Tag Archive for search engine spiders

Getting Your Business Online

May 14, 2010 Advertising, Graphic Design, Internet Marketing, Marketing, search engine optimization, web design One comment

In a previous post, you were given the option of having a low cost website setup. If you have chosen this option then great. If not, then you will need to seriously consider getting your business online. In this day and age, every serious business has an online presence. Having a business website legitimizes your company.

A business website is your online showcase. It allows your customer the added convenience of finding information about your service or product on their own time, even when you may not be accepting phone calls after-hours to answer their questions. Your website can also be a point of contact for new and existing customers. Having a website will allow your customers to contact you via email if they want to, when they simply do not have time to call.

If you decide to publish a website, you will find a huge number of web designers and hosting companies out there. The cost of a website will range from a couple hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars, or more depending on what kind of business you want to start. In addition, hosting your website will cost you a monthly or yearly fee. These can also range, but are typically $30 per month or so. The other cost of having a website is rather small. It is for the purchase of a domain name. Domain names are purchased on a yearly bases, and run around $10 per year or less. You can find a good cheap domain name at www.godaddy.com and you will be given the option to pay for a single year, or multiple years. You can decide which is best by determining your budget at this point. If you can afford it, you will save a few dollars by registering your domain name for 5 years or so ahead of time.

To flash or not to flash, that isn’t the question:

The big debate on whether or not to use flash is not really a debate at all. At least not if you know the main purpose of the website. Let me clarify. Flash is a great thing. It dazzles and looks really cool. But the problem is that flash is not as search engine friendly as plain old html.

When you create a website fully in flash, the website ends up being one simple html file with a call to a flash swf file. That one single file contains all of the contents of your website. This means that there are not pages upon pages of text content that search engine spiders love so much.

The so-called debate is that it is after the year 2000, and flash has new seo attributes such as Meta data. But in the end, the facts are the facts. Flash is not reliable for consistent top 10 Google rankings.

When building your website, you want to focus on a CSS/XHTML layout with lots of excellent textural content. I understand you may not know what those jumbled letters mean right now. But understand that they mean everything right now when it comes to seo. HTML websites can be built a couple of ways.

1.) Table based layout;
or
2.) Table-less aka css/xhtml layout.

Flash can be placed in either format. The difference is in the code. By using css for your layout, you reduce your code by hundreds of lines. Tables and css are structured in a similar format, but css takes up less characters and the code is called from an external css file, which puts the actual page content higher up in the code.

Flash is what you would use when you can care less about search engine optimization. You will notice a good number of record label websites, or film websites use flash. This is because they are focused on the visual graphic effects, and they care less about seo because they generally have excellent marketing.

By combining the css/xhtml layout with regular text and images rather than flash, you have the optimal environment for top 10 rankings.

When it comes down for you to decide on flash versus html, you have to figure out whether you are dead-set on animation or not.
You do have other options though. You are able to effectively build a css/xhtml layout with static content (preferred), but include flash “features” on your website such as an animated header graphic. That way you can have the wow factor of animation without sacrificing search engine optimization standards.

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Size Does Matter

May 4, 2010 Blogs, Internet Marketing, Making Money, Marketing, Research 2 comments

Ok, so you may have come here looking for information on how to work your boat, but that’s not what this article is about. This is about the size of articles. Normally I say that it doesn’t really matter if your article is small or large. What matters are it’s contents and how valuable they are to the reader.

The reason why I believe that larger articles do well, if you are able to research and write them, it because they provide that tasty content for search engine spiders. Spiders live to read text, and a huge article means many more chances of being in the top 10 of Google or some other search engine for different keywords and phrases.

pluginid 300x131 Size does matterAn example of large articles can be seen on a site called PluginID. The site was started by a pretty talented writer who later sold it for a 5-figure amount.

He later went on to start another blog called ViperChill which I sometimes visit and see what he has cooking.

If you visit either one of those blogs, you will notice that it’s author is long-winded and writes lengthy articles filled with lots of valuable information for the reader. The reason why this works is because it creates a better likelihood that readers will comment. When someone is really looking for in-depth information on a subject, they sometimes are willing to sit there and read huge articles.

viperchill 300x131 Size does matterI tend to write medium length articles because that is what I usually have time for. When I am not blogging, I am designing websites, doing seo work or consulting, or doing things here at home. I have a wife and two kids to take care of.

I was just telling a friend the other day that I also market my blog and websites heavily, and volunteer as a dmoz editor. I am stretched pretty thin, but it works for me. On occasion, I try to write heavy in-depth articles. I would like to do nothing but write articles, and one day I will. If you want to reach some sort of success, the lengthier your articles, the better chance you have of ranking and getting traffic. You also have a good chance of being linked to by your readers who enjoyed your research.

If you have a hard time writing (aka writers block), my advice is this. Every subject that can be covered, has been covered. The topic you write will not be unique. What will make it unique is your insight into that topic, and how you translate it in your own way for your readers. If you need some inspiration for a good topic to cover in-depth, you can always go to a blog that already writes big articles and see what they are doing. Don’t just browse, but take part by commenting on their articles. This will equal a ‘thank you’ to the author for providing information that you enjoyed. It will also help you stir up ideas because it takes some thinking to come up with a decent comment that helps make you look like an authority.

When you begin writing, don’t throw out the idea of saving your draft for later. I understand you are eager to get your big article out there right away, but sometimes it is better to wait and research, then see what your brain comes up with to add to your article.

Once you do publish your article, it is important to keep an eye on your stats. Notice how many visits your new article receives compared to the smaller ones you have published in the past. This will give you an idea as to how successful your blog can be if you continued on that path. As always, check back here for the latest articles, and sign up for my newsletter on the right to get free marketing tips that are not published on my blog!

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Forget a Home, I Live in My Blog

May 3, 2010 Blogs One comment

I find myself on the backend of my blog daily. Not just daily, but multiple times a day. The reason for this is that it is becoming a successful blog now. I watch my live stats and it is rare for there not to be a visitor or multiple search engine spiders reading a post or a page.

So, this is what success looks like. Or at least the beginning of it. Are you a failed blogger? Do you see what might have been? I have always took in what I read on other blogs with skepticism. Bloggers speaking of success and such. I guess it takes faith of some sort in order to follow it through to the end. I truly believe that if you can dedicate some time to creating a post every day for 3 months, you will see that success start to happen as well. And that my friends will motivate you even further.

I am not sure how to express this to you as someone who is skeptical yourself. All I can say is that you have to give it a shot, and see how it pans out. If you are too nervous staring at your stats, then spend some time commenting on other blogs, or submitting your rss feeds to blog directories. Do some self-promotion on social networks.

My blog has just begun. As I free up even more time by monetizing this blog, I will be able to write lengthier, and more frequent posts. Right now, I try to ensure that there is at least one post published every single day. And of those posts, each has to provide some useful information and not just a one-liner to get a post indexed.

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Hire a Blogger, Save a Tree

March 10, 2010 Blogs, Internet Marketing One comment

Looking for a way to keep your website updates with fresh content without having to actually spend time researching and typing? If you hire a blogger, you can get the content requirements that you need without using your precious time as an investment. You can find bloggers to write 1,000 word articles for as cheap as $8 a piece.

If you need someone, I am available. I have various knowledge, but am able to research any subject based on your need. Blogging, if you don’t know, is the best way to get search engine spiders like googlebot to stay on your website, constantly indexing.

I recommend WordPress as your blogging platform, and I can install it if needed. I find that WordPress has a bunch of free, essential plugins that allow your blog to be search engine friendly, and integrate with social networks and other modern media.

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