Search Engine Friendly Websites
Everyone wants there website to come up in position #1 on the first page of Google results. Is this a realistic expectation? Yes and no.
For the most part, depending on what the subject of your website is, you may have a tough time competing with already established websites to obtain that top ranking. Google and other search engines give preference to long established websites that are blessed with a healthy number of quality, inbound links. Also, a new website can take anywhere from a few months to a year to start showing results in the Google index. Google does this to make sure your website is a legitimate, viable resource rather than a fly by night website that is here today and gone tomorrow (their main intention being to leverage search engine results unethically).
That all sounds pretty grim for a company starting out with a brand new website. The good news is that there are some things you can do to promote and build up your website presence while waiting for Google to take notice.
Cheap Web Hosting
These days, everyone is trying to cut back and save money. If your website is the backbone of your business though, one thing you really can’t afford is “cheap web hosting”. You can find plenty of ads all over the web advertising cheap, inexpensive and even free web hosting but just like everything else, you get what you pay for. Here are a few things to consider:
- Cheap web hosting usually results in your website being down periodically, due to the increased server load. Not good for your visitors or the search engine bots trying to index your site.
- Slow page loading. Nobody wants to wait around for a website to load up. If it doesn’t load up within a few seconds, your visitors will go elsewhere. Again, search engine bots won’t wait around either. Cheap and free hosting often results in page load delays so beware.
- Many of the inexpensive web hosting providers are in a different country. If your business is in the USA, you really should not have your websites served out of India. Search engines take note of where your hosting is being served from and generate search results accordingly.
- Technical support can be difficult or impossible to find when things go wrong. With dirt cheap web hosting there may be no one to call when your website goes down or any way of contacting someone to help. Even if they do offer a phone option, it won’t help much if the person on the other end cannot understand or clearly speak your language.
As you can see, it really isn’t worth the gamble to trust your website to companies who promise cheap web hosting. Alpine Web Media provides both Windows and Linux web hosting based in the USA, with fast, reliable service.
Got Vermont Web Design & Web Hosting?
We’ve been in the website design business for 13 years now and boy, have things changed a lot since the early days! Back in the mid-1990’s, a new website could be built using a text editor and simple HTML and enjoy placement within Yahoo (the big search engine back in the pre-Google days) within just a few days. Because the web was relatively new, it wasn’t very difficult to come up on page one in Yahoo for most anything.
Believe it or not, I once had a client who quickly got first page results on Yahoo but was afraid of his own success and wanted out.
Free SEO Search Engine Optimization Tools
One of the first things you should do when planning your website is to do a bit of research. Analyzing keywords and putting together a strategic marketing plan is a crucial first step towards the construction of a search engine friendly website. SEO (or search engine optimization) is not all that difficult but does require an investment of time. Basically, the more you put into it, the better your results will be.
Why Graphic Design is Not Web Design
People often confuse web design with graphic design and mistakenly think the two are the same. Actually, there is a very big difference in terms of how the work is created. A graphic designer is most familiar with print media design. Magazines, books, brochures, signs and so forth. When they attempt to design a website, they start at the middle of the process which is the design layout with colors and images. Using layers, they are able to simulate navigation buttons that change color on mouseover, etc. Once their work is done, the better graphic designers pass it along to an actual web designer who must try his or her best to translate the design over to the web as best as possible. The process is exactly like someone giving you a magazine cover and saying “make this into a website”. Not the most efficient way of designing a website but most of the time acceptable results are yielded.
Free Web Graphic Editors for your Web Photos & Images
One of the most common situations I encounter with people uploading images to their websites is that they do not know how to optimize their images. With digital cameras these days, it’s easy to plug into the USB port and transfer files over to your computer, quickly and easily.
The problem is that most people take the photos at a very high resolution so the files sizes can range from 1 to 5MB’s in size. These are NOT suitable to be uploading for your website pages. First, you need to reduce the file sizes and perhaps crop, sharpen or brighten the images. This is where most people get lost in the woods. And no, you can’t do this type of editing in Microsoft’s Paint program, as I have been asked many times.
Ok, so here’s a few free web graphic editors to get you started. Simply download, install and read the directions for use:
- Serif PhotoPlus 6 is an excellent image editor with a variety of features that are comparable to some high-end graphics editors. It even comes with a tool panel surprisingly similar to Paint Shop Pro.
- Gimp 2.4 has a number of high-end editing features with tutorials.
- PhotoFiltre is another great choice for PC users. Although you can’t work with layers (a la Photoshop) there are quite a few other features to keep you satisfied.
Who Really Owns Your Domain Name?
One of the most frequent problems I have encountered as a web professional concerns the ownership of domain names (www.yourname.com).
In most cases, everyone naturally assumes that they own the domain because someone else such as a web design agency, friend or employee registered it on their behalf. That’s where trouble begins. Technically, the registrar is the owner of the domain. Usually, that’s the person who registered the domain. If the registrar is not you, with contact address, billing info matching up to your credentials you do not own the domain name. Sometimes, people are well intentioned but you risk losing your domain name through forgotten renewals or even a friendship turning sour.
Do it Yourself Websites
The infomercials and other ads make it look so very easy to build your own website. These are also the same marketing people who tell you how easy it is to remodel your kitchen yourself, etc. Truth be told, anyone can do just about anything if they have the interest and motivation. Unfortunately, most people want the end product but are a bit short on the “interest and motivation” part.
Flip Mino
The Flip Mino is a tiny little camcorder that is about the same size as a cell phone. I picked one up for creating YouTube videos and I have to say it works quite well. The video quality is better than I expected and the Flip Mino can hold an hour of video and audio. You can easily shoot a video and save it to your computer and/or upload to YouTube and other web video services or even send via e-mail. The Flip Mino is so small, you can bring it anywhere. I brought it along to the Elton John concert recently and nobody gave me a hard time about using it. If I would have had a full size camcorder, I probably would have been told not to use it. Because the Mino is so small, it blended in easily with everyone using cell phones to to snap quick videos. The price is right at around $150.