Saturday, April 19, 2008

7 Tips For A Million Dollar Website

Having a professional looking website can make the difference between a boring site that fails to convert and a million dollar website. Using the 7 tips below to spruce up your website and see what a difference it can make.

1. Include an RSS feed that updates with fresh content frequently. Search engines love fresh content and will reward your site with a higher ranking.

2. Avoid using too many graphics or flash introductory pages. Although flash and graphics can make a site look good, they can take a long time to load. And in today's fast paced society, visitors want information quickly. A substantial delay can cause visitors to click away and go to a competitor’s page before your page opens.

3. Design the site for your visitors, not for the search engines.

4. Host your website with a reliable company. By using the best hosts, you will minimize down time and you will notice quicker load times. These two factors can make a real difference in your success.

5. Use a common font such as Verdana, Times New Roman, or Arial. Some browsers do not support some of the more unusual fonts. You should also ensure that the font size is readable and looks good on your page.

6. Make sure the theme of your website is consistent. Don't try to be all things to everyone. If your website is about bird watching, include a nice variety of bird watching information and related products. Don't throw in foreign exchange trading ads just because it pays well.

7. Use bold print sparingly. Bold text can be a valuable tool for drawing attention to a product or service.

However, if you bold every word in your paragraph, or worse yet, on your site, nothing stands out. Use it in moderation to highlight a few keywords here and there.
Using the 7 tips above can enhance the performance of your website. Not only will it give people a reason to visit, it can give them a reason to return and recommend you to others.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

5 Steps to Achieve Top Search Engine Rankings

Ever since business owners have discovered the importance of websites in boosting their profits and maintain or gather new customers, they have spent a good amount of time in front of their PCs. They have been tweaking their web pages in order to conform with the SEO tricks that they are learning. On the other hand, they spend their advertising money more on pay per click campaigns than in conventional print ads in newspapers.

1. Get your content right. It's already clich, but the content is king approach still does wonders for search engines. This is because they prefer websites that aim to provide Internet users with quality information based on the niche that they belong to. Users, on the other hand, tend to increase your search engine rankings by adding your link at their own websites or sharing it to their friends and family members.

2. Choose your keywords properly. Keywords are very essential to any website. They will be your bases for ranking. That's why it's very important that you choose your keywords properly. If not, you may be driving the wrong audience, those who are not interested in purchasing your products or availing of your services.

3. Link your pages. Links serve as guide for search engine spiders. If you want to make sure that their visit is really pleasant, then you need to link your different web pages to one another. The best option is to make use of text links, since they add relevancy to your web pages. Moreover, you can add these text links at the bottom portion of your homepage.

4. Focus on the structure of sites. There are a number of people that believe that too much glitter is actually gold. That is completely untrue when it comes to SEO. Animation and Flash are usually frowned upon for two reasons. First, they don't necessarily add value to your site in terms of SEO. Second, they can just slow down the speed during download, which, in turn, may compel Internet users to look for other websites.

5. Submit your website in directories. Why should you focus on submitting your site in directories and not search engines? It doesn't really mean that the latter is a bad move. However, as mentioned, search engine spiders will visit pages and just follow the links.

Nevertheless, when you're using this technique, you must have patience as usually it may take months before you can get the result that you like. The nice thing about this is you will gain a permanent link.