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.

Labels: Web Site Design

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.

Labels: Web Site Design

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/

Labels: Internet Marketing, Web Site Design

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.

Labels: Internet Marketing, Web Site Design, Web Site Usability

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/

Labels: Search Engine Optimization, Web Site Design

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

Labels: Search Engine Optimization, Web Site Design

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

Labels: Web Site Design, Web Site Usability

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

Labels: Search Engine Optimization, Web Site Design

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.

Labels: Home Based Business, Web Site Design

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

Labels: Internet Marketing, Web Site Design

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

Labels: Search Engine Marketing, Web Site Design

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

Labels: Web Site Design, Web Site Usability

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

Labels: Web Site Design

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.

Labels: Web Site Design, Web Site Usability

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

Labels: Internet Marketing, Web Site Design, Web Site Usability

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

Labels: Web Site Design, Web Site Usability

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

Labels: Web Site Design, Web Site Usability

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

Labels: Copywriting, Web Site Design

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

Labels: Search Engine Optimization, Web Site Design

Copyright (c) 2006 Mark Silver

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

Labels: Copywriting, Internet Marketing, Web Site Design

By: John Black

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://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.

About The Author: http://www.theinternetone.net

Labels: Blogs and RSS, Web Site Design

By: Adam McFarland

Every website owner has a somewhat unhealthy obsession with
driving more traffic to their site. We all want more traffic,
if for nothing else to be able to brag to others how many
unique visitors we've received. Competition among web owners
aside, actually doing something with that traffic is equally as
important as getting it. Yet for some reason, most site owners
make the mistake of focusing most of their time on getting more
traffic and rarely, if ever, focus on improving their conversion
rate.

What is a conversion?

A conversion happens whenever a visitor to your site performs a
desired action. It might be purchasing a product, signing up for
a newsletter, signing up for an account, or even clicking on an
advertisement (although I'd advise against making the goal of
your site to have someone click away from it). One way or
another, if you have a site, you've got a desired action that
you want the user to perform.

How big of a difference can it make?

Consider Company A and Company B. Both sell online
subscriptions to their news services for a one-time fee of
$100. They each attract 1000 unique visitors per day. Company A
converts 2% of their visitors whereas Company B converts 5%. Big
deal right? How much does 3% really matter? Well, Company A
sells 20 subscriptions per day, or 7,300 per year for $730,000
of revenue. Not bad. But Company B sells 50 subscriptions per
day, or 18,250 per year for $1,825,000 of revenue!

Without any variation in traffic, you can improve conversion
rate on your site and drastically increase revenue. Now, is
increasing from 2% to 5% going be a challenge? Certainly, but
it is by no means impossible and in most cases is probably
easier than you think.

What's a good conversion rate?

Some people will tell you that an "average" conversion rate is
2%-5% and an "amazing" conversion rate is 10%-15%. To me,
that's a broad statement. I'm not saying that you should
completely ignore those numbers, just that you should
understand where they are coming from. Those numbers tend to
apply to e-commerce sites selling to consumers. They also don't
factor in where traffic is coming from, product pricing, and
about a hundred other potential factors that could affect your
conversion rate.

There are times when a 2% conversion rate is phenomenal. For
example, if you are selling software licenses for $20,000,
converting 1 in 50 visitors is pretty exemplary. On the flip
side, if your goal is to have people sign up for a football
newsletter and all of your traffic is coming from an ad you
placed on NFL.com, 15% might be considered really poor.

My answer to "what's a good conversion rate" is any conversion
rate that's better than your current one.

Start by doing a self-evaluation and set a baseline

Before you can even think about trying to increase your
conversion rate, you need to have a system in place to track
your current conversions. In its simplest form, conversion rate
can be calculated by dividing the number of conversions into the
number of visitors to your site for a specified time period.
Most site owners will want more in depth statistics (such as
what page visitors came from and what pages potential customers
left their site from) so I would recommend a web analytics
program like the free Google Analytics that provides in-depth
reporting and can calculate your conversion rates for you.

How will I know if my changes worked?

In my mind, the only way to think about conversion rate is to
start at your current rate and start striving to convert 100%
of the visitors to your site. Is that ever going to happen?
Probably not, but as Les Brown said - "shoot for the moon, even
if you miss, you'll land among the stars." Shoot for 100%
conversion rate and even if you don't get there, in attempting
to do so you'll be instilling the necessary qualities for
amazing improvements.

With that in mind, you should begin the process of trying to
improve your conversion rate from your baseline. The bad news
when it comes to increasing conversion rate is that there is no
"one thing" that every site owner can do to increase it. The
good news is that there are literally thousands of things that
you can try that might increase it. Each one of those things
might help, or each might hurt.

And therein lies the key to success in increasing conversion
rate - testing, evaluating, and then testing and evaluating
some more. Each time you should be striving to "beat your
previous best." If you went from 2% to 2.2%, keep the change
and try for 2.5% with your next change. If you went from 2% to
1.5%, undo the change and try to get back over 2% with your
next change. In general, you should give a sufficient amount of
time to evaluate a change - I generally use one month as a rule
of thumb, but you should factor in how much traffic you get and
how large the change is when determining how long collect data
for before evaluating a change.

What type of changes should I make?

As I mentioned before, there are thousands of things that you
can change that can affect conversion rates. So where should
you start? Start by walking in the shoes of your customer.
Using the example of an e-commerce site, there are several
types of customers that find your site. For the customer
looking to buy immediately, is it easy to find the "buy" button
or do you have to look around for it? For the customer wanting
more information (product info, shipping info, or info about
your business), is that easy to find? And for customers just
browsing, do you have a way to entice them to buy, or at least
entice them to sign up for a newsletter so that you can try to
convert them at a later time?

Asking yourself those questions should result in several subtle
changes and probably a few not-so-subtle changes that you can
make. In addition, ask yourself whether or not the design of
your site - logo, layout, colors, and font - appeal to senses
and make it easy for people to find what they're looking for.

You should also seriously consider the content of your text. Is
it possible that some people don't understand what your product
or service does? Could international users interpret your
phrases differently than domestic users, and if so, is there a
way you could re-word your copy to avoid confusion? Ad copy is
a funny thing - a subtle word change can often drastically
affect conversion rates. The only way to know is to test.

Remember, you should only make one change at a time to be able
to properly evaluate it. Each change will help point you in the
right direction of the next change. Much like SEO, increasing
conversion rate is not a one time event, it is an improvement
process that you facilitate over the life of your site. That
said, it is not an extremely difficult process, and when used
in conjunction with sound SEO it can bring results to your site
that you could have never imagined.

About The Author: Adam McFarland owns iPrioritize
(http://www.iPrioritize.com) - simple to-do lists that can be
edited at any time from any place in the world. Email, print,
check from your mobile phone, subscribe via RSS, and share with
others.

Labels: Pay Per Click Advertising, Web Site Design, Web Site Usability

By: Richard D S Hill

There has been more and more talk about Content Management
Systems as organizations decide that they need direct control
of their websites.

Once they have this, many soon learn that the technology also
allows them to change and improve their internal workflow,
processes and procedures for acquiring, filtering, organizing,
and controlling access to information and create an intranet
and / or extranet too.

Creating an intranet and / or extranet thus giving staff,
suppliers etc secure, remote, 24/7 access to information has
been shown to increase turnover, reduce costs and improve
profits because the right data is communicated to the right
people at the right time.

After all what is an intranet or extranet other than a
restricted-access network that works like the Web, but isn't on
it?

An intranet and / or extranet enables a company to share its
resources with its employees, customers, suppliers etc without
confidential information being made available to everyone with
Internet access, it can share organization policies and
procedures, announcements or information about new products -
anything that can be held in electronic form.

What is a CMS?

So what is Content Management (CM) and what are Content
Management Systems (CMS)?

A CMS is a system used to manage the content of a Web site.
Typically, a CMS consists of two elements:

- Content Management Application (CMA)

- Content Delivery Application (CDA)

The CMA allows anyone without HTML skills to manage the
creation, modification, and removal of content from a Web site.
The CDA automatically uses and compiles that information to
update the Web site. The features of a CMS system vary, but
most include

Web publishing. Page templates and other aids help authors to
produce high quality pages and documents that can automatically
be reused and co-ordinated.

Format management. In many authors can publish automatically in
a format suitable for Web publishing such as HTML or PDF.

Version & revision control. Multiple authors can update files
and yet the changes traced to individuals for security
purposes.

Index, search & retrieval. For data to be valuable, it must be
relevant, accessible and timely. Web content being electronic
is easy to index search and retrieve.

CMS benefits

The benefits of a CMS can be dramatic; for example amongst
others:

- You are in control. No longer do you need your web designer
just to put on new pages. You can spend that money on mire
important things such as search engine optimization and pay per
click marketing.

- Customers can find what they need - you are in control so you
also can control the navigation so that it continues to make
sense as a site grows and changes. Design and layout is
templated properly so all pages fit your brand image.

- The site is kept up to date easily and therefore quickly.
Whether a price list, a product description or a photo needs
updating you don't have to rely on IT or your web designer;
just about anyone can do it.

- Version and revision control makes it easy to roll-back the
site or a document to the 'correct' version.

- Database driven - products, articles and news may all be
separate but CMS' have databases that can allow for
associations between various content elements on a site.

- Controlled access. You can control where files are and who
gets access to them. So content can be tailored to the specific
groups with different access such as staff, suppliers etc

- Approvals and authorities. Good CMS provide the ability for
content managers to approve and validate content before it goes
live. They can also control the time a content element goes
live, the day and time is it removed from the site, and the
locations on the site that the content element appears.

Specifying your CMS

You need to consider a number of factors when you decide to
invest in a CMS. They range from "corporate solutions" that
have everything and cost an arm and a leg to free 'Open Source'
tools you can set up and maintain yourself.

- Do a requirements specification. State your business needs
don't try to design the CMS. Do not get wrapped up in too much
detail, if you and an 'outsider' can understand it your
requirements specification is there.

- Do not expect a CMS to meet every single one of your
requirements perfectly, you'll never find one or spend huge
amounts of money on customization.

- Think about changing the way you work to match the way the
CMS does it. Many CMS have sensible, well-established workflow
systems. If you're working differently from most people perhaps
you should look at why that is.

- Consider your entire organization and all its systems
(infrastructure, other applications, range of your electronic
data, etc.) when you determine the requirements for your CMS.
It's not going to be working in isolation, so it ought not to
be defined in isolation.

- Don't buy what you don't need but do buy something that gives
you room to change and expand.

- Finalize your requirements. If you change requirements during
the project your chance of failure increases exponentially. You
can make changes, but understand that every change is going to
result in higher costs and a longer schedule.

Buying a CMS

So, now that you have a good idea of what you need what next?

- Ask friends, colleagues and a man in the pub what they think
might work?

- Check competitors. Find out what systems competitors use.

- Pick one with a pin. This might work, but it is difficult to
justify to your boss or bank manager.

- Hire a consultant. This can work. OR..... [more likely]

- Contact us on + 44 (0) 1 225 840 490 or ... if you have the
time ...

- DIY!

To DIY:

Start with a long list and compare offered solutions to your
requirements; remove the 90 percent you can see aren't going to
work by checking Web sites, reading reviews and using your
intuition.

Look at the remaining systems. Download product information
sheets and whatever else is available. Take a longer look at
how these systems' features compare to your requirements.

Contact potential suppliers. Sending them your requirements
specification and any other information you think might be
important. You need to be confident that the CMS will meet most
of your important needs. Ask for demos, in-house presentations,
or whatever it takes to be sure their solution meets your
requirements.

Check for government grants.

Just one minor caution, having CM and a CMS does not solve
everything overnight with no hassles. You also need training
staff and develop different processes and procedures for how
you handle web based content whether that be on the internet,
intranet or extranet.

But, once you have one, you will never look back.

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 [ http://www.e-crm.co.uk ] is involved
in ECommerce and Emarketing and helps you to grow by getting
you more customers that stay with you longer. We provide
practical solutions that pay for themselves.

Labels: Web Site Design

By: Trey Pennewell

By: Kim Roach

By: James Opiko

At present, a vast majority of webmasters are designing for IE
(Internet Explorer) 6, which is not as W3C standards compliant
as is FireFox, Netscape, Safari and Opera.

In my article - "The importance of sound website design &
search spiders to Internet Marketers," I mentioned the
importance of a designer being cognizant of the fact that web
browser standards are not yet fully harmonized - a web page
that looks great in Internet Explorer (6) might look hideous in
a Mozilla based browser like FireFox or Netscape.

I also noted that with the explosion of devices with which to
serve Internet applications, compliance with W3C standards has
become critical.

When the final release for IE 7 for Windows XP, Server 2003 &
Vista is launched, hopefully before the end of 2006, the tables
will be turned, so to speak.

Internet Explorer 7 will be more standards compliant and your
HTML code will be subject to much more rigorous interpretation
than is the case with IE 6, consequently some web pages that
look fine in IE 6 might not look the same IE 7.

In IE 7 Microsoft has made a solemn effort to fix the browsers
acquiescence to W3C standards and CSS(Cascading Style Sheets)
compatibility. CSS interpretation as recommended by W3C has
been improved tremendously giving designers and developers more
leverage in functionality for cross-browser design.

Microsoft asserts that they are taking W3C compatibility issues
seriously.

Concisely what this means is that IE 7 will tend to interpret
your web page code more scrupulously than before.

Therefore, if you have been designing your pages and have not
bothered to check how they render in W3C Standards Compliant
browsers like FireFox, you may be in for a rude shock when IE 7
finally rolls out.

If you have not been incorporating W3C Web standards in your
design strategy you may need to re-design for IE 7.

How should you go about it?

Design for "strict" browsers like FireFox first. Not only is
FireFox a more standards-compliant browser but it is also the
primary competitor to Internet Explorer. A contender backed by
Google's marketing machine -- and therefore, is not likely do
"a Netscape" on designers.

Prior and up to IE 4.x, Netscape was the leading browser in the
market with almost 80% of the market, but in a bid to force the
issue culminating with proprietary goofs by AOL to whom
Netscape sold out, they screwed up big time with versions 4 up
to 6. A bitter war of attrition with Microsoft in the late
nineties did not help either.

Microsoft grabbed the opportunity and gobbled the Browser
market overnight.

With version 7+ Netscape has been revived. How well it will
compete with IE and FireFox remains to be seen.

I will be the first to admit that most the web pages I have
built in the last several years are not always standards
compliant...and so are ninety five percent of other web pages
-- as I stated in my previous article, "if strict W3C standards
were to be enforced in browsers, most websites would go out of
business."

To design for FireFox a designer needs to combine Valid CSS
(Cascading Style Sheets) for "look and feel" and W3C compliant
HTML for web page structure.

The combination of these two design strategies is powerful in
that it elicits tremendous flexibility, ease of maintenance and
opens up extensive possibilities in website design. The benefits
are rewarding, and every webmaster should attempt to utilize
this two pronged scheme in their design routine.

Making changes to and/or styling a site designed with CSS is
much easier and more elegant than messing around with a
traditional table-based design.

CSS may look intimidating to a first-timer but once you
familiarize with the basics you can progressively harness the
power of CSS to your full benefit. In addition, most web page
design tools such as Dreamweaver of FrontPage have built in
modules with which you can automatically generate CSS code,
which you can then view in a plain text editor for study
purposes.

To aid you in your CSS endeavor you need the following
developer tools: Web Developer Extension for FireFox and the
Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar. Great time-saving tools
for creating, understanding, and troubleshooting Web pages.

As a matter of fact, by installing some of the 1,500+ available
FireFox extensions you can eliminate the need for quite a chunk
of standalone desktop applications.

After designing your Web page remember to us a MarkUp
Validation Service to check whether your Web page conforms to
W3C recommendations. If there are errors, the validator will
notify you of them and suggest corrections.

Also, remember that when designing using W3C standards
guidelines a lot of code(tags) that were very valid in the
"Pre-Standards" era have completely depreciated and will be
ignored completely by browsers. If you ignore these errors
during validation, your web pages might not render correctly.

In many instances, you may never be able to achieve 100% HTML
or XHTML validation. In such cases you may want put the
following DOCTYPE declaration in your document -- at the top of
your web page before the tag:

< !DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
>

Note: remove space after " < " and before " > "

A "Document Type Definition" or DTD supplies Web browsers with
information about which (X)HTML specification your web page is
built upon, which instructs the Browser how to render the page
for viewing.

In the example captioned above a standards compliant browsers
will interpret your web page as an HTML 4.01 document, and
because it is marked as "Transitional," it will display it in
"quirks mode," meaning that the browser will forgo the strict
standards mode, and display your page like it would be
displayed in older "non-strict" browsers, while still
supporting any tags developed after IE 4, Netscape 4 and
others.

On the contrary, the following DOCTYPE declaration tells the
standards compliant browsers that your web page should be
displayed in strict compliance with the DOCTYPE declaration.

< !DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" >

A complete list of recommended DTDs can be found at the W3C
Website.

If you leave the DOCTYPE out, the browsers automatically switch
to "quirks mode," therefore, it is important to include the
DOCTYPE declaration on every web page that you build in order
for it to be rendered correctly.

If your Web pages render well in FireFox at present you
probably will not encounter any major problems in IE 7 other
than minor adjustments here and there. However, I think a
realistic designer should at least make a meaningful attempt to
follow W3C guidelines for it is the correct way forward.

Do it now so that you will ready for the future...re-designs
and total overhauls are a time consuming and painful process. A
process, which becomes much easier if your initial design
incorporated structurally clean and modular (X)HTML with CSS
compliance.

About The Author: James Opiko writes for
http://AfroArticles.com . Get free Online Coding Tools -
http://www.clubafrika.com/webmaster-tools/coding/PHP-NukeTools.shtml
, Audio Code Generator Software -
http://www.apondosystems.com/products/cb-top/Audio-Code-Generator-Software.html
for your website, emails & newsletters.

Labels: Web Site Design, Web Site Usability

By Editor Sg-Web

I just finished watching a video that shared some updates on
what's happening at the major search engines lately. Since
webmasters are always interested in learning more about search
engine optimization (SEO) techniques, I thought it would be
good to share a neat trick using Google's webmaster tools.

The first time I heard about Google webmaster tools, it was
known as Google sitemaps. That was very little that we can do
with it, except upload a sitemap so that a new site can be
included in Google's index quicker. After toying with it for a
couple of days, I find it a hassle to generate those sitemaps.
If a website is destined to grow, that would mean taking up
more time submitting those sitemaps. Strapped for time as it
is, I figured it would be better to just concentrate on
building more content for my websites.

It's still hard for me to refer to Google's new toys with a new
name but I guess it's a much more suitable name, now that so
many new tools have been added. To begin using the tool, login
to the control panel using a valid Google username. If you do
not possess one, just sign up at the site
google.com/webmasters. After logging in, enter the URL that you
would like to obtain more information about. You'll be required
to verify that you own the site. To do so, you can either add a
META tag or upload a HTML file. Verification is instant and
you'll see your verification status as Verified if it's
successful.

Upon verification, all kinds of interesting tidbits about your
site will be available. The one that interests me most is the
page analysis (Statistics > Page Analysis). This allows any
webmaster to view information about external links. In other
words, Google learns about a website's general theme from
external text links. You'll be able to see all the keywords
that other people have used in the text links that link to your
site.

Many webmasters have already discovered the "secret" that
anchor texts should be used in text links. Anchor texts look
something like Anchor texts. There are many ways to obtain
keyword targetted external links. One popular way is to submit
to web directories.

In many instances, web directories allow webmasters to submit
their sites for free. Some web directories become more
established and may charge a small fee for a site submission.
However, fees are usually one-time payment and are better deals
compared to text links that require monthly subscription.

So, take a look around the webmaster community and spot SEO
friendly web directories and start submitting some links. Your
competitor may be doing exactly the same thing and I don't know
about you but I hate to lose. See you at the number 1 spot!

About The Author: Darren Chow owns a network of quality sites.
He also owns a couple of unique web directories.
http://www.awardtrophy.net and http://www.suggestlinks.org

Labels: Search Engine Optimization, Web Site Design

By Jerry Goldfarb

Creating a website is something anyone can do today with the
advent of many application or website generators available
today. But, creating a appreciable and good looking website
needs a lot of thought process and skills. The following would
help:

1. Think of a theme or idea for the website.

What does your site speak about or what do you want the site to
speak about? Put yourself in the shoes of the visitor and think
why you should visit this particular site and not one of the
numerous others? Always try to offer something extra that a
visitor needs or wants. After you close your thought process on
this, proceed to point no. 2.

2. Now that you have the idea ready, what else do you need?

An idea itself is not enough to create the website. Give a
thought to web design. Design is a process of visualizing the
idea by finalizing the layout, colors and more importantly the
content. Colors and their combinations are very essential,
since if you end up using the wrong ones, the visitor may have
difficulty in reading the content which is the most important
part of the site. The visitor will leave, never to come back.
It is important to visualize the web site design on paper or a
image file to get a proper preview.

3. Finding a web-host.

You can host your site for free; there are many sites which
offer this in lieu of placing an advertisement on your site. If
you are running a business, it is advisable that you get your
own web host. It is not very expensive to do so.

4. Start off with web development.

Now that your web design has been finalized after numerous
changes, it is time to develop the site as per the design
specification. Knowledge of basic HTML becomes essential to
create a quality site. There is no need to get into the tags
and formats but it is necessary to know what HTML is and how it
works. There are numerous HTML development engines available
which work on the WYSIWYG guidelines, a basic knowledge of HTML
will help you create a better website. This knowledge will come
handy when you try to fix the errors on your site.

5. View your handiwork.

While viewing your webpage do not forget the important factors:

1. Loading speed - Is it fast? 2. Is it easily navigable? 3. Is
the content error free? 4. Is there anything that visitors would
need or find useful?

This is only the tip of the iceberg. These factors are
extremely important and most people seem to ignore them
resulting in a poor preventability. The idiom "First impression
is the last impression" holds good while you try to publicize
your site.

6. Create the rest of the pages.

Create the rest of your pages with the above points in mind.
Follow the hierarchy and don't get confused.

7. Make your site go live.

Preview your pages and after being satisfied, upload it to your
web host. The next step is to promote your site. Promoting is
required to inform others about the presence and content of
your site.

The process of web design and development is a cycle. To make
people visit your site again and again, it is important to
update your site at least every two weeks with good and latest
content available to you. Make sure the updates are
interesting.

About The Author:

For more information and tips on creating a
good looking and functional web site, please visit
http://www.cobbwebdesign.com.

Labels: Web Site Design