Wednesday, July 12, 2006

 

Affiliate & Internet Marketing Website Design Tips

Treat Every Page Like It's Your Homepage!

This is something you may not have thought about. The search engine "see's" your online business as web pages, not a single web site. Remember people will be entering your site on web pages other than your homepage. Your homepage may not rank well for a certain term, but one of the pages in your website may rank #1, so it is important to treat every page like it's your homepage!

With that in mind it is important to let the potential customer know what else your site has to offer. This article you are reading right now for example includes all same linking information (top, sides, bottom) as RCLWebMarketing.com homepage. You can think of articles as doorway pages if you like

Easy Navigation Tip

You should include navigation at the top, bottom and/or sides of your web pages. This navigation should include buttons or links that allow visitors to "jump" around your site. This will give them the sense that your information just goes on forever (a lot of content) and it will make them feel comfortable about buying a product/service from your web site.

Just Say No to Keyword Stuffing, or Suffer!

Ahh, the fine art of keyword stuffing. What is keyword stuffing? Just what it sounds like! Keyword stuffing is a process in which you list hundreds (yes I've seen a webpage that had 600 keywords!) listed in their "keywords" META tags. You may also see multiple keywords being "stuffed" in the image ALT tags.

In the past a popular thing to do was to create about 100 or more keywords and make the font color the same color as the background, essentially creating invisible keywords!

This is a big no-no and a sure way to get yourself penalized by the major search engines. Remember these search engine companies have panels of highly trained masters working on their algorithms - don't try to fool them, you won't win.

Research Your Competition!

Research, Spy, same difference! To get started just head over to your favorite search engine and search for some of the Keyword Phrases or Keywords that your planned site will focus on. Take not of where they have placed their links, what type of information they are providing and look for a "testimonials" section so that you can see what their customers think.

You will want to be concentrating on the top 15 or 20 websites that are indexed in the search engine of choice. While you're there don't hesitate to take a look at their HTML source code. To do this click on “View” and then on “Source” located on most internet browsers' upper toolbar. You should take note of the keywords and keyword phrases their site is optimized for.


Article source : http://www.ezinearticles.com/?Affiliate-andamp;-Internet-Marketing-Website-Design-Tips&id=118591

Monday, July 10, 2006

 

How relevant is your Ecommerce Web Site Design?

Ecommerce web site design can spell either success or doom for any business. In this internet age it is imperative to have an online site for advertising, selling or buying a product or service. There are numerous ecommerce websites doing business on the World Wide Web. Your website’s ecommerce design must be relevant to all the different elements needed for designing a good website.

If you want to add a personal touch to your site, you can design your own site. However you can also get professional help from the numerous website designing companies to get your online business site designed. Select a good web design company which has high credibility to design your ecommerce web site.

The purpose of any ecommerce site is to generate business for a product or to promote a service. Ecommerce web site designing is not an easy task and is not done overnight. There are some basic simple rules which you need to follow to make a good website. First of all ensure that your website is compatible to different types of browser and operating systems.

The purpose of an ecommerce site is to generate business leads, and if online surfers using different browsers and operating systems cannot even view your site properly, you will lose out on a significant number of prospective clients. Think about this aspect before you actually go about designing a website.

It is said that pictures have the ability to communicate messages which sometimes even words fail to say. Pictures have a very strong ability to portray strong emotions. Silence they say is sometimes stronger than words. Put up relevant pictures on your site to put forward an idea. Take care that you do not put up any irrelevant and outdated pictures on your website.

Color combination of a website is very important. Choose the color to be used in your ecommerce web site design only after a very careful consideration. Colors in an ecommerce site must not be garish and at the same time must not be too dull, so that it does not even invoke any response from visitors to your site. Choose a color pattern which is appealing to the eye, but at the same time refrain from going over the top.

The navigability and the functionality of ecommerce web site design are of big importance. Your site may be the best visually looking site ever made, but if it does not have proper functionality and navigability, no one is even going to give your site a second glance. No visitor is going to wait and search for information in your site if it is not properly navigable and functional.

Take care of the contents in your ecommerce web site design. Good and relevant content is a great means of bringing visitors to your site. Check out for yourself and see if the content in your site is relevant of not. Also see if all the links are properly placed or not and whether visitors are immediately transferred to the page that has the relevant information for their query.

Make your best effort in satisfying the visitor to your site. Consider yourself as a visitor to a site and think what all things you would want to see in a site. Users are the king in determining if a website will work or not. Take care of the user and try to satisfy his or her needs in your ecommerce web site design.

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/How-relevant-is-your-Ecommerce-Web-Site-Design-/56214

Austen Eddie holds a masters degree in computer science. He is working for Blue Nirvana. For Web designing, search engine promotion and marketing, E-Commerce website design visit www.bluenirvana.com

Sunday, July 09, 2006

 

Major Web Design Tips to Protect You

So you decided you need a website and you need to hire someone to make it. Well lookout! You need to be very careful. To stay with a reasonable budget and good service, please follow the following 6 steps to protect yourself.

1} Customer Service: This is the most important step. Make sure you can always talk to a real person. If you have to keep using a web support form and phone messages. Then move on. Web design needs real people to create it, and if you cannot talk anytime you want, then your doing business with the wrong company.

2} Domain Registration: Make sure the company you pick can buy and maintain your domain. Make sure they know how to set it up correctly for your new website and they make sure it gets renewed every year.

3} Web Hosting: Every website needs to be hosted. Does your design company have their own servers? Many do not. Its always nice to only call or contact one company to handle your web design needs and your hosting and Email needs.

4} Web Design: Websites do not need to cost you a second mortgage. Most of the time, a simple site is all you need. But many designers build sites as they see it. They normally do not think about how the site needs to perform for the search engines and clients with slow internet connections. A good designer will use basic technology and will be aware of the search engine needs.

5} Web Maintenance and Updates: This can be a killer. Make sure your design company includes updates and changes in their package, or you can be nickeled and dimed to death at 40 to 80 dollars an hour. Look out for gimmicks and games. Find a company that truly wants to be your full website provider, including changes.

6} Web Marketing: This is just as important as customer service. You can pay as much as you like for a website, but it is useless without traffic. Make sure your design company builds a good marketable website for you and provide you the services you need to get your site submitted to the search engines. They may also have programs to help with web pay advertising.

You need to ask every web design company about the 6 items above and how much they cost. A truly good web design company will have all 6 items to their package. If not, you will be facing a web design nightmare.

Article source : http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/Need-A-Website-Built--6-Major-Web-Design-Tips-to-Protect-You/27591

Friday, July 07, 2006

 

Web Site Optimization, don't get lured into spending money on software and services You don't Need

What is search engine optimization? It is constructing a web site that will attain a high ranking in the major search engines. This is done by using a combination of techniques which will appeal to the algorithms used by the search engines to rank web sites and web pages. The reason people seek out companies that offer this service or software products that claim to do the same, is because finding the formula that delivers high ranking in the search engines is often very difficult and time consuming. This is because the search engines are always changing and updating their formulas.

What search engines want and what marketers and search engine optimization services want are often very different things. The search engines want pages that deliver what the user is searching for and not necessarily a marketing message. They therefore try to set up formulas called algorithms that prevent marketers from fooling the engines into thinking that a web site or web page is delivering what the end user is searching for; when in reality that web page may just be filled with advertisements and not information.

People use the internet to search for information and to do research. They are not looking for advertising messages. But on the other hand marketers and search engines optimization services want to get their product or service out there and want to expose it to as many people as possible, whether they are looking for it or not. This being the case the search engines are constantly trying to keep the information they are providing free of advertising, unless that is what their user seeks.

How to get your web site ranked high becomes an on going task. If you are not designing your own web site then you may well be looking for a company or a software product that can help you out. But beware, some companies and or products may try to use methods which are against the search engine rules, which could result in getting your web site banned.

What are the search engines looking for in order to give a web site or web page a high ranking? they look for what their users look for, good information. A web site that is providing good information about the subject that the person using the search engine is seeking. This is referred to as content. If this is what your web site is providing then you stand a good chance of gaining a good rank.

However their are more elements to page rank than good content. You also need to be able to configure your web pages in a way that the search engines can relate to. This entails the actual structure of the web site or page. The structure of every web site and or page has a number of elements that relate to the computer language that it is written in known as HTML. This is the language that allows web pages to be viewed in browsers and search engines to find them . When a web page is being built it has something called keywords that are used as a short hand way of describing it's content and subject. The search engine spiders( the computer programs that go out to the world wide web and look for web pages) use these keywords as a way of locating what the end user (the person searching) is looking for.

Keywords and there placement in the web page are important in the way the spider interprets what your web page is all about. Marketers and search engine optimization services have tried various methods to fool the spiders by creating what are called landing pages or doorway pages. These web pages have nothing really to do with the web site. They are simply meaningless pages loaded with keywords and computer generated text. Once a visitor arrives on this page they are then redirected to the real web site, which if often not what they were looking for. Search engines will detect these types of pages, perhaps not immediately, but they will eventually and may decide to penalize your web site for using them.

Another method of achieving a high page rank in the search engines is to develop links that come into your web site from other web sites. Search engines look at these links from other web sites, and if they come from good quality web sites they can increase your page ranking. Once again marketers in an effort to circumvent this sometimes use a quick fix. They create what are called link farms.

As the name implies, these are a network of sites where links are created for the sole purpose of increasing page rank. The links all link back to the web site the marketers are promoting. The search engines have ways of evaluating links so a strategy like this will not last long and may be in violation of the search engine rules, in which case your site could be suspended or banned.

Still other methods include cold calling and email spamming. Cold calling is of course a mass marketing method that has been used for years. Armed with very little knowledge about the person they are calling the marketers/ search engine optimization companies attempt to convince a web site owner that they can improve their web site's ranking and attract traffic to their web site, for a price of course. Sending unsolicited email or spam is another mass marketing method. I'm sure everyone has at least five or ten of those a day, if not more offering everything from Viagra to hair growth products.

Search engine optimization companies that are using these kind of methods are not the kind of company you want to be doing business with. They are concentrating on methods that may get temporary results but overlook the bigger picture. If you work at delivering what the search engines want ,you will not have to resort to these kinds of methods.

Two other methods that are sometimes employed by search engine optimization companies are mirror sites or duplicate content web sites. Using multiple domains with the same or duplicate content. Different keywords are placed in the site to make it appear that they are not exactly the same but the sites basically have the same information.

Search engine optimization company hosted web sites are also presented as a method of boosting page rank. The search engine optimization company or service proposes to create a new web site for you or take over hosting yours. Never let your web site be taken out of you immediate control. Once you give up control the search engine optimization company will be able to dictate terms and fees and you will be helpless. If your payments are not forth coming they can shut down your web site and or direct away from your site. The lesson here is that good content, keywords and links are important elements in promoting your web site, if they are used properly and do not violate the search engine rules. You as a web site owner should know about these things. Why? because if you choose to use a search engine optimization company to help you promote your web site or decide to buy software that claims to provide search engine optimization for your web site you need to beware of the potential problems and pit falls. If you are informed you will make good decisions and save money.

So ask questions of any company you are thinking of hiring and if you are considering software, check out the techniques and methods they are using and how often they update their program. The search engine world is in constant motion, your search engine optimization company or software must keep current on every change they make or you will be out of date and wasting money very quickly.

Can you optimize your web site for the search engines by yourself? Yes. A good article that is available free and outlines the steps and resources for do it yourself optimization is Maximizing Your Keyword Placement, by A.P. Taylor. It can be found at think avenue.com.

Remember you as the web site owner always need to know the basics of how your web site works on the world wide web. You don't need to be a complete technical expert on every facet of the web site but you should understand all the basics. If you do you will not fall prey to all the tempting advertising messages that search engine optimization services offer.

Copyright webdesignpartners,inc. 2006

About the Author
Skye Conroy works for www.websitedesignpartners.com, the site offers help and free information and resources for small businesses wishing to market themselves on the internet. Everything from e-commerce to business plans.

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

 

Automate your web pages content with RSS feeds

One of the key ingredients to keeping your website listed high with the search engines today is fresh content.

The internet is ever growing, and ever changing. The websites of yesterday that are static only HTML pages will start to fade away as more dynamic websites take their place.

What is the difference between static HTML web sites, and dynamic web sites?

Static HTML web pages will always look the same, if you hit the refresh button nothing changes on the page.

A dynamic web page will automatically change every time you hit the refresh button, or they can change their content based on what your user does, like clicking on some text or an image.

Adding Javascript to your site to make it look like the pages are ever changing will work for your human visitors, but not for the search engines. Currently all the major search engines can not read Javascript. They see the Java code but are unable to read any of the text that the Javascript generates.

There are a few ways that you can automate the process of adding search engine friendly content to your web pages.

The quickest and easiest way to add pertinent content to any web page is to use RSS Feeds.

What is an RSS Feed?

RSS is an acronym for "Really Simple Syndication".

RSS feeds come in many different forms.

News feeds that give you the latest breaking news and popular headlines on any topic directly related to your webpage.

Articles can also come in the form of RSS feeds. Thousands of industry experts are writing articles today related to just about any topic imaginable, and you can use these free of charge on all your web pages, and have them updated daily for you with out you ever having to do a thing.

Blog posts are another form of RSS feeds that you can also work with. There is literally a million blogs online today, and they all put out their own unique RSS feed. When ever someone posts to their blog the RSS feed page is created. While you may not want other peoples blog content on your web pages, if you have your own blog you can easily have your posts show up on your pages.

Press release companies are also sending out RSS feeds of all the press releases submitted through their system.

Almost all RSS publishers want other websites to syndicate (republish) their feed content. That's what RSS was invented for.

There are a few programs out today that will help you master the power of RSS feeds, and at the same time automate the whole process for you.

These are called RSS to HTML converters, they take an RSS feed and convert it into HTML for you. All the ones that I have read about, and used are PHP based programs that install on your web server.

I have found the Installation of these programs to be very easy, and take only a couple of minutes. Upload the files to your server, enter in your user name, and password, your done.

Once installed you have a login page that walks you through the whole process. Asking you what feeds you want to work with, how much of the feed do you want displayed on your page, title, author, date, amount of text, you can even change the back ground colors or border around the feeds, even tell it how often you want the feeds updated, hourly, or daily. There are many more options that are available to you when working with these programs most of them are nothing more then selecting a check box. No programing skills needed.

In closing I want to restate that search engines love fresh content. Using RSS feeds on your website is a great way to keep new content on them automatically forever.

Article Author:keith derr
Web Conferencing services

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

 

E-commerce: The Wave of the Future

E-commerce Defined

E-commerce is similar to other forms of commerce except that it involves the buying and selling of goods over the Internet. E-commerce sites range from a simple web page highlighting a single item to dynamic fully developed on-line catalogs featuring thousands of products. The common theme and benefit in e-commerce sites is instant purchase, instant payment (if desired) and instant gratification for the customer.

Over the years, the e-commerce web has blossomed into a multi-billion dollar industry yearly, with significant growth projected over the next 5 years. A defining characteristic is that all ecommerce web sites accept a type of online payment, whether through a third party or directly with a merchant account..

E-commerce: The Wave of the Future

The internet is changing world view of shoppers. Instant gratification is a reality Utilizing e-commerce allows customers the ability to quickly take delivery of the goods they require and desire. In addition, the Internet is perhaps the best sales tool ever invented as it allows customers to browse endlessly in privacy. They can return and order again and again without ever leaving their home.

Most experts agree that it is only a matter of time before all sales-oriented companies will have some sort of e-commerce presence in order to remain competitive and the development of software and tools to improve the productivity of e-commerce sites remains strong. As more and better technology is developed, e-commerce will greatly expand.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jon_Stout

Thursday, June 22, 2006

 

Web design is about having the perfect balance!

Designing a site entails the correct fusion of the different elements of web designing. It requires correct strategy and planning taking into account all the minute details which are important. Visualize properly what information, pictures, graphics, images and the number of pages you want for your website.

Getting a pro to website design your website is a good option. You can be assured that you will not have to worry about small details which you may skip out sometimes. Leave all the worries to your designer and give him in a free hand in designing the site. Nonetheless keep a track of the work done, so that instant changes can be made for anything you do not disapprove of.

Amalgamation of many components leads to the making of a good website. It all depends on how a designer uses the resources at his disposal to create a good web site. Faultless technology and an efficient strategy is that which will give you a good web site.

For web designing E-Commerce NYC, search engine promotion and marketing, internet marketing tips visit http://www.bluenirvana.com/

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