Archive for February, 2010
Business Spotlight: Wick Smith, Biz Tools One Website Design
Has a lot changed since you started in 2001? “Without question. I started in 2001 as a one-man band with FrontPage (software) and a computer and a card table, and an idea. Like most Web developers, it’s a seat-of-the-pants, on-the-job training type thing. And you grow and learn. We were very blessed with good business early in the game, and I knew … I had to bring in new talent. We grew in number of employees and capabilities as clients needed more sophisticated Web sites and technology changed.”
How many sites do you host? “We just crossed the 500 threshold, hosting 502 Web sites at last count.”
Are they mainly sites in N.C.? “Mostly in North Carolina, but like every other sales environment, word of mouth is the strongest sales tool. Through friends who know friends, we have sites in New York, Idaho, Florida. We’re in about 15 states.”
What are clients most interested in today? “They are most interested in really two things. They want a professional Web site that’s easy to navigate, and they want it to be No. 1 in the search engines.”
Do you have a typical client base? “Really, we don’t. We have several sectors that we’ve done quite well in. We’ve done a number of dental and medical sites, and that’s where we’ve gotten a lot of regional and national clients. We’ve done a number of churches … a number of nonprofits. Municipal governments, quasi-government sites. We build and host the cities of Shelby, New Bern, Spring Lake. And of course a lot of private-sector businesses.”
Has the economy affected business? “We were up last year about 8 percent over the previous year, and that is attributable to the fact that folks have abandoned or scaled back from traditional advertising. But they realized they need to do something to stay current, so they’re coming to us to update their Web site or get a site for the first time.”
What do you look for most when hiring? “Positive customer service attitude.”
Owning a small business, what most likely keeps you up at night? “Where the next dollar is coming from. You never know, until the phone rings, whether or not those new customers are going to come walking in the door.”
Any advice for someone starting out? “Most importantly, it’s critical they understand what their customer wants and what they’re willing to pay for it. If you want to sell a $100 widget but the customer wants a $10 widget, you better figure out how to sell a $10 widget or pack your bags pretty quickly. (Late developer) J.P. Riddle used to say this is a hot dog and hamburger town, not a steak town, but you can make a lot of money selling hot dogs and hamburgers. And he was right.”
Web Site Promotion Basics
Search Engine Submission, Ranking, Link Popularity and More
Web site promotion is the most important step in making your business succeed online. To help you promote and maintain your web site, we have dedicated a whole section of our web site to site promotion. We hope that you will find these articles, guidelines and tips useful.
Some people mistakenly believe that as soon as a site is on the Internet, the search engines will automatically index their site and people will start visiting their site from Day 1. This is not true. Once your site is live (i.e. uploaded and accessed through the Internet) you need to concentrate on web site promotion. This is the step that will really give you a powerful Net presence. It’s easy and it’s fun so let’s jump right into it.
Let’s start with the basics
There are many methods that you can use to promote your web site. But one rule remains the same. Make sure that your web site is 100% ready to be submitted before you begin with promotion. You don’t want to give anyone a chance of rejecting your web site and you don’t want to disappoint visitors who come to your site.
- Submitting to Search EnginesThe first and most important method of promotion is submitting your web site to search engines and directories. The webmaster fills out a form that tells the search engine or editor (in case of a directory or site) to visit and index the suggested site.
- Preparing your web pages – Meta tags
You must submit your web site only after you have prepared your web pages for the search engines. This means you have to insert appropriate meta tags on all your web pages (keywords, description and title). - Web site Optimization
For your site to score high with search engines, you will need to optimize your web site (improve your HTML, load time, browser compatibility and other factors to cater to search engines). Only after optimization should you submit your site. - Finally, it’s time to submit!
After optimization, it’s time to submit your site. We recommend submitting to all the major search engines, since search engines generate approximately 90% of web site traffic. Top search engines have a form for site suggestions. A link to this form can usually be found from the home page; it may say “Add a site” or “Suggest a URL.” You can jump to our article which has links to all submission forms and tips on submission, so you don’t have to spend hours looking for them.
- Preparing your web pages – Meta tags
- Submitting to Directories
Once you have submitted your web site to all the top search engines, it is time to submit your site to the important directories, like Yahoo, Looksmart, AOL etc. Submitting to Directories is different from submitting to Search Engines as human editors review your site and accept or reject your site according to its quality. Before submitting to Directories, you need to make sure that your site is 100% ready. You also need to carefully follow their guidelines while you submit your site.Note: There are a number of free search engine submission tools available but I suggest that the first time you submit your web site, do it manually. And never use these free tools while submitting to Directories. This must be done manually. Don’t worry, submitting to search engines is very easy. It’s only preparing your web pages with the appropriate meta tags that takes time.
- Other Internet Marketing Techniques
You need to know that web site promotion is an ongoing process, as there are thousands of web sites being added every day and the competition is getting tougher by the minute! Most of the sites listed on the search engines are getting lost as there may be 100 -10,000 other web sites in the same field. We all know that most people don’t look at more than 2-3 search result pages. The web sites that are not found in these pages are lost in the competition. New promotion techniques are coming out every day to get around this problem. We will discuss these new promotion techniques soon. Some of them are as follows:- Link Popularity
This is a very important Internet marketing technique which is rapidly gaining importance. The term “link popularity” refers to the number of sites that are linked to your site. Search engines check your link popularity and based on how popular your site is, give you a higher ranking. Try getting as many quality links as possible to boost your search engine position. - Writing Quality Articles
Get visitors flocking to your site by writing quality articles. Write articles that are related to the content of your site. Most people come to the Internet for quality information. Articles build your credibility and reputation and your visitors may use your services in the long run. You also get more links to your sites through this method. - Publish your own ezine or newsletter
Ezines (or e-mail newsletters) are the latest buzz for marketing on the Internet. Everyone is talking about how you should publish your own ezine to increase traffic, hits and sales. Popular ezines usually give current information and resources that will keep subscribers informed and updated. Ezines are also a great way to keep in touch with your visitors.
- Link Popularity
Website Promotion Tips and Advice
After trying out various strategies, tips and tricks given in many promotion sites we’ve come up with a few important tips and advice that have worked well for us. These tips would help you get a better listing, position and ranking in the popular search engines. They are simple to follow and are guaranteed to give you good results. Lets go through them right now!
- Quality Site with Quality Content
The first and most important rule is to promote quality sites. Don’t waste your time promoting junk sites. It won’t pay off in the long run. This is honest talking here. You must be willing to spend time developing a quality website, if you want your promotion efforts to pay off. The first month you won’t do too well but as you keep adding new pages, getting new links and updating your site you will see your hits increasing over the months. Your site will get more traffic as time goes by. Also don’t underestimate the importance of small websites. Once they come to your website and they like what they see they will usually link to you with a good review. I can’t emphasize enough on building a quality website. If you have a good website you will definitely get a lot of traffic over time.Important Tip: While we are on the subject of content here’s a very important tip – Try to come out with something original or slightly different from what your competitors are coming out with. Write articles related to your field of experience and focus it on specific topics. For e.g. If we were to write on ‘website promotion’, we would have thousands of sites competing with us in the search engines. Whereas if we were to write on ‘website Promotion Tips and Advice’ we would have a better chance of ranking high in the search engines. Now visitors would come to this page and through this page they may go to our website promotion page or services page. The idea is to write something a little different from the norm to draw visitors to your site. There’s no use writing a great article on what others have already written about. It will only be lost in the search engines.
I’d like to share a personal experience here. When we first launched Entheos I wrote this entire website promotion guide on very generic and common keywords. I made these great pages on search engine submission, meta tags, link popularity etc. – keywords I was sure people would search for. What I didn’t realize was that there were thousands of sites offering what I had written about, as a result of which my pages never came up in the first few pages of search engines. Though they were good pages they failed to bring traffic to Entheos. I then changed my strategy and wrote articles on slightly different topics – like Google Tips ‘n’ Tricks, Altavista Tips and boy did we do well in the search engines. They got the 1st position in the search engines and resulted in an increase of traffic. I wrote these articles because I just learnt of some new tips after a lot of experimentation and research and I was just dying to share them – the rest is history!
- Meta Tags
While preparing your meta tags don’t use generic or common keywords, try to use a combination of keywords and see if you can make them different from your competition. This would give you a better chance with the search engines. Try to come out with something different and you’ll probably do pretty well.
Tip: The golden rule for effective search engine submission is that all your important keywords should appear in your title, description, content and alt tags of your web page. This increases your keyword density and helps in boosting your ranking with the search engines. - Concentrate on the Big Search Engines
Google is my favorite search engine so I’ve really been concentrating on our listing, ranking and links here. Its brought us the most amount of traffic (more than 40 times the other search engines – no kidding!). Google brings in a lot of traffic because it takes keywords from the content as well as the meta tags resulting in a good chance of getting ranked high when searching for unique keywords. Also it gives a lot of importance to link popularity so getting many quality sites to link to yours can get rid of a lot of unwanted competition. Focus on the search engines that are sending you the most amount of traffic – understand their strategies, study their sites, visit forums and get as much of information as you can to tackle them. Contrary to popular belief Excite, Lycos, HotBot, Direct Hit don’t send much traffic. Google by far is the Best. - Get Like-minded Sites to Link to You
This is the key to high search engine ranking and placement. Link Popularity means how many sites link to you. The idea behind link popularity is that other sites will link to you only if you are a quality site offering quality resources. Google uses this concept while ranking websites. Get quality sites to link to you and you will get a good ranking in Google. This is also a great way to bring traffic to your site. Usually sites that link to us send us more traffic than the popular search engines. - Be Patient – Traffic increases over time
Be patient. Don’t expect miracles to happen overnight. Promotion is a continuous process. You need to continue to update your site, add new articles and resubmit to search engines. Over time you will see your site coming up in search engines, getting better placement and sending you more visitors. Check your ranking every month. Be involved in the promotion process. Check your website statistics to see which sites are sending you the most traffic. Work on getting new sites to link to you. Tweak the pages that are not sending you any visitors.
Website Content Writing Tips
When writing for the web, use
- shorter sentences, words and paragraphs
- one idea per paragraph
- concise text – half the word count (or less) than writing for print
- the inverted pyramid style, putting the most important point or the conclusion first.
- simple words
- objective language to build credibility, rather than exaggerated claims or overly promotional words like “great”, “tremendous” etc.
- bulleted lists
- highlighted text (bold or color, also hyperlinked text) for scannability
- meaningful headlines and subheads, avoiding cute or clever lines
Write better web content.
Understand how people (don’t) read on the Web
- Reading on the web is too much work!
Reading from a computer screen tires the eyes. People read 25% more slowly on the web than they read print material.That’s why, web content has to be 50% shorter than print.
- Readers on the Web scan text
According to a study by usability expert Jacob Nielson, 79% of readers on the Web tend to scan or skim text rather than read word for word.Highlighted text (bold or color, also hyperlinked text) and bulleted lists aid scannability.
- Readers on the Web are impatient
Readers on the Web are in a hurry to get the information they want, and move on.
They don’t have the patience for obscure and complex text. They don’t enjoy scrolling through masses of text either.Since there are millions of alternative websites in cyberspace, they will quickly move to another site if they don’t enjoy the information gathering experience on your site.
Attracting attention and retaining reader interest is a challenge, specially as you have just
- 10 seconds to grab attention with your web site content
- 55 seconds to develop an understanding of your company or product
To combat reader fatigue, make it easy for your Web users to get relevant information. Put the most important information at the top. Use clear and concise text.
- Readers on the Web are skeptical
Credibility is a major factor in retaining reader interest on the Web.Use objective language, write meaningful headlines and subheads and avoid marketing jargon or exaggerated claims to build credibility. Cute or clever lines could mean that the reader takes longer to get to the main point.
Hyperlinks to the sources of your information or to related information also add to credibility.
- Readers avoid information overload
In an average workday, people suffer from information overload . They already have a large number of emails in their inbox to contend with, and several documents to read.
They don’t want to spend time and effort reading content that they may not find useful.Offer your readers information in bite-size chunks which are easily digestible. Use short sentences, short paragraphs, one idea per paragraph.
Words That Sell
How do people find you on the Internet?
Through words, of course.
Carefully chosen words and keywords will determine your website or web page’s rankings on the Search Engines, and will pull visitors to your site.
Not just any visitors, but people who want and need your product or service. Targeted Web traffic.
Once they’ve come to your site, how do you ensure you make a sale?
Again, through the right choice of words.
Words prompt people to think, consider the options, decide, and most important, take action.
Words make the sale
What are these words?
- Credible words
It’s important that your web content is believable and sincere. Or you may drive visitors away instead of attracting them.Millions of sites use words that are overstatements or exaggerated claims. Words like “killer apps”, “incredible results”, “never before”, “world-famous”, “extraordinary features” and a whole lot more, usually followed with several exclamation marks!!!!! Limit yourself to a single exclamation mark where relevant, or drop those marks altogether.
Unless the words above are backed up by research or documented evidence, most of your visitors would discount the exaggerations and feel the claims are untrue. How would they trust you with their money?
- Simple words
Use quality words, information-rich words, yet easy-to-understand words. - Powerful words
Use keyword-rich and targeted words, designed to bring the right people to your site.
This is specially important while writing descriptions and ads to promote your site, writing headlines and subheads, writing words in bold or coloured text for easily scannable content. - Action words
Words like “Free offer”, “Free resources”, “Big Discount”, “Sale”, “Free trial”, “Try us out”, are powerful action-generating words. - Documented words
Use research to back up claims of product superiority.Use client testimonials to assure people that you deliver on your promises.
If you add links that lead to more information on the subject, your visitor can check out the authenticity of your statements.
Quotes from experts in the field you are writing about, add weight to your statements
- Thought-provoking words
How often have you read a whole article because the headline triggered a whole thought-process?This is a highly effective way to draw the reader’s attention.
And, as you know, readers are 25% slower while reading on the Web.All the more reason to grab their attention:
- with a question in the headline
- with a paradox or apparent contradiction in facts
- with a bold statement that refutes popular beliefs
Naturally, such attention-getting devices have to be backed up by persuasive content that retains the reader’s interest or puts forward a different point of view
- Persuasive words
Just like a salesman in a shop or office, your content needs to sell a product or service.The difference is that the Web is a virtual showroom, where you don’t have the advantage of using body language like energetic gestures, smiles and a tone of voice that draws and holds attention.
Your visitor has the freedom to click out of your website at any time she chooses.
The words you use can persuade her to stay, take a tour, look at the services you provide, see what other clients have to say, buy your product or give you a project.
- Don’t force the sale
The best salesmen know when to persuade and when to withdraw, to let their customers make up their minds whether to buy or not.Sometimes, your customer may check out your site with interest and yet not make a purchase until he has checked out other sites offering similar products. Don’t give up! Once his interest is aroused, he may come back to you a week later and buy a product.
This is when your response to email or telephone enquiries (so dependent on words) will determine whether he is encouraged to come back or to give up the idea of buying from you.
Meta Tags
Preparing your web pages with meta tags for effective search engine submission and ranking
Crafting your meta tags is the most important step in Search Engine submission. A meta tag is a special HTML tag that provides information about a Web page. It provides information such as who created the page, how often it is updated, what the page is about, and which keywords represent the page’s content. Many search engines use this information when building their indices. The most important meta tags you need to focus on are the Title, Keywords and Description tags. So, lets get right into it!
Step 1: Prepare a list of Keywords and Key Phrases
What are Keywords?
Keywords are words that your customers would enter into a search engine to find your site. E.g. while searching for a web developer you would type ‘web developers’ , ‘web designers’ , ‘web development companies’ , ‘web site development’ as possible keyword searches.
Guidelines while preparing your keywords
- Make a list of your target audiences – This must include all possibilities. Compiling a list of your target audience will help you know what they are searching for in search engines. E.g. Small businessmen, fellow web developers, corporates, professionals. Each of these target audiences will have different needs and interests which you should address in your web site.
- While keeping in mind your target audience, make a list of keywords and key phrases that describe your site. Put yourself in their shoes and think of the words they would type in a search engine to find you.
- Come up with as many keywords and key phrases as you can.
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- As in the example I gave above, I would put ‘web designers’, ‘web site development’ , ‘global web development’, ‘professional web developers’, ‘web promotion’ ,’dynamic web site development’ as possible key phrases.
- Use plurals - e.g. ‘web developer’, ‘web developers’
- Use important words in different forms – e.g. ‘develop web sites’, ‘web site developers’ , ‘web-site development’ , ‘developing web sites’
- Don’t use the same word more than 4 times. Try using it in different forms instead. E.g. web site, web-site, web sites. Using the same keyword more than 4 times may be considered spamming in some search engines and may cause you to be blacklisted.
4. Keep your keywords meta tag length between 200 and 500 characters.
Step 2: Deciding on your Title and Description
What is a Title and Description?
Title – This is what appears on the title bar when you open a web site. This is also the link you see in the search results page of any search engine.
Description – This is the description of the site (1-2 lines) which appears along with the title in the search results page.
An example of a Title and Description
Title – Web site design and development, DHTML, Flash, Promotion
Description – Developing creative, innovative and cost-effective static and dynamic web sites. We believe in making your business succeed online by expanding your business to the Global Marketplace, find out what makes us so unique.
Guidelines while deciding on your title and description
- The golden rule while preparing your pages for search engine submission is that all your important keywords should appear in your title, description and content of your web page.
- Make sure that your title and description is populated with your most important keywords. At the same time it should be a ‘grabber’, as your potential clients will read your title and description and based on that synopsis of your site, decide to click and enter your site. Make sure that they are catchy and grab a person’s attention.
- Keep your title between 15 and 20 words and your description between 100 and 200 characters.
While preparing your web pages remember to also use your important keywords in your alt tags. Some search engines also index the alt tags. An alt tag is a name given to an image that is used in your site. You can see a sample of an alt tag by pointing your cursor entheosweb.com on this page. In a second you’ll see a box appear below. That’s the alt tag. Don’t underestimate its importance.
Web Site Optimization
Check your site with these free site analysis tools
Before you hurry off to submit your web site to all the search engines and directories, remember to check your web site thoroughly to see if your web site is optimized. There are a number of free web site analysis tools available on the net that will check your site for spelling mistakes, dead links, browser compatibility, html design and loading time. They will also rate your web site on a scale of poor to excellent. Checking your site with these online tools will take only a minute of your time will give you a lot of valuable information about your site.
You know how frustrating it is to wait for a page to load. Most of the time you won’t bother to wait for more than 30 seconds or so, and if a page has still not loaded you might think ‘To hell with it – I’m going somewhere else’. Another often frustrating problem is to click on a link only to find the following error on your screen: ‘The requested URL does not exist’. This is known as a dead link. It could happen by giving a wrong link or by deleting a page that is linked to other pages in your site. And when you see a spelling mistake, your response is probably ‘If they haven’t checked their own web site for spelling mistakes, are they professional enough for me!’
Make sure your web site loads fast and it doesn’t have any dead links or spelling mistakes. You could lose tons of visitors if you don’t optimize your web site.
Web site Analysis and Optimization Tools
Among the many web site improvement tools available, we have listed only the best ones – and the best part is, they also happen to be FREE! We have used these tools on entheosweb.com and have changed the site according to their suggestions, to get a good rating. They seem to give different results for the load time but you can take an average of these results to get a better idea of your web site load time.
Some of our Favorite Tools
- Netmechanic
This is our absolute favorite. We strongly recommend that you use this tool for checking your load time, spelling mistakes, and browser compatibility. The report generated is concise and easy to understand. You can also use the HTML design report along with the Hit Box HTML report.http://netmechanic.com/toolbox/html-code.htm
- Website Garage
This tool offers two extra checks i.e. Link Popularity and Register-It! Readiness. Your load time results may not be accurate as it does not recognize Flash and other plug-ins.http://websitegarage.netscape.com/
- Hitbox
If you would like to be cheered up with your web site load time go to Hitbox to get a good report on your load time. You will find that there is a big difference in these results when compared to the other tools. We recommend that you use the HTML design report along with the Netmechanic HTML report to get a good idea of how to improve the HTML design in your site.http://www.hitbox.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?tools/doc
- Bobby
If you want a strict evaluation of your web site we recommend you use Bobby. If you pass his stringent criteria you can get a Bobby Approved stamp.
Guidelines while submitting to directories
What is a Directory?
A directory does not use robots to index a site. All sites that are indexed are directly done by people. You need to submit your web site under a particular category, after which an editor will review your site and then accept or reject your site according to its quality.
Guidelines while submitting to Directories
- Make sure your site is 100% up and running, with no “under construction” signs. Good site design, fast loading pages, and content are important, especially for Yahoo.
- From the homepage of a directory take your time and find the appropriate category your site fits into. You can do a keyword search using your most important keywords or key phrases and note the category that lists these sites. That will probably be the best category for your site. You may also have multiple categories, in which case you must submit under all the suitable categories.
- Once you have found a suitable category, look out for a “Suggest a site” or an “Add URL” link. Click on this link to submit your site.
- Before rushing off to submit your site, carefully read their suggestions on how to submit. They REALLY mean it. Follow their instructions to the absolute letter.
- Since Directories do not use robots, everything indexed into a directory is done by people. No META tags, ALT image tags, HTML comments or image maps will help your performance here. Your best bet is to describe your site accurately and the final decision of adding your web site to a directory’s database rests with the editor who reviews your web site. Best of luck!
Free Search Engine Submission Sites
There are plenty of free search engine submission tools available on the Net. While some of them promise to submit your site to hundreds of search engines, my personal favorites are those that submit web sites to only 20-40 major search engines. The reason is simple – these search engines generate approximately 85% of web site traffic. I hardly get any traffic from the other search engines.
First time submission? Do it manually
Before telling you about the search engine submission tools available, I’d like to tell you that it’s really easy to submit to search engines and I recommend very strongly that you submit manually. I have made a page that gives you the URLs of the submit pages of all the major search engines, and tips to submit to these engines. It will only take an hour or two of your time and you will be able to see the confirmation of your URL being submitted. You can read my article on Search Engine Submission and find out just how easy it is.
Use free tools to update or resubmit
You must be wondering why I’m recommending manual submission, when this article is about free automatic search engine submission services. Well, as these free tools are available on the Net we should make use of them. Here’s what I suggest – After manually submitting to all the search engines your web site promotion efforts are not over. You have to resubmit every 2 months or so and also submit new pages that you have added to your web site That’s when you should use these tools. Try them out and update your site in the search engines in just seconds.
Free Search Engine Submission Sites/Tools
- Submit Corner
You’ll like this submission tool because it allows you to choose the search engines you want to submit to. This wizard usually takes under 30 seconds and you’ll have your site submitted to the top engines instantly. It also has other cool tools you can use to optimize and improve your web site. It’s a great resource site!http://www.submitcorner.com/Tools/Submit/
- Submitplus
Good tool because you have to fill only two fields (Email and URL) and their service effectively submits your web site to the top 10 search engines in less than 1 minute! Its other cool features include real time status reporting, live confirmation link and an email report.http://www.submitplus.com/top10.htm
- Cyberid
Simply fill in the form and click ‘Submit’ – you will be able to verify each entry by clicking the relevant hyperlink. They also have a FREE Meta-Tag Builder that you can use to ensure that your tags are optimized for the Search Engine Spiders.http://www.cyberid.co.uk/submit.htm
- Add Me
Submit your site to the top 30 most popular search engines and directories.http://www.addme.com/submission.htm
- Webtoolcentral
Here’s another simple form to fill up. You can also choose the search engines that you want to submit to.http://www.webtoolcentral.com/webmaster/tools/site_submit/
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