Posts Tagged ‘Website’
Have a church website you want to improve upon? If you’re looking for web hosting we’re assuming you already have a cool Christian site and you just need a host server. As a Christian church planter and online businessman, there are several church web hosting tips I’d like to offer that may increase your attendance and ministry outreach while saving you money.”
It’s better to give than receive except when you’re choosing a web hosting plan. So think twice before choosing a church web hosting company over a secular web host. Why? Am I speaking blasphemy? No, I’m not and the simple reasons for this should be the reasons you should have for choosing “church web hosting”: Bang for the buck, features (like podcasting, space, etc.) and the bottom line cost involved. The sad fact of the matter is church web hosting or christian web hosting comanies can’t compare or compete with the large secular web hosting companies out there. Why go to the mom and pop store with little choices when there’s a Walmart down the street with more choices and better prices? Enough said. By the way, how do I know all this? I’ve been there and done that.
Alright, so you didn’t listen to my advice and now have “church web hosting?” Do me a favor for your own church and spiritual wellbeing. Please don’t build your Christian web site through the church web hosting company you are using. Why? In a nutshell you’ll be stuck with them if you don’t like them and secondly, most of these church web hosting sites and other free church web hosting firms who offer all in one deals (they will host and build your site) drain your own search engine page rank and popularity by linking their domain on your pages. believe me you don’t want or need this. Remember the whole reason you want a web presence id to publicize your church or ministry.
So how do we get out of this dilemma? my suggestion is to do what I’ve done with my Christian Singles site. I didn’t know squat about any tech stuff at the time. All I knew was I wanted to find a service where I wouldn’t have to know web designing but that I could build a site that would reach out to folks without spending an arm and a leg. Today, Christian Dating Service Plus receives over 1.5 million hits per month and is out competing huge sites like eHarmony for prime keywords like Christian Dating Service. All this and quite frankly I’m pretty much a technological idiot.
So how did I do this? The same way I suggest you can: Use WordPress blogging for your church by signing up with an affordable web hosting company you can use for anywhere between 4 -8 dollars per month. Sounds good? These kind of web hosts are not “Christian” per se, but they have FREE church templates and step by step web builder tools that make putting up your site a fun and easy adventure. By the way, if you are interesting in using a blog like WordPress for your church, you can download this blogging software for free as well. it’s real easy to use and I cannot say enough about it. one more note. If you are a church ministry and you need help, just contact us at resource contact listed below.
Selling a product or sharing an idea has never been so easy because of the internet. With millions of people online at any given time, communicating or exchanging views and opinions is a breeze. When you have information to offer, you can develop a website (or hire someone to do it for you) where people can visit and look into what you are offering. However, if you think setting up a site is difficult, the real hurdle that you need to overcome is how to get people interested. Here are some tips to help you increase traffic to your website:
Tip #1. Keep this in mind: search engines love sites with relevant content. Therefore, make sure that your website content is original, free, and of high quality. What you are offering may not be one-of-a-kind but aim to provide products, services, and information that will make you stand out from others that provide the same. Make a point of posting something new on a regular basis (weekly, at a minimum) to keep your site up-to-date and well maintained.
If you think coming up with fresh stuff every week is unlikely, outsourcing articles will help take care of that. It is one of the more affordable ways to keep your site updated. It is worth mentioning that before putting anything on your site, proofread all materials to ensure that they are free from spelling and grammar errors. Otherwise, you will lose your credibility.
Tip #2. Incorporate keywords that describe your website in your content. This increases the chance that your site will turn up when someone searches for related topics. When coming up with keywords, ask around to see what people would normally use when they want to search about the information you offer. This makes searching for your site easier. Just remember to be subtle when including keywords in the text so it will not seem as if you’re trying too hard.
Tip #3. Once you have decided on the kind of information you are going to provide, search for other high-quality websites with related topics and exchange links. This raises the probability that your site will get hits as visitors of those other sites can promptly visit yours just by clicking on the link. Note that you should only be associated with notable websites because they not only lend credibility to your own; they usually have followers who visit them regularly so you can get more exposure.
Tip #4. Promote your website through advertising. When you have money set aside for this, you may want to look into pay per click where you only have to pay when somebody clicks on your ad. You may also consider sponsor listings, which will list you in categories that will target a specific market segment. If you don’t have an advertising budget, you may opt to use e-zines. You can either make your own or submit to other e-zines that accept article entries. There are many online promotional tools but don’t discount the print media.
Many people still have subscriptions to magazines, commercial brochures, and the local newspaper. You can even distribute flyers that indicate information about your website and the web address. Include these details when you get your business cards printed so you can advertise the next time you distribute them to your friends and associates.
Giving free consultation, software, demos, online classes, and eBooks is another form of advertising. If visitors can forward these to their friends, your site will get noticed and people will come back for more.
Tip #5. Take advantage of social networking sites that offer free sign-ups for business and fan pages. Create a page for your site that people can easily find. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Tumblr, and Google Groups are just some examples of sites that can help you get a wider range of prospects. Signing up for these websites is also a great way to build your integrity as visitors have different ways of reaching or connecting with you.
Tip #6. If you have fifteen to twenty pages of content on your site, you are now ready to submit your URL to search engines. However, once you’ve made your submission, be prepared to wait. Google, Yahoo, Live, AOL, and Ask are the most popular so you can expect that they receive thousands, if not millions, of submissions per day. It may take weeks or months for your site to appear but resist the temptation to keep resubmitting to avoid being banned.
There are a few things to remember before you can be truly prepared to conquer the web. The internet has become an open community rife with scammers and people wanting to take advantage of others. Beware of traffic sellers that promise thousands of hits because they usually don’t deliver. They’re a waste of your time and money. If you’ve done everything you think you can and still don’t generate enough traffic to your site, please don’t resort to spamming. This is a sure way for you to lose your integrity and be pegged as a nuisance.
The competition among millions of websites is fierce; you need to assert yourself so you won’t get left behind. Th
Now Pay Close Attention –
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This article is a follow-up to my last entry about search engine optimization (or SEO), which you can find here on Articlesbase. While the first article provided a broad overview of what SEO is and how it can help you market your business, this one is meant to provide a more detailed outline of how the process works and some of the tasks you should perform in order to optimize a site. My intended audience for this article is web design firms and marketing companies who are looking to break into the world of SEO, but need a primer to help them get started.
Getting Started
There is one key piece of information to keep in mind throughout the entire optimization process, and it can be said like this: Search engines have one goal, and that is to return the most relevant results for any given search query. SEO is essentially the process of ensuring that those search engines understand that your site or your client’s site is, in fact, a good, relevant result for certain queries. For example, if you or your client owns a coffee shop in Philadelphia, then their website is absolutely a relevant result for the query “Philadelphia coffee shops”. However, the search engine algorithms can’t determine the relevance of a given page on their own if the site isn’t properly optimized. Let’s take a look at the key steps that are involved in optimizing a site, thus allowing the search engines to realize, “oh! This is a very relevant result for the query I was given”.
Choosing Your Primary Keywords and Phrases
Choosing the primary keywords and phrases which you will be optimizing for is one of the most important pieces of SEO. You need to find what I call a “middleground” keyword – something that’s not so broad that it’s useless to optimize for, but not so specific that no one is searching for it.
Consider a client who asks you to optimize for the phrase “real estate”. With very few exceptions, this is a perfect example of a keyword that is simply too broad to be worthwhile. Anyone searching for “real estate” will immediately realize that they need to refine their search beyond such a broad term. For example – are they looking to buy real estate, sell it, invest in it, or find a real estate agent? And are they looking for commercial properties or residential properties? To buy or to rent?
It should be immediately clear that optimizing for such a broad term is almost always a wasted effort. Not only because the optimization process itself will be excessively difficult, but because, more than likely, the traffic generated will not result in any sales ( “conversions”).
Now, let’s assume your client is ABC Real Estate in Bala Cynwd, PA, and they are residential real estate agents specializing in the Philadelphia market. They might ask you to optimize for “ABC Real Estate Bala Cynwd”. This is an example of a keyword that’s incredibly simple to optimize for (I probably wouldn’t even call it “optimization” since there is only one ABC Real Estate in Bala Cynwd, pretty much guaranteeing you the #1 result), but this keyword is almost useless for driving new traffic to the site. People searching for the company name already know about the company and probably know what the company does. You want to drive traffic from people who are searching for a product or service the company offers, even when the potential customer doesn’t know about the company yet.
“Homes for sale in Philadelphia” is a keyword to think about in this instance. We know from this query that the person performing the search is looking for homes for sale in Philadelphia. Our client is prepared to provide not only home search capability, but real estate agents who are willing to help the searcher in their quest for a new home. This is the kind of traffic you want to drive to the site. You should choose 2-3 similar keyword phrases to serve as the primary search goals. It’s important to note that your site will not be locked into appearing for only those phrases, if you perform the optimization correctly. Now, let’s take a look at how you actually go about doing that.
Site Structure
The first thing to look at when tasked with optimizing a site is the structure of the site itself – the HTML code, the URL/link structure, and the title and meta tags. If the site doesn’t exist yet, but you will need it to be optimized once it’s built, this section still very much applies, so read on.
Navigation
One of the most common problems I see with poorly-optimized sites is a navigation system that is effectively invisible to search engines. Oftentimes, the main navigation was created with javascript or flash, and no alternative sitemap or links are provided. While search engines such as Google are getting much better at identifying links embedded in javascript and flash, it is still a much better idea to provide a plain HTML/CSS based navigation system. You can do this without sacrificing any of the javascript or flash functionality or changing the user experience at all, so there is no reason not to do it. If your navigation is javascript based, make sure you are using a “pure CSS” menuing system, meaning that you can code your navigation as if it were a normal
or based menu, but the script will transform these tags into javascript-powered dropdown menus. Some of the menuing systems we use at Context are: Superfish, OpenCube, and SmartMenu. If your navigation is flash based, you can use a dynamic flash publishing script (see swfobject) that will transparently replace the HTML-based navigation with your flash element. In both of these cases, the search engines will see the original HTML and CSS based navigation elements, which are much easier to traverse and index than their javascript or flash-based counterparts.
A Note about flash based sites
If your site is done completely in flash, you may want to re-think your design, instead using flash for a header, footer, and/or borders, but leaving the main content as HTML and CSS. Otherwise, I recommend essentially building two full versions of the site – one in HTML and one in Flash. As I mentioned above, search engines are becoming much more effective at indexing flash pages, but you are still doing yourself a disservice in terms of SEO if your site is 100% flash based. Also, completely flash driven sites can often degrade user experience, but that’s a topic for another article.
URL Structure
Now let’s talk about URLs. Search engines like very clean URLs, the kind you see at the top of this (or any WordPress-based) blog. Even if your site is driven by dynamic content, you will want to rewrite your URLs to look like static pages. For example, rather than having /product-view.php?fromcat=5&id=32, you will want a url that looks more like /products/32/this-is-the-product-name.html. Not only is the actual URL part of what search engines look at when determine what a page might be about (which is why we include the product name), they also have a much easier time indexing static URLs as opposed to complicated dynamic URLs with a string of variables at the end. There are many ways to accomplish the rewriting, and it’s usually not very difficult. The easiest way is to use Apache’s mod_rewrite module, which lets you transparently redirect one URL to another, while the visitor only sees the original. If you are using ASP.net on IIS, there is an excellent rewrite module for IIS6, and IIS7 has built-in rewriting capabilities. Finally, development frameworks such as Fuse for PHP or Ruby on Rails have extensive “routing” functionality which allows very fine grained control over the URL structure.
Title and Meta Tags
The and description tags are very important in SEO. These tags are your first chance to explain to a search engine what your site is all about, and you should follow some guidelines when generating these tags:
The title and meta description tags should include your primary keywords and phrases, but only once. Don’t repeat “Philadelphia coffee shop” five times in the title tag, because the search engines will penalize the site for keyword stuffing.
While there are no strict rules on length, the title tag should be no longer 60-80 characters, the meta tag around 200 maximum.
The title and meta tags need to be different for every page. Even if the title or meta description tags for some pages don’t actually include your primary search phrases (and they don’t have to), they should be clear and relevant to every individual page.
Content
It is a common SEO adage that “content is king”, and although the SEO process has gotten a bit more complex over the years, it is still largely true.
Your site should contain as much useful, unique content as possible. Simply plastering bits of text all over the site won’t do you much good, but the best thing you can do to optimize a site is to provide high quality content that people actually want to see or read. Developing such content can be tricky, but here are some basic guidelines:
Every page should have at least two paragraphs of relevant content. There are some exceptions here because some pages simply don’t require any text, but you should try to work in as much high quality, relevant (remember: HIGH QUALITY and RELEVANT) textual content as possible.
Don’t rely exclusively on bulleted lists. Bulleted lists are fine and won’t hurt your positioning, but they should be augmented by rich prose, since larger bodies of text will net you the most gains in terms of SEO.
Include your targeted search keywords and phrases in the content, but don’t “stuff” keywords by repeating them more times than is reasonable. There is a balancing act to be performed here, but as a general rule, I try not to include the same keyword or phrase more than once per two paragraphs. There are plenty of exceptions, however, so it’s something that you have to develop a knack for after some trial and error.
Your home page is the holy grail of content for your site. Every single website only gets one home page, so the content there is weighed very heavily by search engines. Make sure your home page content is of a decent length (at least 2 paragraphs), contains your primary keywords and phrases (gracefully – don’t keyword stuff), and is well written and relevant.
Include as much content on as many different pages as you can. Remember, though: high quality and relevant. Don’t create pages for the sake of having more pages – think about information that will be relevant to your potential customers and provide it through your website. For example, if you are optimizing for a coffee shop in Philadelphia, a page dedicated to how to identify & choose the best coffee beans might be a great resource. Oftentimes, you will be surprised and unable to predict some of the keywords and phrases that drive people to your site, but these relevant “landing pages” ensure that you can pick up good traffic that you weren’t necessarily expecting.
Inbound Link Building
Another essential piece of the SEO puzzle is getting other sites to link back to yours. There are several ways to do this, but also some pitfalls to avoid.
Directory submission – this is the process of simply adding your site to online directories that list and link to external sites. There are a few important things to remember when submitting your site to directories, however:
There are a lot of good free directories that do not require a reciprocal link. Don’t get caught up paying for every submission (though there are some directories that are worth paying for).
Make sure that the directory itself is in good standing with Google. You will want to check its Page Rank (Google’s 1/10 score of the importance of a site). The easiest way to check page rank is to install the Google Toolbar
Make sure the directory links directly to your site and doesn’t first go to a tracking page. If the link is not direct, it is essentially useless.
Try to find directories that allow you to specify the anchor text – the text that people will be clicking on to get to your site. Make the anchor text one of your primary keyword phrases, e.g. the words “Philadelphia coffee shop” should link to philacoffeeshopsite.com.
Press release distribution – Your client should have press releases that outline the current happenings at their company. These should be posted as text (instead of or in addition to PDF) format both on the website, but also on aggregate press release sites that allow you to submit your own press release. You should also include links back to your site directly in the press release
Social Networking & web 2.0 – There are many sites available that allow you to post your own business profiles on the web. Hotfrog and Merchantcircle are good examples of such sites, and I recommend adding a listing there for any site you are optimizing. Additionally, if you have interesting, relevant content to share with the public, consider posting it to aggregate sites such as Digg
Conclusion
Hopefully this article provided insight into the SEO process, and can act as a “getting started” primer for companies who are looking to expand their services offerings. I do not recommend that business owners attempt to optimize their own site, because you will not get the results you expect, and your time is better spent running the business. Hire a competent SEO company instead, and work with them to position your site for ideal keywords and phrases.
Internet marketing is essential to the success of web sites. You can have a professional looking website but what good can it do if internet users are not able to find it when they need your products and services? That is where an internet marketing campaign comes into play.
“Your website has to magically appear before buyers when they need products and services.”
Internet marketing is similar to designing websites- it does not require much experience to do a good job, just good knowledge and a keen eye for details. It is fundamentally important for a good internet marketer to constantly update himself weekly, if not monthly, of online markets. There are many ways to market your website.
– Find A Competent and Reliable Internet Marketer –
Justify the costs of hiring an Internet Marketer – First of all, getting an internet marketer is not essential for every website. If your website is a business website or a website which you want to generate revenue from, it is good to seek a competent internet marketer to work on your website. For more details visit to www.ultimate-internet-marketing-tricks.com. The costs spent on your website for internet marketing has to be justified and often, they are justified by having more revenue and traffic to your web site.
Potential customers have to know that there are no guarantees in SEO. Since everything is fundamentally based on search engines, SEO work is at the mercy of major search engines like Google. Many SEO companies tried to secure customers with guarantees that they cannot fulfill, resulting in lawsuits or customers getting burned for hiring their SEO services.
– What an Internet Marketer can offer –
In short, an Internet Marketer oversees that your website
is built properly for visibility and promoted with the best dollar spent on your internet marketing campaign. It is no good having a website and not appearing in internet searches. Your website has to magically appear before buyers when they need products and services. Internet Marketers deploy search engine optimization techniques to make your website visible and targeted to internet users.
Internet marketing requires research and analysis effort for individual website, followed by optimization of website. For more details go to www.inside-the-minds-of-winner.com. Hundreds of hours may be spent on each website, depending on the size of your targeted market. You are essentially paying for the amount of effort involved, effectiveness of your internet marketer and daily sales tracking of your website.
How to choose Internet Marketer- Internet marketing requires constant updating of skills and knowledge. One crude way to test if your internet marketer is a genuine or fake- Ask your internet marketer about recent events that happened in his field. If he cannot answer that, he must have a genuinely good reason to back himself as a good internet marketer! At times, it is easy to fall prey into the hands of bad internet marketing companies as happened in US and other parts of the world.
It is also important for you to feel comfortable with the amount of money you are spending on getting your site popular before committing yourself to an internet marketing campaign. Internet marketing campaigns typically last a few months and requires monthly tune-ups to your website. Include the costs of an internet marketing campaign when doing your company’s advertising budget.
Thinking of going into web hosting? Maybe you’ve had experience working with your personal web space and would like to take the next step in webmastering. You could make money from hosting, certainly – but if you want to go the hardcore entrepreneurial route, you need to think seriously about marketing. If so, think about getting a brandable Web hosting reseller account. At ASPHostDirectory you can get a free professional Joomla installation with your Joomla Hosting account. You’ll get the best service at an affordable price. Only with @ 3.99/month, you can directly get the services you want. So, what are you waiting for? Try it!!
Why does it matter that your reseller space is brandable? Well, for one thing, a brandable Web hosting reseller account would allow you to mark all the services with your own name, so that you can make entirely new footprints in cyberspace – and cut your umbilical cord from your web host, so to speak.
As a reseller, you can go into various agreements with web hosts over the kind of marketing you will do for their space. With non-brandable reseller accounts you may put up your own hosting company – with its own name, dedicated marketing and tech support agents and everything – but you still need to acknowledge that you’re just using someone else’s account. This will make you merely an agent of your web host, not an independent distributor.
If you want to be an independent distributor, you need to be free of advertising commitments to a web host. In effect, you will be marketing YOUR services and leaving the heavy server side stuff to the tech guys at your web host. This leaves your hands freer to attend to improving the other vital aspects of your reseller business, such as marketing and promotion. As a reseller, after all, you are essentially a marketer. Efficient advertising should be your first priority!
A brandable web hosting reseller would be most beneficial if you are thinking of playing in the big leagues and distributing large web space allocations, for heavy corporate use. If you want to attract business owners who want to put up medium to high traffic online stores, for example, brandable resellers are a good way to gain their trust in your service. At the very least, you will prove to your clients that you can appreciate the value of making a unique impression.
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We know that finding a cheap, reliable web host is not a simple task so we’ve put all the information you need in one place to help you make your decision. At ASPHostDirectory, we pride ourselves in our commitment to our customers and want to make sure they have all the details they need before making that big decision.
We will work tirelessly to provide a refreshing and friendly level of customer service. We believe in creativity, innovation, and a competitive spirit in all that we do. We are sound, honest company who feels that business is more than just the bottom line. We consider every business opportunity a chance to engage and interact with our customers and our community. Neither our clients nor our employees are a commodity. They are part of our family.
The followings are the top 10 reasons you should trust your online business and hosting needs to us:
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- Customer Tailored Support – if you compare our hosting plans to others you will see that we are offering a much better deal in every aspect; performance, disk quotas, bandwidth allocation, databases, security, control panel features, e-mail services, real-time stats, and service
- Money Back Guarantee – ASPHostDirectory offers a ‘no questions asked’ money back guarantee with all our plans for any cancellations made within the first 30 days of ordering. Our cancellation policy is very simple – if you cancel your account within 30 days of first signing up we will provide you with a full refund
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- Daily Backup Service – We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
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Happy Hosting!