Website Design & Marketing

Many new web designers wonder what makes a great website. It is natural to want to know what the top websites have in common so you can replicate that on your own site. You want your site to be a success and there is not a better way to do that then to follow the lead of top sites. This is actually a very good plan to have. Creating a website is a tough job, but making is a success is even more difficult. So, follow the lead of the top sites to make sure you create a great website.

Domain Name

Every top website has a memorable domain name. When choosing a domain name you have to be very careful. It should look good when typed out, it should be easy to type and it should relate to your overall website theme. You do not want to make your URL confusing or getting people to your site and getting them to return will be difficult. It is hard to make a website a success when people can’t remember the URL.

Strong Hosting

Have you ever visited a website that is constantly down? If you have then you know just how annoying that can be. Web hosting is one thing you simply cannot try to save money. You need a very stable host. You should verify the down times a host gives you to be sure they are accurate. You want a host who can keep your site up 99% of the time. The last thing you want is for people to be getting error pages when they try to visit your site.

SEO

SEO or search engine optimization is like the heart of your website. It keeps visitors coming to your site and keeps your site alive. If your website is not optimized for the search engines then you will slowly fade into oblivion. Nobody will visit and your site will die away like so many before it. SEO involves using tags, descriptions, keywords and other things to boost the search engine ranking of your website. You must have good SEO to have a good website.

Provide Value

Your website must provide value to the users. So far, you have focused on the technical aspects of your website, but when it comes to visitors, they don’t really consider all that technical stuff. They want a good reason to visit your site. If you don’t offer them something helpful or compelling once they get to your site then nothing else matters because they won’t be coming back. You have to offer your visitors something, whether it is information, products or freebies, that will peak their interest and make them want to stay on your site and visit again.

The top websites can offer you a lot of great tips on what to do to make a great website. You should think about the websites you visit and why you visit them. Think about what you like and what you don’t like. All this will help you to see what you should do with your website to make it a success.

Finding free hosting for your website is as easy as finding free email to use. There are plenty of free website services that lets you be in control of what you want to build.

Most of them give enough space and bandwidth to fit in a small but proper website. It is up to you on how to design your website and whether you want to make it a personal page or an affiliate page.

You should check with your ISP if your subscription service does include web hosting with them. Usually it will come bundled with a few email addresses and a small web space. Try to find out more specifics about the web hosting and see if they charge extra for it.

You can find a lot of free web hosting when you do a Google search for it. They are very newbie friendly where there are step by step guide to get you started. They even have free templates for you to pick from.

Alternatively, you can try to use Web 2.0 sites like using a WordPress.com blog as your website. Blogs are easier to use and maintain since you don’t really need to know any HTML codes to start one.

All you have to do is sign up for a free account, fill in some information about your blog, choose a free template to use and you’re ready to go. A lot of people are now using blogs as their websites. There are even some corporate websites that is actually running on blogging platforms like WordPress.

Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Squidoo can also be used to create pages that act as your own personal webpage.

Well…after about a year doing PPC, (Pay Per Click) and 7 months with a PPC club l feel that l should make an honest post on whether or not it really works, or still works?

For the sake of classification l will use 3 terms, which follows.

• The 3% of people that have a natural knack for PPC and can make substantial amounts, while the majority scratch their heads trying to make anything.

• The percent that gets lucky and finds something quickly.

• And the percent, “that is the majority” that sees these success posts on the forums and begin to wonder what is wrong with them and start thinking that after 6 months or more have passed that maybe they are cursed, etc because other people seem to be getting somewhere with this?

But it is only a small percentage of people that are posting that gives you an unnatural expectation.

I could rattle on about this, but you probably get the idea.

If PPC worked for everyone then PPC clubs forums for example would have most of its members saying that they are making money from it; They usually have a very small percentage of their overall members putting up a positive post.

So…in my honest opinion is it worth joining a PPC club or doing it on your own, well yes and no?

• If you are hard up financially, and like to gamble, then yes, (but l wouldn’t recommend it).

• If you are very lucky in financial things then the answer would probably be yes again.

• And if you have $1000 to $2000 sitting somewhere and want to have a fair to good chance of making $100 or more a day then l would recommend it, (of course you need to seek the opinion of an unbiased PPC expert for further info, this is just my best recommendation on my past results).

But only of you are nuts about PPC, there are far cheaper ways of making a living online, (but l will get to that later).

Just to give you a rundown on a typical PPC club, (that l was involved with).

To make a long story short l ran through about 10 campaigns over several months and found virtually nothing that was viable.

The first 3 where testing my 3 ebooks that l had wrote with pricing, before l tried affiliated products, but with the exception of maybe two, no success, (one that produced some results was in a diminishing market, not the type of project you want to put serious resources into).

The second one was something that someone on their forums said converted well and after several attempts and hundreds of dollars, l started to realize that l would need $1000 or more to really bring it, (hopefully) up to $100 dollars a day?

But as stated before there are better, cheaper ways.

They, (the club l was involved with) did have some excellent videos and training, but it also had some gurus that are running their own training courses. Nothing wrong with that, l hear you say, but unfortunately some of their ideas don’t seem to work that well.

They did have some gold nuggets here and there, but if you are joining one of these clubs to immediately get the million dollar gold nugget, forget it.

Their training methods used to work well, but now unless you have serious money it is getting too expensive with straight PPC. Obviously if you applied their techniques to Facebook, then once you have gotten past their rules you would have a better chance than normal and mobile phone advertising when it matures a bit more.

Facebook will usually give you “internet marketing” keywords for about $1, instead of $5-$15 for Google Adwords, big difference, but still expensive.

So…unless you go into these areas with PPC then without serious capital it is best to consider other options.

I am presently working on lists after about a year with PPC.

Maybe building a list is just another dodgy thing that won’t work, but l have had a few subscribers so far and expect to get substantially more soon.

So…it very well could be something viable and best of all at least so far it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to do.

Nice for a change.

Building a list has many similarities with building your sites, give people plenty of free stuff and they will buy more often than usual.

To wrap up this article, carefully consider your site niche, my game site hasn’t gotten me any new subscribers yet, even after giving away 15 ebooks, (2 l wrote) and l haven’t made a recent sale, even though l have 24 ebooks, etc and ran a survey to see which ones people would buy the most)?

When l make my site 3 times bigger then it could turn the corner…

but…

I am also running an internet marketing squeeze page and have posted a link onto several forums with 6 subscribers so far.

Big difference.

Obviously PPC with internet marketing would cost a couple of dollars per click, but creating a name list is different and cheaper.

So to wrap up, for heaps of great tips and tricks to use with online marketing l would give PPC clubs in general the thumbs up, but for straight PPC with AdWords or MSN, etc unless you are lucky or have a few thousand on standby, l would keep building your site if you think that it has commercial potential or work on creating a list on the side to make sure that if your site takes a long time to mature, you have a backup source of income to fall back on!

A better way to check how many websites and what kind of site you are linking back to your site you must learn how to check web backlinks. It can help you develop linking campaigns, and increase page ranking of your site. Checking website backlinks is a simple process and there are many ways that you can do it. One of the easiest ways is by using the Google search engine.

You can check web backlinks by following these steps:

• Log on to the home page of Google.
• In the address bar type the word “link” and then a colon.
• Hit enter. Google will show website backlinks that have linked back to yours. You can view this just like the way you do if you search for something. In order for you to view link will be listed.
• To check web backlinks if you are into SEO, you can simply download the Mozilla free SEO tools by checking their add-on page and type SEO in the search bar. Download the site and bring up the website backlinks in your browser. It has tools that you can use in linking information.

Aside from the above steps mentioned there are still lots of ways that you can do to check web backlinks.

Website link building means diverting meaningful traffic to our site then this website link building services may come very handy. Website link building is another SEO service being offered by several agencies. It is very cheap and can have longer effect on your site. Using online services to help you with your website link building job is a good idea.

If you have an effective website link building it will help you:

• Increase your traffic significantly
• You can have great saving on high cost advertising money
• Enhance your website visibility in the search engines
• You will get additional resource to your site

Finding the right service will help you a lot on monitoring the website backlinks that you need to keep your online business succeed. It doesn’t matter what agency you will choose as long as you are certain that it will provide the website link building that you requires. Website backlinks can be a daunting task since it will help your site get all the web backlinks that you need. If you don’t have the time to work it out for your site you can always ask the service of website link building services to do the job for you.

In the present internet dominating world, anyone can have a website and do any business. But, everyone cannot 100% succeed in the internet business. While some gain profit, there are others who are struggling hard to drive traffic to their site. The net result is frustration, disappointment and loss. Gaining traffic is not a big problem, as you have many technically sound people with you. There are various ways to set it right and once again provide life to your website.

Some simple steps through which you can improve the number of clicks are:

* The content is the first area you need to revise if your website is not getting more traffic. The content should be informative, free from errors and should be keyword rich one. You can visit some article submission sites and refer it before refining your content.

* In case you are not confident of writing articles relevant to your business, you need to hire any expert to do this work. Content written by professionals will give unique look to your site.

* You should know how to handle the keyword in each and every web page. First, gather the list of keywords related to your business. Include one keyword for every page. Every web page of your site should be named with the different keywords. This could be carried out by contacting the webmaster. You can also take the help of webmaster, who will be able to tell you which keyword suites your website and your product.

* Using the right keyword is essential to get rankings in search engines. The best keyword for your site can also be derived using these search engines. Enter a keyword that is related to your business and click the search button. See how it works. In such a way you can select the best keyword for your website.

* Never allow the resource box blank, as you are not supposed provide about your product name directly in the main article. The resource box should be utilized for exposing your site. Leave a backlink in the resource box, so that when user clicks the link, they will be directed to your website instantaneously.

These are some of the cost effective ways to improve the ranking and clicks to your website. Once you gain more users, your website will get more vicinity in public which leads to increase in traffic. Definitely, by increasing the traffic you can increase your sales and gain more income.

One of the biggest initial costs in getting your business on the internet is the initial website design. One way to reduce this cost is through the use of website templates. They are affordable and save you a lot of time. Templates are a quick and easy way to create a layout for your website. However, there are several mistakes you can make in the process of choosing and using a web template. You could end up with something that is completely different from the image you had in mind. Here are a couple of guidelines to help you avoid those mistakes.

Many people think it is an obvious mistake to use a template that is very popular. The thought is that if many people use the same template, your website will not be unique or appear generic. Not so! Consider why that website template is popular. Because it works! It looks good! You don’t really have to worry about whether your website is totally unique. Why? Lets say that 2,000 people have used a particular website template that you like. Or even 5,000 have sued it. Well, according to the Netcraft Web Server Survey, as of December 2009 there are around 233,848,493 websites available on the world wide web. Your website is just a teeny little drop in the ocean. So, don’t make the mistake of not using a popular, well laid out design, just because a lot of people have already used it.

Another mistake that is common is to change the template to the point that it does not flow properly. The whole point of using a web template is to save you money,time, and effort. With a template, all you have to do is change the title and appropriate details and you’re done. But do not customize the template too much. You may think that is a good idea because you are creating a unique graphic, but you are also defeating the very purpose of using a web template.

Be specific about any changes you do make. If a template you purchase is suitable for your product or service, limit the changes to just what is necessary. For instance, your product is pet supplies. You find a great template that suits you perfectly. However, the designer has put an image of hair products in the header. All you have to do is find images of pets and pet products to replace the hair images. You don’t have to redesign the whole template.

Some people make the wrong choice of templates. A jazzy, hip, template with lots of flash is not going to impress your 60 plus year old target market. Older people like easy to read, plain and simple sites. The bottom line is, just be careful in selecting templates so they target your market. Do not choose a templates because it is pretty. Choose your website template because it serves your purpose.

Finally, it is a good idea to stay away from sites that include java script and flash files. It is much more difficult to optimize these sites for the search engines. And absolutely do not use a template that has frames. The search robots that crawl your site will just see frames, java, and flash as empty holes in your website.