Saturday, March 17, 2012

Blog vs Website for Business

Just like you, there are plenty of entrepreneurs who are pondering if they should create a blog or website. Before you make a decision about having a blogs vs website, let's talk more about what a blog actually is. A real blog is nothing more than web logs where a person writes content (called posts) on a specific subject. The posts are in sequential order and include the date it was posted.

Each time you post content to your blog, your blog visitors are able to write comments about what you have written. Having this kind of interplay with your site visitors is brilliant because it enables you to build kind of a community that folks can come back to.

Blogs have come a ways from just being a one page web log of varied posts and comments. Now you can have what some like to call a regular or “static” website made on blogging platform. The nice thing about this is that you now don't need to have 2 separate sites – you can have a blog and regular website one platform. Having a blog incorporated with your website on the same domain is the most effective way of doing things.

If you have a separate blog that's not on your domain, your main website won't benefit from all of the SEO power that your blog creates for your domain. This SEO power is created because of all of the new blog post content that will reside on your domain. The search engines love when a site posts new content. When you create a website that has a blog on the same domain, your website’s PageRank and authority will increase.

Put simply, Google and the other search engines will love your site and give it a higher rank on their results list. The fact that visitors have the power to make comments under your posts will also help with an increase in your authority.

Another benefit to having a blog is that it's easier to add social media sharing buttons to the base of your posts. These buttons remind your visitors to share your posts with their friends on social media sites. This will give you a link from their account to your page causing an increase in traffic to your site.

So why not just create a blog?

There are plenty of advantages to having a blog, but there are some downsides too.

Old blog entries will not look important due to the date on them (as well as it's going to be tougher for your visitors to find those old posts), and the home page itself won’t targeted enough to be a correct home page.

Blogs are very good when you create original content, but the construction of them makes it tougher for visitors to find what they are searching for. The last thing that you need is for your important information to be tough to find. That's the reason why you need to create static web pages (AKA "regular web pages") where the content stays on the page rather than "falling off the page" like a blog post eventually would.

What you can do is use your blog post to announce the content that you create on a static web page. By doing this you are also making your website more SEO friendly, because now you have more internal links on your site (pages of your website interlinked to other pages in the same site).

When you create a website, it’s important that your home page is focused on a clear call to action. By having a blog, the content on the home page will steadily change each time you make a post, and that takes away from being focused.

So the bottom line is this: You shouldn't choose between having a blog or website - you need to take advantage of having the benefits that both will give you when they are on the same domain. The easiest way to do this is to create a wordpress website.

Friday, March 2, 2012

How to Create Your Own Website That Increases Sales

When you decide that you want to create a website, it can be tough to know what to do being that there are so many web design solutions on the market. The simplest way to make a decision on which one to use is to ensure you select software that will enable you to easily search engine optimize your site without needing to know website code like Html, PHP, CSS, etc.

Many beginners select "do it yourself" website creation solutions based totally on user friendliness and price. Naturally, you want an inexpensive simple solution, but there is however another missing element that must be addressed, and that's search website friendliness. The software that you use to create your website should make it simple for you to search engine optimize the site. Enhancing certain SEO elements on your web pages will help your site get higher rankings in the search engines.

Fact is, most DIY web design solution providers with software that allows you to create your own website don't tell you how significant On Page SEO is. This is often because their software is too limited for search engine optimization purposes.

They'll brag about how easy their software is to use, the low cost, and how it is possible for you to create an attractive website without knowing any web programming, but they won't concentrate on search engine optimization. There are software companies that will mention search engine optimization, but they focus mostly on meta tags as if that's the only part of on page SEO.

There's much more to optimizing your site after you include your meta tags, and you won't have a correctly optimized site if you don't concentrate on all of the other website optimization elements. The most important thing you should think about when making a customer attracting website is to ensure that you have selected web design software that was built with SEO and conversions in mind.

If your potential customers can’t find your website in Google when they're online searching for something that your offer, then there’s no point in even having a website; no matter how good it looks. Your site will just be another pretty web property that nobody sees.

After you find software that is focused on all aspects of optimization, you then can start considering price and simplicity. If you really want to learn how to create your own website, don’t listen to all the sales hype out there – do your due diligence and choose wisely.

Monday, February 27, 2012

Creating a Website - Website Optimization Training

If you were going to ask a programmer or website development expert what website optimization is, their answer will make you believe that you were speaking to someone that spoke another language. They'll talk all about CSS code and java scripts, for example…and how you should not have far too much of this and that in the code, and so on. All of that's great; nonetheless there's loads more to optimizing your site than worrying about complicated stuff that concern programmers.

What I'd like to talk with you about are the things which you as complete beginner can do to optimize your own web site so it can attract your target market and turn them into possible purchasers. Your site must be optimized to do 2 things: Be search engine friendly, and convert visitors into customers (or at the least get those visitors interested enough in your business to take some form of action when they come to your website).

Website Optimization is all about creating a search engine friendly, and adding elements that will convert visitors into taking some form of action on your site.

There are 2 important website optimization terms that you must know and understand:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Conversion Optimization

SEO is composed of elements that must be incorporated on your website, for example: Meta tag optimization, heading tags, keywords on your pages, xml sitemap, image optimization, internal linking, and more.

Off Page Optimization is composed of building links to your site from other sites and web properties. Most of those links should come from sites that are related to what your website is about. As an example, if your site is about cooking, you do not want a link from a site that's about swimming. The more relevant links you have coming to your site, the more the search engines will think of your site as an authority in your industry, particularly if you have links coming from a site that already has got a lot of authority.

By steadily building quality links to your website, you'll cause your listing in Google to rise. This is how folks get first page rankings.

The problem is that too many people target link building before they have optimized the on page SEO factors discussed above. One comes before the other, yet both (one page and off page SEO) are necessary if you would like to ultimately be listed higher than your competition in Google. As you know, the higher you are on the list, the more folks will see it, which equals more traffic to your website.

But now there is another problem...

What happens to all that traffic when they come to your website? The solution to that relies on if you have optimized your site to increase conversions. That's why conversion optimization is part of website optimization.

You must ask yourself what you want your visitors to do when they get to your website. Are you wanting them to fill out a web form? Do you need them to call you? Do you need them to click something? Whatever it is that you want them to do, make it extraordinarily clear.

You must also add elements to your website that interest the sort of people you are targeting. Generally, you need to include images, videos, sign up forms (so you can follow-up with prospects), and so on.

The main thing is to make sure that while you are creating a website, you are also optimizing it at the exact same time.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Have You Been Asking What is SEO? Then Read This

Along your journey of learning the best way to promote your business online, I'm certain you have asked yourself the question, "What is SEO?" SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. That means to optimize your online property in order that it will be indexed and placed in the natural results list of Google and other search engines.

Some folks make the mistake of thinking that they can just pay Google to be included in their list of results. This isn't true!

You can't pay them to be listed in their natural search results (the key list that people look at). Your site and online presence as a whole needs to be optimized in such a way that the search engines' computerized system will include your site on the list. The 1st step to making this happen is to correctly optimize your website in order that it can be indexed.

Google (as well as other search engines) does have what's called a Pay Per Click advertising program where you can pay for inclusion into their paid ads, but your site still must be optimized in a certain way to be on this list too. When you go to Google and type in a search term (often referred to as a keyword or key phrase) for something, the list of results are sites, blogs, articles, promotional releases, videos, etc. which have been indexed in Google.

Before those webpages are placed in the index, Google's robot (also called a spider) "crawls" the content on every one of the pages. After the pages are in the index, Google's robot then sets the relevancy of each webpage to the keyword phrase that was employed, listing the pages ordered by relevancy to that term.

Let's assume that somebody is looking in Google for the phrase “how to lose weight”.

In this example, you may have a site that's all about losing weight, but if the pages of your weight loss site isn't optimized correctly for Google, then none of your pages will be listed in the results. Your target audience will struggle to find your site.

Regardless of whether your website is search engine optimized, it requires a lot of work and time to get it on the 1st page of results for certain popular terms. There are several SEO factors that are important and specific things that must be done directly to your website and indirectly to your site to get the required outcomes.

SEO enhancement of your site comes in two forms: On page optimization and Off page optimization. On page optimization consists of optimizing the individual page elements of your website while off page optimization consists of improving your web pages indirectly through assorted web marketing strategies such as link building and social media activity.


Sunday, April 17, 2011

Don't Listen to Your Web Designer - They Have No Clue!

A big mistake that small business owners make is thinking that just because they have a website their sales will increase...but the only way that a website will increase sales is if it is designed specifically for attracting your ideal customer and turning them into buyers.

Most web designers do not know how to build a website that is optimized to attract your target audience online, nor do they know what elements should be included on your website to increase the likelihood of your visitors turning into customers. They are designers, not internet marketers, so the key to having the right web design is to find a designer that knows a thing or two about marketing online. They need to know about SEO (search engine optimization) and conversion rate optimization. If you have had a website for at least three months and it has not helped to increase sales, then something is wrong!

Unlike a brick and mortar business, people do not happen to stumble upon or drive by your website. When a consumer searches for something in the search engines like Google, the list of results are from sites that were designed in a way where the search engines want to index the website and add it to their listing. If your website was not designed for the search engines, then they will not list your website for search terms that are related to your industry.

Before you have a website designed for your business, it’s important that you do online market research to see what words people are using to search for products and services that your business offers. In other words, what are people typing into the search box when they “google it”? Once you have this information, you design your website based on those keyword phrases.

Watch the video below for more on this topic:




For more details on how to optimize your website properly, download these free website creation blueprints that was created specifically for small business owners and entrepreneurs who want to create sale increasing websites.