 |
|||||||||||
How to Pick the Right Domain Name for Your BusinessAt this stage of the course it is appropriate to talk about websites. With virtually any online business, having a website is essential. Whether you sell a product or promote a service you need a website. Now, if you run an online affiliate business promoting other peoples products then often you do not need a website as you are provided with one. Here is an example of an affiliate website; http://beyond.thesgrprogram.com/. Even if you are with an affiliate program and they give you an affiliate website, then you are still recommended to get your own website. You have so much more flexibility and control. Some affiliate websites you cannot change any aspect of. This other reason for a separate website is search engine rankings. Search engines like Google do not like duplicate content. As such if there are hundreds or thousands of websites with the same content (as is the case with affiliate cookie-cutter sites), then Google are highly unlikely to rank your personal affiliate site. So, get a separate one!
Now if you are new to online marketing then the thought of designing your own website can be a scary thought but hopefully an exciting one. Fortunately, you have several options and technology can help make the job easier. Website Options
Design One Yourself! This is be the best option if you have the time and patience to learn as you will have full control over the site and it offers the most in terms of features and flexibility. As a consequence, it can also be the most difficult option if you are non-techie but not necessarily. You just need to go through the steep learning curve. There are software programs that can help you put up a simple website, two of the most popular are:
Microsoft Frontpage Dreamweaver is the software of choice for many professionals but is also less user-friendly compared to Frontpage. If you are thinking about designing your own website, I would recommend Microsoft Frontpage as a good option. The interface is quite similar to Microsoft Word and so is fairly easy to use for most people. Quite stunning websites can be designed with Frontpage so it's worth a look. Some other Microsoft Office products like Microsoft Publisher can also produce simple websites. For a website, you ideally want to be able to have access to the HTML which is the programming code for the webpage. At first sight it looks impossible to decipher but when you work with it a little, the code is actually quite simple to learn. There is a whole host of free online information on how to code a page using HTML. Simply type in 'learn HTML' into Google. This website www.w3schools.com is an excellent place to start when you have time to learn.
For those who are a little less adventurous or simply have less time to mess about with designing a website, there is another software that I became aware of that is becoming more popular amongst Internet marketers. It is XSitePro. This software is billed as being made by Internet marketers for Internet marketers. It is a simple system to use, very intuitive and you can very quickly rack up a few webpages together to make a website within a short period of time. Arguably, XSitePro is a great piece of software and may be perfect for your needs but it has less flexibility than Frontpage and Dreamweaver. It is a very good starting point. But for flexibility and power (though with a steeper learning curve & more techie) Frontpage is the one to choose.
Get a friend or freelancer to design one for you This is the simplest option to designing a website. Get someone else to make one for you! Most people know a computer-wizard of some description (and they may only be 14 years old!), a bit of persuasion and you will bag yourself a half-decent website. Just give them the content and get them to put a site up for you. If you do not know anyone who knows how to make a website, then you can get a freelancer to make one for you. There are a few sites online where you can post your 'project' up and web-designers will bid for your project. You can get a good basic website made for little money. I have used all of these sites before and can recommend them. RentaCoder The downside to using a freelancer is that if you want changes made, then you will have to contact them and they may ask for more payment even for minor changes. So, at the end of the day, you may end up learning some web-designing yourself anyway in order to maintain the site!
Use an Online Website Builder The final way to get a website made is to use an online service. These services allow you to build a website online and all the hosting is included for you. It is often only a case of drag-drop designing and typing in your text. These are good options if you are starting out but bear in mind that the websites are hosted on their servers, so you cannot really move your website away if you wanted to. This is something you really need to consider especially if you develop an amazing website, you will have to stay with them as moving will be very difficult! Also, they often register a domain for you and if you wanted to move away and use someone else at a later date, then it could prove problematic or they may charge you. So, as an all-in-one solution they are very good but are potentially inflexible. The best option out there is Site Build It! (or SBI). SBI has been established for many years and has proven tools for results. I've used them before and it was very easy to get a website up and running with minimal of fuss. Moon Fruit (an alternative to Site Build It!) Homestead (an alternative to Site Build It!)
Blogs Blogs are like online journals or diaries where people make an entry on a regular basis. They can almost replace the need for a website as some blogs can be pretty comprehensive in themselves. However, to make a blog function like a website you will need to have some programming knowledge and for our purposes I would recommend getting a traditional website. A traditional website is required for some of the marketing techniques that you will be learning about later on. If you want to make a quick start and not mess about with websites or want to leave them until a later date, then I would recommend starting a blog. You can get a free blog at: www.blogger.com
Whatever option you go for, it is worthwhile to eventually learn to make your own website as you then have ultimate control over it and can do as you wish. Some of the marketing techniques at later lessons can get a little technical (I'll try and minimise that!) so any knowledge gained in how your website works is good knowledge to have.
Website Content So, if you have decided to have a website you need to think about content and what you are going to include in your site. Say you were selling a nutritional drink. You may have pages as follows:
The best way to get listed in the search engines is to provide high quality, relevant content. As the saying goes, 'content is king'! It is also quite important that your content is grown over time in order to keep your website fresh and up to date. Remember the library analogy earlier on? Well, if the librarian keeps on reading the same book then they will get bored. Keep adding new chapters to the book and their interest will be kept! If you are selling products, then you may have a shopping cart integrated with your site so customers can buy directly online, this requires a bit more work and you would be advised to consult someone who knows what they are doing. That is beyond the scope of this course. Before you write your website, you need to plan it. So, how do you decide what content to include? Well, the most obvious way is to use commonsense. What information would someone looking for your product/service be interested? The other way, is to brainstorm a list of topics that you think people would want to read about. These topics are your keywords or keyword phrases! For each keyword, you should go through the keyword research process (Lesson 1) and assess the demand and competition for each keyword. You ideally want keywords and phrases with high demand (high number of searches per month) and low competition. This way you are more likely to rank higher in the search engines.
With the business opportunities example we used previously.
A page about 'online business opportunities' would be a better topic than a page about 'business opportunities'. Simply look at the difference in competition! Though the demand is much lower (but still significant), you are more likely to get ranked in the search engines and get some hits. So, get your topic list and do the keyword research. If you don't find any decent keywords, you can still write about it, but do not expect that page to rank too highly. You should continue brainstorming topic areas until you find one with high demand and low competition. Click Here to Revisit the Keywords Lesson. Ensure you do not try to cram too much information onto any one page. In other words, keep each page focused to a particular topic keyword. This will make the information easier to take in for the reader and will also help the search engines list you. You should scatter your keywords around the page but do not plaster it in every sentence as it is called keyword spamming and the search engines will penalise you. There you go, websites explained briefly.
TASK
|
|||||||||||
|
www.seofactory.co.uk.
Copyright © 2008 SEO Elite - IBP10 - Keyword Elite - WebCEO - SEO Articles - XML Sitemap - RSS |
|||||||||||