Create a custom 404 web page, so that any time your website visitor mistypes or misspells a URL on your site, they will still be provided with navigation options for your site (instead of getting nothing but a “Page Not Found” error message, which is neither friendly or helpful).

2. Redirect Non-www. To www.

Website visitors will often leave out the “www.” portion when they type a URL or link to your website. Set the website up so that it automatically redirects any non-www version of your domain urls (http://domain. com) to the www version (http://www.domain. com) of your website.

3. Properly Sized Graphics

Size and define all graphics and images on your web pages properly and correctly. Web pages will load quicker if the graphics contained on each page are properly defined so they don’t require the web browser to re-size them. Properly sized and defined images can reduce the web browser workload and speed up the page loading time.

4. Favicon

Add a Favicon (favorite icon) to your website, so that your company or product logo appears in the URL box. This icon will also show up in a bookmark list, and gives the web site an added level of professionalism.

5. Include RSS Auto-Discovery

If you provide an RSS feed for any content on your website, be sure to include auto-discovery code in the header of your website. This will allow many browsers and RSS readers to automatically detect the presence of an RSS feed and alert the visitor that it is available.

6. Alternate Domains

Domain names are relatively inexpensive, so you should register multiple domain versions and extensions in order to protect your brand. The varied domains can be parked on the main website, simply to prevent others from obtaining them. Registering alternate domain versions will help protect your brand.

7. Consistent Navigation

Navigation should remain consistent on a website. As a website visitor moves through the website, the navigation bar should remain in the same place on each page. This will make it easier for visitors to navigate your website, and become more comfortable as they move through your site.

8. Home Goes Home

The main graphic, company logo, or “header” at the top of the site should be included on every page in the site, and should always return the visitor to the home page of the website. This has become a web standard, and most visitors now expect to return to the main page of the site simply by clicking on the main top graphic from any page within the site.

9. Copyright Notice

Include a copyright notice on the bottom of each page contained on the website, and keep it current! It may seem trivial, but an out-of-date copyright notice can send a message to your visitors that the website and its content may be out-of-date as well.

10. Meaningful File Names

Use meaningful file names for any files, graphics, or web pages. Many search engines look at file names as part of their search algorithm, and using keywords in file names may help to improve search engine rankings.

11. Hyphens vs Underscores

When naming files and webpages, use hyphens (i.e. web-page.html) rather than underscores (i.e. web_page.html) for the file names. It is much easier for search engines to separate and index the keywords when hyphens are used.

12. Alt Tags

Use ALT tags to describe what images represent on web pages. ALT tags not only assist visually-impaired visitors in knowing what the images are, but they also help with search engine ranking.

13. Spell Check

Use a spell-check feature on the text of all web pages in a website. A website that contains mistyped or misspelled words just shouts “unprofessional”. Take the extra few minutes necessary to check the spelling of text on each page of your website.

14. Test

After making changes to a website, test it! Many times, a webmaster will upload changes, confident in their abilities, only to later discover that in their attempt to fix one thing, they have “broken” something somewhere else. Make testing a habit after making even the most minor changes!

15. Keep It Simple

Simple is good. Eliminate unnecessary clutter and distractions from a website and navigation menu.

As a “first step” we suggest that you start by reviewing the questions listed below. We are convinced that once you get to the last question… you will have a list of action items identified that will greatly improve the productivity of your current website. The success or failure of the site and/or business may very well depend upon the decisions you make after reading these questions.

What Do You Know About Your Clients and Prospects State of Mind?

When visitors land on your website, they have very little time to read what you say. They have a need for information or a product and don’t want to listen or read verbose descriptions and comments. You have about 8 seconds to engage them and get them to take action. Do most visitors land on your website wanting:

1) information,
2) a “quick fix”,
3) a bargain,
4) a large selection,
5) or a telephone call, etc.?

It is imperative to know the answers to these and many other questions BEFORE you design the pages within your website.

Do You Make Website Visitors Feel You Can Satisfy Their Wants and Needs?

Landing on any page within your website [especially the Homepage] must make the visitor know that you understand their needs, business, wants, and desires. The more you put yourself into the “mindset” of the website visitor, the better chance you have of converting their visit into something you want to happen i.e. buy, complete a contact us form, bookmark the page, pick up the phone and call you or any other method of measurable conversion.

What Approach Do You Take When Developing Pages Within Your Website?

What do you think you would want from your website if you were the prospective visitor or client? Assume you don’t know as much information as you want in order to make an informed decision. Talk to these visitors in a language they will understand. If visitors want more insight or information, tell them to click on the more info link or give you a call. They will follow your direction ONLY if you have built some level of trust or understanding.

What are You “Selling” to the Website Visitor?

Are you focused on telling them about your product or service or are you making them understand that choosing your firm will deliver that special feeling they are seeking by making the purchase? Are you sure that you made the visitor know that you understand their needs, wants, problems, etc.? What techniques did you implement to get your points across?

How are You Going to Get the Visitor to Stop and Think About Your Service or Product?

Remember… they are ready to pass by your website in a blink of an eye. What are you going to do to engage them? The answer you come up with will be critical to the success you have in gaining their confidence enough to buy or call you. Make sure what you say is NOT the same old thing they are used to seeing or reading on other websites. Be boring and you lose! Address the issues that appeal to the visitor and they WILL STOP! This is hard work… but worth the effort.

What Kind of “Call to Action” Statements are You Placing on Your Website?

Turning a visitor into a prospect or client is one of the most critical actions of your website. How will you engage them? Once they know that you understand their needs and wants, they are more inclined to follow your CTA direction. Call to Action statements are critical to the success of any website’s conversion. Guide them in a manner that is more telling, rather than selling. Don’t be afraid to be assertive.

How Does Your Website Address the “Who Are We” Issue?

Again, it is about making the website visitor feel confident that they are choosing a reputable firm or organization with which to do business. They need to read about your success. This can be done by exhibiting your affiliation with associations, awards won, satisfied client statements, client success stories, examples of your work, etc. Show them you are a “player” in your industry.

Are You Prepared to Answer: “What Makes You Different”?

What have clients and prospects said about you and your company? Have they applauded you for your approach to doing business? Did they say you made them feel like you understood their needs and wants? Think back to the reasons clients buy from you. How did you meet their needs and wants? Give your prospective clients reasons to do business with your firm.

A final thought…

Make it your primary goal to understand the potential client. Look at your website through that client’s perspective. Who are they? What makes them different? What do they individually want and need? Be informative… do more telling than selling. They will “get it” and appreciate that you have made them an educated buyer. Finally, tell them what you want them to do next. Get them to take the first step and be ready to deliver on the expectations you have set throughout your website!

Finally, be sure to hire Internet marketing professionals to do the job if you don’t have the capabilities in-house. Too much is at stake to leave this part of your business to chance! We are pleased to provide you the insightful comments contained herein.

That’s why it’s extremely important to have a solid plan in place before the redesign process takes place.

Start by analyzing what you have.

The first thing we need to do is review each and every file at the current site. Depending on the age and size of the current site, this step can often take several weeks.

We catalog each piece of content at the site, which includes pages, articles, posts, comments, images, videos, audios, free reports, digital downloads, forms, scripts, products, autoresponders, newsletters, plug-ins, etc. We simply list every asset at the site.

Next, decide what you’ll do with it all.

Now that the list of assets has been created, it’s time to come up with a plan for what stays and what goes. Look at every item and decide if it will be added to the new site? Will it be moved to a different directory? Will the URL change? Will the asset be renamed? Do any of the pages require new Meta tags?

Pay special attention to your scripts and forms, do they refer to a certain asset that you wanted to discard? Does a form point to a certain thank you page? Make a notation of what will stay and what will go.

Thirdly, list all of your exceptions.

Before completely eliminating an item, you’ll want to investigate your off-site assets. Are any of your active PPC campaigns referring to a particular landing page? Are your linking partners linking to a page that will get renamed?

Take a look at your traffic analytics to determine which off-site sources are driving traffic and exactly where they’re sending that traffic. You might want to keep these pages as-is, disallow them in your robots text file to avoid any duplicate content issues, and contact your traffic sources about the change. Keep the items live until you are 100% sure there is no traffic being directed to them.

And finally, create your redirects.

As your new pages are being created, be sure to replace the old page with a 301 redirect. This will notify the search engines that the asset has been permanently moved. Eventually, they will no longer refer to the original link but instead, they will pass its ranking to the new page.

The way you execute your 301 redirect will depend on the changes you’ve made and the hosting platform you use. If you’ve moved your entire website, as-is, to a new url, the easiest redirect is through your htaccess file. As long as you’ve kept the site structure intact, simply replace the htaccess file at the original site with a 301 redirect to the new site.

In the case of a redesign that uses the same URL, you will need to redirect each page individually. For that, you would add a separate line for each page into your htaccess file.

If you don’t see your htaccess file, make sure your ftp program is set up to view hidden files. And if you definitely don’t have an htaccess, simply create one in your text editor, like notepad. (Do not use a word publisher like Microsoft Word to create your htaccess file.) When you save the file, be sure to name it DOT htaccess and not htaccess DOT txt.

Personally, I prefer a page-side redirect using PHP. In this case, you would replace the original HTML file with a file containing the redirect code in its header.

Save this with the old file name and ftp in ascii mode to the same directory the original file was in. Then ftp the new file to the new directory. Anyone who tries to access the original page will be immediately taken to the new page, and the search engines will be notified that any “points” awarded to the original page should now be passed to the new page.

But there is a caveat. If the new page doesn’t “deserve” the points of the old page, it will not automatically be favored with a great SE ranking forever and ever simply because you used a 301 redirect. You will need to continually maintain your new pages just as you did your original pages.

You can also use ASP to create your redirects by adding the ASP code to your original file’s header, similar to the PHP redirect. And again, save this as the original file and ftp it to your server.

It’s true that when you make changes to your website, especially a major change like an entire site redesign, you should expect some changes to your traffic and rankings. But if you plan ahead and map out your process, you can keep these changes to a minimum.

About the Author: Karen Scharf is an Indianapolis marketing consultant who works with small business owners and entrepreneurs. She offers several whitepapers, free reports and checklists, including her free Can-Spam checklist and free email pre-flight checklist to ensure your emails get delivered, get opened and get read. Download your copies at http://www.ModernImage.com.

A high-quality business website provides you with a way to capture the enormous amount of traffic that is on the Internet. It also makes your business more accessible to your customers.

It does this, by giving website users a way to contact you or find out valuable information about your products or services without having to get on the phone, and during non-business hours.

There are literally millions of people searching the Internet for various reasons on any given day. If you are not trying to capture some of those visitors, then you are losing out on many potential sales each month. Just as your store gives you a physical presence a high-quality website provides you with an online Internet presence.

Benefits of Having a Good Website

As a business owner, there are many benefits to having a quality website that is able to not only generate traffic but also increase sales for your company. The first benefit that a business website can provide you with is it enables you to have access to customers that you otherwise might not have contact with.

Without a website, you are only able to reach your potential market through traditional means, and not those potential customers that primarily use the internet for their purchase research.

By enlisting the help of an internet marketing service company, you can create a highly effective direct response website that enables you to reach out to Internet traffic.

By adding an opt-in form to a quality website, you can increase your earning potential each year by at least 20%. An opt-in form provides a means of capturing visitors’ contact information. This is very valuable as it will allow you to send current and potential customers information about promotions, important updates, and special sales events throughout the year.

The visitors on your list will be people that you know are already interested in the services that you are offering, and by sending out a sales message to them your rate of return will be much higher than with an untargeted ad in the newspaper.

One of the most important benefits that a business website provides is that it allows you to remain a step above your competition. If other related local businesses do not currently have websites, you are already reaching far more people than they are.

By creating a high-quality website that can generate massive traffic and drive sales, you are ensuring that your site will be listed before the competitions’ in the search engine rankings.

How to Develop a High Quality Business Website

Unless you are professional, the best way to develop a high-quality business website is to seek out an Internet marketing company or web designer that can create a customized plan for your business.

These companies have experience marketing to those online, and they can help your website by marketing it for targeted driven traffic, and ensuring that it gets ranked well within the search engine listings.

Off-line business owners can increase their revenue by creating a business website or revamping their old one. Without a high-quality site that is able to generate traffic and increase your sales, your online presence will do you no good. Enlist the help of a professional Internet marketing company to develop a website that will help your business thrive.

Wikipedia defines a landing page as:

The page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link. The page will usually display content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link, and that is optimized to feature specific keywords or phrases for indexing by search engines.

Wikipedia’s definition sums it up nicely but there is certainly more to a great landing page then relevant and keyword rich content. Here are 10 things that you should be looking at when optimizing a landing page:

- Relevant Content

A landing page’s content should be directly related to organic search results, PPC campaign, anchor text in inbound links and any other targeted inbound advertising, online and offline. If people don’t get what they expect, they will be more likely to leave.

- Multiple Landing Pages

A landing page shouldn’t necessarily be your homepage. In many instances a homepage is a good landing page. However, for more targeted traffíc and better results, you want a landing page to be focused on a specific offering and specific call for action. To accomplish this, a given website should have multiple landing pages. Create some deep link landing pages that will focus on a specific proposition and your conversion rate will be higher.

- Focus on Functionality

More and more visitors seem to judge the professionalism and credibility of a site by its design. To satisfy this, many website owners concentrate on the design aspect instead of focusing on its functionality. A well-designed landing page is essentially worthless if the prospect can’t accomplish anything. While I wouldn’t suggest skimping on the design, it shouldn’t be your priority. Focus on the exact steps you want your visitor to take and design a page with that in mind.

- Call To Action

You got visitors to your landing page, now direct them to take action. Make it clear and highly noticeable without overwhelming your audience. Whether it’s a sign-up form or a “buy now” button, make it the focus of your page.

- Send a Clear Message

Keep your landing page clean and clutter free so your visitors stay focused on your message. Emphasize the biggest reasons that they should carry out the applicable call to action with larger text, contrasting colors, images. Make it easier for them to scan the content by using lists and getting right to the point.

- Provide Incentive

Bribing your visitors with freebies and samples is a proven method of enticing them to sign up. Provide more than your competition but don’t sell yourself short either. Provide a list of reasons why your offering is better and what exactly the visitor can expect. Provide references and testimonials.

- Make Visitors Stay

Avoid sending your visitors to another page unless it is absolutely necessary. That includes any internal navigation as well as external banners. If you eliminate all distractions and limit navigation options, you stand a better chance of keeping your visitors around.

- Simple is Better

Make it easy for your visitors to complete the action you want them to. Less confusion and decision making for your visitor means better conversions rate for your landing page. Don’t provide multiple choices and throw in optional extras. Focus on the pitch the page was created for.

- Power of Freebies

Everyone likes free offers. They are hard to resist and can be a powerful conversion tool. Whether a call to action is free or something free is receíved as a result of carrying out a call to action, it certainly doesn’t hurt. If your competition charges for something and you provide it for free, you’ll win the customer. Remember, just because you make a free offer doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be quality.

- Testing

In a recent post “How to Turn Website Visitors into Buyers“, I’ve stressed how important testing is in finding out what your visitors like. Testing various text, call to action forms, layouts will give you a true idea what produces the best results as far as conversion.

Using a tool like Google’s Website Optimizer you can easily monitor the conversion rate, bounce rate, and tons of other useful metrics found in most modern day web analytics apps. Using these metrics you can easily figure out which version will be your optimal page, one that maximizes the results.

Creating a successful and effective landing page takes a lot of work but should be the focus for anyone involved with a website. Whether you are a website owner, web designer, web developer or a web marketing specialist you must be aware of the components that comprise a solid landing page. After all this can mean a website’s success or failure.

About The Author
Joanna Colek is the owner of Joanna Ciolek Web Design Studio, based in North Denver, Colorado. She offers affordable, custom and effective web design services to small business owners.

Before we actually talk about building a site you will require a few things :

•    A domain name – This the address of your web site with a www. prefix.
•    Web site building software – Many are free ( One I highly recommend is XsitePRO )
•    Ftp software – This software enables you to upload your web site to your hosting provider. This is sometimes built  into the web site building software.
•    Hosting – This is where your web site files are stored on the Internet.

Just bear those things in mind as we go along.

Actually building a web site is not that difficult depending on its complexity. The first thing we need to know is whether the site is for business or pleasure. If your site is for pleasure then there is no need to rush and you can enjoy the experience, however, there are other considerations should you want to build a business web site which we will go into later.

For the complete novice I would recommend visiting a site like “Godaddy”. From this site you can organize every thing you need. You can search for a domain name and register it. Once you have done this you will be offered hosting and site building facilities. This is like painting by numbers you really can not go wrong and you will have your site up an running in minutes.

Personally I haven’t taken this approach, I started at the deep end, however, I do use “Godaddy” to register my domain names.

Because I enjoy getting into the code of a web site I tend to build my sites from scratch usually using HTML or Php. These are just computer languages or code and there are many tutorials on the Internet on how to get started if you would like to build a web site in this way. The following are just a few, but probably the most popular.

• HTML Tutorials
• CSS Tutorials ( this styles your web pages and makes them look pretty )
• PHP Tutorials for Beginners

I also have my own hosting facilities, its not expensive and I can host as many web sites as I wish, mine or other peoples. You can get affordable hosting with Host Monster and host unlimited domains!

Building your own site can really be as easy or complicated as you want to make it. If you really have an interest in it you will find masses of free information on the Internet for beginners.

Getting Started:

A domain name is what you will need before you can upload your site to the Internet, this is what your site is known as on the web and how people will find your site. You could have a top level domain name or TLD, for example, www.myownwebsite.com or you could go for a sub-domain such as www.andrewswebsite.anyhosting.com. TLD’s are good because they are generally short and easy to remember. TLD’s can be quite inexpensive, even for a dot com. If you are watching the pennys then you can get a sub-domain free through many hosting company’s.

You will need some kind of site building software. Some are referred to as WYSIWYG ( Wisywig) this stands for “What you see is what you get”. This means that as you construct your site the software will display exactly how your site will appear as a live web site so construction is relatively easy. Basically you position and type your text and insert your images, when your happy upload to your host. As I mentioned before, XsitePRO is one I’ve had great success with.

You will need somewhere for your web site to live. For this you will need hosting. Once you have completed building your site you will need to upload the files to your host’s server.

If its a business site you require then the bottom line is that you want to make some money. You have to ask your self whether you can afford the time to build a web site when you could be drumming up trade it may be better to outsource it to a web designer. A web designer will make sure that your site looks professional as this is the impression you want to give your customers when visiting your site. Once you have your visitor you want to keep them interested and maybe they will buy something.

Don’t get me wrong the website wasn’t flash, but it was clean, easy to navigate and most of all, provided me with the information I was looking for. I phoned the next morning, made an appointment and even got to see a dentist that day!

After that experience, it really hit home … what a difference a professional looking website makes! I am sure most of the dentists in my area are great at what they do, but none of their websites portrayed that. As a result they lost a customer who will spend hundreds, possibly even thousands of dollars on their services.

So if you have a website and are hoping it will bring you lots of visitors who will turn into paying customers, it is EXTREMELY, let me say that again EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that your website:

1. Is Visitor Friendly

What this means is that your customers must be able to find what they are looking for easily and quickly. And that means a great navigational system. Most websites either display their navigation bar on the left or at the top. And since most people are used to this type of navigation, it’s best to stick with it. It also helps to include your navigation bar at the bottom of each page to save your visitors from having to scroll back to the top.

2. Focuses on your customer’s needs

Rather than trying to “sell your business”, let your prospects know how your product/service is going to benefit them. Emphasize the benefits and solve problems. Make this the focus of everything you write on every page of your site. Don’t try to sell visitors your products or service, help them.

3. There are no spelling mistakes

Ensure there are no spelling or grammatical errors. Check that all links are working and graphics display correctly.

4. Proves credibility

Include testimonials from your current customers to show your potential clients that you are trustworthy, reliable and that you provide great service and/or products. Make sure the testimonials are real and if possible provide contact details of the person who supplied you with the testimonial. If you don’t have any right now, get them! Simply email your customers and ask for their feedback on your business and service. Most happy customers will gladly provide this.

You could also include before and after photos. Show the problem picture and beside it show the picture of resolution, with an explanation of your product’s benefits.

5. Has Contact details

Place contact details in as many places as possible. Make it easy for your customers to contact you. Create a special “Contact Us” page, include your details in “About Us” page and also at the bottom of each page. Information to include: business name, physical address, mailing address, telephone, fax, email, emergency number, website address and most importantly, don’t forget to include your business hours.

6. Offers a Monëy Back Guarantëe

The longer the guarantee, the more effective it will be. It could be 30 days, 60 days, 1 year or lifetime. Remember you are trying to take the risk out of doing business with you.

7. Provides information that people are looking for

If you don’t provide it, someone else will. Content is still the king. You should include as much information as possible – not only detailed descriptions and prices of your products and services, but also free resources, articles, reports, ebooks relating to your industry, service and products. You can easily source free information on the internet. This will ensure that customers will keep coming back to your website, even if it is just to get information. The more they visit, the more you will stick in their mind as an expert and the next time they are ready to order your products/services, you will be their first choice.

If your website features any of the following, your website definitely needs an EXTREME MAKEOVER or at least a face lift.

1. Flash intros, revolving globes, bevelled line separators, animated mail boxes.

2. Loads of pop up or pop under boxes.

3. Autoplay music. Allow your customer to play music only if they choose.

4. Hit counters of the free variety, which say “you are the 27th visitor”.

5. Date and time stamps, unless your website is updated daily or weekly.

6. Busy backgrounds.

Ask yourself – does my website portray the professional image I want my customers to see? Have I provided all the information that my customers may want or need to know? If you answered no to either of these, call your website designer today or you could lose thousands of dollars as your customers head to your competitor’s door.

About The Author
Ivana Katz of Websites 4 Small Business makes it easy for you to get your business on the internet. If you’re looking for a professional and affordable website designer, visit Websites 4 Small Business and download a website plan for free

Use a custom 404 page, so that if a user incorrectly types a webpage URL, they will still retain navigational options within your site and be provided alternative solutions. When a domain is correctly entered, but a specific webpage’s URL is entered incorrectly, it is possible to display your custom error page to the visitor. By providing users with a navigational bar and further assistance, rather than leaving them with a generic “page not found” error screen, you can often keep prospective customers on your site by providing them with navigation alternatives.

2. UrlTrends

UrlTrends is a service that shows historical trends, so that webmasters can see how their SEO efforts are affecting websites in the search engines. UrlTrends should be used in conjunction with web-logging software.

UrlTrends – www.urltrends.com

3. Favicon

Polish your website by adding a Favorite Icon. When a “favicon” is available on your site, and the site URL is entered in the user’s web browser URL box, the favicon will be displayed beside the URL. This gives the website a more professional and polished look.

Favicon HTMLKit – www.htmlkit.com

4. Color Matching

Match the primary web colors with those used in your logo. Simply choose a preferred color using the ColorBlender service below, and a 6-color matching palette and blend will be automatically calculated for you.

ColorBlender – www.colorblender.com

5. Online WYSIWYG Editing

Online webpage editing allows for collaboration, so that different users can log in and edit web pages.

Edit – www.edit.com

6. RSS Feeds

No longer considered to be just a nice addition, RSS feeds are now a “must have” for popular websites! Create RSS feeds for newsletters, press releases, educational articles, product tutorials, new product promotions, or just about any other sort of web content. FeedForAll – www.feedforall.com

7. MaxEmail

MaxEmail’s very affordable Internet fax and voicemail service allows a fax message to be delivered to an email address as a PDF formatted attachment. This allows fax messages to follow you regardless of your location. And, it also eliminates the need for a costly extra telephone line and a dedicated fax machine.

MaxEmail – maxemail.com

8. Royalty-Free Images

Locate stock photos to incorporate into your web design. Use royalty-free stock photography to add professional, high-quality images to your website.

Photo Wizard – www.photo-wizard.net

9. Submit Corner Web Assessment Tools

These web assessment tools help you use search engines to effectively monitor who links to your website, how many links, and who your competitors are. The tools include search indexing, link tracking, and competitor identification.

Submit Corner – www.SubmitCorner.com

10. Ranks.nl

This service assesses keyword density and prominence of a domain. The tool parses keywords and assesses the number of times a keyword occurs, and then discerns the density of the keywords.

Ranks.nl – ranks.nl/tools/spider.html

11. Webmaster Toolkit

The Webmaster Toolkit is a collection of webmaster tools developed to help webmasters with daily webmaster chores. The suite of free tools and resources included continues to grow, and contains something useful for the beginner and the advanced webmaster alike.

Webmaster Toolkit – www.webmaster-toolkit.com

12. HTML Web Templates

Make it clean and professional. Use easy-to-edit HTML web templates for web design.

Web Design – www.webmaster-templates.net or www.webdesign-elements.com

13. TrafficZap

This website includes script, page rank checker, link popularity checker, and more.

TrafficZap – www.trafficzap.com

14. Compete.com

Web Analytics – Stay on top of rivals with site metrics and audience profiles for the top 1,000,000 web domains. Identify rival search marketing strategies to take your SEM and SEO efforts to the next level.

SiteAnalytics – siteanalytics.compete.com

15. Thumbshots

Easily add thumbshot images to your webpages. Integrate website thumbnails by simply copying and pasting HTML code. Additional software is not needed.

Thumbshots – www.thumbshots.org

Use top-notch tools to make web maintenance and management a little easier.

About The Author
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for RecordForAll audio recording and editing software.

]]> http://websiteperks.com/must-have-tools-for-webmasters%e2%80%8f/feed/ 2 http://websiteperks.com/search-engine-optimization-may-not-be-as-hard-as-you-think/ http://websiteperks.com/search-engine-optimization-may-not-be-as-hard-as-you-think/#comments Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:55:08 +0000 John Bento http://WebsitePerks.com/?p=23 Being found on page one of the major search engines is one of the number one marketing techniques you can use.

It’s all about bringing targeted traffic and visitors to your site for your niche. Not only that but it is often one of the least costly kinds of advertising even if you hire an expert to do it for you.

For example a Toronto search engine optimization company may charge a few hundred dollars a month for their services. In comparison you would easily spend upwards of a thousand dollars trying to get similar results from paper ads. And optimizing your site can give it much a broader exposure.

You don’t always need to hire an expert because you can do a number of things yourself if you are willing to put in the effort.

Before you even begin to optimize your site you need to think about which keywords you wish to rank for.

Think like a customer to discover keywords phrases they might use to find a similar product or service. The more you can think of the better. These may then be plugged into on-line tools like Google’s keyword research tool or on sites such as Wordtracker or Wordze.

These sites can give you an estimate on how often these terms are searched for. If you find some terms that have a great number of monthly searches then it is a good indication that being on page one for that phrase could equal a large number of site visitors.

Remember that frequently the keyword phrases with the most amount of searches are often the most competitive also. That does not mean that you can never rank for them, only that it may take quite a lot of time.

A good strategy is to select a mix of difficult and easy to optimize terms. This will help get you a short term and long term focus.

The content contained on the pages of your site should be your next focus.

Try to use your chosen keywords into the various web pages. Despite the fact that one of the reasons for using your keywords in your site is for the search engines don’t forget that actual visitors will be viewing it.

The greater the number of pages you can add to your site the better. Every time you add new content you are attracting the search engines to frequently return and reindex your web site. This can increase the chances of getting you to page one for many more terms than the ones you are specifically focusing on.

Finally comes what is definitely the most critcal part. Every time another site points to your web site you are one step closer to being on page one. That does not mean getting just any kind of link from any site. They need to be from sites that are of the same theme to yours.

For example if your site is real estate oriented site then you will need to have a real estate search engine optimization strategy. This may include getting links from various real estate agent sites, blogs, or anything related to that topic. You should be more concerned with quality, not just quantity.

One of the premier ways to accomplish this is with article marketing. You create content in the form of articles. These can then be submitted to various directories for inclusion like Article Alley. Your site will get a link pointing back to it in return for handing out free content. This is step you should be doing a minimum of once a week.

You will slowly begin to see your site’s traffic and ranking soar. The greater the time period you optimize your site for the better your results will be. It could take some time and work however it is well worth it.

About the Author: Stefan Hyross publishes information for the Toronto search engine optimization company WebClimb. Specialists in real estate search engine optimization techniques. Visit the site for more information, news and tips.

There are five crucial components of web design that you must focus on in order to make a site valuable to its visitors and successful for you.

• SEO -
Getting free traffic to your site.

• Usability -
Ease of navigating around the site and finding desired information quickly.

• Aesthetics -
Visual appeal.

• Content -
Valid, up-to-date, relevant information.

• Graphics -
Eye candy that relays relevant visual information to the visitor.

SEO

Before you ever lay down a byte of HTML code for a site, you have to know and understand at least the basics of SEO and how it fits into the design. SEO is the art of designing a site in a fashion that gives the site an advantage for obtaining free and abundant traffic.

The number one aspect of SEO is selecting keywords relevant to your site. The keywords you select should be based on high usage, low competition and relevancy to your topic. Once you select keywords you can then begin the development of your site. Keep in mind keywords are a critical aspect of the design. The keywords you choose will be applied within the design in strategic fashion to benefit the flow of traffic to your site. To understand more on how to implement SEO you should read and learn more about this important subject. If you don’t, your website success will be difficult to achieve.

Usability

Your website must be easy to navigate and designed in a way that makes it easy to find information. Visitors will not stay long if it takes more than one or two clicks to get the information they want or if it takes brain power to figure out how to get the information they want. One of the goals of your site design is to keep usability easy, and simple. To do this, apply the following three fundamentals of usability.

• Provide a site search tool.

A visitor in a hurry can quickly find the info they desire then move on to the action they desire.

• Provide simple, intuitive and consistent site navigation.

This provides visitors the tool they need to leisurely explore their way through your site.

• Provide logical and simple to follow content.

The message of a site should start off in a simple and basic fashion with well defined links pointing the way to more detailed information or explanation as needed.

In the cases above, the goal is to make it easy for your visitor to find the information they want without frustration or difficulty. Doing this well will have a positive effect on increasing the return of your visitors.

Aesthetics

A website has to look clean, uncomplicated and strike a balance in layout that is pleasant to the visitor. Pleasing aesthetics come about when the colors of a site complement each other, the graphics blend and lend continuation of the theme and the layout brings unity and openness to the page.

Often overlooked by novice designers is the color palette of the site. While you can select color in a willy-nilly fashion and still provide a visually appealing site, a better idea for color selection should be based on an understanding of the color wheel and proven color strategies.

Many web designers often view a web page as an opportunity to blast a visitor with lots of information in hopes this will convince the visitor to take action. Usually this results in a quick exit due to the overwhelming visual effect and complicated look. A better approach is to provide less content and open space (referred to as white space) to allow visitors eyes to scan and explore with ease.

Content

An important feature of any website is the quality of the text content. Visitors come to a site expecting to find answers to their questions, solutions to their problems or for entertainment value. The content offered at your site must be well-written and without grammatical or spelling errors. It also has to be relevant to the theme of your site, with valid, up-to- date information for your visitors. Content is King!

Graphics

You can have a functional and usable website without graphic elements. However, if there are similar sites to yours that employ graphics, guess which site will get the most traffic. The necessary companions to any well-designed site are the images and illustrations that grace its pages. The images can’t be any willy-nilly graphic that you might think is cool. Graphic imagery has to support your branding, and communicate the message you are trying to convey. Before you incorporate graphic elements into your site, take some time to look around the web. Notice what looks good and how elements are laid out. These same layouts techniques can be used as models for your site.

The Internet is a highly competitive business arena. To be successful with a commercial website, you have to keep these five crucial web design elements in mind. Contrary to what many will tell you, it is rarely possible to have commercial success without the benefit of a professional website. This is not to say that you must hire a professional, however you must implement professional design elements to improve your chances for success.

About The Author
Woody Longacre, Internet Web Design. We invite you to visit the Web Hosting Goods Store for Web Design Services, Web Hosting, and Domain Registration.