Editable websites are an excellent solution for people who need to keep their website content up to date, on a frequent basis. The issue with normal HTML websites (from the client’s point of view) is that they can become expensive to maintain and keep up to date, as they need to contact a developer to update the content, who may charge anywhere between $40-$120/hr! This means you are constantly paying for your website! I believe it makes much more sense to pay for your website once, then use the money you would have paid a developer (to update your site) on something you need at that time- like print advertising, monthly costs of running your business, etc.

One question/comments get frequently are: “How is it different”? “how does it work”? “sounds complicated, I don’t think i’ll be able to manage it myself”…

the way an editable website works is actually quite simple. The developer takes the design work for the website (either the finished HTML pages or the slices of the web page) and feeds them into an online database. This database is programmed to take the design elements and throw together pages (which allows you to create a new page in seconds), move the design frame down to allow the page to grow when you add more content, and most importantly, allows you to edit the content on the pages.

The page editor is a tool that allows you to manage the content on each page via an easy to use interface. We, for example, build our client page editors to look a lot like Microsoft Word- this is to make it more familiar to the user. All you need to do is log into the admin area of your website (it is protected of course; you don’t want anyone and everyone changing your website content!) click on the page editor function (or sometimes on the page name, it all depends on how your system was built) and begin changing content. When done, you click save and voila! the updated content is now displayed on your website.

Editable websites are more expensive than simple HTML websites. This is because there are 2 types of developers involved- a designer and a programmer. However, your actual per page cost of development is MUCH lower compared to HTML, as the designer just needs to design 1-2 page layouts, and the database will use these to create the new pages. With HTML, the designer needs to create each and every page, which can be expensive. If you are looking to save money in the long run, then an editable website is the best choice. Not only do you never have to pay anyone for website updates again, you control when the update is done… (clients of ours who have worked with other firms and developers understand what I mean about control) Many firms do not give simple updates a priority in their production schedule, so clients end up waiting days, if not weeks, for their simple update to be done.

But what’s surprised me the most is that even though there is a lot of discussion about monetizing online content, there really isn’t a single centralized location with all the information. That’s why I’m sharing what I think are four great ways to monetize your blog’s content.

1. Banner Ads

Banner ads are easily the most used tool for creating a solid revenue stream. First used in offline media, banner ads have existed online since before blogs became popular. Google AdSense is the most popular service for placing banner ads for people who want results without using lots of time trying to sell banner space without a third party.

Plus, Google’s ads are usually less intrusive than others and are more relevant to each blog, as they use viewers’ search history to cater ads toward them. Alternatives include Kontera and adBrite. You can use them with other types of ads since banners occupy up space that’s not used by anything else.

2. Affiliate marketing

You can get good revenue by simply placing an affiliate marketing link after each product review, service recommendation, or pretty much any blog post. Unlike banners which are usually pay-per-click or pay-per-impression (views), most affiliate programs use pay-per-sale or pay-per-lead. These work best if you have a fair amount of traffic to your site, but it can work for smaller sites too since it’s almost always free to become an affiliate.

3. Utilizing Social Media

The opinions of personal friends has a great influence on consumer choice. For example, a BlackBerry user might tell her friends looking to buy their first smartphone to buy a BlackBerry Torch. Her friends will trust her more than they’ll trust a BlackBerry salesman. Because of this, social media, such as Facebook has seen a surge in use within the business world.

Many bloggers and businesses start a Facebook fan page and simply copy and paste content into the page to get more readers and subscribers. As a blogger looking to make some dough, you can use social media to drive a market to your website in combination with any of the other methods to cash in, and magnify the effects of your other marketing strategies. In this way, social media can become a sort of “force multiplier.”

4. In-text Monetization

Unlike banner ads, link insertion involves ads in the actual text of your written content but does so in a way that doesn’t decrease the site’s overall appeal. Usually, the program automatically finds and highlights keywords that, when hovered over, display a small ad that can then send the reader to the advertised product. These ads are like AdSense in that they target the reader’s actual interests (e.g., a gaming blog is typically read by someone who plays Xbox). They also don’t get you blacklisted on search engines since the links use nofollow attributes. The most used systems, many of which are free, include INTENTclick, Infolinks, Skimlinks, etc.

I wrote Content Monetization, an eBook about that you can read for more detailed information.

Disclosure: I work with INTENTclick.

What exactly is search engine optimization? Don’t websites automatically get ranked on google? these are some of the questions i get asked on a daily basis. Search engine optimization is a service- it is not generally included in normal web development as it requires time, attention to detail, extensive research and an excellent understanding of search engines and how they work. Websites usually do find their way into Google’s index, but if the site is not properly optimized, it will probably show up on page 99,999… which is pointless.

The point of search engine optimization is to get your website ranked for specific keywords. These keywords should be the products or services you offer, or a topic of discussion on your website. Don’t get fooled by people who will get your website ranked for your company name or website address- this happens anyways, so you are essentially paying someone for no work at all.

What do you need to know in order not to get ripped off? you need to first understand how a website gets ranked on a search engine:

Search engines send out a ‘bot’ (robot, spider, whatever you want to call it) which is an automated program that crawls the internet and bounces off HTML links. Most bots will first target major directories, like DMOZ (the largest human edited directory on the internet) and the big search engines, as all search engines feed off each other. When they find their way into a directory or different search engine, they will bounce off the link to the websites and ‘visit’ them. When the bot arrives, it is looking for specific instructions, or ‘meta tags’ to help direct it around the website, and understand what the page is about. There are a variety of robot commands that can be used, which need to be hard coded into your websites pages. After reading the meta tags, the bot will then proceed into the text content of your page, and should then (hopefully) find it’s way to your other pages.

This is where optimization helps. There are many misconceptions out there about properly optimizing your website and which keywords to use, how many, what should be in the site description, etc. Some common misconceptions are:

1. The more keywords the better. THIS IS WRONG! you should always choose (if possible) ONE keyword or one key phrase per page. The logic is simple: if you add 10 different keywords in your meta tags, the search engine will look for these keywords in your content. If your content only contains 4 of these keywords, for example, you have immediately wasted the other 6 keywords. The problem now becomes how often do each of the 4 keywords show up in the content? if the text has been written simply from an explanation point of view, chances are 1 keyword shows up more than the rest, and that is what the page will rank for. Remember- if you add more keywords, you are making them compete against each other- which is pointless.

2. The website is guaranteed to rank #1. THIS IS AN OUTRIGHT LIE! I always advise my clients to visit Google’s webmaster tools page, and read up on their advice. One of the first things they say is no one can guarantee a ranking… this is because the whole process is 100% automated. There is no actual person sitting at Google’s offices choosing which site should rank where!

3. Once optimized, the website will start ranking immediately. THIS IS INCORRECT. Even a properly optimized website can take some time to rank well. this is because search engines like Google receive millions of submissions daily…

There is a lot more to optimizing a website correctly, but this covers the basics. Always remember that optimization does not need to cost thousands of dollars (which many firms like to charge), and always ask to see some examples of the company’s optimization work. If you need to check where your website ranks on Google, or any search engine, simply search for “site:www.MYWEBSITE.COM” (replace mywebsite.com with your website address). This will return all the pages that have been indexed by Google, or that search engine.

There are tons of excellent bloggers and publishers doing excellent work, and those who stand out deserve to have their hard work recognized, associate with each other, and see their readerships grow. That’s why the World Media Awards exist- to recognize and reward great contributions to media from bloggers and publishers.

In my own career, I’ve learned and benefited so much from others that I wanted to help establish some way to give back to an industry I love show appreciation to the up-and-coming leaders. The World Media Awards will culminate in a 1 day event in San Francisco that will celebrate the best in blogging, forums, publishing and media from around the world.

So if you are a top notch blogger, why should you enter?

1. Get Recognized- You Deserve It

You put a lot of effort into making your blog spectacular. You know it and your readers know it. The World Media Awards is a way for you to get authoritative recognition from other bloggers and industry experts. That recognition will help you increase your readership, make fresh collaborative connections, and hopefully have great moments that make all the late nights even more rewarding.

2. Meet Other Bloggers Who Care

Blogging, forums and most other on-line media is about conversation and interaction, but sometimes it’s easy to end up trying to hide away behind a monitor in your office or home all alone. Meeting other bloggers and publishers keeps the fire lit and the conversation going. When you enter the World Media Awards, you’ll be listed alongside other bloggers and publishers who put the same level of satisfaction, attention and effort into making their blog top notch.

3. Expose Yourself to New Partners

If your blog or forum is part of your business, being part of the World Media Awards will increase your exposure by putting your name in front of countless visitors to our site and the award ceremony. That means you can find out who else is doing great work, strut your own stuff, and expand your network of contacts and collaborators.

4. Make Yourself Irresistible to Clients

What helps your chances at winning that next pitch more than growing your network? Telling that network that you are the winner of a World Media Award. Winning an award shines a light on your achievements, and it serves as an example of the commitment, engagement and exacting standards you apply to your work.

5. Be Part of the Beginning of Something Big

Because 2012 is the first year for these awards, you have the one-time chance to be the inaugural winner and set the standard for the World Media Awards in your category. Getting in on the ground floor of these awards will open opportunities for you as a blogger and a publisher.

The bottom line is, the World Media Awards will shine a spotlight on the year’s most successful bloggers and publishers, and on the businesses that serve and interact with them.

Now is your chance to be one of them.

The reason for this post is because I have been receiving some interest from people who would like to design a new website for their business, but do not want to spend a lot of money doing it. As a result, inquiries regarding website templates (thanks to Google, no doubt!) have been coming into my quote request area on this website more than ever! As I always take the time to explain all options, I thought it would be wise to write a couple of key points that should be considered when deciding between a website template or a custom designed website.

Why would you choose a website template over a custom design? The first, and most obvious reason, is cost. Website templates are usually mass produced (no, not in a factory) but by web designers whose sole business is designing templates and selling them. When deciding on layouts, designers usually do some research into the market they are designing the website template for. They review some of the most popular website in the industry, get a sense of similarities between the designs, then come up with some generic which seems to fit. They may offer some options, like different colours, different page widths, etc but the general template remains the same.

Why is this an issue. It’s isn’t really an issue, but the first thing to keep in mind is that potentially hundreds of other people have purchased the exact same design. People who purchase website templates are looking to save money, so the chances of them modifying the website template so it does not even resemble the original template is very slim… graphics and colours will be updated, of course, to match their logos but that’s usually about it. There have been a couple of times I can remember when a client has shown me a website template they want to purchase, and I say to myself (and the client) “I have seen this website before… somewhere else”. The problem with this is that your website loses it’s uniqueness, and the chances of someone visiting the website and thinking to themselves that they have seen this design somewhere else is high, or at least higher than it should be!

The second thing to keep in mind is that your website is your online identity (for your business, that is). Most people who visit your website may be first time visitors, and if you don’t have a brick and mortar shop, or don’t allow walk ins at your office, then that’s all they will ever physically see about your business. If you use a website template and the website does not look unique enough, or doesn’t have a ‘wow’ factor, chances are you will bore the visitor who will then navigate to another site, and you have then potentially lost business… Now, I’m not saying that a website template will result in loss of business; don’t get my wrong! It’s just that the nature of online business has changed drastically over the last few years. Websites need to be extremely attractive, fast, easy to navigate and encourage the visitor to come back as often as possible. Website templates usually don’t deliver on these points.

The main benefit to a custom designed website is that is it unique (usually!) and it is designed to match your logo and style. This immediately shows when you see it, and most web surfers nowadays can identify a website template from a custom designed website.

In short, when looking to design a website and save money, try and save money on other things but don’t cheap out on the design… trust me, it will come back to haunt you soon enough.

Submitting to the search engines is very important, as this step tells them that your website is online, so come and index it! However, there are a couple of things to keep in mind so as not to get ripped off by so – called SEO specialists. I’ll explain a couple of the most common things I’ve seen my competitors do, which you should be careful of. The main thing to keep in mind is that most of it as actually common sense!

The first thing to be careful of, in my opinion, is any search engine optimization firm that offers various ‘packages’ for search engine submissions. These packages are usually something like a ‘basic’, ‘advanced’ and ‘pro’ package (or something like that, I also see a lot of minerals being referenced like bronze, silver, gold, etc). The basic package always has the least number of add-ons, and more importantly, the least number of search engines the search engine optimization company will submit to, while the highest (and most expensive) package has the most.

Now I know what you must be thinking: “Sign me up for the highest package because I want my website submitted to the most number of search engines”, right? WRONG. The simple fact is that these companies are fooling their clients into thinking they are benefiting from submitting to thousands of different search engines, and the logic is simple.

If the search engine company is submitting your website to thousands of search engines around the world, that means they are submitting your website to search engines in different countries as well, right? “How can this be bad?” is what you’re thinking now, right? This is not bad, but simply a giant WASTE OF TIME. Search engines have their own rules, and Google France, for example, will only accept website submissions in french, so if you’re website is in french, then you’re fine! If not, well… the submission is REJECTED as it did not meet the minimum requirements of the search engine. Now isn’t that simple and doesn’t it make sense? Thought so…

So this means, potentially, if you sign up for a submission package that involves submitting your website to 2000+ search engines, chances are over 1000 submissions are going to foreign countries, out of which maybe 500 do not accept English language website submissions, may not accept submissions from other countries, etc. So effectively, you are paying for a service that you’re not even receiving. The nice part is if you’re lucky, you’ll receive a website submission report, which will conveniently omit all the failed submissions.

So what’s the point of this? An honest search engine submission company will always offer 1 package for search engine submissions, which is TAILORED to your content, target clientele, and type of products and or services you offer. This type of submission package, which Evolution in DesignZ offers ONLY, is called a ‘targeted submission package‘. This simply means we target only the relevant search engines that will accept your website submission. The number of search engines may not be as impressive, like 2000 search engines, but at least you know it will generate results, and not get rejected.

Also never forget that organic search engine optimization, even with a search engine submission package, takes a bit of time to kick in. I have clients ask me almost every day “When will we see results?” or “it has been 2 days already, how come I’m not #1 on Google??”. As in my last article called How do I rank my website on Google? Search engine optimization takes time… it may kick in in a couple of weeks, it may take a couple of months! It all depends on how competitive your website is in terms of content, search engine optimization, and many other factors.

In this article, I will address some basic, easy to do security settings for WordPress, so you can be assured your blog is not floating around the internet with giant loop holes in it’s security settings. While no method or plugin is 100% guaranteed to stop all attacks, implementing these basic rules will significantly reduce your chances of getting hacked.

WordPress Security Tip #1: Change your database table prefixes from wp_

If you’re not familiar with databases, then this one may be a little confusing. I promise I’m trying to avoid using ‘technical jargon’ as much as possible, so here’s a quick explanation of what this means. When you’re setting up WordPress for the first time, you go through 2-3 steps to get the basic site installed and running. One of these steps involves connecting WordPress to a MySQL database on your hosting package, which is the ‘brain’ of your blog. A MySQL database consists of tables which contain all your data. These tables have prefixes (usually 2 characters) which distinguish different installations of the same script, which are running on the same MySQL database. The default prefix for WordPress is ‘wp_’.

So now you must be wondering why it is important to change this, and the answer is very simple. Any ‘baddie’ or hacker searching for sites to hack will try and identify the database table prefix, to get an sense of what platform you’re using. As soon as they see ‘wp_’ they yell ‘aha! this clown is using WordPress, so now I know how to get in and mess around with it’ (they may not literally yell this; I’m sure they have their own catch phrases while twisting their curled up mustache ends).

How do you get around this? When you’re installing WordPress, change the table prefixes from ‘wp_’ to something else. This at least has more of a chance of throwing off hackers, as they won’t see the default ‘wp_’ table prefix.

WordPress Security Tip #2: Re-name default WordPress directories.

WordPress, unfortunately, has some dead giveaways that you’re using the platform, which is easily seen in the source code. Go ahead and try it on your WordPress blog: right click in the page body and select ‘view source’. Close to the top of the code, you will see paths like ‘wp-content’ and wp-includes’. That’s the problem (I know, again with the wp!). Re-naming these directories is a little more complicated than you may think. If you simply change the name of the directories, chances are you will break the path to many important plugins, themes, and functions. However, it is still easily done by a developer who knows their stuff. It involves changing the paths in the actual plugin files from ‘wp-includes’ to whatever you decide to name the directory. It shouldn’t take too long to complete, but this depends on how many plugins you’re using and how complex the code is. I know from experience that plugins using flash will be a lot harder to update to the new directory names.

WordPress Security Tip #3: Install WordPress security plugins.

WordPress being an open source application, has a billion plugins (not literally a billion, but lots!) available for free (and paid) to help secure your blog. Some essential ones (in my opinion) are:

1. WP Security Scan: helps identify security holes in your blog.
2. WordPress Firewall: monitors your site for suspicious activity and blocks many attacks, include ‘brute force’ attacks
3. Stealth login: this one re-names your admin folder, so you can set your own admin url and not use the standard ‘wp-admin’

There are probably more out of there, but I find these ones do an excellent job of securing your blog.

In short, make sure you or your developer considers these security points when setting up WordPress. I have seen far too many developers who ignore these basic security points and the client ends up suffering in the end. Your blog is one of the biggest online marketing assets you have, so make sure to take the time to secure it properly to keep it running!

The first question I am usually asked is “what is WordPress? I have heard a lot about it and how it can help me rank on search engines”. WordPress is primarily a blog platform (what is a blog, you ask? if you still don’t know what a blog is, then you should start here). The main point of a blog is to regularly (I cannot stress this enough) post articles about topics related to your blog. The idea is that your blog will develop a following and people will subscribe to it, so every time you write a new article, they will automatically get a copy via the RSS feed or Feedburner (a Google tool which allows people to subscribe to your blog via email). As your blog becomes more popular, and gets more and more traffic, it becomes more important in the eyes of the search engines and starts to rank well.

Blogs are designed to rank well. They have all the nifty tools built right in, like RSS feeds and the ability to tag articles (tagging is like using keywords), and there are hundreds of plugins, for free, which you can install in seconds to help your blog rank well, add functionality, and more. By far, the best blog platform I have ever used is WordPress. Now I’ll explain the technical things about it.

WordPress is an Open Source project. This means you do not have to buy the application, you can simply visit their website (http://wordpress.org) and download the files. Many developers from around the world contribute their time and expertise to improving WordPress, which helps everyone in the end. If you set it up yourself, you’ll need to know how to set up a MySQL database on your hosting package, and use an FTP programme (File Transfer Protocol) to copy the files to your hosting package. The good news is many commerical hosting companies offer 1 click installation of WordPress, so if your host provides this ability, it’s much easier for non techies to set it up.

Now that you understand a bit of what WordPress is, how can it help you save money and rank well on search engines? Simple. WordPress being an open source application, it is FREE to download and install. This (naturally) saves you money if you can do it yourself. If you can’t, most developers will charge a nominal fee to set it up for you, as long as you don’t ask for a million changes and upgrades. A straightforward WordPress installation will take literally 5 minutes. After that, you can use a default template or buy a premium template to make it look pretty (premium templates range between $30- $100). Once WordPress is set up and you have your template installed and everything looks great, it’s time to start populating the site with content. This now depends on how you will use the site: Will it be your primary website or will it be a blog, or both?

Using WordPress as a website is very simple. It allows for both pages and posts, which means you can use the pages for your normal information, like about us, services, contact, etc and you can use the posts for the blog part of your website. The main benefit to setting it up like this (in my opinion), is that you have a website and blog, all seamlessly integrated and everything looks exactly the same in terms of look and feel. I believe this makes everything looks a lot more professional. To achieve this, make sure to look for a template which is set up like this- there are hundreds of free and premium templates which are organized like this, and come with their own plugins to help you organize everything.

Now that you have your site (and blog) set up and ready to roll, how do you promote it? The best way to promote your new WordPress website/blog is to treat it as both a website and blog. This means submit the pages (or home page) to search engines like a normal website, and submit the RSS feed to directories and repositories. This double submission will help promote your website in different ways, and the chances of ranking increase. Based on my experience, the blog part will probably begin ranking before your informational pages, but that’s ok- the goal is to get visitors to your site by any means possible.

Google Instant has not been released in Canada as yet, but a quick look on Google.com shows how it works, which is exactly why it’s called Google Instant. While typing in your search query, Google will now begin displaying matching search results as you’re typing, without having to click the ’search’ button. This has generated some concern for SEO specialists, as this now changes the way in which search results are delivered.

For example, while you are typing ‘how do I rank my website on google?’, Google will now begin displaying results for ‘how do I’, ‘how do I rank’ etc.  while at the same time, offering suggestions in grey (much like how it did before). These more general search queries may not match your more specific key phrase, which is ‘how do I rank my website on google?’. Now I’m sure you’re asking yourself: “Ok, but who cares? it will probably suggest my more detailed key phrase anyways, right?” Well, not necessarily…

The way SEO works is you specify a main keyword or key phrase in your keyword meta tag (along with other meta data such as description and other robot commands), which helps guide the bot (or spider) on what to look out for when crawling your page. If you have done your SEO correctly, then your text on the page is balanced with about 7-10% keyword to text size ratio, which tells the spider that this page is indeed about the main keyword or key phrase.

This is where the potential problem arises: if your key phrase is ‘website designers in toronto’, Google Instant will now begin returning results for ‘website’, ‘website design’, ‘website designers’ without allowing the visitor to enter the complete search phrase before seeing the results. Still, you may think, “why is this a problem?” . This can be an issue because people are getting more and more lazy, and want instant gratification. Many will think “wow! I don’t even have to finish typing in my search and I’m already getting search results!”. How does this effect you? Simple: your website may not rank for the more general key phrase!

If you conduct some searches on Google or any search engine, you will see that the more specific (or detailed) your search query is, the less results the search engine will return. This works on a very simple logic: you are giving the search engine more specific instructions on what you are looking for, so it does not need to guess which websites have this information and return the results.

It is still quite early for people to begin panicking about their search engine rankings on Google, but one thing is clear: Google Instant is going to change the way in search engine optimization works. SEO specialists will now have to ensure their clients’ websites rank highly for even the most general spin offs of the main key phrase. Let’s see how this plays out… I’ll definitely write more about Google Instant as I myself learn more about it, and how it may effect your rankings, so check back regularly!

Many people now ask “why is it important to have a Facebook fan page?” or “How will Twitter help my website and/or business??”. The problem is most people are under the impression that by simply creating a Facebook page and Twitter account, awareness of their business will immediately increase tenfold,  their rankings on the search engines will automatically skyrocket, and business will be better than ever. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Facebook is probably the most familiar and popular social media website around. In case you don’t know what Facebook is (which means you must have been living in a cave in some mountain range for the last 5 years), Facebook is a website that allows you to create a profile for yourself (and your business), post information about yourself, upload pictures and most importantly, connect with people. You can add other users to your friend list, which in turn grants you access to their profiles. I have heard many stories of people finding long lost childhood friends, relatives etc on Facebook, which is nice as it let’s you re-connect and catch up relatively quickly. But as Facebook grew in popularity, so did the business interest in using it as an online tool to promote businesses. This made sense since most people had Facebook accounts and connected with new ‘friends’ via their website, so it was pretty much a matter of time before more businesses began understanding how Facebook could be used as an effective marketing tool.

This is where Facebook pages, or fan pages, come in. I created one for Evolution in DesignZ and within a couple of weeks, found about 30-40 people became fans. This doesn’t really help me directly on the search engines, but it does get the company name out there, to people who may not have found us in different countries. As their friends check their status updates and see they have become a fan, they in turn may check out the page and become a fan too. This is sometimes referred to as a ‘viral’ or ’snowball’ effect: it starts with one or two people and grows without you really doing anything! Why is this useful? (do I really need to answer this question??) It is useful because it lets more people learn about your business, services (or products) without actually spending any money on advertising. The ‘viral’ effect can potentially lead to hundreds of people finding your company’s Facebook page and becoming ‘fans’.

I have to admit, I have never been a fan of  Twitter- I simply cannot see myself updating the world with what I or my designers, programmers and project managers are doing every 2 hours… you really have to have a lot to say to really make use of Twitter in my opinion, and let’s face it, most of us who work all day do not have the time or patience to update our status every 2 hours or so. However, posting relevant company updates is useful. I have also noticed more Twitter pages showing up in search engine queries recently, so if you have the time (or a very bored marketing team), then by all means- tweet away!

LinkedIn is one of the most useful business tools I have used in a long time. It let’s you set up your profile with your employment history and based on that it will suggest other people you can link to. If you have friends on LinkedIn and link to them, you will be able to browse their connections and request a link as well, thus growing your network. However, don’t request links to people you do not know directly as most people on LinkedIn use it as a serious tool- not like your normal Facebook page where you can have 1000 friends but only really know 30 of them.

The power of effectively using social media websites is endless. They are basically free advertising platforms for your business, and will increase awareness of your products and services in a way no other medium can.

Don’t websites automatically get ranked on Google? Websites usually do find their way into Google’s index, but if the site is not properly optimized, it will probably show up on page 99,999… which is pointless.

So what exactly is search engine optimization? The goal of search engine optimization is to have your website rank highly on search engine results, for specific keywords or key phrases. This means if you type in your main keyword in Google, for example, your website should show within the first two pages of the search results.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and submissions to Directories are the number one source for traffic. In fact, up to 90% of the total traffic to your website could come from the major search engines and directories. However, achieving high rankings on the search engines takes a lot more nowadays than just submitting your website to Google!

The fact that your site may be listed in search engines doesn’t guarantee traffic. Only expert search engine optimization and positioning strategies tailored specifically to your website can result in more traffic. Many common misconceptions are “the more keywords the better” and adding a variety of keywords will result in high rankings- this is not true!

Our search engine optimization service includes a Google local business listing, xml sitemap for Google, and much more. Need some proof of our ability to achieve these rankings?

Call us today to speak with a Project Manager and see what we can do for your website rankings!

Well… not necessarily. After you website has been optimized, you need to determine how effective the optimization strategy is. This is done not by simply going to Google and searching your keyword, but by monitoring your website statistics, or traffic. I get at least 20 emails or phone calls a week from people who are totally confused by their website statistics, and believe with all their hearts that their traffic is excellent and they have every reason to feel happy and proud of what the optimization company has achieved for them. This is always the part I hate… having to burst their bubble.

When reading your website statistics (or traffic report if you will), you need to first understand what you’re looking at. Most website statistics programmes offer colourful charts and graphs which is great, but don’t get distracted by them; look at the actual data in the tables. These are some of the main things you need to look closely at:

1. unique visitors
2. total visitors
3. most popular pages
4. visit durations (how long people spend on your website)
5. external links to your site (other websites that had a link to you, that people clicked to arrive at your website)
6. which search engine robots or spiders are visiting your site, how often, how much bandwidth they used
7. what keywords people typed into a search engine to find your website

One of the main misconceptions I hear every day is “look how many hits my website got this month”. THIS IS IRRELEVANT. I cannot stress this enough. A “hit” on your website (or web page) measures how much content was downloaded when the person or visitor arrived at your page. Here is a simple example: You have 1 page that serves as your website. This 1 page consists of 4 images and of course, the HTML page. When I visit your website, it will be counted as 5 hits- 1 hit for each image that was loaded on the page, 1 hit for the page itself. This has nothing to do with traffic itself, does not give you any information on how popular your website is, and most importantly, DOES NOT MEASURE VISITOR TRAFFIC! I know of a couple of dishonest search engine optimization companies that will report traffic “increases” to their clients by sending them a report of “hits”. Hits always look more impressive as this figure is usually in the ten’s of thousands for a proper website, if not more. This misleading figure is usually misinterpreted as visits of traffic. I’m sure you’ve heard many people throwing around the term that their website got thousands of  ”hits” this month- unless they’re actually talking about visits, they have been mislead to believing this is actually the number of visits.

Which website statistics programme should you use? This is always tricky because there are so many excellent ones out there for free. Google Analytics is a simple enough one to use, but it requires javascript code to be entered in the footer of each page you want to track. I highly recommend a programme called “AwStats” . Awstats also requires installation if your hosting provider does not already offer it, but it is well worth it. It is 100% free to download and install, and shouldn’t take an experienced developer more than 10 minutes to install on your hosting package.

In short, make sure you understand your website statistics before jumping for joy at all the new traffic and visitors you’re getting, and most importantly, don’t confuse hits with visits!

Blogs are designed to be search engine friendly by allowing you to “tag” your articles (or posts) with keywords. There are also many plugins available for blogs (especially WordPress) that add the well known “meta tags” fields to your posts, which help in terms of search engine optimization. However, this is not all. By just adding search engine optimization plugins and thoughtlessly tagging your articles with keywords will not achieve the desired results; a lot more thought and knowledge needs to go into optimizing your blog. Think of it this way: you have the car, now you need to select the right type of oil and gas to get the car going at optimal performance.

Start by tagging your articles correctly. This means you need to select as few as possible keywords as tags for your articles. I know what you must be thinking now: ” Is this guy crazy? I’ve heard the more keywords the better!” or ” I want to rank for multiple keywords, so I’m going to use as many as possible”. If you do this, you may as well forget about ranking your blog on search engines.

Tag, or keyword, selection is crucial to ranking your blog well on search engines. If your article is about website design for example, tagging the article with “e-commerce” or “CMS” is quite pointless- you’re better off writing dedicated articles about those topics. Yes I know, E-commerce is a type of website, but it technically has nothing to do with the article topic (website design). Search engines are not as intelligent as people think they are: they follow specific rules when indexing and ranking websites. In the eyes of the search engine, “E-commerce” is different from “website design”. I know if you perform a Google search on “website design” you will find links that mention “E-commerce” as well- this brings me to the second point: description and content.

Your blog’s text content (i.e. your article) needs to be written in a search engine friendly way to start ranking on search engines. This means you need to select a topic and stick to that topic in the article. If you have a lot to say on a similar or related topic, write a dedicated article for that. After you have written your article, try and ensure your main keyword shows around 5-7% of the entire text body. Also, make sure your article page is named after the main keyword. These 2 points greatly help your chances of ranking well.

Lastly, refer to my other article about starting a blog for a list of repositories and directories to submit your RSS feed to. After all, you need to get the word out there that your new blog exists!

As websites become more and more crucial to a business’ marketing plan, a blog can compliment your website nicely by allowing you to post discussions and thoughts on topics of your choice. Blogs have an RSS feed link built directly in, which allows people to subscribe to your blog to receive new articles whenever you write them. How does this help your website? I’ll explain…

Simply creating a blog and writing your everyday thoughts may be fun (if you have the time), but that does not help your website, or your website rankings on search engines, at all. You need to create a complimentary blog website for your main website. This means the articles should be about what you do, or the products you sell, for example. This helps in 2 ways: since blogs are designed to be search engine friendly, they usually get indexed (i.e. read) by the search engines rather easily and quickly. They also allow “tagging” of articles, which means you can specify keywords for the article to help get it ranked. This is where the basic principles of search engine optimization come into play: make sure you select targeted tags or keywords for your articles, and try and choose 1-2 tags or keywords per article. Spins-offs the tags are fine and don’t worry about pluralizing keywords.

Creating categories is crucial, and making sure the categories are clear and precise makes all the difference. In blogs, like WordPress for example, if you create a category you must create at least one article within that category, or the category will not display on the front end of the website. You can provide a short description for the category if you like, this also helps the search engines when they visit your blog.

Now that you have your new blog set up and ready to go, how do you start getting it ranked on the search engines? There are a couple of ways, but the main methods I use are:

• In the URL bar of your browser, you will see a little ‘RSS’ sign or text in the corner. If you click that, it will display your articles as an RSS feed. Alternately, you can also test out the RSS feed link by typing in “feed://YOUR DOMAINNAME/DIRECTORY THE BLOG IS INSTALLED IN/feed/. Our RSS feed is: feed://evolutionindesignz.com/feed/, for example.

• Now that you have your RSS feed address, submit to to as many RSS directories or repositories as possible! A good site with a comprehensive list is http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm. Another excellent site to submit to is http://www.digg.com. You can also use automated  software to submit the feed; many of them are free. Don’t forget to submit it to Google as well!

• Submit the normal URL (e.g. http://evolutionindesignz.com/blog) to as many search engines as possible. Again, there are many online services that submit URLs to many search engines for free, or you could use purchased software as well.

Once all this is done, monitor your blog’s traffic. It usually takes a little while before you start showing up in search engines, directories, etc and it all depends on how popular your topics are. Remember to be patient and keep writing new articles, and eventually your blog should start doing well on the search engines.

Content Management Systems (CMS) allow the user to log in via an online administration area to make changes to their websites, update the content, add new pages and much more. We simply refer to them as “Editable” websites, as it much clearer to a person who is not website savvy. This is a much more cost effective solution than a simple HTML website, as you no longer need to pay a developer to make updates or changes to your website. Sounds good, right? exactly what you were looking for, you say? Well, read on then…

The big decision now becomes “do I get an open source CMS or a custom programmed CMS?” This can be a very tough decision. I’ll now explain why:

Open source content management systems are FREE. That’s right, free. However, it is not as simple as that, as you still need the system installed and set up for you (aw shucks!). This can be easily done by people who are familiar with FTP programmes (File Transfer Protocol). This tool (also many free ones available) allows you to communicate directly with the server to upload and download files. So all you need to do then, is download the files for an open source CMS, upload them to your hosting package, and bang! you have a full CMS website ready to roll…. well, no (sorry). CMS sites are database driven, which means you now need to set up the “brain” of the website, so it can do all the work for you. This too is usually simple enough. You just need to log into your hosting control panel, set up a MySQL database and user, etc etc… then come back to the installation screen for the CMS, input all that info and now (finally) bang! you have your full, powerful CMS website ready to roll. But it doesn’t look anything like the sample you saw online, right? well, that’s because everything is set to “default”, so now you have the fun task of finding a template that you like (there are many free ones and paid ones available), customizing it if needed, installing it,….

Ok, by now you must have figured out that while the system is free, there is quite a bit of work involved in setting it up and getting it running the way you want. This is why developers charge for this.

So it turns out the system is not 100% free, as you still need to pay someone to set it up, install and modify a template for you, set up your basic pages and info, etc. Now this is where it gets tricky…

When you speak with a developer and let them know you want a website you can maintain yourself, they will (usually) suggest a CMS system. However, many developers will not tell you about the open source ones, as they obviously want to sell you their system, which is understandable, right? However, their system may cost big $$ which you don’t have! “Now what options do I have?”, you ask. Some will tell you to save up the money, some may offer a flexible payment plan… and some may actually suggest the open source CMS! “Aha!” you say; finally an option I can afford. Now here are some things to keep in mind when negotiating the installation and set up cost:

1. the system is 100% free, which means they do not need to charge you for the system. Some free CMS systems are Joomla, Mambo, Drupal… just to name the most commonly used ones. Go ahead and Google the names to read more about them.
2. To save more money, find a free template you like. You can then download this template and send it to your developer, who can install it for you in under 2 minutes. Make sure you find a template meant for your system though! The good thing with Mambo and Jooma is that they are more or less the same system, so many templates can be used by both systems.
3. If you are not 100% happy with the template, ask the developer what their hourly charge is to modify to your needs. Most of the time simply changing the banner image at the top will give the whole template a new look.
4. There are many free plugins that can be installed in these systems, that add functionality. Wordpress, for example, has a HUGE library of plugins that allow you to do all sorts of cool things.

Custom programmed CMS systems will be more expensive, but usually have alot of benefits that come with the added expense, like :

1. The system will function exactly the way you want it to. This means you don’t have to navigate your way around a huge, confusing and sometimes complex admin area of the open source cms, to find the function you’re looking for,
2. The system is usually alot more secure and less vulnerable to hackers. This is because the open source cms system can be downloaded and installed by anyone, including baddies with nothing better to do with their time than sit there and find vulnerabilities in the programming, which they then develop a hack for and attack everyone they can find. Keep in mind that many open source cms and even blog systems, like wordpress, use standard database prefixes, like “wp-” for wordpress. This is a dead give away to a hacker who is looking to target a wordpress system!
3. Support. Custom programmed cms systems should come with a guarantee, so if anything crashes or stops working, you should be able to call the developer who will then fix it at no cost. An open source system cannot come with a guarantee, as the developer did not create it, just installed it for you.

Ok, I think I have given you a lot to think about… Make sure to keep all this mind when shopping around (and if you call us, we’ll be happy to read you this post over the phone if needed!).

As people are becoming more web savvy, they are learning of more ways to get their websites noticed, and most importantly, found on search engines. Most people are now familiar with search engine optimization or SEO, but more and more people are now blogging and creating RSS feeds.

Why is an RSS feed important, you ask? Well,  to put it as simply as possible (keeping true to the simplicity to RSS), an RSS feed allows you to literally broadcast your information across millions of web portals, websites, blogs, directories and more. An RSS feed will also help your search engine rankings, as you are no longer relying only on Google and word of mouth to bring traffic to your website. By listing your  RSS feed with directories, you are becoming more “searchable” on the internet- and chances are your RSS feed will be listed as a result for a search… somewhere.

Blogs are important  because they do alot of the work for you. A wordpress blog, for example, will generate an RSS feed automatically, by specifying a path to your blog in feed format, which begins like this: feed://companyname.com/blog for example. You can then copy this link and submit to to hundreds of directories and RSS repositories to get your information listed and ranked. The key to good rankings is:

1. Keep your information up to date,
2. Add new information as often as possible
3. Add relevant “tags” to your articles
4. Try and write the content in search engine friendly format

The last 2 points require a bit of search engine know-how, but to explain: a tag is literally a quick one word description of the content/subject of the article. Try and choose tags that ONLY deal with the content of your article, don’t try and use tags just to get ranked… this never works because the search engines will read the text content of your article, then look at your tags (or vice versa) to see what matches. If you write an article about “Website design” and you tag your article with “hosting companies” you won;t go very far…

Writing content in a search engine friendly way is a little tricky. Keywords must be decided upon before writing the article, and then carefully placed throughout the text content. You don’t want to use your selected keyword too often as this results in “keyword saturation” (yes, this is a real term!) and search engines don’t like that.

in short, use an RSS feed to help increase your rankings and drive more traffic to your website. Make sure to plan your articles properly and write them with care, then be sure to submit the FEED, (not necessarily the link to the blog) to RSS repositories, feeds and directories. Most importantly be patient- results take time but stay the course and you will see results.

“How does this this work”, you ask? Simple. Most Search Engines offer this service, which is PAID (hence the pay per click). It is a system which allows you to create an account with the provider, select the keywords you want to rank for, set a budget for the campaign, and get started. Sounds simple enough, right? WRONG! As you can see so far, I am not a huge fan of the PPC or Pay Per Click system.

PPC providers make signing up easy enough, but there is loads of information they do not tell you- like how much it will cost you! The Pay per click system has financially crippled many of my clients, who benefitted little for what they paid… Ok, now i’ll explain how this works so you can decide for yourself:

1. Create your account: This step is simple enough. You simply choose a username and password, set up the basic info for the account, choose your keywords (what you want to rank for) and make sure to have your credit card handy!
2. Now the tricky part: Compete for your keywords.

“Whats’ that?” you say? well yes; the system works very much like Ebay. The main thing to keep in mind is you are not alone in wanting to rank well on search engines- so do all your competitors. The issue now becomes people are willing to pay good money to rank well, and the service providers know that. Once you have chosen your keywords, the system (depending on the provider) will inform you how much it will cost you to rank #1, #2, #3, etc for that key word or key phrase. The cost you are quoted is PER CLICK. This means if you’re willing to pay, let’s say $0.50 per click to rank #1 for your keyword, every time someone sees your link and clicks it to go to your website, your account is charged $0.50. 

“But baddies and competitors can click away my savings”! Well, yes and no… most providers have a tracking system in place, so when someone clicks on your ad and you are charged, it “remembers” the visitors IP address so if they click it again within 24 hours, you will not be billed again. If the trouble maker wants to run around town clicking your ad on different computers, well then… 

What are the benefits to PPC or Pay Per Click? Well, PPC allows you to rank #1 immediately if you’re willing to dish out the cash. Organic ranking can take much longer, but pays off in the long run. Keep in mind that you usually get billed monthly for PPC, which means if you don’t set a daily spending limit, you may get a nasty surprise at the end of the month (and the provider already has your credit card number!). This means you will need to constantly monitor your Pay Per Click account, to ensure you are not spending more than you can afford. One part that is hard to control is when you see people have actually been clicking your link, and you’ve nearly reached your daily spending limit…Don’t get tempted to immediately increase your spending limit, as this can end up costing you more than you realize. Be patient, and see how much business the PPC campaign has brought in- within the first 2-3 months, if it has not paid for itself, then I would not suggest continuing with it.

Sometimes I get clients who are anxious to get to #1 on Google within 24 hours. After explaining the impossibility of that occurrence, I sometimes admit defeat and suggest a short term Pay Per Click campaign, so they can see themselves as #1 on Google. While they are busy amusing themselves with that, I concentrate on the organic rankings so before they know it, they are doing well on the natural or organic results for Google, and they can put that money towards better use.

When contacting a website design firm, be careful not to be drawn in for the most expensive options with fancy bells and whistles- chances are you will never use over half these features. Some of the first things you need to decide are:

1. Which market am I targeting?
2. Who is my target audience?
3. What age group do my potential clients fall in?
4. Will I be selling products online?
5. What kind of functionality do I want my clients/visitors to have?
6. How big will this website grow?
7. Will I need to add new functionality?
8. How often will I need to update the website?

Remember: most website development firms are reluctant to give pricing over the phone and via email. If you call prepared, sales people will be forced to narrow their sales pitch down to your requirements, which will make it harder for them to distract and confuse you. Never let a sales person use technical jargon; this is a tactic widely used to justify inflated pricing. For example, if you need an e-commerce website, you know that you need a shopping cart function, member a/c function, payment gateway to process transactions and the ability to maintain the catalogue yourself (just a few examples of the functionality). if you ask for something that seems would/should come with an e-commerce site, like specifying bestselling products, chances are the system already comes with it. HOWEVER! always ask for a complete list of functionality before going into the details of what you need. If the sales person sees you are asking for functionality that already comes with the website, chances are they will scale down the functionality and charge you separately for each additional function, even though the base system comes with it!

E-commerce websites, put simply, allow you to sell your products online. There are a number of things to consider before developing an e-commerce website though:

1. How many categories is the website going to start with?
2. How many products?
3. Do you have all the information ready for the listings?
4. Do you have all the images for the products?
5. How will inventory be controlled?
6. How will you accept payments?

These are some preliminary questions I always ask my clients. An effective way to save money on the development of your e-commerce website is to be prepared with the content and know what you want. Of course, it is the responsibility of the developer to guide you through the process, but by knowing what exactly you want and having your content ready, you will save valuable time in programming and designing, which will in turn save you money.

One way I work with clients is to concentrate on the design work first- this builds the frame work for the website and helps you visualize the needed functions like “tell a friend” or “newsletter signup”. This way, if my client thinks of a new function they want to add, it is not costly to implement as the detailed programming has not started. This also gives the client time to prepare their information and inventory, so when the programming is complete, the developer has the content to begin beta testing.

Payment gateway refers to how you will accept payments online. Some options like PayPal are excellent to begin with, as it is free to sign up, and they charge a small commission on transactions. Most importantly, any proper developer knows how to implement the PayPal system as a payment gateway. For a more corporate feel, speak to your bank about their “Merchant Account” options. Some clients I have worked with have found it tedious to work with a bank to accept payments online, some said it was a simple process. Speak to your personal banker for details.

Remember to take your time in beta testing as this is the final stage in development. By the time you are in beta testing, the e-commerce website should be 100% functional, should have all the real content, products and information, and you should have been able to successfully order products online. Make sure to go through every function properly, as once you have signed off on it many developers will wash their hands of the project…! I suggest taking 2-3 days to properly test your system.

Hosting a website basically means once you have a completed website, the files that make up the pages of the website need to be connected to the internet, so people can find the website by typing in the domain name. What is a domain name you ask? Domains are ‘www.website.com’, for example. You need to have a domain name to go with your hosting package, so people can type in the website address and find your website. Proper hosting companies will arrange all this for you, but you should have some basic information in order not to get ripped off:

Hosting companies offer a variety of hosting packages to suit your needs, anything from a basic “starter” hosting package to full blown “Professional packages”. What is the difference between the packages and why do they cost different amounts?

Simple. Different hosting packages will include different features and functions on the server which you will have access to. The more included, the more it costs. However, there are 3 main things you need to look for when choosing a hosting package:

1.    Bandwidth
2.    Disk Space
3.    Databases (how many and what kind?)

Bandwidth means the amount of internet traffic allowed to your website on a monthly basis. This in turn directly effects the number of visitors your website can support on a monthly basis. Every time you have a visitor to your website, bandwidth is being used. This is because your website pages are made up of different elements, like images, flash, etc. These are stored in separate directories on the server, so when you visit the website, the browser on your computer is calling the website page from the server, which pulls the various elements from the the directories, and sends a copy down to your browser. Each file, like an image file, is a specific size (like 10kb), so each element being called to make your website page is using up bandwidth.

Bandwidth is one of the most important features to consider when choosing a hosting package. Make sure you have a minimum of 50GB per month of bandwidth, to ensure your website is always online. Many hosting companies penalize clients for going over the allocated amount of bandwidth, and do different things when this happens. A good company will increase your bandwidth for the month and monitor your bandwidth more closely next month. If they find you are regularly surpassing the quota, they will contact you and ask you to upgrade your package, or charge you separately for more bandwidth. A bad company will suspend your website so it is no longer on the internet, and put a placeholder page asking the owner of the company to contact them. This is simply bad business, as it could effect YOUR business if the website is down…

Disk space is exactly what it sounds like… just like a computer! It is the amount of space you are allowed to use on the server for your website files. A good amount to have is between 500MB- 2 GB. Anything more than that is un-necessary for a normal website, since HTML files are compressed to make them load faster on browsers. Even an HTML website that contains 30-40 pages could be only 20- 30MB total in size!

Databases allow for functionality, such as the shopping cart system on an e-commerce website, the page editor in an editable website, and much more. By neglecting to check how many databases are included with your hosting package, you are potentially limiting how your website can grow! Many people like to start out with a simple HTML website (a brochure website, if you will), then eventually upgrade to something more functional and powerful. If your hosting plan does not include atleast 1 MySQL/ASP/MSSQL database, then you can’t develop a more functional site as the “brain” will be missing!
Remember: do not get drawn in with useless features like ‘unlimited email accounts’. As a hosting provider, I can tell you it is a simple matter of a few clicks for a hosting provider to increase the number of email accounts for a client’s hosting package. Some hosts like to boast ‘unlimited email accounts’ and bump up their prices to justify this. Fact is, you will never need unlimited email accounts!

Finally, how much should a normal hosting package cost? This depends on the provider. A commercial hosting company will always give you the best rates, as that is their sole business and they have rooms and rooms full of servers, so they benefits from economies of scale. While their prices are good, their customer service may not be… always remember a commercial hosting company will NOT assist you with website problems, only issues related to the server. Some may offer help, at an additional charge.

Smaller firms (like us) offer hosting as well, but cannot benefit from the same economies of scale as the commercial hosts, as we do not need rooms of servers. Evolution in DesignZ, for example, rents a server from a commercial host, and offers hosting. The packages may be a little more expensive than the commercial hosts, but you receive personalized service with smaller firms. For example, my clients can call me directly (anytime, and yes, even weekends) if they have an issue or even a question about hosting. If they have a problem with their website on our server, we fix it free of charge! The point is you get personalized service and the security and convenience of dealing with one company for everything.