Web Design Discussion

Search engines love content. The beauty of PDF files are that they contain lots of textual content. Creating PDF files and including them on your web site is a good strategy for providing additional food for the search engines.

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For the past few years site owners tried to get as many links as possible (link schemes) to their web sites. It didn’t matter where they came from. Search engines willl now penalize you for this practise because they want searches to be relevant and targeted.

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For Part 1 read How to Repurpose Info Products - Part 1

5. Become an expert

If you create content for your niche that is then repurposed, reformatted you will soon be seen as the expert in your field. The best way to do this is to choose a niche that is not too competitive but is very popular.

6. Boost web traffic and visitors

Re-purposing content will increase the number of people who will interact with your products thus you will make more sales. You can increase traffic by creating a forum, blog and marketing to the search engines. The idea is to get your product in front of the people in your niche. ie if they are hanging out in myspace web sites then go there to interact with them.

7. Create a community

Once you have attracted lots of visitors, you can invite people to become affiliates. A team of affiliates will rapidly increase your sales because they are motivated to make money for themselves through selling your products. Be sure to treat them like business associates so they will be motivated to keep selling.

Tip 1

The best way to get started with re-purposing content is to create the content yourself because you will then have the copyright to it. Don’t use other people’s content for yourself because this would be an infringement of copyright. All content created on the web is automatically copyright protected.

Once you start making enough money to sustain yourself, you can start outsourcing your content creation.

Tip 2

Add bonuses to increase the quality of your products

Resources

Need help writing or re-purposing content?
http://dynamicduoofcontent.com/

Have you ever written an article, ebook or report only to have it sitting on your hard drive gathering electronic dust?
The good news is that you can repurpose the content and make money from it.

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Please read Top 10 Benefits to Build a Web Site - Part 1. 1-5

6. Interactivity

Building a web site will allow you get immediate feedback from your customers. Some of the ways to create interactivity include surveys, videos, audios, live chat, forums, blogs, RSS feeds and podcasts.

7. Look like a corporation

Even if you are a one person entity a professional web site can make your business appear to be a corporation.

8. Improve communication

By constantly updating your web site with new information you can constantly communicate with your customers about the products and services you provide. For example an online newsletter is a way to inform and educate customers. Previous newsletter issues can be placed in an archives section of your web site so customers can access that information anytime.

9. Educate your customers

Create a knowledge base of white papers about your business. You can convert these to PDF files for customers to download to their computers. You can also create a database of files for them to access. Teachers and professors use web sites to educate and commuicate with their students. You can even do a college course or degree online from anywhere in the world as long as you have internet access.

10. Restricted access

If your business or organization wants to restrict access to certain members you can create password protected sections of your web site. These areas will not be accessible to the public or be indexed by the search engines. This web site could also serve as an intranet accessed only by your staff.

I often get a call from a person or company that wants to build a web site for their business but doesn’t truly understand all the benefits of having one or what it will take to get one built. They sometimes think it will only take a few clicks of the computer keys and “voila” out pops a web site. They then expect it to be no more than a few hundred dolllars.

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Google is still the largest search engine on the Net, so getting your web site indexed by it is crucial for web traffic. A new web site often takes a long time before it appears in Google’s search results.

Here are 3 fast ways to get a new web site into Google:

1. Get a link from a web site that is already in Google

The quality and quantity of links pointing to your web site determines its ranking in Google. Your ranking will increase in proportion to the links you get.

One of the best ways is to write an article and submit it to article directories since these are well established and get indexed by Google every day.

Visit forums or blogs related to your web site content and leave a well written and informative post. If you provide information that is valuable to others they will naturally wish to link to you.

2. Add a blog to your web site

Blogs tend to be quickly indexed by Google. Create a blog for your business then include links back to your web site in your posts. Google will find your web site by indexing your blog entry.

3. Submit a Press Release

Create a press release about your web site and submit it to:

PRWeb
http://www.prwebdirect.com/

Free Press Release
http://www.free-press-release.com/

Make sure your press release is interesting, informative to read and includes a link back to your web site. If many people read it you may get hundreds or thousands of new links which will result in an immediate boost in traffic.

Search engines will give a higher rank to web sites with
unique content than those that contain duplicate content.

Here are 3 less obvious areas where duplicate content
may occur within your web site:

1. Newsletter archives

You may have a web page on your web site with an article that is
also duplicated in your newsletter archives.

2. Blog posts

A blog post or article may also be duplicated within
the web page on your main site. Most blogs contain duplicate
content because they automatically archive posts within
the blog or the blog owner has placed the post in multiple
categories.

3. PDF files
You have duplicate content if you converted an html page
on your web site into a PDF file for downloading. PDF files
also get indexed by seach engines.

Tip

Make sure you also don’t use the same title and description meta
tags for every web page. Use different titles and descriptions
for every page on your web site.

The web site for your business is often the first interaction a visitor will have with your business. Here is a list of mistakes that many site owners make when building their web sites.

1. Long or hard to spell domain name

If you want your customers to find you quickly, choose a domain name that is short and easy to spell. Some site owners may try to include their main keywords in the domain name with the hope that this will help them rank well in the search engines.

It makes better sense to optimize your web site with keywords placed in the content and meta tags than in the domain name. Think of what will benefit your customers more than what will benefit the search engines.

2. Amateur design

First impressions make a big difference in deciding who to do business with. If your web site does not have a professional appearance you may lose your customers to your competitors. Be sure to use the latest design techniques ie CSS and HTML. Using old techniques such as tables and deprecated html tags may slow the loading and indexing of your web site by the
search engines. Thousands of new web sites are coming online everyday. Don’t let your competitors get ahead of you.

3. Unclear navigation structure

Make sure you can access any part of your web site within 3 clicks. If your page is buried deeper than this it will be hard for both visitors and search engines to find the information.

The links should be clickable. Try not to use javascript or image maps. Some users have javascript turned off so they won’t be able to navigate your web site. Image maps don’t make it obvious there is a link to click on. Try to use CSS navigation menus because they are fast, contain simple code and are search engine friendly.

Link text should provide a clear description of the link destination. For text links, use colored, or underlined text (don’t underline non-link text).

4. Avoid using a lot of flash

Most web site visitors want to quickly access information on your site without being distracted by objects flashing across the screen or blinking at them. Flash is a programming language that should only be used to enhance a web site whereas a static page cannot. I still see flash introductions that take forever to download and test my patience. Usually I click elsewhere.

5. Unclear content

Most visitors don’t want to spend a lot of time reading from a screen because it’s harder on the eyes than reading printed text. Writing large blocks of content creates a cluttered appearance and is hard to read. Web content should contain short paragraphs of a few sentences that are to the point so visitors can quickly view what you have to offer. Try to answer visitors questions and don’t use complicated language. This improves search engine visibility because you are using your visitors words not your own.

6. Unreadable text

Many web sites use very small font, or use a type font that is hard to read on a monitor screen. Use font such as verdana or arial for your main content and times roman or arial for the headings. The main content size should be 12 pixels or above.

Don’t use dark text on a dark background or light text on a light background. Use contrasting colors such as black text on a white background or white text on a black background.

6. Browser incompatibility

Many years ago most computer users only used Internet Explorer but now people use other browsers ie Firefox. Make sure your beautiful design can be viewed by all the main browsers. You don’t want to lose visitors because your web site doesn’t display correctly in their browser.

7. Screen resolution

Most new monitors these days have a screen resolution of 1078×768 pixels or above. However many computer users still have old monitors and computers with the resolution set to 800×600 pixels. Also people with poor eyesight will deliberately set their screen resolution to 800×600 so the text is enlarged.

Many web designers only design for high resolution monitors. This means you will lose the visitors whose screen monitors are set to a lower resolution.

Conclusion

Whenever you want to add new features to your web site ie flash, video etc, ask yourself if this will enhance your web site’s appearance and give you a better return on investment (ROI). For most web sites it would be far more beneficial to improve or add more content than to add these new features.

The key to building link popularity for your web site is to find related web sites and directories based on the keywords used within your content and meta tags.

Here is a great tool that will quickly find web sites, blogs, forums and directories that have the potential to provide a link to your own web site thus boosting your link popularity and increase traffic.

Link Search Tool
http://www.soloseo.com/tools/linkSearch.html?keyword

How it works

If you enter a keyword into the search box it will provide hundreds of links for any of these search engines Google, Yahoo!, MSN, ASK

Here is an outline of the results page after entering a keyword and selecting one of the search engines.

Add/Submit

keyword “submit url”
keyword “add a site”
keyword “suggest a site’
etc

Advanced

allintitle:keyword
allinanchor:keyword
etc

Directories

keyword directory
intitle:directory “keyword”
etc

Blogs & Forums

intitle:keyword forum
inurl:keyword forum
intitle:keyword blog
etc

The beauty of this link search tool is that it can save you a great deal of time when building links to your web site.