Max Distro LLC Las Vegas Web Design and Software Development Blog

affordable web devepoment and design – http://www.maxdistro.com

Losing Visitors Is Easy Just Follow These Suggestions:

If you would like to drive your pagerank into the ground and ensure nobody finds your website, ever. Then just follow the subsequent steps in no particular order. In no time flat they will ensure that your website is a proverbial ghost town.

Display your content using iFrames, this will be perfect for destroying pagerank because other websites can’t link directly to your content.

If you use images, make sure not to define their alt and title tags so search engines have no idea what they are and how to index them. Better yet don’t use images just make a huge page full of text that scrolls on and on seemingly forever.

Ensure your website is jam packed with tons of useless widgets and huge picture file sizes. This will make it take so long to load your site that users will just close the window in anger.

Treat your visitors as a captive audience: Have an audio clip play as soon as the page loads. It can be anything, from whatever song is your favorite this week to a clip of your child singing off key in the school play. This will help destroy your load time but best of all it will annoy your visitors and encourage them not to come back. An added touch is not displaying any controls, forcing the stubborn to turn off their sound.

Make sure you have tons of useless outbound links. This will make it so each of your links carries less and less pagerank flow, so webmasters will avoid linking to your site in hopes of a linkback. News feeds are excellent for this.

Link to websites that have nothing to do with your website theme. This lowers your relevance and in turn lowers pagerank.

Make sure you have no cross browser compatibility.

Set up your website in a ridiculous manner and don’t submit a sitemap. This will work wonders. You can use your imagination here, just make sure the search engines have no way of finding and indexing your content.

Make sure not to update your links…ever.  Eventually your visitors will end get a 404 error after clicking an ancient link. Broken links work wonders for lowering pagerank.

If people do manage to make it to your website, help to convince them they have made a bad decision by frequently using poor grammar and misspelled words. It also helps to use odd colors and ridiculous font combinations.

If you find that your website is doing something on this list you need to consult with a professional web design firm that employs an SEO expert. You may find that your website needs a few minor adjustments to correct the issues or maybe a website redesign is in order. In any case a professional web design firm can get your website back on the right track.

Currently, the major search engines are giving priority to videos in their search results. For example, if I had a fairly new site that was ranked number one in Google for a particular niche keyword, it is likely someone could beat my site to the top spot in one day. All they would need to do would be to submit a video to YouTube that had the same keyword my site ranks highly on, in its title/description (regardless of the video’s content). That is the power that videos and video repository sites currently posses over search engines. (Google paying a fortune to own YouTube might have something to do with it too.)

Keeping your video under ten minutes in length this will ensure that it accepted by video sharing sites that have length restrictions. It does not even have to be a true video, the content can be text, a picture slide show, or even just audio, as long as it is saved as a video file. The content should promote your site and the products and/or services you are offering on your website. Try to mention your web address a few times. Now save the file 3 times – each file must be different quality (thus different file sizes), and save them with different names. We will examine why you this is done further on.

Before submitting your videos, there is one more important thing to do. This is to create a new text document and write into it your website’s name, and then write into it three differing descriptions of it (including a few choice products). Next, search for all the video sharing websites that you can find (Youtube, DailyMotion, Odeo – to name a few, there are more and more it seems everyday). Now we return to the three different sized video files. Every times you submit your video and a description, rotate through your three different files and texts. While it may be a fairly time consuming process, hopefully, the added site traffic it can help generate will be well worth it for you.

Now here is the easy part. It will only take a day for Google to list some of the new videos you have submitted. They should be ranked highly when any of the keywords in the description(s) you wrote for them are searched for. Not only will your site receive a boost in Google’s rankings, from the videos (the more links from high Google rank pages to yours the better), the people who watch the videos should be interested in your product. They may visit you website after watching, and possibly purchase something they saw.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a process that requires the understanding of search engines and their indexing algorithm and how to apply that knowledge while changing or designing a web site to rank high on user searches. Rank is the relative position in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) for a specific keyword or key phrase search.

Fancy tricks, doorway pages, and spamming techniques cannot achieve what clean, logical and spam free coding  can. Here is a quick checklist to help drive the search engine spiders to index your website.

CSS: Using CSS as it simplifies site maintenance.

“H1″ and “H2″ tags: Place your keywords in the HTML header codes “H1″ and “H2″ tags.

Anchor text: Use keyword rich anchor text that best justifies your landing page.

Title Tag: Maximum 90 Characters.

Keyword tags: Maximum 25 words.

Browsing Menu: If you use java script menu include redundant set of text links.

Internal Linking: Ensure that you have good internal linkage and no dead pages.

W3 HTML Validator : Use it.

Other tags: “Strong” & “em” tags perform better than “b” in the eyes of Spiders, without compromising website aesthetics.

Avoid placing links in images

Avoid heavy use of Javascript, flash and frames

Avoid dynamic URLs.

One of the most effective means of free advertising is through providing interesting and relevant information to your potential customers. You can do this easily by writing and distributing free reprint articles at various web sites around the internet. There literally are thousands of e-zine and web site publishers actively searching for the interesting and informative articles you can craft in your area of expertise. Targeting the audiences of these publishers is an indispensable element of a cost-effective advertising and marketing strategy.

Anyone with a web site can promote that web site along with its business, products, and/or services by implementing this basic marketing strategy. Sure, it easy simple enough, but what if you aren’t confident in your writing skills? Accurate written communication is the foundation of this marketing strategy.

At one point I sat down at my computer and attempted to write my own article and spent the next half hour staring at a blank screen. Frustrated by the writer’s block, I eventually threw up my hands in disgust and walked away from the machine. Later, I found myself complaining to a friend that I was having trouble with my article. I complained about having doubts in my proficiency at writing and that my only qualifications were basically just good grades in English classes attended years ago. My friend eventually interrupted me to point out that my education should have provided me with the necessary skills to write competently and effectively.

My friend then generously offered, what in retrospect seems like an obvious suggestion. Her remedy to my problem was that I should try to begin again, but this time start by choosing a topic, and then create an outline representing the points I wanted to cover in the topic of the article. Selecting a topic would give me a foundation upon which to build my article outline. Preparing an outline would allow me to address the issues that I felt were relevant to my topic.

I gratefully accepted the advice and put it into practice. I narrowed the possible topics, and selected one that I would write about. With that one topic in mind, I then continued to create a comprehensive outline. After completing my outline, I fleshed it out, added anecdotal evidence to illustrate my points, and before long, I had a rough draft of my first article. That rough draft, after being carefully proofed and polished, became an article that was published in dozens of online publications. The positive result of my effort was that my article resulted in getting me thousands of web site visitors and also rewarded me with a long-term client.

If you’re absolutely positive you can’t write effectively there are at least three options that may be well worth considering. The first option is to enroll in a writing class through your local university, adult education program, or sign up for an on-line course. Many local universities, community colleges and adult education programs offer on-line courses so you should be able to find one that caters to your time schedule and budget.

Your second option is to seek out and hire a ghostwriter. Many ghostwriters will take your chosen topic, then conduct the research and write an article for you to review. Upon your approval of the article the ghostwriter will add your by-line and release the article to you for distribution. Offering research resources or providing an outline for the ghostwriter to follow may reduce the fees. You can post your article writing project and take bids from ghostwriters on-line at http://www.elance.com and http://www.creativemoonlighter.com or you can seek a ghostwriter using any search engine. You should find various options that will fit your budget. Freelance ghostwriters can be negotiated with regarding their fees since they work for themselves and often offer reduced rates to returning clients or to secure a long term client.

A third option also requires hiring a ghostwriter to write your article and add your by-line but going further to enlist that person to distribute the article for you. This is a convenient and time-effective way to have the entire writing and distribution project completed by the same individual. You can review two companies that offer packaged services at http://www.marketingwords.com/ezinearticle.html and http://thephantomwriters.com/purchase/index.shtml

Even if you can’t write you can certainly still educate your target audience, earn loyalty and establish yourself as an expert by using free reprint articles. You can invest a bit more in your advertising and promotional efforts by taking a writing course or hiring a ghostwriter. Whichever route you choose, you are making an investment that will be returned many times over in beneficial results to both you and your readers, and your website. Be willing to go the extra mile in establishing your website as the definitive choice of your targeted customer base. You’ll be pleased with the rewards of your efforts.

Hiring a professional web designer is essential to ensuring your website’s success and handing your business venture to your brother’s friend or the neighbor kid who is “good with computers” is almost always the wrong choice. We are not always as lucky to have talented relatives and friends who can do our quality web designing for free. We hear it all the time; some variation of… “My (insert acquaintance here) is working on my website but unfortunately the project is not proceeding as expected.”

If you want results, you have to be willing to pay for them: Experience teaches us that “The cheapest price isn’t usually the best price” and “You get what you pay for”. We know everybody likes to get the job done  as economically and  as quickly as possible, it is part of human nature. But rest assured that if you want to pay less for web design, your website will always pay the price.

Personally check every link: Once a rough draft of website is ready, testing the web site yourself. Go through the content and check every link. No one can check your site as thoroughly as you. Your design team might have overlooked some seemingly obvious issue that fell through the cracks while addressing numerous others.

Clear and Easy Navigation: Nobody likes getting lost and navigation can make or break your site. Every page within your website should have a clear and consistent navigation pane and a link to the Home Page. The home button is usually the most used button by a visitor.

Choose an alluring color scheme: You might be a heavy metal fan but your website may not be suited for dark colors. Your website is for your customers. Always give preference to the colors that appeal to masses and if you hire a good web design firm, it will make sure to use the colors that represent your business, products, and/or services in the most fitting way.

Browser compatibility: Your designer should make sure that your site runs on as many browsers and devices as possible to reach the largest audience. Test your website on as many platform combinations as possible including Mac, PC, BlackBerry, Palmtops, cell phones, etc. Not doing that can result in losing out more than 30% of customers.

Search Engine Optimization: Sometimes writing good relevant content and keeping an eye on keywords is not enough to break away from the pack and appear in the first few results in a search, An SEO expert is needed here to further tailor your website to make it easier for the search sites to find and index it. SEO is an integral web design service.

Web development is a creative process and good ideas are required at every stage. Stay involved with the project, be sure to give your design team your input on their progress.  This can alleviate any misunderstandings that tend to devour development time to correct, often pushing back project delivery times.