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08/30/08 It starts as an idea. A picture in your mind. The most awesome site ever that ranks #1 on Google for every keyword known to man and is so popular it even get’s mentioned as the most interesting man in the world’s favorite site in Dos Equis’ commercials. But before all of that, your site is a blank slate, and it’s up to you and your designer to decide what your site will become. Choosing a website designer could seem a little like finding a needle in a haystack. But, with a little help and right questions, you can find a professional, experienced designer that fits your needs. When you're in need of a website for your business or organization, first ask yourself a few basic questions: 1.) What do you want your website to do? Are you looking for your website to serve as the equivalent of an advertisement for your business? Or, do you want it to be able to take input from users and process transactions, (such as credit cards)? Do you want users to be able to download video or audio files? You'll want to meet with your designer to list all of your needs, requirements, design and look-and-feel ideas, and any wish list items you have for your site. Your site is a blank slate before you begin; it’s up to you and your designer to decide what your site will become. 2.) Where should you look to find a designer? Choosing a local designer is almost always your best bet. You can see a list of local website designers on various sites like Kudzu, Google Maps, and Freelance Designers. Because the work of designing a site often requires discussion and brainstorming, it's helpful to be able to discuss your needs, requirements and goals for the site with someone face-to-face. 3.) So, now you've found a few designers. How do you decide which one to use? Visit each designer's website and evaluate what you see. Is the design pleasing to the eye? Is the site easy to use, and is the content written in a natural, easy-to-understand way? If it's not, think carefully before choosing to work with them — your site may turn out to be difficult to use as well. Also consider whether the navigation elements and content (the text on the site) are designed in a consumer friendly manner? Strive to find a designer who has a track record of putting together uncluttered, easy-to-use websites, that focus on the end user getting straight to what they are searching for on the site. 4.) How much will building a website cost? Website designers generally do businesses on an hourly rate, while others prefer the predictable nature of flat-fee-based service. It depends on what the designer and client are most comfortable with. Generally, hourly rates for website designers can fall anywhere from $25 to $85 per hour, or higher. Flat fees for website design projects can range from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars, depending on the requirements. If you have a designer you're thinking of hiring, ask them to provide you an estimate for the project once you've established the needs of your site. 5.) You have a lot of requirements. Should you build everything at once? If you're planning a complex site, ask for pricing options, almost as you would when you purchase an automobile. Ask for pricing for sites of basic, mid-level and premium levels of complexity. If you're not ready to pay the full cost of building out all your requirements at once, consider building your site in phases. Have your basic site built first and add more complex site elements and additional content later.
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08/30/08 It starts as an idea. A picture in your mind. The most awesome site ever that ranks #1 on Google for every keyword known to man and is so popular it even get’s mentioned as the most interesting man in the world’s favorite site in Dos Equis’ commercials. But before all of that, your site is a blank slate, and it’s up to you and your designer to decide what your site will become. Choosing a website designer could seem a little like finding a needle in a haystack. But, with a little help and right questions, you can find a professional, experienced designer that fits your needs. When you're in need of a website for your business or organization, first ask yourself a few basic questions: 1.) What do you want your website to do? Are you looking for your website to serve as the equivalent of an advertisement for your business? Or, do you want it to be able to take input from users and process transactions, (such as credit cards)? Do you want users to be able to download video or audio files? You'll want to meet with your designer to list all of your needs, requirements, design and look-and-feel ideas, and any wish list items you have for your site. Your site is a blank slate before you begin; it’s up to you and your designer to decide what your site will become. 2.) Where should you look to find a designer? Choosing a local designer is almost always your best bet. You can see a list of local website designers on various sites like Kudzu, Google Maps, and Freelance Designers. Because the work of designing a site often requires discussion and brainstorming, it's helpful to be able to discuss your needs, requirements and goals for the site with someone face-to-face. 3.) So, now you've found a few designers. How do you decide which one to use? Visit each designer's website and evaluate what you see. Is the design pleasing to the eye? Is the site easy to use, and is the content written in a natural, easy-to-understand way? If it's not, think carefully before choosing to work with them — your site may turn out to be difficult to use as well. Also consider whether the navigation elements and content (the text on the site) are designed in a consumer friendly manner? Strive to find a designer who has a track record of putting together uncluttered, easy-to-use websites, that focus on the end user getting straight to what they are searching for on the site. 4.) How much will building a website cost? Website designers generally do businesses on an hourly rate, while others prefer the predictable nature of flat-fee-based service. It depends on what the designer and client are most comfortable with. Generally, hourly rates for website designers can fall anywhere from $25 to $85 per hour, or higher. Flat fees for website design projects can range from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars, depending on the requirements. If you have a designer you're thinking of hiring, ask them to provide you an estimate for the project once you've established the needs of your site. 5.) You have a lot of requirements. Should you build everything at once? If you're planning a complex site, ask for pricing options, almost as you would when you purchase an automobile. Ask for pricing for sites of basic, mid-level and premium levels of complexity. If you're not ready to pay the full cost of building out all your requirements at once, consider building your site in phases. Have your basic site built first and add more complex site elements and additional content later.
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08/26/08 Submit a site map to Google. By having a map for the search engine spiders to follow, you are insuring that Google will at least have access to all of your pages. :-) Good Luck and Happy SEOing! |
| 08/25/08 Search Engine Optimization. I get a lot of people asking me about this, and while it can be kind of like a Black Art, here are some proven White Hat tips for optimizing your web site to place better in the search engines. Search engine friendly pages help you achieve high ranking in the search results. If your pages are search engine friendly, then you will be placed at the top of search results for your optimized keywords. These tips will certianly help you achieve high ranking when optimizing and creating new pages. 1. Before creating any page, you must know for which specific keywords are you creating / optimizing page. Concentrate on those specific keywords, use them throughout the web page. Don't flood your page with those keywords, search engine robots are clever enough to point spam, and if you will use those keywords a lot on one page, spam flags will be triggered, which may hurt your current ranking. A good rule of thumb is for every 200 words have your keywords mentioned at least once. 2. Start your page title with that specific keyword, for example I am concentrating on the keywords "photography, graphic design and web sites ", then use these keywords in the title. Don't use more than 5 words in the <title> tag. Use three important meta tags in each page i.e. title, description and keyword. People will often say meta information isn't relevant anymore, but just because Google doesn't place as high an importance elements, that doesn't mean all the other search engines operate the same way. And while Google is an important search engine, it's not the only one. I use about 7 different search engines when I am looking up information on the internet, because Google doesn't always have what I am looking for. 3. The first paragraph is very crucial and important, the search engines (robots) usually pick the first 30-40 words for analysis and ranking, although it doesn't mean that only first paragraph is important. You should use your specific keywords throughout the page. 4. Use your keyword in headline <h1> tag. There have been a lot of discussion on the headline tags, most of the experts believe headline "<h1>" and bold text "<b>" is given extra weight. Do not use <h1> tag so often, use it only 2-3 times in one page, you can easily change the style of <h1> tag using css. For example h1 { font-family: tahoma, helvetica; font-size: 12px; color: 000000;} 5. Use "alt" and "title" tags for images, search engine robots cannot identify graphics and / or flash based SWF files, so always use "alt" tag and put your specific keyword in it. For example when I developed this site, I renamed several of my images to keywords relevant to my end users searchs. It's a good technique for concentrating on specific keywords. 6. Use keyword rich files names, for example if your page is about flower arrangements and you rename it newpage.html, it doesn't make sense, use something like bouquets.html. It not only helps search engines but these URLs are easy to remember. The same applies to the folders / directory names. 7. Anchor text, is also an important factor in high ranking. Anchor text is the mask of any URL, the text which leads to any link. Do not use more than 100 links per page as recommended by Google, as in my case I am concentrating on "photography, graphic design and web design " keywords, so I want to use words like "logo creation, custom graphic design, web design, web development, web programing and professional portrait photography ", on my web pages as these are the decsriptive keywords my target audienc is looking for. 8. Do not use frames, most of the search engines cannot follow frames, use it if you do not have any alternative. The page loaded in frames cannot be read by the search engine robot, so anything or any optimization you do in that page is invisible to the search engine robot. 9. Search engines robots are more clever than you think, so do not try to cheat search engines by doing stuff like using hidden text, hidden variable names with keyword, cloaking etc. You will find tons of tricks to cheat search engines, but what if those tricks get you banned from search engines? If you have found a good trick and you feel it can get you banned simply read search engine guidelines, or ask from the gurus in online SEO communities. 10. Content is king, you might have read this a thousand times, and this is what search engines love. So before creating a new page, collect and write useful, keyword rich and informative content for your page. Do not copy and paste other's content, although there is no proof of "duplicate content penalty" but just don't use it. Search engines love fresh content. Follow these Ten Tips I have mentioned and you will see the results yourself, don't expect to see the results in one to two days, you will see results in 2-3 months or even more. For one of my sites I have seen results after 5 months and reached top 10 positions. Good luck with optimizing and creating search engine friendly pages. :-)  |