Website Design That Works (Part 1) - Bart The Bear SaysSitemaps Improve Site Value - Bart The Bear SaysHow to Reduce the Pain of Switching Domains - Bart The Bear SaysNo Website Is An Island - Back Linking is Essential for Success - Bart The Bear SaysWhat Your SEO Strategist Won't Tell You

Submit Your Articles
To Moxie Drive Expressions

Bart The Bear Says Home Page

Click here to email me

Exchange Links

The official NowSourcing blog

Marketing Blogs - BlogCatalog Blog Directory

Introduction
Before you even think about opening Dreamweaver or your favourite html editor and start designing your site there are a few things I believe you need to do first. I am going to describe how to íncrease your work flow and give you some general tips and tricks that will speed up the design of your website project and help to get it showing up in search engines quicker. In future articles I will be going into greater detail of some of the topics I describe here. Now let's get started.

Purchasing and Optimizing Your Domain Name
The first thing you need to consider is your domain name. I suggest that you don't just use your company name, i.e. if your company makes tartan paint and your company name is "Hamish Paints" don't go for the obvious choice of hamishpaints.com. I would try and come up with a keyword rich domain name. Some search engine optimizers (SEO) would say that having keywords in your domain name doesn't make any difference to your listings but I disagree. Google will highlight your keywords in the search engine results page (SERPS), which leads me to believe that keywords do hold some weíght, and besides it will make it clearer to the searcher what your site is all about.

What are Keywords?
Keywords from a search engine optimization (SEO) stand point are the key -words that are used to optimize your website for better listings on search engines. These are the words or phrases people are typing into the search bar of Google etc. to find websites relating to what information or products they may be looking for. Go to www.bruceclay.com and www.highrankings.com - two great websites where you can learn more about keywords and SEO.

How Do I Find and Choose My Keywords?
To find keywords that people may be using in search terms the first port of call should be the overture keyword selector tool and you can access this tool at http://inventory.overture.com or http://inventory.uk.overture.com. If you want the UK results, here you will find an excellent tool for discovering keywords. All you need to do is type in words or phrases that are going to be related to your website and Overture will show you related searches that include your term and how many times that term was searched in the last month. Now you can get an idea of what keywords you should be including in your domain name.

Please note that search engines don't like long domain names so try to keep it as short as possible. Other great resources for keywords are:

http://www.wordtracker.com
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
http://www.keyworddiscovery.com

As we all know, all the good domain names have been taken and it's almost impossible to get one-word domain names these days, so be inventive if you get stuck. I always find it helpful to visit www.dictionary.com and use the thesaurus to come up with names maybe I hadn't thought of. Now that you are armed with a killer domain name you can go to http://www.umbrellawebsitedesign.co.uk/order/whois/ and chëck its availability.

Try and get the domain name extension of the country your company resides in as it makes it clear where you're from. I know most people want to get a .com but, if you are in the UK, I believe a better extension would be .co.uk as it shows where you're from. This will also help in the SERPS. When people are searching for websites in the UK you don't want to be competing with websites outside of your country if you can help it.

Building a Holding Page and Creating a Site Map
Now that we are sorted with our domain name and hostíng the next step involves creating a holding page and submitting a sitemap to Google. First of all you need to create your holding page. It's a good idea to create a holding page so your domain can build up some respect with search engines. You don't want to wait until your website goes live before submitting it to search engines.

Designing a Holding Page
Keep it simple and describe all the services and products you may be offering in your site. Don't forget to use keyword rich text in your title tag, description tags, and body text. Use the keywords you discovered in the "how to find and choose keywords" section. This is good practice for when you design your website proper, but you have to remember it's unlikely this page will be viewed by many people. However, this isn't the purpose of your holding page.

A good idea here would be, if any visitors did visit your site, perhaps they would like to know when your website goes live or maybe they will have questíons. I would therefore suggest you add a simple contact förm asking for their name and email address to notify them when the site will be live or to answer any questíons they may have. You could even use them to do some usability testing and describe in more detail the coming sections. Name it index.html or index.htm and put it in the root folder of your site and upload it to the server.

Creating a Sitemap for Google
A Google sitemap is a XML document that contains information of every page on your website (not to be confused with a sitemap html page on your website). You need to upload this to the root folder of your server so that Google can access it and index your website more quickly and easily. You can create a Google sitemap with very little effort online by going to http://www.sitemapspal.com and following the online instructions. Once you have created your site map you can go to www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ and follow Google's instructions for adding a site map. You will find this service very easy to use and invaluable in getting your website listed properly on Google. Remember to update your sitemap XML document when your website is finished and every time you make changes so that Google can index your new pages. Doing this now will save you time and effort later.

Now Submit Your Website to the Major Search Engines - Right?
Wrong! It's a misconception that you need to submit your website to search engines. Please, please don't pay anyone to do this, as it's not necessary. (Are you listening all you black hat SEO companies, shame on you). Once you have created a sitemap in Google this is more than enough to get yourself listed in the search engines. The search engines will actually come looking for your website in due course. Engines like Google and Yahoo serve listings to lots of other sites. For more information on this visit http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginerelationshipchart.htm. The one place you must submit your website is the Open Directory or DMOZ for short as this is where all the major search engines get their directory listings from. For more information on submitting your website to DMOZ visit http://www.dmoz.com/add.html.

Creating a Rough Draft of Your Site
Now its time to start designing your site. Before you go ahead and start creating a website in Dreamweaver you will need to get the layout and design in place first. If you want an easier way to design your site and you are not familiar with Dreamweaver or technically minded, you can always use website builder software to create your website. I would recommend this, if you are just starting out, as this is a quick and simple way to get your website up and running. For information on using website building software visit http://www.umbrellawebsitedesign.co.uk/web_b.html. However, if you want to get your hands dirty, read on.

The Pen is Mightier Than The Mouse
The first draft of your website should be on paper. Illustrate where your are going to put everything on your final page, including images, text and links, and name them for quick reference. This will save you lots of time later on in Dreamweaver. You can even sketch out a sitemap of all the pages in your website showing what page links to what.

Creating a PNG File
Now that you have a rough copy of your layout go ahead and open fireworks or image ready and start creating your site as a png file. Here you can start creating your logo and the graphical elements you plan to use. You can create your navigation and add your menus and text so that you can easily refer back to them once in Dreamweaver. Layout everything as it would look like in a browser. This is a good idea as it's easy to make changes unlike in Dreamweaver where changes can be time consuming. Go ahead and save your page as a png file.

Well that's it folks for part one. In part two, I will be creating a site in Dreamweaver, discussing cascading style sheets, usability, accessibility and validating your work to comply with W3G standards.

About The Author
Website design specialist Kevin J. Gallagher works with Umbrella Website Design in the UK.

Labels: website

Getting your pages indexed. It is your most important SEO goal and perhaps the one most vital in determining the success of your SEO campaign. However, many search engines have trouble finding links buried deep within the structure of your site. So how do you make sure your pages are easy for the search engines to find? With a sitemap. Creating a sitemap provides the search engines with a one-stop-shop for all of the pages on your site. And if designed correctly, your sitemap can also be a valuable resource to lost visitors looking to understand your site structure.

What is a Sitemap?

A sitemap displays the inner framework and organization of your site's content to the search engines. Your sitemap should reflect the way visitors would intuitively work through your site. Years ago sitemaps existed only as a boring series of links in líst förm. Today, they are thought of as an extension of your site. You should use your sitemap as a tool to provide your visitor and the search engines with more content. Create details for each section and sub-section through descriptive text placed under the sitemap link. This will help your visitors understand and navigate through your site, and will also give you more food for the search engines. You can even go crazy and add Flash to your sitemap like we did with the interactive Bruce Clay sitemap! Of course, if you do include a Flash sitemap for your visitor, you will also need to include a text map so that the robots can read it.

A good site map will:

Show a quick, easy to follow overview of your site.
Provide a pathway for the search engine robots to follow.
Provide text links to every page of your site.
Quickly show visitors how to get where they need to go.
Give visitors a short description of what they can expect to find on each page.
Utilize important keyword phrases.

Why They Are Important?

Sitemaps are very important for two main reasons. First, your sitemap provides food for the search engine spiders that crawl your site. The sitemap will give the spider links to all the major pages of your site, allowing every page included on your sitemap to be indexed by the spider. This is a very good thing! Having all of your major pages included in the search engine database will make your site more likely to come up in the search engine results when a user performs a query. Your sitemap pushes the search engine toward the individual pages of your site instead of making them hunt around for links. A well planned site map can ensure your Web site is fully indexed by search engines. Sitemaps are also very valuable for you human visitors. They help them to understand your site structure and layout, while giving them quick access to your entire site. It is also helpful for lost users in need of a lifeline. Often if a visitor finds themselves lost or stuck inside your page, he will begin to look for a way out of his hole. Having a detailed sitemap will show him how to get back on track and find what he was looking for. Without it, your visitor would have just closed the browser or headed back over to the search engines. Conversion lost.

Tips for Creating a Sitemap

Your sitemap should be linked from your homepage. Linking it this way will force search engines to find it that way and then follow it all the way through the site. If it's linked from other pages it is likely the spider will find a dead end along the way and just quit. Small sites can place every page on their sitemap, but largër sites should not. You do not want the search engines to see a never-ending líst of links and assume you are a link farm. Most SEO experts believe you should have no more than 25 to 40 links on your sitemap. This will also make it easier to read for your human visitors. Remember, your sitemap is there to assist your visitors, not confuse them. The title of each link should contain a keyword whenever possible and should link to the original page. We recommend writing a short description (10-25) words under each link to help visitors learn what the page is about. Having short descriptions will also contribute to your depth of content with the search engines. Once created, go back and make sure that all of your links are correct. If you have 15 pages on your sitemap, then all 15 pages need to link to every other sitemap page. Otherwise both visitors and search engine spiders will find broken links and löse interest.

Remember to Update!

Just like you can't leave your website to fend for itself, the same applies to your sitemap. When your site changes, make sure your sitemap is updated to reflect that. What good are directions to a place that's been torn down? Keeping your sitemap current will make you an ínstant visitor and search engine favorite.

About The Author
Lisa Barone lbarone@bruceclay.com is a senior writer at Bruce Clay, Inc.

Technorati Tags:

keyword search engine spiders seo campaign sitemap website

Labels: keyword, search engine, search engine spiders, seo campaign, sitemap, website

Transferring traffíc and popularity to a new domain is a painstaking process that no one on the web appears to be immune to, or so Topix.net has realized. Topix.net is a leading news aggregation resource that has been in the news lately because they are planning to move their site from Topix.net to Topix.com after purchasing the .com for a cool million from a Canadian animation company.

The Wall Street Journal wrote this article explaining how damaging a seemingly simple process of switching from .net to .com could be for Topix LLC. The author goes on to explain such a switch is usually fraught with ranking drops while the major search engines notice and respond to the changeover. The fact that switching addresses will cause problems is not news in the SEO world; however, I thought Topix.net's situation was a great opportuníty to review what one might expect when switching domains.

Switching Shingles

Switching a domain is tantamount to changing physical locations and it should be treated just as seriously. The following are the steps to take and consider when switching domains:

1. You must install a site wide 301 (permanent redirect) on your old domain to forward all human traffíc to the new domain and inform search engine spiders that your website has permanently moved to a new location. For information on how to implement a 301 redirect here is a great tutorial.

2. Google is the biggest player and likely the most significant driver of traffíc to your website. Keeping that in mind you will want to notify Google of your switchover as soon as possible by registering the new website within Google Webmaster Central and then submitting a fresh XML sitemap. Google representatives are very clear the only way to minimize the impact of a domain changeover is to give Google's automated system as much warning as possible to limit downtime.

3. Find the most significant inbound links that point to the old domain and selectively contact the site owners requesting a link update to the new domain. TIP: Discovering which sites to contact first can be done using a combination of top referrer statistics, and search engine backlink reports. I don't recommend taking this step unless you find a few sites that stand out as massive traffíc drivers as this process can be frustrating due to lack of response; after all, changing a backlink to your site is likely low on a webmaster's priority list.

4. Send out a press release far and wide explaining the move to the new domain. Feature the domain prominently in the release to begin the task of re-branding.

5. All email addresses will need to be forwarded to their respective addresses on the new domain. Ensure that anyone emailing the old address is forwarded to the new one BUT they should also receive an automated notice to change their contact records to reflect the new email. Leave these email forwards active for a short time to catch the most important emails and then turn them off and delete the old address accounts to avoid encouraging sp@mmers.

6. On the new domain don't forget to implement a 301 redirect for the "non-www" traffíc so they get forwarded to the preferred "www" version of the domain. For more information and background on this topic please visit the following tutorial "301 Redirect of Non-WWW to WWW URLs".

7. If you expect a severe drop in traffíc you can expect a drop in salës. In this regard you may want to ramp up or start pay per clíck marketing to minimize the damage to your bottom line.

How Long Does a Domain Transition Take?

Generally a popular website will experience the least amount of downtime because Google will take notice faster due to the many entry points (inbound links from news articles, etc.) this type of site usually has. It is also more to Google's benefit to ensure that a credible and well-trafficked website is kept high in Google's results to ensure users receive the best results possible. Using a popular website such as Topix.Net as an example, I would expect a 2-week to 1-month turn around at which time traffíc would be back to approximately 85% of what it was.

Sites that are less popular will really need to do their homework and ensure they have informed Google in every way possible of the transition. The transition back to normal traffíc for sites that carefully transition their website should be in the realm of 2 to 6 months.

"What If?" The Worst Case Scenario

What should you do if your traffíc drops dramatically and after a few weeks or months it still has not measurably restored itself? Google actually recommends you post your issue on their online user support forum. Apparently Google engineers occasionally take pity and help out; maybe you will get lucky. I also recommend visiting the more authoritative search engine forums (such as Search Engine Watch, iHelpYou, etc.) and requesting help. There are a lot of incredibly talented SEOs on these forums that are happy to provide assistance.

WARNING!

If you must conduct a domain transition be sure to plan it during a historically slow time of year to minimize damages. For example, it would be a mistake for a B2C to switch domains before the Holiday Season rush.

In Conclusion

Do not switch your domain unless you have no other choice because no matter how popular your website is domain switchovers are far from enjoyable. After all, even losing a single week of significant traffíc for a popular site could cost many thousands or even millíons of dollars. On the flip side of the coin, less trafficked websites (i.e. Mom and Pop sites, small B2C websites, etc.) usually experience a longer wait time so they experience a different type of pain. Fortunately, you now know there are ways to mitigate the potential harm to your bottom line, just don't forget to follow the rules and your switchover will be a lot more effective and ultimately less painful.

About The Author
Ross Dunn is the founder and CEO of StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc. Based in Victoria, BC, Canada, StepForth has provided professional search engine placement and management services since 1997. Ross is a search engine optimization and placement expert with over 9 years of marketing experience and is a Certified Internet Marketing and Business Strategist (CIMBS). Blending his experience in the art of web design and search engine optimization, Ross offers a unique and informed perspective on obtaining top search engine placements. Ross can be reached at ross@stepforth.com.

Labels: domain, marketing, pay per click, search engines, SEO, traffic, website

By Trey Pennewell (c) 2006-2007 Links And Traffíc

Creating back links to your website is one of the best ways to gain a higher ranking in the search engines. Almost any Search Engine Optimization (SEO) expert will agree with this point. The SEO experts will also tell you that your placement in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) can make or break your website.
It is commonly thought by many that if your website does not rank on one of the first two pages of the SERPs that your website will rarely be seen by visitors. For most people searching the web, this means that you must be in the top 20 search results. Think about it, when you do a search and you cannot find what you are looking for after a couple of pages, what do you do? I know what I do, I type in a different keyword or a variation of what I was looking for in hopes of getting better results.

Google and Yahoo love to see a website that has back links leading to it. You can chëck this for yourself, take a look at a popular keyword phrase that everyone is trying to get ranked for. Most likely you will see that the top few sites have a large number of back links leading to that site. Conduct your own case study and look at your Number 1 competitor; does that site have more back links than you do? You can determine the number of back links that a site has by entering the following into the search engine of your choosing: link:http://www.yourdomainurl.com

Of course back links are just one part of the equation, but they are a big part of the equation in getting good SERP results. So, if creating back links is such a good idea, why isn't everyone doing it? Well, not everyone is doing it, because it can be a real pain to create back links.

Let's look at some of the more common methods of building back links:

Email A Fellow Webmaster
It is recommended that the back links that you get to your site be from a site that is relevant to the topic of your own website. Having a website about cars linked to a site about fishing does not help you in the SERPs, as much as having a site about cars linking to a site about tires.

The problem here is that you can literally spend hours upon hours emailing various webmasters and asking them to give you a back link. In addition, it is common practice that you offër a reciprocal link to their website. This is fine for some people, but others do not want to clutter their pages with links that take visitors away from their website.

Additionally, you will want to look and see if the site that you are trying to get a link from has a good Google page rank (PR). Google says that a back link from a related site with good PR counts as a strong "vote" for your site; the more votes that you get, the higher your SERP and the higher your PR will be at the next update.

Once you create a salës pitch to a Webmaster for a link exchange, you have to hurry up and wait. You can email 100 webmasters and get a varied response, that is, if you get a response at all. It has been cited that reciprocal linking campaigns have about a 2-5% acceptance rate. In other words, out of those 100 people you took the time to research and to email, only 2-5 of them will give you the back link that you are looking for. Of course, a few more may be willing to do it for a fee.

Directories
Directories are another "tried and true" method of generating back links to websites. Again this is a process that will take hours of work. The two most popular directories are DMOZ.com and the Yahoo directory.

DMOZ is human edited; this is good, because they work hard at only approving quality sites. The downside is that they often lack the actual human beings to approve or disapprove all of the sites that are submitted. There simply are not enough people volunteering for DMOZ to stay on top of all the submissions.

Yahoo will allow for directory submissions for frëe if your website is not deemed to be a business website. If your website is deemed to be a business website, plan on shelling out about $300 to be "considered" for a listing in their directory. They do not guarantëe that your website will be listed in their directory. Yahoo only guarantees that they will consider your website for inclusion in their directory.

You will find that many webmasters operate their own directories. You can find a líst of many directories on message boards like the one at DigitalPoint.com. Many of these directories provide frëe listings, or they wish for a reciprocal link in exchange for placing your link. At many of these directories, you can also pay for a sponsored link.

The problem here? These directories are usually operated by software and are not human edited. This means that your site could end up in the wrong category or that your site is simply listed and forgotten about. These link directories often boast of having decent PR on their homepage, but the actual page that your site will be listed on usually has a 0 PR. These small directories also have numerous requirements, and you need to read the fine print. One mistake and the 15 minutes you spent constructing your submission could be wasted, when your submission is rejected.

Reprint Articles For Back Links
This is an option to create back links that many webmasters overlook. Probably the primary reason that webmasters do not take full advantage of this is because they do not feel comfortable with writing articles. Another reason is that the Webmaster may not have the time to write a quality article.

Consider this, one well-written article can be submitted to literally thousands of publishers of ezines and newsletters, niche webmasters, and frëe reprint article sites and can result in dozens, hundreds or thousands of back links. Now, not every publisher will pick up your article, but for the ones that do use your article, you will get a back link from their website. The back link is achieved in the "about the author" box that is required to stay in place with your article.

The more informative people find your article, the more linking results you can expect to achieve from your reprint article.

A webmaster that says he or she doesn't have the time to spend an hour or two writing an article needs to take a look at how many hours have been spent submitting to directories or writing to other webmasters asking for back links.

Don't feel comfortable writing your own article? Then hire a ghostwriter.

Once the article is written, then you should consider paying a distribution service to distribute your article for you. Again, this is a relatively small price to pay in order to get those all-important back links.

Some recommended article distribution services in alphabetical order include:

ArticleSubmissionSites.com

EzineTrendz.com

PRLeads.com

SubmitYourArticle.com

thePhantomWriters.com

In the end, you can save yourself time, monëy, and a lot of headaches by using articles to create back links to your site. You may be surprised by how many websites are starving for content and are more than happy to place your frëe reprint article on their website. Odds are that if they are placing your article on their website, then they are in your same niche market --- which only adds to the value that the search engines will place on that back link. Don't forget that people actually read these articles, and you can gain a boost in traffíc as a bonus to all of your new back links.

In Conclusion...

I know, you don't want to shell out the monëy to use reprint articles as a linking method, but how much monëy have you spent on being listed as a "sponsored" website in directories?

How much time have you wasted in trying to drum up new back links through other methods? After all, your time is your monëy. You can spend your time or your monëy to do the tasks that you need to do to be successful. And literally, sometimes it makes a whole lot of sense to outsource specialized tasks to experts in their fields.

No website is an island. You cannot just build your website and expect people to be knocking down your door to buy your products or services. You have to advertise. People have got to have a way to find your website.

If you take the time and expend the effort to build your website in such a way as to attract the search engines and to provide what the search engines consider to be a good website, then you will find that the search engine companies can be your business' best friend. And whether you like it or not, one of the ways that the search engine companies deem a website to be a good website, is by the number of back links pointing to the website.

You can have the best website on the internet, selling the best products and services at the best prices, but if people cannot find you, then your website is pointless. If you desire to be successful, then you need to do whatever is necessary to build links to your website. Give the search engines what they want (back links to your website), and the search engines will give you what you want (targeted traffíc).

About The Author
Trey Pennewell is a writer who writes for the "Links And Traffíc" guaranteed link building service. They use reprint articles to develop quality links from quality websites. Their writers know what it takes to write informative articles that generate above average linking results, and they put their monëy where their mouths are, by guaranteeing their results. Learn more at: http://www.LinksAndTraffic.com. Feel frëe to reprint this article on your website, so long as this About The Author information and all live links remain with the article.

Labels: article, back, back links, back-links, directory, email, link exchange, linking, search engine result pages, search engine results, SERPS, success, website, website link popularity

By Jerry Bader (c) 2007

Maybe you own your own business, or perhaps you're a critical cog in the corporate machinery responsible for marketing your company, brand, product or service. If that describes you, here's eighteen things you need to know about Web-marketing but were afraid to believe.

1. Time To Be Heard
Your mother told you 'children should be seen and not heard,' but you're not a kid anymore. So why are you listening to all those guys telling you not to use audio on your website. If you want to deliver a lot of content that people will remember, try letting your website do the talking.

2. There's Nothing Like the Real Thing
In a world of virtual everything there's nothing like the real thing. The sound and image of real people delivering your marketing message makes it a believable, memorable presentation.

3. Unlock the Conventional Wisdom Straightjacket
Driving traffíc to your site is great, if those visitors stay long enough to find out why they should be doing business with you. If your website traffíc is leaving as fast as it's arriving, maybe search engine optimization isn't the answer you've been looking for.

4. Linking Your Way To Obscurity
You know the reciprocal linking strategy everyone is talking about as a way to generate leads? Did you ever consider that each link to another website is an invitation to leave your site? Is that really what you want - to invite people to leave? I think not!

5. Your Company's Voice Is It's Personality
Give your company a professional voice, with a finely crafted scrípt delivered by a professional voice-over announcer that presents a compelling, memorable marketing message and a unique brand personality. Or do it yourself and sound like an amateur. The choice is yours.

6. Addressing Ass-backwards Priorities
If your website design firm is twisting your marketing message out of shape to conform to the technical 'technique du jour' that only looks good in one popular browser, then you hired the wrong guys. It's not about technology; it's about communication.

7. Text-Ads Are Dead. Long Live Web-Video
Squeezing your marketing message into a pay-per-click text-ad is like trying to attract leads using one of those newspaper real estate ads where every word needs to be decoded. Start communicating with a Web-video that tells a story - your story.

8. Nobody Ever Bored Anybody Into Buying
The vast majority of website text is boring, unimaginative and self-promoting. If you don't present a compelling focused story then you are just wasting peoples' time. Seduce your audience with an informative, entertaining, and memorable presentation created by marketing professionals.

9. Too Much of Good Thing, Isn't So Good
You were worried about load times and search engine optimization so you dumped most of your images and multimedia and proceeded to put enough text on your site that would take a month to study; but have you considered whether anybody is ever going to actually read that stuff? And that's assuming people could ever find what they were looking for in the first place.

10. Stop Hiding Behind Your Email Address
You've got a killer website. It tells visitors everything. All they have to do is place an order. But wait … somebody has a question. So they go to your contact page and find an email address. No contact name. No address and no telephone number. You've provided a Q&A, an FAQ, and a líst of technical specs. What more do they want? Well, what they want is to talk to somebody to make sure you're legit and if they have a problem that you'll stand behind what you're selling. Silly them.

11. Do You Suffer From Redundant Redux Reflux?
Search engines love content. They index all your text, searching for keywords and phrases. So what do you do? You repeat and repeat stuff, over and over to make sure the search engines understand what you're all about. To bad all your Web-visitors get indigestion from reading your redundant copy and leave because they forgot why they were there.

12. Inform. Enlighten. Persuade.
Knowledge is today's high-value commodity. If you have a set of skills that people want to acquire, then you've got something to sell: something to build a business around. But if you don't know how to present that knowledge to an audience, then your skills are unmarketable. If you want to get paid for what you know, you better find out how to deliver your content.

13. It's Not About Numbers; It's About Quality
It's not the number of hits you get on your website, it's how long visitors stay on your site and how much information they retain after they leave that counts. It's about the quality of traffíc not the quantity. And the best way to create quality traffíc is to provide easy to find, easy to understand, easy to remember content.

14. Don't Play Constant S.E.O. Catch-up
Every time an S.E.O. whiz kid comes up with a trick to beat the search engine algorithms, the experts at the search engines change their criteria. This means you're constantly playing S.E.O. catch-up. Good for the whiz kid, not so good for you. And have you ever wondered how all those search engine optimizers can guarantëe you, and everybody else they are selling, top billing - kind of hard to believe isn't it?

15. Show Me What To Do
Anybody who has ever spent the night before Christmas trying to decipher the arcane instructions provided by the manufacturer of the bicycle you bought your kid, or the bizarre graphics included with the do-it-yourself kitchen you bought from 'you know who', knows that there is nothing like a good video to explain how Part A actually does fit into Part B.

16. Even Cows Have Brands
If you've got a business, you've got a brand. We're not just talking about a logo. We're talking about every thing you do: your website, your print collaterals, everything, including how you answer the telephone. You do answer the telephone don't you? If your website design firm doesn't get it, if they aren't creating a brand personality, what are they doing?

17. Lost In Space
Ever go to one of those websites that's impossible to navigate. Maybe the navigation system doesn't work in your favorite browser, or maybe the navigation system is so confusing visitors get lost in cyber-content-hell. Information architecture, how people find the content they are looking for, is critical to creating a satisfying user experience.

18. You Can Have It Both Ways
Remember when your mother told you, you couldn't have dessert if you didn't finish your broccoli? Sounds like those know-it-all search engine gurus telling you that you can't have multimedia on your site. Well you're a big boy now, and if you want that multimedia hot fudge sundae you can have it. And you can also have all the good-for-you search engine friendly copy too. Who said you couldn't have it both ways?

About The Author
Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, www.136words.com and www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

Labels: business, design, S.E.O., search engine friendly, search engine optimization, SEO, web-marketing, website