SEO Blog and Web Hosting News

Archive for February, 2010

Designing a website may not seem like the easiest of tasks, but with the help of some new web building conveniences that have entered the market in the past few years it is possible to create a professional website for your business with only a small investment of your time and money. In fact, with the advent of greater choice in web design such as ready-made website templates, logos and other corporate necessities, you can build a website in three easy steps.

Step One: Plan Ahead

Before you delve into the world of web design and start looking for a suitable template, it’s important to plan ahead. You need to clearly define your company’s objectives beforehand so that the design selection process goes more quickly and you choose the right template.

For instance, who is your target audience? You must know your customer inside and out in order to choose the best site design for bringing in business. For instance, if most of your business comes from corporations and professionals you will need to choose a template that caters to that group of people – one that gives the right first impression and shows you are a serious business that can handle top-notch clients. In this case, a simple, efficient design will be your top preference. If, however, you are building an ecommerce website selling a range of goods, a template that can be customized for online shopping will probably be your design of choice. Perhaps you require a more “flashy” website? Flash templates are also an option and suit many different types of websites that rely on more than just text and a logo to make money.

Ensure that the template you eventually purchase is easy to customize and update. That’s the whole point of buying a template in the first place – to make both the building of the website and its maintenance stress-free, affordable and fast. You will need to add your own content to the template and work with the overall theme once it is downloaded. Also, most businesses will want to add fresh content, site updates, links etc. as time goes by so keep this in mind when searching for that perfect template. If you plan to incorporate interactive features into your site, such as forms and chat areas, the template you choose should be able to handle this as well.

Step Two: Choose a Template

Now that you are prepared, you can begin shopping for a website template that will work best for your business. Start by researching the many website template companies on the market that offer professional designs for reasonable prices ($20-$40). Most companies offer the choice between copyrighted and non-copyrighted material as well, so if you want to be the only one using the template design spend a little more money to receive exclusive usage. One such website template company I found that offers reasonably priced templates is TemplateDogma(see the link in Resource Box). Once you purchase a copyrighted template it is taken off the market. If you don’t find a template that fits your business precisely, investigate which companies offer to design custom-made templates for your usage. This will cost more but prices are kept lower than hiring a designer and the results are just as good – if not better.

When you find the right template after reviewing the available designs, the rest is simple. All you have to do is purchase the template and download it to your hard drive in seconds.

Step Three: Customize

With the template all ready to go, all you have to do is add your own content, graphics, images – anything you need to make the site your own. If you can use a simple editor such as DreamWeaver or FrontPage, this can be done in a few days or less. If you are inexperienced when it comes to any aspect of web design you can hire someone to do the editing for you for a very small fee – much smaller than what you would pay a designer to create the whole site from scratch.

When adding content, if you only require a few simple words, consider writing the text yourself. If you need a lot more information, such as product descriptions, articles or sales content, consider hiring a writer to create unique, high-quality content. Because you saved so much money purchasing a ready-made website template, you can spend a little more hiring a great writer! If you write the material on your own, remember to keep it short. Keep paragraphs short and don’t bog the reader down with unnecessary information. People are in a hurry and don’t want to spend a lot of time reading pages and pages of writing. Let your visitors get the information they need so they can move on and buy your product or service, but also make sure the information you provide is actually helpful and written without grammar or spelling mistakes.

The overall design should be kept simple, but that doesn’t mean you can’t add graphics, pictures or even video. As long as you keep it uncomplicated visitors will not regret visiting your site and learning more about your business. Not everyone has high-speed Internet yet, so fast loading pages are still a consideration.

Other additions include tables, forms and quizzes. Tables specifically are an easy way to organize text on a web page and they load very quickly. Most HTML editors make it easy to generate tables on your website.

Website templates have brought web design out of its infancy and into the 21st century, catering to the unique needs of the online business owner, so don’t be afraid to take advantage of the convenience – you won’t regret the decision.

We have seen in our previous topic, how to increase your traffic.
In some circumstances, you may need to increase your traffic immediately or to boost it in order to spread a new product or an offer or or simply to implement your viral marketing. Well there is 3 easy to do that and we will explain them now. You can: Buy targeted traffic to your site, email to your list, or make a Joint Venture(JV).

To buy fast and immediate traffic, you will need to go to google or one of the other alternatives like overture from yahoo..
You may need to know how to use google adwords first, there is excellent ebooks on this subject, that will save you a lot of money, and avoid your ad to be deactivated.
That type or advertising is called Pay Per Click advertising. You will set a daily budget for your campaign, and you will only pay when some one make a click on your link. You will be able to see your ad on the right table of the page, when you search for specific keywords.
You will need to track your campaign.
For example, you can buy 3 different advertising sources, pay the same price for each, then track with a software which advertising gives you more results.
Then go on, like that you will save your money.
The second way is to email to your list. You must understand the sale process. In a nutshell, visitors are surfing they fall on your site, but they probably won’ t come back except if you offer them an incentive, or newsletter, something that will bring them back:
You can send a promotional email, twice a month or once
Send valuable information between the promotional offer.

The last tip for immediate traffic is Joint Venture.
You have to get other websites to send email to their list, place your link on their website, and you will pay them only when they process a sale.
Pay them 50% or more.
And make the sale easy for them, prepare for them the subject and body of the emails, prepare the affiliate link they will put on their websites, and any other material you can use.
And who knows, you will maybe find some good friends out there.

Do you use Manual Surf Traffic Exchanges to drive traffic to your websites or affiliate links?

In case if you are a new internet marketer and do not know what is a Manual Surf Traffic Exchange, here is a short explanation:

“Manual Surf Traffic Exchange is a online service, where members can show their websites to other members, by viewing (surfing) other members websites.”

This is a very easy way to receive traffic, especially if you have limited budget, but have time to view other websites. And if you don’t want to pay your time, you can purchase traffic directly from traffic exchange programs.

However, you should know that these type of traffic is “ineffective” traffic. Ineffective means the conversion rate of your product or service from traffic exchanges will be lower than other highly targeted traffic sources like PPC visitors.

Note, this does not mean using traffic exchange is not profitable. This is because the cost of each traffic exchange hit is greatly cheaper than other traffic sources.
And if you do it right, the ROI (Return On Investment) will be positive.

Many marketers claim that Manual Surf Traffic Exchange is not useful. They are completely wrong because they missed some very important keys when using traffic exchanges.

Now let me expose two of the secret keys that will turn your traffic exchange failure to success:

1. Method – Capture Leads And Do Not Sell Directly

Every traffic exchange user is busy at surfing. They do not have time and intention to read your long webpage. So NEVER put your sales page. Instead, put a lead capturing page with a “Attention Grabbing Headline”, “Amazing Benefits” and a “Opt In Form”. Remember, your purpose is to capture email addresses and then follow up with additional sales materials.

2. Target – Webmasters Who Want Traffic

Do you notice the common purpose of the traffic exchange users? Yes they are webmasters or affiliates who want to promote their own websites. Remember, these people is your target market, not kids, not elders. If you are promoting high quality advertising related product or service, then I can guarantee you will convert them to sales very well!

Now it is your time to make money by using traffic exchanges! Here is the number one manual surf traffic exchange that I would like to recommend – TopSurfer.

TopSurfer not just provides real and steady traffic, and its wholesale membership is also the best among all traffic exchanges. You not just receive traffic, and you can also make 100% profit by reselling the membership! Visit this link to join:

http://www.marktse.com/topsurfer/

To your online success,
Mark Tse

PS. Want to rule traffic exchanges? Get all the keys from “Traffic Exchange Secrets Revealed”:

http://www.marktse.com/recommend/traffic-exchange-secrets/