SEO Placement Web Design Facts and Ideas

1 - Do's and don'ts of web site design 2 - Signs it's time to redesign your website 3 - The importance of updating your website 3 - Types of website designs ( static - dynamic) 5 - Web Design - Simple Mistakes and Golden Rules 6 - How can I build my own site? 7 - Can I promote my own website ? 8 - Can anyone register a domain? 9 - Do you build websites for clients?

 

Web Design - Simple Mistakes and Golden Rules

1. Keep Everything Obvious - Don't Make Me Think

The book entitled Don't Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug is one of the best selling books on the subject of web design and usability. Personally, I think thinking is a good thing but at the same time I don't want to be struggling to figure out how to submit a web form!

Visitors to a website expect certain conventions, breaking these is a great way of losing visitors. People expect to find the navigation at the top of a page or on the left hand side. Logos are mostly found on the top left. Much research has been conducted into how people view and use web pages. The good news is that you do not to know all of this; instead look at how larger companies such as eBay, Amazon, Google, Microsoft structure their pages and the language they use, then emulate them.

2. Limit Colours

A website using too many colours at a time can be overwhelming to many users and can make a website look cheap and tacky. Any users with colour blindness or contrast perception difficulties may even be unable to use the site.

Limiting a palette to 2 or 3 colours will nearly always lead to a slicker looking design and has the added bonus of simplifying your design choices, reducing design time.

Software like Color Wheel Pro can greatly simplify the creation of a pallet by showing which colours sit well together. If you really do not have the eye for design then software like this provides the perfect way of escaping monotone or badly combined colour schemes.

If your site uses blue and yellow together or red and green then it may present problems to anyone suffering with colour blindness. Vischeck.com provide free software that can simulate different types of colour blindness.

3. Be Careful With Fonts

The set of fonts available to all visitors of a website is relatively limited. Add to that the possibility of a user having a visual impairment then the options become even smaller. It is advisable to stick to fonts such as Arial, Verdana, Courier, Times, Geneva and Georgia. They may not be very interesting but your content should be more interesting than your font and if it can't be read, what is the point of having a site?

Black text on a white background is far easier for the majority of people to read than white text on a black background. If you have large amounts of text then a white or pale background is far more user friendly. Always ensure that there is a good contrast between any text and its background. Blue text on a blue background is okay as long as the difference in shade is significant.

Verdana is often cited as being the easiest to read on the screen. Georgia is probably the best option for a serif font.

4. Plan for Change

If you fix the height of your page to 600 pixels will you still be able to add additional menu items without completely redesigning your page?

The ability to add or remove content from a website is fundamental to the ongoing success of it. Having to rewrite the entire web page or website each time you want to make a small change is sure fire way to kill your interest in your own site and will negatively impact your overall design and usability.

Getting a good idea of how your website is likely to grow will clarify how best to structure your layout. For example, a horizontal navigation is often more restrictive than a side navigation unless you use drop down menus; if your navigation is likely to grow and you hate drop down menus then your design choice has been 99% made for you!

Understanding how to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), avoiding unconventional layouts and complicated backgrounds will all help enormously.

5. Be Consistent

Again, don't make your visitors think! About how to use your site at least. If your navigation is at the top on your homepage, it should be at the top on all other pages too. If your links are coloured red ensure the the same convention is used on all sections.

By using CSS correctly you can make most of this happen automatically leaving you free to concentrate on the content.

6. Keep it Relevant

A picture is better than a thousand words but if the picture you took on holiday is not relevant to your Used Car Sales website then you should really replace it with something which reflects the content or mood of the page; a photo of a car perhaps!

If you can take something off of your web page without it adversely affecting the message, appearance or legality of your website you should do it without hesitation.

Avoid the need to add images, Flash animations or adverts just because you have space. This wastes bandwidth and obscures the intentions of your website. If you absolutely must fill the space, then exercise your imagination to find something as relevant as possible.

Keeping your content focused will ultimately help your search-engine rankings

7. Become a CSS Expert

Cascading Style Sheets should be any web designer's best friend. CSS makes it is possible to separate the appearance and layout of your page from the content. This has huge benefits when it comes to updating and maintaining your site, making your site accessible and making your site easy for search engines to read.

CSS at a first glance is very straightforward but is definitely worth investing in one or more books. Two great books are: CSS the Missing Manual by David McFarland and Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm.

8. Avoid Complexity

Using standard layouts for your web page will save you development time and make your site easier to use. Pushing the boundaries nearly always leads to quirky behaviour, cross-browser problems, confused site visitors and maintenance headaches. Unless you really do like a challenge then avoid complexity wherever possible.

Many standard layouts are freely available online with much of the boring, repetitive work already done for you.

The principles above all border on common sense and are well known to most people, yet so many sites continue to deviate away from them and suffer as a consequence. Following these principles will help you keep away from trouble, although it still doesn't guarantee it!

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The importance of updating your website.

Now that you've designed and launched your website, you have a powerful marketing tool for your business. But, your website is only as useful as the content is current. The process of keeping the content on your site current is called website maintenance, and it's important to keep both visitors and search engines supplied with new information. Just like regular maintenance on your car, you have to make changes on your website every few months to make sure that things run smoothly.

If you update the content on your website on a regular basis, potential clients will be drawn back to your site to find out "what's new". The search engines pay visits to websites in their queue regularly. The catch is that you'll stay in the queue only if you update your site regularly. If the search engines visit your site several times in a row, and don't find anything new, they may decide not to come back-which can be a blow to your search engine rankings.

So, when is it appropriate to update your website? You don't want to waste time and money nitpicking at your site if you don't have updates of real value to add. You should update your site if you've:

Spotlight any major updates on your home page as well, so that people will learn of those updates as soon as they enter your site. The search engines will also discover the new update as soon as they enter your home page if you leave a bit of information, with a link to the full story, on the home page. That will act as a breadcrumb for the engine to follow-the engines will follow your link to learn more about it.

Any of these reasons, and dozens of others, are great reasons to make changes to your site. If you make keeping your website current a priority, it will pay off with better search engine rankings and increased sales and leads through your website.

Once you've decided to make your changes, the next choice is how to go about doing that. There are two steps involved in maintaining your site:

We suggest that you use this tool to make only simple text changes. More complicated changes-for example, to the overall design or navigation-are more difficult to make, and having a professional make those changes will save you energy and frustration.

If you are comfortable with a more complicated software program, then we recommend a professional-grade tool such as Dreamweaver. With a better software package, you'll be able to make some of the more complicated changes yourself.

By building more-and more current-information into your website, you will also begin to build trust with your potential clients, since they will have a snapshot of what's currently happening in your business and available to them. Your website can go a long way towards making sure that your online prospects know, like, and trust you-which can lead to more sales from your website.

Signs it's time to redesign your website.

Designing your first website is a stressful undertaking. It requires you to dig deep into your business in order to write the copy for your site. You need to work with a designer and go through the process of creating a site that looks unique and works well. Plus you'll end up investing a lot of time, energy and money. And finally, after all that, you're finished and it's time for the site to go live. What a relief!

Many business owners go through this same process. By the time the process is finished, many entrepreneurs are very glad that it's over - and don't want to do it again anytime soon.

Unfortunately, websites don't last forever. Even if you plan your site to work for the current vision for your business, you can't accurately account for the entire future of your business.

Eventually you'll have to make some changes to your website. Some of these changes can be accomplished with simple maintenance, and by making updates to your site. But there's only so far that patching and revising your current site can go. If your site is particularly outdated, or if it's not working well for you, it's probably time to consider a full-scale site redesign.

Some signs that it's time to redesign your site include:

Your Business Has Changed or Grown

If your business is no longer the same as it was when you designed your site, chances are that you should redesign your website to reflect that. If you've only had a few small changes, you might be able to just update your current website. But, if you've changed your business direction, decided to provide new products or services, or if your company has grown significantly, it will pay off to redesign your site. Reconsider how the changes to your business should be reflected or addressed in the structure, design and strategy behind your website.

Your Site Looks Like It Was Designed in 1994

Some signs of an outdated web site include: chunky, slow-loading graphics, old-style "framed" coding, where the site is divided up into panes that load separately, little animated cartoon clip-art throughout the site, and text created as images instead of in HTML. Having any of these on your site could reflect poorly on your business, making you look 'behind the times'. It can also make you look like you don't care enough about your business or about technological advances to keep abreast of them. Keeping your company's website looking modern will improve its credibility.

The Information on Your Site Isn't User-Friendly

If you cringe when you read your site text, or if you regularly get questíons on your site text from visitors, re-structuring your copy or rewriting it can help to fix these problems. If you've been adding to your site over time and the navigation has become unwieldy or confusing, restructuring your navigation could be another pressing reason to redesign your site. You want visitors to be able to easily find their way around your site and to be able to access all the information you have within a few clicks. Laying out your site to make that possible can make your visitor's experience on your site a lot easier.

You Apologize for the Site When Referencing It or Handing Out Your Business Cards

Your site should be a source of pride. It should provide your clients and prospects an easy way to get a lot of information about your business. And, if you have to apologize for out-of-date information, broken images, poor design, difficult navigation or anything else on your site, it makes you look unprepared and unprofessional. Make sure your site is in top shape and looks impressive, so your clients believe your business is in good shape too.

You're Not Getting Good Results in the Search Engines

Poor rankings in the Search Engines can be a result of not optimizing your site well. Poor search engine ranking can also be a result of bad design choices or coding on your site. Make sure that your site isn't designed using frames and that the text is coded in HTML. Flash sites are also more difficult to optimize for Search Engines.

It's Not Bringing in inquiries and Helping You to Make Sales

If your site was designed long ago, then there's a good chance that it was designed as "brochureware". This means that the site was designed just to act as an online brochure. This was very common a few years ago, when websites were new. But recently businesses have realized that a website can do a lot more than just impersonate your brochure - it can help you close sales, bring in new prospects and make your business easier to run. To bring in more inquiries and make more sales include the following when you redesign your site:

• Calls to action to encourage your visitors to take specific actions - like purchasing something, contacting you, or signing up for a newsletter.
• Forms, scripts, or programs to make your business easier - like contact forms, project estimating tools, and an autoresponder email series that can help you keep in touch with your clients and prospects. Including a shopping cart or Paypal buttons on your site can also help you to make more sales without any additional work.
• Downloadable information packets, articles, questionnaires and white papers can answer a prospect's questíons about your products or services and help them to move closer to buying. And, if you require the prospect to enter their email address or other contact information, it can help you to grow your prospect líst as well. These are just a few of the functions that your site can perform for your business. To get ideas for other ways that your site can help you improve your business, look at the other sites that you visit and note the functions they perform.

Your Site is Costing You a Fortune to Update

If you're racking up huge bills because of changes and still have a lot to go, it might be time to consider a whole site redesign. Make a líst of everything that you want to do on your site and consult a web designer about redesigning your site with those changes in mind. Often, if you have extensive changes to make to your site, it can be less expensive to just start over.

If your site is designed in Flash or coded in such a way that you can't maintain it yourself, redesigning and re-coding your site could allow you to do so. Having the ability to make changes and update your own text will let you make revisions quickly, at no expense. And you can play with your site and make revisions to see what will work best for your business and clients.

If your site has any of the problems mentioned here, it's time to redesign. The steps needed to update and revise will differ depending on the problems and issues that your site has - you may not have to start from scratch. But, do make sure that you address all of the problems that your site has so that you won't have to redesign again any time soon!

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Do's and don'ts of website design .

1. No page counters: Page counters do nothing except make you look like an amateur, mess with your design, and tell people information about your site you probably don’t want them to know! If you want to know how many people are hitting your site, just ask your host for server stats. Any host worth it’s salt should be able to provide you with detailed stats that make page counters look stupid.

2. Forget blinking or flashing text: The only place you see blinking and or flashing text is on the neon signs of naked bars or web sites made in the mid 90's! People don’t like them and expect to see naked people inside sites or buildings that have them … enough said.

3. Make your titles on your web page make sense: One of the core attributes of a web page is its title. In between the <title> </title> tags you can specify the page's title as it appears in the browsers top title bar and in the search engine results.

People pay attention to page titles, so you should make sure that they are clear. If you have a page on how to take care of dogs and you happen to have a dog named ‘Jimmy’ don’t title your page: ‘How to look after Jimmy and his furry friends.’ You should title you page something like: ‘How to take care of dogs.’

4. Don’t force people to download a new browser of special plug-in to see your site: Unless you have a site that people are dying to see, why limit your audience because you want to use some special features in a browser or a plug-in like Flash. Today, with proper use of CSS and HTML, you can present fantastic looking pages without having to jump through the hoops old timers like me had to when garbage browsers like Netscape 4 were being used in great numbers.

5. Think twice before using framesets: In the olden days you could argue a use for framesets because of HTML’s lousy layout capabilities. Today with CSS positioning being well supported by all the major browsers there is no need to use framesets for just about 99.9% of websites. Why don’t you want to use framesets you ask? Well beginners tend to have trouble creating and using them properly. Framesets tend to make websites more complicated than they need to be and finally they can cause you all kinds of problems with the search engines.

6. Don’t try any stupid cheat tricks in an attempt to fool the search engines: In the past we webmasters developed various nefarious (disreputable) methods in an attempt to get higher rankings in the search engines. Tactics included putting hundreds of key words on the pages as invisible text, etc … These tactics may have had some limited success in the past, but those days are long gone. Try to fool Google (the king of search engines) and you and your web site will die a horrible and painful death! I will not describe how to get high rankings now, but keep this is mind: good content honestly presented is the foundation of high rankings and high traffic for your site.

7. Chat rooms: Most people don’t give a crap about chat rooms. And worse than having a chat room is having an empty chat room! Who wants to hang out at a club that has nobody inside? So unless you have a web site with tens of thousands of visitors a month and is of a subject that might necessitate a chat room, don't do it.

8. Flash intros: I am guilty of this as much as the next guy. A few years back Flash intros where all the rage, not sure if anyone knew why we ‘needed’ them, but as it turns out the ‘skip intro’ button is the 2nd most clicked on the web today. Don’t waste your time on Flash intros and in my opinion Flash should only be used in special situations.

9. Under construction pages: Just forget it, if the page is not ready, don’t put it up. If you have links that are pointing to the pages, disable them until your page is ready. If your page is truly ‘under construction’ and has content on it that is ready to be seen by your web surfers, just post a ‘last updated’ date and make sure you get the new content in place soon. What ever you do, don’t put one of those cheesy ‘under construction’ images on the page.

Types of website designs.( static - dynamic)

Static websites are designed for easy downloadable images, browser compatibility and easy navigation having effective graphics and interactivity.

Static web site contains a site with linked pages using a font or graphics-based logo, and containing text, and simple graphics. Sites may include any number of pages with minimum script and HTML.

Static website can help your business to present your products, services, and any other important information you want your visitors to have access to. Building a static website is relatively simple because the development technology is simple to use.

There is also hybrid website design. The hybrid website contains static as well as flash animation. The hybrid website is better option when you need to represent informative site with animated look. In hybrid sites the top or half part is design with flash animation which gives unique and innovative look to your site.

Dynamic Website Design

A dynamic website is required for content such as online databases, e-business, collaborative content, membership, private areas, knowledge base, a resume or jobs database, online shopping site etc. A dynamic web page is any web page which has content that is changed by a program or script at the time the page is requested. Dynamic website pages are pages that allow a user to set preferences regarding what kind of information will be displayed.

There is a major difference between building a static website and building a dynamic website. A simple static website is an interactive information sheet of your products and services while a dynamic website is capable of engaging the visitor and impacting the business more dramatically. If all you want to do is present information, then a static web site is all you need. Dynamic website is required for content such as e-business, collaborative content, and member-only.

Dynamic Website Types:

• Database driven Website
• e-Commerce Website
• e-Business Website
• Knowledge Base Website
• Jobs Database
• Resume Database
• Member-only sites
• Intranet
• Extranet

When developing your website, your web pages are either designed as dynamic or static. Essentially, static web pages are those on your site that send exactly the same response to every search request.  On the other hand, dynamic pages are most often customized to offer some form of personalization in the response displayed to the end customer.

Dynamic pages are obviously beneficial, and although search engines may be able to index some of them, generally the pure volume alone is an inhibiting factor to most Search Engines.

In a entirely dynamic website, all web contents are stored in a database and assembled into a web page when the page is requested. The dynamic site is essential when frequent change in website content is essential and also to reduce maintenance of the site for the users who do not know HTML. In dynamic websites when the content is retrieved it is merged with a template that provides components that are common to the whole site or sub sections of the site and also includes components that control the style of presentation for the user entered data.

All you need to build your own website is a computer, an internet connection and a little knowledge of HTML - the language that websites are made with.

Building a website can be a very simple task, but it can also become overly complicated if you don't plan each stage of the building process.

There is no point having a state-of-the-art website designed if you haven't got any web space to host it in, so you need to make sure you have all the right elements in place at the beginning.

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How can I build my own site?

Before you start building your site, you have to make sure you've got the right equipment and information to get it up and running. Here is a quick check list of things you need to build your website.

A computer.
A modem
Internet access via an ISP
A domain name (optional)
Web space
Web authoring or HTML editing software
FTP software
Some good ideas
Plenty of time!
Some good advice

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Can I promote my own website?

Yes you can. But you must be patient and fully comprehend every aspect of the methods I have used in promoting my websites and all my customer websites.

Let's start by listing the methods used to promote websites.

Meta Tags
Page Titles
Page Text
Optimizing
Search Engine Submission
Spam Search Engine Taboo
Pay Per Click
Media
Web Catalogs & Directories
Banners
Selling Ad Space
Adwords
Adsense
Word of mouth
Linking and link backs (reciprocal linking)
Forums, Blogs and Chat services
Electronic Newsletter

Meta Tags explained

In order to list your site in their databases, search services must have information about your site. Specifically, they must have the name of your site, a description of your site, and the keywords that can be used to index your site. Historically, search services used special XHTML tags called meta tags to obtain this information.

Meta Tags

Meta tags give information about your site to web servers, search services, and other programs. Meta tags are different from other XHTML elements, because meta tags give information about the pages themselves rather than about the content of the pages. Meta tags are not displayed by browsers for human use but are processed by the browsers and other software for their own use.

Keep in mind, that not all search services use meta tags, and the ones that do use them may not use all of them. Thus, meta tags may help you get more hits on your web site, but they are not a cure-all. For example, the current trend is that search services get keywords from the text in your pages instead of from meta tags. Some services may use meta tags, and the tags should be included in your pages.

Meta Tag Syntax

Unless you have an editor that creates meta tags, you will have to go to the XHTML level of editing to insert them. Let's discuss the syntax of meta tags.

Because meta tags are XHTML tags, they are enclosed in angle brackets. Each meta tag has three dedicated words, meta, name and content . Meta identifies the tag as being a meta tag. Name assigns a property to the tag. Content assigns a value to the property.

Page Description

When search services return results, the results include short descriptions of the pages. Some services obtain descriptions from the text of the page, while other services use descriptions given in description meta tags. By providing brief, legible descriptions of your pages in meta tags, you are able to control the descriptions used by the services that use meta tags. Keep the descriptions to 150 characters, including spaces and punctuation. Include in the description the keywords that are important to the page.

Description meta tags look like the following (all one line).

< meta name="description" content="A web site giving hints and tips for those who love camping in the outdoors the scouting way." />

Keywords

People searching the Internet specify keywords to be searched. The search services check their databases for web pages that are indexed by the keywords. At the present time, most search services extract keywords from the page text, but some services may use the keywords meta tag. Keywords meta tags have the following syntax (all one line).

<meta name="keywords"
content="scouts,camping,tents,hiking" />

Notice the keywords are separated by commas, and the string of keywords is enclosed in quotation marks (double quotes). The number of characters allowed in the content of the meta tag by search services probably varies with the service, but plan for around 1000 characters. Spaces are not used after the commas, because they aren't needed and would only make the content of the meta tag longer. Have short phrases as well as single words between the commas.

Choose carefully the keywords you insert into meta tags. Pretend you are searching the web for sites that have themes similar to your site. List keywords you think people might typically use. Include popular synonyms of your keywords (since search services are now extracting keywords from text, the inclusion of synonyms is one of the most important uses of keyword meta tags). Also include common misspellings of the keywords. Include phrases of two or three words that might be used by persons searching for your site. These phrases are of special importance, because when people search on single words, they usually get more hits than they can examine. People then enter phrases of two, three, or more words to narrow the searches. If you place the same phrases in your meta tags, your site will more likely come up earlier in the searches. Make nouns plural to catch both singular and plural words.

Do not enter keywords more than once or twice. Words in phrases should not also be entered as individual words. Search engines check for repetitions of words and penalize pages that have high repetition rates. This penalization varies with the engine, so to be safe, enter words only one or two times.

The meta tag keyword list is ordered in importance from left to right. Add keywords that are unique to the page to the beginning of the meta tag list.  Then end the list with keywords that are unique to your site. By doing this, the most important keywords will be placed at the beginning of the list.

Window-Target

A common but unethical practice that some people practice is to create a framed page and link it to another site. The linked page will be displayed, but because the link is in a framed page, the browser will display the address of the framed page not the address of the page at the link. The result is that the displayed page appears to be published under the domain of the framed page. To avoid this happening to your site, place the "window-target" meta tag in your pages.

<meta http-equiv="window-target" content="_top" />

Robots

Robots are spider or crawler programs that are "owned" by search services and spammers. The robots constantly roam the web and index web sites into their search databases. The robots meta tag, if it is honored by the spiders, allows you to control which pages are indexed and if local links on those pages are followed to obtain more pages to index. Replace xxx with "index", "noindex", "follow", "nofollow", "all", "none", or combinations of those words. "all" is the same as "index,follow", and "none" is the same as "noindex,nofollow".

<meta name="robots" content="xxx" />

Meta Tag Location

Meta tags are placed anywhere within the header of your page . For example, a meta tag could be placed in the header, as follows.

<html>
<head>
<title>blah blah</title>
<meta name="keyword" content="dog,cat,horse,pig,cow,bird" />
</head>
<body>

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Page Titles explained

Each web page should have an XHTML title that describes the page. This title appears in the title-bar of browsers. It also appears as the name of the link in search results.

The title is entered into some WYSIWYG editors by right clicking on the page background and selecting Page Properties , and then entering the title in the Title field. The generated XHTML element is placed inside the page header.

<html>
<head>
<title>Camping the Scouting Way, tents, backpacking, bsa</title>
</head>

Source Of Keywords For Searches

In addition to identifying the page for browser windows and Internet searches, the title is used by all search services as a source of keywords, and these keywords are usually given the highest priority. Thus, a few of the most important keywords for a page should be included in the title, ordered in importance from left to right.

Each Page Has A Title

Each web page should have its own unique title element. This will help your visitors learn what your pages can do for them, and it will increase the probability of Internet searches finding individual pages in your site and placing them close to the front of the results.

Alphabetical Search Results

A few search services alphabetize their search results. Because of this, some web designers attach letters or punctuation characters to the front of their titles to make their sites appear at the front of the results. For example, if I were to do that with a site, I might use the following as the title of the home page.

<title>AAA Camping the Scouting Way, tents, backpacking, bsa</title>

I don't recommend this practice, because it makes the titles hard to read. In addition, most search services don't alphabetize results.

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Page Text explained

The rankings given by search services are affected by the text within your pages, especially your home page. In addition, not all search services use meta tags to obtain descriptions of your pages. Some services create descriptions from the text of the pages. Thus, to obtain higher rankings and to insure that your search descriptions are accurate, follow the following suggestions.

Use the home page to provide a concise and accurate introduction to the theme of the site.

Keep the home page short by placing on subordinate pages information not pertaining to the introduction of the theme. Short pages may receive higher rankings from the search services. In addition, short pages load faster. Some web designers recommend that web pages have at least 250 words so search services have enough text to analyze for keywords.

Place the most important sentences at the top of each page. The top of the page may be more likely to be read by visitors and may be given higher priority by the search services.

Write your page text to have real meaning to your visitors. Page content is king in optimizing web pages. Place the most important keywords throughout the text in each page, especially the top half of the page, but be sure that the keywords fit within the context of their page. That is, do not stuff irrelevant words in your pages in attempts to increase your search ratings. Doing so will dilute your pages, giving you lower ratings, and may cause your pages to be removed from the search services.

Be sure your keywords are relevant to the pages in which they are used.

Organize your pages into subtopics and use "headers" (the XHTML <h> elements) to "announce" each subtopic. Use color and font changes to cause the headers to stand out from the text in the subtopic. The headers will help your visitors navigate through each page, and they may help you to get higher rankings from search services.

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Optimizing explained

To get high search rankings, you must optimize your web site to have quality content that is useful to your visitors. Let's look at the specific things you can do to optimize your web pages for high search rankings.

First, the most important rule: web pages that have good content for your visitors will likely have high rankings from the search engines. This is critical for good rankings (and to good page design).

Divide your site into categories that are natural and appropriate for the theme of your site. This will help both your visitors and the search engines find the information they are seeking.

Have each web page contain unique information. That is, each page makes its own contribution to the site.

Choose a navigation scheme that is logical and natural, one that your visitors and the search engines can easily follow.

Choose 3 or 4 keywords or phrases that are appropriate for each web page. Because each page is unique, these keywords will be unique with their pages. Write text or copy for each page that gives important, significant, and useful information about the topic (don't just write fluff that doesn't say much). Place your keywords and phrases in a few appropriate places in the text such that the keywords contribute to the value of the text (don't over do this; putting your keywords in too many places may get you penalized by the search engines).

Use variations of the keywords and phrases in a way that is natural for the topic and that contributes to the content of the page. This is important because most search engines extract keywords from the page text for indexing. Put the keywords in the XHTML <title> element and in alternate text attributes for graphics.

When you add keywords and phrases to the text, be sure that they are appropriate to the theme and content of the page. Do not stuff keywords and phrases into the page that don't relate to the theme of the page, and do not repeat the keywords and phrases a lot of times.

Add a description meta tag to each page that briefly (200 characters or less) describes the page. Because each page is unique, these descriptions will be unique with each page. These descriptions may be used by search rankings to describe your links, so write them to entice people to click on your links.

Add a keyword meta tag to each page that contains the 3 or 4 keywords that are special to the page. Since most search engines currently use page text for locating keywords, use the meta tag to give synonyms and common misspellings of the keywords.

Keep the most important pages within the first two sub-levels of your site. Search engines may give higher rankings to web pages that are easy for persons (and spiders) to access, i.e. access with just one or two clicks.

To cover pages that are more than two sub-levels down in your site hierarchy, have a site map that links to every page in the site. Be sure the site map is linked from the home page.

If your site has dynamic pages (pages that are generated dynamically by your server when visitors click on links), have static links to each dynamic page. Search engines don't rank dynamic pages very well. Having static links to those pages helps.

If you redesign your site, such that page URLs change, have a custom 404-error page that points your visitors back to your home page (or another appropriate page). You will need cooperation from your server webmaster in doing this. Besides pointing your visitors to appropriate pages in your site, your custom error page can contain general information about your site to entice your visitors to continue surfing your site. Some designers use a site map as the error page.

Using Flash is ok if you use it like a graphic, i.e. small areas to enhance your pages in appropriate ways. Pages that are nothing but flash will get low rankings since those pages have no (or little) text for the search engines to analyze.

In summary, optimize your site by having excellent content in the web pages. Focus each page on particular keywords, keywords that are unique to each page and are meaningful to your visitors.

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Search Engine Submission

Each search service has its own characteristics. Knowing those characteristics will help you design your site to be ranked higher by the services. Most search services provide Help information that describes how you can improve your ranking. The following links take you to the Help information.

Keep in mind, however, that search engines and directories are not static. They are continually being updated with more refined search algorithms to give better service and to defeat people who try to abuse the engines and directories to get higher rankings.

Free Submissions

AltaVista (uses Yahoo! Search)

Google

HotBot (click on Help)

Lycos (click on Help)

Open Directory Project (DMOZ)

WiseNut

Free Directories

Directories do not have a general ADD URL section. You have to traverse the category directory structure until you are in the category you want your page to be listed in, and then click on ADD URL. Submissions are reviewed by an editor who decides if the submission will be listed.

Open Directory Project (DMOZ)

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Search Engine Taboo / Spam

Some web developers spam the search services in attempts to get higher rankings. In the beginning, spam worked, but search services are getting more sophisticated, and spam now results in pages and sometimes whole sites being dropped from search service databases. Each service has its own definition of spam, but the following list characterizes spam

Repetition of keywords . Search services give higher rankings for multiple occurrences of keywords. Developers abused this by repeating keywords many times, and services now penalizes pages that have repetition of keywords. Some services allow a few (2 or 3) repetitions, but use caution in how much repetition you have.

Scatter your keywords and phrases throughout the page, and use variations of the words. Make the use of the keywords appropriate for the context of the page. Search services now do context checking of keywords.

Keywords not related to web site . Certain keywords, such as sex and naked have high usage in web searches. Some developers add those keywords to their pages in hopes of getting more hits. Search services now do context-testing of keywords and penalize pages that have keywords not related to the themes of the pages.

More than one page title (HTML <title> tag) . Many search services put a high priority on keywords found in page titles, assuming that titles will be read even if the pages aren't read. Pages that had more than one title tag used to get higher rankings, but search services now penalize this abuse.

Text the same color as the background . Most search services now index every word in the text of the page and give higher rankings for words that occur more often. People abused this by repeating keywords in the text many, many times. The repeated keywords were set to the color of the background so they were invisible to the human visitors but visible to the spider software used by the services. Services now penalize this technique.

Duplication of pages with different URLs . A technique that has been used to give multiple listings in search results has been to duplicate a page several times and assign different names (URLs) to the clones. Search services penalize the use of this technique.

A better technique is to divide the site into several unique pages and submit the site to search services. The spiders will eventually visit each page.

Some people create different versions of the same page and optimize the versions for different search services. The pages may be interpreted as spam. If you do this, use a robots.txt file to limit access to a given page by only the service for whom that page is optimized.

Different splash pages linking to same home page . Another technique to get multiple listings in search results has been to have several splash pages link to the same home page. This technique is also being penalized. Again, a better technique is to divide the site into several unique pages.

Different pages given to search services than to human visitors. This is known as cloaking and allows pages that would be hard to read by people to be given to search services. Search services penalize this technique.

Only link to/from appropriate sites . Search engines give higher rankings for sites that have a lot of links coming to them. However, these sites must be appropriate for the theme of your site. Avoid linking to and requesting links from sites that aren't related to your site. Search services want quality links not quantity of links.

Don't resubmit your site many times. After you have submitted your site to a search service, wait until you are indexed before you resubmit your site. Make significant changes to the content of the site before resubmitting

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Pay Per Click

By paying for visits from people who are searching on keywords related to your product or service, you are almost ensuring that your website will generate more revenue with a higher conversion rate of visitors to customers. The more popular programs include Google AdWords, Overture Content Match and Site Match, as well as smaller players like FindWhat, Kanoodle and Mamma.

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Media explained

The mainstream media can be effective sources of promotion for your web site, if you play the game by its rules. Make your press releases news worthy, i.e., be sure they convey news that is of general interest. This type of news usually involves the movement of money. Include statistics from reliable sources. People won't be interested in your product unless it will save them money. Design your press releases such that your words create visual images in the minds of people. Plan a series of press releases that tell a story how your company can save them money.

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Web Catalogs & Directories

Taking out annual subscriptions in one or more of the major web catalogs (e.g. Inktomi, FAST, AskJeeves, etc.) and business directories (e.g. YellowPages, Superpages) can help garner some immediate traffic for your website. Web Catalogs tend to work well for new sites, as they get you some all important links in the early stages. Business directories work for virtually any business as they put a listing (or ad) for your website right in front of people looking for exactly what you're selling.

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Banners

An advertiser that is interested in posting banner ads on other sites has three basic options. The advertiser can:

• Arrange to display other Web sites' banner ads in exchange for them displaying its ad.

• Pay publisher sites to post its banner.

• Pay an organization, usually a banner network to post the banner on a number of publisher sites.

These three arrangements take many forms and advertisers and publishers must choose the specific arrangement that best suits them. If you want to post banner ads on other sites but don't have the capital to mount a traditional advertising campaign, you may choose to exchange banner ads with other sites. There are two ways you can go about this. The first is to individually develop relationships with other Web sites and trade specific banners. This is a very natural process and allows you to place your banner ads conscientiously and post other Web site banner ads that fit your site well. Your banner ad doesn't end up on very many sites, however, unless you invest a whole lot of your time in seeking out interested webmasters.

If you want to get your banner ad on a lot of sites in a short amount of time (and don't want to pay for it) then your best bet is joining a banner exchange program.

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Selling Ad Space

Selling banner advertising space is a great way to use your site's traffic to generate revenue, but it can be a bit tricky. The easiest option is to join a banner ad network, which will recruit advertisers, keep track of your earnings, and control banner ad placement on your site. In exchange for these services, the network will take a hefty percentage of the advertising money generated by your ad space.

If your site gets a good deal of traffic, more than 100,000 impressions per month, then you should be able to join a good banner network's CPM program. If you have a smaller site, you should look into banner network click-through programs, which tend to have lower minimum traffic requirements. You probably won't make much money in a click-through program, however, because you are only paid when visitors actually click on the banner, which is very seldom (typically, less than 1 percent of the people who see a banner will click on it).

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Adwords

Google adwords are like pay-per-click search engines in that you can bid on your keyword phrases to determine which position you get.  However, they are listed on the right hand side of search results on the Google engine, plus throughout partner sites such as about.com etc., and private sites of relevance that have been accepted into the Google AdSense program (relevance is determined by the content on the page where ads appear).  You design your own ads to display, and can also design banner ads to appear in some of their partner sites.

 

Adsense

How can we make money off of our existing traffic? Well, Google AdSense of course. Probably the most popular of affiliate programs for one reason, not that it pays the best, but because it has the best mechanism. It takes into account what you have written, and then displays ads it feels to be the most relevant. And this increases your odds of people clicking your ads.

Now many people have all these assumptions when the first start running AdSense ads on their site. Most people think that they will just start raking in the dough for running a couple ads on their site. Guess again. So if you want a get them 20” rims quick scheme, this isn't it, but if your looking to make a little extra money at the expense of running ads on a site, then you should consider AdSense.

 

Word Of Mouth

Many small-medium sized companies make little or no effort to actually use and maintain their Websites once they've been built. In fact, the majority of small business Websites that I come across in the course of my work do far more harm than good for that very reason. It's sad, but true. With a little effort though, that 'online business card' can become the valuable asset you've always known it could be.

Okay, let's get started....

Launch Your Website

Hopefully you're very proud of your new site and presumably that means you'd like to tell people about it. There are several rather obvious ways that anyone can do this:

• EMail

• Telephone

• Word of mouth

• Snail mail

Yes I know -- it's hardly rocket science but it's always helpful to start with the basics, and telling all your customers and friends about your new site is a good way to begin.

Let's look at each of these points in a little more detail:

Email

Email everybody in your address book, and if possible and appropriate, ensure that everyone in your company does the same thing. But be careful! This kind of email can easily be considered spam . Bear these two important points in mind:

1. K.I.S.S. Keep It Short and Simple. 4-5 lines including the URL will be quite sufficient.
   

2. Send plain text. Don't be tempted to send html email, as many will object to it and some won't even open it. Besides, most email clients will render the URL as a link anyway.

Telephone

We'll focus here on how you might approach your customers (your friends will probably be delighted to hear from you and excited by your new site, so calling them to tell them won't be a big deal).

In my humble opinion (which means that it's not even remotely humble!), there are two rules to promote your site by phone without causing annoyance:

1. Call to inform your customers of a genuine benefit to them regarding your new Website.
   

2. Tell them about it when you next speak to them in the course of business -- don't call them solely to tell them about your site.

For example, you may wish to tell all of your customers where they can now find important information, or perhaps take advantage of a special 'Website-only' offer. More on this later. And remember to tell whoever answers the phones in your business to mention the new site in each call as well.

Word of Mouth

This doesn't really warrant much explanation, other than to point out that when you tell someone about your new site, your recommendation will have a greater impact if you can hand them a business card that shows the URL (or at least write it down for them).

Your efforts here will again have far greater results if the people that you talk to perceive some benefit in visiting you site, such as special offers and relevant information on products and services.

Snail Mail

The rules here are pretty much the same as for email. The best way is to either write a short mailshot that details a specific benefit to be found on your site, or include a small note/paragraph in your regular correspondence to clients. Don't forget to add your website address.

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Linking and link backs (reciprocal linking)

This is a fantastic way to increase the importance of your website in the eyes of the search engines. The rationale that the search engines use is that if other sites are linking to yours, then your site must be important. A link from another site to your site is considered a “vote” for your site. The more of these votes, the better; to an extent, of course. Steer clear of such black hat techniques as link farms and free for all (FFA) sites. I recommend starting by asking your vendors, suppliers and customers if they could link to your site in exchange for a link to theirs. You could then branch out into related businesses that service a different audience (e.g. a competitor in another city that you don't service).

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Forums, Blogs and Chat services

Forums, blogs, bulletin boards and chat services are a relatively good way of putting information on the web. Individuals use them as diaries or journals to document their progress in their endeavors or to record their observations or comments about particular activities. Blogs are primarily one-way discussions from the owners of the blogs, although some blogs allow others to respond to the owner, thus providing two-way discussions.

Bulletin boards or discussion forums provide two-way discussions. Anyone can create new topics or threads and can reply to existing posts, although most forums require visitors to register before they can post. Visitors can read existing posts without having to register. Bulletin boards have existed longer than the world wide web; prior to the web, bulletin boards provided forums through dial-up connections.

Web sites can use these tools to advertise their site, post news releases, tips of the day (or week or month), etc. Bulletin boards can also be used for those activities that are non-commercial. Both blogs and bulletin boards can be used to create feedback pages to allow visitors to comment on the site and information or products offered by the site.

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Electronic News Letter

An electronic newsletter is a fantastic method for staying in touch with not only existing customers, but potential customers as well. Provide useful, interesting information on a regular basis and be sure that people can subscribe and unsubscribe easily. Utilizing a good tool (e.g. Constant Contact) will make your life easier and allow people to forward the newsletter to their friends and colleagues (known as Viral Marketing). You can also use the newsletter as a vehicle for announcements or specials. Never charge anything to subscribers, and build your list by running contests or promotions.

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Can anyone register a domain name?

Yes, anyone is able to register for ownership of a domain name. It does not matter what country your are from.  Anyone can easily register their own a (.com, .net, or .org) website address here for present, or future use.   

To begin, search for your requested domain name by typing the name in the box below, (this search service is free) along with the appropriate extension in the drop box below, such as .com .biz, .info, .org (for non-profit organizations), .net (for networks).

May we suggest the following companies: http://internicsearch.com - gigahost.ca - hostdomain.ca - hostmart.ca

Do you build websites for clients?

Yes, with your help in regards to your business I can build your website.

We will send you a form with questions to make us familiar with your business so we can plan the layout and then create a template  that is relevant to the type of business you operate.

Each site is custom designed and communication is the strongest element between the webmaster and the site owner.

During the process the logo design, pictures, catalogs, pamphlets and articles regarding the business are exchanged.

The webmaster becomes more than the website creator, he becomes a part-time employee for the client.

You can figure about $200.00 per page.

Obviously it all depends on the complexity of the design.

We can also build french language sites.

To see our web design company and portfolio go to Trinakria Development

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