However swinging around the back then comes the next request “… and be found in search engines”. Unfortunately the two don’t go hand in hand. Simple 4-5 page websites can rank against competition but it takes a lot of work to achieve this.

If you have a website with the classic pages Home, About, Products, Contact and Location for example with some boilerplate text in them and you don’t put any internet marketing hours into them I can confidently say the site will never ever rank on search engines.

The 4 to 5 page website is a legacy of when websites first came into the market and are really a dead duck. People now voraciously go to the web looking for great information on products. And there niches now growing online for everything and people devour the good content and link to it. Look at your website. Do you think it has content that people would love to read? If not then you need a content strategy in the first instance of your SEO plan.

Related posts:

1. Low Cost Websites Revisited
2. Web Design Cork – On Page SEO
3. Don’t Be A Joker – Homegrown Websites

Brand:Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers

This is how Wikipedia defines the term Brand and whole university courses have covered this topic on its own. When looking at your website you could take each of these terms on its own and apply energy and time in developing a site that helps establish your brand’s recognition.  But lets look at seven!

1. Website Name

Too often people get hung up with having the product in their website name california-widgets.com, new-york-widgets.com and so on. But customers and now Google have tired of this for recognition and search respectively.

What is moreimportant is that you have a website name that sticks in peoples minds even after they may have forgotten about the actual product’s name.  Mashable   blogged about Twitter in 2007 when they were amused by the name and how people were tweeting about their cats but it <b>did</b> caught their attention and later they became one of the early adopters and huge advocates.

Of course it doesn’t have to be a name that makes people smile but it shouldstick. It may be worth investing in the help of a marketing firm and spending some time brainstorming this name.

If your budget is low then why not use an old fashioned tool like a Thesaurus and plugging in your service or business into it. It will give you a both definitions and synonyms and perhaps trigger the creative juices.  Play around with options that you are comfortable with.  Say it a few times.  See if it sounds right.

2. Design of Your Website

Simple sites work best. We are in the 140 character world. People visit sites quickly, spend seconds and make quick decisions. However simple does not mean easy in website design despite what the above Thesaurus might say.

For a website simple means, clean, accessible and responsive. Read Write Web told us last October that the Responsive Web Revolution was coming to Facebook and this title alone told us that they assumed the fight was already over for standard sites.

The temptation to load your site with imagery. the dreaded flash movie and a montage of colours that you may think eye catching is attractive.

If you look at Alexa’s top sites and the top 10 you will see that they all share a simple landing page and you probably use all or some of them on a weekly if not daily basis.

Even they sites have their design  updated regularly as they work to make them even more simple to use for the visitor. Although past the first page there may be a depth of detail and a wealth of information, their initial goal is to make it easy for you to use the the site, stay, and conduct business or some activity.

You need to apply this logic to your own website as well. Although you may be tempted to show how much you know about your brand on page one don’t!  They will run screaming to the hills – we call it bounce rate and boy do they bounce.

Build a simple navigation and structure that will lead your visitor to their information, entertain them, make them welcome and deliver the right experience to them. Remember the portals of the early 1990s. Well I do and they were – shiver – terrible and now they are gone.

3. Establish a Symbol

Prince changed his name to a symbol and it did catch the eye. We don’t expect you to change your name but strong symbolism does help. Now before you go off making weird and wonderful combinations of crosses and Greek circles, there is a simpler option. Its called Typography.

Well chosen fonts and colours can make your brand stand out. Your designer will select those that speak to our brand and image. Most designers can in their own geeky way tell you how the Gotham typeface was used in the Obama presidential campaign. With careful font selection you can deliver a powerful and strong brand message.

4. Website Features

There are many tricks and gimmicks that you can add to your site to make it jump and play with the visitor. But the wrong choice of feature can scare them away. It is important to get into the shoes of your potential customer. Your feature may a authentication method using Facebook or like newspapers like the Huffington Post a quick read button that summarises the headline into an easily digestible 40 word summary.

If you have racked your brain for a feature and cant think of one then do what successful brand owners do. Ask your customers. Ask them what they are looking for when they come to your site. Pick up the phone and say hello and ask 2-3 questions of them. They will tell you. They will be right. Take their ideas on board.

Revisit regularly.

5. Distinguish Yourself from the Others

When all the above are complete and tidied away you still need to stand out from the crowd and distinguish yourself. For a website this is simple.

• Make bold promises and keep them.
• Present top class information.
• Amaze your visitors with your product information and fresh updates.
• Beat everyone on service and reliability.
• Take feedback and implement it quickly. Show what you have learned.
• Be human and open.This is the hardest part but the one that will deliver the biggest rewards.

And finally.

6. Start Today

Don’t wait till tomorrow. Start today. Take small steps every day. If you haven’t got a website register a domain, if the domain is registered get hosting, get a designer, form a network to get ideas, hire a graphical designer, start writing ideas and keep a steady momentum going towards developing a strong website brand.

7 … and don’t stop. Don’t Ever Stop.

Related posts:

1. 5 Simple Website Design Tips
2. Super Bargain Christmas Website Offer
3. How Much Will My Website Cost?

Do you have a blog or perhaps a thriving website in a niche topic? If you’re seeing a decent amount of visitors to your site, you stand a fairly good chance of being able to monetize that traffic in some way. Most website owners would be interested in making an income from their site traffic, so let’s look at some of the ways you can do just that.

Advertising Networks

A popular way of earning money from your site traffic is to sign up with an ad-serving network. The most popular and probably easiest to use is Google AdSense. What’s that then? Put simply, it’s a flexible and hassle-free way to earn online revenue. Website owners display Google sponsored ads on their site. You choose where ads appear; preferably making use of the ton of advice out there that shows you the optimum positions for maximum click-through rate (the amount of time people click on an ad). The way that ads look in terms of font, color and size can be customized to match the look and feel of your site, so you can make them as subtle or as obvious as you like. Ads are targeted so that they will be relevant to the content of your site.

For example, if you write a parenting blog and have written a post about your child’s fascination with all things Lego, you’re likely to see ads from toy shops or online suppliers of Lego toys. The theory behind it being that if people are interesting in reading your post, they’ll most likely be interested in clicking on one of the ads to find out even more about the product. Once your visitor has clicked through to a merchant, it’s up to them to make a sale. You, on the other hand, will have already been paid when they made that all-important click.

Affiliate Products

Another way of driving some income from a website is to join an affiliate program and promote products of interest to your visitors. Most website and blog owners focus on a particular topic. It can be a niche topic or one covering a broader angle; it really doesn’t matter. If you have decent content but no product to sell, the solution is simple – sell someone else’s product. Using our parenting blog and Lego post example, you might write about a particular play set your child has enjoyed.

Talk about it favorably and then show your readers where to buy it with a link to a store selling that particular play set. There are loads of affiliate programs out there, but perhaps one of the best known is Amazon Associates. By promoting products sold on Amazon, you could enjoy a commission on every single sale that originates from your website. The Associates program is one of the better affiliate programs and offers loads of tools and neat-looking widgets to help you convert your traffic into sales. You can even set up your own Associates store to promote a wide range of relevant products at once.

Engage With Your Visitors

It’s worth spending some time looking at the importance of engaging with your visitors. If you build a nice site with some decent traffic, then at some point you’re going to get visitors. A half-decent SEO strategy with the help of some nice juicy keywords should ensure at least a little traffic comes your way. The key is to keep them coming back for more and offer them things outside of the realms of your website. Get your visitors involved and invested in your site and at some point you’re going to reap the benefits of that interaction. A simple way to start the process of getting to know your visitors a little better is to simply ask them for their email address. Pop a form on your website to collect their details and you’re on your way to creating your own email list. Encourage participation by using what is known as a call to action.

This could be as simple as offering your visitors a free eBook when they subscribe to your newsletter. Of course, you’ll then need to write a newsletter each week. This needn’t be overly time-consuming; a quick round up of the posts from that week will do it. This has the added benefit of bringing traffic back to your site and ultimately offers a greater chance of them buying a product through an affiliate link or clicking on one of your sponsored ads.
There is a world of opportunity to make money as a website owner. It needn’t cost anything bar a little time and effort.

Related posts:

1. Business Plan for Your Website
2. Website Design – Writing Excellent Content
3. Get Tooled Up – Market Your Website for Free

For some it may rely strongly on a social approach on others a business to business approach and for others a mix of both. Over the coming weeks I will post some common sense tips on how to improve your sites ranking and show I have done this openly even for this site. Join me soon to read more on this topic.

What the posts will reveal is that there isn’t a secret to SEO at all it is a combination of knowledge on the topic, being well researched and working really hard with a trackable plan.

Content, HTML and Architecture

From the very beginning of your site you have to look at the content of the site and just not blindly pump out pages with bland, uninteresting content that people aren’t looking for. It is all very well that you enjoy wiring for your site but if from a very basic level the content is not on peoples search in Google, Bing and Yahoo then you might as well write nothing. Yes nothing.

The Google Keywords Tool provides an easy to use tool to allow you start some beginning keyword analysis for your business niche and gain traction from a content writing perspective.

Related posts:

1. SEO Consultants in Ireland
2. SEO – Buyer Beware
3. I am an SEO Expert if You Are

He was very convincing and in fact the product he is selling is interesting and unique to the Irish market. When he paused for breath I said I didn’t want to meet him this week and thought he should write the content himself.  I was happy to go off and get the website design started but I really wanted him to get into the habit of writing his own content and not rely on me.

There was a short uncomfortable  pause which I filled by saying he had a CMS and he could write all this content himself right now and we could shape and mould this in advance of his soft launch in a few weeks.

I sensed a bit of discomfort at his end of the phone  and I  explained that there was no magic wand for getting his message on to a website. He just needed to sit down and type.  I told him it would be hard at the start but all he needed to do was develop the habit of writing a little every day.

When I am writing content I close all other windows put on some nice music and distractions open the editor (usually in WordPress) and start pecking away at the keyboard.  If you are passionate about your business then this should not be a problem.

But We Need To Meet?

I have no problem meeting people to discuss their project and website design plans. But let me let you into a little secret. My job isn’t to be passionate about your product. I will work on the design and development and deliver the message but you are the person who has the passion about it.  I mean I have created a website the Irish Lactation Consultancy Association.  But I don’t care about lactation or the sky above it.  They write their own content and they are happy with that approach.

If you can’t write 3-400 passionate words on your business then I think you might be already in trouble. The website designer isn’t going to do this for you. I have writing skills but I am not going to overnight develop the product knowledge and the energy to write 7-800 words on your business. I will end up referring back to you anyway.  However I bet I could become and expert on your business area and what is happening for the purposes of writing website content pretty quickly by doing solid research and using the many tools out there for developing content.

But I Can’t Write Very Well!

If you can’t write very well then record it and get a content writer to write it for you. Hire a writing professional,  get someone with excellent writing skills to create the content. But in the first instance at least try and create it yourself. Business websites do not win Pulitzer for their flowery language. Simple is good, complex scares people away. If you are still reluctant to do this then use the people above. But I bet you can create at least content that shows you care.

Magic Wand Inc.

Magic Wand Inc doesn’t exist when it comes to creating content.  If you develop the discipline of wiring you can create a rich and useful book of work on your topic.  The fictional graph above is based somewhat on my recent post on how prolific some of the professional bloggers are.  Now the content isn’t the be all and all of your site and internet marketing strategy but without content you are missing a leg on the table.

Search and Keywords

As a regular reader of SEOMOZ their recent blog post  on keywords should be  mentioned in this post.  Keywords and content are a critical part of the pie in search and if you want to be found it makes sense to have content and keywords that people search for with the right mix of keywords and also good articles.  For instance this article is focused on writing content  for your website and how best to approach it.

It isn’t about magic wands as these are for magicians and that isn’t my business.

With Thanks to SEOMOZ

I could write many thousands of articles on how to write excellent content but in reality there are really only a few simple rules.

1. Write Often:  Writing every day is really hard.  But it is a habit and you can develop it and it will yield benefits.
2. Write Well – make sure your spelling is good and your sentences readable.  I make tons of spelling mistakes but a bit of proof reading does show up your errors.
3. Make it Visually Appealing.  Use good graphics and images to show your message.  I took the graphics and presentations in this post from other sources and they were freely available.
4. Write for your Customer.  Think of what the person landing on your page is looking for and write with this in mind,  Ask your customers!
5. Research Your Topics.  Research is everything.  The Internet has tons of information out there and you should use it well.
6. Keep On Trying to Get Better.  Get feedback from people who care and work on improving your writing.  Revisit old articles and make them better.
7. Go Back to Step 1

What do you think?

Update:  One week later despite much prompting he hasn’t written a word of content.  Nor does he want to hire a writer.  It will magically appear for him.

Related posts:

1. Content for Your Site
2. SEO for Your Business
3. Website Design – Writing Excellent Content

Often while watching TV during weekend nights I am ,video flicking idly through web pages, social media and online news sites.  With a typical laptop experience I enjoy rich graphics and colour but when using a mobile device my demands different.  I have a smaller screen but I still want an enjoyable experience.  As the device is at my fingertips I also want a light yet rewarding experience online.

Speed of Delivery

Speed of delivery for me is critical.  At night time my kids are often using the Internet as well and more often than not streaming video and games so I want my content quickly and light.  I don’t really want that big image or the flash slide show.  Give me clean typography and crisp text.  I actually want that from my desktop browser as well but I get more finicky when on a smaller screen.  If I am on the move and restricted to 3G or even worse Edge the limited number of HTTP requests can really drag my transfer speed down.

Mobile Theme

Give me the mobile theme.  I really appreciate getting presented the mobile theme and not the full up theme.  I want clearer navigation and crisper menus when on the move.  Get me the message quickly.

If there is an image that contributes to the message then by all means deliver it but deliver it fast!.  People that are using mobile devices are content junkies.  If you can get us good graphics and video at the same speed please do so but not at the expense of speed.

Are You Losing Customers?

Don’t lose valuable customers.  Look around you on the streets and bars and the Smartphone is dominating the market now.  People really don’t use these for calls,  they use them for a host of things and getting online is top of that list.  If you want a ‘lite’ experience and want these people to read your information then think of this  mobile user.  We are an impatient lot.  Much more than the desktop user who can Alt-Tab to another window while your site is loading.

WordPress Mobile Theming

As I thought about this article I realised that I didn’t even have a mobile theme for this blog.  So how long di it take me to remedy the situation?  30 seconds.  I downloaded the WPTouch mobile plugin and installed it in a few seconds and then went to my iPhone to see what it looked like.  And it did exactly what I wanted.  Nice crisp presentation of the blog posts and the date that they were written.  Exactly what a mobile user who was blog hunting would want.  You can do similar work with one of the many free themes that are available for WordPress users.

Detecting Mobile Devices

There are many ways of detecting mobile devices so that when they do come to a static HTML site they get directed to the mobile device.  The above plugin has the code inbuilt to the php and does it transparently which is nice.  However your site may not always be WordPress and need a different design approach and in some cases even a separate site.  However if you don’t have the budget or time for this then the best thing to do is focus on a number of devices and create specific code to recognise the incoming device.

You can then adjust to accommodate  the  screen size to reflect the device.  Use the right CSS can make the mobile browsing experience that bit easier.  Your visitors will thank you

Other Options

Of course you can also get more imaginative and take more time by having a mobile sub domain and a separate site to reflect this or serve different templates (which the plugin above does) or as we are seeing more and more adpopt a more fluid layout.  Fluid is possibly going be what is going to domiante the market as mobile becomes the first device of choice.

Planning Your Site - Flexible Design and Responsive Layout

If you are thinking mobile from day one in your design then your first stop checklist should think of items like CSS choice, and Scaleable Vector Graphics (SVG).  SVG is the new kid on the block and is now a W3C standard that when used well can help you deliver graphics without compromising speed and proportions of images.  It takes a bigger investment in design but if your user community is a mobile one then the payback will be worth it.

Both flexible layout and responsive design deliver the experience irrespective of the design or the actual screen being displayed.  It takes a thoughtful approach and is just not changing fonts but deciding on what the delivery experience is.

Sadly Interent Explorer seems the least responsive on many counts here so again there is the added challenge for the designer to be conscious of the myriad of browser versions that are out there and the risk (or more correctly fact) that depending on the end use, browser and display size your client base will be seeing different content in different orientations and screen sizes.

So Confusing – Where to Begin

Realistically without a significant investment of time (read money) it is difficult to deliver the perfect experience to everybody but some market research of your customer base can help decide where to focus and deliver the best experience there.  Ultimately the mobile market will haea larger and larger piece of the pie so you need to be conscious of this and keep apace with the hcanges.

Related posts:

1. Why You Don’t Need a Flash Website
2. Upgrade Your Website Today
3. WordPress Demonstration Site

Well if you have a contact page and actually are getting contacted then you are at a minimum collecting email addresses.  You should tell people what you are doing with their data.  Some people may worry about what you  with this information.  People hate spam and they don’t want to be getting more crap offer email from you pushing some special offer.

Your WordPress blog privacy policy isn’t meant to be a legal document but if you were to ever use their email address and got a complaint from someone at least you could point to this and say it was there.

I recommend saying in your auto response when someone does contact you what you plan to do with their data  or at least point to a link where they can read some more.

For ecommerce a more rigorous document is needed as you are then handling personal information and even if it is invisible to you you should at least specify this in terms that the layman would understand.

If you are confused then write the words We will not do anything with your data is a good start!.  Then build on this and get a more comprehensive statement over time.  It needn’t come together in one fell swoop and ask others to review it and look at what other sites do and get some ideas.  Jot down a few lines and put the link on your website’s footer.  People may not read it but when they see it they will at least know you were thinking about it and have some responsibility.

But I May Want to Do Something with Their Data!

Well if this is your plan then again state this up front and in your privacy policy.  Also give them an option to opt out.  People will opt out and now you should make the option to Opt In the default so that it isn’t pre-ticked on the form that they use to put in their detail.  It is devious to have a book ticked with an opt in.

Related posts:

1. Create a Contact Page – Part 7 of a 25 Part WordPress Series
2. Static Page for WordPress Part 3 of a 25 Part WordPress Series
3. WordPress Demonstration Site