Free Website, Printing and Graphic Design Tips

You can register your domain name from any one of the many sites designed this purpose. Two examples of such sites are: Register.com and Simple URL.  It is important that you review their services when comparing. Cost should not be the only deciding factor. Typically, you will be asked to enter the name you desire and if it’s available, you can purchase it right then and there. If your first choice has already been taken you will have to submit alternate names until you find one that’s available.  
You can also purchase your domain name from the hosting service you will be using. This is usually the better approach. If you register your domain name and utilize hosting services from the same company there will be less confusion. If you choose to register and host with the same company make sure that if you decide to change to another hosting service in the future that you can “take the domain name with you”. It is important that your domain name is registered to you not to your web developer, designer or hosting service!

Keep your website visitors coming back. A “sticky” site gives its visitors reasons to return to the site and since the number of visitors a site gets has a large impact on its ranking…you want as many visits as you can get! With that in mind, take a look at Freesticky.com. This is a site where you can get lots of free content to help make your website “sticky”. You’ll find items like horoscopes, games, software, educational material, maps, tools and tips. Just follow their simple directions and you’ll be making your site even more appealing to your visitors.

I received an email today from Microsoft Office Live Small Business Advisor. Since I’m always searching for new ways to promote my business, I took the bait and checked out their claim:
“Microsoft Office Live Small Business now includes new easy-to-use tools to help you do business on the Web. And now’s the perfect time to explore them all, because you can get started for free—no strings attached. Sign up now.”
If you have an msn, hotmail or windows live email you can sign in with those credentials and I did. This looks like a good resource for small businesses who aren’t ready or able to pay for professional web design services. You can set up a website for free. You can set up advertising promotions including a pay per click beta deal, that sounds good, and email newsletter campaigns. Some of the services are free and some come at a cost but overall it looks like a good place to start getting your company name out there. 
Setting up your own website is free. You can get a domain name, and use a “powerful site designer” and templates to get the job done. They even include a section with tips on how to create an effective site. I’d suggest you take the time to give it the once over and no, I’m not on their payroll.
http://www.officelive.com/

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.