Free Website, Printing and Graphic Design Tips

When searching for a product or service online the first thing I do is enter a word or phase to describe what I’m looking for. If I’m looking for toys for my puppy I might enter “puppy toys” into the search box. Well, if you sell puppy toys and you do not have “puppy toys” listed in your site’s keywords, your website will not be returned as a possible resource for “puppy toys” and I’ll never know that you had exactly what I was looking for. So, how do you find out what keywords people will use when searching for your services or products? A simple but slightly labor intensive way would be to research your competitor’s sites. Go to the search engine of your choice. In the search box type a word or phrase that you think your customers would use to find businesses like yours. When the list comes up, select a competitor and click on their link. When the page comes up right click on the page and select “view source” from the menu that appears. A file with a mesmerizing amount of what looks like gibberish will open up in notepad. Look for a line that begins “<meta name=”keywords” content=” and take note of the words. Copying and pasting them into another document would be a good way to keep track. After visiting several of the top sites (the more the better), you will find that certain keywords appear more frequently than others. Try adding the top 5 or ten to the keyword section of your website.  If you don’t know where to find the keywords on your site or how to add to or change them, please send me an email or submit a comment and I’ll help you to locate them as “painlessly” as possible. (It’s a free service!) There are several other ways to determine the right keywords for your website. I’ll address additional methods in future posts. “Stay tuned!”

Help improve your website’s search standing with Google.
It’s FREE and it’s by Google for you.

When you make use of Google’s Webmaster Tools you can:
1. Automatically inform Google when you update your pages
2. Discover your links and see how users are reaching your site
3. Enhance and increase traffic to your site
4. Learn more at Webmaster Central
(The above 4 items are taken from the Webmaster Tools page.)
Simply go to the page http://www.google.com/webmasters/start/ and click on get started or, if you prefer take a tour of the tools Google makes available to you for free. It’s a great resource for anyone maintaining their own website.

When deciding what you’d like your website’s domain name to be there are several factors you should keep in mind.
1. Try to use words that are key words for your business. If, for example, you are in the business of house cleaning then housecleaning.com, smittyshousecleaning.com, smittys cleaning.com, etc. would be good choices. When potential clients conduct an online search they are going to use the words that most commonly describe your services or products first. You want those words on your website and in your domain name if possible.
2. Keeping the above suggestion in mind, try to keep the name short and simple. The more characters people have to type the more likely there will be an error and your web page may not “come up”.
3. Finally, stay away from using unusual spelling techniques (cryptic stuff similar to the ”words” found on vanity license plates). For example spelling the word “graphics” as “graFics” can become a problem along the way. As I have well learned.

Creating your own website can seem like a daunting task but with some good help it is possible. Visit http://www.w3schools.com/web/default.asp to get started. Here you will find a beginners’ guide to virtually all things website. 

Another resource for free website tools, etc. is http://www.bravenet.com/webtools/.

Good luck and don’t hesitate to ask questions!