Cross Linking with the services

Optimizing the content of your HTML, using proper headers and titles, is one way to get search engines to sit up and pay attention. However, the number and quality of links is one of the most important factors in the way the search engines calculate how relevant and authoritative a page is. As the title and headers are the most important parts of the page, so the hyperlink is the most important part of the entire Web.

the revolution in search that was pioneered by Google in the late 1990s and early 2000s was based on the concept that the relationships expressed between sites was more important than the content of the site itself - that as more sites linked to a specific page or site, that site was deemed to be more valid and more relevant.
For our site this means that cooperating with systems that will promote links both to and from your site will increase the perceived relevancy of your site. The more inbound links from trusted sources you have, the better.

Sites that are used to bookmark or otherwise register people's attention on the Web - such as Yahoo!s del.icio.us and the independent sites such as Digg, reddit, and ma.gnolia - can be valuable resources of links. Furthermore, by participating in these systems, you ensure that your content can also easily be found by the users of these systems as well as by search engines.

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A Good Site Menu

Because you cannot know the entry point of your visitors (or you lose a lot of potential visitors if you force them to go via the homepage), you need to cater to visitors arriving at any place in your site. There are some simple rules any menu system should follow to be usable and accessible regardless of how fancy it turns out to be in the end:

- At any point in time the visitor should know where in the page hierarchy they are and what is available in the immediate surroundings.

- The menu should be obvious to the visitor in the first few milliseconds they see the page. In order for a visitor to feel at ease with your site, it is crucial to distinguish between the page content and the connection to all the other things you have to offer.

- The current page should never link to itself - why should it? (One exception is if the link is a permutation of the current page, like a print version or a permanent link for a blog entry, but neither should be part of a menu.)

- The menu entry of the current page or, if you are on a page deeper in the hierarchy, the entry and its parent section should look different than the rest of the menu. Visitors should be able to quickly identify which part of the site they are in.

In addition to these basic principles for the site menu, there are other ways of giving visitors a helping hand when they arrive on one of the pages of your site.

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Help visitors find content

There are many ways to promote and allow people to find out more about the content of your site. The main menu with sub-menus is the lifeline of your web site. Using it should allow visitors to get anywhere in your site. This does not mean that you need to offer all options in a single menu; that could become overwhelming and counter productive. It means that before you even start thinking about what kind of navigation you want to offer, you should think about how to sort and collate all the information you want to convey.

The skill set to be able to find common terms to collate information and sort it in a logical manner is called information architecture, and it happens on both the page and the site level. If you visit a web site like the Yahoo! homepage or Amazon and you wonder why some material is shown in a certain way on the scree and which content is available only by drilling down into certain sections, you might not at first realize it but a lot of research and testing went into those, and there are reasons for the placement of everything on the page.
A big part of being able to offer information that can be easily found and used is connected with psychology and heuristic information about how humans use web sites. This is call usability - the science that analyzes and defines how we use things. This could be an ATM, a coffee maker, or a web site - in the end, the human factor plays a very important part in how successful any product will be.

Some visitors will not use your menu at all but will immediately seek a search option to find what they are looking for. This is why sites should always offer a site search, even when you just start out with 10 pages - it is amazing how fast your site can grow. Almost every large search engine out there offers you ways to implement their search forms catered to your look and feel in your site, and blog systems such as WordPress have a built in search.

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The organic growth of a website

Here's something most web designers/ developers learn early in their career: a web site is never finished. If you already expect the site structure and size to change, you'll save yourself a lot of trouble and frustration.
Do not waste your time building a menu that has a fixed size and caters only to a certain amount of menu entries. Instead, make sure that you can add or delete items, replace link texts with other terms, and extend items with other entries in the hierarchy below them.

In other words: a good web site has a menu that can be easily changed, extended, and even renamed. You can achieve that in one of two ways:

- Use real HTML text links as the menu and give it a logical semantic structure (normally an unordered list). This means that you can easily change the text when you need it and translate it into other languages should you want to offer a multilingual site in the future, while visitors can easily resize the menu to their needs (not every body can see as well as you might). In this day and age, you can use CSS to make a text menu look as fancy as a graphical one.

- Use server side includes and a server side language to maintain the menus. This is also what content management systems or blogging systems such as Wordpress do for you.

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Different Layouts for different needs

There are no rules for laying out a website. Instead, there are many options and you have to be sure to pick what works best for your site and your intended audience. You can position the menu to the top, the left, the right, the bottom, or even in the page - whatever floats your boat. Each of these approaches has different issues and virtues:

- The more or less de facto standard of a website layout calls for a header, a left hand menu, a content slot with a right hand extra slot of advertising or contextual navigation, and a footer.

- Many blog layouts break that convention by offering a header with a very short horizontal menu, a large content block, and a right hand menu, thus making the content of the page the center of attention and offering the other menu options as alternatives to explore further.

- A lof of e-commerce web sites (with Amazon taking the lead) use a tabbed menu, giving visitors the option to go directly where they intend to go while offering lists of products in the main slot with contextual second-level menus on the left and promotions on the right.

Creating a complex layout in HTML can be a tiring and annoying process, mainly due to browser inconsistencies and some misconceptions of what web design is. Once again, you can use a library or CSS solutions other developers created and tested for you.

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Best Web Design

Good design means creating a look that both appeals to your target market and compliments your brand.

Now that you've got your content all ready to go and have organized it appropriately, it's time to add some designs into the mix, so the whole thing is pleasing to your user's eyes and is appropriate to your brand. But how much design do you need to really make your website great? The debate over how much emphasis to place on a site's graphic design (also called design) is one that seems to have been going on since the first day of the internet. For those who are just joining this story in progress, here is how it's gone so far:

In the beginning, there was the internet. Thousands and thousands of geeks wrote code all day long, putting web pages out there in cyber space to be viewed over a vast network of technology by thousands and thousands of other geeks. For a while, people (mostly geeks) were content to create and to visit sites constructed entirely of text. Then other people discovered the World Wide Web, and soon they became more sophisticated in their online expectations. No longer was it cool for every website to look basically the same. Users wanted to be able to tell websites apart, and website owners wanted to distinguish their sites from others so users would notice them, spend more time there, and come back. Before long, both users and owners were craving variety and pizzazz. They wanted websites with more functionality, more content, more .. design.

Originally, the designer's job was to add visual elements (pictures, color, shading, borders, etc.) and symmetry (the arrangement of design elements and text on a page) to a site. The goal wasn't so much to create an artistic design as it was to effectively translate a company's brand into what was called a recognizable web presence, so that, for example, when users logged on to iboobo.com, they'd know essentially what they were going to get.

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Turn your brand into Cash

You probably already defined your brand when you started your company and have infused it into everything you've done - from your logo to your products and marketing materials. In that case, you'll want to convey that same brand in the look and feel of your website, in order to capitalize on and to strengthen your brand recognition in the market.

If you haven't defined your brand yet, now is a good time to do it, before you design (or redesign) your website. That way, as you develop or update each aspect of your business - whether it's your website, logo, tagline, brochures, product, or lines - your brand will be reflected consistently throughout your enterprise.. and will become instantly recognizable to customers and potential customers.

What is a brand? We defines brand as:

A product, service, or concept that is publicly distinguished from other products, services, or concepts so that it can be easily communicated and usually marketed. A brand name is the name of the distinctive product, service, or concept. Branding is the process of creating and disseminating the brand name. Branding can be applied to the entire corporate identity as well as to individual product and service names.

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Color Associations

For your reference, here is a list of colors and some common associations ascribed to them. Generally speaking, warm, cold, and neutral indicate that color's typical hue. White and black are considered base colors, and only acquire a hue when another color is added to them.

Red (Warm). Red is readily visible and attracts attention. Red represents intensity and urgency; it is the color of blood, fire, heat, desire, war, danger, rage, strength, power, and speed. Some say looking at the color red can increase your blood pressure, metabolism, and appetite. Red is commonly used for stop signs, "For Sales" Signs, and "Buy Now" and "Click here" buttons. Lighter shades of red and pink might represent love, passion, and romance.

Orange (Warm). Orange is also highly visible and quite intense but less so than red. Orange is associated with sunshine, joy, creativity, autumn, energy, and warmth. As an interesting side note, in 1999, orange was the most frequently used color on websites.

Green (Cool). Green is the primary color of nature, healing, growth, prosperity, and harmony. Green is soothing and is often associated with freshness, purity, money, and recreation.

Brown (Neutral). Brown is the color of earth, structure, and wholesomeness.

Blue (cool). Blue is the color of the sea and the sky. Blue is fluid, cool, receding, calming, clear, intuitive, and vocal. the color blue represents truth, intelligence, faith, heaven, confidence, vision, peace, agreement, and consciousness. Blue is at the far end of the color spectrum from red and represents the opposite of red. Dark blue is common among corporate logos and can represent depth and stability.

Purple (Warm or cool). Purple, a mixture of red and blue, literally combines the energy and excitement of red with the depth and stability of blue. For some, this combination is psychologically difficult to resolve and can create tension, but for more people, purple represents power, luxury, mystery, magic, and rarity. The color purple is often associated with royalty, fantasy, and the artist formerly known as Prince (and now known as prince again).

White (base) Technically, white is the combination of all the colors of light. In essence, a rainbow (which is simply a shaft of sunlight) is white, and its colors come from the light's reflection on water (clouds/rain). White represents purity, clarity, innocence, cleanliness, levity, light, goodness, virginity, impenetrability, godliness, faith, life, and safety. Other associations: dairy, angels, hospitals, and heath.

Black (base) Technically, black is the absence of light and, Hence, the absence of color. Black can represent power, authority, strength, elegance, and formality - or, on the other side of the fence, it can represent fear, death, despair, evil, and enigma. Black is also associated with simplicity. Black in combination with other colors can be very powerful. On a website, too much black, especially as a background or in large chunks, can distract attention and cause the images on the page to recede. The human eye is attracted to and stimulated by light. When bombarded with black, which is the absence of light, we are compelled to try to escape the darkness and to look for other visual stimuli.

Based on this list of colors and their associations, think about a color scheme for your site that is appropriate, both to your brand and to your demographic. For instance, a site that focuses on eco friendly architecture is likely to be clean looking and have green and white as its main color themes, while financial institutions are more likely to design with a shade of dark blue that instills trust and confidence in their visitors.

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Forums and Chat room

Over the last three years somewhere in the region of 5,000 posts across a whole load of forums and a chat rooms. Now, the beauty of forums is that more often than not they allow the user to create a profile, and one of the fields is URL. Most people leave this blank or add a link to their Facebook/ MySpace page- such a waste. Add your company Web site address. In many case of the company, if the company sold kit parts for cars, and here they were chatting on performance-car-related sites. They quickly added the URL of the business to their profile, and, being dynamic, the forums updated every post this company had ever placed on their sites with a link to their own Web site. With over 5,000 inbound relevant links to their credit, their site became an authority site overnight with a PageRank of 7. From page 8 to page 1 in 24 hours, it really make excellent.

Entertaining the Masses

The other search engines are not to be sneezed at- it’s all very well being number 1 on Google, but truth be told, although 80 percent of the search market is Google-led, that still leaves a massive one in five Internet searchers who choose not to use Google for whatever reason. Are you just as high on Live.com, Yahoo!, or AskJeeves? If not, work on figuring out why not. Theoretically, if you rank highly on Google, you also ranked highly everywhere but Google.

Business Directories

They’re out there and they are used- they just don’t advertise themselves very well. Every city or county government will have a register or list of companies and businesses in the area, and most offer a chance for you to add yourself or at least alter the information held on your business. The business was sold four years ago and ceased trading soon afterward, yet they still come. These sites do work, so be sure you and your business are listed.

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How comment affect your site

No matter how well you promote your business and your site, someone, somewhere may have it in for you: a disgruntled customer, an ex-employee, an obnoxious member of the public…

Disgruntled customers, whether they’ve explained their problem to you or not, may decide to use the Web to vent; sometimes they’ll write negative comments about a company in their blogs. Some of your competitors might like to damage your reputation by creating fake comments about your site.

No matter how good your company is, some people will write something negative about your site even if you tried your best to help them. What can you do if Web page with negative comments appears on the first result page for your company name?

Ask and Thou Shalt Receive…

That is not as unlikely as it might appear. All Webmasters are conscious of ranking and SEO and are striving to be the highest in their own field. If you send the Webmaster of the Web page in question a polite e-mail and ask for the removal of the negative comments, he or she has no control over the quality or accuracy of the comments submitted. Be friendly, polite, and self-effacing and don’t ever threaten the other person. Many Web master will cooperate if you explain the issue.

Give Web Pages with Positive Comments about You a Boost

Find Web sites that contain positive comments about your site, whether they are links, comments, or testimonials. Link to those pages from your own site to increase the link popularity of those particular pages. The Web pages with the positive comments may get more inbound links and higher rankings, thus forcing them to leapfrog over the site with the negative comments. Granted, this is counterproductive to establishing your site as the number 1 site, but if you’re a long way off, better the devil you know. . . .

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Gather some feedback

You have a handle on how many people are finding your site (and how long they're staying there, so let's dig a little deeper and figure out how many many of them are becoming your customers. For, as the saying goes, when you know better, you do better. That adage certainly applies to your site's conversion rate, the percentage of casual visitors that convert to paying customers and to users' opinions of your site. The next step in your discovery process, beyond the site statistics even, is to gather and evaluate the sales data and as much customer feedback about your site as you can muster. This information will help you even more as you begin to construct your new site, as it will tell you what's working (and what's not) about your existing web presence. For instance, if you have a particular "call to action," like a two for one offer or a bestselling product call out that's really prominent in the data, put that on the list of "things to keep". If you find you have a page that one one ever goes to or that people are complaining about, definitely put that on your list of things to leave behind.

So where to look for this golden information? Well, you can start by looking back at the history of sales on your site. Looking at your sales statistics (or sales stats) will give you a clear picture of what's selling and what's not, so you can further hone your ideas of what you customers really want and hopefully give them more.

To borrow another adage: You can't know where you're going unless you know where you've been. Now is the time to gather up the current sales information for your site, so that you can get a clear picture of your baseline and set some goals for improvement. After all, you don't want to put in all this effort, only to be unable to tell if your numbers are going up. You should collect and evaluate your sales data on a regular basis, at least monthly, if not weekly. You'll want to determine the following information.

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Getting Repeat Customer

Do you have an effective way of measuring return visitors to your site and their ordering habits? If you're using an online shopping cart/ merchant account service (such as Yahoo! Business), they will definitely have these statistics for you. If your site doesn't take credit cards, just make identifying any matching names/orders part of your weekly sales data collection and evaluation, and create a database or Excel spreadsheet to keep track of this information.

Why is this important? Because repeat customers are your bread and butter, and they should be treated as such. Knowing and being responsive to your customers' wants, needs, likes, and dislikes will keep them coming back for more. Use every available strategy to increase your volume of repeat customers and every available means to appease them. There are many ways to reach out to your steady customers. For instance, would they like to be on a monthly subscription program for a specific product or product line? Would they like to hear about special offers or receive coupons? Do you have a physical mailing list of customers and prospects with whom you consistently communicate? If so, do you also have their email address? If not, we will start capturing those.

If you have a content only site or sell services or products that can not be measured, these number s obviously aren't as important to you. However, any time you notice one of your users coming back for more, so to speak, in the way of renewed subscriptions or even by way of repeated email comments or inquiries from the same person, make sure to put this person on a special preferred customer list. This person wants to buy what you are selling!

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Excellent Online Business

Studies show that as few as 4 percent of dissatisfied customers complain to the company with which they are unhappy. In the very best of circumstances, a mere 30 percent voice their complaints to a company. That means that 70 to 96 percent of unhappy campers never say a peep to you, anyway. But they will tell seven to ten other people about their displeasure with your company.

With online businesses, it can be even worse. Numerous studies have shown that excellent service is the most important factor in online customer satisfaction. When online customers are ticked off about your site, not only will they tell the seven to ten people they regularly come into contact with, they might broadcast it to the world by posting it on their blog or any of the myriad online complaint sites out there. Plus, because of the immediate nature of the internet, online customers tend to expect a faster response to their complaints.
Another startling reality is that more than two thirds (63 percent) of dissatisfied customers never come back. That's a big chunk of lost business, when you consider that for most businesses, an average of 65 percent of their income comes from repeat business. At a time when brand loyalty is crucial to the success of any business, customer service can make, or break, an online enterprise.

As scary as all this might seem, customer complaints are actually a good thing. After all, you can't fix something if you don't know it's broken. If your site gets a decent amount of traffic and there's something amiss, a weird piece of technology that's not working, a broken link, an egregiously misspelled word, it's really only a matter of time before you get an email or two about it, if you haven't already. In that case, look at a user complaint as an opportunity to improve your site.

Also keep in mind that the majority of your users are probably satisfied with the site as it is and that no one expects absolute perfection. There is only so much you can do to prevent and resolve problems. Inevitably, something is going to slip through the cracks, and when it does, you'll deal with it. Just do what you can to avoid errors and to resolve them when you become aware of them.

Responding quickly, directly, and fully to user complaints will improve customer satisfaction. Sometimes it can even bring back a disgruntled customer. And it definitely will boost your sales.

Build Your keyword list

In order to make your website successful, you must make sure that the words on your site and the words for which people are searching are the same. If your site is not keyword rich (meaning it has the right supply of in-demand keywords), the search engine will be unlikely to find it. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to use the tools to build a keyword list - right now, before you start creating (or revamping) your website - which you will use later to design a site that search engines are sure to find, sending a slew of new users your way. Having a killer keyword list will help you create great content for your site, raise your search engine ranking, and create an effective pay per click advertising campaign to drive more traffic to your site.
This exercise requires a few minutes, an Excel spreadsheet, and a keen sense of curiosity. With these three things, you can home in on which keywords are most likely to drive users to your site and pretty much estimate how many of them are interested in buying what you're selling.

Building your keyword list will involve the following steps:

1. Create an Excel spreadsheet named Keyword Research. You will be adding to this spreadsheet after the initial research, if you expand your inventor or get more ambitious with your online advertising.

2. Go to the Google AdWords Keyword Tool and start by typing in the most general word or words that relate to your site.

3. Copy and paste the list generated by the Keyword Tool into your spreadsheet for future reference. Right now, you're just trying to generate a list of search words/terms that might lead people to your site. Copy and paste all the words that come up, even if they only had a hundred searches last month. Later, when we cover online advertising, those infrequently searched keywords is your advantage.

4. Keep typing in words - you'll find some crazy stuff that will rapidly build up your keyword list. This exercise is fun!

5. Keep going until you have at least 250 words.

Once you've build your keyword list, you can (and should) keep adding to it, as you think of other keywords that apply to your business, build your website, expand your product line, and add content to your site. In the process of building and updating your keyword list, you will probably also stumble across and brainstorm other ideas for your site, so always keep a notebook handy to jot them down.

Forums, Communities, and RSS

A sticky site is one in which users fell happy spending time and time and they have a reason to return again and again.

If you can create a community feeling on your site, you will reap the rewards in terms of numbers of visitors and consumers regardless of what you are selling or promoting on the Web. Google will notice this activity and also will note the many mentions of keywords related to your market on a daily basis. If every time the Googlebot visits, there’s tons of relevant, new, and original content, guess what’s going to happen to your ranking?

A Home from Home

When it comes to comfort, we would all prefer a soft and luxurious hotel comforter to a starchy, stained motel blanket. This is the feeling you need to replicate for users. Envelop them in your expertise and knowledge, convince the world that your Web site is the definitive provider of information or products, and give them a nice warm feeling-all that makes it nearly impossible for them to leave. When users fell relaxed and at ease, they automatically want to spend more time on your site, and if there is something to buy, hands are going to be reaching into wallets. And never underestimate the power of word of mouth. With the prevalence of chat rooms, discussion boards, forums, and blogs, it does not take long for news to get around. Ideally, users will be so impressed with your site and your service that they will tell their friends.

We’re Not Really in the Right Market for Forums

Cars are easy and popular, but what about my dental Web site or my engineering firm? Well, we’re back to a phrase that was popular in the late 1990s- “content is king”- and it really is. If your site has great copy that is updated regularly and is of interest to users, they’re going to want to read it. If there’s a forum that appears to be well used, they’ll be inclined to join in: “I didn’t know there were so many people interested in collecting beer coasters.” With the invention of RSS feeds, the hard work has been done for you. You post a message or an article, and those who’ve signed up get a feed-and if there are links on the feed, they come back to visit your site.

Good and Bad Navigation

The Force may well have worked for Luke Skywalker, but your users are not Jedi’s… They need to be shown a clear, well-defined path they can follow.

Navigate This, if You Can

Keyword prominence and relevance should be your primary concern in terms of creating effective copy for a Web site, but it all starts with the navigation on the site. You have to be clear and concise in your offering. JavaScript has its place, but Google can’t see it. That means that without a site map it can’t index your site; the Googlebot will just get stuck on your home page. Graphical representation of buttons looks great, but Google can’t see the words you added to the graphics, making those links redundant. Simple, honest text links work well for human users and robots. Anything else is actually detrimental to your site and its potential for being ranked.

Irrelevant Navigation

Most Web site design aficionados will sign the praises of keeping the navigation consistent throughout a site to promote familiarity and ease of use, but Google doesn’t need to have its hand held so tightly- in fact, it would prefer it if the navigational options altered as it entered different sections or areas of the site. For example, let’s say you have a B2C and a B2B offering on your Web site. you will always rank higher on Google if the navigation alters with the section of the site users find themselves in. your navigation should always be subject-specific and dense in relevant and related keywords. If I’m in the personal banking section of a Web site, there’s no need to show me your business banking options- they’re irrelevant to me and to Google.

The Three-Click Rule

This dates back to dawn of the Internet but remains true- your user needs to conclude a visit to your site within three clicks of the mouse. If you’re selling products, that third click should be for adding the item to user’s basket. If your site is there primarily to provide information and prospect for new clients, that third click should be to your “contact us” page or to an online inquiry form. If it takes more than three clicks for users to complete their interaction with your site, you must revisit the process.

The World Wide Web

Running a Multilingual Web Site Marketing Campaign

Not everyone in the world speaks English. By ignoring other languages, you are in effect blocking potential users from finding and interacting with your business.

Speaking in Tongues

We are very lucky that English often is regarded as the language of both the net and business, but we have to remind ourselves that not everyone speaks it. Non- English versions of a Web site are not created overnight, nor are the cost of translation cheap. Taking the step to offer a multilingual site or dedicated language versions in something that has to involve all functions of the business and must be budgeted for. The overriding question must be whether a multilingual version of your Web site or the launch of a new country- specific site will add value for both yourself and your customers. If the answer is no, save yourself the project management nightmare and spend the money visiting these far-off climes instead.

Going the Whole Hog

If you decide you need or already have implemented a multilingual site, well done! Multilingual sites are difficult projects to manage and maintain, but the benefits-if they are done correctly- can be immense. Be sure to assign a country manager to each language version of the site or sites. This person will be responsible for the Web site content and updates but, more important, will be your interface with the local Google site. He or she will have to manage keyword selection, optimization, and an Ad Words budget if you are planning to pay for placement.

The important thing is User

An important thing to remember is that your website is a tool - which someone (the user) actually uses to accomplish a task, whether that is to buy something or simply to access the site's content. The number one goal of any website should be to make sure that all users can find what they're looking for and accomplish their objectives without any hassle. It is also important for each step of the entire online process to be transparent to the user. If the user needs a bunch of directions and cues to make your site work, it's not really working. As we said at the agency: "If it needs a sign, it's a bad design." When designing and organizing your site, always do so with the user in mind. With no doubt discover that many of the sites you come across on the internet were obviously not designed with the user in mind. Some of these sites might have beautiful designs and feature super duper technology, which is all well and good but that zing doesn't mean a thing if the site doesn't function properly. Remember: function first, form second or, put another way, users first, personal style second.

Sound simple, right? Well, it is.. and it isn't. Every user is different, and you can't please everyone, but you do want to please the users that make up your target market. So you'll want to identify those users and define their needs, and then tailor your website to fit them. The bottom line: A website that's built and maintained with the user in mind is more likely to attract the right visitors and to turn them into return customer. Make it easy for them to navigate your site, to find things, to complete transactions and feel good while they're doing it, and you'll win the advantage over your competition. Combine this with a strategy for driving traffic to your site, and you will be unstoppable.

Define Your Audience

When you know your users like the back of your hand, you can aim your site straight for the target and hit the bull's eye time after time.

You don't have to hire a big name design firm and spend a million bucks to reap the benefits of using good tolls to build your site. A website is simply an extension of your vision for your business, and like any successful component, it needs its own little business plan. This just means getting a few things straight before you touch a single thing on your site. Defining who will be the primary and secondary users of your website can make a huge difference in the way you design your site, the technology you choose for it, and the content you put on it. Your primary users, or audience, are those for whom you're primarily making the site that is, your target market, the people you hope will be using the site 90 to 95 percent of the time. Your secondary users would be anyone else you think might use the site.

This might seem obvious, but you'd be surprised how many people throw up a website without first profiling who their main users are, what those users' primary objectives are, and why and how their site can satisfy those objectives. If you're making a site to which you hope eighteen to twenty five year old guys will flock, it's going to look a lot different than, say, a site for new moms. Having a clear picture of who your users will be makes the job of designing a website much easier, since you'll be making your site for real people, not just an abstraction in your mind. Whenever there's a question as to whether a design element be it the colors, layout, words, images, or special features such as Flash is appropriate for the site, you can just refer (and defer) to your primary and secondary user goals. If it doesn't match, don't bother. It's that simple.

Make your Keywords list

Creating a killer keyword list will snag users far and wide and drive them straight to your site.

Once you've got a handle on who you want coming to your site, the next step is to figure out what search words they're using to get there, so you can use those words in the site's construction. These "Keywords" make the difference between a good site, and a good site with tons of traffic.
You can spend as much or as little time on the subject of keywords as you choose. Keyword research can be fun (and somewhat addictive), and it's an endeavor that some people have based entire companies on. But, since you probably want to know what keywords have to do with your site, where to find them, and what to do with them, let's get to it! If, you end up opening your own keyword research company, more power to you.

of all the mistakes that people making with websites, not having a decent keyword list is, by far, the most frequent and most harmful. taking the time to properly build a keyword list will make a world of difference in attracting users and a higher percentage of users with the potential to convert to customers to your website.
Keywords are just that, the words that users type into search engines to find what they're looking for. From the site owner's point of view. Keywords are those commonly known terms and phrases that describe the nature of your business and your products. For example, a website for an online tea shop might include the keywords "specialty teas", "gourmet tea", "tea pots".

From a web consultant's point of view, keywords are what we use to do search engine optimization otherwise known as kicking competitors' asses in the keyword search arena

Have Excellent and Unique Content

The most important way to ensure regular traffic to your website is to have the highest quality, unique content. You must set your website apart from millions of others. The easiest way to do this is to trust your own voice and fill your website with the things that interest you.

If you have a website that is about making scrapbooks about kids involved in sports, make the best site you can about that. This can include showing the best examples you can find, reviewing products, or offering how-to tutorials.

On the other hand, a website that is just rehashed, boring, dull material or, worst of all, devoid of content altogether, will not attract visitors. Try not to make your website only about you and how great you are. People want to find out about new things, not just about you. 

Self-Promotion

When you promote your website, you’re acting as your own advertising firm. People won’t know anything about your website unless you tell them. Whether you use a sandwich board and walk up and down the streets or put your URL on a business card, marketing your website increases your exposure and ensures that more people will visit your website. In this section, I want to give you some ideas for how to promote your website’s URL for free.

Promoting Your Website

Whether your website is a small company website or a national charity, you should promote it to increase traffic. The more people who come to your website, the more people hear your message. The problem is that there is millions of website out there. You have to do some work to promote yours.

Promoting your website can be simple or complex. If you are made of money, you can hire an ad agency to plaster your URL on billboards all over the world. I’m guessing that if you picked up this book, you are most likely looking to keep costs to a minimum.

This chapter is separated into two parts. The first part covers things you can do to promote your own website. This includes ways to publicize your URL and connect to others. The section of the chapter covers what a search engine is and how it works. Then I’ll tell you how to optimize your site to get the best search engine results.

Start at the End

I always begin by defining what must work on the website before I can release it. Start at the end by deciding what must work, and then work backward. Think of it like starting a journey- you need to know where you are going before you can decide how to get there. For example, the page must load correctly in the major browsers. If this is not the case, you are not finished developing the website. If the page loads correctly, you can cross that off the list and move on to the next test. Defining the minimum necessary to be correct before you call the website done helps you know when you can release it.

Building a Test Plan

A test plan is a list of the things you are going to test before releasing your website. It might be just a list you create for yourself in a Word file, or it might be something more elaborate that your boss or clients want to see. If you are building websites for other people, it is essential that you write up a formal test plan. You need to think about several things as you create your test plan.”Do all my links work correctly” is just one question in what can be an overwhelming list of things to test. Your test plan is probably going to go through some changes. Keep a list of things to test for as you are developing your site, and it will be easier for you to remember everything when it comes time to test.

Testing Your Website

By now you have probably spent hours on your website. You have let your creative juices flow, and now you can’t wait to share the site with someone. So you proudly send your uniform resource locator (URL) to a friend, who looks at the website and comments on only the broken links and missing images. You were expecting her to say how cool your work was, but instead she only noticed what you did wrong. This is definitely not the reaction you wanted. To stop this from happening, you need to test your website before showing it to other people.

When you test your website, you simply go over the work you have done and make sure it is correct. Testing can involve simple things, such as optimizing your HTML code. This chapter gives you some guidelines on what to test as well as some free resources and tools you can use.

Making Your Website Mobile

I’m going to show you how to create web pages that work best on the mobile web and how to test these websites. As with any website, you should follow the steps of planning, designing, building, and then testing. When people come to your website using a mobile web device, you might want to direct them to a particular part of your website. Detecting a mobile web user might not be as easy as it seems. There are scripts in languages such as PHP that can detect a mobile web browser and direct the visitor to a more mobile-friendly part of your website. You might not want your whole site accessible to the mobile web, or you might want to create a website specifically for the mobile web. If you are creating  a website specifically for the mobile web user, you might want to create a specific domain or subdomain. Here are some examples of mobile web specific domains:

m. Prefix – if you go to a mobile website, it might have a subdomain suffix of m.. For example, the mobile version of Google is m.google.com, and the mobile version of cnn.com is m.cnn.com. Because most host providers don’t charge for new subdomains, this is usually a free option.

.mobi – There is now a high-level domain for mobile phones, known as .mobi. This domain was set up specifically to be used with mobile web content. This domain was sponsored by major telecommunications and software companies to separate their sites from other domains.

You can use HTML to create mobile websites, but you might want to use other languages specifically designed to make mobile web pages as easy to use as possible. Here are a couple of options:

Wireless Markup Language – An early version of a language specifically for mobile devices

XHTML – A markup language (like HTML) that allow web pages to work better on some mobile web browsers.

Making Your Site Mobile

Being mobile means that you have access to the internet away from your home or office, with a computer, cell phone, or PDA, and without the use of wires to connect. Mobile access is the fastest growing area of web development. If you’ve ever used your cell phone to look up directions, you have used the mobile web. Wireless technology has increased in prevalence because the hardware required to operate wireless technology has become smaller and faster. More and more people are using their phones and other devices to access the mobile web than ever before. As a web designer, you need to be aware of how the mobile web works and how your website might need to be changed to be used with the mobile web.

If you want to use the mobile web, you first need a device that provides a connection to the internet. A cell phone, PDA, or wireless laptop would work. Then you use a browser built in to your device to go to an address, similar to the browser you use on your computer to access the internet. Mobile web devices can access almost any web page, but some pages are specifically designed for mobile web users. These pages display better and load faster on mobile devices. 

Developer Networks and Sites

If there are millions of websites on the internet, there must be a lot of people developing those websites. These people like to talk to each other. This socializing is good for more than just finding friends. It can be excellent for networking ideas and information about website developments.

Developer network sites are websites where you can find a solution to a problem or question you might have regarding web development. You can be assured that you will find someone willing to share their solution or ideas with you. Connecting to other web developers in these communities enables you to share your experiences. These folks obviously have something in common with you (they are also developing websites), so do your part and share your knowledge as well. Here are some of the best web developer networks:

Webmonkey (www.webmonkey.com) Webmonkey was one of the first and best websites dedicated to website developers and setting up a community. It was launched in 1999 by the folks who bring you wired magazine but closed three short years later. But wait Webmonkey has returned! The site was re-launched in 2008 and contains excellent tutorials, references, and a code library. There is a sense of fun and community on this site, and it continues to be an invaluable resource for web developers. 

Yahoo! Developer Network (http://developer.yahoo.com) this site is for people using Yahoo! Technologies to develop websites and other applications. Although it might not have a direct impact on your website, if you are doing anything related to Yahoo!, you might want to check it out.

Google Groups (http://groups.google.com) Google Groups are social connections that are based on interests. That could be anything from car racing to web development. Have a look around this site for web developer groups.

How Web Pages Work

Under every web page on the internet is at least some HTML. Even a site that uses something like Flash still has an HTML wrapper around it. To really understand the web, you need to understand how web pages work, what parts make up pages, and how these parts work together. Each web page is a file. It might reference other files, but it is still a single file. The web page is just a text file of the HTML commands. This file is small, which is why it loads so quickly.

You can use a couple of different types of tools for HTML creation. These include both text editors and WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors. Most web developers use a combination of these things. For instance, a quick page fix is usually done with just a text editor, whereas the creation of a table is better done with a WYSIWYG editor. It’s important to understand the unique advantages each editor offers so that you can easily decide which tool will work best for the particular job you are doing. 

Working with Multimedia

As we all know, the web is much more than text and pictures; it’s also multimedia. Multimedia is the combination of multiple forms of digitized media, including video and audio files. For example, a song from a band’s website and the trailer of an independent film are both forms of multimedia. When used properly, multimedia adds to the user’s experience. When not used properly, multimedia can ruin a website.

One important consideration when dealing with multimedia files is file size. Multimedia files are usually quite large, and there is a constant battle between keeping the file size small and maintaining high quality. Even though broadband access is becoming common, there are still numerous people who use slower internet connections. Do not assume that everyone will have lightning fast connections to down load your large movie files.

Another consideration is that media files can be specific to operating systems. Having a web page that tries to play a file that doesn’t work on most operating systems is just going to annoy some of your visitors. When making choices, make sure you consider different operating systems and choose file types that run on the most operating systems.

In addition, not all visitors to your site may have the hardware to use multimedia effectively. They may not have speakers or graphics cards that allow all multimedia to play effectively. Don’t leave these folks out in the cold. Make multimedia an enhancement on your website, not a requirement.

Finally, multimedia files can be available for download or streaming. A down loaded multimedia file is transferred to a computer where a media player can play it. Streamed media files are played while downloading, usually through a browser. What you use depends on the size and content of your multimedia files. 

HTML 101

HTML is the common language of the web. It is the programming language of every web page on the internet. To do anything on the web, you need a solid grounding in how HTML works and how others use it.

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. “Hypertext” means there are links between documents and within documents that interconnect the documents. Linked pages allow the web to constantly expand and become more interconnected. A markup language uses tags to “mark up” the text to apply formatting and structure. A tag is essentially a text marker that signifies the start and the end of a particular kind of formatting.

HTML was created in 1991 by Tim Berners – Lee, researcher at a scientific think tank called CERN, located in Switzerland. Tim wanted to create a simple system of document organization that allowed for simplicity and cross referencing. When other people began using HTML, it took off, and the web as we know it was born. 

Web Page Services

Maybe you still are not sure whether you need a full blown website with your own web server, but you know you want more than the websites covered in the previous chapter have to offer.

Fortunately, there a lot of people like you who want most of the functionality of a website but don’t want the hassle of advanced functionality and maintenance complexity and lack the necessary technical knowledge. There is a type of website creation tool just for this group of people, commonly called web page services.

These services enable users to create websites using just their web browser. These sites have many features of a standalone website (pages, images, links, widgets) but don’t require that you set up a web server or pay for a host. If you are interested in creating a site that needs to be as inexpensive as possible and won’t get much traffic, this is definitely an option. It won’t have all the bells and whistles, but it will do exactly what you need. 

Using existing website

You want to build your own website. But some of you just want to create a web presence and are not interested in building an entire website. If you’re one of the latter, you’re in luck. There are websites (Myspace.com, Facebook.com, Flickr.com) that allow you to create a profile, meet other people, share pictures, and get information – all without having to mess with site planning, web servers, hypertext markup language (HTML), or navigation.

In their most advanced form, these sites offer blogs, photo albums, email features, and instant messengers, all under the rood of one website. If you already have an account on one of these websites but need something more, you probably need your own website. If you are unsure, sign up for these sites and see whether it fulfills your needs.

One of the benefits of this type of website is that it allows you to promote your website to other people.  I am a member of all of these websites, and when I publish a new blog entry or am doing a speaking engagement, I use these sites to promote these events.

Web advertising

One way you can subsidize your website is by selling advertising space there. First, this is not a quick way to become filthy rich. Making any profit through web advertising is difficult and unlikely to happen, but you might be able to subsidize part of your website costs. Before you go searching for advertisers for your website, you might want to spend your time and energy on making your website the best it can be and attract advertisers that way.

Advertising Banner Ads

Banner ads are advertisements that appear at different places on your website and allow people to click on the ad and go to an advertiser’s site. You are essentially being paid to provide a link to another website.

Advertising Animated Ads

Over the past few years, there has been a trend in website advertising to create animated or interactive ads to attract the attention of website visitors. Unfortunately, these tend to have the opposite effects and just annoy visitors. My advice here is to take the high road and not use these ads on your website. 

Keep your website consistent

Try to keep your website a unified whole. This makes it look more professional and helps the transmission of your message. A website filled with inconsistent pages makes for a mess that drives visitors away. A site that is unified and consistent from page to page conveys the fact that the creator of the website has invested a great deal of time to present a well-crafted and well-conceived site whose purpose is for your enjoyment. Keep your pages uncluttered and organized. Use consistent structures on pages (such as headers and footers) so your visitors can easily tell what your website are about and not get lost in a bunch of unorganized text and links.

Well-organized, well-designed websites are easy to maintain and improve. If your site is a disorganized haphazard mess, it causes you more work in the long run. And if you have a complex site, you need a lot of time to make sure all the parts work together. Starting simple and trying to maintain that simplicity can be helpful in the long run. 

Website goals

Before you begin designing or building your website, you need an idea of what you want to achieve with it. The goals you are hoping to achieve will help you make decisions down the road. Your goals are simply the things you want to accomplish with your website these could be things such as making money, attracting attention, or making a statement. You should have goals for your site itself and for its content. You also should think of short – and long term goals for your site. Start by examining some of your favorite sites and determining the goals of those websites.

When you are figuring out the structure of your site, you need to think about both the site as a whole and each page. Remember that a website is just a collection of web pages. There should be a unity to what you create. This unity should be apparent on the site itself and on each page. For example, if you create a family website with pages for each member of the family (mom, dad, son, and daughter), each of those pages should look similar to the others. They should look like a united whole. If every page is different, the site visitor might get lost. You might start by looking at your entire site, or you could look at just one page. 

Planning your site

The central question you need to answer before beginning any website project is “why do you want to build a website?” Sometimes the answer can be simple – the boss wants you to create a site, you want to connect to old school friends, or you want to promote your home-based business. By asking the question, you can begin to figure out the best structure for the site you are building. For example, if you are making a website for your home based – business, you want your products and services on pages by themselves. You should also make sure the business contact information is on every page.

You should ask when planning your website’s structure. You should try to answer as many of them as you can because they will help you make important decisions about your site. Don’t just read the questions and think about the answers; make notes and develop a formal plan. If you are building this site for someone else, that person probably wants to see your plan of action, this plan of action would include listing the website’s goals, the rough plans for the site and the pages, and a timeline of when you plan to complete the work. 

Basic website ordering

It is important before beginning to build a website to have some idea of the completed project. Think of it this way: if you are going on vacation, you have a chosen destination, a method of travel, a route, and a time table. Without any one of these things, your vacation will probably be less than enjoyable. Each of the parts is also interconnected. If you are planning on flying but don't have a destination, you won't be able to define a time table. Building a website is a similar process. It's common temptation to want to build your site as soon as possible, but as is the case with traveling, if you get on the road with no sense of your destination, you are going to get lost quickly. Also, the parts of the project have an order to them. You can't go to an amusement park at your destination until you have mapped out its location. Similarly, knowing and following the order of these interconnected steps allows your plan to be a success.

We look at the steps for the entire website creation process, from planning to maintenance, in a brief but fundamental way. Don't be tempted to skip to the next step just because this is an overview. These steps are the foundational building blocks in the process of creating your best website. Each part of the process is covered in greater detail later on, but it helps to have an overview of the whole process before you begin.

How to plan a website

All endeavors should start with a planning phase. You have to plan the steps needed to complete a project. The way I think of it, a project such as creating a website is made up of small steps that, when done correctly, result in a successful project. This might be the easiest thing to skip, but it certainly is as important, and might actually be more important, than any other part of the process. By making plans and decisions early on, you will find that the steps in the process are easier and seem more guided.  The following are some things you need to decide before you begin:

·         Why am I building this website?

·         How do I want this website to function?

·         What goals do I have for the website?

·         Is this a website I expect people to come to once or return to often?

·         Who is going to design, build, test, and maintain the website?

·         What tools will be used to build the website?

·         What is my website budget?

·         Who do I want to visit my website?

How to design a website

There are as many ways to design a website as there are ideas for content and designers building those sites. When I talk about web design, I mean more than just the look of the website. Design is more than just graphics. It also includes the way the pages are organized (site structure), the buttons or links that enable the site visitor to get to those pages (navigation elements), and technical details such as how the programming language is used and which application technologies will be employed. When I design a website, I use a whiteboard to draw out what my page will look like.

Everyone wants a unique website, so it is important for you to look at as many websites as you can before planning and designing your own. This will give your insight into trends that look fresh and new and which tired web clichés to avoid.  The key to creating an excellent website is taking your unique content and matching it to an excellent design.

How to build a website

Far too often people start at this phase without doing the planning and design needed to create a successful website. Building is the actual work of creating pages, editing graphics, making links, managing multimedia, and adding scripts and other elements to the server.  In the past, a website needed to be created by hand. This meant that a developer had to manually type each file that made up the website. Luckily for you, this is no longer the case; the building section covers web page creation tools, graphics tools, and other utilities that enable you to quickly create a single page or an entire site without writing a single line of code. Most of these utilities and tools are free or very cheap

How to promotion and maintenance the website

After you have planned, designed, built, and tested your website, you are ready to send it out into the world. This is not the end of the story, though. You need to promote your website to others, make sure it appears on search engines, and promote it to people you don’t know. However, doing all of that is still not enough. You need to maintain and update your site so that people have a reason to come back to it.

Choosing a location for your site

One of the most common question people have when they set out to create a website is where to host it. Remember that a website is a collection of web pages, graphics, script files, and anything else associate with the website. These files need to be stored on a computer that is accessible to other people. This computer that other people can access is also called a server or a host. When a server stores your files and allows others to access them, it can be said to be hosting your website. Deciding where to host your website’s files is extremely important and should be planned and researched like any other part of the process.