SEO is a set of actions carried out with a webpage to improve visibility of that webpage in search engines. The goal is to ensure top places in the search engine results for a specific query.

How important are the search engines? Data show 81 percent of Internet users find the sites they're looking for through search engines. Over 57% of Internet users search the Internet everyday. Up to 500 Million searches take place in a day. 55% of all Internet purchases originate at a search engine as oppose to 9 percent from banners. These statistics are pretty convincing, but surprisingly, according to StatMarket.com only 7 percent of websites are visible by search engines.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can really bring amazing results. Our page http://trade-leads.rusbiz.com recently started to show on the first page of Google for the search phrase "trade leads". Within the last month we have noticed almost 30 percent increase of traffic to this page which is pretty much inline with the available statistics. If your optimization efforts started to bear fruits and you ended up on the second or third page of Google search, you can expect a dramatic increase of almost 5 times more traffic than before and after two months it can be over 9 times! An upward move from 2nd and 3rd pages to the much coveted first page will bring an increase of around 30 percent. Along with the traffic the conversion rate - the quantity of actual purchases - also goes up significantly.

Your position within the first page also makes a lot of difference. The top positioned web page in the sponsored - paid advertisement - receives 50 percent of all clicks and first three top ranked web pages garner 60 percent of all clicks.

Once you have decided to go for search engine optimization, your next step is to figure out for which search engine you should work on optimizing your site. After all there are so many search engines out there!

If you look at the latest statistics available for the month of November, 2005 compiled by Nielsen/NetRatings it, probably, won't be any surprise to you that Google at present has the most search market share. There were 5.1 billion searches done in November. Out of 60 search engines monitored, Google had a share of 46.3 percent,Yahoo - 23.4 percent, MSN - 11.4 percent, AOL - 6.9 percent, Ask Jeeves with its other affiliations MyWay, Teoma, Iwon and search sites of Excite Network has a combined share of around 6 percent, etc. This clearly shows that Google is the undisputed leader among search engines at this moment. That's why in your quest of getting more traffic to your site, you have to emphasize on Google. Other key indicators which favor Google as well are:

. Google is most favored by business people - 82.9 percent of all business users make their queries through Google.

. The Google users are more educated. They are more likely to have a college degree.

. The Google users are from higher income groups.

As mentioned earlier search engine optimization is a set of actions that you have to take regarding your web pages. Here are the key steps of the process:

Select keywords for search engine ranking
1. Make a list of keywords that you think buyers might use to search for products and services you sell.
2. Use a Thesaurus to check synonyms of the words and phrases that you have chosen. You may come up with additional keywords.
3. Eliminate all single words from the list!
4. Go to several of your competitors' websites and check out what keywords they are focusing on by viewing the HTML source of the pages.
5. Now go to Yahoo! pay per click search marketing site Overture, which has an excellent keyword selection tool. Google also has a similar tool located at
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox.
6. Get the search phrases or terms that are popular enough and fall into your criteria from above mentioned lists.
7. Check where you stand with these keywords or key phrases in main search engines. Find the needed tool for this here. http://www.marketleap.com/verify/default.htm.
8. Now try to find whether you should use your keyword in singular or plural, or which one of the two similar search terms or phrases are more desirable by going to the following page:
http://www.onfocus.com/googlesmack/down.asp. Remember, studies show that conversion rate for plural words are in general higher than singular!
9. Now that you have a number of keywords, cluster two to three of them for one single page. Remember, every page of your site should be built surrounding one single theme and focused on
maximum two to three keywords.

Optimize the pages for keywords

Place keywords in Title tag, Meta description, Alt tags, Heading tags, Comment tags. Here is an example:

<title>Search Engine Optimization for the Rest of Us</title>
<meta name="description" content="Article about search engine ranking at ezine.rusbiz.com">
<meta name="keywords" content="search engine ranking, optimizing web pages for keywords, SEO steps">
<meta name="author" content="Nowshade Kabir">
<meta name="copyright" content="Nowshade Kabir">
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow">

Create content

Now develop informative content using these keywords. Use your key words in headlines and alt tag of the pictures. Make sure that you don't over do it! If you stuff keywords more than
necessary for a normal text, search engines can ban your site for keyword spamming. Here is a tool for checking density of keywords on a page: http://www.gorank.com/seotools/. Maximum
preferable density is 3-5 percent.

Submit to search tools

Effective promotion of a website starts with submission of the site to various search tools available on the Internet. There are two different types of search tools - search engines and
directories. Search engines index their listings based on the information retrieved by their spiders which crawl through the hyper links constantly looking for new websites. The directory
listings are compiled by human editors from the URLs submitted to the directory. If your website is listed in the directories you can be sure that the spiders of different search engines
sooner or later will index your site. That's why you should start submitting your website to the directories. The major directories are GMOZ, Yahoo!, LookSmart, etc.

Link popularity

The quantity of links in different websites pointing to your sites is called link popularity of your website. The more popular is your site the more links you get from other websites and vice
versa. Link popularity is one of the key factors that search engines consider in their search algorithm while indexing a website. What would be the rank of a website in a search result
depends on its link popularity in a very big way. Work on getting as many backward links as possible, preferably from the web pages with higher page ranking than yours.

Track ranking

Search engine optimization requires constant monitoring and updating. Don't forget that the competitors are working relentlessly on achieving high positions. The search algorithms are also constantly changing and improving. That's why every now and then you should check out how your site is doing.

Track traffic

If your work started to bring good results and you are getting more traffic, but the visitors are not taking expected actions, this means, you probably have selected wrong keywords. Start all
over again with keywords analysis.

Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing web pages for natural or organic - as they are also called - searches. Once you are certain that you have done everything possible to
achieve maximum results in this sphere, you should consider pay per click marketing with Google, Yahoo and MSN. Effective web promotion requires a combination of both of these two search engine marketing strategies.

About the author:

Nowshade Kabir is the CEO of Rusbiz.com, a global B2B Portal, which helps companies build web store, buy and sell products and services using eMarketplace, eCatalog and other features. Rusbiz also offers website development packages: http://www.rusbiz.com/design_package.html

How Keywords Affect Your Rankings

By James Mahony

This article explains a few things about SEO, and if you're interested, then this is worth reading, because you can never tell what you don't know.

We all want to know how keywords affect our rankings, but to find out we'll need to do a little work. Many say keywords are the key to good search engine rankings, although they aren't at
all the only factor.

If you need a tool to help you decide on your keywords, try Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool - it allows you to test your keyword rankings by showing you statistics on recent searches for them. It's a great tool when you have no clue which keyword you should choose, as it can give you a list of terms that were recently searched on.

Keyword Density.

Keyword density refers to the number of the keywords contained within your text relative to the amount of text there is. Preferred keyword density ratios vary between search engines, but you should generally try to keep them between two and eight percent (major search engines prefer the lower end). Keyword analysis tools can help to optimize a web page's keyword density. These tools are good if you're not sure of what you're doing, as they're very intuitive and explain things as you go.

Counting the Keywords.

Many SEO experts will tell you that the keyword density of your text isn't a very important factor, and that you should be careful not to overdo it. So is there a limit? How many times should you use your keywords? SEO experts won't be able to answer these questions for you, because no-one's really sure of the answer. The best answer is that it changes regularly, and you can never be sure - you have to experiment to see what works for you.

Location of Keywords.

When testing the effects of keyword location, we found that pages with the keywords at the top and bottom of the page ranked higher on Google than pages with the keywords in the middle.

I trust that what you've read so far has been informative. The following section should go a long way toward clearing up any uncertainty that may remain.

Many other search engines also give keywords more or less weight based on their location, but keep in mind that each search engine's algorithm is different. Here's a list of how most search engines prioritize keyword positions, from most to least:

1. Domain name.

2. Page title.

3. Headings (i.e. H1, H2, etc.).

4. Body text (the first 2 to 3 KB usually counts more).

5. Meta tags (especially description).

6. Links (including keywords in the URL or link text of links to you).

7. Alt text (the 'alt' descriptions for your pictures).

Really, though, keyword density is one of those areas where you'll have trouble on your hands if you try to second guess the search engines. Be cautious.

As your knowledge about SEO continues to grow, you will begin to see how SEO fits into the overall scheme of things. Knowing how something relates to the rest of the world is important
too.

About The Author:

James Mahony is the founder of http://www.searchmama.com - A site dedicated to Search Engine Optimization http://www.searchmama.com
http://www.thedomaintycoons.com
http://www.articlesforwebsitecontent.com

Successful Website - Secrets

By Jerry Goldfarb

Does your business have a presence on the Internet? Is it doing well? Did you know that the most important factor effecting your business on the internet is your web site? No matter how good your product is, no matter how low your product is priced at, success on the internet depends wholly on your website. If the website is not professional looking, the chances of your
success are slim.

This article assumes that you are conversant with HTML and includes a few tips on designing a professional looking website.

* The home page should load in the browser in less than 8 seconds at 56.6 Kbps connection. The customer never waits, costing you precious business.

* Search Engines are the agents that bring traffic to your site; about 80% of web traffic comes through search engines today. To make your website friendly to search engines, make sure that proper META tags are included in each of the pages. Before you edit the site or make one, make sure that you understand how to optimize the website.

* Choose your backgrounds and colors carefully. Dark colors and interesting backgrounds take the focus away from the content. Maintain the color and background theme throughout the site.
Colors have an effect on the mood of the visitor. Choose carefully as per your requirements.

* Choose not to use animation on you site. Animation causes slow loading speed and also looks unprofessional.

* The home page should contain relevant information on what you are offering. If the visitor cannot find the product or service at the home page, you will lose him forever.

* Avoid using banners. If you need to use them, keep them limited to 1 per page.

* Always display contact information on every page of your website. Also keep the response times minimal, within 48 hours to promote better relationships.

* Make sure all links and images are working properly on the website. Check for grammar in the content. A professional website should not have mistakes in it and should contain a logo on each page. Make sure that a visitor can get from the start to the end of his destination within 4 clicks.

* The navigation should be simple and easy. Keep all navigation links together.

* Java and frames should be used sparingly, to speed up loading times and to ensure search engine friendliness.

* Finally before uploading, check the site loading different browsers. All browsers are not made equal.

* Keep your site up-to-date and change content every fortnight. The regular visitors should have a reason to come back.

For more information and tips, visit http://www.cobbwebdesign.com/.

About The Author:

Jerry Goldfarb

For more information and tips, visit http://www.cobbwebdesign.com/.

Improving Conversion Rates

By David Andrew Smith

You have optimised your website and attracted a large number of inbound links by one means or another. The results of this are that your site now appears on the first page of the top three
search engines, Google, MSN and Yahoo, for your chosen keywords or phrases. You have cracked it! Now you are getting hundreds of visitors a day to your website. Unfortunately very few are staying to browse your site and even fewer are purchasing your products or enquiring after the services you offer.

You must look closely at your site to find the reason behind this if you wish to improve your conversion rates. There are two immediate actions you can take. Have you optimised your site for the search engines or your visitors? You should always optimise your site for your visitors as they will provide you with your income not the search engines. The search engines are simply a means to an ends.

It is better to have twenty visitors to your site 15 of whom purchase a product or service than it is to have 500 of whom only 5 make a purchase. When developing your site keep in mind your potential customers and put text into the site that they will appreciate, like and find informative. Never write your copy with the search engines in mind and those omnipotent algorithms. Algorithms do not make enquiries or purchases people do.

If your copy is attractive and readable and encourages real people to contact you or buy a product then it is highly likely to be equally attractive to the search engines. When writing your copy you should not be trying to 'sell' your product or service with blatant over the top advertising. Be more subtle. You are fulfilling a wish or a need or solving a problem so be
informative. People have carried out a specific search so the need is already there you have to now give them the information they need to convince them to purchase of you. So as always the
content is the key to making sales as well as attracting the attention of the search engines.

You must work hard at getting this content right. The second line of investigation is to analyse your sites visitor statistics carefully Look at each visitor and how they arrived at your site. That is what search terms did they use? What page did they land on? What pages did they navigate through? What page did they exit on? What area of the World or country did they come from? If they made no enquiry or purchase, look at their search phrase, and where on your site they went, and attempt to calculate why they left without making that enquiry or purchase. Was it because their search was not appropriate for ypour actual product or service? Do you not perhaps provide your service to their particular area? Did they miss or could not find exactly what they wanted on your site because of badly designed navigation paths? Or is it perhaps because the text is simply not up to standard?

If you think it is a structural problem then you can alter this so that people find it easier to navigate to places on the site that they actually want. It may also be a matter of your content so you can change this.

By constantly monitoring your site's statistics you can dramatically increase your conversion rates, that is, convert more of your visitors into paying customers. Finally do keep note of what you do so that you can accurately monitor the changes you make to find out if and by how much they are making a difference.

About The Author:

David Andrew Smith runs a successful contract cleaning company http://www.wesparkle.co.uk for both commercial and domestic customers in the UK. He has devoloped and maintains the company's website.

What Does Your Website Say About Your Business?

By Tim Knox

Q: My business is very small, just me and two employees, and our product really can't be sold online. Do I really need a website?
-- Robin C.

A: Congratulations, Robin, you are the one millionth person to ask me that question. Smile for the cameras, brush the streamers and confetti from your hair and listen closely, because I'm about to answer for the millionth time what has become one of the most important and often-asked questions of the digital business age.

Before I answer, however, let's flash back to the very first time I was asked this question. It was circa 1998, during the toddler years of the Internet, just after Al Gore laid claim to having given birth to the concept a few short years before.

I was giving a speech on the impact of the Internet on small business at an association luncheon in Montgomery, Alabama. My motto then was: Feed me and I will speak. I have the same motto today, but I now expect dessert to be included in exchange for the sharing of my vast wisdom.

In 1998, which was decades ago in Internet years, the future of electronic commerce or "ecommerce" as it's come to be known, was anybody's guess, but even the most negative futurists agreed that all the signs indicated that a large portion of future business revenues would be derived from online transactions, or from offline transactions that were the result of online marketing efforts.

So, Robin, should your business have a website, even if your business is small and sells products or services that you don't think can be sold online? My answer in 1998 is the same as my answer today: Yes, if you have a business, you should have a website. Period. No question. Without a doubt. Thank you, drive through.

Now serving customer number one million and one.

Also, don't be so quick to dismiss your product as one that can't be sold online. Nowadays there is very little that can not be sold over the Internet. More than 20 million shoppers are now online, purchasing everything from books to computers to cars to real estate to jet airplanes to natural gas to you name it. If you can imagine it, someone will figure out how to sell it online.

Internet marketing research firms predict that online revenues will range between $180 and $200 billion dollars in 2003. They also predict that the number of online consumers will grow at a rate of 30-50% over the next few years. These numbers alone should be enough to convince you that your business should have a website.

Let me clarify one point: I am not saying that you should put all your efforts into selling your wares over the Internet, though if your product lends itself to easy online sales, you certainly should be considering it.

The point to be made here is that you should at the very least have a presence on the World Wide Web so that customers, potential employees, business partners, and perhaps even investors can quickly and easily find out more about your business and the products or services you have to offer.

That said, it's not enough that you just have a website. You must have a professional looking website if you want to be taken seriously. Since many consumers now search for information online prior to making a purchase at a brick and mortar store, your website may be the first chance you have at making a good impression on a potential buyer. If your website looks like it was designed by a barrel of colorblind monkeys, your chance at making a good first impression will be lost.

One of the great things about the Internet is that it has leveled the playing field when it comes to competing with the big boys. As mentioned, you have one shot at making a good first impression and with a well-designed website, your little operation can project the image and professionalism of a much larger company. The inverse is also true. I've seen many big company websites that were so badly designed and hard to navigate that they completely lacked professionalism and credibility. Good for you, too bad for them.

You also mention that yours is a small operation, but when it comes to benefiting from a website, size does not matter. I don't care if you are a one-man show or a ten thousand employee corporate giant; if you do not have a website you are losing business to other companies that do. Here's the exception to my rule: It's actually better to have no website at all than to have one that makes your business look bad.

Your website speaks volumes about your business. It either says, "Hey, look, we take our business so seriously that we have created this wonderful website for our customers!" or it
says, "Hey, look, I let my ten-year old nephew design my site! Good luck finding anything!"

What does your website say about your business?

Here's to your success.

About The Author:

Tim Knox Entrepreneur, Author, Speaker
http://www.prosperityandprofit.com
http://www.dropshipwholesale.net http://www.smallbusinessqa.com
http://www.timknox.com

Affiliate Tip - Build A Website

By Nell Taliercio

One of the first things you should do as an affiliate marketer is to build you own website. Yes, you can market affiliate programs without it by adding links to your email or signature file on message boards, but you will be very limited in how much you can earn this way. Building a website allows you to expose the products you are promoting to a much larger audience with less effort.

Decide on a Topic

Your first step is to decide what you would like your website to be about. Find a topic you like, something you are passionate about. You will be spending a lot of time creating content for your site, so it may as well be something you enjoy reading and writing about. Your enthusiasm for the subject will shine through as well, and will get your visitors interested. Once you have your topic, make sure there are affiliate products available that compliment the site and that there are people interested in buying it.

Pick a Domain Name

Use a site like register.com, or your web host's site to research available domain names. It helps to have one of your major keywords in your domain name. So if you decided your website will be about growing roses, try to work "rose" in the domain name. You want your domain name to be easy to remember and easy to type. Try to avoid using dashes in the name and find something that's available as a dot com address.

Hosting

The next step is to set up a web hosting account. You should be able to get by with a basic personal website package to begin with. Get some recommendations from others when it comes to choosing the actual hosting company. You want a service that is reliable and has good customer service. After all, you won't be making any money when you site is down. I have been using Dayana hosting for years and highly recommend them.

Site Builder or Software

Let's talk about how you can build your website. Your options are using a site builder, like internetbasedfamilies.com or software like Microsoft FrontPage, or my favorite x-site pro. A site builder is usually easier to use in the beginning and hosting is included. You will pay a monthly fee for the software and hosting combined. If you build your site using software like x-site pro or FrontPage, you have the added initial expense of buying the software, but your monthly hosting costs are usually lower. Of course a third option is to have someone else design the site for you. You should still get familiar with the site builder or software, so you can make changes to the site.

Getting Traffic To The Site

Your last step will be getting traffic to your site. Optimize your pages for search engines to get free traffic. You can also write articles and submit them to article directories. Pay per click advertising and buying ads on other related sites or newsletters are also great ways to drive traffic to your site.

About The Author:

For more information about websites go to http://www.mommysplace.net and for more information about affiliate marketing go to http://www.nellnews.com

So That's What Goes on a Home Page!

By Marcia Yudkin

In the early days of the World Wide Web, the word went around that the thing to do on a home page is to heartily and sincerely welcome the visitor. Today, this is unnecessary, cliched and ineffective. Instead, an effective home page needs to quickly orient the visitor to what the business or professional practice offers, distinguish these offerings from competitors' and direct the web site visitor what to do if they are interested in learning more.

It's especially important to make a strong and clear presentation on the home page if you want perfect strangers coming from a search engine to spend more than 10 seconds on the site when determining whether or not it is relevant to them. Getting business from such strangers is one of the major payoffs of having a web site, and they lack the patience of someone who has already had contact with you or been referred by a trusted source. Even people seriously
inclined to hire you don't have endless patience to wade through hot air, jargon or superfluous preliminaries.

Therefore, a home page must make it possible to answer these questions within 10 seconds:

• What is being described or sold here? What kind of business is this?


• Why should I do business with this company rather than its competitors?


• What should I do to find out more or get in touch?

In judging web sites for the Webby Awards, I have seen as many rich, large companies as small ones overlook the first essential for a home page - set the context. Orient the visitor. The perfect stranger may need to know things that you assume everyone already knows, such as:

1. What business are you in? Include a commonly understood industry name or the generic name of your primary product or service prominently in the home page copy, if it's not already part of your business name or in the tag line. When this information isn't plainly and obviously stated, many visitors are screaming to themselves, "What IS this?" as they hit the back button on their browsers.
2. Who do you serve? So many businesses - banks, restaurants, dentists - leave it unspoken what state or province and even what country they are in when that's essential to someone figuring out whether or not this business meets their needs. When location plays a crucial role in service, make it unmistakable where the business is. Other times, the answer to this question is more subtle. You need to indicate that you work with Fortune 500 companies, or mostly with authors, or with ambitious fitness professionals and health club owners.
3. Why should someone do business with you? The best kind of answer to this question involves presenting the benefits someone gets from buying your products or services. Indeed, I recommend putting such benefits right in your home page headline. For instance, for a caregiving support site I created this headline: With Support, Caregiving Becomes a Rewarding Journey. For a site about a book on outstanding women scientists and artists, the headline read: Learn From Accomplished Women Role Models How to Create a Fulfilling Lifelong Career. Note the inviting tone of these headlines. Within the paragraphs of the home page copy, refer again and again to what customers get and what makes you different from competitors.
4. What should I do next? Even though you provide navigation links for people to choose where to go next at the site, it's effective to say explicitly what someone with such and such an interest should do. Your call to action might have more than one part, such as: To learn more about how Hyana Heights Club helps you stay healthy and fit, click here. To book your free tour and complimentary aerobics class, click here.

Use these guidelines to create or redo a home page, and you'll enjoy a significantly improved response from your web site both from people landing on your site from search engines and those already somewhat interested in what you offer. There's much more involved in turning web site visitors into customers, but you'll certainly thereby have laid the groundwork for a reasonable return on your web site investment.

About the Author:

Marcia Yudkin (marcia@yudkin.com) has helped to judge the Webby Awards for six years, as well as the Inc. Magazine Small Business Web Awards. The author of Web Site Marketing Makeover and 10 other books, she performs web site reviews, web site makeovers and creates marketing-smart web sites from scratch. See her sample home page makeover at http://www.yudkin.com/sample8b.htm .

How To Display An XML Feed On Your Website

By William Lee

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) has taken off in a big way. Just as satellite television beams more channels into your home than you can watch, RSS allows to you display an endless amount of other peoples content. Whilst RSS XML feeds are plenty, there's not as much in the way of clear, simple instruction when it comes to making use of those feeds.

If you're one of the webmasters who uses a content management system that makes using RSS XML feeds as simple as specifying a feed URL then you're fortunate in that respect. For others, the options available tend to be offered by developers of the software and the usage instructions provided can often be riddled with technical jargon. Many cry, "Use my feed", but fewer tell you how.

One of the best and easiest ways I've found to show the content from an RSS XML feed on one of my websites is to use a ready made PHP parser. Now, don't worry about what that means, just think of it as somthing that someone has already created; a blackbox that makes it easy for you to use content from RSS feeds and display it on your website.

For this guide, I've used MagpieRSS because it's compact, works well and is distributed under the GPL, which basically means it's free for you to use. Now, MagpieRSS is written in PHP so you'll need a compatible hosting account that allows you to execute PHP scripts.

For the purposes of this guide, I'm assuming you've some level of basic knowledge about websites e.g. you know how to FTP, change file permissions etc. Covering the basics of running a
website is beyond the scope of this article.

Instead, let's cover what are probably the most difficult steps; displaying the content from an RSS feed on your website.

1. Download the latest stable release of MagpieRSS.
2. Extract the contents of the ZIP file onto your computer.
3. The core files you need from the ZIP package are rss_cache.inc, rss_fetch.inc, rss_parse.inc, rss_utils.inc. You'll also need the extlib folder together with the Snoopy.class.inc file inside of it.
4. Create a new file to display your RSS feed. I've called mine, index.php. Inside this file, copy and paste the contents of the file referred to below and save it.
5. Upload all of the files and the folder mentioned in steps 3 and 4 to your hosting account. Put them into the desired location, but ensure that the Snoopy.class.inc file is still within the extlib folder.
6. Then visit the file you created in step 4 using your web browser.

That's the basics of it. Once you've got this far, customising the way you present the content of the feed is relatively easy. Just refer back to the MagpieRSS website for guidance on how to do this.

About The Author:

William Lee is the Internet Marketing Fool (http://www.internetmarketingfool.com). The MagpieRSS website is http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/. The code to copy in step 4 can be found at http://snipurl.com/example_code.

4 Tips To a Better Looking Website

By Kaleb Brody

There are many conflicting theories about color and layout of a website, however I would like to list a few rules that will help you improve your website visitor experiences.

I have seen literally hundreds of landing pages and websites that have great sales copy, are promoting quality products, and have a lot of potential to be a great, but the page looks horrible. Today we are going to focus on the readability and layout of a website.

The purpose of a landing page or website is to get your visitors to read what you have to say. Whether you're selling products and services, or providing useful information, you need to be able to effectively communicate with your visitors for them to take the action you desire. That action could be clicking on a link, signing up for a newsletter, or purchasing a product. The size and color of your text play a huge part in communicating your message to your visitors. Having Black Text, on a white background is THE easiest form of text to read.

Using color schemes that clash, or cause the text to be difficult to read will many times cause your visitors to leave your page immediately. If you want to use a different color background or text color, make sure that readability is not negatively affected. Below are a few rules that will help you improve your website.

1. Do not use dark text with a dark background. Dark text on dark background makes it hard to distinguish text from the background color. Thus making your eyes have to focus harder.

2. Do not use text colors that clash with background color. White text on a black background has a "glowing" like affect that makes your text hard to read. Red on blue also creates a negative glowing affect.

3. Do not use large text for your main sales copy or body paragraphs. It is ok to use larger text for links and headlines, but the main text of your page should be Arial Size 2 (12pt). Arial Size 2 is the internet standard.

4. Do not waste the space at the top of the page with unnecessary graphics, flash, or banners that have no purpose. Simply listing the name of your website, or domain name is a very poor use of this prime real estate space. The first fold of your website is the most important space that you have because it is the section of the page that is visible as soon as your page loads. Do not take up this space with unnecessary graphics, flash, or banners. A Strong headline that states the benefit of your product or service is always better than a banner that has no purpose.

If you are struggling with site design or if its taking too much of your time, here's some tools that can greatly help you.

Site Rubix: Not free but well worth the investment. Cost less than most website builders. This website builder enables you to create professional looking websites within 5 minutes, all without any Html knowledge.

DreamWeaver: This software is allows you to build visually appealing websites without Html skills, but may take you awhile to get past the learning curve that the software presents. DreamWeaver is one of the more popular but expensive website builders.

Nvu: It's free, but will take you longer to make a website and generally the site will not look as professional.

Remember, your website serves a purpose, whatever that purpose is make sure your visitors can easily read and understand message. I hope the tips provided above assist you in creating a professional looking website that you can take pride in.

About The Author:

Caleb Caldwell is a full time Internet marketer and web designer. If you're interested in learning more about how you can quickly and easily build a professional website with no Html skills, the be sure you go to http://www.siterubixone.com for more info.

Domain Name Promotion And Web Site Design/SEO

By Jay Johnson

If you do not have one million dollars in your pocket, you might find reading what I have to say worth a moment of your time.

I've bought my Domain Name. Now What?

First a transfer of Domain into your free account takes place on sellers end at no cost, money, time or frustration to you.

After a successful transfer (usually 12 to 24 hours) it will be up to the new owner of Domain to set the DNS (Domain Name Servers). This process usually takes less than five minutes and if purchased from 11J.com I'll be happy to help buyer with DNS or anything else for a smooth installing of a new Domain Name.

The obviously next step after purchasing a Domain Name is to build a web site for your new Domain. Easier said than done? Maybe so, but I'm about to give to you a little of my experience
to iron out any bumps on this road ahead of you to web design/development. In fact, if you will take the time to carefully review the steps below you will find earnings far greater than a miserly one million dollars and this I personally Guarantee!

The Art of Web Design

There are two rules that you absolutely must strictly adhere to for success with your new web site:

1. You must have an idea for your new web site from the ground up. This means from the beginning while sitting directly in front of a blank Notepad screen, to the successful completion.

2. You must enjoy the topic of your new web site to the point of money having absolutely no bearing on the intensity of your passion for that topic.

So you don't have the foggiest idea for your new web site? Not a problem in the least, please allow me to share a piece of my experience to guide you to conquering rule #1.

Being brand new to the Internet I did not have a clue what the difference was between HTML and a web site was. Source Code? Are you kidding me?? And yet, from scratch I built not one, but three huge multi-page web sites that I am positive could have sold from anywhere between $500 and $3000! Total cost: $100 per site. Of course, not having the foggiest idea what SEO meant all three web sites flopped. Domains expired and those web sites floated off into cyberspace.

I'll get to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in just a moment, but first for those that don't have an idea to pursue for web site design please allow me to share the two simple steps to a potential $3000 web site for your chosen topic/passion. And at a cost of no more than $100 for your new web site.

1. Go to http://www.scriptlance.com/.

2. Scroll through all projects listed. (I have no affiliation with scriptlance, merely sharing my experience to help others succeed).

To steal another's idea is not only ridiculous but also will put one on a path to collapse. But what can be done for those with no idea for a profitable web site is to closely glance through all projects requesting assistance to find a web site to mold around whatever ideas might come to mind. After the merging of your idea into a potential web site possibly found on scriptlance or anywhere else, a Free account must be opened to place your idea in the hands of a designer/developer.

Are you still with me? If so, it is important to realize that most designers on Scriptlance are from overseas living in third world countries. The importance of keeping this in mind is due to the fact that the US dollar has a completely different value in other countries. How much does the common laborer in China make? $0.70 per day? I've worked with the Russians, the Romainians and Indians and call tell you those I've worked with speak better English than me! Communication is not an issue and the value of money takes on a whole new meaning.

(Should I condense this into a cheap free e-book? Maybe so. But hold on, the best part is yet to come!)

If you are interested in success with your new web site, please believe me when I say utilizing Scriptlance will be a mind blowing, mind boggling, and an absolutely wonderful pleasant and enlightening experience!

Before I go any further, there is one web site/school that is an absolute must for web site design/ownership. Memorizing tons and tons of code is just plain stupid! In fact IMOH I really don't believe all those HTML codes even can be memorized! But in order to explain to web designers (those that fix your site when down) problems you may be having, a basic understanding of HTML code truly is necessary. For this education in HTML, please head
over to http://www.w3cschools.org/. A Free internet school to help you understand the basics of HTML code which will prove to be invaluable if you are to own/run a new web site.

Okay, so now I have my Domain Name, and my web site. Can you promise me at least one hundred thousand visitors to my web site daily? I'm glad you asked. Because the answer to that question is a big fat NO. Why? Because I'm about to give to you directions to bringing far more than merely a hundred thousand daily. For those that have taken the time to read though my words of wisdom I'm about to give absolutely free of charge 100+ steps to an unlimited amount of visitors (REPEAT VISITORS) with the potential for an unlimited amount of earned income!

I would find it difficult to believe that anyone can start at step one and move beyond step ten. But the good thing about this list is the ability to pick and choose those steps your feel up to implementing.

I talk too much don't I? Suppose so, so here ya go:

1. Submit articles to article directories.
2. Conduct link exchange activity with other blogs and websites.
3. Run a teleseminar.
4. Be a contributor on Yahoo/MSN Answers
5. Create a blog and join MyBlogLog.com
6. Create a MySpace.com account and make friends with your target market.
7. Create a viral report with links coming back to your website.
8. Generate a software product that you distribute free but advertise your website in it.
9. Build an article directory for a hot niche market
10. Produce a useful web-based software for public use
11. Ask thought-provoking questions
12. Build viral videos and upload them to Youtube.com
13. Buy links from Text-link-ads.com
14. Submit classified ads to USFreeAds.com
15. Publish content based on the latest news or unique items to tap on long tail traffic
16. Optimize your webpages for meta tags, title tags and H1 tags
17. Run online contests with kick-ass prizes
18. Run article exchange campaigns with HTML links in them
19. Generate your own social networking site
20. Produce an unbelievable product and sell it on Clickbank.com
21. Auction off cheap digital items on eBay
22. Write articles for major sites like About.com
23. Create a regular PDF newsletter
24. Talk to 5 people every day about one piece of content on your site
25. Visit online guest books and leave a comment
26. Visit other blogs and contribute actively on a regular basis
27. Use banner advertising on banner exchange programs like BannersgoMLM.com
28. Seek out joint venture partners to promote your site/event
29. Purchase leads from a co-registration service
30. Write an offline book
31. Distribute flyers
32. Sponsor an event with prizes that have your website on it
33. Run a charity event
34. Submit a press release to PRWeb.com
35. Use resell rights promotions
36. Produce a web or blog template using Open Source license
37. Create a community with a community badge/chicklet for identity
38. Look for newsworthy information and syndicate to Digg.com
39. Use your MSN nickname/message
40. Provide a free download on your site with a message on the back of your business card
41. Leave an email signature
42. Have a tell-a-friend form
43. Newspaper advertismenets
44. Direct response mail
45. Regular podcasts
46. Run a "live" seminar
47. Create an affiliate program
48. Get invited to events
49. Run a 24-hour answering service
50. Give people the right to syndicate your content
51. Keep your content fresh
52. Create multiple offers
53. Use ping sites for your blog
54. Use article submission services like ArticleAnnouncer.com to create backlinks
55. Give a DVD out for free that requires opt-insk
56. Car decals with your website on it
57. Generate a member-get-member promotion
58. Offer a 50% sale for products on your site
59. Create an online community of friends
60. Invite 10 people to visit your site on a regular basis
61. Print t-shirts with your URL
62. Advertise in trade magazines
63. Advertise in the main newspapers
64. Radio interviews
65. TV interviews
66. TV advertisements
67. Use Google Adwords
68. Use MSN Adcenter
69. Use Yahoo Search Marketing
70. Use Adbrite
71. Getresponse Co-registration service
72. Optimize your website for a specific, targeted key phrase
73. Use PayPerPost.com to get bloggers to write about your site

74. Run a Web 2.0 community
75. Advertise in the Yellow Pages
76. Directory submissions
77. Affiliate directory submissions
78. Direct email campaigns with list owners
79. Use direct response postcards
80. Build a free software directory
81. Build a free image directory
82. Offer a bonus product during a product launch to JV partners
83. Use well-optimized websites and content
84. Bait providers to visit your website through eLance.com and Scriptlance.com
85. Purchase outdoor advertising space at targeted locations
86. Create an Opt-in mailing list
87. Visit and participate in forums related to your niche.
88. Build more backlinks for popular keywords
89. Narrow your market to a specific niche
90. Build more websites within related niches
91. Attend more seminars to gain connections
92. Use a Feed Reader to subscribe to RSS feeds - comment on targeted posts
93. Have multiple distribution locations for a physical product

94. Create your own products and let affiliates sell them
95. Blog controversially
96. Deliberately start an online war (flaming - not recommended)
97. Look for related websites in #1 position and buy advertising space from them
98. Set up account with Squidoo.com
99. Set up account with Hi5.com
100. Set up account with Multiply.com
101. Set up account with iConnectE.com
102. Set up account with Huminity.com
103. Do a giveaway rights promotion
104. Build a presence on 43 things
105. Create an affiliate promotion with Clickbank
106. Run a Cost-Per-Lead program
107. Find a Cause to support and promote the cause
108. Get people involved in your community
109. Use a tell-a-friend script and place this automatically with people have opted-in
110. Run a blog carnival
111. Use games to "tag" people
112. Encourage article exchanges
113. Request people to submit articles that you will display on your blog for free
114. Build a free online widget that people will use
115. Join discussion groups on Google, Yahoo or MySpace groups
116. Advertise on Alexa.com
117. Use Global SMS service
118. Leverage Craigslist.org

Was this list enough to make you dizzy? If this information is not worth a million dollars then I don't know what is!

Have a Great and Wonderful and Spectacular Day! And remember if any help is needed with DNS or Site Design or anything else please check out my `Links' page or feel free to email me.

About The Author:

Jay Johnson is a full time Internet marketer and has a wide variety of domain names for sale at affordable prices. http://www.11j.com

How To Build A Better Website Without Building A Website

By Richard D S Hill

The most important thing to think about, when first thinking about any website, is the user. Like so much marketing websites are, unfortunately, too often developed `inside out' (company focused) rather than `outside in' (customer focused).

All website users have their own reasons and objectives for visiting a site. No matter how targeted any website has to communicate with a wide range of individual users.

To be successful therefore, every site has to give each and every user a thorough but simple presentation of the site's content so that the site achieves your objectives e.g. registrations, leads, sales.

To do this successfully users want:

Simple navigation

Navigation that is clear and consistent.

Probably the worst issue is `lost visitors' - those who are in a maze and don't know where they are in the site.

The site should always allow users to easily return to the home page and preferably get to any page with one click.

Studies have shown that users want to find things fast and this means that they prefer menus with intuitive ranking and organizing and multiple choices to many layers of simplified menus. The menu links should be placed in a consistent position on every page.

Clarity

Users do not appreciate an over-designed site.

A website should be consistent and predictable. For maximum clarity, your site design should be built on a consistent pattern of modular units that all share the same basic layout, graphics etc.

Designing websites that meet their objectives

Everything above is pretty simple, but how do you ensure that you can achieve it?

The answer is website architecture - an approach to the design and content that brings together not just design and hosting but all aspects of function, design, technical solutions and, most importantly, usability.

The distinction may seem academic but imagine trying to publish a magazine using just graphic design and printing whilst ignoring content and editing. It just would not work yet that's what too many people still try to do.

Website architecture

Defining a website using web architecture requires:

- Site maps
- Flow charts
- Wireframes
- Storyboards
- Templates
- Style guide
- Prototypes

This planning saves you (the client) money. The better the site map, flow chart, wireframe, storyboard, templates, style guide and prototype the more time and money you save because it gives the designer who has to do the graphics and the developer who has to do the programming a blueprint.

We are constantly amazed that people who wouldn't think about building a house, car, ship or whatever will still build a website without an architectural plan.

The benefits include:

- Meeting business goals
- Improved usability
- Reducing unnecessary features
- Faster delivery

Site maps

Many people are familiar with site maps on web sites which are generally a cluster of links.

An architectural site map is more of a visual model (blueprint) of the pages of a web site.

The representation helps everyone to understand what the site is about and the links required as well as the different page templates that will be needed.

Flow charts

A flowchart is another pictorial or visual representation to help visualize the content and find flaws in the process from say merchandize selection to final payment.

It's a pictorial summary that shows with symbols and words the steps, sequence, and relationship of the various operations involved and how they are linked so that the flow of visitors and information through the site is optimized.

Wireframes

Wireframes take their name from the skeletal wire structures that underlie a sculpture. Without this foundation, there is no support for the fleshing-out that creates the finished piece.

Wireframes are a basic visual guide to suggest the layout and placement of fundamental design elements on any page. A wireframe shows every click through possibility on your site. It's a "text only" model to allow for the development of variations before any expensive graphic design and programming but one that also helps to maintain design consistency throughout the site.

Creating wireframes allows everyone at the client and developer to see the site and whether it's `right' or needs changes without expensive programming. The goal of a wireframe is to ensure your visitors' needs will be met in the website. If you meet their needs you will meet your objectives.

To create a wireframe requires dialogue. You and your developers talk to translate your business successfully into a website. Nobody knows your business better than you and your
developers should listen to ensure the resulting wireframe accurately represents business. You, however, must answer the questions; questions such as:

- What does a visitor do at this point?
- Where can a visitor go from here?

and ignore questions about what your visitor sees at this point. Sounds easy, but!

Storyboards

Storyboards were first used by Walt Disney to produce cartoons. A storyboard is a "comic" produced to help everyone visualize the scenes and find potential problems before they occur. When creating a film a storyboard provides a visual layout of events as they are to be seen through the camera. In the case of a website, it is the layout and sequence in which the user or viewer sees the content or information.

However, the wireframe provides the outline for your storyboard. Developers and designers don't need to work in a vacuum - the wireframe guides every design, information architecture, navigation, usability and content consideration. Wireframes define "what is there" while the storyboards define "how it looks".

Templates and style guide

Templates are standard layouts containing basic details of a page type that separates the business (follow the $) logic from the presentation (graphics etc) logic so that there can be maximum flexibility in presentation while disrupting the underlying business infrastructure as little as possible.

Style guides document the design requirements for a site. They define font classes and other design conventions (line spacing, font sizes, underlining, bullet types etc.) to be followed in the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) used to provide a library of styles that are used in the various page types in a web site.

Prototypes

A prototype is working model that is not yet finished. It demonstrates the major technical, design, and content features of the site.

A prototype does not have the same testing and documentation as the final product, but allows client and developers to make sure, once again, that the final product works in the way that is wanted and meets the business objectives.

Now you have built your virtual site it's a lot quicker, easier and cheaper to build the real one.

About The Author:

Richard Hill is a director of E-CRM Solutions and has spent many years in senior direct and interactive marketing roles. E-CRM provides EBusiness, ECommerce and Emarketing and ECRM. http://www.e-crm.co.uk/profile/message170807.html

A Beginner's Guide To the Online Shopping Cart

By Lena Crossan

Want to launch a successful ecommerce business? Having an easy-to-use, reliable shopping cart is a necessity. But what many first-time business owners don't understand is that a shopping cart is only one part of the process. In order to upload a working site that makes money, you'll need a shopping cart and much more! Don't panic. I'll gladly take you through what's required to create a basic ecommerce site.

What Is An Online Shopping Cart?

The term "online shopping cart" is mistakenly used when referring to the entire process visitors go through when reading product descriptions, adding an item to their virtual baskets, checking out and paying for their orders. That is only partially correct.

The shopping cart comes into play when a site visitor chooses to add an item to their basket. According to Wikipedia.com, "The software allows online shopping customers to place items in the cart. Upon checkout, the software typically calculates a total for the order, including shipping and handling charges and the associated taxes, as applicable." That's it.

Until your visitors add an item to their carts, and after they initiate payment, the shopping cart isn't involved. Those functions take additional types of software and accounts. Let me explain.

In the Beginning.

When a visitor types in your URL (also called a domain name or web address), he/she can view your website. The website is what delivers your pictures and product descriptions. It includes the design and any necessary programming to make the basic site function. Perhaps the site uses a content management system (CMS) to serve up your products in a logical way or it may
simply use basic HTML. Either way, once the site design is completed, you are now able to show your products to the world. But that's all. At this point, they can't buy anything. This is where the online shopping cart enters the game.

The shopping cart provides visitors with the ability to create a list of items they want to buy. It stores the items as the shopper continues to browse through your site. The shopping cart can calculate totals, show listings of what's currently saved in the cart and more. When a visitor has finished shopping, two other components come into play: a merchant account and a payment gateway.

Show Me the Money!

In order for a visitor to pay for their items, your site must be equipped with the ability to accept credit cards and the ability to process those cards via the Internet. This requires a merchant account as well as an online payment gateway.

A merchant account is provided by a bank or other institution. It allows you to accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express and other credit cards as payment for purchases your visitors make. Generally, if you were a brick-and-mortar store, this would be all you needed. However, for ecommerce sites, you must have a way to instantaneously process the cards in real time via the Internet. That requires a payment gateway. Once you have all four elements in play (a website, an online shopping cart, a merchant account and a payment gateway) you can launch your ecommerce site and sell products or services.

Sound complicated? Not really. Because the functions work hand-in-hand, you can find companies that offer complete packages containing all four elements. That makes it simple for you to quickly upload your pictures and content and start receiving orders right away.

The Internet can be an exciting place to earn a living. Before jumping onto the ecommerce playing field, however, do your research. You'll want to find a reputable company to provide these all-important services. If possible, find one organization that offers all the services. Look for a business that has a proven track record of dependability and outstanding support before making your decision.

About the Author:

Lena Crossan is Marketing Manager of GoEmerchant.com that has offered affordable award-winning ecommerce services since 1995. Discover their proven, innovative online shopping cart and other solutions today at http://www.GoEmerchant.com.

Hiring A Web Designer

By George Meszaros

It is very important to find a web design company that understands your online strategy. The company you hire must be dedicated to your business needs. Finding a company that is committed to your success can be challenging. Don't ever hire the first company you interview. Even if you fall in love with the person you speak with you should evaluate other companies. Don't make a decision until you have interviewed at least three design companies.

The company you choose has to appreciate your needs and not the other way around. You hire the web designer to help you create a website that helps you succeed online. The design is not about serving their ego. Their artistic ambitions are only of interest as long as they serve your needs. Don't agree to any technology unless they can prove how it will help you sell more, create more customers, educate your visitors, generate more leads, etc.

Make sure that the company understands your goals. It also helps if they understand your business. When you interview Web design companies ask to see if they know anything about your industry. Find out if they understand the trends in your market. Of course, they don't have to be experts in your area, but it helps if they have a basic understanding of your business.

If you have a service business you are going to have very different needs than if you were an online retailer with 500 products. Web sites for service businesses are usually very rich in content. For example, an accountant's web site may include a large number of articles about accounting advice or tax strategies. A website created for e-commerce is going to be focused on selling products. Such a site is going to be equipped with a shopping cart, a database driven backend solution, online chat, etc.

The functionalities you desire for your website is going to have the greatest impact on expense. A three-page web site that serves as an online business card is going to cost much less than a fully functional e-commerce site. A complex e-commerce site is going to cost significantly more because of the technology required.

About The Author:

Author: George Meszaros with Webene http://www.webene.com

Seo - Rabbit And Tortoise Web Design

By Scott Lindsay

Once upon a time there were two web designers. One was Tom Tortoise and the other was Harry Rabbit.

Harry was one of the fastest web designers the forest had ever seen. He could churn out a site in no time while Tom consistently worked late into the night trying to get his work done.

One day Harry met Tom at the local Spareducks for coffee.

"I bet I can finish the `Stork Appreciation' site before you can finish the `Stop and Smell the Roses" site," Harry said with a slightly evil chuckle.

"Well, I don't know," Tom said slowly.

"Ah, that's what I thought. You're a chicken," Harry replied.

"OK the first one to reach the top ten with their respective keywords will be the winner," Tom said.

Harry readily agreed and slurped down his Espresso con Panna. Like a shot Harry was off to work on his newest website creation. Tom took his time and finished his Espresso Lungo with just a hint of caramel.

The next morning Tom arrived at work to continue designing his website when Harry called and said, "Silly tortoise, you should never try to outdo a rabbit. I worked late last night and the website is done. I sent you a link. Check your email."

Tom listened to the rabbit cackle as he hung up the phone.

Tom took his time making sure every page, Meta title, photograph and article was SEO friendly. He made sure he submitted information to the main Internet directories and he quietly watched as his finished website rose in the search engine rankings.

Then came the morning when the site was ranked in the top ten. That's when he called Harry, "Did you notice I won the contest?"

"What contest?" the rabbit bellowed.

Tom explained and the rabbit was fit to be tied.

"It's like my dad always said, Harry, `Slow and steady, wins the race,'" Tom replied.

The moral of this fractured fairly tale is that simply building a website is not enough to ensure that people will visit or that search engines will take notice.

Like the children's story, the individual that is methodical and consistent in web development and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will likely do much better in the long run than a hastily prepared site that lacks a cohesive purpose in online marketing.

Do everything you can to optimize your website with specific keywords or phrases and watch your site visitation statistics improve.

About The Author:

Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with HighPowerSites at: http://www.highpowersites.com. Start your own ebook business with BooksWealth at: http://www.bookswealth.com

25 + Common Website Design Mistakes To Avoid

By Debbie Ray

I'm sure you've seen examples of great websites on the internet - and also examples of really "Bad" websites. First impressions are extremely important - you have about 20 seconds to make that first impression a good one. If you want your visitor to come back you've got to do a lot to impress them in an extremely short period of time.

Many individuals or small business owners often opt to design and build their own websites. Without proper experience or website design background many mistakes are made. If you are a beginner then there are several things you should keep in mind to avoid before designing your website.

Here are several common mistakes which should be avoided when designing your new website.

1. Slow Loading Pages

Problem: Have you ever gone to a website and waited and waited for it to load?

Solution: Optimize your images at a lower resolution to achieve faster loading pages. Keep your page sizes well under 60 KB.

2. Page Layout

Problem: Websites that have the navigation in different places throughout the site. It looks cluttered and unprofessional.

Solution: Be consistent and be organized in your websites layout. Make sure all your web pages look the same and the websites navigation is in the same location on each page.

3. Wild and Crazy Color Schemes

Problem: Have you ever visited a website that has a background with a bright, neon color and can't read the content because the colors are so loud? What's the point?

Solution: Think "easy to read." Avoid dark backgrounds with light colored fonts. White background with black text is best for the general public.

4. Spelling and Grammar Errors

Problem: Spelling and grammar errors just jump off the page.

Solution: Always spell check.

5. Text on the Page

Problem: Most internet users don't read web pages - they scan them.

Solution: Make sure your page is easy to read. Break text into manageable pieces, use sub headings, short paragraphs, highlighted keywords and bullet points.

6. Font Styles and Sizes

Problem: Serif fonts such as Times New Roman are more difficult to read on a computer monitor. Also, text that is too small or way too big are hard to read.

Solution: Use non-serif fonts such as Arial, Verdana or MS Sans Serif for web pages that will be read online. Your page will look much better, more professional, and will be much easier for your visitor to read.

7. Not Enough "White Space"

Problem: Too many words on a web page can be overwhelming.

Solution: Make your page easy to read by breaking the text into smaller, more manageable pieces. Also, use sub-headings and bullet points.

8. Cheesy Music that the User Cannot Control

Problem: Background music on a site that does not fit. Next, not being able to shut it off.

Solution: If you think you need to use music on your website for some reason, then make sure you offer your visitors the option to turn it off, or on, quickly and easily.

9. Poor Layout and Design

Problem: Have you ever been to a website that is simply just "too much"? It's like they are trying to fill every available pixel of space on the entire page.

Solution: Don't overdo it when designing your pages. Just because you can add something doesn't mean you have to. Leave plenty of white space between your text and images.

10. Overly Long Pages

Problem: Ever been to a website with a page that just scrolls down forever?

Solution: Most people will never scan down to the bottom of really long pages. It's better to have several short pages vs. a few really long pages.

11. Non-Standard Links

Problem: You go to a website and aren't sure which words are really links because the link colors have been changed.

Solution: Don't confuse your users. Keep the link colors as they are.

12. Under Construction signs

Problem: Have you ever been to a website and found a page with no content of any type but a big "Under Construction" sign instead?

Solution: Don't use "Under Construction" signs on your website.

13. Didn't Test Your Web Site

Problem: Ever been to a website that just looks like a mess? Maybe you saw text overlapping images, weird alignment, etc.

Solution: Always check to see what your site looks like in multiple browsers and change accordingly before uploading your site to the web.

14. Unclear Navigation

Problem: You don't enjoy broken links, error pages or too many moving objects - neither do your websites visitors. If navigation is too difficult to follow, visitors won't return.

Solution: Make sure that your navigation is easy to read, find and to follow. Also, make sure that it is in the same spot on all of your websites pages.

15. Sloppy Web Site Copy

Problem: Have you ever visited a website with missing words, bad grammar, or it just didn't make sense?

Solution: Always remember, "Content is King" on the internet, so make sure there is plenty of good, focused information for your visitors.

16. Never Updating Your Site

Problem: Ever go to a website that hasn't been changed at all over the last few times that you've visited it?

Solution: You should always update the content on your site frequently.

17. Too Many Clicks

Problem: Have you ever gone to a website, found something you're interested in checking out, and then had to click, click, click before you found the item you were looking for (if you didn't give up first)?

Solution: Don't test the patience of your visitors. Make sure that everything can be found on your site within 3 clicks or less.

18. No Privacy Policy

Problem: No Privacy Policy page is listed on a website.

Solution: Post a Privacy Policy on your website. Make sure that your customers know that you will not share their addresses with anyone.

19. No Company Contact Information

Problem: A company with no address or contact information is not one you necessarily want to give your money to.

Solution: Email addresses or phone numbers are most often seen as contact information on websites, however, having a physical mailing address on your web site adds another key credibility factor.

20. Using Free Web Hosting

Problem: You visit a web page that has a name so long you'll never remember it because it is from one of those free website hosts.

Solution: If you want your internet business to be taken seriously avoid using free web hosting. This all adds to the issue of credibility.

21. Using Free E-mail Addresses

Problem: You visit a website and try to send an email to them, however the email addresses are not associated with the domain name.

Solution: Using a free email address, such as Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail, is never appropriate for your website. On your website, always use an email addresses associated with your own business domain name.

22. Advertisements

Problem: You've come to a website where the pages are cluttered with a lot of different advertisements.

Solution: A lot of people are using advertisements to earn extra money. That's fine, just don't overdo it.

23. Bad Images

Problem: How many times have you seen a web page with missing graphics files or misshaped images?

Solution: Always optimize your images and use the height and width attributes of the image tag. Additionally, save the files in the right image formats: JPG for Photographs and GIF for artwork.

24. This Website Best Viewed on .....

Problem: This is often seen on many beginner websites.

Solution: Simply don't use this on your website.

25. No Prices

Problem: Websites that don't have product prices listed clearly.

Solution: If you're selling a product on your website, ALWAYS include a price with the item description.

And here's a list of things that you should just avoid, or should not forget, simply because it's the right thing to do, website design-wise. And here they are:

Frames, Hit counters, Orphan pages, Anything "Cutesy", Pop ups, Fancy Fonts, Don't overuse Flash, Avoid Javascript links, Blinking text , Animated GIFs, Missing Meta Tags, Horizontal (sideways) Scrolling, Don't underline or color normal text, Don't forget functional links on your footer, Don't forget about your Marketing Strategies, Don't forget to include anchor text on your links, Never subscribe a visitor for anything without his consent, Don't leave the home page title as "Welcome to Mysite.com", Avoid using all the "Bells And Whistles" simply because you can, Not Taking Advantage of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on your website.

Whether you have created your own website or are working with someone else on creating your website, I hope all these ideas above will help you build a better website that steadily attracts visitors. If you've never built a website on your own, I hope the tips above help you design the best site that you can and help you to avoid all these issues in the future. Knowledge is critical.

About the Author:

Debbie Ray, owner of http://www.pedigreedpups.com, http://www.the-website-doctor.com, http://www.pedigreeddogs.com and http://www.total-german-shepherd.com is a lifelong animal lover, dog enthusiast and internet business owner. Want to learn how to build a website? Interested in more dog information? Thinking about getting a purebred dog? Interested in the German Shepherd? Promote your dog related website? Check my sites out for more info.

Using Adsense Templates To Boost Your Site

By Seth Willis Jr.

Your AdSense program can benefit greatly by using a pre-made Adsense tool. Today's most dynamic and robust sites can offer better traffic, increased Web clicks, and a stronger Web presence to keep your AdSense program profitable and consistent. Pre-made Adsense programs allow you the freedom of organizing your data and information easily and effectively.
Instead of the ads being placed haphazardly across a site, with minimal chances of getting clicks, a template can help you put together an appealing and attractive site format.

Pre-made Adsense Websites should be designed with simple and minimal colors for high impact. Take a look at sites you currently visit, and notice the color themes, schemes, and backgrounds. It's likely that the most appealing and user-friendly have only four or five basic colors. Adapt this to your site, and you'll easily create a more attractive site for your potential Web traffic.

Pre-made Adsense Websites make your site simple and easy to navigate. Too much media-rich content, flashing ads, banners, or other pieces will lose the attention of your visitors very easily. Incorporating an AdSense template will make sure that the most important areas are seen first, and a user can be comfortable and more likely to click your ads in the process!

An effective AdSense strategy will include additional articles and links to your subject, topic, or blog. This works even better if you can set up other sites that link to your particular subject, and add additional click-through ads on the sites! Articles keep the reader engaged, more likely to continue reading your site or blog, and encourage them to review the ads around the textboxes.

Pre-made Adsense Websites also allow you to easily track visitors and traffic. When you use this template-style site, you'll easily be able to analyze and see how well your site is doing on a daily basis. Almost all AdSense Website packages offer some form of measuring tools and traffic count devices for you to use. You'll be able to review where people are clicking, how often, and even during what times of the month. If you're linking out to other sites, you'll be able to see how and where these links are coming in from. This information can help you adjust and coordinate your campaign and strategy to make the most of potential Web traffic.

There are multiple benefits to using pre-made AdSense Websites and incorporating blogs. Even though your Website may be full of strategically placed ads, the number of inbound and outbound links on your site can greatly increase your search engine automatically. This is just one great way to generate more traffic without too much extra work! RSS feeds let your visitors and users subscribe to any new information that you post; whenever you update your blog or publish an article, the headline gets sent to your RSS users. This gives them an efficient link to your site to review the whole article, and can give you more traffic whenever you introduce new content.

When creating your pre-made Adsense Website, do keep in mind the value of color coordination, making your site user-friendly, and providing valuable and insightful article information. You'll gain increased user interest, and let people become more comfortable clicking and reviewing your AdSense advertising!

About The Author:

Seth Willis Jr. is the webmaster for http://www.adsenseschool.com he is an experienced internet marketer and has a lot of expertise with adsense." I created adsense school so that I could help others who are starting out and needed a resource and tutorial site to get started, the school is completely free and there for anyone with a desire to learn how to make an income using adsense."

Web Design A Website For All

By Scott Lindsay

How many customers are you losing every day in your ecommerce website? I suppose every business owner expects some customer loss, but did you know you could be losing more customers than you may have realized?

Tim Berners-Lee is credited with creating the Worldwide Web and he always envisioned an online experience that would be useable to all online visitors. This vision included individuals with a variety of handicaps.

While there are web applications that allow vision and hearing impaired visitors to use websites, many site designers do very little to help these individuals navigate their website.

Interestingly one of the key factors that minimize effective use of an ecommerce website design is an over produced website with multi navigational tabs. A growing number of baby boomers and senior citizens are using the web and the use of a site that is difficult to navigate makes the site essentially `off limits' to these potential customers who often leave in frustration.

Consider these financial facts from the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey.

* The 50 and older have $2.4 trillion in annual income, which accounts for 42% of all after-tax income.

* Adults 50 and older account for an estimated $1 trillion+ in total expenditures in 2005.

* Consumers 50 and older own 65% of the net worth of all U.S. households.

The demographic for those over the age of fifty find a consumer base with the most disposable income, increased buying power and this demographic often provides an increased level of brand loyalty.

Interestingly television networks have essentially turned their back on this demographic by providing program geared to viewers 35 and younger.

It is possible that web design could benefit by remembering a demographic who may have an interest in purchasing products or services from your website as long as you make sure to provide a means of accessing the website in a way that is attractive yet easily accessible.

Many websites rely on flash design. In a scenario in which you are seeking the age 50+ consumers you may want any flash you provide to be instructional on the use of the site. However, you may be better served by using straightforward text and graphics and by simplifying the steps your customers must use to make a purchase.

"In most [web design] projects, accessibility has fairly low priority because project managers underestimate the number of people who are impacted by design problems." Jakob Neilson

If you can make your web design appealing and easily accessible you will find all your customers being able to maximize the pleasure of the visit and may likely develop into repeat customers.

About The Author:

Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with HighPowerSites at: http://www.highpowersites.com. Start your own ebook business with BooksWealth at: http://www.bookswealth.com

SEO: Text Is King

By Scott Lindsay

There are so many file types, and the web is incredibly accommodating. For each program you use to develop new information for your website there is a software application that allows you to publish that file on the web.

Portable Document Files (pdf), Word Documents (.doc) and many others are being integrated into standard site designs. Flash is often used to enhance the site with some pizzazz, but in each case the truth is just because you CAN put those files into your site design doesn't mean you SHOULD put those file types into your site design.

For the purposes of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) the greater you can rely on text the better your site will perform in site rankings.

You see, the trouble with these files is most search engine spiders do not recognize them because they are not `text' files. There are search engines that have become adept at indexing these files, but the majority of search engines do not recognize this content at all.

If you find yourself concerned with SEO techniques and their impact on site rankings then it may be worth your while to visit with your site developer to determine if there are areas
where a .doc or .pdf file can be moved to text status to allow all pertinent content on your website to be considered by search engine spiders.

All content on your site should be systematically upgraded to match keywords or phrases that will further assist in SEO strategies. Site owners will routinely contract with freelance writers to revise content for consistent keywords or phrases throughout the site. This is done because as the website becomes more uniform and cohesive the search engines will begin to take notice.

Web development has always been one of the world's great experiments. As techniques become more refined and search engine expectations alter so too can your approach to site design and SEO implementation.

Routinely sites are either completely overhauled or significantly altered in fewer than three years. The site that you have now will be antiquated in many ways in the not too distant future. This truth simply adds to the body of evidence that indicates the web is growing and the SEO and site design techniques are changing.

Keeping up with current trends may be difficult to manage, but the truth is it is in the best interest of the future of your firm. Others are using rapidly evolving techniques that are yielding real results. Yes, there is a learning curve, but the alternative is less than desirable for the long-term health of your online company.

About The Author:

Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with HighPowerSites at: http://www.highpowersites.com. Start your own ebook business with BooksWealth at: http://www.bookswealth.com

How To Make Money Through Your Ecommerce Website

By Wisam Abdulaziz

If you are in the process of setting up an eCommerce website, or of you are interested in increasing the revenue and profits from your eCommerce website, there are some suggestions that you need to keep in mind. There are some helpful tips that will show you how to make money through your eCommerce website both in the short and the long term. This article is designed to provide you with an important overview of tips and pointers that will show you how to make money through your eCommerce website.

Of course, at the heart of understanding how to make money through your eCommerce website is the need for traffic. You absolutely must have high traffic to your eCommerce website if you expect to generate revenue and profit from that venue.

Competition on the Net today is fierce. Therefore, when it comes to learning how to make money through your eCommerce website you need to employ all of the various effective techniques that have been demonstrated successful at increasing traffic to eCommerce website venues. Chief amongst these techniques and practices is search engine optimization or SEO.

In order to master the ability to understand how to make money through your eCommerce website you will want to make sure that the design and development of your eCommerce website results in a venue that is attractive. Consumers from all walks of life naturally are drawn to stores in the brick and mortar world that are nicely decorated and appointed. Similarly, consumers in cyberspace are drawn to those websites that are professional in their appearance, that are - in a couple of words - "nice looking."

Another simple and yet vitally important factor that you need to keep in mind when it comes to how to make money through your eCommerce website is ensure that your eCommerce website completely is user friendly. While it is all well and good to draw traffic to your website, if a potential customer or client finds your website difficult to use, other websites are only a mouse click away.

Yet another factor that you must keep at the top of the list when it comes to how to make money through your eCommerce website is to provide excellent customer service. More business is lost due to less than adequate customer service (as well as technical support as applicable) than anything else when it comes to eCommerce website operations.

About The Author:

http://www.searchfreearticles.com/ and http://www.searchengineoptimizationtoronto.com/

Your Ecommerce Website - How To Gain The Trust Of Prospective Customers

By Wisam Abdulaziz

If you've an eCommerce website you understand perfectly the need to generate a reliable stream of traffic to your venue. Reliable and steady traffic means reliable and steady profits. Of course, there are many factors that come into play when you are dealing with developing and then maintaining a strong traffic flow to your website. Chief amongst these considerations is gaining the trust of prospective customers or clients when it comes to your eCommerce website. Through this article, you will be provided with an overview of tactics and strategies that you can employ when it comes to gaining the trust of prospective customers or clients for your eCommerce website.

Develop and Design an Appealing Site

One of the most important steps that you will need to take in order to gain the trust of prospective customers or clients is to ensure that your eCommerce website is attractive. Consumers naturally are more inclined to put their trust in an eCommerce website that is professional in its appearance. Business is lost each and every day in cyberspace due to the unprofessional appearance of some eCommerce website venues.

Testimonials can be Useful and Helpful

Another method that you can employ to instill confidence and to gain the trust of prospective customers or clients is the inclusion of testimonials from satisfied customers or clients at your eCommerce website. History oftentimes is the best indication of future performance. Therefore, by including testimonials from satisfied customers or clients at your eCommerce website, you will be taking an important and meaningful step in gaining the confidence of prospective customers or clients.

List Affiliations at Your Website

If you are part of any association or organization, you should include those affiliations at your website. For example, if your business is part of a Chamber of Commerce or some sort of recognized Internet organization or association, you would be well served by listing this information at your eCommerce website.

"Contact Us" - Make Sure They Really Can .

Everywhere eCommerce website has a "contact us" section or link at the site. However, it is surprising how often these "contact us" devices, links or pages do not function correctly. You need to make certain that any mechanism that you are using to allow for contact between a prospective customer or client and your eCommerce website actually works. You need to make sure that the "contact us" mechanism is user friendly - that a consumer does not have to jump through a bunch of hoops to connect with you. Finally, you need to make certain that when a prospective customer or client makes contact with you that you respond in a timely manner. This will help to foster a sense of trust between a prospective customer or client and your eCommerce website.

About The Author:

http://www.dirinc.net/ and "http://www.torontourl.com/

Your Goals In Web Design - Is The Key Looks Or Usability... Or Both?

By Wisam Abdulaziz

If you are in the process of drawing up plans for the design and development of your business website, or even for a personal website, you may be wondering whether or not the goal in regard to website design and development should be looks or usability. In many ways, this has been the great debate when it has come to website design and development: Looks versus design.

In reality, when it comes to the great debate of looks and usability when it comes to website design and development, both elements are of vital importance. If you want to create, design and development the most ideal website venue, you will want to keep both looks and usability in mind. Your final goal when it comes to website design and development has got to be both the looks of the website and the usability of the website.

Through the years, many people have tried to make the argument that you cannot judge a book by its cover. In so many ways, this is the babbling of a person who is the author of a book with a poorly designed cover. In fact, the cover of a book is very important - and reputable publisher would tell you that this is the case. The same holds true for the look of a website. A person surfing the Net naturally will stop and pay closer attention to a website that looks nice, that is attractive and designed in a pleasing manner. Therefore, when it comes to your own website design and development goals and plans, you must keep the element of the looks of the website in mind.

Once you've got the attention of a prospective customer or client by designing and developing a nice looking website, you've got to keep them at the site. If you create a website that is difficult to utilize - that is not user friendly - the potential customer or client will bounce off somewhere else in no time at all. You will lose a client or customer because you website is not usable. Therefore, it is imperative that when it comes to your website design and development that you make very, very certain that the final product is completely user friendly.

By following the suggestions outlined for you in this article you will be well on your way to designing and developing a website that is not only attractive but also user friendly. You will end up creating a website for your Internet business that ends up generating revenue and profits for you.

About The Author:

http://www.my-dir.net/ and http://www.buydir.net/

How to Create Search Engine Friendly Title and META Tags (Part 2)

By Kalena Jordan

In Part 1 of this article, I defined Title Elements and META Tags and took you step-by-step through how to create an optimized Title Element. Now it's time to create your optimized META Description and META Keywords Tags.


Create Your META Description Tag

Now it's time to create your optimized META Description Tag.

Take your list of target keywords and phrases and open another text file. Again, you can use an existing sample META Description Tag as your template. Let's say our existing description is:

[META name="description" content="Miami Florists create beautiful floral bouquets, arrangements, tributes and displays for all occasions, including weddings, Valentines Day, parties and corporate events. Deliveries throughout Florida."]

You can make your META Description Tag as long as you like, but only a certain portion of it will get indexed and displayed by search engines. According to Danny Sullivan in his article How to Use HTML Meta Tags, 200 to 250 characters of the META Description gets indexed but less than that gets displayed, depending on the search engine. So you want to make sure all your important keywords are listed towards the start of the tag.

Now take your list of keywords for the home page in order of importance. For our fictional florist these were:

- florists Miami
- florists Florida
- wedding bouquets


Now you need to create a readable sentence or two describing your web site and incorporating these keywords so they make the best use of the keyword real estate available.

Because search engines often display the contents of the META Description Tag in the search results, it is very important that your sentences make grammatical sense and are enticing enough to encourage readers to click on your link. Let's start with:

If you're seeking a florist in Miami Florida, Funky Florists create unforgettable wedding bouquets, floral arrangements, tributes and displays for all occasions.

Ok, so that's around 150 characters long and gets our three important keyword phrases included. But it’s a bit bland. We need to add something to entice the searcher to click on it. How about:

Order online for a 10 percent discount!

So now we have the following completed META Description Tag:

[META name="description" content="If you're seeking a florist in Miami Florida, Funky Florists create unforgettable wedding bouquets, floral arrangements, tributes and displays for all occasions. Order online for a 10 percent discount!"]

Our new tag is optimized for our keyword phrases, it's around 200 characters in length, it describes our site accurately, it speaks to the reader and it (hopefully) entices them to click on the link and view the site.


Create Your META Keywords Tag

We're almost there. Now it's time to create your optimized META Keywords Tag. Let me stress here that this Tag is quite unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Not many of the search crawlers even support it any more. You can see which ones do on this page. If you have the time and you really want to create META Keywords tags for your pages, then go ahead, but if not, then leave them out of your code altogether. This tag will have very little impact on your overall SEO campaign.

Assuming you do want to create a Keywords tag, take your list of target keywords and phrases and open another text file. Again, you can use an existing sample META Keywords Tag as your template. Let's say our existing Keywords Tag is:

[META name="keywords" content="flowers, roses, weddings bouquets, florists, floral arrangements, flower deliveries, Valentines Day gifts, Christmas decorations, Mother's Day, tributes, wreaths, clutches, sprays, in sympathy, funerals, corporate functions, parties, floral displays, Miami, Florida"]

You are just including a list of related keywords to include in this tag. Now take your list of keywords for the home page in order of importance. For our fictional florist these were:

- florists Miami
- florists Florida
- wedding bouquets

Because you have a lot more room in this tag, a good rule of thumb for creating a META Keywords Tag is to include the keywords and phrases your are targeting with your site content, as well as some terms that you don't necessarily want to use in your site copy but are still relevant to the site content. For example, the site copy, TITLE and META description tags would include the most important search keywords, but the META Keywords Tag could be used for keyword variations and combinations that don't appear in the visible site text, but that people may also search for. Examples include plurals, contractions, slang, variations, misspellings, cultural nuances and industry jargon.

For our fictional florist, these may include things like:

- wedding flowers
- roses
- wedding roses
- Valentine's Day roses
- sympathy gifts
- Mother's Day gifts
- funeral wreaths
- flower deliveries
- floral arrangements
- birthday gifts
- flowers
- flowers for wedding
- wedding decorations

So now we have the following draft META Keywords Tag:

[META name="keywords" content="florists Miami, florists Florida, wedding bouquets, wedding flowers, roses, wedding roses, Valentine's Day roses, sympathy gifts, Mother's Day gifts, funeral wreaths, flower deliveries, floral arrangements, birthday gifts, flowers, flowers for wedding, wedding decorations"]

However, when creating your Keywords Tag, you should not repeat any particular keywords within your META Keywords Tag more than five times and exclude commas so that all your keywords can be indexed in combination with each other.

So we need to fix the draft tag to remove the excess repetition of the words "flowers" and "weddings". This is easy to do because some of the keyword phrases already incorporate these single generic keywords.

For starters, we can lose the single "flowers" as it is already covered by some of the other phrases like "wedding flowers". Next, we can drop "roses" for the same reason. Then we can combine some keyword phrases together to save space, e.g. "flowers for wedding" and "wedding decorations" can be integrated to become "flowers for wedding decorations" so we can lose the extra instance of "wedding".

So now we have the following completed META Keywords Tag:

[META name="keywords" content="florists Miami florists Florida wedding bouquets wedding flowers wedding roses Valentine's Day roses sympathy gifts Mother's Day gifts funeral wreaths flower deliveries floral arrangements birthday gifts flowers for wedding decorations"]

Tailored TITLE and META Tags

While some webmasters remember to include a META Description and a META Keywords Tag in their home page HTML code, many forget to include them on every page of the site that they want indexed. Or worse, they duplicate the homepage TITLE and META Tags on all other pages. To give a web site the best ranking ability possible, it is highly recommended that each page of the site include a unique TITLE tag and unique META tags, individually tailored to the content of that specific page.

For example, our fictional Miami florist may have a page devoted to wedding bouquets and another devoted to funeral wreaths. The TITLE and META tags for the first page should include keywords relating to weddings and the page about wreaths should utilize keywords relating to funerals and sympathy.

The use of tailored TITLE and META Tags on each page creates multiple entry points to a web site and enables relevant content to be found in search engines no matter where it resides on a site. For example, instead of relying on visitors to arrive via the Home Page, the optimization of individual site pages makes each page more visible in the search engines, providing additional gateways to the site's content. The more pages optimized, the wider the range of keywords and phrases that can be targeted and the more entry points are created to a site.

(This is a two part article. Click here to read Part One.)

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About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

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How to Create Search Engine Friendly Title and META Tags (Part 1)

By Kalena Jordan

In this article, I'm going to show you step-by-step how to create search engine optimized Titles and META Tags. This is a two part article. This part discusses the Title Element, also known as the Title Element. (Click here to read Part Two).

The TITLE Element

TITLE elements, (commonly called TITLE Tags), are one of the most important factors that search engines "look" at when it comes to determining the relevancy of a web page against a search query. In their ranking algorithms, nearly all the major search engines attribute a high relevancy weight to the content of the TITLE tag.

In the HTML code of a web site, TITLE tags look like this one for a fictional florist:

[TITLE]Miami Florists - beautiful floral creations made to order.[/TITLE]

(Please note that square brackets [ ] have been used in place of open and closing tags < > to prevent this page code from breaking. You'll need to replace all square brackets with open and closing tags.)

To view the HTML code of any site, choose "View, Source" from your browser toolbar or right click anywhere on the page and choose "view source code".

The META Description Tag

META Description Tags are designed to describe the content of web pages. Search engine robots will gather up this information when indexing web sites and often use it when referencing web pages in the search listings.

While not all search engines continue to utilize the META Description Tag, a majority of search engines rely on the content of this tag (together with a site's visible content) to provide information about a site that they can match with search queries. It is therefore important for webmasters to include keywords and phrases in the META description that they would expect searchers to use to find their site content.

In the HTML code of a web site, a sample META Description Tag looks like this:

[META name="description" content="Miami Florists create beautiful floral bouquets, arrangements, tributes and displays for all occasions, including weddings, Valentines Day, parties and corporate events. Deliveries throughout Florida."]

You can view the META Description Tag of a site by viewing the source code.

The META Keywords Tag

While only indexed by a small handful of search engines these days, the META Keywords Tag is still worth including within a site's HTML code, if only to provide those search engines with as much information as possible about site content.

In the HTML code of a web site, a sample META Keywords Tag looks like this:

[META name="keywords" content="flowers, roses, weddings bouquets, florists, floral arrangements, flower deliveries, Valentines Day gifts, Christmas decorations, Mother's Day, tributes, wreaths, clutches, sprays, in sympathy, funerals, corporate functions, parties, floral displays, Miami, Florida"]

The current lack of support for the META Keywords Tag by so many search engines can be attributed to increasing spam abuse by ignorant webmasters. These webmasters thought the keyword tag was a good place to stuff hundreds of keywords in the hope of achieving a higher search ranking, thereby "spamming" the search engines with useless, non-relevant data. This prompted many search engines to filter out the META Keywords Tag or lower its importance within the ranking algorithm.

You can view the META Keywords Tag of a site by viewing the source code.


Create Your Own Optimized Tags

Now, it's time to create optimized TITLE and META Tags for your own site. Let's start with the TITLE Tag for your Home Page.

Create Your TITLE Tag

Take the list of target keywords and phrases that you want your web site to be found for in search engines. You should have already allocated them to the appropriate pages of your site to be optimized. I use a spreadsheet for this purpose but you should use whatever works for you.

Now, open a text file in Notepad or something similar. If you like, you can use an existing sample TITLE Tag as your template. Let's say our existing Title is:

[TITLE]Miami Florists - beautiful floral creations made to order.[/TITLE]

Now take your list of keywords for the home page and put them in order of importance, with the ones you want to rank highest for at the top. For our fictional florist these are:

- florists Miami
- florists Florida
- wedding bouquets

Now you are simply going to combine these keywords into a sentence or short blurb so they make the best use of the keyword real estate available. Always try to use as few words as possible in your Title Tags, because each additional keyword dilutes the ranking relevancy of all the others.

In this case, I would initially combine the keywords as follows:

Florists in Miami Florida specializing in wedding bouquets.

Notice how I've got the keywords in the correct order for the search queries? I've tried to include the most important keywords towards the start of the tag. There was no need for me to repeat the keyword "Florists" more than once because the sentence I've used covers both "Florists Miami" and "Florists Florida". Most search engines will ignore "in" as a stop word, so it shouldn't matter that we've included it.

Although it's tempting to put a comma between Miami and Florida, on some search engines commas act as a keyword separator, so we don’t want to use one here because we don't want "Florists" and "Florida" to be separated.

Now, there is just one problem with this draft Title. Our 3rd keyword phrase "wedding bouquets" is right at the end of the sentence, meaning it may lose some relevancy weight (search engines consider keywords closer to the start of the tag as the most important). How do we fix this? Let's try this:

Florists in Miami Florida - wedding bouquets a specialty.

We don't want to use a period after "Florida" for the same reason that we don't use a comma. But a hyphen should not make a difference to search engines yet still allow the sentence to read logically to a searcher. So now we have our three target keyword phrases covered in a very short space.

In fact, the above sentence now covers the following keyword combinations:

- florists Miami
- florists Florida
- florists in Miami
- florists in Florida
- florists in Miami Florida
- wedding bouquets
- Miami wedding bouquets
- Florida wedding bouquets

When integrating your keywords, remember that their order is important. If you want your site to have the best possible chance of being found for the search query "Miami florists", you need to put the keywords in that exact order and not "florists Miami", because the spider searches the keywords in exact order. Unless they are stop words, also try to avoid using extra words between your keywords.

If you wanted to, you could integrate your company name into the Title tag, but (unless your company name is super short or includes a keyword), don’t sacrifice a keyword to do so. Instead, try placing the company name at the end of the tag so you can be sure that all your important keywords will be indexed first.

In the case of our florist, let’s imagine their name was Funky Florists. We could easily accommodate the name into the beginning of our optimized Title as follows:

[TITLE]Funky Florists in Miami Florida - wedding bouquets a specialty.[/TITLE]

It may reduce the keyword relevancy impact very slightly, but including your company name enables you to brand your page, which may be more important to you.

The content of the Title Tag is also what gets saved in a person's Favorite’s list when they bookmark your site, so having your company name included is worth considering from a branding perspective.

In Part 2 of this article, I will show you how to create your optimized META Description and META Keywords Tags.

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About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

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Does Your Web Site Need a Workout?

By Kalena Jordan

Here's an analogy for you. Yesterday, I was working my butt off in the gym on the cardio machines, panting wildly with sweat dripping off me and my face as red as a beet. Not the most attractive sight, but I figure, you're at the gym to work out right? I might as well "go hard" or "go home", as they say.

As I looked around me, I could see all these people simply going through the motions. There they were, minus perspiration in their shiny new lycra and expensive gym shoes, casually walking on the treadmill or lazily turning the wheels on a bike while reading a book or glued to the TV screens in front of them. Only a few seemed to be there for the actual purpose of working out. The rest seemed to be there to check out the talent or to simply keep up the appearance of fitness, while doing the bare minimum.

Huh? I don't get it. Why have these gym bimbos paid so much money for a gym membership and all the related gear if they aren't going to take full advantage of their investment?

Then it struck me - these gymbos were just like those companies who spend thousands of dollars on a shiny new website with all the bells and whistles like graphic design, blogs, shopping carts, web analytics, the lot and then fail to take advantage of it. I see it so often, regardless of company size. Web sites that could easily be bringing in loads of traffic and revenue simply wasting away because nobody can be bothered tracking visitor activity, analyzing trends or checking for search engine compatibility and usability.

These companies are simply keeping up appearances, investing heavily in Internet technology because their competitors are doing the same. But no thought has gone into the search engine compatibility of the site, how usable it is for visitors or whether it meets accessibility guidelines. They don't look at their site statistics, they don't check for broken links and they sure as heck don't investigate why their sites aren't converting traffic into customers. What a waste!

Is your web site working hard enough for you? Run it through the following 20 point fitness assessment to find out:

• Is your site fully search engine compatible? Are all your pages being indexed by the major search engines?
  
  
• Do you track your visitor statistics on a regular basis? Do you use the information provided by your visitor statistics to improve your site?
  
  
• Is your web site accessible to visually-impaired visitors? Does it meet the international standards set down by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)?
  
  
• Do you know which sites and search engines provide you with the most traffic? Do you use this information to increase your traffic further?
  
  
• Do you track the source of all reported errors in your site statistics and fix them promptly?
  
  
• Do you know which keywords your site was found for in the search engines? Have you conducted keyword research to determine what search terms your target markets are looking for so you can optimize for them?
  
  
• Does your web site HTML code validate to W3 standards? Do you check for validation regularly?
  
  
• Does your site contain zero broken links? Do you check for and fix broken links regularly?
  
  
• Has your site been fully search engine optimized to integrate your target search terms into your Page Titles, META Tags and visible page text?
  
  
• Have you created and submitted an XML sitemap to Google Sitemaps?
  
  
• Have you created and submitted a sitemap to Yahoo Site Explorer?
  
  
• Have you checked to see if your site meets Google's Webmaster Guidelines?
  
  
• Do you measure your visitor sign-ups and conversions on a regular basis? Do you tweak your landing page copy to increase the conversion rates?
  
  
• Is your site navigation intuitive and are your visitors following the navigation paths you intended?
  
  
• Do you encourage feedback from your site visitors and provide an obvious way for them to provide such feedback?
  
  
• Are there at least 250 words of text on your home page to satisfy search engines?
  
  
• Does your site contain a visible, text-based site map to aid user navigation?
  
  
• Do you have an ongoing link building campaign running to secure more incoming links to your site and improve your site's link popularity score?
  
  
• Does your site have a high percentage of repeat visitors? Are the majority of your visitors staying on your site for more than a minute?
  
  
• Do your search engine referrals and site traffic figures grow each month?

Unless you can answer yes to all the questions in the above checklist, your web site is not working hard enough for you and needs a workout. Get to it!

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About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

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20 Things You Need to Know Before Optimizing Your Site

By Kalena Jordan

One of the most important aspects of a search engine optimization project is also one of the most overlooked – preparation! There are some important steps to take in advance of optimizing your site that will make sure your SEO is successful.

Before You Start

Before you start any search engine optimization campaign, whether it’s for your own site or that belonging to a client, you need to answer the following questions:

1) What is the overall motivation for optimizing this site? What do I/they hope to achieve? e.g. more sales, more subscribers, more traffic, more publicity etc.

2) What is the time-frame for this project?

3) What is the budget for this project?

4) Who will be responsible for this project? Will it be a joint or solo effort? Will it be run entirely in-house or outsourced?

Answering these questions will help you to build a framework for your SEO project and establish limitations for the size and scope of the campaign.


Get Ready: How Search Engine-Compatible is the Site Currently?

Something I find very useful before quoting on any SEO project is to produce what I call a Search Engine Compatibility Review. This is where I carry out a detailed overview and analysis of a site's search engine compatibility in terms of HTML design, page extensions, link popularity, title and META tags, body text, target keywords, ALT IMG tags, page load time and other design elements that can impact search engine indexing.

I then provide a detailed report to potential clients with recommendations based on my findings. It just helps sort out in my mind what design elements need tweaking to make the site as search engine-friendly as possible. It also helps marketing staff prove to an often stubborn programming department (or vice versa!) that SEO is necessary. You might consider preparing something similar for your own site or clients.


Get Set: Requirements Gathering

Next, you need to establish the project requirements, so you can tailor the SEO campaign to you or your client’s exact needs. For those of you servicing clients, this information is often required before you are able to quote accurately.

To determine your project requirements, you need to have the following questions answered:

1) What technology was used to build the site? (i.e. Flash, PHP, frames, Cold Fusion, JavaScript, Flat HTML etc)

2) What are the file extensions of the pages? (i.e. .htm, .php, .cfm etc)

3) Does the site contain database driven content? If so, will the URLs contain query strings? e.g. www.site.com/longpagename?source=123444fgge3212, (containing “?” symbols), or does the site use parameter workarounds to remove the query strings? (the latter is more search engine friendly).

4) Are there at least 250 words of text on the home page and other pages to be optimized?

5) How does the navigation work? Does it use text links or graphical links or JavaScript drop-down menus?

6) Approximately how many pages does the site contain? How many of these will be optimized?

7) Does the site have a site map or will it require one? Does the site have an XML sitemap submitted to Google Sitemaps?

8) What is the current link popularity of the site?

9) What is the approximate Google PageRank of the site? Would it benefit from link building?

10) Do I have the ability to edit the source code directly? Or will I need to hand-over the optimized code to programmers for integration?

11) Do I have permission to alter the visible content of the site?

12) What are the products/services that the site promotes? (e.g. widgets, mobile phones, hire cars etc.)

13) What are the site’s geographical target markets? Are they global? Country specific? State specific? Town specific?

14) What are the site’s demographic target markets? (e.g. young urban females, working mothers, single parents etc.)

15) What are 20 search keywords or phrases that I think my/my client’s target markets will use to find the site in the search engines?

16) Who are my/my client’s major competitors online? What are their URLs? What keywords are they targeting?

17) Who are the stake-holders of this site? How will I report to them?

18) Do I have access to site traffic logs or statistics to enable me to track visitor activity during the campaign? Specifically, what visitor activity will I be tracking?

19) How do I plan on tracking my or my client’s conversion trends and increased rankings in the search engines?

20) What are my/my client’s expectations for the optimization project? Are they realistic?


Answers to the first 10 questions above will determine the complexity of optimization required. For example, if the site pages currently have little text on them, you know you’ll need to integrate more text to make the site compatible with search engines and include adequate target keywords. If the site currently uses frames, you will need to rebuild the pages without frames or create special No-Frames tags to make sure the site can be indexed, and so on.

This initial analysis will help you to scope the time and costs involved in advance. For those of you optimizing client sites, obtaining accurate answers to these questions BEFORE quoting is absolutely crucial. Otherwise you can find yourself in the middle of a project that you have severely under-quoted for.

The remainder of questions are to establish in advance the who, what, where, when, why and how of the optimization project. This will help you determine the most logical keywords and phrases to target, as well as which search engines to submit the site to.

For those of you optimizing web sites for a living, you might consider developing a questionnaire that you can give clients to complete to ensure you tailor the web site optimization to their exact needs.


Go!

So now you are clear about your motivations for optimizing the site, you know more about the target markets, you know how compatible the existing site is with search engines and how much work is involved in the search engine optimization process. You’re ready to tackle the job!

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About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

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3 Steps to a Search Engine Compatible Site

By Kalena Jordan

Is your web site search engine compatible? Despite all the misinformation out there, it's very easy to design a web site that search engines will love. All you need to do is follow 3 simple steps:

1) Obey the Search Engine Guidelines

Nearly all search engines publish their own guidelines regarding the submission of sites, the type of sites they will accept and recommendations for optimized content. Google recently updated their Webmaster Guidelines which cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative search engine behavior that they consider to be 'spam'. They also published SEO Guidelines – advice for webmasters to heed when choosing an SEO. Google was the first search engine to publicly acknowledge search engine optimizers in this fashion.

It's not just Google publishing anti-spam guidelines. You'll find them at the following search engine sites as well:

• Yahoo terms of service
• Yahoo guidelines on search engine spam (covering AltaVista and AllTheWeb as well)
• Yahoo definitions of search engine spam (covering AltaVista and AllTheWeb as well)
• Yahoo content guidelines
• MSN Search webmaster guidelines
• AltaVista terms of use (AltaVista is a Yahoo-owned company)
• Ask.com terms of service and spam policy
• Ask.com editorial guidelines

2) Don’t Use Spammy Search Engine Tactics

Often, webmasters will use search engine spam techniques without even being aware that they are doing so. Or worse, web designers can - advertently or inadvertently - integrate techniques that could cause a site to be penalized in the site's rankings in one or more engines, without the site owner's knowledge of such penalties. The key to avoiding spamming the engines is research.
Keep track of the various search engine guidelines via the links above. Watch for any changes they make to these guidelines and tweak your site accordingly. Trawl the various webmaster and search engine forums regularly to ensure your site doesn't use any of the latest optimization methods that appear to be penalized. If you suspect your site has been penalized, remove the offending content, contact the engine concerned and ask to be reinstated.

Google actually encourage you to file a re-inclusion request via their Help Center and this post by Google staffer Matt Cutts outlines what should be included.

Alternatively, here is a sample email template you can use instead:

--------------------------------------------
Sample Re-inclusion Request Email

Dear [search engine name],

I am the owner of [your site URL].

I did not realize that participation in [spammy method] and
[spammy SEO name] programs could cause problems for my website. I was
assured that these techniques were search-engine-friendly by [your source for using spammy method].

I now understand that the practices used are not acceptable. I apologize for having allowed them to be placed on my website. I've removed the questionable pages and links from the site. I promise not to repeat such mistakes.

I am asking you to please consider reinstating my website,
[your site URL] into the [search engine name] Index.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]
------------------------------------------

To assist them to provide a high quality service, search engines encourage people to report search results they are dissatisfied with. If you spot some content spam or techniques that are clearly in breach of the search engine's public guidelines, you can report it using these links:

• Google spam report or via search-quality@google.com
  
• AllTheWeb relevancy problem report (AllTheWeb is a Yahoo-owned company)
• AltaVista search results manipulation report (or via Yahoo's spam report)
• Yahoo spam report
• Ask.com spam report or via information@ask.com

3) Build Sites for Visitors Rather than Search Engines

The methodologies may have changed over the years, but the same principles have always applied to "good" or "white hat" SEO. Build sites for humans, not search engines. Make the site as user friendly as possible, avoid the bells and whistles and include high quality, relevant content.

Wherever possible, include text-based content and navigation menus with simple, descriptive, well-written copy designed to convert your visitors into customers. Include keywords and phrases your audience would logically type in to search engines to find sites like yours. Only link to sites that are relevant to your target audience and spend some time on usability, making sure all your forms and shopping carts work.

Remember that what pleases a visitor is almost always what pleases a search engine too.

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About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

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Building Your Website: How To Do It Yourself

By Michelle Bery

You've always wanted to start your own website, but you didn't have the funds to hire someone to build your site, or perhaps you just didn't trust the project in anyone else's hands. At the same time, you didn't feel comfortable building it yourself because you were inexperienced and nervous about the outcome. However, over time, you've come to see that many people build
their own websites and online businesses with the help of various business tools. How can you train yourself and create your own online business?

First of all, you should understand that there are various ways to publish a website, and some of them are much easier than others. If you have little web design experience and want to assure yourself that your site will look professional, you may want to hire a professional! However, working on your own website can be exciting and save you a wad of cash that you may want to invest elsewhere.

One of the simplest tools for building a website is HTML code. You can find everything from small guides to internet sources to thick, detailed books on how to write HTML code. This basically allows you to position, size, and color text on the page while inserting images, links, buttons, and other media onto your site prior to publication. Learning HTML can actually be
beneficial because, once you have learned to use it, you could possibly assist others for additional income.

There are also programs that can be used just like a typical written document that build the HTML code for your website as you create the page that you want. You can edit things in Microsoft FrontPage the same way you would in a Microsoft Word document, for instance, and it will build an HTML code document for the web page you are trying to publish, complete with links and pictures. If you set your margins properly, it will even position everything correctly. Other software packages are available, as well, to do this.

Once you've learned how to build the website yourself, you must determine what information you'd like your pages to contain. You can either write the content yourself, if you are familiar
with keyword density and search engine optimization, or you can hire another party to do the work for you, simply explaining what you wish to accomplish with the text on each individual page.

Finally, you will need to choose a service provider through which you can publish your completed website. Some are less expensive than others, and some offer a great deal more personalization, access, and storage space than others. Do some research to find out which options are best for you, then sign up and upload your work to the domain that you purchased.
Once you are up and running, search engines will begin to troll your site, looking for keywords, and your website will become its own home on the World Wide Web.

About The Author:

For easy to understand, in depth information about building your own website visit our ezGuide 2 http://makemoneyonline.ezguide2.com

Quality Web Design And The Future Of Your Business

By WebGuru

When it comes to web design, quality must be the one constant, and that quality must be built into the design, not tacked on afterward as an afterthought.

The concept of web design is focused on building the front end of the web page, and with providing the visitors to that web page with a pleasurable and profitable online experience. How
this interface is designed can make a huge difference in the success or failure of any web based business, so it is essential to get the web design right the first time around.

Anyone who has even considered building a website has no doubt heard of HTML (hyper text markup language) and it is true that HTML is the language of the Internet. During the web design process, the web designer uses HTML to control how the web page will appear on the end user's web browser screen.

When designing a new web page, or when redesigning an old one, it is important for the designer to remember that although Internet Explorer still holds a commanding market share it is
no longer the only game in town. The remarkable popularity of alternative web browsers like Firefox and Opera mean that web designers must make sure that the pages they create load and operate as intended not only on Internet Explorer but on a number of alternative web browsers as well.

It is important as well for the web designer to make sure the web page operates properly, and looks great, on a number of different screen resolutions, monitor sizes and color depths. For instance, many new laptops use a widescreen format with a longer screen, and not all web pages have yet been redesigned to take advantage of this widescreen format. It is important therefore for all web designers to keep up with the ever changing technology to make sure their pages work properly no matter what the size of the screen, the color depth or the screen resolution.

All who work in the field of web design must also be familiar with the many tools and languages that are used in the field, including such popular names as ColdFusion, ASP, PHP, Macromedia Flash and more. As more and more ways to surf the web, from cell phones to portable video players, hit the market, it will become even more important for web designers to use the latest technology to build the best possible web sites for the end user.

After all, when it comes to surfing the web, it all boils down to the experience of the end user. If the user of the web site is not satisfied with his or her experience, they will not return, and no web based business can survive for very long without a steady stream of repeat customers.

About The Author:

For more information web design development , visit http://www.ocitservices.com SIMPLIFYING THE WEB

Ensure That Everyone Can Properly View Your Website

By Paul J Coulter

It is common mistake for novice web designers to create a website and only test the website at 1 screen resolution and in 1 web browser. The problem is, there are still some Internet users that use 15" monitors, or use a browser which is different from Internet Explorer. Thus, if you're not testing your website to ensure that it appears correctly at different screen resolutions and in different web browsers, you may be neglecting a small portion of your potential customers. Sure, maybe only 10% of your customers may not be able to view your
website as you've planned, but constructing a website that is accessible to everyone is so easy that it would be a huge mistake to neglect that 10%.

Screen Resolutions

Screen resolution refers to the number of pixels that span a particular space. If you are running 1024 x 768 resolution, 1024 pixels can fit horizontally across the page. When designing a website, it's not so much the number of vertical pixels that should concern you, but rather the number of horizontal pixels. You need to ensure that the user does not have to scroll to the right in order to view your whole web page. As a quick rule of thumb, I usually design my websites to
span 768 pixels across. Yes, that means that I would be neglecting those ancient computer users that use 600 x 480 resolution. But, by accommodating those users you would not be utilizing very much of the screen, and it wouldn't appeal to all your other users that make use of higher resolutions. Here are some statistics regarding screen resolutions for Internet users:

800 x 600: 14% of Internet Users

1024 X 768: 60% of Internet Users

1280 x 1024: 26% of Internet Users

Another idea, as opposed to using absolute definitions for the screen width, you could also employ relative screen width. The problem with optimizing your website to be 768 pixels wide is that your website may look empty to those viewers using 1280 x 1024 resolution. To do this, just create a table with its width set to 100%. Your web page should adjust automatically to the
user's screen width. Just remember not to add too much content in there or else the page will not adjust properly to users with lower resolutions.

Test Your Website

In order to ensure that your website will appear correctly you should view it using different screen resolutions on your own monitor. Here's how you can do this:

1) Right click on the desktop and click "Properties"
2) Click on the "Settings" tab
3) Move the slider through all the different resolutions and hit "OK"
4) Open up your website and see if there is any scrolling required

Ensure Browser Compatibility

If you're coding your website with an editor, you should be aware that there may be slight differences in the website's appearance depending on the brand of browser you are using. Over 70% of Internet users surf the web with Internet Explorer, but you should check to make sure your site looks consistent in Firefox, Netscape, and Opera. Also, if you have access to a Mac, it would be a good idea to work through the different resolutions, and then you'd have most all your bases covered.

Usability And Accessibility

Website accessibility refers to the ease of use for all types of Internet users, regardless of the type or age of equipment and software they are using. When you start to consider accessibility over a flashy appearance that may only please some surfers, you should increase visitor satisfaction and in turn, increase your bottom line. If you just assume that everyone has a massive monitor and running high resolutions, you could be shutting out a good number of your potential customers. It's just smart business.

About The Author:

Paul Coulter owns and operates a London Ontario Website Design Company. http://www.ekonline.com/

A Look At Web 2.0 Trends You Can Profit From

By Gray Rollins

Profiting From Web 2.0 Trends

Web 2.0 represents a world of busy bodies. Web users strive to communicate, to change applications for the better, and improve each other's sites and software. Web 2.0 trends are pushing anything interactive and collaborative ahead of the pack. The applications that require collaboration are the ones attracting the highest number of users.

To take advantage of the most popular web 2.0 trends, consider what parts of your site might be better served by an interactive interface. If there isn't an aspect that would be served better by a wiki style format, then consider other ways to personalize your content. One way to do this is by keeping a blog related to your content. This could be about all of the great applications you are finding for your products, or about your business in general, or it could even be a personal blog to give an added, personal dimension to your site. People, for whatever reason, love to read blogs. They are an addictive form of entertainment, almost like a book emerging in short chapters. Profiting from this trend means keeping the blog updated with relevant, engaging information that will bring people back to the site to read the next update. And while they are there, they may just become customers.

Using web 2.0 trends also means keeping them in mind when you decide what products to sell. Items that take advantage of the whole web 2.0 shebang are going to have better marketing possibilities than those that don't. An ebook or some software that enables people to market blogs, for instance, would be something that is likely to searched for.

Keep web 2.0 trends in mind when designing your site. If this was not done the first time around, you might consider a redesign to incorporate some aspects of it. Internet users now
like having some control over the content that they read. This can include giving them a place to leave comments. In web 1.0, this was accomplished with a general guest book page. This new phase however, has made a comments section on each page the new norm. This can be as simple as allowing them to change the fonts sizes on the page to suit themselves.

On a product-centered site, the testimonials page has long been a staple. Using web 2.0 concepts can include creating an interactive testimonials page as an effective way to bring customers in to add content. No longer will you have to seek out testimonials, as they will be pasted to the site even as you sleep. This of course will mean more work on the part of the site owner, to take off any obnoxious comments, but it is a way to attract customers wanting to add their own positive reviews. The web 2.0 revolutions means everyone has opinions about everything, and they all seem to wan their opinions known and broadcasted. Let them do it they may just be back to see what he other busy bodies have been up to.

About The Author:

Gray Rollins is a featured writer for the Ultimate Traffic Blueprint. If you want to keep up with the latest methods for driving traffic to your website, be sure to visit http://www.ultimatetrafficblueprint.com/blog/ and for marketing advice, visit http://www.marketingeffects.com/

Learn How To Create A Web Site

By IPRWire Staff Writer

Have you always wanted to learn how to create a web site? A web site is a great investment for a business, or a fun way to put yourself out there in the world and let your friends and family
see what you've been up to. For a small business or individual family page, it may not be worth it to hire a professional to create a web site for you. After all, there are other services available. One option is to use a template style program, which allows you to choose a classic, easy on the eyes format and individualize it to build your own personal page or business platform. Web hosting companies often have services like this which are free with a hosting package.

There are many reasons people may want to claim their own corner of the Internet and create a web site:

* A web page allows customers to find businesses more easily - many people look on the Internet first when they want to find a product or service, if only to research. They may
then order it online, or go to the store with more confidence because they have already researched the product. This means a web page can often be an easy form of advertising - you can convey a lot more information to a customer than with a billboard or a flyer.

* A family may want a way to keep connected across the country. This allows grandparents and other relatives an easy way to see pictures of junior, or friends to see what their buddies are up to.

* Starting your business online can often be less expensive than opening a store. An Internet based business will often have lower costs - hosting a site versus renting a location is highly affordable.

It's easy to create a web site. Using a hosting service, you can get your pages hosted on a server for a low monthly fee, and use a custom package make your site in a few simple steps. The only technical knowledge required will be pointing and clicking as you load on pictures and text. You will also receive extra conveniences such as email addresses to match your site.

A few good things to remember:

* Choose a domain name that reflects something about your business. Your business name would be ideal, as long as it also includes some reference to what your business does. If your business' name is Bob's, you may want to add something to the name, such as Bobspancakes.com if you sell pancake mixes.

* At the same time, do not be too specific. If your company grows, you may not want to change the name of your web site. If you think you might add to your company in the future, you
might choose Bobsbreakfastmixes.com or Bobsmixes.com, to allow for growth.

* Keep your pages easy to read. It can be tempting to add a lot of graphics and bits of video, but it may turn off potential customers if your pages take too long to load or are too distracting.

For more information as you create a web site, check out ABI Hosting at http://www.abihosting.com, a full service company dedicated to helping people and businesses create a successful Internet presence.

About The Author:

http://www.abihosting.com was founded in 1998 in Northern California and has a top notch reputation for providing web builders and creating web sites.

Enjoy Developing A Web Site With Web Builder

By IPRWire Staff Writer

Creating your own web site or page on the Internet can be easy when using a web builder. There are many templates available for people to choose from, and all they have to do is upload
their own text and pictures into their chosen template, often using an easy web builder. But to make your own site stand out, it is important to have your own unique design.

Because the skill level of people using the Internet varies, from professional site designers to those who are happy with pointing and clicking, it is important for any company that features hosting services to provide a variety of packages, often including an easy way for individuals and small businesses to design their own site.

ABI Hosting can provide an easy web builder for anyone to use. Even those used to HTML and writing their own code will appreciate the ease of this program, which allows people to see what they are doing as they are doing it, rather than writing out strings of commands and hoping that each item will turn out exactly where you want it. This makes it easy to customize a web site, whether it is a family memories themed site, or a business selling products over the Internet, and can be completed in five quick steps.

While you want your site to be unique, and it can be easy to add extra items with a web builder, you also want it to be easy to read and appealing. Here are a few tips:

* Avoid using too much movement. A lot of flashing images or words moving across the screen can be distracting and difficult to read.

* Be sure to have contrast. Dark letters on a light background, or light letters on a dark background.

* If there is a lot of content on a particular page, use borders or boxes to help readers keep track of what they are reading.

* Choose basic colors, and use a few other colors for contrast. Too many colors can be distracting to the eye.

Once you've designed your site, you need to have a way to get people to find it. For many industries, there are chat rooms and forums where members of those industries meet. Join a few, and make insightful posts, with your web site in the signature. Or join forums where you think your customers might be - if you are selling yarn, you might comment in a crochet forum. You can also place ads on other web sites, either by buying space or through programs such as Google Adwords. Building traffic can take time, so the sooner you get your site up and running, the better.

A hosting service with a simple and flexible web builder can get your site onto the Internet quickly, but with high quality results. This will allow you to spend your time focusing on other aspects of your business. The Internet is also a great way to grow a business, both as an advertising method and as another way to sell to your customers.

Visit ABI Hosting at http://www.abihosting.com for more information about web site hosting and how to make your company a destination on the Internet.

About The Author:

http://www.abihosting.com was founded in 1998 in Northern California and has a top notch reputation for providing web builders and creating web sites.

Packages For Choosing Internet Hosting

By Victor Nunn

In order to do business online, many people rely on the packages of services found through Internet hosting sites. These packages for choosing Internet hosting can be used by individuals, or small, medium and large businesses. They are suitable for doing business online with a professional image projected that will help your online business expand farther than you ever dreamed possible.

All of the packages for choosing Internet hosting will be offered for a fee. Some of those fees are presented in the form of set-up fees, which allow the Internet hosting site to provide you with domain name registration and the opportunity to have your business website built by web professionals or offered in a website design package. The website design package will allow
you to custom build your business image from the ground up using your own ideas, styles and color choices.

Beware of landmark services that state they will create a business website at no charge, but will require a 4-year contract for their services at a low monthly fee. In these services, what you will get will be a business website that might be totally different from the verbal requests for color,
links, and basic page design. When these services lock you into the contract, they will leave you with a website and nothing else.

Nobody will be able to find your website on the Internet because these landmark typed services do not include that in their free website package offerings. For absorbent fees, you can find other web companies to market your business. You will be lucky if you can get the landmark Internet hosting service on the phone.

Another area that is offered in a package is the E-commerce website package. These landmark Internet services have contracts with credit card companies who will be included on the list of credit card services your business can accept. The credit card machines that you use at your brick and mortar company will not be suitable for use with your web based business.

The credit card machines that are included in your E-commerce package will come with a four-year contract that is non-cancelable, and will be an additional price you will have to pay on top of the price you are paying for web hosting services. In order to get approved for accepting credit cards on your website, though, you must sign this 4-year non-cancelable contract and the machines will be sent to your address. For a low monthly fee of $59.05, you can now accept credit cards in your online business.

These are some of the packages that are being offered through Internet hosting sites. While some of them are hardly appealing, they are offered and people get cuckolded into signing on the dotted line. The only comfort that a business owner has in these situations is that the business expense can be deducted on the income tax forms. Be wary of what is included in all packages for choosing Internet hosting sites, because some of those packages will cost more than you ever
dreamed.

Some Internet hosting packages are clear cut and to the point. You can complete the web sites yourself, or ask them to do it for you. They let you pick and choose all of the features that you desire in your website, and how you want customers to be driven to your website. Through the selection process, you can end up with a total dollar amount that does not include any hidden costs, and do business for years without any problems.

About The Author:

Victor Nunn writes about http://www.findinternethosting.com/

A Day in the Life of a Website

By Cherie' Davidson

Ah, there he is. What did he do, sleep all night?! We'll never get any sales if he doesn't do something with me. My navigation is awkward, the page flow...well, it doesn't, and humans keep leaving the site after a few seconds. It's no fun for me, I can tell you! I'm a Website, damn it, and I deserve some respect!

My human - he calls himself a business man...ha! - is trying to make a living from me. But what can he expect when he has no clue what my visitors are thinking? This just chaps my scripts, I can tell you.

Okay, in all fairness, he did make me look good. Actually, real good. I'm hot...my graphics are sharp and engaging, my design is striking and if I were a photograph, I'd be framed in a fancy gallery! But doesn't he know, looks are only monitor deep? Pleeeez, get a clue! My very survival depends on business, which starts with happy humans. And unfortunately, as pretty as I am, I'm not making anyone happy. Yep, my days are numbered unless he starts paying attention to my needs!

Impatiently waiting for his human to fill his coffee mug, Website sits, wondering what today will hold...

Come on, come on! We're burning pixels here! Yes! Pull out your chair, there you go. Sit... alright! Gotcha! Now we're cooking. Yep, there's the familiar tap...and...woo hoo! He's pulling some of my files. We're finally going to get something done!

Human has been reading about Web analytics...

What is this? He's adding a strange little snippet of code. Hmmm, interesting, it's nonintrusive, but...whoa, baby! I can see who is looking at me! Wow! There's one from Alaska, and Arizona, oh,ya, and that place humans call Florida. This is a rush! Look at those traffic numbers climb! I've got to look at this deal. Ok, ya, reports, good. Easy to read. My human needs to look at these closely. Oh ya!

Wait a second! Only 20% of all these people went to my sales page?! That can't continue. Hey, human! Human! Are you seeing this?!

It seems Human is seeing the numbers, and he is realizing there is a lot he has been missing by not having used traffic reporting before now...

Ok, we need to look at this more closely. I see that 10% are buying once they get there. Hmmm, that could be improved! Oh, geez, look at that product description page - everyone is leaving when they get to it. What's up with that?! Human, you need to get a copywriter on that page, like now!

This is interesting, that press release he sent brought 379 people to the site. And 214 are from Florida. What else, oh...keywords! Aha! I don't see my #1 product anywhere.

The unpleasant screeching sound issuing from the computer echoes Human's feelings about his site. This Web analytics data is shedding light on some serious issues...

Come on, Human! Take your mouse by the horns and make some changes! This is good stuff we're seeing here. Your banner ad on that sweet little site in Canada is getting great response. Do more of that, would ya? I sure wouldn't mind connecting to some other hotties like that one, and we now know that pays off!

Human, you're...making changes! You go!!! Ahhh, I'm already seeing a difference...look at that! Not so many jumpers from the description page; they're starting to move over to sales. Now you've got it. Oh ya, this is doing the trick. You're seeing what needs to be changed, what works and what flops!

No more long, lonely nights, no more feelings of cart abandonment, no more dollars surfing out of my reach! I'm all choked up...Human, you couldn't have made a better move, and you're going to see the difference I can make now! Oh ya! My virtual world is turning around, thanks to one little snippet and a human who is paying attention to the reports.

What about your Website? Don't keep it in the dark, bored, doing nothing for you. An unfulfilled Website is a tremendous opportunity lost. By using Web analytics, it can do what it was created to do...bring you business!

About the Author:

Article written by freelance writer and Website content developer, Cherie' Davidson
(http://www.cheriedavidson.com). Cherie' is also copywriter and managing content editor for VisiStat, a Web reporting service
(http://www.visistat.com), and their informative Analytics Blog
(http://www.visistat.com/wordpress/). For more information, write her at editor at visistat.com.

Build A Website - The Easy Way To Profitable Websites

By Alexander Marlin

Everyone talks online about how easy it is to build a website and make money online. Is is really that easy or pure hype to get you to purchase the next great thing to hit the online market.

All I have to say is that it is not that easy building highly profitable websites online. But, you can learn how to build a website, that will be fully optimized for the search engines and highly profitable in a couple of weeks, using the same simple tricks I use daily. It doesn't matter if you want to build a website for free or for profit.

To win online, you have to build a website that gets free traffic from the search engines, and implement all other simple traffic methods like: posting to forums, using ads in ezines, submitting your site to link directories, writing reviews for other peoples products, reciprocal linking and pay per click.

First you have to learn how to do your onsite optimization, and for that you will have to:

1) Insert your keyword into the title of your page

It amazes me how many sites online don't have their main keyword in the title page. Just make sure to always include your main keyword in the tile page of your site.

2) Add Meta Tags

Not as important as it used o be, but I like to include it in every site I build. Add Description meta tags and your keywords meta tags.

Use one or two keywords per page only. Add your main keyword into your page description.

3) H1 Header Tags

Use your H1 header tag on each page, I always like to use a smaller font size, like 14pt.

4) H2/H3 Header Tags

Try and use at least one H2 or H3 Tags within the first three or four paragraphs

5) Last and First Paragraph

Make sure to start your first paragraph with your main keyword and to end your last paragraph with your keyword

6) Bold, Italize ad Underline your keyword

You must Italize and bold your main keyword just once, and you must use your main keyword to link out of your site to another website (use that link to create an underline keyword) , at least once.

7) The Alt Image Tag

Well, this is very useful if you have pictures that you will be including on your site. Try to use the Alt Image Tag for your pages, I use the alt image tag on my website header.

Those are the only onsite optimization tips that you should use on each and every site you build. Try to not make it look too obvious, and over do your web site optimization. Learn to build a website the easy way by just following the simple tips I have outline here.

For more optimization tips, try to get your hands on VEO Report by Colin Mc. Dougal. This is the best and most understandable guide to building fully optimized websites online.

I will leave you with one tip I learnt from The VEO report; Before you add any affiliate links to your website, you must first build a website that focus on pure content and include an about you page, and then submit that site to the open directories, like DMOZ.org, etc. After your website has been added to those free directories then you can add your affiliate links and start building reciprocal links and the above mentioned traffic methods will deliver even more traffic.

http://www.veoreport.com/

Now that you know how to build a website for fun and profit, it is time to learn by actually doing something with the information you just read. Go build your first website, the second will be better and your third will be a master piece.

About The Author:

Alexander Marlin, Ebenezer St. Maarten A.N. Discover the simple secrets I use to build a website that ranks high in the search engines. And make thousand weekly with affiliate programs this way. For more information:
http://how-to-build-website.com/

Basic Search Engine Optimization - Beyond The Mystery And Right To The Facts

By Tim Whiston

Search engine optimization has long been the Holy Grail of Web marketing. Every website owner wants to see their sites rank well in the top engines, but exactly how to achieve this remains a mystery for most marketers.

The first thing I want to point out is this fact: The exact algorithms used by the major search engines are actually proprietary, so anyone who doesn't work for one of these companies who tells you they know exactly what it takes to put you at the top is probably lying to you.

The truth is the search engine companies don't want people like me understanding their systems and creating positive results for my clients. The people behind search engine technology believe their algorithms provide the perfect solution for a Web surfer's query.

But of course you and I know better. How many times have you tried to do a simple keyword search and ended up with page after page of irrelevant results?

Whether they like it or not, the search engines do need help from proficient designers and skilled marketers. It's up to us to add the human element that robots and software simply can't accomplish in an effort to bring searchers the best possible results.

SEO (search engine optimization) is a term with a very broad scope. There is a great deal of work and diligence involved in producing favorable search results for your website(s), but this article will take away much of the mystery that shrouds this subject and give you the basic fundamentals you'll need to create some real results.

First of all, you should know there are two aspects of search engine optimization; onsite and offsite. Onsite optimization refers to what you can do within your code to make your files more search engine friendly, and offsite refers to link building from other websites back to your web
pages.

Solid onsite optimization involves the following steps:

Title and Meta Tags:

Your title tag should reflect your primary keyword phrase. This is HUGELY important.

Often when I visit a site I see the domain name in the title bar. The title tag is the first thing a search engine robot is going to take notice of, and if you blow this aspect of onsite optimization your remaining efforts will have considerably less impact.

For instance, on one of my sites I sell an e-book to online marketers about the pitfalls of business opportunity programs found on the web. The title of my e-book is Net Marketing Exposed, which is pretty cool, but do you think this would be an intelligent entry for the Title tag of my main page? Of course not. Who on earth is going to search for 'Net Marketing Exposed'?

So my title tag reads: Internet Marketing E-book Internet Business Opportunity. My target market for the site I'm referencing consists of home-based opportunity seekers and Internet marketers so I have chosen keyword phrases that match these search terms for my Title tags.

And note you can use the pipe character ( ) to separate multiple terms in your title tag. I recommend going with at least two phrases in your title tag, but do not use the exact same words more than three times in your title.

The debate as to whether or not search engines still reference your meta tags when spidering your site is a hot topic among SEO experts. I honestly don't know if the major engines still read the keyword tag or not, but I add this tag anyway because it only takes a couple of minutes and why not take this extra step just in case right?

Whether or not you utilize the Meta Keywords tag is up to you but I do urge you to use the Meta Description tag. We know for a fact the engines read this tag because if you have it entered in the head section of your html it is what displays under your site title in the search listings.

So the description tag serves not only to add keyword relevance for the search engine spiders, it also acts as your ad when a searcher views your listing in the search results. Adding a quality description in this field can improve the clickthrough rate your listing receives once it is found through a keyword search.

Search engine Friendly File Names:

I recommend naming your page files in a manner that reflects your relevant keyword phrases. If you have a page that lists your articles on your site name that file articles.html instead of something useless like page02.html

Of course the main page in every directory will have to be named index, but that's ok as the engines are hip to that; just be sure to put some thought into your other file names.

Header Tags and Page Content:

You should also use Header tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) to illustrate important keyword phrases within your site. For example, the page title your visitor sees at the top of your content should be enclosed in H1 tags and should contain your primary keywords.

And obviously your main keywords need to appear several times in the content of each page. Placing these phrases close to the top of your content is recommended, and you should use underline, bold, and italic tags to add emphasis to your keywords within your content.

I have found the 'strong' tag to be of particular effectiveness. While on a visual level it serves the same purpose as the 'b' tag (creates bold text) my research suggests that search engine spiders respond better to the 'strong' tag.

Be careful not to emphasize every keyword phrase with special tags, and avoid excessive and unnatural "stuffing" of keywords onto your pages as the engines may pick this up and flag your site as search engine spam.

Image Tags:

Many designers and marketers ignore the value of proper image tagging when optimizing their templates for the engines. I can tell you right now I have seen a huge jump in ranking as a direct result of changing the structure of a site's image tags.

First of all, remember that search engine robots read text, not images. So avoid giving your image files names like 'header.jpg' or 'photo014.gif' unless you are hoping to be ranked for search terms like header and photo.

You should also be sure to use an alt tag with every image, and enter a keyword relevant phrase as your alt tag.

Going back to my e-book site as an example, my header graphic is named
http://internet-business-opportunity.jpg, and has an alt tag of "Internet marketing e-book reveals the truth about Internet business opportunities." And the cover graphic for my book is named
http://internet-marketing-ebook.jpg with a matching alt tag.

Onsite Link and Navigation Structure:

Finally pay attention to the anchor tags and navigation structure of your site. It's better to use keyword terms for a hyperlink text than to simply use 'click here'. I also suggest applying the Title attribute to add keyword phrases to your link tags.

Of course if you use image links refer back to the image name and alt tag rules.

And your menu should also be built around search engine friendly tags. For instance never use a 'Home Page' tag on your navigation; instead apply a relevant keyword.

If your website is about swimming lessons, the menu button for your home page should say 'Swimming Lessons' or something similar and not simply 'Home'.

This may seem like a lot to take in, but it's really a very simple formula for building search engine ready templates. Review this info until it is second nature and apply it to every site you build and you'll be on your way to stronger placement in the major engines.

The last, and the most important element of basic SEO is offsite optimization. This is a fancy term for link building.

To get the most out of your onsite optimization, you need plenty of good links pointing back to your website. And you should always strive for keyword anchored backlinks over straight URLs.

Again using my example site that retails an e-book to folks with an interest in work from home opportunities, I want hyperlink text that reads "Internet marketing e-book" or "Internet business opportunity".

A correctly built link back allows you to control what search engine spiders look for once they follow a link to your site. Once they arrive through an anchor tag that reflects your primary keywords, the spiders will proceed to look for these terms in your file tags and page content, which will of course improve your potential rankings.

This article has covered everything you need to get started with successful SEO. Master these concepts and you are certain to see a big jump in your search engine rankings!

About The Author:

Tim Whiston is a full-time entrepreneur who helps small businesses and indivual professionals develop a profitable web presence for their ventures. Have a look at his Website Design Service to find powerful and cost-effective solutions for your business.
http://www.timwhiston.com

Bells And Whistles - Does Your Site Really Need Them?

By Tim Whiston

Current graphics technology is awesome, and I love a good video game. But market testing has proven websites that go overboard with graphic design and special effects actually convert far fewer sales than sites with clean, attractive layouts that do not interfere with the most important element - the content!

I hate it when I come to a site looking for a product or service and I can't get past the streaming video intro. I also hate it when a fat audio file loads on every page I navigate, or when the flash elements and high-tech animations make it hard to find the order button.

Believe it or not I'm saying this as a professional web designer. And guess what?

According to multiple independent studies the average Internet consumer agrees with me!

It's a fact - sites with too many bells and whistles will actually drive your customers away before they have a chance to soak up your offer or at least subscribe to your opt-in list. As a rule, I don't even recommend flash as a viable media for direct response marketing.

Look at some of the most productive retail sites in any niche and you'll find clean, appealing graphics. But these visual creatives will not overshadow the most important element of all. the site's content!

Unless you are marketing a video game, a movie, or sophisticated animation software/design service, it's the content that generates sales and not the bells and whistles that turn your site into a digital carnival.

Don't get me wrong, both audio and video elements can have a tremendous impact on your conversions; but not if these features are presented in place of quality sales copy and plenty of solid consumer information.

High-tech design solutions should be applied in a way that compliments your content. Your marketing message should never be upstaged by visual theatrics or dazzling sound effects unless you're in the business of selling such effects to site owners who don't know any better.

Regardless of how far technology advances it is highly unlikely the average consumer will ever stop demanding quality content prior to his or her purchase of your product or service. So lead with your message and let the special effects blend in and compliment your content delivery.

Keep the balance between graphic design and strong copy, and your visitors will be far more likely to stick around and give you the chance to close the deal.

About The Author:

Tim Whiston is a full-time entrepreneur who helps small businesses and individual professionals develop a profitable web presence for their ventures. Have a look at his Website Design Service to find powerful and cost-effective solutions for your business. http://www.timwhiston.com

Web Designer's Guide to Search Engine Optimization

By Sitecritic .Net

From a search engine point of view, the perfect webpage has no graphics, no scripting, no tables... etc but just alot of normal, plain readable text. You can just take it that plain text is the food for search engine spiders. Therefore, the more text you have, the more you will keep the spiders happy. However, from the design point of view, such pages are very boring but the fact is that everyone is more interested in keeping the spiders rather than us happy. The argument is that if search engine spiders cannot find your site, no one will. Based on this philosophy, we witnessed the fall of flash and sites with strong graphics over the years. Many sites that utilized heavy graphics where no longer found. Web developers become happy because they have an excuse to create less impressive websites...

The question is can we make both the saerch engine spiders and us happy? The answer is definitely a "Yes" provided that web designers can follow certain rules when designing web pages. They need to step out of their comfort zone and learn abit more about new web technologies.

Domain Name and URL Naming Convention
Having a proper domain and url name is quite often neglected. Many search engines actually put some weightage in the way you name your domain or url files. You will definitely want to include some juicy words in your naming convention. For example, if you site is about website critics and your url is http://www.sitecritic.com, this will definitely be better than a domain like bluefish .com or someting. The same principle goes for hyperlinks. If you have 2 words as key words, you can use an underscore "_" or dash "-" to separate them.

Title
Do not fool around when writing the title. From my experience, this is the most important part of your webpage. Many designers like to put special characters such as " * "," ", " : " or " [ ] " in the title to make it look unique. If you really want to make your webpage special, I advise you to do it else where such as in the body of the HTML document. You should include your keywords in your title. Like the previous example, if your web site focuses on website reviews, make sure you have the words "Website Reviews" somewhere in the title. Noticed that "WebsiteReviews" is not the same as "Website Reviews". Spacing is important.

When writing the title, try not to write more than 8 words. There are no hard and fast rules on that but the fact is that more does not mean good. In fact, the more you write, the more your keyword density will be diminished. If you keep repeating the same keyword in the title, search engines will see your site as spam and you will be dead in no time. For example, a title like "Sitecritic Web Reviews" is much better than "Sitecritic Web Reviews, Internet Marketing, Web Design Ideas, Internet Directories, Budget Web Hosting, Melbourne". I will have to stress again, do not fool around with your title.

Meta-Description
After the title tag is the meta description tag. Many people argued that meta description is no longer important. Based on my experience, they are still relevant in SEO rankings especially if your website is new. The principle in writing the meta description tag is the same as the title. The only difference is that you want explain abit more about the services that you provide in a friendlier format. You will also want to include your keywords in the meta description.

Menu, Content and Links
You should not use any javascript menus that hid the urls. Many javascript menus are fancy but actually not SEO friendly. What ever technique you are using to create the menus, make sure that the tag is visible. You might also want to include a variation of the keywords in the menus, links or text. Like the previous example, if your keyword is "Web Site Reviews", you might not want to use the same word over and over again. You can vary it by using "Professional Web Reviews, Reviews of Websites, Site Reviews...etc". Varying the keywords makes your content more interesting and is good for SEO as well.

When writing the contents, try to put the keywords in different areas of the document. Use tags like or to make the keywords stand out. Avoid urls that say "click here" or "view". Though often used, they are not advisable for SEO purposes.

Text links are stonger than image links. It is therefore not advisable to use images as the main navigation menu throughout the website. If you would like to incorporate images in the user navigation experience, you might want to consider separating the text from the images. This can be achieved easily using CSS or the background image option in the or tag.

Images
Unlike many Search Engine Experts, I strongly encourage the use of graphics because I am passionate about Web Design and is sad to see so many websites that are well optimized for search engines but look crap on screen. You need to balance between the amount of graphics used and downloading speed. Like I mentioned before, if your header banner or important images contains text , you could split up the text and use the images as a separate background or floating layer. That way, you can make the image size smaller and also make the text visible to the search engines. Transparent gifs are very useful for laying over other content or images. Appropriate use of jpegs and gifs can also cut down loading time by alot.

CSS Technology
CSS helps you to cut down your tag and gives more room for the spiders to read your content. The problem with CSS is that it is not as straight forward as tables. At the moment, CSS is also inconsistent in different browsers, so before you publish your web page, you need to check the layout in different browsers. I am actually not against designers using tables especially if they find the time spend in creating a full CSS site not justifiable. The fact is that there are still cases when using CSS is not advisable. An example is when displaying tabular data; Tables still excel in displaying tabular data at the moment. Unless you are using complex nested tables, the, or tags should not pose too much of a problem for the search engine spiders.

Conclusion
Web pages should not be boring and web designers should not bow down to the Google revolution. A well designed site combines both form and function and yet, still able to be search engine friendly. I strongly believe that this can be easily achieved if website designers are able to follow very basic rules in designing their web sites.

About the Author

Sitecritic.net is formed by a group of web addicts, mainly volunteers from all over the world. Our goal is to create a community of web designers and developers who share the common interest in bringing out the best in creatiing effective web sites.

View their website at: http://www.sitecritic.net

Real Home Based Business Opportunity - Site Promotion Tips

By Razvan Rovinaru

In this article I'm going to point out the things you should look for when you are trying to promote a website.

First you should know that this is a real home based business opportunity and that a growing number of people are starting to do this.

The first thing you should do before you get started is scout the market. Find a website you are interested in promoting and start gathering information about the products or services offered by the website. You should take your time here, because this step is really important.

The next thing you need is to choose your website name, careful what name you choose for your website. It should be something that implies or is very similar to the name of the website you want to promote. You should keep your .com domain name within 2-3 words - it is recommended that the domain name contains your major keyword, for better SE placement.

Now you can start putting together your web page. There are a few things you should look out for though. Try to keep your pages between 60-70Kb, as Google ranks this kind of pages higher. Don't use borders or tables unless they are necessary, avoid spasm such as hidden text or a keyword density bigger than 10% (this could get your site banned) etc. Make sure you have a sizable number of HTML pages before you upload and it might be a good thing to validate your web pages with something like "http://validator.w3.org/.

Now that you have your site you will need a web host. There isn't s shortage of those around so this should be such a difficult task but here are some pointers when choosing one. Look for response times and the committed up-time, check for PHP support and of course technical support and also for how long have they been in the business.

Now that you have a host, upload your web site to the web address. FTP is the most commonly used protocol for uploading web sites. After the upload, check the website and see if it works properly and all the links are functioning.

Now you can start using this real home based business opportunity to make money. Promote your web page to search engines. You should start by submitting to Google Yahoo!, DMOZ. Also you should promote to Fast, Altavista, Lycos, Hotbot or Teoma. Don't be upset if nothing happens for the first 2 months, that's the time it takes for your web site to be indexed. Bring as many backlinks to your site as possible, as this will increase link popularity and give you a higher ranking in the search engines.

Now you need to bring customers to your website. Do this by always updating the content of your web page, posting in forums, using PPC (pay per click) advertising and by exchanging
links with similar topic sites. Take your time evaluate the market and learn how to market your web site wisely, and you will get pretty soon to thousands of customers each day.

About The Author:

Razvan Rovinaru is the owner of the
http://work-from-home-on-line.blogspot.com Blog, where he gives you step by step guidance on how to start and develop a successful home based internet business.

12 Simple Steps to Effective Websites

By: Nancy Fraser

In a beautiful pea green boat, They took some honey, and plenty of money, Wrapped up in a five pound note.

Edward Lear must have had some precognition about what was in store for us all with the development of the internet when he wrote this nonsensical poem.

Many people do feel at sea after they launch their website and attempt to navigate the sometimes confusing channels of the internet. They wonder why their website doesn't get more traffic and why their inbox is not filling up with emails from people clamoring to buy their products or services.

It seems that the rules change as often as Oprah changes her clothes and who could ever hope to keep up with that!

Price quotes for search engine optimization are all over the map; the process seems never-ending and expensive.

How is it that some people seem to have great success on the web without spending a huge amount of money? Is it unrealistic to think that you can make a living working on the web?

When faced with a seemingly overwhelming challenge it helps to break things down into bite-sized pieces.

Effective websites should include the following:

1. Your website needs to focus on a specific niche.

2. You need to do keyword research and although Google no longer gives weight to Meta keywords some of the other major search engines still do.

3. Your website should have the main keyword used throughout and each page should be written around 5-10 keywords that are tightly focused on that particular page's topic.

4. Content is still King. Well written, focused content is crucial.

5. Meta titles need to include your keywords.

6. Organization of content should include headings and subtitles to make it easy for readers to scan the pages. Be sure to include your keywords in these headings as well.

7. Most people on the web are looking for information. If you don't give them anything of value or entertain them, they will be gone, probably for good.

8. Use keywords in links where ever possible.

9. Include a call to action and if possible offer a Free trial. You have to build trust before you can make a sale.

10. Check your website in various browsers (FireFox, Internet Explorer, etc.) to make sure it displays equally well in all.

11. Your personality is what attracts people to you so why would you create a generic website with all of the excitement of a flat glass of pop. Keep the content fresh so it has Fizz!

12. Most importantly, have realistic expectations of what you want to achieve with your website. With all the hype about overnight successes on the internet it's difficult to put your results into perspective. If you expect instant success and it isn't happening it's easy to become demoralized and quit before you reach your goal.

Some Other Important Web Marketing Tips

Google page rank counts! The higher your page rank number the higher you will rank in user searches. How do you find out your page rank? Download the Google toolbar here for Internet Explorer
http://toolbar.google.com/T4/ or here for FireFox
http://tools.google.com/firefox/toolbar/install.html.

Improve your page rank by encouraging other highly ranked websites in complementary businesses to link to yours and by developing content with a niche focus. Page rank is also affected by traffic numbers. A couple of ways you can boost traffic are pay-per-click advertising and posting articles on the web.

Your web image is at least as important as your personal image. You wouldn't go out to meet a prospective client wearing a mishmash of styles and colours but many businesses have websites with tools that don't work, tables and text that are out of alignment, old information, dated colours, and confusing navigation. Those things are bad enough but when an experienced web developer looks at the code on a website they often find a website that looks good but is not built to encourage search traffic.

Be prepared like the wise owl and make the job of marketing your business as easy as possible with a website that enhances your brand image and is technically sound and purrrr your way to
success.

About the Author:

Nancy Fraser of Nota Bene Consulting has been helping clients get better results with their marketing and advertising for over 20 years. Sign up for Notable News and get free marketing tips at http://www.notable-marketing.com

Google Goes For Quality

By Kevin Dahl

Google continues its march toward being the ultimate search engine in terms of relevancy and quality, and if you aren't paying attention and keeping up with their changes, you're going to be left in the dust, with ineffective campaigns and hefty minimum bid prices.

This is just another move in the latest flurry of changes Google is making to weed out the "scrapers" and arbitragers. You'll find the following in the Google Quality Score Section:

* Link to the page on your site that provides the most useful and accurate information about the product or service in your ad.

* Ensure that your landing page is relevant to your keywords and your ad text.

* Distinguish sponsored links from the rest of your site content.

* Try to provide information without requiring users to register. Or, provide a preview of what users will get by registering.

* In general, build pages that provide substantial and useful information to the end-user. If your ad does link to a page consisting of mostly ads or general search results (such as a directory or catalog page), provide additional information beyond what the user may have seen in your ad or on the page prior to clicking on your ad.

* You should have unique content (should not be similar or nearly identical in appearance to another site). For more information, see our affiliate guidelines.

You have to love how clear Google is with this. If your sites aren't meeting these requirements, expect your Quality and Relevancy scores to plummet. You have to be providing good content to your users and you need to make sure their experience with your site is logical and helpful. Sure, this may mean you need to do some tweaking or make some outright improvements to your sites, but the end result is that Google remains the search engine people trust and expect to deliver them quality results. And your end result is that people will click through to where you want them to be and hit that "buy now" button more often.

About The Author:

Kevin Dahl is a software developer with 20+ yrs experience developing Windows software. You can visit his sites at http://www.pdf4u.com and http://www.affiliate-marketing-advantage.com

Website Development On Your Own Terms

By Scott Lindsay

The early days of web development saw a relatively small handful of 'experts' and had them seeking to find ways to make a website do what their client wanted them to do. There was very little standardized methods to make website development an easy process and each site may have been designed with customized programming that may have been totally incompatible
with any other site.

When the number of programmers raised from a few hundred to more than 30,000 it became much clearer that there needed to be some cohesive way to simplify things. This process led to new partnerships and development applications that have become the standards of the day.

As new developments are unveiled they are field tested by programmers and implemented once it is clear that the methodology is workable.

In many cases these new development programs can be refined and repackaged into a form based method that allows non-tech customers to develop a website that is as functional as any
other site and at a fraction of the cost.

Certainly this was not possible in 1995, but through the trial and error of more than ten years the best features have risen to the top and the have proven very useful to both programmers
as well as online business.

With so many programs available to developers today it is becoming much easier to upgrade features and enhance website productivity.

Many programmers are very interested in making site developments self-directed by their customers. The reason is simply the sheer numbers of new sites that are being developed. If at least a portion of the site can be managed by the customer there are two benefits, 1) less need for one on one development for the programmer and, 2) more direct control by the website owner.

When the business owner has the capability of managing the functions of the website the faster the clarity of vision can be realized. This is largely viewed as one of the predominate features of self-directed programming on website developments.

The cost effective nature of self-directed site development has caused many to wonder why they didn't look into this solution before. Many new start-up ecommerce sites have discovered this method to be the quickest way to provide their potential customers with the full benefit of their services.

The future of web development has a lot to do with the expectations of website owners and the demands of the consuming public. It is a safe assumption that as new technologies are required there will be programmers who can assist in its development and then work to refine the function so that ecommerce can implement the technology in a self-directed user-friendly format.

About The Author:

Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with HighPowerSites at: http://www.highpowersites.com. Start your own ebook business with BooksWealth at:
http://www.bookswealth.com

Advantages Of A Professional Web Design Vs Doing It Yourself

By Gabriel Adams

Your website says a great deal about you and your business. It can make the difference between making a sell and the consumer using another website for their purchase. It is quite possible to design a website on your own, but it isn't always the best choice.

A professional web designer has insight about what consumers are going to focus on and how to set your site up to offer them exactly what they are looking for. They are also very skilled in how to promote various aspects of your website to help you generate even more sales.

Having a professional design your website generally means you won't have to spend so much of your time focusing on this aspect of the business. Websites continually need changes and updates so you can see how that will eat away at your time. This means the navigation tools will often need revamping to keep up with such changes. A professional web designer is an expert in making everything fall into place. You want the consumer to be able to click and access on your website without having to consider how to make it happen.

A professional web designer does cost more than doing it yourself, but you can avoid common mistakes that plague do it your self website projects. A huge issue is the scripting of the website. It takes more than good spelling and grammar to make it interesting and attractive to the consumer. Graphic designs look great, but do you know how they affect the consumer? It may attract their attention but if it takes too long for the graphic to open they will likely move on to
another website.

You can avoid both of these issues by placing your web design needs into the hand of a professional web designer.

About The Author:

Visit National Web Design for a professional web design for your business:
http://www.nationalwebdesign.co.uk

The Keys To Building A Successful Ecommerce Website

By Alexander Thomas

An ecommerce website is fast becoming an essential piece of the modern business' success with the gradual shift in business environment to the online landscape. For the website to make any type of substantial contribution however, the business needs to have a complete understanding of its' customers wants and needs. This is perhaps the toughest aspect of the online business model.

Tools such as web analytic software can provide early guidance on how to proceed into the online business world. Designed testing to gain insight into visitor traffic patterns enables the user to monitor the site traffic in order to study the general market issues, number of visitors clicking into the pages of the sites etc. A business can use this information to design and develop the optimal solution to address these visitors / potential customers.

From the small out-of-the-basement business to the giant entities, regardless of business mode (B2B or B2C), building an ecommerce site has a terrific significance in today's market. The subject of building an ecommerce site involves certain pivotal steps that the web site developer is required to take for planning, developing and putting it into action by using applications such as Microsoft studio .NET.

One can find tons of detailed information regarding the choices of the designs the developer needs for building an ecommerce site. In this issue, it is important to discuss about the term
"Handel" since it is very much a related topic. A "Handel" is basically a set of technical modules that are used to perform certain repetitive usual actions such as adding and removing items to and from the shopping cart and other usual tasks which are related to making ecommerce software.

Building the best solution involves solving for the endgame. What is the end goal the site should accomplish? With this in mind, build the site mechanics using reverse engineering, always keeping the end result in mind. It is best to always strive to build efficiencies and ease-of-use so that the visitor avoids any type of confusion in navigation. Build it and they will come!

There are certain criterions that must be met to build up a better ecommerce site. A better ecommerce site must give a clear view of the company's actual status and should be comprehensive and substantial. It is very important to create an ecommerce site in such a way that it becomes capable to deliver within a very short window of time. If you continue to focus on the question, "why should a customer buy from me?" then your project will experience the greatest end success.

Another pivotal point regarding building a better ecommerce site is fewer the number of pages, better it is for the external world. The site should display the points of guarantee or warrantee for the products and should be built in such a way so as to assure the customer that you will always be there to help the customer if anything goes wrong.

About The Author:

Alexander Thomas is a respected author and contributor to Ecommerce-Site.org -
(http://ecommerce-site.org), a leading authority and resource directory for information on Ecommerce on the internet.

5 Common Web Hosting Mistakes

John Lenaghan

Mistakes aren't necessarily a bad thing, but if you can learn
from other people's mistakes it can save you from having to
deal with them yourself. When it comes to web hosting, there
are basically two kinds of mistakes - technical and general
business.

Technical mistakes usually come up because of a
misunderstanding of the internet and how it actually works. The
first mistake many people make when creating a website is to
cram as much information, photographs, images, etc. on each
page as possible.

This makes the site take longer to download, leading to many
visitors just moving on and never actually looking at the site.
It also makes it more difficult to find what they're looking for
if the page is unorganized.

Another common error is creating a web site that isn't search
engine friendly. If the search engines can't determine what
your site is about, they aren't going to be able to send you
people who are searching for what you offer.

A mistake that many people make when starting out is to choose
a host solely based on price. This is obviously an important
factor, especially in the beginning, but if you choose the
cheapest host you may be limited in your scalability as the
website grows in popularity and traffic.

On the business side of things, the most common mistake is
trying to be everything to everyone. You should have a plan for
your website - a purpose for its existence - and build according
to that plan.

Choose your target market and stick with it. Advertise in
places they would see. Market in ways that would be of interest
to them. Resist the urge to branch out into other areas just
because something catches your eye. A site that tries to do
everything usually ends up achieving nothing.

Another common business mistake is following the competition's
lead. You'll obviously want to keep an eye on them to see what
they're up to, but if you copy everything they do you'll always
be one step behind.

Use your creativity and come up with unique ways to stand out
from the rest of the websites in your market.

About The Author:

John Lenaghan writes about web site hosting
and other related topics for the Hosting Report website. For
more helpful web hosting information visit
http://www.hostingreport.org

Start Managing Your Website Easily With A Content Management System

Heris Yunora

One main advantage of using CMS is one will be able to manage
the contents of ones websites without having to deal with
complicated technical tasks. Imagine that you are a very
talented writer but you can't show your writings online just
because you don't have any idea how to write webpages
thatconsist of HTML tags.

With CMS, a writer only needs to type her works in an editor as
if she does it with a word processor. Then the CMS itself that
will show her works online. It is a great time saver for a
webmaster to create and maintain her website. The installation
process is also very easy since many web hosting services have
offered special features such as Fantastico where a user can
install a CMS with just a few clicks of mouse. The process is
done automatically.

Basically, a web content management system consists of two main
parts, a front-end and a back-end. The back-end is a section
where you can do many administrative tasks such as inserting
and editing articles, giving privileges to some people,
managing the look and feel of your website, and so on. The
front-end refers to what visitors see. It is the face of your
website.

In choosing a CMS, you should know what is the main purpose of
using it. There are CMSs which are intended to build portals.
Other systems are mainly used to build photo gallery, forum,
personal or even corporate websites. Then you need to know what
kind of features they have. For example, Drupal, an open source
CMS, provides a feature where you can gather fresh contents
from other sites by adding the sites' feeds. You can even
filter any items so that you only show the items that contain a
specific keyword.

Usually, a CMS also offers additional modules that will enable
you to use additional features without having to put your
efforts in programming. Just download the module you need and
install it in your hosting server.

Don't forget also to know your own desires and abillities in
modifying a CMS. For instance, Mambo should be sufficient for
you who don't want to deal with some PHP coding. Mambo has
already provided many modules to accomplish specific tasks. It
also offers ready-to-use templates you can choose. On the other
hand Typo3 is the right choice for people who need a very robust
and flexible system.

It is necessary to know that there are so many commercial and
free content management system available. Vignette and FatWire
are the example of two commercial systems while PostNuke,
Drupal and Mambo.are free to use.

And, of course there are other things you should consider for
finding the right CMS. So please do a good and thorough
analysis before deciding which system to use. Choosing the
right Content Management System from the beginning is very
important. Make sure it would best fit your needs.

About The Author:

Heris Yunora
http://www.unlimitedhostingplan.com

Is Your Website Ugly Enough?

By Ray L. Edwards

What gives a website owner fuzzy feelings inside is not the
same thing that makes the site sell. In fact, it has been
proven and shown over and over again that UGLY, but functional
sites outsell fancy looking websites designed to win creative
awards.

Think about the most popular e-commerce sites online: eBay,
Amazon, MySpace and Skype, and you'll see that they are not big
on design. But they are simple, clear and very intuitive for the
visitor to use.

So skip the Flash introductions (or your visitors will!) and
all those slide show graphics because they are just distracting
at best to what you want to accomplish. When a prospect comes to
your site you don't want to try and win their attention because
you ALREADY have their attention. Instead you want to GIVE them
attention by making their task easier.

Speaking of tasks, people come to your website with a certain
aim in mind. You have to build a site that would facilitate the
accomplishment of that aim. So if you are promising a free
report then show them CLEARLY how they can get the report in
the least steps.

One characteristic that mark web surfers is that they are
impatient. If you website doesn't satisfy the advertised need,
then your competition is just one click away. No driving
required, no walking to the next closest store, but just one
mouse click and they are gone!

Here are some ways in which you can design a website that's
functional:

1. Make your navigation system as intuitive and consistent
throughout the website. Same placement, color scheme etc.

2. Watch the layout of your text to make the information
readable. Not too many dense paragraphs and use a lot of white
space.

3. Make your headline stand out by using a larger font and
attention-getting color.

4. Guide the user step-by-step in accomplishing their task.
Number these steps if possible. Do not assume too much. What's
obvious to you the owner of the site may not be obvious to a
new visitor. (Much like your home.)

5. Label action buttons appropriate, such as: "Click Here To
Buy", "Click Here To Subscribe!"

As a copywriter, I've found that 'marked up' sales letters
-yellow highlighting, underlines, bolding, etc. had a higher
response than clean looking copy. And what people SAY is often
the opposite of what they DO! (Welcome to the human family.)

So in other words, the colleagues who tell you that your
website looks "pretty" don't buy from such sites. "Does this
site look good?" is a wasted question.

"Would this site sell?"--that is the question.

Don't be flattered by the friends who tell you, "WOW, your site
looks good!" Aim for the UGLY site that fattens your bank
account.

About The Author:

Ray L. Edwards is a published author, a
copywriting coach and internet marketing consultant. You may
find more information on boosting your online sales by visiting
http://www.yourwebsiteconversion.com

Good Website Copy writing is the key to your online success

Good Website Copy writing is the key to your online success

Steven Gerber

If you want to have promotions and good standing in search
engines then you should know that the written content of your
website is one of the very important factors to meet that ends
and the quality of the content of your website can make that
happen. It is absolutely the one factor that could possibly meet
the success goals of your site. Remember that if the site
contains only images it can do nothing to make the sales higher
and for the visitors to stay and return.

Your site is valuable to every customer; there should be articles
in your website to help convince people to visit your site over
and over again. Let the people be encouraged in visiting your
website through the content of your copywriting. And besides, the
content of your site will depend upon the image of your company
that will make the positive outlook and will convey thoroughness,
awareness and pique the interest of the visitors to your site.

There is so much that needs to be considered and applied when
writing for a website. The quality of thoughts is very much
important when it comes to the content in terms of relating it to
the structures of the site that you are writing for. It needs to
catch the attention of the visitors of your site and needs to
reveal the accurate search terms to make a reasonably high
ranking with the content driven search engines.

The importance of the copy on your site has to work together with
a specific direction so that the readers can be attracted with
what they read and to make them always keep in touch with your
site and for them to be familiarized with all the products that
you are selling. All the details in your site project the image
of the company, and it should capture the interests of the
readers or the visitors of your site. One very important factor
is that the content should make logical sense to the readers.

The more the readers or visitors value your site, the more you
will have higher rankings. Definitely your company will remain
competitive and will remain on top.

Copywriting is writing words that sell. It should consist of
words that are precise and clear for the effectiveness of all the
content of your site because it will definitely give your
visitors the confidence and trust to your products or services.
Copywriting should catch the attention of the customers since it
is the lifeblood of every online services and businesses.

Your site will be successful if you always bring the quality
information to potential customers and will generate more
potential sales. Words that you will use in an online business
will draw the customer to purchase a product and the words you
used on that certain page will be the basis of the customer in
making decision whether to stay or get out of your site.

In web copywriting, it determines the best and appropriate way of
getting the sales increase. It means that promoting a certain
product or service will depend upon the words you convey in your
online access. Every word that you are going to use will change
the way you sell forever.

Web site copy writing will soon be the huge demand for the
successful online business because using selling and persuasive
words can be powerful in terms of selling your products or
services. You have just to put to your online business with the
words of wisdom and ultimately you will meet the increase to your
online sales and get the possible highest search engine ranking.

About the Author:

Steven Gerber is a professional copywriter and
marketing consultant with more than 8 years of
expertise. He is a protégé student of Dan Lok -
The World's #1 Website Conversion Expert, and
in Steven's totally biased opinion simply THE
BEST. You'll find the latest internet marketing
techniques and tricks at:
http://www.websiteconversionexpert.com

The SEO Guide Part 1

The SEO Guide Part 1

David Fishman

It helps you to get your web site to appear in search engine
result pages (SERPs) for keywords that that are relevant to
your business.

Google, MSN, and Yahoo all use their own formulas to calculate
the relevance of your pages, but here are a few common factors
to guarantee you will rank above those not using them. Of
course, one of the most important factors you want to check out
is the company's track record of results. There are a couple of
factors that have effect on your search engine positioning,
here is one important one, the on-page optimization factors.

If you want a healthy return on investment (ROI) with search
engine optimization (SEO), your success - or failure - hinges
on the keywords you select when combined with other factors
like link popularity and web site design. This would include
such tasks like modifications to your keywords, description,
title tags, comment tags, alt descriptions, and title
descriptions of anchors and the actual text of your web page.
The TITLE tag first is the most important part, the "< TITLE >"
tag. Words people are most likely to search on put first in the
title (called "keyword prominence"). Optimizing Your Title Tag.
This is because most engines & directories place a high level of
importance on keywords that are found in your title tag. Your
page title is one long uninterrupted road sign instead of
several small ones.

If it was possible to master seo techniques, and be sure that
we can get high rankings by editing just the Meta tags that
would be very easy, but this is only one part of search engine
optimization, but that's just not going to happen. These
factors all relate to your own site and include your domain
name, page names, meta tags, keyword density, titles, headings
and last but not least the content. Optimizing your meta tags
and dropping a few keywords into your web site won't pay the
rent. Things like the page title, Meta tags, heading tags,
comment tags, and anchor text were the only things that
mattered. Back couple of years ago you could just tweak, title,
headers and description on each page and by doing this you could
create fantastic seo results.

By including local information in your tags and web pages, you
help prospective customers find specific information on the
area and business they are searching for. Localized search
engine optimization is the addition of local search terms to
your tags and web pages. Keywords / Description / Alt Tags /
Title Tags / Page Content.

Make sure that all your tags properly closed and that there are
no tags missing, when search engines spider your site and your
pages are not complete the search engines might ignore the
page. The science is formatting the pages with the right meta
tags and submitting them in the right way to the search
engines.

Search Engines are also interested in the text of the site.
Anchor text is the text the web visitor sees on the web page,
which is hyperlinked to your domain name or URL. When
submitting to other sites use your keyword phrase for your
anchor text when ever possible. You can just take it that plain
text is the food for search engine spiders.earch engines.

About The Author:

http://www.linknetics.com is software that
helps http://www.linknetics.com/reciprocal-link-exchange.html

Why you don't want Michelangelo working on your website

Copyright (c) 2006 Mark Silver

Everyone wants to live surrounded by beauty. Beauty soothes the
soul, and lifts the spirit. It inspires us and keeps us healthy.
We all want beauty.

Can you have beauty in your website? Sure you can, and it's
important to have your website be pleasing to the folks you want
to help. Unfortunately, this desire to have beauty and to please
folks means that you can spend a great deal of time creating a
'unique and beautiful' web design that people actually avoid.
How can you spend so much time on beauty, sacrifice so much money
with a designer, and still end up with a mess?

Do you do Frescoes?

No one would complain about the beauty of the Sistine Chapel in
Rome.

Michelangelo spent four years, from July, 1508 through October,
1512, painting over 5,000 square feet of the Sistine Chapel's
ceiling.

Unfortunately, Michelangelo was a sculptor, and loved working in
marble. Prior to the Sistine Chapel, he had only painted briefly
as a student of Domenico Ghirlandaio in Florence. Which means
that he got off to a slow start as he learned how to paint
frescoes.

Luckily for him, Michelangelo was already an accomplished artist.
He wasn't exactly doing the Sistine Chapel as a free promotional
effort. Pope Julius II commissioned him for those four years, and
didn't seem to mind that it took Michelangelo a while to get in
a groove.

History reports that one of the Pope's motivations was to outdo
Pope Alexander VI. So, the whole idea was to create an amazingly
glorious ceiling that would stun everyone who saw it.

Are you trying to stun your visitors? Remember the purpose of
your website: to create a relationship with the right people,
connect with their hearts and needs, and to help them take the
next step in relationship to what you offer. If you aren't being
commissioned to paint the ceiling of your website by a fabulously
wealthy Pope, and if you aren't trying to stun your visitors
with beauty, I suggest you relax, just a little bit, any
attachment you might have to beauty and uniqueness around your
website.

Your visitor is waiting for dinner.

Imagine showing up at a friend's house to eat. You've worked
all day, you're hungry and you've been looking forward to
dinner. Yet, once you arrive, they keep you waiting for three
hours while they pull out family home movies, or their wedding
album.

It's not that you wouldn't eventually like to see those things.
But first, can we have dinner, please?

The Two Functions of Your Design

Absolutely prepare and present the food with love and beauty. But
just remember that your visitor is looking for food, not
frescoes. It's been shown that when a visitor comes to a
website, design plays two primary functions:

(1) to show that the website is solid and professional-looking
enough that the business can be trusted, and

(2) to make sure that the visitor can find what she needs really
easily without having to guess or hunt.

As long as you are meeting those two needs, your design is going
to work.

So, where is it safe to bring forth beauty and inspiration on
your site, and where will it keep you stuck to the ceiling for
four years?

Keys to Website Design

* Things to avoid.

Avoid putting a pattern behind your text, or using a text color
that isn't very dark. In fact, I recommend that you stick with
black text on a white background. Millions of novels of great
variety, beauty and talent are written, all printed black text on
a white background.

As a general rule, avoid animation and oversized photos and
illustrations- anything that distracts from the food you want
your visitor to eat.

Avoid unique design layouts. Many websites look the same
structurally- and so do human beings. You don't have to look at
the back of someone's knees to find their eyes. People know how
to connect with each other more easily in part because of
structural similarities.

Your visitor has been trained to expect certain conventions in
web design, so they can find what they are looking for. Don't
play a guessing game with them by creating some outlandishly
creative and confusing design.

* Things to do.

Keep your text front and center. Keep your navigation either
across the top, or down one side, with clear labels. Don't use
more than two columns- one for the navigation or side text, and
one for the main content of the page.

Have a clear banner across the top with a simple message about
your business.

* Things of beauty and inspiration

Make your banner beautiful and inspiring, without being
cluttered. Use colors you love.

Use creative bullets rather than just the usual round variety.

Use color highlights around navigation buttons, and in the frame
around your page.

* Above all, don't agonize over it.

If you don't have a website yet, or your website isn't
effective and you are upgrading it, bring in what creativity you
have, but don't agonize over the beauty aspects. Your visitors
are waiting to be fed! Once you start having a lot of visitors
coming to your website, and your business is humming, you can
take the time and space to bring out the fine china for them.

My very best to you and your business,

Mark Silver

------------------------
Mark Silver is the author of Unveiling the Heart of Your
Business: How Money, Marketing and Sales can Deepen Your
Heart, Heal the World, and Still Add to Your Bottom Line.
He has helped hundreds of small business owners around
the globe succeed in business without losing their
hearts. Get three free chapters of the book online:
http://www.heartofbusiness.com

What Is Article Marketing?

Article written by: Jonathan White

Article marketing is a new method that most claim you have to
subscribe to if you really want to fine-tune your search engine
optimization techniques. Article marketing is actually quite
easy and is something that most successful webmasters have been
onto for some time. While some have been focusing just on
creating good links within their websites, successful people
have been focusing on the fact that there has to be a balance
between good links and good content and this is where article
marketing comes into play.

The Basics

The bottom line is that those that focus on links alone for
good traffic to their website will likely not see the success
that they hope for. To get good traffic from search engines you
have to provide content for the search engines as well as the
people that visit your website. It is well known that search
engines place a lot of importance on back links but you'll also
find that most websites with good page ranks are always looking
for good content, and this is not a coincidence. Search engines
usually give more weight to sites that have high quality content
in addition to back links.

How Article Marketing Works

So, you're a webmaster and you are new to article marketing.
You know that you are not a good writer so you aren't sure
where to get the quality content that you need to work with
your back links to establish the page rank you are looking for.
What's next? Article marketing, that's what!

It's important to understand that true article marketing
involves several different parties. First, there is the author.
This is the person that actually writes an article on any given
subject, he or she displays their information in what is called
a resource box at the bottom or top of any given article. Next,
there is the article directory. This is basically a bank for
authors to submit their articles to. After some editing or an
approval process that is provided by the directory the article
will be posted on the directory for content hungry webmasters
to view.

The publisher is you, the webmaster, who is looking for high
quality content that will work along with their back links to
improve search engine optimization. Webmasters can peruse the
directories and choose articles that are relevant to their
subject, service, or product. The publisher can publish said
article on their website as long as they include the author
resource box as well as a link back to the author website and
the article directory. The links give you high quality links
from websites to your site and the content provides all that
you will need to get noticed by the search engines and increase
traffic.

It Works!

As you can see, article marketing works for the author as he or
she gets exposure, it works for the article directory as the
article is linked to them, and it works for the webmaster
because they get high quality content and links. Many
webmasters report that within 48 hours they are getting much
more traffic and their page rank is much better than before.
Article marketing really is the wave of the search engine
optimization future and will keep webmasters, article
directors, and content writers in business for a long, long
time.

About The Author: Jonathan White has been involved in article
and other online marketing for over 4 years. He is the owner of
http://articles.simplysearch4it.com &
http://articles.simplysearch4it.co.uk

Web Site Design Principles And Best Practices

Article written by: William Perkins

The key to designing an excellent website, and doing it in the
least amount of time, is planning. Internet web site design
follows a set of principles which you must incorporate into
your plan. Additionally, you'll want to use a good web building
tool to expedite the process.

Planning your web site on paper first is vitally important. I
don't mean planning every little detail, I just mean planning
the look and feel of your homepage, as well as the navigation
or flow chart of the various pages of your entire web site.

Think of your website as a pyramid with your homepage as the
pinnacle of the pyramid. Your visitors will navigate from your
homepage to your 2nd tier pages, and from there to the 3rd tier
pages. In the beginning, you will just want to build your home
page and the 2nd tier pages.

Here's a Fast Track Technique to make your job of designing and
building a website a lot easier:

All you really have to do is plan one page, your homepage, and
then clone all your other 2nd and 3rd level pages. Your goal
should be to make one perfect webpage, and then you'll simply
use this as your template and fill in the pages with different
content.

Let's look at the requirements of a successful webpage. A good
webpage must fill the needs of the visitor to your site, as
well as the needs of the search engines, and must also entice
the visitor to click-thru to the merchant page where s/he can
make a purchase.

But that's not all. A webpage should also capture the name and
email address of the visitor. There should be numerous places
and opportunities for the visitor to opt-in to your newsletter
or to get your freebie product. I recommend you put your opt-in
email capture form on every page of your website. Getting your
visitor's name and email address is actually more important
than selling a product to your visitor.

Optimizing your webpages for the search engines is especially
important to get free, targeted traffic to your site. Using
articles that you write about your business, combined with SEO
webpage design principles practically guarantees an avalanche
of targeted traffic to your website.

In addition to convincing your visitors to give you their name
and email address, and optimizing for the search engines, a top
notch webpage should also be designed to nudge the visitor along
a pre-defined path to get the visitor to take a particular
action. The action you usually desire the visitor to take is to
click on the link that leads to your merchant page where a
purchase can be made.

Here is where website navigation becomes vitally important. The
amount of clicks from the time your visitor arrives at your
website to the merchant page where the visitor is confronted
with an offer should ideally be not more than three clicks.

The navigation must also be designed so that the visitor is not
overwhelmed with choices. I see too many websites that offer a
plethora of choices to the customer. This is a Big Mistake. A
confused mind hesitates to make a purchase, or takes no action
at all and exits the website in search of a simpler solution.

Design your navigation so that no more than five choices are
offered at any one time. So your homepage might offer five
category links at the top of your page, each of which might
lead to five more 2nd tier links. This already adds up to 25
pages plus the homepage.

The navigation should also be placed in the same place on every
webpage to make your visitor's experience easy and pleasurable.
You do not want a frustrated customer. The happy mood is the
buying mood. What's more, a good experience at your website
ensures that your customer will return again and again to your
website.

Offer excellent, easy to find content at your website. Design
your webpages with simplicity in mind. Nothing fancy or
complicated. Use a white background and easy to read fonts. Do
not overdo the colors! Choose black type and one or two colored
fonts and that's it.

You need to convince your visitor that you are reliable,
trustworthy, honest, and credible. To do that your webpages
should be conservative, easy to navigate, and easy to read.
It's also important to include your email address prominently.

By following these webpage design guidelines, everybody wins.
The search engines do their job by delivering relevant content
to the visitor (because your webpage has been optimized for the
search engines). The visitor wins by effortlessly locating the
information and product that s/he was seeking. The merchant
wins by making a sale. And you win by collecting a commission
from the sale. You also acquire the customer's trust, as well
as their name and email address, so that you can market to them
again in the future.

About The Author: Big Willy writes about starting an online
business, affiliate marketing, and making money. He has
packaged much of what he knows into a re-brandable ebook
titled, "Fast Track To Internet Riches!" which you can get for
free at his website. http://www.BigWillySite.com

SSL: Site Security And Privacy

Article written by: Scott Lindsay

Netscape began using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) in 1994 as a
means of sending sensitive data over the web. The newer edition
of the service is called Transport Layer Security (TLS),
although even this is routinely known by the SSL designation.

Before the introduction of SSL it was difficult to ensure
privacy over the web in online transactions. There was a
general distrust of the ability to conduct online transactions
and a fear that an individual's credit card information could
be picked up by a third party and used for unauthorized
purchases.

What makes SSL unique is an encryption technique that sends
credit card and other personal data through the web. This
encryption technique makes the information totally useless to
anyone who does not have decoding abilities. If a third party
were to intercept the information it would be useless to them.

The use of SSL Digital Certificates also provides a unique
level of trust because a certificate verifies the users
authenticity. This is an important step in instilling trust in
potential customers. Many savvy consumers will avoid an online
retailer entirely if they do not use SSL.

Without the proper use of SSL, information such as credit card
numbers, third parties with less than positive motivations
could obtain passwords and personal identification numbers.

A 128-bit key that is harder to break and typically protects
personal account information than the 40-bit key. If your name
and address is all that is being protected a 40-bit key may be
used; the higher bit the key, the greater level of encryption.
Most financial institutions only use 128-but keys for the
security of their client's data.

As an online marketer you will likely be asking your visitors
for personal data. Don't be surprised if your potential
customer determines their willingness to do business with you
based on the security of your website. Many customers will look
for the SSL symbol and will move along if the don't find it. SSL
use can also be recognized by a lock symbol in the lower right
hand corner of your browser window. If the symbol is unlocked
then SSL is not in use on the site.

SSL should be enacted on pages requiring a password or might
contain personal data most clients would like to keep private.
Some sites will place SSL on some pages and forget other pages
that are equally as sensitive. For the sake of your personal
experience with ecommerce you should implement SSL protocol.

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

Importance Of W3 Standards

Article written by: Dave Davis

When the Internet first began its boom, the technologies used in design were forgiving. W3-Compliance wasn't as necessary because there were fewer browsers, fewer users, and overall fewer technologies in use. With the burgeoning popularity of the internet, new developmental tools are created daily. With these tools come new challenges - marketing, design, cross-browser transitions, etc. All of these can be a daunting task for those web gurus who aren't well versed in the W3 Standards. W3 (http://w3schools.com) is a resource for webmasters and programmers who want the most for their viewing public. There are numerous technologies used by programmers (ASP, PHP, and Javascript to name a few), but this article will focus solely on XHTML and CSS. W3 has a set of standards for both of these technologies, and making a website W3-compliant ensures that most all viewers will see the site exactly the same way (no matter what browser they're using). Validation also helps with Search Engine Optimization(SEO) because clean code means easier search-engine spidering.

Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, is a technology often used in sites with many pages to make aesthetic changes easier. The style sheet is an exterior file that runs interdependently with the HTML (or outputted HTML) of a site. The style sheet serves as a template for the entire site's color and font schemes, while also controlling borders, sizes, and more. Being able to edit a single file, instead of 100s of changes in many files saves time and precious web design dollars. Validation is imperative to get the most out of a website. That is, a user can upload or copy-and paste their CSS file to the W3 site, and they'll be given a list of any errors it contains.

Another of the technologies becoming more popular is Extensible Hypertext Markup Language, or XHTML. XHTML is an extension of HTML 4.0, and, while in its infancy, has become quite prevalent. XHTML conforms to standards moreso than HTML. As such, it is more search engine and user-friendly:

XHTML documents conform to XML. XML Tools can double as XHTML tools.

XHTML is an extension of HTML 4.0. It is more user-friendly and streamlined than HTML.

XHTML is a combination of HTML and XML in that it can run scripts and applets that use both the HTML and XML DOM (Document Object Model)

As XHTML grows, XHTML 1.0 documents will be able to interoperate among other XHTML documents making it a more browser transitional language.

To conclude, using the standards of web development lined out by the W3 is imperative for users to get the most out of a site. Often, making a webpage W3-compliant is the first step of SEO, a marketing tool to get the most out of your advertising dollar. Validation is easy, and can be completed if a user has a basic knowledge of HTML-editing and FTP (File Transfer Protocol). Using these tools, coupled with the set of W3 standards can save a lot of money and help the site's overall functionality.

About The Author:

David Davis, is the lead developer and project manager of RedflyStudios LTD. - Web Design Ireland. For more information visit http://www.redflystudios.com © 2006 David Davis.

How To Make Visitors Bookmark Your Site

Article Written by: Cheryl Miller

When visitors bookmark your site it is a sign that you have built a great website and are pleasing them. Visitors think highly enough of your site to want to return and possibly tell others about it. You are not only increasing traffic from your existing clientele you are encouraging new traffic by means of viral marketing.

What exactly is book marking? It is when a visitor to your site decides that they like your site enough to place it in their favorites so that they may return and look over it some more.

How to make book marking easy for your visitors: You can place a small script http://www.jscode.com/js_auto_bookmark.shtml from this website. It is free. Or you can look on Google for other book marking scripts (free book marking script). Internet Explorer already has an option for this called "favorites."

Ways to encourage visitors to bookmark your site:

1. Your content: make it high quality and interesting. You can write articles about:

* Your products or service- reviews are always popular
* Informative articles- about product, service or your industry
* Stories and anecdotes- about your industry
* News stories and top trends
* Original content

2. Always add new content on a regular basis-keeps visitors returning. Always let visitors know that your site is updated on a regular basis

3. Make your site professional looking

4. Make it user friendly with simple navigation

5. If your site is large you may want to make a table of contents with clickable links

6. Have links to different sites that are good resources. Add these on a regular basis

7. Quizzes and trivia questions relating to your industry-the answers will be found on one of your important pages

Of course there are obvious things that will discourage book marking:

1. A boring site with no real content or resources

2. Inaccurate information or rehashed information

3. Poor web design-just appears tacky and looks like it was written by a kindergartener

4. Slow loading-visitors will not wait longer than 2 seconds.

5. Hype-this is very unprofessional and visitors get annoyed by this and leave

Visitor duration and page selection: A useful piece of information about your site is checking traffic and how long your visitors are staying on any given page. You can see this by looking at your log files. This can be done by a Cpanel or whatever your web host has set up. You can view things like:

1. The amount of visitors that have come to your site- monthly weekly or daily

2. How many bots are visiting

3. Your most popular pages

4. How many error 404 pages you had

5. How long visitors are staying at each page

This is all valuable information and will give you a good idea of what is interesting your visitors and allows you to work on the areas that are attracting them.

Business owners often overlook book marking but when you pay attention to what is useful and attractive to your visitors you will encourage book marking and many return visitors. Once visitors are in the habit of returning they will familiarize themselves with your website and be much more likely to buy. Don't you buy more from your favorite store?

About the Author:

Cheryl Miller is an entrepreneur specializing in niche markets. For more information about magnetic badges and how they can help you promote your business, please visit http://www.badgemags.com Cheryl is also the publisher of the Magnetic Marketer Newsletter http://www.badgemags.com/magnetic_marketer_subscribe.htm

Site Development: Extreme Online Marketing

Article 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

Online Personalization 2.0: This Time It's Personal

By: John Black

After the flame-out of early business models focused on online personalization - for instance Firefly - it was easy to dismiss this as another over-hyped casualty of the dot-com boom. But there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the technology or the concept. It was primarily ahead of its time. Now personalization is an integral part of leading e-commerce sites such as iTunes, Amazon and NetFlix, and a contributing factor to their success. However, beyond this top tier, use of personalization is not yet widespread online.

All of the macro trends - expanded product selection, consumer-generated content and information overload - suggest that personalization is poised to come back in a big way. What's needed for mass adoption is a new business model rather than new technology.

Trends

First, let's look at the trends that build the needs and the opportunities for personalization Product selection. The "Long Tail" phenomenon was first coined by Wired in 2004 to describe how, removed from the constraints of the physical world, the economics of retailing and the behavior of consumers have changed radically. Where a traditional retail store could only dedicate shelf space to high volume products, an e-commerce site can stock literally millions of products.

Consumer-generated content: Partly in response to distrust of marketers and professional critics, partly in response to the ease of personal publishing/blogging, consumers are posting their views, profiles and opinions online en masse. An estimated 33 million Americans have rated or reviewed products online. Social networks like MySpace and Facebook have become a cultural phenomenon. The combined voice of consumers is a powerful force. Study after study shows that word of mouth by far carries the most influence on purchase decisions.

Information Overload: Unfortunately, consumer-generated content is often lacking in relevance. A consumer reading conflicting reviews of the same product is often left asking: what do people like me think of this? Was the one-star book review from an English professor, or from a high school dropout? Further, it is often difficult to separate objective feedback from self-promotion.

While online retailing offers consumers unlimited choice, this choice can be paralyzing. While word of mouth often provides objective peer opinions, just as often it creates more confusion without any filter on relevance.

Existing Solutions

New online services and technologies are starting to emerge to solve these problems. The site Trendwatching.com has coined the term "Twinsumer" to describe matching consumers up with "their taste twins; fellow consumers somewhere in the world who think, react, enjoy and consume the way they do." These solutions address real and growing consumer concerns:

* Tell me what's right for me
* Help me explore beyond the mainstream, or in the words of Wired, push people down the long tail

Personalized recommendations are typically driven by statistics, in the form of "collaborative filtering", or by the user's own network of contact. In collaborative filtering, "like users" (or "like items") are matched based on their statistical similarity. So it Bob and James liked 10 of the same books, the 11th book that James rated 5-stars would be recommended to Bob. Or if customers who buy the Godfather Part 1 also buy the Godfather Part 2,... well you get the idea.

In the social network approach, recommendations are driven by your friends, or by people you have chosen to bring into your online circle of trust. This operates more like traditional word of mouth, but on a much larger scale.

These personalization solutions tend to be tied to either e-commerce or affiliate marketing business models:

* e-commerce merchants: iTunes, Amazon, NetFlix, eMusic
* online communities: listal.com, nextfavorite.com, librarything.com. ratingzone.com
* music applications: Pandora.com, last.fm, MusicIP. Yahoo Music

In most cases, personalized recommendations have focused on product categories with a) broad selection and b) subjective tastes. Hence, books, music and movies.

Challenges

With all of the promise of personalization to increase sales and improve customer loyalty, you'd think its use would be more widespread. However, every personalization application faces the dual, and opposing, challenges of critical mass and data quality. The best recommender technology is worthless without enough data to populate the recommendations. In categories with a broad selection, such as books, recommendations are not very effective beyond the most mainstream titles until the number of ratings/purchases reach the hundreds of thousands.

So how to get hundreds of thousands of data points from customers before you can offer effective recommendations? Most e-commerce sites use observed customer behavior - clicks, searches, carted items and purchases - to infer product feedback. While this is the quicker and easier path to critical mass, it sacrifices data quality. Just because a user clicked on or even bought an item does not mean they liked it. Often the customer purchased a gift, did not enjoy the product, or had a one-off need for the product. I suspect other people have a similar mish-mash of recommendations at Amazon as I do: from gardening tools to lullaby CDs to Accounting books.

These data challenges - not technology limitations - have kept personalized product recommendations out of all but the very largest, most sophisticated e-commerce sites. And let's not forgot about traditional brick and mortar retailing, which still accounts for 90%+ of book and music sales. When was the last time you got "personalized" service at a big box retailer or chain
store?

A New Approach

There's no good reason why every retailer shouldn't be able to implement personalization as well or better than Amazon or iTunes. At least in books, music, movies, video games and probably consumer electronics and travel. In this new world of ASPs, Web 2.0, APIs and web services, the technical barriers have been all but removed.

Which leaves the data. A new business model that can successfully aggregate anonymous customer data and product reviews across multiple retailers could be far larger, and more predictive, than any database within a single merchant. And literally any retailer, down to a single-store independent bookseller, could tap into the benefits by also contributing to this uber-database. If this sounds farfetched, note that Abacus Direct grew a similar cooperative database model into a $100 million business in the offline catalog market.

The benefits are clear for those sites who have successfully implemented personalized product recommendations: dramatic improvements in sales, conversion rates and customer loyalty.

About the Author:

John Black has a long experience with personalization and predictive modeling. John was the product manager for the first one-to-one online banner ad targeting product at DoubleClick, and managed market research and new product development at Abacus, the leading predictive modeling company in the catalog market. John is currently the founder and CEO of NextFavorite.com (http://www.nextfavorite.com), a personalization service provider.

Wordpress And Content Management System: How To Make It Work

By: Danny Wirken

Since the release of WordPress, web users have customized this blogging software to suit their own needs. On of the most established needs in today's computing world is the need for content management, particularly, a Content Management System (CMS). With its rich set of features and flexibility, WordPress can be customized into a major CMS.

Content Management System

Content management can be described as the process of creating, managing and publishing online content sans any programming or technical skills. If used properly, content management saves time and money. An effective content management can be attained by utilizing a content management system.

A content management system is a web-based application connected to a database that allows users to update a website without having to know any HTML (Hypertext Markup Language, standard language with which all web pages are built). It is software used to manage websites and web content. A CMS facilitates the maintenance of content but not the design on a website.

Without CMS, updating a website say, posting a new article would involve manually changing the home page and archives and creating a new page from scratch for the article itself. Coupled with this, if a user wants other pages to link to the article like a list of current articles in the sidebar of pages, he has to change all these manually as well.

With CMS, a user just logs in and adds the article heading to a specific category. He then enters the content and ends by selecting some tags to describe the article. The CMS will automatically put the title, date and the first paragraph on the home page. He then constructs a new page for the article and adds the article to an archive by date and category.

As can be gleamed, CMS does away with inconvenient manual tasks and streamlines the updating process. A CMS manages content efficiently from the time of creation to publication. A content management system establishes a definitive approach to effectively publish, store and organize content for the users.

Content management systems offered by different vendors have varied benefits and functions that a user can select from according to his needs. A CMS can be expensive or absolutely free like WordPress. It really depends on how complex the site is and what needs to be done.

Most blogging software programs are considered a particular type of CMS. They have CMS features for creating and maintaining a blog. They make publishing on the Internet as easy as writing an article, giving it a title and setting it up under one or more categories. Basic blogging software provides an interface where a user can work in an intuitive manner while the blogging software handles the presentation and publication. A blogger gets to concentrate on writing and the blogging tool functioning as a content management system takes care of the rest of the site operation. WordPress is an example of blogging software.

WordPress - An Overview

WordPress is a well-structured personal publishing system written in PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor, a popular open source server-side scripting language constructed specially for integration with HTML available in Windows, Linux and Mac OS X) and backed by MySQL(open source Structured Query Language database implementation). WordPress is licensed under General Public License (GPL) and is available for free. WordPress started in 2001. Since then, it has grown to be the biggest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, utilized on a multitude of sites. WordPress focuses on ease of use, speed and a wonderful user experience. It is an open source program. Hundreds of people all over the globe are working on it. It offers a service in http://www.WordPress.com that lets a user get started with a free WordPress-based blog in seconds.

WordPress is an advanced blogging software program that provides a sophisticated set of features. Via its administration panels, a user can set options for the presentation of his blog and be published on the Internet instantly. WordPress focuses on aesthetics, web standards and usability.

WordPress as a Content Management System

A distinct characteristic of a CMS is that it singles out content from presentation. Content consists of text, images or other information shared in posts. This is separate from the structural design of a site which provides the foundation into which the content is inserted and the presentation of a site which involves graphic design. Content is stored in a database. A user can change the look of a site with a few changes to style sheets such as CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and other layout features that define the font styles and sizes, colors, backgrounds and positions. In like manner, WordPress stores content in a database and the WordPress Theme(layout/design) controls the look of how the content is displayed.

A CMS has control over what content shows up and where ads, related posts, comments and other interactive elements appear on a web page. But with the plug-ins and add-ons available in
WordPresss, a user can also add these features to his blog. A user can turn WordPress into a full-fledged CMS with the many options, customizations and controls accessible to him.

There are a number of options a user can use to make WordPress works like a CMS. Most CMS sites control what articles appear on the front page. In WordPress, a user can make use of the Semiologic Opt-in FrontPage Plug-in that lets him choose which post will appear on his front page. Podcasting, videoblogging, adding music and images are possible with WordPress. There are plenty of elements that a user can add to WordPress to enhance connectivity and functions. Signing up for mailing lists, newsletters and other information to be disseminated can be done with WordPress. A user can even set up e-commerce with WordPress. Adding ads to a WordPress site is as simple as placing the ad information into the proper template file. Forums and bulletin boards are integrated with WordPress. Every WordPress user has a role that determines his rights within the application. This is particularly useful to control the flow of certain content. Another valuable feature of WordPress is its built-in moderation feature. This allows the user to approve messages before they get posted. The WP-ShortStart Plug-in renders Statistic monitoring. Lastly, a user's CMS site won't be complete without a way to handle external and internal links. WordPress has a number of plug-ins that can be used for this purpose.

Simply put, WordPress has sophisticated features that make it a powerful content management system.

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