Selecting a Professional Web Designer Choosing a designer to develop your web property is without a doubt one of the most important decisions you will make in the preparation of your online business, and can have a significant impact on your overall potential for success. Effective web design is a product of experience, a keen understanding of the competitive world of ecommerce, and the technologies relative. Selection of a developer lacking in up to date technical knowledge, or one without an eye for the customer can set you quickly on the road to dot com failure. Some criteria to carefully consider when selecting your central development team include the following: Experience what properties have they developed to date? what has been the success rate of those properties? have they developed ecommerce sites, or purely information based properties? can they provide references who may be contacted? Technical Scope what development tools have they utilized in the past? what ecommerce solutions have they recommended? are all site add-ons developed in-house, or are they usually out-sourced? if out-sourced, who is the provider, and what is their range of experience? what is their comfort level with relatively new technology, such as database development, Flash development, Java? Customer Fulfillment what do they consider the determining factors in developing a customer oriented site? what steps would they take pre-development to determine the property needs necessary to customer satisfaction? what history of customer based development can they show? General what is the projected timeline for development of the property? have they experienced delays in delivery in the past? do they offer site maintenance and upgrade options? will they train the owner to administer the site, once launched? Pricing what financial commitments do they require prior to beginning the design function? what is the projected overall cost, including all recommended elements? what are the projected costs for regular site upgrades? can these projected costs be put into writing? do they provide any form of satisfaction guarantee? A careful exploration of all potential options can mean the difference between overnight success, and almost instant failure on the web. Finding the perfect mix of developer experience and pricing can be a challenge, especially for the business owner uninitiated in the technologies and terminologies of the internet. With attention to detail, any avid learner can pick up a sufficient level of knowledge to make the right decision, one that results in their online success. Would you like to use this article on your site, or have it emailed to you Related Subjects: Develop your own website Top ten web design tips top of professional web designer page
Search Engine Ranking – Keywords, Descriptions, and Popularity as a Tool
Preparing Your Site for True Search Engine Popularity with Keywords site and keyword optimization services and softwares >>> To this day, many budding web designers preparing their own piece of internet real estate often neglect to incorporate well thought out keywords or descriptions into their site design concept. Some leave the area untouched, while others choose to include hundreds of keywords, which in the end can have as little value as none at all. Keywords, though an aging aspect of search engine inclusion and end placement, continue to play a role in those engines that are entirely spider based, scouring the internet for newcomers offering content of value to their visitors. Many of these sites consider some, or all of the following site inclusions when determining their overall ranking within their listings: Title Your site title should be succinct, no longer than six or seven words, and must include selected keyword(s), in a logical order, and in as sensible and appealing a fashion as can be developed. When listed, this area will be featured on the spider-based engines as your highlighted drawing card, and must have appeal to your customers in order to be effective. Important keywords should be placed prominently within the title so as to indicate to the spider that these keywords play a significant role in the nature of the page. Description There are a variety of search engine expectations with regard to the description area, and the number of terms or phrases that should be included. To offer a simplified suggestion, keep your description to the point, within a reasonable number of words – say between six and fifteen. Utilize both the keywords placed within the title, as well as additional versions of those words, such as plurals, and other related terms felt to be common queries within your market. Prominence plays a role here as well, so keep your major keywords in mind when writing the description, and if the number of words is growing too large when all aspects are incorporated, consider moving the pluralized forms into the meta keyword, and body areas. Meta Keywords Determining the keywords of most value to your operation can be an arduous, but necessary task. Utilizing tools such as the Overture search frequency tool can play a strong role in simplifying this process. In the end, your quest should be the targeting of keywords that are popular, entirely relevant to your product or service, with as little competition as possible. For example, a company in the area of alternative health would do better to focus on keywords relative to specific ailments, where the number of sites focused on these areas is low, versus targeting the keyword health, for which competition is in the millions. As in all other areas, select and place your keywords in careful order, keeping overall prominence, and number of words in mind. Don’t overdo it in this area, as too many keywords are a signal to some engines to ignore a site that may simply be attempting to misdirect traffic through the inclusion of a barrage of keywords, versus actual content. A safe number of keywords would be in the ten to twenty range. Body Text Inclusion of keywords in your page’s body text, as well as the volume and placement of those keywords is an additional factor reviewed by search engine spiders. As they say, content is king, and a well written content page can please both spider oriented engines, as well as the keen eye of a manual review. Keep your keywords in mind throughout development of your page, targeting all forms of the keywords you are featuring. As prominence again plays a role, it may be of value to place your most potentially important words both near the beginning, and end of your content area. Link Text Search engines will also take note of your site’s linked text, as an indicator of overall relevance. Ensure that your incorporate keywords into both the text portion of the link that your visitors will encounter, as well as the actual page name that the link will transfer them too. In order for link page names to be legible to an engine interested in them, phrases must be broken up into blocks, as in the following: http://www.onlineforsuccess.com/internet-marketing-directory.htm In this example, keywords internet, marketing, and directory are utilized to the best advantage of the site development team. Other forms of breaking up phrases include the use of the underscore: _ Comments and Alt Tags Site designers often incorporate keywords into their comment and alt tag areas as well. Comments are notes to the designer made while developing site areas to remind them of each area’s location and/or designation. Alt tags are placed alongside link text so that the site visitor who places their cursor over the link can see a quick summary of that link’s offering. Adding keywords to these areas is not an imperative, but assists in establishing the overall nature of the site with the engine. Keep the number of keywords to a minimum, as too many comments and/or alt tags can again be seen as abuse, and result in non-inclusion. All of the above areas are of value in designing a site that intends to develop traffic flow via search engine listings. Other factors of recent importance include overall site popularity, which is a search engine measurement of the number of sites linked to your property, and the newest technique, theme indexing, which measures the overall nature of your site, versus the nature of individual pages within that site. Understanding these concepts, and applying them to your final stages of design are imperative to successful traffic generation, and your overall potential for online success. Would you like to use this article on your site, or have it emailed to you? Related Subjects: Preparing your site for directory based search engines – Yahoo! Site optimization software & services – more than just keywords Analyze your site traffic – softwares and services directory top of site design for search engine popularity
Promote Your Internet Business Ideas on the Search Engines
Creating a Search Engine Friendly Site site optimization services and softwares >>> You’ve given thought to your idea for some time. In the end, you’ve chosen to act upon your dreams, and began the planning process for development of your own online business presence. You have researched potential products, established your domain name, and arranged for, or completed construction of your virtual property. The site includes every feature your potential customers are looking for, is laid out in an efficient and focused manner, and is sure to convert lookers into the all-important buyer. Every conceivable aspect of design, construction, and consumer research is complete, and you are finally ready to launch your creation. Or are you? With the hard work, and financial investment relative to the building, and establishment of a quality internet property, ensuring its overall popularity on the search engines is key. Without proper planning relative to achieving quality search listings, the launch of any new enterprise can turn into an anticlimactic affair. Search engines continue to provide a potential wealth of traffic to the online entrepreneur of today – traffic that can make or break the newly launched ecommerce site. Preparing your site to deliver a top ranking search result for specific, targeted keyword(s) is imperative to a lower cost of operation, and a stronger business model. There are a number of varieties of search engines out there today, each requiring a different approach in achieving a meaningful ranking. The three most common today are: True Search Engines These database sites scour the internet based upon both submitted recommendations, and links to new sites found through existing ones, adding properties that meet preset requirements, and categorizing them for future use. The largest example of this type of search engine is Google, the largest internet database anywhere. Directory Based Search Engines These portals attempt to provide greater usability and site quality to their visitors by manually reviewing every site submission before including the property in the search results seen by their users. Yahoo is the largest current example of a directory based search engine, with thousands of manually reviewed sites. Many directory operators now charge a fee for submission, to cover the expense associated with the manual review process. Pay Per Placement Search Engines These providers have taken a previously frustrating site owner experience, and turned it into a hugely successful enterprise. With the growth of the internet market, submission turnaround time was becoming increasingly slow, a strong negative to the site owner requiring traffic today, not six months from today. The pay per clicks delivered the ability for the newcomer to the market to immediately achieve top ranking on some of the internet’s most travelled sites, through successful keyword bidding. The most popular of these services is GoTo.com, whose top bidded listings are given priority placement on many of the large scale portals, including AOL, MSN, and AltaVista. Achieving a popular, traffic generating listing within both the true and directory based engines is no simple task. The rules applied either mathematically, or manually in the case of the directories, are complex, and consistently changing. The constant shifts in requirements are applied regularly in an attempt to better filter out abusers of the system, whose sites offer little in the way of true content or quality. This reality has made the required effort on the part of the honest operator far greater than ever before. Utilizing tools to measure your site’s potential for success within these different environments is an imperative to assuring that you are both successfully listed, and achieving strong search result based traffic numbers as quickly as possible. With the increased demand for this type of specific and carefully measured targeting within one’s site design, there has been a signficant increase in the number of service offerings in this area. The nature of these offerings vary from operations that charge a monthly fee to manage your site’s search engine preparation, and monthly submission, with guaranteed results for specific keywords, to softwares that analyze your site construction based upon the same algorhythyms utilized by the engines themselves to assess overall potential. In the end, the product you select will depend largely upon the ability of your target market’s search potential to deliver large volumes of traffic if proper placement is achieved. If, however, your market is so niche that you feel the number of searches relative to be too low to justify the expense associated, you may choose to prepare your site on your own, utilizing some of the tools offered by Online for Success. This approach can be far more efficient, and effective, for the internet business owner who wishes to establish their listings within a non-competetive market, or one who simply cannot afford the costs associated with pay for service offerings. Would you like to use this article on your site, or have it emailed to you? Related Subjects: Preparing your site for directory submission – Yahoo! Preparing your site for spider based search engine submission Site optimization software & services – more than just keywords top of search engine help page