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.

First, if your website is already entering a highly competitive subject area, you may want to consider a “niche marketing” approach. This starts with careful website planning and research. Don’t worry about what your website will look like graphically at this stage. You need to build a foundation before putting up the window dressing. The number one mistake most companies make is putting graphic design ahead of website design. Graphic design is NOT website design. You need to understand the differences.
After you have researched your competition, keyword phrases and so forth, you need to think about your website architecture. The categories and sub-sections you will use within the site can also be created in a search engine friendly manner. Once this is done, you need to think about web copywriting which balances the appropriate keywords and subjects into strategically placed pages. There is also a huge difference between a “web copywriter” and a general “copywriter”. Adding a very well written page to a website is not enough. It has to contain proper keywords and phrases with the appropriate density and saturation levels.
Once all of this is done, it would be a good time to discuss graphic design and other options such as special effects, tell-a-friend features, blogs, etc. Your homework is done, you’re well prepared and ready to put on a pretty face for all to see.

All done, right? Not necessarily. This is the point at which many websites fail or do not catch on as quickly as most people would like. As mentioned above, it could take almost a year or more for your shiny, new website to start coming up in the search engine results. During this time you need to seek out links for your website on high ranking reputable websites. You may want to consider pay-per-click campaigns, print advertising with your web address and other ways to get your domain name noticed. It’s a bit like growing a garden. The more care and feeding you provide, the healthier your website will grow. Best of all, after doing much of this, Google may soon realize that your website is an authentic, reputable site after all and speed up the indexing process.

There’s a lot more to all of this than what we’ve explained here, so contact Alpine Web Media today for a free consultation.

• 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.

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.

One of my first clients back in those days, enjoyed a number one, page one placement in Yahoo under ‘Vermont country stores’. These days, that is a very competitive search term and even getting on page one of Google results is a monumental task. Ok, back to the story. One day, I asked my client how everything was going. He asked, “You know that webby thing you did on the computer?”. I nodded yes. “Well, people keep coming into my store and saying Hey, Ralph…I saw you on the web.”

I was a bit puzzled and replied, “…but Ralph, that’s a GOOD thing!” Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to think so. He said that he didn’t have a computer so he couldn’t see the web ad (even though I had offered to give him printed hard copies). “Well,” he snorted, “I can see my ads on TV but this webby thing makes me nervous because I can’t see it and it makes me nervous when people come in my store and say they saw me there.”

He was very happy when I took down his “webby thing” and people stopped coming into his store and mentioning that they had seen him on the web. With the millions of businesses that would do most anything to be seen and easily found, I came across the one businessman who wanted no part of it.

Only in Vermont!

The days of tossing up a website on the fly and waiting for the world to beat a path to your door are long gone. First, determine the purpose of what your website will be. Search for the competition and try to learn how challenging it will be to compete. If you have a relatively new idea, you may have low keyword competition but a problem with familiarity. For instance, I develop a new product called “Tredlitely Chocolate Bon-Bons”. More than likely, I will have no problem coming up number one in a search for that phrase. However, without a huge marketing and branding campaign, no one would be searching for that phrase anyway. This is where niche keywords can be a great help. Don’t focus on the keyword “Chocolate” if you have a new website because your chances of competing for that keyword are slim to none. Instead, try to focus on “chocolate bon-bons” which would have a more narrowed focus, yet lower competitive ratio.

Here are a few free SEO tools to get you started:

• Nice Searcher - A free, online tool for comparing keywords and determining their effectiveness.
• SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool - This keyword tool is powered by Wordtracker’s API and offers rough suggested daily search volumes by market for Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.
• Xinu - Great for a quick check of your (or your competition’s) PageRank, backlinks and much more.
• Self SEO - Offers a wide variety of other free, online tools for checking page links, popularity and more. The best way to get your website off to a good start is to research what your competition is doing using these type of tools. Why re-invent the wheel?

Graphic designers with little or no web design skills simply “slice” up their design into smaller photos and export it all into a web page like a jigsaw puzzle. These provide the least favorable results because they are not really website pages. Web pages are made up of HTML code and text, which is what the search engines look for when indexing a website for placement. Although a sliced photo website may look great, to a search engine spider it looks empty and useless, sort of like Paris Hilton. To make matters worse, there are often no title tags, description and/or keyword metatags because the graphic designer is not familiar with HTML coding. If you have a nice looking website but no one seems to be able to find it, make sure it’s not a photo sliced up into a number of pieces and reassembled as a faux web page.

Web designers are trained to work with code first, with images and layout creation taking place later on in the process. Web designers are very similar to contractors building a house. A good web designer starts with research into the proposed content and goals of a site, keywords that will be used to generate traffic and a list of items that should be on the website. After that, a simple wireframe layout (think blueprint) is put together for approval and discussion. Domain names and web hosting are set up, which create a foundation for the project. Images and text are compiled in preparation for the design phase. Once the web design begins, the web designer starts with a code based layout utilizing the basic building blocks such as HTML and CSS. The code structure is now in place and images and graphics are created for placement within the code structure. The use of images is minimized in favor of quick loading CSS code that often accomplishes the same visual results as photos and graphics. Photos are carefully optimized for fast loading time. Page copy is scrutinized for the best choice and frequency of keywords. Meta-tag code is inserted which provides “spider food” for the search engine bots.

Two entirely different processes, right? Does the web design process look a bit more technical and complicated? You bet. That’s why there is such a big (and important) difference.

For a simpler comparison, consider this. If you needed heart surgery which would you select? A general practitioner with a passing interest in heart surgery…or, would you prefer a heart surgery specialist with a background in general medicine?

What does a smart web designer do when he needs print ads, signs, brochures and business cards? He calls a graphic designer and lets them do the work they do best!

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.

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.

Some web agencies will even mislead you into registering the domain name under their ownership while allowing you the use of the name. A reputable company will transfer the domain to your ownership upon request. Beware of others who may hold your domain name hostage for a large fee if your business dealings take a bad turn. In some cases an agency may go out of business, etc. and your domain disappears along with them.

The bottom line is that legally and morally, you should own and have direct access to manage your domain at any time. How many companies hire a lawyer to register for corporation status but allow the lawyer to own their business name? Same thing. In some cases your domain name is an integral part of your business. Never allow someone else to own it. Manage it for you, yes….own it…NO!

To find out who the true owner of your domain name is go to http://www.networksolutions.com and look for a WHOIS link or button. Enter the domain name and see who the registrar is. If it’s not you, it might be time to start asking questions.

For instance, I love good food and could learn how to cook up whatever I want. However, i have zero interest in doing so and it would be a chore that I would just as soon avoid. My wife loves to cook and that is her passion in life. I am happy to defer to her expertise and stick with what I’m good at, which is building websites. She feels the same about computers and the web. Although she’s a very intelligent woman, she is savvy enough to leave that type of work up to me.

There is no such thing as a “do it itself website”. Note that this is different than a “do it yourself website”. Most people get the two terms mixed up and here’s why. They think a “do it yourself website” is something you bring up on the computer and just start working with. No such animal. Everything has a learning curve and like any other type of software, you at least have to learn the basics. Even for supposed “do it yourself websites” there are a few things to learn and perhaps books to read before you’re ready to tackle the task at hand. Most people don’t have the time or “interest and motivation” to learn. They’re too busy doing what they enjoy and are comfortable working with.

So before you take the “do it yourself website” path, consider whether or not you’re willing to invest in the learning curve. If not, let the pros do the work for you and get the job done right. If you have the “interest and motivation”, there are a few options that might work well called content management systems (CMS). More on those in an upcoming post.

There are a few disadvantages. There is no image stabilization so every camera shake is very noticeable. I had trouble uploading the videos directly to YouTube but an e-mail to Flip Mino’s support department mentioned that a fix is on the way. Apparently something to do with YouTube. The video is very good but if you’re looking for high end recordings, you’ll have to pay more for a more robust camcorder.

All in all, this is a great little toy for carrying around and snapping a quick video here or there. I would recommend it for anyone looking to create YouTube or other low resolution videos to share.