Why You Need Video

Not only is embedded video a must for Web sites from a promotional perspective, but hosting clips related to your business can boost your search engine optimization. Whether you sell used cars or toys, sporting goods or books, it helps to make video available to enhance your inventory and bring a personal touch to your brand. Video is viral – post a humorous commentary or pratfall and people around the world will e-mail, blog, “tweet” and post to their social pages. In some cases, the national media picks up on popular videos to spotlight on news briefs. The immediacy of online video – the sight and sound – draws viewers to a webpage and holds their attention. To create a video clip with your site URL or sales information could increase awareness of your company and associate your name with something hundreds, even thousands, of people will share.

Why Host Your Video

Given the popularity of YouTube and Google Video, you might ask yourself why you need to enhance your own Web site when you can just create an account and upload videos there. Truthfully, maintaining a YouTube account is a great idea, but it shouldn’t be your only option in site promotion. Having your videos hosted on your business site establishes the material as your property, and emphasizes your brand. If you distribute instructional videos, for example, the archive you create on your site can become a valuable resource that remains as third-party sites come and go. In the event somebody is unable to access your YouTube account, the main site remains open to visitors.

Apply Video to Your Site

If you are not yet schooled in the proper coding and implementation of video, consult with an experienced Web designer to handle redesign and embedding of video clips for your site. Depending on the scope of your project, you may find that video design is quite affordable, and a small price to pay for increasing traffic, sales, and leads to your business.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance writer specializing in articles on streaming video web design and Virginia web design.

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The Personalized Domain versus the “Free Site”

One thing I notice, specifically with authors, is the usage of a free site to host information on books and other writings. Assuming an author only has so much to spend on promotion, it’s understandable to want to be thrifty, but one can also argue the purchase of a domain is a necessary and worthwhile expense for anybody wishing to market online.

When you look at a business card, for example, are you more apt to visit the site of a business with this URL:

http://www.freesite.com/mybusinessname

…or this one?

http://www.mybusinessname.com

The latter certainly may look more professional, and will also imply that the site is done with great care. Free sites, while helpful in a pinch and good for personal websites, often come with strings attached. Signing up for a free service may require you to run banner ads on your pages, and may force you to limit the type of content you can have on your site. With the recent news of Geocities closing, too, comes the realization that there is no guarantee a free service will always be there to store your pages. Having your own web space and URL is easier to maintain in this respect, as pages and URL positioning can be moved if needed.

The URL name: Yours or Your Topic’s?

Let’s say you have decided to spring for a simple web hosting package and a URL. The domain name you choose must best express what you plan to showcase on the Internet. Authors, actors, and musicians will tend to use their names if available, yet the business owner has options. If you operate a bakery in your town, you may wish to purchase a domain that is the name of your business, or else a keyword-strong URL that tells people exactly what you do. “YourTownBakers” or “YourTownBakery” where “Your Town” is where you are located, is a viable option. You stand the chance of increased search relevancy based on the keywords used, and one doesn’t have to guess what it is you do.

A good method of determining the right URL for your company is to consider how it will look to the public. The words that comprise the domain should be short, easy to remember, and to spell. Consulting a site like Domize can tell you if the URL you want is available for purchase- if not, you may be able to find an alternative to work for you.

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It’s nice to be able to walk into a store and buy exactly what you want, when you want. However, with some products that isn’t always the case. Specialty items like gourmet foods, regional delights, and organic health and beauty aids might not always be readily available at your local grocer. Those handmade crafts and dolls you admired on a recent trip to the country, too, more likely not be found at Wal-Mart. So what do you do? If you want more, you go to the Internet to find it.

More and more, businesses turn to the Internet as a means of increasing customer base and global brand awareness. Consumers, too, turn to major shopping portals and smaller, specialized stores for unique items and gifts. If you have something to sell, but don’t have it in your budget to distribute through major department stores, an online boutique and shopping cart provides an affordable solution.

If and when you do decide to set up an online business, you want to be certain you have all the proper elements needed to succeed. As you shop for a designer or web hosting, take care to note the following essentials for your store:

Custom Storefront Design – If you have an existing color scheme and branding for your retail business, make sure a designer can integrate your logos seamlessly into an attractive storefront template. Logos and graphics should also be updated to celebrate your store’s emergence as a virtual storefront, satisfying regular customers and drawing in new ones.

Your front page is also your big sell page, what attracts buyers to the product. Highlight what you sell with crisp photos and detailed description, making point of sale links easy to find.

Search and Structure - Your store should offers categories and subcategories for products, allowing you to set products to multiple categories and increase their visibility. Look for shopping cart software that will allow you to automatically create category pages with ease, and give customers search functions to find what they want without having to browse extensively. Side navigation menus offer the user easy access to your entire inventory, so be sure to offer them.

Individual Inventory Pages – Showcase each item in stock with its own web page. Offer an extended image gallery for displaying color and size options, and allow customers to submit reviews. Individual pages may also allow for sections to display similar items for products that come in a set, so you are continuously selling to your customers. Look for a shopping cart software that allows for “smart URL” functionality, too; unlike other online carts where the item URL is an endless string of jumbles and suffixes, each item in your store gets a unique URL for easy off-site linking. Great for affiliates!

Discounts, Gift Certificates, Coupons – Just one click of the mouse allows business owners to set closeout prices on any item in their stores. Find a program that lets you set special promotional codes for newsletter subscribers, offer buy one, get one free incentives, sell gift certificates and accept coupons online.

Customer Database – Keep track of customers. Use a software that records information on all customers, so you can create opt-in newsletters and direct mail promotions. Offer incentive coupons and sales for returning customers with ease.

Affiliate Programs – Turn customers into salespeople by offering an affiliate program through your online store! Affiliate marketing counts for a large number of Internet retail sales; website owners act as third-party e-tailers and receive commissions for every sale made through their own sites (Amazon.com Associates is an excellent example). With the right software, you can customize your own affiliate program and allow other webmasters to sell your products for you. You pay a small percentage per sale, and in return your brand visibility and link popularity explodes!

To be a good salesman, you must first be a good shopper. Find the proper software to meet your e-commerce needs – user-friendly and functional, and compatible over many browsers – to help your online business succeed.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance writer and SEO consultant who works for CINIVA Systems, a provider of e-commerce solutions for businesses.

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If you are trying to make money online, your website should do more than present a nice picture for people to look at before moving on to the next website. If your aim is to foster a community of regular subscribers and increase sales and visibility, your website needs to stand tall and tower over your competitors. Interactive functionality and user-friendly Web applications designed to hold existing visitors and attract new ones provide an affordable solution to online marketing and longevity. Why have just a website when you can offer users a place to go and a place to stay?

When you search for a website company to handle design and development, here are a few tools to consider to add this functionality to your online presence, to maintain a strong customer base and win new patrons to your products, subscriptions, and news.

Online transactions and payments – Sell products online, accept credit cards and Paypal, and allow for customer interaction.

Events Calendars – Let the world know what you’re doing, where it’s happening, and when to be there. Community and travel sites in particular can take advantage of custom event calendar functionality from CINIVA to enhance the interactive usability of their sites. Post information on concerts, sporting events, charity events, and parties.

Events Registration Manager – Once you’ve posted your schedule of events, now you can let people register for them online! Collect the data and transactions, and keep the customer information for future opt-in mailings.

Weblogs and Forums – Weblogs are a popular and easy to implement way to produce fresh content for your site on a regular basis, with no special skills, equipment, or external software required. Blogs allow you to share your expertise, opinions, stories, company news, etc. and optionally allow readers to respond or even syndicate your information. Blogs allow you to dramatically improve the timeliness and relevancy of your website by helping to keep the content fresh- this not only attracts site visitors who know your organization, but the search engines like Google, which are always on the lookout for ‘what’s new’ as they scan through millions of website pages every day.

Online forums, also called ‘bulletin boards’, are great community builders, which translate into making your website more useful, visited, and visible to search engines. It’s great especially for non-profit organizations looking to enhance member communications and disseminate information. Another good use of a commercial online bulletin board is to improve communications among sales and technical teams (cuts down on email traffic) , as well as customer help forums.

Customer Response Forms – A relative straightforward way for website visitors to communicate with your staff – better than simply posting e-mail addresses, forms allow you route inquiries, require specific information, and collect data, including marketing information that users may wish to provide in exchange for some type of information or newsletter subscription. Dynamic forms can range from short and simple to complex multi-part applications which include photo submissions complex scripting.

Image Libraries and Photo Galleries – A great way to provide visual content to visitors in a directed way.

Create the site with the proper tools to allow customers to not only purchase, but interact and continue to do so in the future.

Kathryn Lively works for CINIVA Systems, a Virginia Beach web design company.

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You have created your website – uploaded content and images to create a pleasing online environment for your information – and are ready to launch. Yet, for all the relevant content and attractive photos provided, optimization for the search engines will require more than presenting a nice package. The site needs to be optimized for search results, that search users looking for information on your topic are able to find you. For newer sites, age can be a determining factor in how it is ranked among older sites search engine view as more experienced and relevant, yet with proper optimization and implementation good results can be had.

Some factors to consider when optimizing your website for good search rankings include:

Code – Is the HTML code that builds your website valid? Will a search engine spider be able to crawl your front page in its entirety, then go onto the listed sublinks without hitting any walls? Is your code free of dynamic strings that a search engine spider cannot read. If not, is the code altered in a way to keep the dynamic factors of your site without holding up a crawler’s ability to mine data from your website?

Content – Is the content you provide on site relative to the site’s topic? If paraphrasing from other sources, do you give proper credit? If your content is original, do you make it available to other sites of relevance to use, and do you include your link information? Is your content well-written, free of spelling and grammatical errors? Is there a proper balance of relative keywords that may be targeted in search? Is your content compelling enough to prompt site owners of relative content to link back to you without being asked?

Freshness – How often do you update your website? Do you use a blog to power your site with updated content? Do you syndicate your content through an RSS feed for other sites of relative topics to use? Do you use an RSS feed of relative information on your site to bring updated content to your visitors?

Keywords – How balanced is your use of searchable keywords in your content? Are the keywords used relative to the site’s overall content? Are you trying to trick the engines using keywords that are not relevant? Do you use too many keywords, or too few? Do you create anchor link text of searchable keywords, leading users to information deeper within your website?

Links – Do all of the links on your website work? Is every subpage within your site linked back to the home page? Do you have outbound links on your site that lead to relevant information? Have you performed a link popularity check on your site to determine what sites are linking back to yours? Do you seek link building relationships with sites of quality and relevance?

META data – Do you include relevant META tags for keywords and descriptions on your website? Do you use too many META keywords, too few? While META tags are sometimes viewed as being less important for search engine optimization than content, it is helpful to use the META description tag concisely to achieve accurate site descriptions in search results, thereby encouraging a higher click-through rate to your website.

Search Friendliness – Overall, how search friendly is your site? Will search engine spiders be able to explore the entire site without running into problems? Does the site look professional, original?

Sitemap – Do you have a sitemap containing links of all subpages in your site? Is it parsed correctly and easy to read? Is a link to the sitemap available on your home page? Do all the links on your sitemap work?

Usability – Is your site’s look and feel attractive to the site visitor? Is the site easy to read, easy to navigate? Does a visitor need to click on more than one or two links to find relevant information? Does the site load quickly?

One thing to note about search engine optimization is that there are no set rules. What works for some will not work for all. Take into consideration this list and apply the best of your abilities where needed on your website. Constant care to your website will yield results.

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So, you spent a considerable amount of time designing your website. You have attractive graphics on display, user-friendly navigation, perhaps a bit of Flash or javascript to enchance the user’s experience on your site. The site’s content is fresh, relevant, and original. A site such as yours should attract much attention in relevant search results, so why is incoming traffic so slow? Why are the search engines not caching your information as quickly and as often as you would like?

You look at your website and wonder what could be wrong. On the outset, the site looks fine, but consider this: what the average Internet user sees is not what the search engine spider (or “bot”) sees when it crawls the web to collect the data. The spider reads the site’s code, all of the characters and data you or your HTML editor added to create the site. Oftentimes, a spider will attempt to crawl a site only to become entangled in a different kind of web! If there is one character out of place, additional code that shouldn’t be there, or code that is unreadable to spiders, your website just may be bypassed altogether.

Remember all of those fancy Flash and javascript doo-dads you implemented? Some spiders can’t read that type of code, and you may be blocking them from collecting your information for search. Be sure to allow room for spiders to move around. Keep complicated code to a minimum or forgo it altogether. The cleaner a website’s code is, the better a web crawler can spider the site and gather relevant data for caching. The more relevant, updated information a seach engine spider gathers from a site, the better that site’s chances are in search results.

A good way to determine whether or not your website is searchable is to have the code validated. The W3C Validator is a free service recommended to validate site code and check for conformance to W3C standards. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public, work together to develop standards for the World Wide Web. Simply enter your URL in the validator and a list of errors, where applicable, will alert you to what needs to be improved in the code of your site. Think of it as fine tuning, it may take some time to improve your site’s code, but in the long run the increase in search referrals will have made it work the hard work.

Kathryn Lively is a freelance SEO writer working for CINIVA System, a Virginia Beach website design and hosting company.

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You’ve written a book and want to promote it. You’re starting a new business and want to attract new customers. You have an established business and wish to retain current patrons and tap into the growing world of Internet commerce. You need a website, but you have no idea how to design or maintain one.

There is no shame in admitting that you need assistance with website design and development. True, you may feel behind the times when middle school children are launching sites with ease, but remember that not all websites are the same, and not all websites are designed for the same purpose. The flashy, graphics-intensive look of a personal site may not suit the needs of a business, while a catalog site with extensive programming may be too much for what is essentially an online calling card.

The first important step toward building an online presence is to know what your website needs to do for you and your products. With the proper guidance of a competent, efficient website designer, you can achieve the perfect look and functionality for your brand.

But, with so many website design companies in business, how do you know which one is the right one to work for you?

As with choosing any service provider, a number of factors should be taken into consideration before hiring somebody to create your online headquarters. With dedicated research, you can find the perfect fit. Here are just a few things to look for when scouting potential web designers:

Web Presence

What does the website of the design company look like? Does it load quickly, and is the design attractive and effective? Is it simple to navigate? Is it loaded with ads, or is there relevant content available?

Check to see if there is an available portfolio of clients, and visit those sites as well. You may need to do some personal evaluation to determine if a particular client has a website appropriate for its purpose, or if it looks like it has been overdone with unnecessary bells and whistles. Contact a few clients and inquire about their relationships with their designers.

Check also for an About Us section with information on the company and its employees. What professional qualifications are included? How long has the company been in business? Is there a rate card available on site? Not every company will publish hard numbers, as custom design can vary according to a client’s needs, but one good thing to look for is a base minimum price set by the company. This will help you determine if the company is too high-end for your budget.

Customer Service

Does the company’s website have easy to find contact information? How quickly do they respond to an e-mail or phone query? Test the possibility of a few design companies with a general query, then make note of the timeliness and personable qualities of each reply. Are some e-mails more like form letters? If you are interested in maintain a constant, personal relationship with your website designers, you may want to consider the ease with which you can contact them. While an immediate automated response might not indicate the company is too busy to contact you, prolonged neglect should answer your question.

When you meet with potential firms, take into consideration their interest in you. Are they genuinely interested in your project, or does it seem like they want to sell you more functionality and services you neither need nor want? Website design companies offer different services like hosting, online marketing, and ongoing maintenance, so naturally it is in the best interest of such a company to promote these services. As you do your research, you may find you need some extras, but don’t feel pressured into anything you are certain you don’t need. Inquire about custom pricing for combination packages, and test the company’s flexibility. You will know if they truly want to aid your vision or are just interested in the sale.

Location

Where is the company located? Are they local or within the state? If you are interested in maintain close contact with a website designer, it would be recommended to find one you can visit if needed. Scout local website firms and note their locations. Does the company have an office, or is it a sole proprietorship operated out of a private home? Will the designer meet with you personally when you wish? What kind of equipment is used in design? Are employees in-house, or do they depend upon third party freelance work? If you are looking for immediacy in design and maintenance, this may be a deciding factor.

With so many potential companies to design your website, it may seem like a daunting take to whittle the choices down to one. Yet, with diligent research and a knack for personal intuition, you can find the proper designer to create your online presence and foster your brand.

Kathryn A. Lively is a freelance writer specializing in search engine optimization and social media optimization. She also assists with Virginia Beach website design.

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Websites fail. That is a fact of the Internet. It is hard to believe that only two decades ago, the Internet was unheard of. In a span of twenty short years, it has advanced at astonishing rates. User expectations are greater than ever before and people are demanding more and more from the sites they visit.

There are many reasons why a website may not perform as well as expected. Perhaps the site is not generating any sales. Maybe the site is not attracting the target audience, or the site was never properly launched in the first place. This is a list of common reasons a website may fail to attract beneficial traffic.

1. Your website is a very powerful tool. It is used to get information out regarding your company and your products. Previously, a company may have used the Yellow pages, newspaper ads, local radio or even TV to advertise. Today, they use the Internet. Unfortunately, many business owners simply throw something together instead of spending valuable advertising dollars on a website.
2. Never get your teenage son’s best friend to build a website for your company. Hire a professional. Competitive web sites need to be designed, branded, architected, developed and marketed by professionals in order to effectively compete in today’s Internet marketplace. Do not underestimate the value of a professionally developed website.
3. Your site has to be clear as to its purpose. Many times business owners will see a website while surfing that appeals them in some way. They decide that is what they want their website to look like even if it does not have anything to do with what they are selling. That is no way to business. Just like a business, a website needs a plan, a goal, a direction. Share those ideas with your web developer and they will help you achieve the goals you have set for your site.
4. Websites have to be marketed. You can have the best site ever designed, but if no one knows about it, it will not benefit you in any way. Remember, you are in a sea of billions of website. Your marketing budget should be a proper investment. Research and find the best Internet marketing company you can afford. Listen to them and take their advice. A good marketing company will research your competition, your keywords and act accordingly to get you placed where you want to be on the Internet.
5. Also included on this list should be laziness. Many times companies begin with a really nice website and a really nice idea. Then, they allow their site to stagnate. Without changes to the site, even if people are visiting your site, they will stop because they will get bored with your content. Internet users have way too many choices of sites to visit and you must give them a reason to come back to yours. A blog is a good way to update content and to get people to visit. It is a great way to market your products.

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How can you tell the difference? The answer is simple. Ask the hard questions and gauge their answers.

What type of Search Campaign does your firm prefer?

Ask the company if they do Paid Search or Natural Search optimization. The major differences are, a paid search should include a huge variety of key phrases, even numbering into the hundreds. A Natural Search is much narrower and focuses on a small number of effective key phrases. Your SEO firm should be able to do to both.

The SEO firm will set up a Paid Search campaign to gauge which keywords or phrases are targeted the most as regards your site and then they will focus their efforts on those select keywords or phrases for the Natural Search campaign.

Unfortunately, many times, firms skip the Paid Search Campaign because it is more profitable for them. In a Paid Search Campaign, much of the client’s money will go to Google or Yahoo to pay for the campaign, leaving little for the firm, itself.

The only time a firm should skip the Paid Search phase is if the client’s site is a narrow niche that has only a few, well targeted keywords or phrases that are appropriate to that site.

Not only should the potential firm be willing to perform both tasks, they need to make certain that the keyword or key phrase campaign is in keeping with the goals of the website. If the client’s goal it to generate leads, then the keywords and phrases should reflect that goal. If the client’s goal is to generate sales, the campaign should keep that in mind.

Does your firm perform SEO copy writing?

SEO copy writing is the creation of website content that is written to attract the attention of search engines. If you have seen a site with a phrase that is repeated over and over, you have likely seen a page that has been created by an SEO specialist.

The downside is these pages do not go over well with humans.

The key is finding a happy medium, which is keeping your keyword and/or phrase density to about 17 to 20 percent and to make the sentences and paragraphs sound natural. Because the algorithm changes frequently for search engines, this will keep any SEO firm busy by making frequent site changes to keep up.

Your chosen firm should not be shy about making site content changes without loosing focus of your over all business goal.

What about link building?

This process is extremely important to raise rankings with Google, who gets about 65% of all search business, and somewhat important to Yahoo and MSN, the next two most popular search engines.

Make certain your potential SEO firm engages in sufficient link building efforts. This is done by creating links to your site in a number of ways: blogging and social site are just the beginning. A good SEO will write articles and post those articles to sites such as ezineArticles.com or Helium.com. This creates a link back to your site. These articles can then be posted other locations, such as blogs.  If the system works well for you, someone else will find the article and post it to their site or blog, giving you an unsolicited link back to your site.

The problem is this method takes a long time (sometimes 2 to 3 months) for real results to be seen. The solution is to purchase links. Care should be taken to link to only reputable sites and not to link farms which sell links simply to make money for themselves. The more inbound links your site has, the better your rankings will be.

What keyword or phrase will be used to show my rankings?

It is a fact that if you do a search for an article by that article’s title, it will show up as #1 in page rankings. If you search for the page’s URL, it will be #1 because there is only one site with that URL. The real test of your SEO firm is if they can raise your rankings via a keyword or phrase that is a popular key word or phrase and not something so narrow that you are the only one who will have that particular search phrase.  What are the odds that someone will do a search for “Before You Hire an SEO Firm, Ask These Questions”?

The firm should focus on the keyword or phrase that will accomplish what your company is hoping to accomplish.

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