Archive for June, 2009
Paying For Clicks – Still The Fastest Way To Instant Web Traffic
There are so many success stories you will hear about businesses making it good on the internet. The troubling thing is that for every success story, there is probably the story of a hundred failures. Many have unsuccessfully launched a business enterprise that is internet based but only a handful shall succeed.
Is this through luck? That is even more remote. It takes good business sense and a lot of help and team effort. Most importantly, it is the eagerness to succeed and the determination to learn and the willingness to invest in a lot of hard work and some money.
The Very Basic
Like Neo, traffic is “The One”. Without traffic, all your effort would just go to waste. Every business needs customers, without them you wouldn’t have anyone to sell your products to. On the internet, website traffic is like walk in customers in the real world. It is a matter of simple mathematics, the more people you get to your site, the more sales you are likely to make.
But like any business that’s in every corner building or in the mall, not everyone that goes in will buy, but the greater of number that do come in to browse your merchandise, the greater number of people that will buy your products. It is a simple and known fact.
But, how do you get traffic, traffic large enough that could make a small percentage of eventual buyers enough to make a good profit. Many big companies generate traffic of tens of thousands a day and a measly ten to fifteen percent actually buys, but that small percentage is enough to provide them with good business.
Many of these success stories, did it the easy way, by paying for their traffic. You may have heard this one before, but you have to spend money to make money. Advertising is the key. The more people that knows that your site exists; the more people would of course go to your site, that’s common sense.
There are many ways of generating free traffic, but the truth is that they will not achieve anything like the same results as paid advertising. These paid advertisements include advertising schemes by Google and Yahoo.
The Value of Searches
The search engines are the easiest and fastest medium for finding what a person needs on the internet. Search engines have been very popular because they provide a vital service to many people. They are free and easy to use. With this popularity, they get many visitors and clicks and they are the most commonly visited sites on the internet today. It is easy to understand why so many companies would pay to advertise with these search engines.
Search engines are the number 1 source of information to millions of people that use them each day. They provide targeted links to possible sites that may be of interest to the searcher. If your site’s link pops up in the high rankings of the search results pages, you have a great chance that visitors will go to your site. While search engine optimization is a cheaper and low cost way to get your site a high rank, paying for advertisements will ensure that you will be on the top ranks and by that I mean those pop up ads on the right hand side bar in the search engines.
When you pay for your advertisements, it is like paying for your traffic. You may think this not to be such a good idea, but the truth is that the payoffs could be astounding. When you pay for your traffic, you are guaranteed of a consistent traffic flow to your site. You will hardly have a dry day, every day will result in sales.
Paying for your Traffic
Usually, you will be charged with the number of hits a link gets when your ads is clicked, this is called pay per click. With some of the smaller search eniges, you will be charged for the number of times your ad appears. It is imperative that you have good keyword content in your ad. There are many tools that aid you in using the right keyword for the right moment.
All the money you spent in paying for your traffic will not be for naught. You will get an impressive boost in traffic which will also result to a great boost in your sales figures. Paying for your traffic would be a really good idea and you will get all the benefits it has to offer.
Setting up a pay per click campaign is in reality not all that easy and many people will give up before even trying, because of the fact that it can be so complicated. Fortunately many web design companies can assist you with your website promotion and it is therefore important that you make use of the services of a full service web design company from the start, one that will not only help you set up a search engine friendly website, but also one that can help you with your pay per click advertising campaigns.
While pay per click is the fastest way to get traffic to your website, you could lose a bundle if you are not careful. For this reason you have to make sure that your web design company is well-versed in pay per click campaigns, so that you will actually make money and not just lose money.
Rian Schoeman
SilverFox Web Design
Pros and Cons of Flash-based Sites
Posted by rians in General Interest on June 23rd, 2009
Flash-based sites have been a craze since the past few years, and as Macromedia compiles more and more great features into Flash, we can only predict there will be more and more flash sites around the Internet. However, Flash based sites have been disputed to be bloated and unnecessary. Where exactly do we draw the line? Here’s a simple breakdown.
The good:
Interactivity
Flash’s Actionscript opens up a vast field of possibilities. Programmers and web designers have used Flash to create interactve features ranging from very lively feedback forms to attractive Flash-based games. This whole new level of interactivity will always leave visitors coming back for more.
A standardized website
With Flash, you do not have to worry about cross-browser compatibility. No more woes over how a certain css code displays differently in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. When you position your site elements in Flash, they will always appear as they are as long as the user has Flash Player installed.
Better expression through animation
In Flash, one can make use of its animating features to convey a message in a much more efficient and effective way. Flash is a lightweight option for animation because it is vector based (and hence smaller file sizes) as opposed to real “movie files” that are raster based and hence much larger in size.
The bad and the ugly:
The Flash player
People have to download the Flash player in advance before they can view Flash movies, so by using Flash your visitor range will decrease considerably because not everyone will be willing to download the Flash player just to view your site. You'll also have to put in additional work in redirecting the user to the Flash download page if he or she doesn't have the player installed.
Site search engine optimisation
If your content was presented in Flash, most search engines wouldn't be able to index your content. Hence, you will not be able to rank well in search engines and there will be less traffic heading to your site.
Loading time
Users have to wait longer than usual to load Flash content compared to regular text and images, and some visitors might just lose their patience and click the Back button. The longer your Flash takes to load, the more you risk losing visitors.
The best way to go is to use Flash only when you absolutely need the interactivity and motion that comes with it. Otherwise, use a mixture of Flash and HTML or use pure text if your site is purely to present simple textual and graphical information.
Some Common Mistakes When Using Web Templates
Posted by rians in General Interest on June 23rd, 2009
Website templates are very affordable and they save you a lot of effort and time when you want to create a new layout for your SEO website. However, a lot of people make mistakes in the process of choosing and using a web template and end up with something that was unlike the image they had in mind. Here are some guidelines to help you avoid those mistakes.
The first obvious mistake you should be aware of is using a template that is very popular. If many people use the same template, your website will not appear unique at all and your credibility as a solid, different website will be tarnished. In other words, you will appear generic just like your next-door neighbours.
To whole point of using a web template is to save time and effort. You just change the title and appropriate details and you’re done. The biggest mistake one makes is to customize the template beyond recognisation. While that may be good in the sense that you’re creating a unique graphic, you’re defying the very purpose of using a web template — saving time and effort.
However, on the opposite side, if a template you purchase is suitable but some changes must be made to suit your site’s theme, then you will have to take some time to make the changes. For example, you can find a very nice template that suits your hobby site except the original web designer has put an image of stamps in the header. You can find images of garden plants and spades to replace the stamps for your gardening hobby site. However, do only make the necessary changes and don’t redesign the whole template.
In some circumstances, some people simply make the wrong choice of templates. This is a very subjective issue but you have to be careful in selecting templates to suit your audience. Do not choose templates just because they are pretty, choose them because they serve your purpose.
Improve Usability of Your Website
Posted by rians in General Interest on June 22nd, 2009
No matter how brilliant your web designer is, if it is hard to reach the content of your site then your site is as useful as an empty shell. Here are some tips to improve the usability of your website to ensure it serves its functions optimally.
The first method is to make sure the typography of your content is suitable. If you have large blocks of text, make sure to use CSS to space out the lines accordingly. The longer a single line of text is, the greater the line-height of each line should be. Also, make sure the font size of your text is big enough to read easily. Some sites have 10-pixel-tall text in Verdana font; while that may look neat and tidy, you have to really strain your eyes to read the actual text.
Make it easy for visitors to find content that they want on your site. If you have thousands of articles on your site and a certain visitor wants to find one single article from that pile, you have to provide a feasible means to enable visitors to do that without hassle. Be it an SQL-driven database search engine or just a glossary or index of articles that you have, providing such a feature will make sure your visitors can use your site with ease.
Ensure that your site loads fast if you do not want to lose visitors. Most internet users will leave a website if it doesn’t load completely within 15 seconds, so make sure the crème de la crème of your website is delivered to the visitors as soon as possible to retain their attention.
Last of all, test each and every link on your site before it goes online. There is nothing more effective in tarnishing your professional image than broken links, so be very careful about that.
About Author: David Hueber is the Managing Director of SEO Auckland – a company that has been providing excellent SEO Services in New Zealand for over 5 years.
How To Design A Search Engine Friendly Site
Posted by rians in General Interest on June 18th, 2009
When you are thinking of building a website or if you already have one, one of the most important things that you will want is for the site to look good. No one wants an unattractive site, as this is a projection of your corporate image.
Unfortunately, this fixation on having a visually appealing site can be in major conflict with one important thing – the performance of your site in search engines. It is crucial to remember that search engines are blind to how aesthetically pleasing your website is, they are only focused on the content and internal structure of your site.
Here are some ideas whilst you are busy with your website designing to help ensure your site will be search engine friendly:
First of all, make sure that your whole website is not made up of Flash technology. Although Flash is very attractive and appealing to a lot of people, the search engines will not be able to ‘read’ your site. In addition to ensuring your whole site is not Flash based, you must make sure it is not run on purely Javascript either. If you do this, you will make it difficult for the search engines to follow the links on your site. In turn you will not be indexed properly.
Next you must ensure that your site had individual and descriptive META tags for all the pages. The most important tags are the TITLE tags and the DESCRIPTIVE tags. These tags need to describe the content on each page on an individual basis. Any good website designer will know this.
It is vitally important that your site has search engine friendly URLs. Some websites are built using software that will generate pages with scripting languages such as PHP or a semi-automated tool. These software packages are fantastic for creating websites quickly, but unfortunately the URLs that they generate can be extremely unreadable for human navigation. For an example, instead of your page about safari packages for Africa having an internet address of http://www.yourtravelsite.com/safari-packages-to-africal.html, it might say http://www.yourtravelsite.com/index.php?com-category=2&id=4. Although search engines are able to read these links, the site will do much better with a humanly readable link. It is also much easier attracting visitors with descriptive links explaining the exact page they will be visiting.
These are just a few tips to make your website designed in a search engine friendly manner. Ensure that you discuss these with your web developer.
Web Design – 3 Top Priorities and Tasks for Website Success
Posted by rians in General Interest on June 18th, 2009
One of the most lucrative business models of the day, that takes very little in start up costs, usually about $10 a month for hosting is an online business. The best and most standard options for earning online is to use a website or blog. Webmasters builde websites that focus on a niche. With the huge amount of traffic potential and exposure the Internet provides, the possibilities are endless.
The online business is not taught in schools and there is no degree, most of us are self-taught utilizing the many free resources and free webmaster tools that teach and provide support for webmastering, Internet marketing and web design.
Many think they cannot build a great website because they do not know code. This is not true, there are so many great ways to build websites and blogs, that do not require any knowledge of code, programming or design, so most anyone who is willing to work hard and put in the time necessary can succeed online. There are also tons of free places to get website templates so they design element is much easier and there is no coding knowledge required.
Many webmasters miss out on important elements of web design that cost them visitors and money. Some of these are in website desing, which is a great way to get visitors to leave the site. Many make mistakes in promotion and SEO, which when done right will bring the organic searh traffic that is so valuable.
3 Top Webmaster Tasks
1. Link Building/SEO
Higher SERP ranks are the main benefits of SEO which are achieved through external links from other sites to yours. The most important part of the link is the anchor text. The anchor text is crucial for ranking and needs to have the site’s keywords in it.
Those that do not optimize the link anchor with the correct and relevant site keywords end up with low or nonexistant SERP rankings.
2. Good Web Design
Good navigation and pleasing colors are important tasks for webmasters.
a) Colors – Colors are crucial for web design, for the look as well as usability of the site. A solid example of this is using black backgrounds with red or neon pink font that is harsh and irritating for the eyes. Many will leave your site because they find it hard to read.
The best option is white or light background and black text or vice versa.
b) Navigation – Another big mistake is to have confusing or worse non-existent navigation of all the content on the site. The website navigation needs to be clear with either toop nav bars, left sidebar or right sidebar navigation. The colors should also emphasize the navigation area, distinguishing its existence from the rest of the site. Traffic needs to be able to find all the content your site has to offer quickly and easily. The Internet crowd has a short attention span and if they cannot easily navigate they will leave.
3. Content
Lack of fresh, original and keyword relevant content is a typical newbie mistake. Deep webpages, those that have lots of pages are better for visitor retention. Also, search engines feed on original content and so your site will be more favored in the SERPS with lots of fresh and original content.
The more content you have the more opportunity you will have for exposure to the ads, affiliate links, blog RSS buttons and whatever other actions you want visitors to perform.
Website Design – The Difference Between Success and Failure
Posted by rians in General Interest on June 18th, 2009
Website design is the most important factor for any business starting out in the world wide web. Understanding and making sure you have the perfect website design could determine the difference between the success and failure of your online business.
It’s interesting to note that the Internet holds a big amount of information and is probably one of the fastest when it comes to growing networks all over the world. Thousands of websites are being built on a daily basis and if the business is similar to yours then you should be aware that these websites are now your competition!
You may take comfort in knowing a majority of these websites are built without a specific plan or website design in mind, this brings your competition down. If and only if, you take the time and effort to build a website with good website design you are far more likely to succeed
Building a website is basically giving your customers an online catalogue by which they can view your products and obtain more information. Poor website design could discourage a potential customer, then this is the case, most of the time, if your website is difficult to navigate around and hard for the customer to find what they are searching for.
Once you are thinking about navigation, it is very important to remember that it determines the search engines will rate your website as well as affect the number of pages your potential customer will see. Most sites have some sort of menu and the easier and more visible this is the better!
However, if you have decided to get the help of a professional website design company, then it is important to play an active role so that your opinion and ideas are taken into account. Make it clear you need a site that has structure, structure means having a clean and coherent hierarchy to the site and good page structure. This means your visitors will be able to appreciate and recognize the significance of different sorts of information on the page as well as access exactly what they are looking for, which in return increases web traffic and visits.
Always make sure you understand what the professional website design company include in the services you have chosen, it is common for a business to think they are getting a lot more than they receive. Do not assume that promotion of the site is a free and instant offer in their services.
Website design packages vary in price but lets face it you get what you pay for these days!, with this in mind it is worth paying that little bit extra for a more professional service. Just like top seo services, a lot of the professional website design company will offer a free quotation so make sure you shop around and not only compare prices but what is on offer.
Web Design
Posted by rians in General Interest on June 18th, 2009
If you are creating your own website you would like to make sure that the website designs are appealing to you and to the ones that will visit it online. To do this you have to make sure that whatever you post on your website should be good enough and understandable enough for the visitors of the site who are going to read your contents.
To be able to achieve this, you should be able to create website designs that would draw the attention of online users to continuously visit your online webpage for what ever purpose it may serve to them. You have to remember that not only do you need to excite the curiosity of those who are going to visit your website but to be able to have them engaged in your business in whatever way.
Looking into website designs that are very catchy in the sense, would definitely be advisable for those who are starting out a business online. So what you need to consider in creating effective layouts for your website is that it should be having a content that would be informative to the website visitor and engaging in a sense. Of course you don’t want your website designs to be over sophisticated, but at least have it look a little bit professional to draw more people into your website. Have you ever tried WordPress to create web sites? #1 WordPress Theme Generator. Instantly create great looking and professional WordPress Themes.
A very appealing website would include website designs that are more informative and educational. If this is the first time that you are building the website, you should be ready for the layout. The layout of the website designs should be in accordance with standards being used for creating websites and it should be simple enough but should be tending to increase knowledge and dissipate ignorance.
Logo’s are part of your website designs so don’t forget to be creative in building one. The customary website designs actually takes time in creating logos that are distinguishable to others. This is to make sure that you are unique and so your website enthusiasts will be able to remember you even via the logo that you use. Do you look for and use the free wordpress themes or have you ever tried to create your own? #1 WordPress Theme Generator.
There are a lot of website designs that you can choose from which is beneficial for business, personal and for whatever use it is intended for if this is your first time, try to do a research on the internet so you would be able to check on the options available for you and your business.
CMS Website Design for Beginners
Posted by rians in General Interest on June 18th, 2009
A CMS (content management system) is used for creating, managing and controlling HTML content, documents and images. It is used as a web application the system can be implemented by either your self or a professional this is because some content management systems require detailed knowledge and understating while others offer a way to create and manage content with relative ease of use.
Any mature or new business can only grow and gain more sales and web traffic by having it’s own website. In today’s day and age more people will search the World Wide Web for businesses before stepping out of their houses to look. It would actually look like this will only increase in time as more and more businesses build user friendly website design to bring in their customers and increase sales and demand.
Looking a content management system or CMS website design system that can store, manage, and format your web information appropriately must always be your main focus. The foundations that the website is built on is the key to how it will prosper over time.
A lot of CMS applications include blog software such as WordPress, Serendipity, Nucleus, Slash, They also include some forum software and site management tools such as PhpBB. It is crucial to research exactly what is offered to you and what are the costs involved. There is nothing more disheartening than spending hours building a website only to find there are far better CMS website design systems out there.
You will need to assess yourself as to how confident you are when it comes to building, designing and maintaining your own website, you may find that enlisting the help of a CMS website design company is the best way forward for you and your business.
On the other hand if you already have skills in this area, building the site yourself gives you the opportunity to be able to control your own website and keep it up to date without relying on a web designer or agency to do updates for you. Designing and maintaining the site your self can save you considerable time and money but you need to know what you’re doing in order for it to succeed.
For those who decided to get professional help from a CMS website design company it is important to find a company that can offer something bespoke, this means you have the right to give out your own opinions and requirements.
When it is all about website development, it is paramount that you have ultimate control over the content and exactly how and when it is displayed. Website design is the key for top seo services after all.
Choosing a Hosting Plan for Your New Website
Posted by rians in General Interest on June 15th, 2009
So you think you want to start up a website. In prior posts I discussed choosing a domain name and creation of web pages. Which brings the subject of hosting into play: One of the critical decisions you will have to make is what type of hosting plan to use and what hosting provider to choose.
Once you have created the pages for your website, now you want to publish it to the internet. Publishing to the internet involves getting a hosting plan. By purchasing a domain name you have branded, or named your website. You own the name, but now you must pay rent to someone to actually get your website online. In it’s simplest terms a hosting plan is paying a company to broadcast your website onto the internet. The key considerations for choosing a good hosting plan will be discussed here.
SERVICE First and foremost in your decision is to consider the hosting provider’s reputation for it’s services. Bells and whistles and fancy features will do you no good if you can’t get customer service in a timely fashion. If your website is not available on the internet you are losing opportunities to connect with customers. For that reason you want to be sure and choose a hosting provider that will provide the best uptime as well the best availability and quality of customer service.
UPTIME Does the hosting provider you are considering offer an “uptime guarantee? Many guarantee 99% uptime for their servers. Even at 99% average uptime it can mean that your website will be off the internet for over 7 hours per month. The best hosting providers will have a track record of up to 99.9% uptime, which essentially guarantees you that downtime is negligible or even non-existent.
SIZE What size, or how many pages will the website have? One of the determining factors for the price of most hosting plans is the amount of space required to store the website on their server’s hard drive. If your website will be media rich with videos or music or photo files, or a large e-commerce site with a lot of catalogue pages, you will have to take space into consideration as a criteria for choosing the right hosting plan.
LINUX OR WINDOWS This question refers to the operating systems available for hosting and which one to choose. This question has no relevance to the brand of operating system you are using on your computer. What programming language was used in the Web site design? For example, if you designed a website using ASP or ASP.NET, you’ll need to find a Windows hosting plan. If you have a Web site that uses CGI or PHP, you’ll need to get a Linux hosting plan. Note that if you are simply publishing a basic html website, the choice of hosting Operating system won’t really matter as much until you get into more advanced languages such as PHP or ASP.
TRAFFIC How much traffic or how many visitors do you expect monthly? Hosting plans are usually sold at different level plans according to the bandwith that will be required. Bandwidth = Traffic. The more visitors or traffic you expect on your site, the higher the bandwidth you will need, and the more the plan will cost. The best advice here is to start off with a low cost, low bandwidth plan and upgrade it later as the traffic to your website grows.
SHARED OR DEDICATED HOSTING Whether or not to choose shared hosting over dedicated hosting comes down to the following: First a brief description of shared hosting, which is sharing space on a server with dozens or perhaps hundreds of other websites. The main factor here is that you will have no control over the operating system, database structure, etc., and will have to work within the structure setup by the hosting provider. Dedicated or virtual dedicated hosting is different in the sense that you will have full control over the environment that your website resides in, and you will have the only access to that space. Dedicated server hosting gives you full control over setup of the operating system and auxilliary programs such as database management or shopping cart or database management software. This type of hosting is definitely geared to the more advanced user, and usually you won’t be able to get as much customer support because it will be a custom setup. The best advice I can give to the newbie is to use shared hosting at first, until you gain more experience and abilities and are ready to take the plunge into something as advanced as dedicated hosting.
At StartMyWebsiteToday.com I offer 99.9% guaranteed uptime and offer customer service 24/7. We also have a selection of shared, dedicated, and virtual dedicated hosting plans to suit all budgets and sizes and types of websites. To review the options we offer, click HERE: Hosting plans.