Your advertising opportunities for a website are almost endless and the scope of advertisement that you do is only limited by your aim and your budget.  The considerations for advertising is too big of a subject, so I choose not to go into this at this time (stay tuned for a future blogpost on this). However, I will concentrate on the easiest and quickest way to get you on the 1st page of search engine results.

This is called Pay per Click (PPC) advertising.

The 2 main PPC programs on the internet at the moment are from Google and Yahoo. Both work with 2 different methods of calculation.
While Google takes into account page rank and relativity, Yahoo works solely on the higher the bid the higher the position. Both programs syndicate over a number of SE’s.

Before going into a PPC program you need to decide:

1. Your monthly budget. - Your monthly PPC advertising budget should be calculated the same as any other advertising budget. This budget is calculated on your expected Return on Investment of all your keywords together. (ROI)
2. A maximum spending limit for each Keyword. This is calculated as follows:

(Monthly Clicks X Cost Per Click) = Monthly cost
Monthly cost / Expected Conversion Rate (Percentage) = Profit per Conversion.

Thus a profitable PPC campaign is:
Profit per conversion X Expected Conversion Rate > Monthly cost

So the obvious conclusion is if your profit per sale does not cover the monthly costs then you need to make changes in your keywords, descriptions and or the Cost Per Click that you are bidding on.

She explained the logistics involved in presenting search results on the SEPR (Search Engine Results Page), There are a lot of machines operating in sinc behind every search query entered on Google: 400-1000 Machines work together to present results within 0.2 seconds. To constantly improve their algorithms and reach their goal of serving up results that match the user’s needs and wants, Google does a lot of A/B testing without users knowing it. Changes range from minor pixel adjustments to much more noticeable layout changes. So for the observant Google users among us: if you think you notice a slight difference on the SERP page, you likely are. It is just Google testing pages.

Just as Google is testing pages, so should you. Have you reviewed your analytics lately and watched page exits numbers increase and are not sure why? Why not serve up different landing pages and monitor the results. You may find out some interesting information. Not sure where to start? You can get some ideas from reading:  Ten Things You can do to Increase Visitor Response at Your Web Site.

Getting started.

So you have decided that you want a site or you want to improve your site. These are the steps that you should follow:

• Decide the purpose of the site.
• Decide on the functions that you want on your site: (See Appendix 1)
• Contract an SEO.
• Contract a webmaster.

What does “contracting” mean?

There are the before” and “after” stages in building and designing a website. (This is similar to hiring a painter for your house.) If you do not have an iron clad contract, you might find yourself paying for the painting of the house but not for the window panes and doors. These are the “little extras” that you find out about and pay for way down the line.

Contracting an SEO.

The reason we advise to contract an SEO before actually contracting a webmaster is that the SEO is providing a service as apposed to a webmaster that provides a product. Whether creating a new site or revamping an old site, the SEO will assist you in defining the best site design which will also fit a following Search Engine Strategical marketing plan. The SEO is not only about optimization, it also about being creative. This creativity comes from thinking “Outside the Box” both in your site design, Keywords and Advertising campaigns.

Your SEO’s job is to assist you and your webmaster to improve your SE rankings.

If you consider that 80% of your traffic comes from generic searches terms on Search Engines, you can not afford to be without an SEO to assist you in the process of getting the highest placing possible. Unlike signing a contract with a webmaster the terms of the contract with an SEO depends entirely on the quotation that he gives you. No self respecting SEO will guarantee quick results but if you reached him/her, and if you & your webmaster work in sync according to the SEO’s suggestions, you will begin to see results sooner than you think.

Contracting a web designer/webmaster.

1. Write down your requirements in a numbered table format. These requirements might cover hosting and what exactly falls under their web management clause. (This might be an hourly rate or per call basis. (This is only for when the site is up and when all “Contracted” items work flawlessly).
2. Get recommendations or go into websites that meet your fancy and look for the designer’s details. (This will generally be at the bottom section.)
3. Speak to the sales person of the companies you choose explaining in exact detail what you need.
4. Make sure to see their website. They will normally have examples of sites they designed.
5. After your telecon, send them the page that dictates your requirements and wait for a quotation. (Repeat this stage with at least 3 companies.)
6. Make sure that the contractor understands the source code is your sole property and that you take possession of it when the site goes up.
7. Sign a contract and good luck.

Choosing and registering a domain name.

Unless you are aiming at creating a company brand name, choose a domain name as close to your main market keywords as possible. Register the domain name yourself. (Do not allow the contracted webmaster to do this). Have all correspondence regarding the domain name registration come to you.

DO NOT LOSE THE PASSWORD TO YOUR REGISTRATION SITE OR YOU WILL LOSE THE ABILITY TO CHANGE SUPPLIERS OR WORSE YOU WILL LOSE THE ABILITY TO RENEW THE DOMAIN NAME.

Working with the SEO.

When you start working with the SEO, you enter an entire world of facts, theories and numbers that you did not know prior to starting your website project. The SEO becomes your partner in business in a sense that he/she has to feel breath and know the company and its goals in order to do the best job possible. The SEO will give you suggestions for your website according to your business aims and markets that you works in. The SEO also makes suggestions for website marketing. These suggestions you are free to accept and implement however you will be wise to listen to the SEO’s reasoning behind every suggestion that you get.

A short insight to “Keywords” and their usage.

What is a Keyword? (www.wikipedia.com) “A keyword in an Internet search is one of the words used to find matching web pages. It was popularized during the early days of search engine development, as it was not possible to ask natural language questions and find the desired sites. Searches gave the best results if only a few keywords were chosen and searched for. These “keywords” captured the essence of the topic in question and were likely to be present on all sites listed by the search engine.”

“Keywords are still used today. Many modern search engines have methods for determining which words in a search string are important and are ought to be treated as keywords. Common words like articles (a, an, the) and conjunctions (and, or, but) are not treated as keywords because it is inefficient to do so. Almost every English-language site on the Internet has the article “the“, and so it makes no sense to search for it. The most popular search engine, Google removed words such as “the” and “a” from its indexes for several years, but then re-introduced them, making certain types of precise search possible again.”

The Myth of the Keyword. - “Your best bet is to use the main keywords that relate to your market and fight for the top position with those”

The truth about the Keyword. – “Choosing a list of good keywords is a science. Along with choosing the keywords, the correct “landing pages” need to be created for them or decide to which web page you will send the browser. (This is the “Landing page”). You need to decide which title is best to use for each keyword and you have to decide which description you will use with the Keyword and the landing page.”

Write “Search Engine friendly” content together with “user friendly content”, then join the 2 together to make a “user friendly page”.

Once your SEO has your list of keywords, he/she will investigate deeper and make a list of 100-500 related keywords. The SEO comes up with titles and descriptions for each page. (These your webmaster will turn into Meta tags.)

Next your SEO will work with you on creating relevant content pages. THE MORE UNIQUE RELEVANT CONTENT YOU HAVE THE BETTER. The important thing is to not create “DUPLICATE CONTENT” pages. Search Engines are very wary of duplicate content, it is seen as cheating the SE and you will likely be penalized.

The best places to get content are from RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) FEEDS. RSS has become a popular technology for bloggers and podcasters to distribute their content. Your SEO will know where to find these.

Next the SEO will submit your site to all relative directories (Not Search Engines.). If you have a good sitemap the SE’s will find you.

You will need approximately 100 pages or more to be counted by the SE’s as a serious site. (There are some exceptions to this rule, but it is better to as aim high as possible).

The next most important item on the SEO “to do” list is to get as many relative links to your site as possible. Linking assists the SE’s in seeing importance and relevancy to your business. DO NOT TRY TO DO THIS YOURSELF as you could find your site being penalized for spamming. (Yes, a website can spam.) If you link to or get an incoming link from a site that has been blacklisted, you could get blacklisted too.

THE MORE RELEVANT LINKS YOU HAVE, THE HIGHER YOUR SITE IS GOING TO RANK. (This includes individual page ranking.)

To start getting noticed, write articles and get them published in authoritive sites. Make sure that at the bottom of the article, you put a link to your site by stating your name and connection to the industry. Most publishers like articles of between 800-1200 words. Your SEO can assist with getting your articles into the correct industry sites.

As fancy and tempting as it is, DO NOT USE FLASH ON YOUR HOME PAGE. SE’s can not read flash and they could ignore your site until they find an inbound link to an internal page of your site. If you are adamant about it, there is a work around this problem and your SEO or webmaster should know it.

If you got lost in all this jargon, contact us; we will assist you In planning and overseeing your website.

For more information:

• getting a clearly defined project plan for your (re) building your website
• strategic web planning

Return soon to see PART 3 of this paper.

Click here if you missed “Part 1″

is multi disciplined in all areas of the Internet and is responsible for defining your web-site with you and getting it completed on time and within budget.
One of the most important services offered by websiteoverseers is liaising between you and the various professionals contracted to building your site.

This is because most of our customers do not fully grasp the ins and outs of the internet and have not planned ahead thoroughly enough before contracting a professional service.

Read on to find out more about the logic and benefits of using a websiteoverseer.

Getting to know everything about SEO is like learning 55 languages at once. Each search engine has its own rules and set of tools to assist the SEO to analyze the site and the success of the site over a given period.

The main problem of the SEO is to keep up with latest technologies because as the search engines develop, they develop more “artificial intelligence” which basically is the spiders back bone and which tells the spider how relevant the site is. The better the spider and the algorithms are, the more traffic that particular search engine is going to get and the more the SEO knows about the spiders, the more he knows about possible pitfalls that can get a site banned or pushed back in the search engines space.

Search engines are not interested in the design and look of the site. (Usability) – The site can look drab, but if the webmaster is an SEO wizard or has a Search Engine Optimizer working with him, they can place the site as high up in the rankings as possible. (Below page 3 is usually worthless.)

The very beginning - want a website?

• Make sure that you define the goal or aim of what you hope to achieve from the site before looking for a web designer.
• If you already have a site, ask yourself if it is achieving your aims. If not, then make the necessary conclusion of if you are wasting money or if you want to make the necessary changes.
• If your site is not achieving your aims, ask yourself why?
• Ask other peoples opinion of what they think as well? (Not people that work for you.
• If you designed the site yourself, put your ego aside and take an unbiased look at the site. (A slightly impossible thing to do, but a necessary step anyway.)
• If you are serious having a productive site, then hire a professional to take a look and to give you constructive criticism about what to improve and how you can do it. (It is worth the money, believe me.)
• DO NOT GO TO ANYBODY THAT PROMISES TO GET YOU ON THE FIRST PAGE OF GOOGLE AND WHO CAN GET YOU LISTED IN 10,000 SEARCH ENGINES. These guys only give their profession a bad name. (Besides the fact that you can do this by yourself if you have the time.)

Understanding the match between the Search Engines, the Web designer and the SEO

If you choose any topic or search word and search for it in any SE, you will notice on the top right side in blue is the number of relative results the SE has in its database. Most keywords searched for will have well over 10,000 results.

These are the total results on the Internet which that particular SE has listed for that topic.Your job is to make sure that no matter how many results there are with your particular keyword, your Search Engine Optimizer gets you as close to the top of given results as possible with any Search Engine and that your website is designed to allow browsers to come in and stay in your site.

Your Store front

The most popular myth of the internet is the illusion that the look and feel of the site is likened to a store-front window which should be attractive enough for the browser to enter the site.
This is untrue.

Your description that appears on the search engines results page is the first thing that the browser will see. Your description is therefore your store-front window of your store. This should have relevance to the subject and an enticing reason for the person to click on your link aside from the other 10 sites on the page. That reason is your call to action. Peoples mind on automatic mode when scanning a SE results page. Your aim is to trigger that mindset with a command and a good reason to click on your link and to visit the “foyer” of your store.

The Foyer

What we call the foyer of your store is what keeps the browser on your site and that your aim of turning a browser into a client is achieved. Always keep in mind that the second that browsers do not find their way in the navigational process of your site, you lose them forever as the next action that will follow is “Back” or “Close” to continue their search on other sites that will give them the answers to the questions that they have.

Your foyer has to follow the basic rule of “Kiss”. You personally need to “KISS” the customer by“Keeping It Smart and Simple”

• Make sure that info is easy to reach. This basically refers to having the browser not having to click more than 3 times to reach their target.
• The look of your foyer depends on many factors and as long as you remember to KISS, you have a better chance of keeping your browser and achieving your goal.

The Search Engines

If you are not a professional SEO, then do not even try to understand the methodology of the SE’s. The only things you HAVE TO KNOW are that the SE’s have strict codes of relevancy and an even stricter policy of ethics.

1. If you are selling a product and try and disguise it by using unique unrelated keywords, you will be blacklisted from the SE’s.
2. If you use keywords relative to your product, but you do not have relative content or relative links you will also find your site blacklisted.
3. If your webmaster, unknowing to you, uses illegal methods to try and trick the SE’s, your site will be blacklisted. (The list of these tricks gets longer as the SE’s improve their artificial intelligence within their search algorithms.)
4. The more relative content and “incoming links” that you have, the more respect you will get from the SE’s and the higher your site will be placed.
5. The older your site is, the more respect you get from the SE’s.
6. Your website has to have a Site Map. The site map is probably the most important page on your site as this assists the spiders through your site. (Your SEO will assist with the placing)

The Webmaster / Web designer

The webmasters part in building or redesigning your site according to a specific schedule, design and as close to the rules of the individual SE’s as possible. The first step in designing a site is your decision as to the purpose of your site.

• Do offer a service that you want to advertise?
• Do you accept Credit Cards etc?
• Do you want an interactive forum?

Based on the above, you can now start collecting quotes for the best webmaster/web designer to do your site for you.
Do not make the mistake and expect the web designer to write content for the site. The job of writing relevant content is entirely your job. Now is the time to get in touch with the SEO.

The SEO

The SEO’s job function is to assist you and the webmaster to achieve your goal of your site.
There are many items that need to be covered by the SEO and we will start with the most important item which both you and the SEO have to do together.

The SEO will know what the search engines are looking for and how they work. The SE sends out a program that scans the web for new sites, new content and sees that the old unchanged site has not changed subject of interest. This program is related to as the “spider”.

Once the spider finds a new site, it goes through a check list to find out what the site is about. Sure the technology is that does this is great, but it is not so great that it can “look” at a page and know what the site is relevant to. You and the SEO have to tell it by leaving certain “hints”. This is the SEO’s first step.Normally, the SEO will ask you a lot of questions about your business, your market and your competitors. He/She will also ask for a list of 10-20 keywords or key-phrases that relate to your market. He will also ask you for any literature that you have so that he can learn about your market. Approximately 1 week later, the SEO will come back with a multi staged proposal from helping you with your keywords and rewriting/redesigning of your content so that it serves your purposes best in the fight to gain the highly rated 1^st page of the Search Engine queries results page.

WARNING!!

DO NOT BE BLINDED BY FUTILE PROMISES. REACHING THE TOP 3 PAGES CAN TAKE UP TO 6 MONTHS TO ACHIEVE AND IT IS VERY HARD WORK. If your site has been up for a while, this 6 month period may be shortened, but any good and honest SEO will tell that the worst thing that you can do is to rush in and expect miracles. This may even work against you.

Check back here shortly for part 2.

Many professionals and company owners, who have not seen the light as to the value of an Internet website, may one day look around and find that they are on a fast melting iceberg of people in the same position.

Those that have taken the dive into the vast sea of the Internet have a head start on them with all the advantages that the Internet has to offer.

Eventually, the majority of businesses in the world will be represented on the Internet as it is turning into an integral part of our lives. Turning to the Internet for assistance is becoming as natural as brushing our teeth. Mobile Internet is advancing with enormous strides and in the next few years will offered as a viable and cheap option for Internet usage.

Many of you who are looking for ways to get off that melting iceberg may be impressed with the “Fast and Free” website tools that are available, and see this as a quick way to having your own website. However, building your own site has very specific problems that will be setbacks more than the savior you are expecting. This is only because you probably:

1. Do not have background knowledge of the Internet. This means you may not be aware of the basics that are needed to build a successful website. (Successful = when you finally have a website, it will work for you and not against you.)
2. Do not know how to best get your website listed in the major search engines (and not banned)
3. Do not know how to write for Search Engines as well as the customers that you are writing for.
4. Do not know the coding needed when writing web content.
5. ………….
6. ………..

YOU DO NOT HAVE THE TIME OR THE RESOURCES TO GET A SITE THAT WILL MEET YOUR OWN EXPECTATIONS.

This list could go on and on however I think the message is clear enough. It is better to spend the extra dollars for a good professional site than to attempt to do it on your own, no matter how good the free tools are.

On a final note: If you do not have the time nor resources to plan and keep track of a group of professionals, hire someone to do it for you.

David Singer

WebsiteOverseers.com
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