This list of top 10 strategies for building links is based on my own experience of building links to my sites throughout the years. It is important to keep in mind that when it comes to SEO, nothing is set in stone. SEO is a cat-and-mouse game, so I will revise this list from time to time as the field continues to evolve.
Please note that the order in which these methods are listed do not necessarily reflect their order of effectiveness. Some methods may work better than others for certain sites.
1. Submit to web directories
Submitting to web directories is a vital part of every successful link building campaign. Apart from driving traffic to your website through direct referrals, web directories provide static, one-way links to your site, boosting your link popularity and improving your rankings on the major search engines like Google and Yahoo.
It is important to note that not all directory listings are equal. Listings from trusted, established directories like Yahoo! and DMOZ are more valuable than those from the thousands of others on the net. All else being equal, a link from a directory focused on your niche is worth more than one from a general directories.
Submit to both free and paid directories. Free directories provide one-way links to your site with no strings attached, but they can take forever to review your link. Paid listings can be a good investment if the fees are reasonable and the pages on which your link will reside have decent PRs. Your sites will be listed with fewer competing links on paid directories.
2. Write articles and press releases
Submitting your article to directories is a highly effective way to build one-way links to your site. First, you write a thoughtful and informative article on an topic in your area of expertise. Then you submit it to article directories to be read by the general public and reprinted on other web sites. Appended to the end of your article is a resource box which contain links to your site and email address.
While there are hundreds or even thousands of article directories on the web, you should focus on writing a high quality article and submitting to a handful of the more popular ones. Having your article published on a top directory can be worth more than a hundred less reputable ones. If you write something that people find useful, they may pick it up and reprint it on their blogs, newsletters, etc. This is how a quality article propagates virally in cyberspace-- it virtually distributes itself without your having to manually submit to a thousand article directories.
3. Exchange links with related sites
Online forums like Digitalpoint are an excellent place to find reciprocal linking partners. Avoid sending out spammy e-mail solicitations like those generated by many SEO software programs. I get dozens of these everyday.
4. Make use of social bookmarking sites
Social bookmarking sites help bring together internet users from every corner of the world into a virtual global village. Submitting content to sites like Digg.com, YouTube.com and Del.icio.us can bring lots of visitors in a hurry.
It is important to understand that sites like Digg and YouTube are not necessarily shock sites. Although there is some publicity to be gained from the shock value of an article or video, one must not resort to tasteless and offensive materials to gain attention. There is only so much value in the attention gotten by being the village idiot.
5. Buy text links on other sites
Although link buying is somewhat an unnatural way to build links, it may be the only way to increase your link popularity if your site is not unique or interesting enough to get people to link to you on their own. Most commercial sites fall into this category.
You should buy links in a way that simulates natural linking as much as possible. Buy text links from sites that are related to yours. Vary anchor texts and descriptions. Buy links from internal as well as home pages. Buy links from both high- and low-PR sites (which can be gotten at a bargain prices).
6. Participate in online forums
Sharing knowledge can be a very powerful way to establish your online presence and credibility. If you check your backlinks on search engines like Google and Yahoo!, you may notice that a number of them come from the signatures of forum posts, that is, if you post in forums. Most forums allow signature links. I don't participate in forums that don't as allowing them is the least the forums can do to compensate me for contributing to their contents.
7. Write testimonials and reviews.
Writing a glowing review about a product or service and submitting to your vendor or service provider can give you a very high quality link back to your site. But this strategy can prove time-consuming as many vendors publish only a handful of testimonials from their customers. Don't waste your time by sending a testimonial to a vendor who does not have a "Testimonials" page on their site. When submitting a review or testimonial, don't forget to mention to your vendor that they should be feel free to publish your comments on their site (along with a link to your site).
8. Ask vendors and clients to link to your site.
I once bought a $350 script package and asked my vendor if they could feature my site as site made with their script. They obliged and gave me a PR7 text link from their site. Since the link is worth at least $40 a month, my initial investement for the script has paid for itself many times over. Besides the SEO benefits, it is responsible for thousands of visitors to my site a month through direct clicks. The moral of the story: don't be afraid to ask. The worse that could happen is that they say "no".
9. Blogging
Setting up a blog is a no-brainer. Even if you've no web designing experience whatsoever, you have a blog up and running in no time. Blogs allows for a more informal setting to get your words across. So, it's much easier to write a blog entry than an article to submit to article directories. Use your blog to share knowlege, voice opinions, connect with others with similar interests, and of course, to link to your other sites.
Avoid spamming blog networks like Blogger and MySpace. These spam blogs ("splogs") are a waste of time as they will not get much attention from people and will yield little, if any, SEO benefits. Write about something you know and have a genuine interest in. Focus on quality rather than quantity.
10. Content is king.
Yes, content is still king. In fact, content is by far the most important of the ten strategies I've mentioned. Having fresh, unique, engaging content is an excellent way to attract natural linking from other sites. This is the type of links that search engines like.
You may have heard of the buzz phrase, link-baiting, that is being tossed around in the SEO community nowadays. The idea is to get others to link to you voluntarily, perhaps by causing some type of sensation or controversy on YouTube, Digg, the message boards, or whatever. Link-baiting, in my opinion, is no more than a new play on the old "content is king" mantra.
About the Author
Oudam is the webmaster of UnlimitedTraffic.net, a site that offers a wide range of effective and affordable website traffic building solutions. Visit his site for more free tips and tutorials on optimizing and promoting your site.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
3 Income Source - Entrepreneur Business Opportunity by Kevin R. Guthrie
There are many who are coming to the internet looking for a entrepreneur business opportunity and finding that the 3 income source is a great place to start. The internet, though it may be goldmine of information and opportunity, there are many things to learn about making money and many ways to get lost in the shuffle.
What is important to note is that most come to the web with little business experience and may not have many of the skills that are required to strike out on their own. Skills such as copywriting, designing graphics, or creating their own products.
The entrepreneur business opportunity we are going to have a look at is a cash generating system. What is drawing many to this kind of start on the web is that, all you need to get started is access to a computer, internet connection and a desire for success.
What makes this cash generating system unique is the fact that it has already proven to be successful by many others like yourself, who are able to quickly start reaping the benefits.
This is a complete entrepreneur business opportunity website that is setup for you. Now do not get this confused with others who may offer a free site setup, but do not give you any training or support. Been there - done that.
A team of website programmers and technicians have designed this site to make it easy to use for absolutely anyone, even for those who have no computer knowledge. There will be no need to learn any computer languages such as HTML. Everything is taken care of through this system.
The website will work similar to a Wal-mart. As most of us recall Wal-mart does not manufacture or sell any of their own products. They are a retail distributor for many companies and make a commission on all the merchandise that they sell.
Those choosing this entrepreneur business opportunity and cash generating system, will receive a designed site, a profit pulling sales page, and many of the hottest selling products on the web today.
How does one get paid? Excellent question. For those who take advantage of the automated system, will get a website setup and receive a 75 percent commission on every product sold from that site. That is on a $100 dollar product they will be paid $75 dollars spendable cash. They will also have access to website stats 24 hours a day to see how much money they have made at any given time.
The 3 income source is divided up so that they will receive two checks twice a month and a third check once a month. Direct deposit is also available for convenience. With this system they will also receive training material that will show them how to get started with step by step instruction to start making money right away.
We are not talking about a traditional business here. All of the customer service is handled from one location by company representatives. They will take care of all customer returns, refunds, phone calls and all emails.
At no time will anyone be asked to carry an inventory of products in their home. This means nothing to wrap, package or ship, ever. All of this is taken care of as well. Allowing for more free time and the ability to work whenever they want.
About the Author
This has been proven to work for many people who are no longer a slaves to money. This entrepreneur business opportunity is earning cash 24 hours a day. Check it out here: Entrepreneur Business Opportunity
Kevin R. Guthrie is a full time marketer. Lives to enjoy the outdoors with wife and kids hunting, fishing and traveling.
What is important to note is that most come to the web with little business experience and may not have many of the skills that are required to strike out on their own. Skills such as copywriting, designing graphics, or creating their own products.
The entrepreneur business opportunity we are going to have a look at is a cash generating system. What is drawing many to this kind of start on the web is that, all you need to get started is access to a computer, internet connection and a desire for success.
What makes this cash generating system unique is the fact that it has already proven to be successful by many others like yourself, who are able to quickly start reaping the benefits.
This is a complete entrepreneur business opportunity website that is setup for you. Now do not get this confused with others who may offer a free site setup, but do not give you any training or support. Been there - done that.
A team of website programmers and technicians have designed this site to make it easy to use for absolutely anyone, even for those who have no computer knowledge. There will be no need to learn any computer languages such as HTML. Everything is taken care of through this system.
The website will work similar to a Wal-mart. As most of us recall Wal-mart does not manufacture or sell any of their own products. They are a retail distributor for many companies and make a commission on all the merchandise that they sell.
Those choosing this entrepreneur business opportunity and cash generating system, will receive a designed site, a profit pulling sales page, and many of the hottest selling products on the web today.
How does one get paid? Excellent question. For those who take advantage of the automated system, will get a website setup and receive a 75 percent commission on every product sold from that site. That is on a $100 dollar product they will be paid $75 dollars spendable cash. They will also have access to website stats 24 hours a day to see how much money they have made at any given time.
The 3 income source is divided up so that they will receive two checks twice a month and a third check once a month. Direct deposit is also available for convenience. With this system they will also receive training material that will show them how to get started with step by step instruction to start making money right away.
We are not talking about a traditional business here. All of the customer service is handled from one location by company representatives. They will take care of all customer returns, refunds, phone calls and all emails.
At no time will anyone be asked to carry an inventory of products in their home. This means nothing to wrap, package or ship, ever. All of this is taken care of as well. Allowing for more free time and the ability to work whenever they want.
About the Author
This has been proven to work for many people who are no longer a slaves to money. This entrepreneur business opportunity is earning cash 24 hours a day. Check it out here: Entrepreneur Business Opportunity
Kevin R. Guthrie is a full time marketer. Lives to enjoy the outdoors with wife and kids hunting, fishing and traveling.
Unique Web Design by Dustin Schwerman
Very few professional sites these days can claim to be unique. This isn't to say that they don't look good. The clean look that many websites favor is not due to laziness or ineptitude; it is intentional. Most business websites these days are graphic-light, often having little more than a logo and perhaps an image or two off to the side. Above and beyond that, they may have some button links which are only graphics in the sense that they were created by a graphics program.
These websites are clean, presentable, and best of all they are what people expect. They are the respectable web standard, the baseline for web design.
But they are not unique. Changes in colors and varying graphics do not make a site unique; they make it a separate site. A website worthy of the term unique has to do more than make the changes allowed by the forms it works within; it has to use different forms entirely.
This isn't a matter of an interesting graphic, cool bit of code, or elaborate flash intro page. It's a matter of designing your site with the intent to stand out. It's about going beyond the safe, well-traveled path of white backgrounds and file tab links and setting up your site to catch the eye. You don't want a visitor to come away with different information than every other site in your field; you want the visitor to come away with an entirely different experience.
But it's not all about ingenuity. Creativity is key, but that creativity has to be tempered with the user's experience in mind. A site where the links are made to resemble airplanes trailing banners and fly around the site randomly is certainly unique, but it's also a lot harder for the visitor to travel about your site. This is the precarious balance of unique web design; making your website both look and function in original ways, but still be just as easy to use as a run-of-the-mill, black-text-on-white-background website.
With risks come rewards, and leaving the safe, easy path is always risky. It is the norm because it has been proven to work, and if you design such a site you know that your site layout will never be a hindrance to the user's experience. But the question becomes, will it be a benefit? Often not. Generic site design won't improve the user's experience because it is exactly what the user is used to, exactly what the user expects to experience. The bland and basic layout fades into the background where it's supposed to be, and the user goes about exploring the site with no starting impression.
Unique web design offers you the chance to create a starting impression that your competitors are avoiding. It gives you a chance to make the user come to a conclusion about your website before reading the first line of text, due simply to the layout and the graphics. All you have to worry about is making that impression a good one.
About the Author
Dustin Schwerman is the head web designer for Truly Unique--Affordable Custom Website Design. Truly Unique specializes in creating highly customized, visually impressive websites at affordable prices.
These websites are clean, presentable, and best of all they are what people expect. They are the respectable web standard, the baseline for web design.
But they are not unique. Changes in colors and varying graphics do not make a site unique; they make it a separate site. A website worthy of the term unique has to do more than make the changes allowed by the forms it works within; it has to use different forms entirely.
This isn't a matter of an interesting graphic, cool bit of code, or elaborate flash intro page. It's a matter of designing your site with the intent to stand out. It's about going beyond the safe, well-traveled path of white backgrounds and file tab links and setting up your site to catch the eye. You don't want a visitor to come away with different information than every other site in your field; you want the visitor to come away with an entirely different experience.
But it's not all about ingenuity. Creativity is key, but that creativity has to be tempered with the user's experience in mind. A site where the links are made to resemble airplanes trailing banners and fly around the site randomly is certainly unique, but it's also a lot harder for the visitor to travel about your site. This is the precarious balance of unique web design; making your website both look and function in original ways, but still be just as easy to use as a run-of-the-mill, black-text-on-white-background website.
With risks come rewards, and leaving the safe, easy path is always risky. It is the norm because it has been proven to work, and if you design such a site you know that your site layout will never be a hindrance to the user's experience. But the question becomes, will it be a benefit? Often not. Generic site design won't improve the user's experience because it is exactly what the user is used to, exactly what the user expects to experience. The bland and basic layout fades into the background where it's supposed to be, and the user goes about exploring the site with no starting impression.
Unique web design offers you the chance to create a starting impression that your competitors are avoiding. It gives you a chance to make the user come to a conclusion about your website before reading the first line of text, due simply to the layout and the graphics. All you have to worry about is making that impression a good one.
About the Author
Dustin Schwerman is the head web designer for Truly Unique--Affordable Custom Website Design. Truly Unique specializes in creating highly customized, visually impressive websites at affordable prices.
Website Decisions II--Inspiration by Dustin Schwerman
It amazes me how many times I've seen people wanting a website "like this". Where this indicates another existing site. And every time, I have to give a slight sigh and shake of my head. Turning to other sites for inspiration is definitely a wise thing to do. In fact, when you are designing yours, the second thing you should do (after keyword selection) is type a couple of your keywords into the search engines and look at what the businesses at the top are doing. These are your competition. More to the point, they are the most successful members of your competition.
But saying that you want to be like this site or that business is not a viable decision. First, bear in mind that there is already someone else who is doing that. And this person or group or business has been doing it for longer than you have, and are ranking higher on the search engines than you are. That latter condition is, hopefully, temporary, but given two organizations with similar purposes and designs, it is the more experienced group that will get the majority of the business.
The other problem with saying you want to be like someone else is that it doesn't give your web designer much information. I've had more than a few clients send me links to sites they like, which is well and good, but so rarely does that provide me with any real information about what they want me to incorporate into their site.
Do you like the layout? The graphics? The colors? What aspects do you favor? Use others for inspiration, but don't stop at a link. Determine what parts you like.
And then decide how to work such aspects into your design. And then figure out what you don't like. Consider things that you could do better, that might be improved upon. Look at two different sites; think about how one's layout might complement the other's functions, especially when both are used to present your products.
The goal is to make your website uniquely yours, but to use and take advantage of proven methods. You don't want to play entirely by the rules of others, because playing by the champion's rules is a sure way to lose unless you are simply better at the game. If you can compete in your own style, taking what benefits you, discarding the rest, and adding your own touch, you have a much better chance of being recognized as a unique entity in your own right. Otherwise, you run the risk of being marked as such another of the millions of .coms using the same forms and functions, the same styles and layouts.
It can be hard to come up with ideas, and it will always be time consuming to figure out which ideas work. By using other websites for inspiration, you can get a number of proven ideas quickly, which can be added to, deleted, or modified to suit your site. Be they colors, graphics, layout, even code, you can take advantage of the results created by others to help you figure out what you want your result to be. Used properly, as a single step in the process, this technique can only improve the finished work. But used as the process itself, and you end up with an easily-ignored impersonation of an already successful competitor.
About the Author
Dustin Schwerman is the head web designer for Truly Unique--Affordable Custom Website Design. Truly Unique specializes in creating highly customized, visually impressive websites at affordable prices.
But saying that you want to be like this site or that business is not a viable decision. First, bear in mind that there is already someone else who is doing that. And this person or group or business has been doing it for longer than you have, and are ranking higher on the search engines than you are. That latter condition is, hopefully, temporary, but given two organizations with similar purposes and designs, it is the more experienced group that will get the majority of the business.
The other problem with saying you want to be like someone else is that it doesn't give your web designer much information. I've had more than a few clients send me links to sites they like, which is well and good, but so rarely does that provide me with any real information about what they want me to incorporate into their site.
Do you like the layout? The graphics? The colors? What aspects do you favor? Use others for inspiration, but don't stop at a link. Determine what parts you like.
And then decide how to work such aspects into your design. And then figure out what you don't like. Consider things that you could do better, that might be improved upon. Look at two different sites; think about how one's layout might complement the other's functions, especially when both are used to present your products.
The goal is to make your website uniquely yours, but to use and take advantage of proven methods. You don't want to play entirely by the rules of others, because playing by the champion's rules is a sure way to lose unless you are simply better at the game. If you can compete in your own style, taking what benefits you, discarding the rest, and adding your own touch, you have a much better chance of being recognized as a unique entity in your own right. Otherwise, you run the risk of being marked as such another of the millions of .coms using the same forms and functions, the same styles and layouts.
It can be hard to come up with ideas, and it will always be time consuming to figure out which ideas work. By using other websites for inspiration, you can get a number of proven ideas quickly, which can be added to, deleted, or modified to suit your site. Be they colors, graphics, layout, even code, you can take advantage of the results created by others to help you figure out what you want your result to be. Used properly, as a single step in the process, this technique can only improve the finished work. But used as the process itself, and you end up with an easily-ignored impersonation of an already successful competitor.
About the Author
Dustin Schwerman is the head web designer for Truly Unique--Affordable Custom Website Design. Truly Unique specializes in creating highly customized, visually impressive websites at affordable prices.
Custom Website Design--The Layout by Dustin Schwerman
There are some things that every website needs. A content area is critical, displaying your text, videos, products, or other primary information. You need a section for your major links, of course, and if they are not drop-down lists or dynamic menus, you'll also want a position for the minor links of that section of your site. And don't forget your text links; the search engines like those. You probably want a banner, or a logo, or maybe both. Some sites will also need a section for advertisements, affiliate links, or shopping cart checkout buttons.
If you are creating a custom website then you probably have some fairly impressive graphics to work with. You want those images to stand out, but you don't want to lose out on your site's functionality to cater to them. Indeed, your graphics should augment the utility of your site, form and function complementing one another to attract the eye to key points and relax it from text-heavy content.
This is the goal of a custom layout. All those key elements of the site have to fit in with the impressive graphics that provide your site with both brand recognition and visual appeal. The text, links, and other Internet-specific parts have to fit in with the graphics, attracting attention without ruining the picture. Likewise, the graphics have to channel focus to the content that the viewers are there for, not distract them from the main points of your website.
There are a number of traditional layouts. The classic links to the left, content to the right, banner at the top or the header above tab links above content are two of the best-known styles. These layouts are time-tested and quite functional for a mundane site, but when custom graphics are involved, these tactics are limiting. As always, the goal of custom website design is optimizing for your business. You don't want to be different unless doing so is useful.
Chances are, it will be, especially if you have a graphics-heavy site. Here's the challenge, then; your layout has to fit with your graphics, but you still need to incorporate all of the important parts of your site. More to the point, you have to do so in a recognizable manner. If your users can't see how to interact with your web pages...they won't.
I'll provide an example. I have a site dedicated to my fantasy writings, and my brother (an adept graphic designer) and I are working at improving its layout. We have ideas for a classic fantasy dungeon setting, including piles of treasure along the bottom of the site. Previously, my brother had designed me an intricate book graphic, and I was hit with the inspiration that we could take that graphic, adjust the title for each of my writings, and scatter the books among the treasure hoard, turning them into links to excerpts from the appropriate book.
Doing so would have been interesting certainly, and I might still use the idea--but only as a secondary linking scheme. As an added option of navigation, it might amuse those visitors who notice it, but I have little doubt that most wouldn't. For primary navigation, I will still rely on a grouped set of links, with one of them clearly displaying "writings". This is the sort of style that visitors expect, and even if it doesn't follow one of the traditional link styles, it will be readily apparent for what it is. If instead I scattered those books as my primary links throughout the treasure at the bottom, I would no doubt lose many visitors owed to frustration.
When designing a custom layout, thus, you are designing both a visually appealing picture and a functional, intuitive website. To focus on either at expense of the other is the path to failure, and to focus on both individually is a waste of your site's potential. Your aim is to make form and function into a seamless whole, both complementing each other, both improving your website in the eyes of your visitors.
About the Author
Dustin Schwerman is the head web designer for Truly Unique--Affordable Custom Website Design. Truly Unique specializes in creating highly customized, visually impressive websites at affordable prices.
If you are creating a custom website then you probably have some fairly impressive graphics to work with. You want those images to stand out, but you don't want to lose out on your site's functionality to cater to them. Indeed, your graphics should augment the utility of your site, form and function complementing one another to attract the eye to key points and relax it from text-heavy content.
This is the goal of a custom layout. All those key elements of the site have to fit in with the impressive graphics that provide your site with both brand recognition and visual appeal. The text, links, and other Internet-specific parts have to fit in with the graphics, attracting attention without ruining the picture. Likewise, the graphics have to channel focus to the content that the viewers are there for, not distract them from the main points of your website.
There are a number of traditional layouts. The classic links to the left, content to the right, banner at the top or the header above tab links above content are two of the best-known styles. These layouts are time-tested and quite functional for a mundane site, but when custom graphics are involved, these tactics are limiting. As always, the goal of custom website design is optimizing for your business. You don't want to be different unless doing so is useful.
Chances are, it will be, especially if you have a graphics-heavy site. Here's the challenge, then; your layout has to fit with your graphics, but you still need to incorporate all of the important parts of your site. More to the point, you have to do so in a recognizable manner. If your users can't see how to interact with your web pages...they won't.
I'll provide an example. I have a site dedicated to my fantasy writings, and my brother (an adept graphic designer) and I are working at improving its layout. We have ideas for a classic fantasy dungeon setting, including piles of treasure along the bottom of the site. Previously, my brother had designed me an intricate book graphic, and I was hit with the inspiration that we could take that graphic, adjust the title for each of my writings, and scatter the books among the treasure hoard, turning them into links to excerpts from the appropriate book.
Doing so would have been interesting certainly, and I might still use the idea--but only as a secondary linking scheme. As an added option of navigation, it might amuse those visitors who notice it, but I have little doubt that most wouldn't. For primary navigation, I will still rely on a grouped set of links, with one of them clearly displaying "writings". This is the sort of style that visitors expect, and even if it doesn't follow one of the traditional link styles, it will be readily apparent for what it is. If instead I scattered those books as my primary links throughout the treasure at the bottom, I would no doubt lose many visitors owed to frustration.
When designing a custom layout, thus, you are designing both a visually appealing picture and a functional, intuitive website. To focus on either at expense of the other is the path to failure, and to focus on both individually is a waste of your site's potential. Your aim is to make form and function into a seamless whole, both complementing each other, both improving your website in the eyes of your visitors.
About the Author
Dustin Schwerman is the head web designer for Truly Unique--Affordable Custom Website Design. Truly Unique specializes in creating highly customized, visually impressive websites at affordable prices.
Affordable Website Design--Package Deal or Value Meal by Dustin Schwerman
I don't know about you, but when I hear "package deal" I hear variety. When I hear about different levels of package deals, with incrementing costs, my default assumption is that each package offers its own selection of ever-improving options. Naturally, I also expect that the package includes a greater amount of benefits obtained from previous packages.
But you know, I could be wrong. Maybe what most people call a package deal I would call a value menu; the same selection of items at a higher price, with certain side benefits increased in quantity while the main part of the deal remains much the same. I can't help but think there's a tendency towards these sort of packages after looking at a few sites that offered website design packages where the main improvement seemed to be the number of pages available.
Am I missing something here?
Myself, I've never understood the theory behind charging by the page number. Okay, sure, I understood it from a "hey, let's grab the maximum amount of money for the minimum amount of work" standpoint, but it always struck me as a really rather arbitrary method of pricing. Website designers have a tremendous variety of tools that they can use to create a layout that functions across multiple pages. CSS stylesheets, php file functions, dynamic database page creation, external javascript files...
Maybe I am missing something. Maybe these web designers are using template systems. That would make sense. The way those things lag, charging by the page begins to sound downright reasonable. I just can't wrap my mind around the idea of a web designer actually using a template system as their primary method of designing websites. Or maybe they are expected to write all the content? The cost per page for written content would make sense. Myself, though, I'd rather write the content for my business and let the web designer format, optimize, and upload it.
It just seems to me that number of pages isn't a viable pricing method, and it is even less viable as a primary scaling benefit of a web design package. Complexity of coding, content creation, data entry, e-commerce, SEO...all very valid things to base a pricing structure on. Even hourly would make more sense if it wasn't for the fact that there is no way to keep track of hours spent.
Getting back to my earlier analogy, taking your basic offer, adding more web pages, and calling it a package deal seems to me like asking the visitor to buy for the burger but pay by the french fry. You stick them all in the same vat of oil, toss on the same salt, put them all in the same carton, and it's done. At least with food you get a more filling meal. Huh, now there's an analogy for you. Additional Web Pages: The #1 Filler Of Website Design Packages.
About the Author
Dustin Schwerman is the head web designer for Truly Unique--Affordable Custom Website Design. Truly Unique specializes in creating highly customized, visually impressive websites at affordable prices.
But you know, I could be wrong. Maybe what most people call a package deal I would call a value menu; the same selection of items at a higher price, with certain side benefits increased in quantity while the main part of the deal remains much the same. I can't help but think there's a tendency towards these sort of packages after looking at a few sites that offered website design packages where the main improvement seemed to be the number of pages available.
Am I missing something here?
Myself, I've never understood the theory behind charging by the page number. Okay, sure, I understood it from a "hey, let's grab the maximum amount of money for the minimum amount of work" standpoint, but it always struck me as a really rather arbitrary method of pricing. Website designers have a tremendous variety of tools that they can use to create a layout that functions across multiple pages. CSS stylesheets, php file functions, dynamic database page creation, external javascript files...
Maybe I am missing something. Maybe these web designers are using template systems. That would make sense. The way those things lag, charging by the page begins to sound downright reasonable. I just can't wrap my mind around the idea of a web designer actually using a template system as their primary method of designing websites. Or maybe they are expected to write all the content? The cost per page for written content would make sense. Myself, though, I'd rather write the content for my business and let the web designer format, optimize, and upload it.
It just seems to me that number of pages isn't a viable pricing method, and it is even less viable as a primary scaling benefit of a web design package. Complexity of coding, content creation, data entry, e-commerce, SEO...all very valid things to base a pricing structure on. Even hourly would make more sense if it wasn't for the fact that there is no way to keep track of hours spent.
Getting back to my earlier analogy, taking your basic offer, adding more web pages, and calling it a package deal seems to me like asking the visitor to buy for the burger but pay by the french fry. You stick them all in the same vat of oil, toss on the same salt, put them all in the same carton, and it's done. At least with food you get a more filling meal. Huh, now there's an analogy for you. Additional Web Pages: The #1 Filler Of Website Design Packages.
About the Author
Dustin Schwerman is the head web designer for Truly Unique--Affordable Custom Website Design. Truly Unique specializes in creating highly customized, visually impressive websites at affordable prices.
Web Banner Design From A Professional Perspective by Mike Standing
Web banner ads are seen on many websites as they still are proving to be very effective in converting graphical ad units visitors and viewers to real websites traffic main streams which will in turn lead to sign ups, orderings and online purchases.
You know, there is a secret feeling that makes people click on animated web banners on the web, if the banner ads be designed in a way to professionally reflect the web business image on the web then people will feel that clicking on the ads will take them to a website offering something or the information that they like to view.
As a matter of fact animated and static or Flash banners are designed by so many companies and people and these ads are used mainly in letting more and more new visitors and internet users taking a look at some advertising websites.
Web banner ads too just like any web related design project can be accomplished in a professional way that will cover the fees of running the ads by generating a great healthy sales experience and that exactly defines why even multimillion companies are still using this powerful media source for driving traffic to their websites.
Please note that designing a truly amazing banner is not necessarily equal to having the best pictures used or giving information about the bestseller products of a company, but it needs a complex market knowledge and knowing the delicacies which altogether will create a great web banner that not only does it turn visitors to shoppers, but adds to the fame of the specific companies as well.
If you still haven't made up your mind on the specific design details of your banner ads, it is useful and always helpful consulting with the leading design firms and professional freelancer developers who have extensive experience in creating web banners for the webmasters and the advertising companies.
In some cases, designing a banner ad can take several days especially the ads are going to be developed using complex programming language of the Flash software, and as you already know, many of such banners are run for interaction purposes, since they are in most cases playable and have the ability to connect to a website's database or some online scripts.
It really is not that important what format and style of banner ad you are going to design and use, but one thing which you are better always remind to yourself is to carefully analyzing your web banners to figure out if the designed ads are going to bring in new visitors or simply will be displayed online as a beautiful graphical file that does nothing but keeping people praising its beauty or complexity and which will merely cost thousands per advertising campaign.
A professionally designed banner is regarded as a friendly advertising partner of any website and the very great news is that by using some exclusively developed banner advertising websites you can make sure to receiving a targeted traffic stream coming from your banner ads exposure on the participating websites.
When you take a look at the above mentioned points, you will have a better and more professional idea while designing and creating your web banners so that every minute spent over building your ads will be guaranteed to bring great online traffic news. Good Luck!
About the Author
http://www.bannerperfect.com
You know, there is a secret feeling that makes people click on animated web banners on the web, if the banner ads be designed in a way to professionally reflect the web business image on the web then people will feel that clicking on the ads will take them to a website offering something or the information that they like to view.
As a matter of fact animated and static or Flash banners are designed by so many companies and people and these ads are used mainly in letting more and more new visitors and internet users taking a look at some advertising websites.
Web banner ads too just like any web related design project can be accomplished in a professional way that will cover the fees of running the ads by generating a great healthy sales experience and that exactly defines why even multimillion companies are still using this powerful media source for driving traffic to their websites.
Please note that designing a truly amazing banner is not necessarily equal to having the best pictures used or giving information about the bestseller products of a company, but it needs a complex market knowledge and knowing the delicacies which altogether will create a great web banner that not only does it turn visitors to shoppers, but adds to the fame of the specific companies as well.
If you still haven't made up your mind on the specific design details of your banner ads, it is useful and always helpful consulting with the leading design firms and professional freelancer developers who have extensive experience in creating web banners for the webmasters and the advertising companies.
In some cases, designing a banner ad can take several days especially the ads are going to be developed using complex programming language of the Flash software, and as you already know, many of such banners are run for interaction purposes, since they are in most cases playable and have the ability to connect to a website's database or some online scripts.
It really is not that important what format and style of banner ad you are going to design and use, but one thing which you are better always remind to yourself is to carefully analyzing your web banners to figure out if the designed ads are going to bring in new visitors or simply will be displayed online as a beautiful graphical file that does nothing but keeping people praising its beauty or complexity and which will merely cost thousands per advertising campaign.
A professionally designed banner is regarded as a friendly advertising partner of any website and the very great news is that by using some exclusively developed banner advertising websites you can make sure to receiving a targeted traffic stream coming from your banner ads exposure on the participating websites.
When you take a look at the above mentioned points, you will have a better and more professional idea while designing and creating your web banners so that every minute spent over building your ads will be guaranteed to bring great online traffic news. Good Luck!
About the Author
http://www.bannerperfect.com
How to Sell Web Design by Frank Vanderlugt
Knowing how to sell web design is as important as designing skills. You can have the best designing skills in the world, but if you can't sell the web design, you won't make very much money from your skills. If you plan to work as a web designer, you should spend some time learning how to sell your designs and not just focus on your design skills.
When you beginning selling your web designs, you'll find that businesses are often less interested in the actual design than they are in how it will benefit their business. Although they may have opinions on the color, space, and layout, they will be much less concerned about these items than you as the designer will be. Many designers have trouble with this aspect because they themselves are so concerned about these items.
Working with clients can be a challenge as you try to blend good design with the wants and wishes of the client. The individuals you deal with will more than likely not have any background in design. They may have ideas that clash with your design ideas and you'll need to be able to negotiate through these issues.
Clients will also probably be more interested in what your design can do for their business than about the design elements. Some experts say that you should show how your design will save them money while others recommend showing how your design will increase profits. You may need to adjust your pitch from client to client to on this issue.
You should remember that you are the expert when you present your design to the client but you also need to be flexible to the client's wants and needs. Although you may not be thrilled about some of the requests, try to incorporate what you can. Yet, you also need to keep an eye toward good design at the same time. This can be a tough line to walk sometimes but the better you can do it, the happier your client will be.
Leave any designer ego that you might have at the door. Although you may not agree with all of the choices or wishes that the client has, you need to be open to them and not impose your design on them.
Another thing that you need to keep in mind is that you should have clear, intelligent answers for the questions that the client will pose. Be ready to address why you made the choices you did and what benefits these choices will bring to the client. You don't need to be overly technical, but you need to sound like you know what you're talking about. This will help instill confidence in you on the part of the client.
Keeping the client's bottom line in mind when you are designing will help you be successful. Knowing how to sell web design will be very important to you as you try to make a living in web design. By focusing on not only your design but also the business side of things, you'll find greater success and happier clients.
About the Author
frank j vanderlugt owns and operates http://www.howtosellwebdesign.com 2 Howtosellwebdesigncom
When you beginning selling your web designs, you'll find that businesses are often less interested in the actual design than they are in how it will benefit their business. Although they may have opinions on the color, space, and layout, they will be much less concerned about these items than you as the designer will be. Many designers have trouble with this aspect because they themselves are so concerned about these items.
Working with clients can be a challenge as you try to blend good design with the wants and wishes of the client. The individuals you deal with will more than likely not have any background in design. They may have ideas that clash with your design ideas and you'll need to be able to negotiate through these issues.
Clients will also probably be more interested in what your design can do for their business than about the design elements. Some experts say that you should show how your design will save them money while others recommend showing how your design will increase profits. You may need to adjust your pitch from client to client to on this issue.
You should remember that you are the expert when you present your design to the client but you also need to be flexible to the client's wants and needs. Although you may not be thrilled about some of the requests, try to incorporate what you can. Yet, you also need to keep an eye toward good design at the same time. This can be a tough line to walk sometimes but the better you can do it, the happier your client will be.
Leave any designer ego that you might have at the door. Although you may not agree with all of the choices or wishes that the client has, you need to be open to them and not impose your design on them.
Another thing that you need to keep in mind is that you should have clear, intelligent answers for the questions that the client will pose. Be ready to address why you made the choices you did and what benefits these choices will bring to the client. You don't need to be overly technical, but you need to sound like you know what you're talking about. This will help instill confidence in you on the part of the client.
Keeping the client's bottom line in mind when you are designing will help you be successful. Knowing how to sell web design will be very important to you as you try to make a living in web design. By focusing on not only your design but also the business side of things, you'll find greater success and happier clients.
About the Author
frank j vanderlugt owns and operates http://www.howtosellwebdesign.com 2 Howtosellwebdesigncom
Data Entry India by Rosy
EDataIndia is a growing Delhi based IT/BPO company which believes in delivering high quality and cost-effective data services. Our have a wide range of services to deliver. Our services range from Data Entry Services in India, Data Processing Services in India, Data Conversion Services in India, Catalog Processing Services in India, OCR/Scanning Services in India and Web Designing Services in India.
We have a team with a perfect blend of expertise and experience to offer you both strategic and tactical services for the complete data life-cycle. Those combination would not only help you develop a new business but also enhance your existing business.
Our commitment to being exclusively focused on data makes us very different from all other data management companies. Our team is not only well equipped with the latest technologies and methods to the job, we are constantly upgrading our method improvements that will yield better results in our service and product levels.
WHAT WE DO
Outsourcing is not a new concept and there is huge market of companies doing the outsourcing work. What makes eDataIndia different is that we work with a difference and our work speaks for itself. We help businesses find the true value of their data by offering very low-cost outsourcing of data entry, online data entry, data processing, data conversion, data capture, OCR/Scanning/indexing, catalog processing, online product entry, image processing, website designing, book keeping and accounting services with the complete satisfaction level of all our clients.
OUR POLICY
We at eDataIndia believe in working together with our customers and bring to them cost effective solutions. eDataIndia is dedicated to provide all type of BPO services to our clients at Australia, UK, USA, Canada, India at lowest possible cost. We treat all our customers as the most valued customer irrespective of their being first time customer or a regular one as we believe that there is always a first time for a customer to become regular. We also believe that all customers are important whether they need a team of one person or 50 as the one starting with one will also need 50 once we work together.
About the Author
Written By Rosy
We have a team with a perfect blend of expertise and experience to offer you both strategic and tactical services for the complete data life-cycle. Those combination would not only help you develop a new business but also enhance your existing business.
Our commitment to being exclusively focused on data makes us very different from all other data management companies. Our team is not only well equipped with the latest technologies and methods to the job, we are constantly upgrading our method improvements that will yield better results in our service and product levels.
WHAT WE DO
Outsourcing is not a new concept and there is huge market of companies doing the outsourcing work. What makes eDataIndia different is that we work with a difference and our work speaks for itself. We help businesses find the true value of their data by offering very low-cost outsourcing of data entry, online data entry, data processing, data conversion, data capture, OCR/Scanning/indexing, catalog processing, online product entry, image processing, website designing, book keeping and accounting services with the complete satisfaction level of all our clients.
OUR POLICY
We at eDataIndia believe in working together with our customers and bring to them cost effective solutions. eDataIndia is dedicated to provide all type of BPO services to our clients at Australia, UK, USA, Canada, India at lowest possible cost. We treat all our customers as the most valued customer irrespective of their being first time customer or a regular one as we believe that there is always a first time for a customer to become regular. We also believe that all customers are important whether they need a team of one person or 50 as the one starting with one will also need 50 once we work together.
About the Author
Written By Rosy
The Samsung U600 - Amazing Quality by Matt Sharp
The Samsung U600 is one of the most important member of second generation of Samsung Ultra edition. Ultra Edition 10.9 - as it is popularly marketed, represents the maturing of the first Ultra Edition both in terms of functionalities and overall designing. While the Ultra Edition successfully placed Samsung mobiles in the minds of modern day mobile phone users, the updated line up - Ultra edition II, aims to take Samsung mobile experience a step further with all types of cutting edge technologies available today.
Meticulous designing is the high point of the Samsung U600. Even the 262k coloured, TFT screen is hidden beautifully within the slider. This makes the handset look like a highly reflective box that could be mistaken for a mirror. The tactile keypad is etched into the glossy surface and glows in blue light when the phone is slide opened. Taking note of all the negative feedback on other fashion models with touch sensitive keypads like the Samsung E900, the manufacturers of the Samsung U600 have opted for a well spaced, conventional one to keep wrong presses to minimum.
The Samsung U600 features a advent grade 3.2 megapixel digital camera on the back of the slider. The digital camera is equipped all necessary mobile imaging aids like autofocus, digital zoom and integrated flash light. Shoot pictures or videos of anything that catches your fancy, create a MMS complete with a photo or video with text and sound and share it with all who missed it. The mobile email service of the Samsung U600 allows you to send emails, thereby opening new vistas of communication and sharing.
The Samsung U600 Pink comes with quad band technology that works across all corner of the globe. Emailing apart, the Samsung U600 is a great way to browser the web - powered by GPRS, via a built in WAP 2.0/xHTML browser. You can download your favourite songs to be played on the integrated media player of the Samsung U600. With 60 Mb of internal memory pool and expandable memory card slot, storage space is never going to be a problem with the Samsung U600.
About the Author
Samsung U600 Pink
Samsung U600
Meticulous designing is the high point of the Samsung U600. Even the 262k coloured, TFT screen is hidden beautifully within the slider. This makes the handset look like a highly reflective box that could be mistaken for a mirror. The tactile keypad is etched into the glossy surface and glows in blue light when the phone is slide opened. Taking note of all the negative feedback on other fashion models with touch sensitive keypads like the Samsung E900, the manufacturers of the Samsung U600 have opted for a well spaced, conventional one to keep wrong presses to minimum.
The Samsung U600 features a advent grade 3.2 megapixel digital camera on the back of the slider. The digital camera is equipped all necessary mobile imaging aids like autofocus, digital zoom and integrated flash light. Shoot pictures or videos of anything that catches your fancy, create a MMS complete with a photo or video with text and sound and share it with all who missed it. The mobile email service of the Samsung U600 allows you to send emails, thereby opening new vistas of communication and sharing.
The Samsung U600 Pink comes with quad band technology that works across all corner of the globe. Emailing apart, the Samsung U600 is a great way to browser the web - powered by GPRS, via a built in WAP 2.0/xHTML browser. You can download your favourite songs to be played on the integrated media player of the Samsung U600. With 60 Mb of internal memory pool and expandable memory card slot, storage space is never going to be a problem with the Samsung U600.
About the Author
Samsung U600 Pink
Samsung U600
Website Designing Company in India -A gateway to your business world and its Future Success by Ashish
If you want to capitalize from the internet and monetize your company website, then you must embrace the magnitude of the entire concept. Choose an expert website designing company situated in Delhi, India who has the qualifications and experience needed to provide quality content, eye catching design and optimal results that will enhance your ranking. Sophisticated website designing companies in India improve your conversion rate and produce exceptional website performance .Increase your advantage over your competition in the major search engines with the help of professional website designing companies at New Delhi, India.
Professional website designing companies understand how to optimize a dynamic pages, flash designs, frames, mouse-over links, images, query strings, and image maps. An expert website designing company is always one step ahead of the competition. You may have a complex web site with exceptional design and features such as frames, flash, java script, mouse-over links and graphics. Contact a website design company based in Delhi, India that understands how to interact with search engines with these features and get design the website in an optimal manner.
Website designing companies help the client to get the maximum return on the investment of the web site designed. Reputed website designing companies in India offer different procedures to brand your business such as ...
* You as a client will receive information on the architectural design that the web design company hosts for their customers' entrepreneurial online business. * You will be provided accessibility with reference to your website to make it more facile for your customers. * Your web design will contain the basic key word that optimizes your websites chances with search engines that can rank your website. * Your website can comply with W3C standards for accredited HTML and CSS and many other.
About the Author
Ashish (SEO Consultant)
Professional website designing companies understand how to optimize a dynamic pages, flash designs, frames, mouse-over links, images, query strings, and image maps. An expert website designing company is always one step ahead of the competition. You may have a complex web site with exceptional design and features such as frames, flash, java script, mouse-over links and graphics. Contact a website design company based in Delhi, India that understands how to interact with search engines with these features and get design the website in an optimal manner.
Website designing companies help the client to get the maximum return on the investment of the web site designed. Reputed website designing companies in India offer different procedures to brand your business such as ...
* You as a client will receive information on the architectural design that the web design company hosts for their customers' entrepreneurial online business. * You will be provided accessibility with reference to your website to make it more facile for your customers. * Your web design will contain the basic key word that optimizes your websites chances with search engines that can rank your website. * Your website can comply with W3C standards for accredited HTML and CSS and many other.
About the Author
Ashish (SEO Consultant)
Are you looking for quality web Design Company? Visit India for the best results! by Ashish
To get a more profitable business from your website it is important to get your website noticed. So do not compromise on your business website, contact an established web design company in New Delhi, India. An established Web Design Company always remains one step ahead of the competition. Web Design Companies located in New Delhi, India offer a variety of best-in-class services from basic web design services to complete web development services.
If you are interested in top position on the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN or you want something unique that will get your site noticed, you should think about getting a web design from a reputed web design company located in New Delhi, India.
Best web Design Company located in India follows the following procedure to help you to achieve your target audience...
* Design and structure your website, keeping the search engines in mind. * Include a feature that allows you to monitor your site, telling you who visits and how many times they have visited * Design your site, or follow your plans if you have something in mind. * Design the site in a sophisticated manner to make it easy for the customers to navigate * Have it high ranked on the search engines.
A leading web design company in Delhi offers web designing services that meet client requirements with essence of knowledge, experience and talent in such a manner that produce eye catching cutting edge web pages in web designing. Web design companies India create web designing service standing on the core foundations of passion, creativity and vision. A professional web design Delhi is fully dedicated to offer experts that fabricate amazing descriptions, meaningful content and comprehensible ecommerce applications and user friendly web designing services. The web site design services offered by sophisticated web Design Companies in Delhi, India are cost effective and helpful in increasing your business operation by enhancing your revenue.
About the Author
Ashish (SEO Consultant)
If you are interested in top position on the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN or you want something unique that will get your site noticed, you should think about getting a web design from a reputed web design company located in New Delhi, India.
Best web Design Company located in India follows the following procedure to help you to achieve your target audience...
* Design and structure your website, keeping the search engines in mind. * Include a feature that allows you to monitor your site, telling you who visits and how many times they have visited * Design your site, or follow your plans if you have something in mind. * Design the site in a sophisticated manner to make it easy for the customers to navigate * Have it high ranked on the search engines.
A leading web design company in Delhi offers web designing services that meet client requirements with essence of knowledge, experience and talent in such a manner that produce eye catching cutting edge web pages in web designing. Web design companies India create web designing service standing on the core foundations of passion, creativity and vision. A professional web design Delhi is fully dedicated to offer experts that fabricate amazing descriptions, meaningful content and comprehensible ecommerce applications and user friendly web designing services. The web site design services offered by sophisticated web Design Companies in Delhi, India are cost effective and helpful in increasing your business operation by enhancing your revenue.
About the Author
Ashish (SEO Consultant)
Web Accessibility Tips for Developers by aisha danna
When you think of online marketing success, you should also think of making your website accessible to all and sundry. As a business owner, you should not limit your market to certain segments of users. You will indeed have a target market, but then, the trick is to look beyond the obvious.
Here lies the importance of web accessibility, the practice of creating websites that are usable for all kinds of Internet visitors. It is a type of design wherein a person's physical and mental disabilities are taken into account. Most of the web development companies ignore this aspect of designing, and come up with HTML coding that helps neither the user nor search engines.
To get more visitors to your website, you have to make it accessible by including utilities for visually handicapped users as well. Make use of text-to-speech software and replace images with alternate text. Whilst making these changes, name the URLs properly and also take care of the navigation aspect of the site.
And, to appeal to more search engines, you need to clear out all chances of confusion with regard to coding. Poorly coded and unnavigable sites are unlikely to be crawled properly by search engine spiders. Therefore, you stand the risk of losing out on high rankings on SERPs.
As a designer, do not rely completely on video and audio elements as information conveyors. Some of your users might have speech or visual impediments, and therefore it becomes extremely difficult for you to impart a message in the desired manner.
It is not advisable to expect that users will install certain hardware or software on their systems specially to access your web pages. You are the one who needs to ensure that they get to visit each section of your site without any hassles. These visitors will ultimately bring in the moolah; do not let them turn away from your site because of these hindrances.
When it comes to web design and development, always have an alternative to elements or features that might create problems. Allow for enlargeable text sizes, and colour your links in such a way that they can be easily differentiated from the content matter on a page. Use coding that allows users to navigate a page without the mouse.
The main purpose of web accessibility is to help users access a site despite all sorts of problems. As a developer, the onus of doing this tough task lies on you.
About the Author
Aisha Danna is an expert in Internet Marketing, presently working with ePurple Media. The company provides services in the domain of web design and development, search engine marketing, email marketing, affiliate marketing, etc.
Here lies the importance of web accessibility, the practice of creating websites that are usable for all kinds of Internet visitors. It is a type of design wherein a person's physical and mental disabilities are taken into account. Most of the web development companies ignore this aspect of designing, and come up with HTML coding that helps neither the user nor search engines.
To get more visitors to your website, you have to make it accessible by including utilities for visually handicapped users as well. Make use of text-to-speech software and replace images with alternate text. Whilst making these changes, name the URLs properly and also take care of the navigation aspect of the site.
And, to appeal to more search engines, you need to clear out all chances of confusion with regard to coding. Poorly coded and unnavigable sites are unlikely to be crawled properly by search engine spiders. Therefore, you stand the risk of losing out on high rankings on SERPs.
As a designer, do not rely completely on video and audio elements as information conveyors. Some of your users might have speech or visual impediments, and therefore it becomes extremely difficult for you to impart a message in the desired manner.
It is not advisable to expect that users will install certain hardware or software on their systems specially to access your web pages. You are the one who needs to ensure that they get to visit each section of your site without any hassles. These visitors will ultimately bring in the moolah; do not let them turn away from your site because of these hindrances.
When it comes to web design and development, always have an alternative to elements or features that might create problems. Allow for enlargeable text sizes, and colour your links in such a way that they can be easily differentiated from the content matter on a page. Use coding that allows users to navigate a page without the mouse.
The main purpose of web accessibility is to help users access a site despite all sorts of problems. As a developer, the onus of doing this tough task lies on you.
About the Author
Aisha Danna is an expert in Internet Marketing, presently working with ePurple Media. The company provides services in the domain of web design and development, search engine marketing, email marketing, affiliate marketing, etc.
Getting quality content for your blog by Rob Benwell
All Internet marketing guides stress the importance of using only quality content for the blog pages, yet, the question remains: how can one decide which is good content and which not? I simply suggest that we start from the very nature of the blog: a highly informational and personal site which tackles with subjects in a specific domain. Hence, when designing the blog, don't make it too complex, stick to the simple structures that allow users to perform actions easily on the page. The frame should also be very simple and the eventual ads and links need to naturally blend in the content of the blog as such. Web design provides the great advantage of using similar fonts and formats, so that only some elements on the page should stand out.
Furthermore, you may have learned by now that you need to create the site content around some high-in-demand keywords that users type in the search box of the engine. The more the keywords, the higher the chances to have your blog appear in the first result pages. However, many bloggers understand keyword density the wrong way. The blog content should naturally include the keywords in an easy-to-read kind of way; a keyword density that goes higher than 2 or 3% could make the articles less appealing to the reader.
There are some tips you may consider when creating quality content for a blog. First of all, regardless of the domain and the target audience, it should be reader-friendly and even reader-oriented if it be the case. This means that even when you deal with a scientific topic, you can still keep the reader's attention vivid since not everybody who visits your blog has a professional cultural background. Write everything in short or medium-sized paragraphs so that the information naturally flows without being hard to track in case of an interruption.
Statistics show that blogs that include links in the very article content are more successful than those who present links at the bottom of the page for instance. Inserted links allow the reader to get a puzzle-explanation of a concept or provide the opportunity to show interest for specific products or services. Furthermore, the blogs that make a happy combination of written content, pictures and videos are considered a lot more appealing to the average Internet user, and thus receive a lot more traffic. The key to being successful within the blogging system is definitely the continuous adaptation to the requests of the market.
About the Author
Rob is currently developing Blogution and I-Topic which are both set to go live early 2008.
Furthermore, you may have learned by now that you need to create the site content around some high-in-demand keywords that users type in the search box of the engine. The more the keywords, the higher the chances to have your blog appear in the first result pages. However, many bloggers understand keyword density the wrong way. The blog content should naturally include the keywords in an easy-to-read kind of way; a keyword density that goes higher than 2 or 3% could make the articles less appealing to the reader.
There are some tips you may consider when creating quality content for a blog. First of all, regardless of the domain and the target audience, it should be reader-friendly and even reader-oriented if it be the case. This means that even when you deal with a scientific topic, you can still keep the reader's attention vivid since not everybody who visits your blog has a professional cultural background. Write everything in short or medium-sized paragraphs so that the information naturally flows without being hard to track in case of an interruption.
Statistics show that blogs that include links in the very article content are more successful than those who present links at the bottom of the page for instance. Inserted links allow the reader to get a puzzle-explanation of a concept or provide the opportunity to show interest for specific products or services. Furthermore, the blogs that make a happy combination of written content, pictures and videos are considered a lot more appealing to the average Internet user, and thus receive a lot more traffic. The key to being successful within the blogging system is definitely the continuous adaptation to the requests of the market.
About the Author
Rob is currently developing Blogution and I-Topic which are both set to go live early 2008.
Tips for Effective Real Estate Web Design by John West
Get any successful Realtor to show you their secret weapon, and chances are they'll sit you down at a computer and pull up a nice looking website. As a marketing tool, a website can make all the difference, especially in real estate, where more than 80 per cent of buyers check the net first. Sellers, too, are increasingly using the Internet to market their home, and prominent, attractive websites are where they're most likely to ask for help. It's important to consider all aspects of web development, like programming, copy writing, and usability when creating your website, but this article focuses on design because it's what people notice first.
Whether you're re-designing your old site or creating a new one, following a few simple guidelines can bring great results. Keep in mind as well that the help of a professional web-designer will help everything here go a lot smoother.
The first challenge in creating a unique looking real estate website is overcoming the sheer volume of similar sites out there. Unfortunately for Realtors, there's a lot of competition online, and it can sometimes seem like all the good ideas have been taken. While it's not necessarily that much of an uphill battle for the average Realtor, a post-modern approach to design can make things more interesting. So what if everything's been done? You can do it better, taking the best ideas you find for layouts and color schemes, and adding your own touch to bring things to the next level, and avoid copyright theft. If you're worried your site does look too similar to someone else's, no problem - just find a good real estate design forum and ask for feedback.
One mistake a lot of Realtors make in their design is trying to force a company logo into a layout where it doesn't fit. If the logo must be there, make sure it complements the design, or vice versa, to avoid the impression you've simply taken a template and added your own image files - this can be a turnoff for web users.
As your site concept takes shape, you'll also have to figure out how much text to use, particularly on the homepage. For this step, keep in mind what the user might be expecting when they click on a particular page - if it's a clearly designated information section, they might want a lot, but if it's the homepage, a few lines that connect with and begin to inform the user might suffice. Also make sure your text styles are consistent, and your headings unique and complementary to the design.
Be careful as well not to try and pack too many features or links onto a single page. Things like map searches, menus, and weather indicators are often popular with users, but they might look awkward and take away from the site's main focus if they aren't given enough space. Site navigation bars and buttons should be limited to a couple spots on the page where they always appear, so the user is easily able to orient his or herself.
If you're a Realtor serious about expanding your market, it's important to spend time each week making yourself look good on the Internet, and coming up with a good site design is the first step.
About the Author
John West is an experienced Summerlin real estate professional. His website includes local information, a comprehensive local home search, and relocation resources for anyone moving to the Summerlin real estate area.
Whether you're re-designing your old site or creating a new one, following a few simple guidelines can bring great results. Keep in mind as well that the help of a professional web-designer will help everything here go a lot smoother.
The first challenge in creating a unique looking real estate website is overcoming the sheer volume of similar sites out there. Unfortunately for Realtors, there's a lot of competition online, and it can sometimes seem like all the good ideas have been taken. While it's not necessarily that much of an uphill battle for the average Realtor, a post-modern approach to design can make things more interesting. So what if everything's been done? You can do it better, taking the best ideas you find for layouts and color schemes, and adding your own touch to bring things to the next level, and avoid copyright theft. If you're worried your site does look too similar to someone else's, no problem - just find a good real estate design forum and ask for feedback.
One mistake a lot of Realtors make in their design is trying to force a company logo into a layout where it doesn't fit. If the logo must be there, make sure it complements the design, or vice versa, to avoid the impression you've simply taken a template and added your own image files - this can be a turnoff for web users.
As your site concept takes shape, you'll also have to figure out how much text to use, particularly on the homepage. For this step, keep in mind what the user might be expecting when they click on a particular page - if it's a clearly designated information section, they might want a lot, but if it's the homepage, a few lines that connect with and begin to inform the user might suffice. Also make sure your text styles are consistent, and your headings unique and complementary to the design.
Be careful as well not to try and pack too many features or links onto a single page. Things like map searches, menus, and weather indicators are often popular with users, but they might look awkward and take away from the site's main focus if they aren't given enough space. Site navigation bars and buttons should be limited to a couple spots on the page where they always appear, so the user is easily able to orient his or herself.
If you're a Realtor serious about expanding your market, it's important to spend time each week making yourself look good on the Internet, and coming up with a good site design is the first step.
About the Author
John West is an experienced Summerlin real estate professional. His website includes local information, a comprehensive local home search, and relocation resources for anyone moving to the Summerlin real estate area.
Hawaii Time-Out by Frank Vanderlugt
When the winter blues start settling in for the long run or when you just need to take a "time out" from life in a calming, tranquil vacation spot, you head for Hawaii. Maybe you've already been to Hawaii and you like it so much you want to stay.
Moving to Hawaii? Vacationing in Hawaii? Want to save yourself money, visit all of the best places, and navigate around the Hawaiian Islands like a pro? Start planning now!
How do you plan the perfect Hawaiian vacation? Start online and visit a few tourism Web sites that cover the must-sees in Hawaii. Even if you're planning to move to Hawaii, there's no better way to familiarize yourself with all the best spots in the Hawaii area than by pretending you're a tourist and reading about the most interesting and inexpensive places to visit, shop, and eat while you're in Hawaii!
Hawaii's official site of tourism is GoHawaii.com. Learn about the places of interest on six of the eight Hawaiian Islands, including the Big Island, Molokai, Lanai, Kauai, Maui, and Oahu.
Search for the best and/or most inexpensive spots to visit depending on what kind of Hawaiian experience you have in mind. Adventure? Romance? Indulgence? Cultural? Relaxation? GoHawaii.com will give you suggestions for designing the perfect Hawaiian experience. If you're going to move to Hawaii, all the better! You can find the time for all of these Hawaiian experiences!
Hawaii.com is another great resource for Hawaiian tourists and residents-to-be alike. Plan a tour of a few of Big Island Hawaii's five volcanoes by helicopter or take a helicopter ride across Maui's breathtaking waterfalls. Cruise around all of the Hawaiian Islands for a week or backpack across nature trails in Lanai. Your Hawaiian experience is entirely up to you, and Hawaii.com can help you plan it!
If you're moving to Hawaii or even if you're just vacationing to Hawaii and want to make sure you get the best deals on rentals, hotels, restaurants, and more, one of the best places to stop online is the Hawaiian newspaper closest to your Hawaiian destination.
The Honolulu Advertiser is Hawaii's capital's newspaper and features job classifieds and real estate listings for the city of Honolulu, which encompasses the entire island of Oahu. Stay up to date with the latest Hawaiian news, check on Hawaii's sports teams, and even look at cultural newspapers aimed one of the many diverse native ethnic groups in Hawaii. Stop by HonoluluAdvertiser.com for more information!
The Hawaiian tourist or new resident who plans ahead is the Hawaiian tourist or resident who experiences Hawaii stress-free! Save yourself time and money and find exactly what interests you most about Hawaii before you even head to the airport.
Need a little more help in planning your trip or move to Hawaii? Visit Hawaii-2007.com for articles and resources that will get you wishing your plane ride to Hawaii was today!
About the Author
frank j vanderlugt owns and operates http://www.hawaii-2007.com Hawaii
Moving to Hawaii? Vacationing in Hawaii? Want to save yourself money, visit all of the best places, and navigate around the Hawaiian Islands like a pro? Start planning now!
How do you plan the perfect Hawaiian vacation? Start online and visit a few tourism Web sites that cover the must-sees in Hawaii. Even if you're planning to move to Hawaii, there's no better way to familiarize yourself with all the best spots in the Hawaii area than by pretending you're a tourist and reading about the most interesting and inexpensive places to visit, shop, and eat while you're in Hawaii!
Hawaii's official site of tourism is GoHawaii.com. Learn about the places of interest on six of the eight Hawaiian Islands, including the Big Island, Molokai, Lanai, Kauai, Maui, and Oahu.
Search for the best and/or most inexpensive spots to visit depending on what kind of Hawaiian experience you have in mind. Adventure? Romance? Indulgence? Cultural? Relaxation? GoHawaii.com will give you suggestions for designing the perfect Hawaiian experience. If you're going to move to Hawaii, all the better! You can find the time for all of these Hawaiian experiences!
Hawaii.com is another great resource for Hawaiian tourists and residents-to-be alike. Plan a tour of a few of Big Island Hawaii's five volcanoes by helicopter or take a helicopter ride across Maui's breathtaking waterfalls. Cruise around all of the Hawaiian Islands for a week or backpack across nature trails in Lanai. Your Hawaiian experience is entirely up to you, and Hawaii.com can help you plan it!
If you're moving to Hawaii or even if you're just vacationing to Hawaii and want to make sure you get the best deals on rentals, hotels, restaurants, and more, one of the best places to stop online is the Hawaiian newspaper closest to your Hawaiian destination.
The Honolulu Advertiser is Hawaii's capital's newspaper and features job classifieds and real estate listings for the city of Honolulu, which encompasses the entire island of Oahu. Stay up to date with the latest Hawaiian news, check on Hawaii's sports teams, and even look at cultural newspapers aimed one of the many diverse native ethnic groups in Hawaii. Stop by HonoluluAdvertiser.com for more information!
The Hawaiian tourist or new resident who plans ahead is the Hawaiian tourist or resident who experiences Hawaii stress-free! Save yourself time and money and find exactly what interests you most about Hawaii before you even head to the airport.
Need a little more help in planning your trip or move to Hawaii? Visit Hawaii-2007.com for articles and resources that will get you wishing your plane ride to Hawaii was today!
About the Author
frank j vanderlugt owns and operates http://www.hawaii-2007.com Hawaii
Keeping It Simple With Web Design for RevolvingTravel by Trisha Frauenhofer
Have you been searching the web and noticed sites that are so busy that you just couldn't stay on the page anymore? Flashing lights, audios, animation, and too much text can really boggle the eyes. Chances are, when you run into a page like this, you are tempted to leave it and go to another one that is easier to read like RevolvingTravel.
In this day and age, it seems that technology has taken over absolutely everything in our lives. Even children's toys are now more technical and visually stimulating than they used to be. Just watch a few TV commercials, and you will soon see how fast they go, and how much is happening on one commercial.
In the world of online marketing, many marketers think that using more fancy technology when designing the site is the way to go. This is actually farther from the truth than you may think.
Picture this: You come to a site about a business opportunity and the first thing you see is a blinking banner at the top. As you scroll down, you see bright pictures and more blinking images. There are also ads, buttons to push, a few paragraphs of text, and a box to put in your information. The colors are bright and difficult to read. Do you want to spend time on this site trying to figure it all out, or do you want to find a site that is easier to read? The majority of visitors would leave.
This kind of technology is not bad, but must be used in the right way. Blinking banners or pictures are good, but only when you are offering a limited one-time offer, and only one per page. Having ads on your site only distracts the visitor from what you are trying to sell. This can take them completely away from your page and visiting another page that is easier to read and offers something better to them.
You color choice when designing a web site is more important than most people think. Bright colors are difficult to read for most people. The text should always be dark, and the background should be a neutral color. This may seem boring, but it is definitely easier for people to read.
Simple is the way to go when it comes to the appearance of your web page. The graphics you use should also not be too busy. Keep it simple and clean, and it will look more professional.
If a site has too many buttons, a visitor can get confused as to what they should click on to go where. They want to know exactly where they are going when they click on a button or link, so label these clearly so they know where they are being taken.
The most important part of your website is your content. You want to have enough, but not too much. Too much text on a web page gets to be boring, and if it takes a reader too long to get through all of the text, you have just lost them. The text should also be aligned in small chunks of writing. This looks more appealing to the eye. You can put a graphic or two in the midst of a couple paragraphs or so, but not too many. Just enough to break up the page a bit and keep the reader interested. The thing to remember is that having lots of white space is a good thing.
Following these simple guidelines of designing a RevolvingTravel website will ensure that your page will get read and you will get the results you are wanting. Keep it simple.
About the Author
Discover how to clobber the competition and dominate virtually any online market or niche. See the amazing marketing strategy that allowed me to personally sponsor 116 people in less than 60 days. Click here -> http://www.ClobberTheCompetition.com
In this day and age, it seems that technology has taken over absolutely everything in our lives. Even children's toys are now more technical and visually stimulating than they used to be. Just watch a few TV commercials, and you will soon see how fast they go, and how much is happening on one commercial.
In the world of online marketing, many marketers think that using more fancy technology when designing the site is the way to go. This is actually farther from the truth than you may think.
Picture this: You come to a site about a business opportunity and the first thing you see is a blinking banner at the top. As you scroll down, you see bright pictures and more blinking images. There are also ads, buttons to push, a few paragraphs of text, and a box to put in your information. The colors are bright and difficult to read. Do you want to spend time on this site trying to figure it all out, or do you want to find a site that is easier to read? The majority of visitors would leave.
This kind of technology is not bad, but must be used in the right way. Blinking banners or pictures are good, but only when you are offering a limited one-time offer, and only one per page. Having ads on your site only distracts the visitor from what you are trying to sell. This can take them completely away from your page and visiting another page that is easier to read and offers something better to them.
You color choice when designing a web site is more important than most people think. Bright colors are difficult to read for most people. The text should always be dark, and the background should be a neutral color. This may seem boring, but it is definitely easier for people to read.
Simple is the way to go when it comes to the appearance of your web page. The graphics you use should also not be too busy. Keep it simple and clean, and it will look more professional.
If a site has too many buttons, a visitor can get confused as to what they should click on to go where. They want to know exactly where they are going when they click on a button or link, so label these clearly so they know where they are being taken.
The most important part of your website is your content. You want to have enough, but not too much. Too much text on a web page gets to be boring, and if it takes a reader too long to get through all of the text, you have just lost them. The text should also be aligned in small chunks of writing. This looks more appealing to the eye. You can put a graphic or two in the midst of a couple paragraphs or so, but not too many. Just enough to break up the page a bit and keep the reader interested. The thing to remember is that having lots of white space is a good thing.
Following these simple guidelines of designing a RevolvingTravel website will ensure that your page will get read and you will get the results you are wanting. Keep it simple.
About the Author
Discover how to clobber the competition and dominate virtually any online market or niche. See the amazing marketing strategy that allowed me to personally sponsor 116 people in less than 60 days. Click here -> http://www.ClobberTheCompetition.com
Guidelines To Hiring A Web Designer Who Creates Winning Websites like TheOvernightCashSystem.com by Trisha Frauenhofer
Have you decided it is time to hire a professional web designer like who does the TheOvernightCashSystem.com? Great! This can save you a lot of time and headache. However, before you start hiring, there is some much-needed research that needs to be done on the people you are looking at hiring.
You see, a professional web designer is a profession that should not be taken lightly. You are hiring someone on to do a job. Just as any employer would do, you need to do some background research on this person before you make any decisions.
So, what exactly do you need to know about these people? Here is a guideline to go by.
Qualifications
In the world of web design, qualifications are worthless to you. Why? Because most web designers get their degree from a part time community college, and they really don't learn enough of have the actual qualifications to design a successful website.
Instead of qualifications, look for what is in his/her portfolio. They should have a list of lots of attractive successful websites. This is their way of displaying their skill for you through a portfolio. It is extremely important that you see their skill. If they don't have a portfolio, they probably aren't very experienced. If this is the case, have them do a first draft for you to see their skills before you make any decisions.
A Website Built For Users
Many web designers may be very well skilled in designing dynamic flashy websites, but if they aren't built for the user, they are worthless. You know how it is. You have probably come across some of these websites yourself. They are flashy, hard to read, and don't navigate well. If you hire one of these web designers, you will have wasted your money and time.
You must ask this web designer how many browsers they will test the site on and what the purpose of the site is. They should tell you they are testing the site on as many browsers as they can and that the purpose of the site is to get the visitors interested and intrigued to find out more.
What do they charge?
When finding out how much a web designer charges, you need to find out how many designers there are working on this project. They may charge too much if there is a committee of people working on it. You want to look for an individual worker and pay them by the hour.
Looking for the perfect web designer takes some time and patience, but if you follow these guidelines, you are sure to find someone who will create a great website for you to market with like the TheOvernightCashSystem.com.
About the Author
Discover how to clobber the competition and dominate virtually any online market or niche. See the amazing marketing strategy that allowed me to personally sponsor 116 people in less than 60 days. Click here -> http://www.ClobberTheCompetition.com
You see, a professional web designer is a profession that should not be taken lightly. You are hiring someone on to do a job. Just as any employer would do, you need to do some background research on this person before you make any decisions.
So, what exactly do you need to know about these people? Here is a guideline to go by.
Qualifications
In the world of web design, qualifications are worthless to you. Why? Because most web designers get their degree from a part time community college, and they really don't learn enough of have the actual qualifications to design a successful website.
Instead of qualifications, look for what is in his/her portfolio. They should have a list of lots of attractive successful websites. This is their way of displaying their skill for you through a portfolio. It is extremely important that you see their skill. If they don't have a portfolio, they probably aren't very experienced. If this is the case, have them do a first draft for you to see their skills before you make any decisions.
A Website Built For Users
Many web designers may be very well skilled in designing dynamic flashy websites, but if they aren't built for the user, they are worthless. You know how it is. You have probably come across some of these websites yourself. They are flashy, hard to read, and don't navigate well. If you hire one of these web designers, you will have wasted your money and time.
You must ask this web designer how many browsers they will test the site on and what the purpose of the site is. They should tell you they are testing the site on as many browsers as they can and that the purpose of the site is to get the visitors interested and intrigued to find out more.
What do they charge?
When finding out how much a web designer charges, you need to find out how many designers there are working on this project. They may charge too much if there is a committee of people working on it. You want to look for an individual worker and pay them by the hour.
Looking for the perfect web designer takes some time and patience, but if you follow these guidelines, you are sure to find someone who will create a great website for you to market with like the TheOvernightCashSystem.com.
About the Author
Discover how to clobber the competition and dominate virtually any online market or niche. See the amazing marketing strategy that allowed me to personally sponsor 116 people in less than 60 days. Click here -> http://www.ClobberTheCompetition.com
Site Rubix Website Builder-3D Websit Builder Without Html by Elliot Jarves
One of the most sought after tools for affiliate marketers, business website developers, and anyone doing business with e-commerce has always been and continues to be a website builder that requires no HTML and can create hundreds of professional websites in no time flat!
The ideal website designing tool should be able to create websites with drag and drop technology, Send your website files to your web host right within the tool. This means you can instantly make your websites go Live without having to download FTP programs or other software. The Site Rubix Website Builder will do just that!
The website development tool should be able to duplicate existing pages and full sites with a click of a button. Add video, images, instant screenshots, or content in seconds and the ability to customize your site in terms of banners and images and let the system worry about the resizing, rendering and making things look great! The Site Rubix Website Builder will do all that!
No need to use Photoshop, Snagit or other similar screenshot programs. The Site Rubix Website Builder software allows you to instantly grab screenshots of any website with the click of a button in less than a second, add it to your media page, and use the screenshot over and over again. The Site Rubix Website Builder does it all.
The Site Rubix Website Builder will do for internet website designers and developers what no other website building software has been able to do before. This is a website developing software breakthrough and will make people wonder why no one else had thought of it!
About the Author
The Site Rubix Website Builder is being launched very shortly by the Pro's at Wealthy Affiliate. To get more free info, please visit us at: http://Site-Rubix.profitsdomain.com
The ideal website designing tool should be able to create websites with drag and drop technology, Send your website files to your web host right within the tool. This means you can instantly make your websites go Live without having to download FTP programs or other software. The Site Rubix Website Builder will do just that!
The website development tool should be able to duplicate existing pages and full sites with a click of a button. Add video, images, instant screenshots, or content in seconds and the ability to customize your site in terms of banners and images and let the system worry about the resizing, rendering and making things look great! The Site Rubix Website Builder will do all that!
No need to use Photoshop, Snagit or other similar screenshot programs. The Site Rubix Website Builder software allows you to instantly grab screenshots of any website with the click of a button in less than a second, add it to your media page, and use the screenshot over and over again. The Site Rubix Website Builder does it all.
The Site Rubix Website Builder will do for internet website designers and developers what no other website building software has been able to do before. This is a website developing software breakthrough and will make people wonder why no one else had thought of it!
About the Author
The Site Rubix Website Builder is being launched very shortly by the Pro's at Wealthy Affiliate. To get more free info, please visit us at: http://Site-Rubix.profitsdomain.com
Marketing Militaria on the Web by Bob Treend
As you can see from the title, this article was written for the benifit of militaria dealers and collectors. However, the ideas and principles expressed here are just as valid for someone who is in to collectibles of any kind. Coins, antiques or baseball cards, it's all the same when it comes to internet marketing. I hope that reading this will make you consider whether you want to create your own site, or if it would be better to use a third party site to market your wears. It all depend on how involved you are in the business and how much work you want to put into it. The opinions expressed here are based on my personal experience and someone else may have differnt thoughts on the subject. You can take this for what you feel it is worth. b.t.
"You can have the slickest web site on earth, with the greatest militaria ever seen, but if no one can find it, it don't mean diddle!"*
Most knowledgable militaria dealers and collectors (...who know all the originals from the fakes; can quote the value of every piece to the penny, and know how to drive to every show in the country without a map) know zip when it comes to marketing on the net. To them, their web site is just a side line to their main business of buying and selling in person or on the phone. This is unfortunate because they are missing out on the greatest marketing tool since George Washington invented the dollar bill.
Don't get me wrong, I think every dealer should have a web site. It should provide basic info on the dealer such as his address and phone number, how he does business and what he deals in. And, he should offer some of his militaria on the site as well. This gives the dealer a "web presence" which is good P.R..
Building a web site is easy. If it's a simple one you might be able to do it yourself. If it's going to be more complicated, there are thousands of individuals and companies eager for your business. Either way, creating a web site and getting it up, is a real no-brainer.
Here's a typical synario of what happens next.
Ok, let's say you've built your web site and it's up and running. Now what? You have to get the word out. So you email all your collector buddies and customers and tell them about it. You also trade links with some other sites. Maybe run an ad or two. Then you sit and wait... For the first couple of weeks you get quite a few "hits" as collectors look to see what you have. Then you notice that slowly you are getting less and less traffic, until finally, it drops off to a trickle. It doesn't alway happen like this, only about 99% of the time.
What now? You're not getting any NEW customers. Why? The site is running; you've got great stuff for sale and besides, you're a nice guy... So why are things so slow? If you're imaginative at all, the next thing you do is check to see if people can find your site. So, you go to the search engines and start typing in search terms like , militaria, military,relics, SS, Army, Luftwaffe, medals, daggers etc. etc. Each time you get a list of sites and you start looking down the list for your web site. After you get to about page 150 you figure that this is a waste of time. You can't find your site anywhere. Oh, it's there alright, probably buried down around page 1,243.... Great! What the heck good is that??? Answer: none. Research has shown the most people, after doing a search, will only look at the first few pages of sites. If you're site isn't on the first 3 or 4 pages, forget it! Hardly anyone is going to find you. And if you're buried down on page 1,243, you'll be luckey if you get a hit once every 10 years! (I've looked at all the militaria sites that are on the first couple of pages of results, using the most common search terms in our hobby. For the most part they are "grandfathered in". Which means they are there because they have been up so long, not beause they are doing anything magic... Search engines reward longivity.) Of course, your new site has none...
So, as things now stand, you have a web site, all your friends and old customers know about it and buy something occasionally. But, you're getting little or no new business. This stinks! You've spent money building this site; you're paying each month to host the darn thing; You spent a lot of time designing it and trying to make that stupid computer guy understand what you want. And for what? The business just ain't there. What should you do?
In order to get customers to the site you will have to do some "web promotion". Now, from what I've seen, most militaria sites mainly do this by trading links with their buddies. This works and will bring in some new customers. So, you sit at the computer for hours searching out good militaria sites which have a lot of links and you send them a nicely worded email offering a link trade. You get "some" responses and a few trades and you're off! Somewhat....
But still, thinking about those serach engines bugs you! You want your site to be on the first couple of pages when people serach for your kind of militaria. The question is... How do you get there? Now the real fun starts.
Getting position on search engines is an art, as well as a science. The more heavily a catagory is represented on the net the more difficult it is to "massage" the search engines to your benifit. There are bigger categories, but believe me "militaria" is big enough.
Going into detail on how to make your site "search engine friendly" is beyond the scope of this little article, so I'll keep it short. First you have to "know" what to do. Then you have to do it. Every day you will need to work on the site. Checking your stats to see what collectors are searching for and "tweeking" the site to take advantage. Adding new content constantly. Seach engines don't like sites with stale information. You should add features to your site, like a blog or a forum, to help generate new content. You even need to go so far as to make sure certain characters don't appear in any of the URLs on your site, because they can lower your search engine rating! The "tweeking" can get into some very detailed work. And it goes on and on.... You don't just do these things once and forget it. You have to do them every day to keep on top of things. It takes time... and more time.
You can hire one of those so-called "web promotion companies" who promise to get you on a slew of search engines. They'll do just that, get your site on dozens of search engines... on page 1,243, or 1,242 if you're lucky. And besides most of those search engines don't mean a thing. There are only a hand full that are important. These "services" are a waste of money. You're really on your own.
So, in conclusion, if you spend time studying how the net works; improving and maintaining your site daily; contantly adding new content; massaging the search engines for advantage; and doing all those other little fun things that are required... you will have a successful militaria web site. Of course, you won't have time left to buy or sell any militaria.
* An old saying I just made up. B.T.
About the Author
Bob Treend has been involved in militaria for over 35 years as a collector, dealer, publisher and author. He has written numerous articles on the different aspects of militaria collecting. http://germanmilitariacollectibles.com
"You can have the slickest web site on earth, with the greatest militaria ever seen, but if no one can find it, it don't mean diddle!"*
Most knowledgable militaria dealers and collectors (...who know all the originals from the fakes; can quote the value of every piece to the penny, and know how to drive to every show in the country without a map) know zip when it comes to marketing on the net. To them, their web site is just a side line to their main business of buying and selling in person or on the phone. This is unfortunate because they are missing out on the greatest marketing tool since George Washington invented the dollar bill.
Don't get me wrong, I think every dealer should have a web site. It should provide basic info on the dealer such as his address and phone number, how he does business and what he deals in. And, he should offer some of his militaria on the site as well. This gives the dealer a "web presence" which is good P.R..
Building a web site is easy. If it's a simple one you might be able to do it yourself. If it's going to be more complicated, there are thousands of individuals and companies eager for your business. Either way, creating a web site and getting it up, is a real no-brainer.
Here's a typical synario of what happens next.
Ok, let's say you've built your web site and it's up and running. Now what? You have to get the word out. So you email all your collector buddies and customers and tell them about it. You also trade links with some other sites. Maybe run an ad or two. Then you sit and wait... For the first couple of weeks you get quite a few "hits" as collectors look to see what you have. Then you notice that slowly you are getting less and less traffic, until finally, it drops off to a trickle. It doesn't alway happen like this, only about 99% of the time.
What now? You're not getting any NEW customers. Why? The site is running; you've got great stuff for sale and besides, you're a nice guy... So why are things so slow? If you're imaginative at all, the next thing you do is check to see if people can find your site. So, you go to the search engines and start typing in search terms like , militaria, military,relics, SS, Army, Luftwaffe, medals, daggers etc. etc. Each time you get a list of sites and you start looking down the list for your web site. After you get to about page 150 you figure that this is a waste of time. You can't find your site anywhere. Oh, it's there alright, probably buried down around page 1,243.... Great! What the heck good is that??? Answer: none. Research has shown the most people, after doing a search, will only look at the first few pages of sites. If you're site isn't on the first 3 or 4 pages, forget it! Hardly anyone is going to find you. And if you're buried down on page 1,243, you'll be luckey if you get a hit once every 10 years! (I've looked at all the militaria sites that are on the first couple of pages of results, using the most common search terms in our hobby. For the most part they are "grandfathered in". Which means they are there because they have been up so long, not beause they are doing anything magic... Search engines reward longivity.) Of course, your new site has none...
So, as things now stand, you have a web site, all your friends and old customers know about it and buy something occasionally. But, you're getting little or no new business. This stinks! You've spent money building this site; you're paying each month to host the darn thing; You spent a lot of time designing it and trying to make that stupid computer guy understand what you want. And for what? The business just ain't there. What should you do?
In order to get customers to the site you will have to do some "web promotion". Now, from what I've seen, most militaria sites mainly do this by trading links with their buddies. This works and will bring in some new customers. So, you sit at the computer for hours searching out good militaria sites which have a lot of links and you send them a nicely worded email offering a link trade. You get "some" responses and a few trades and you're off! Somewhat....
But still, thinking about those serach engines bugs you! You want your site to be on the first couple of pages when people serach for your kind of militaria. The question is... How do you get there? Now the real fun starts.
Getting position on search engines is an art, as well as a science. The more heavily a catagory is represented on the net the more difficult it is to "massage" the search engines to your benifit. There are bigger categories, but believe me "militaria" is big enough.
Going into detail on how to make your site "search engine friendly" is beyond the scope of this little article, so I'll keep it short. First you have to "know" what to do. Then you have to do it. Every day you will need to work on the site. Checking your stats to see what collectors are searching for and "tweeking" the site to take advantage. Adding new content constantly. Seach engines don't like sites with stale information. You should add features to your site, like a blog or a forum, to help generate new content. You even need to go so far as to make sure certain characters don't appear in any of the URLs on your site, because they can lower your search engine rating! The "tweeking" can get into some very detailed work. And it goes on and on.... You don't just do these things once and forget it. You have to do them every day to keep on top of things. It takes time... and more time.
You can hire one of those so-called "web promotion companies" who promise to get you on a slew of search engines. They'll do just that, get your site on dozens of search engines... on page 1,243, or 1,242 if you're lucky. And besides most of those search engines don't mean a thing. There are only a hand full that are important. These "services" are a waste of money. You're really on your own.
So, in conclusion, if you spend time studying how the net works; improving and maintaining your site daily; contantly adding new content; massaging the search engines for advantage; and doing all those other little fun things that are required... you will have a successful militaria web site. Of course, you won't have time left to buy or sell any militaria.
* An old saying I just made up. B.T.
About the Author
Bob Treend has been involved in militaria for over 35 years as a collector, dealer, publisher and author. He has written numerous articles on the different aspects of militaria collecting. http://germanmilitariacollectibles.com
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