1. You can get incredible looking websites from template directories (link to a few)

When you begin to build your own web site, you have the tendency to spend a lot of time on your website design. It’s a good thing to pay attention to your site design, because it has impact both on you and your site users. But making it the number one priority isn’t a good web strategy. Users spend only 1/20th of a second to judge your design. This doesn’t mean that your site design isn’t important or don’t have impact, of course it have, but it isn’t analyzed in detail.

Design Techniques

• Know your audience.
  If you design a site that suits your audience, your customer won’t be complaining to you later.
• Test, test, test
  Test your designs in every browser and OS combination that you can get your hands on. Don’t forget resolution
  Browsers and OS are important, but if your readers and customers are browsing on a smaller screen than you design on, they could be unpleasantly surprised.

Theme or category isn’t the only thing to decide however. Once you’ve found the template you want to use for your website you then need to decide on the leave of customization you want for it. If it is a good site then you will be able to change things like color, font and logo without to much trouble. Other changes should also be available to you but will be more difficult to implement. You may need certain software or have to pay an additional fee for example.

Mini site templates or micro-sites are used by online businesses to quickly and easily create free landing pages. A landing page is where a visitor to your primary business website goes when he or she clicks on a link there. Mini site templates can also function as stand-on-their-own small websites of one, two, or three pages in length.

Benefits of using a template

When you begin your Website with a template it will serve as a good starting-point for your site and when you add sub-pages to your site you can keep the same theme throughout your site

Don’t have time to learn HTML, visit the Websites below and download their templates for free. Templates are simple to use. All you need to do is add your text, edit your images and provide a link back.

The sites below offer templates for free

• ByDezign Free Theme Sets. A great collection of Website themes listed by category.
• Elated Pagekits. Excellent collection of over 40 site templates. Each contains multiple page layouts, HTML code and graphics.
• Free website templates. The best free website templates on the Internet.
• Free Templates Online. Free templates resource. Download professional web templates absolutely free of charge
• Free Web Templates.com. Good selection of templates, buttons and backgrounds, including business templates, fan club templates, frames templates, gaming templates, interactive templates and user templates too. They also offer a help forum, if you get stuck.
• FreeLayouts.com. Free Website Templates, Free Myspace Layouts, and Flash Templates.
• Free Site Templates. An excellent selection of templates in many different styles, including business designs, personal sites and fast loading pages.

2. It is a commodity now. You will get a better website for less by going with one of these great websites than paying a lot more for a custom design

There are some amazing websites on the net these days. It used to be that if you wanted a really good website it would cost you thousands of dollars and months of time. Not any more! The quality and availability of website templates these days makes it easy for anyone to have an amazing website quickly and easily.

One of the major drawing points for the use of mini-site templates is that they are absolutely free online. When you are starting a new online business and finances are tight, this comes as a wonderful resource for new business owners. Experienced business owners also see the value of free business website templates and use them to good effect to market their products.

How to use Website templates

1. Download and unzip your templates.
2. If you are new to zip files visit this page, Zip Files.
3. You can edit each HTML document using Notepad (Mac users can use SimpleText.)
4. To edit your graphics, you will need to download Irfan View 3.99 for free. Or, create and add text for free at My Imager.
5. Edit the text that appears between the <BODY> </BODY> Tags.
6. Make sure you don’t modify any <HTML TAGS> - unless you know HTML.
7. Show me again how to cut and paste.
8. If you use any of the templates below make sure you follow their rules, most sites require a link back.

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We are all interested in having great looking websites, with sophisticated interfaces and complicated structures. Nevertheless, we seem to get distracted by all these and ignore one vital aspect: the traffic. Some websites are simply closed because nobody visits them, therefore the traffic is inexistent. Website traffic is the key to the success of your online business. Website traffic is the amount of visitors your website receives and is crucial for your online presence.

For instance, there are great looking websites which have a low traffic and simple websites which have an excellent traffic. Although it seems odd, there is an explanation. People are generally attracted by the messages you are posting on your website. They appreciate valuable articles which have a meaning to them. If you have plain messages with no meaning, people will quickly go to another site.

The key is to focus on the content, on its value and originality. It is better to offer a few good quality articles than a big quantity. Of course, this will not attract hundreds of visitors right away, but on a long run you will create your own network of clients.

If you do not like to write articles, there are other possibilities to increase your traffic. You can resort to traffic exchange which is very convenient if you want to make good money with your website. Use traffic-generating programs such as pop ups, exit page programs.

Another idea is to increase website traffic by setting up a number of affiliate programs. A very popular method is to include a newsletter into your site. This will arise the visitors’ interest in the available materials from your newsletter.

You can also post on forums on different topics allowing your visitors to exchange opinions which will significantly contribute to the increasing of your traffic flow. If you are selling products you can post some product reviews to help the visitor choose the product he wants or initiate a question/answer section related to the products you sell.

Link exchange may be also a strategy to increase website traffic. Link exchange can give your site more credit and people will visit it more often. You have to spend some time in looking for partners in link exchange programs, but in time it pays off well in creating more website traffic.

There many more strategies to get a high traffic (pay-per-click, searching engine optimization) and it is recommended to choose the ones which suit you best. However, do not forget that traffic is not a static indicator. It can grow, but it can decrease as well. Therefore, you have to do something to keep it coming on a long term. We offered you some solutions which can be summarized in one sentence: build your website traffic by marketing your website so that it can market for you.

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Online marketing has become a necessary evil but in a good way. You can now compete on level ground with larger companies and reach your target audience at a fraction of the traditional cost. However, cost is not the only advantage of online marketing….it also helps reduce the time-to-market and has many other benefits and that is why this article is being written in the first place! Some of the beginner level steps for online marketing include:

1) Getting a web site: Important steps in getting a web site include booking a relevant domain name, buying space on a server (hosting) and using either a template based or custom web site design. You will need to have the objective of the web site planned before you start doing all this and that should get you going in the right direction. There are many online services which can provide you all the required services in one location and that is best suited for cases where you do not have a friend or family member who can offer tech help.

2) Make it interesting: With billions of web pages dotting the internet, it has become important to make your web site interesting. You can enhance the look and feel of the web site with the latest technology such as AJAX and FLEX. Other than that, you can also add interesting content, interactive sessions like RSS feeds, competitions and transactions to make users come back to your web site. Though the internet has become highly competitive, it has also got many tools which make your web site attractive.

3) If you pick up a magazine, you notice that the quality of the magazine is determined by its content. A web site is also similar and the quality of content determines how many users hit your web site. Apart from getting professional marketing content, you might also like to explore the possibility of having blogs, regular newsletters and interesting white papers on your site more ’sticky’. Web 2.0 revolves around more interesting content and that in itself is something worth talking about.

4) An important aspect of a web site is the ability to let users get in touch with you easily and thus you can feature all types of contact data on it. Implementing an easy to use contact form, easy to find email address can help increase the success rate of your web site by as much as 50%!

5) Depending on the budget you have, online web promotion packages can be purchased from many reputed vendors. Try and use a supplier which has a good reputation and is easily available on the phone. Strictly avoid using suppliers who communicate via automated systems as they are not going to be of much help during a critical time.

6) One of the best ways to promote your web entity is through the traditional mediums of marketing which you might already be using such as print advertisements, visiting cards, display ads etc. Subtle advertising includes a system where everyone in the company uses company email addresses such as yourname@yourcompany.com and it in turn popularizes the web site with customers, suppliers and all external parties.

These first steps towards online marketing should be able to get you the desired results and get you going towards generation of good business leads in record time.

- Kavita Jhunjhunwala
kavita@webspiders.com

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Many of us need web site design done in a hurry and if you are on a shoe-string budget (read as under $200 for a pop!) then this is the right place to look for a list of template monsters which can give you a good looking web site, up in record time!

1) www.top1000templates.com is a well categorized web site with templates for most common online businesses and is one of the cheapest we could find at under $100.
2) If you are looking at buying templates in bulk, then www.tukanas.com can be an interesting bet as it offers a few thousand templates for an unbelievable price of under $50. Even if you get 100 good templates out of the thousands, the math makes the site a no-brainer.
3) Another site along similar lines is www.fxstyle-templates.com which offers slightly more stylish templates for users.
4) However, nothing works like a free web site and you can really enjoy the features of www.homestead.com as it offers a free website making tool. Downside? You need to have a good idea of DIY tools for the web and then pay a nominal $5 per month to maintain the site.
5) One of the best template web sites continues to be www.templatemonster.com which has been around for quite some time and gives you a good value for money buy.
6) If you are looking for a bit more than plain HTML templates, then you can try www.templatesbox.com which does not offer a very large variety but still manages to make your web site stand out in a crowd.
7) www.boxedart.com is exactly what its name suggests…high quality design which might be a tad expensive but is still worth every penny you spend on it. one of the unique features at www.boxedart.com is that you can actually buy a template exclusively for yourself and ensure than it is not resold.
Yet another interesting service provide which makes the cut and forms part of this list is www.templatesfactory.net which offers you loads of options and gives you an excellent opportunity to choose a really cool template which is well under $200.
9) Most hosting providers also offer web templates to choose from and can include shopping carts as well. You can try www.hostpro.com or www.godaddy.com for a really well planned complete package.
10) www.freesitetemplates.com is also a good bet as you are able to get something which gives you an opportunity to get a fairly professional looking web site for FREE.

As you can understand, $200 can go a long way in getting your web site up. However, a few thing to keep in mind is that the template is not yours exclusively (except in cases where specified) and it can only be used once and cannot definitely be resold. Other than that, using web templates for your web site is quite a seamless task and helps you get your web site up and running in record time.

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If you need to develop a website for your business, you must use WordPress blog managing software. According to its website, WordPress is “a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.” WordPress allows even the most novice of web designers to create pages that look professionally done. It is an open source project which means that anyone around the world can contribute to it at any time. The code available through WordPress is all free for you to use, no matter who you are. There is a “WordPress for Dummies” book that was written by people who want to make your visit to WordPress as painless as possible.

Everything about WordPress is geared toward being easy-to-operate, inclusive and free. WordPress evolved from cafelog in 2003, and has since grown to offer the option of static home pages through which blogs can be hosted. This is evidence of WordPress growing from being simple blog-management software to a powerful content manager capable of running large and complicated websites.

WordPress offers great features such as:

-Password-protected posts. You can designate blog entries public or private, viewable only to certain people.

-Easy installation and upgrades. WordPress is designed to be downloaded and installed through a single wizard that guides you seamlessly through the installation of the latest version.

-No rebuilding. Changes that you make to your site will take effect immediately. You will not have to wait for a static page to reload itself.

-Themes. WordPress offers design themes that make design as simple for you as possible. There are many to choose from, and designs can be altered at the click of a button. WordPress states that you can “have a new design every day.” Importantly, the founders of WordPress quit allowing the posting of themes that offered sponsored links in 2007. This was not a popular decision with the designers of those themes, but was applauded by most WordPress users. Themes with links were widely regarded as a type of spam. WordPress’ decision to exclude them shows WordPress’ commitment to free ease of use.

-Spam protection. Needless to say, WordPress is committed to protecting its users from unnecessary and annoying junk.

-Comments. A comment feature can be enabled on your blog in a variety of different ways.

-Multiple authors. In addition to allowing multiple authors to post on the same site, WordPress allows up to ten different levels of authors with different privileges regarding publishing and editing.

-Full user registration. WordPress can set up comments to be all-authenticated, or you can allow anonymous comments.

WordPress is so easy to use, you are able to create your own, professional-looking website for any type of website you want. Of course it is always important to remember that good content is necessary to any quality website, but it never hurts to have good design as well to sweeten the deal. Investigate WordPress for all of your website building needs.

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If you have a website, register with Google Webmaster Central. This is possibly one of the best investments you can make to get your site noticed and to increase traffic to it. Webmaster allows you to collect a lot of valuable information about how a given site ranks when it comes up as a search result on Google. Google is the ideal company to offer a service like this. Google, after all, is the site whose name changed from a noun to a verb when its huge network and quick results made it the go-to search engine for most of the world.

Google Webmaster does not cost anything; you simply need to get a Google account before you can sign in to Webmaster. The website you plan to work with on webmaster may be from any domain you wish. Many large publishers utilize the Google webmaster tools to help adjust the content on their websites. You already have a Google account if you use Gmail or Blogger.

Go to www.google.com/webmaster/, sign in and you will find yourself at the Google webmaster dashboard. From here, you may take advantage of a range of tools that allow you to work with Google from your computer to make your site more visible on Google searches. Google has provided all the necessary tools to get started with this, including inside looks at how Google indexes sites so as to maximize the advantage you have by using Google Webmaster.

First, you will learn how Google’s robot (Googlebot) crawls through the web and indexes sites. You will learn how often Googlebot checks your site for new content, and you will learn whether Googlebot is able to access all areas of your site. Webmaster helps you find out if Googlebot has had problems with this, and offers tools to correct problems that may exist. Webmaster offers file validation that allows you to test out changes made to your site before actually making the changes on your server. Webmaster also allows you to see which words attract the most business to your site and see what words other sites use to link to it. Webmaster allows you to track which search terms are driving the most traffic to your site and how much of your pages are indexed. With Webmaster, you will see where you need to push content and which terms to use to optimize your website’s performance.

In addition to helping you gather search data, Google Webmaster offers a sitemap protocol that allows you to submit your sitemap to Google for referencing on its index. This supplements the crawl mechanism of the Googlebot and allows you to have your site as thoroughly indexed as possible. When you have a page within your site that does not link to any of the other pages, a sitemap is a virtual necessity if you want to drive any traffic at all. After all, it will only be accessible via search engine result, and the sitemap protocol will make the listing of those sites as comprehensive as possible.

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One of the fastest growing areas of the web is advertising with a local search feature. Americans have become more and more dependent upon the internet as a go-to source for virtually all of their needs, and advertising plays a key role in determining which websites receive the heaviest traffic. According to Borrell Associates, a company that tracks local advertising and helps online companies develop marketing strategies, revenue from local search engines will double from $2.5 billion to $5 billion in 2008 and will hit $12.6 billion by 2012.

According to online research company Jupiter, however, local search engines will handle more business, but only about $8.9 billion worth of business in 2012. The estimates regarding the future of local search engines vary, with Veronis Shuler Stevenson estimating $6 billion in 2011. Although some of these predictions portend more growth than others, they are all in agreement that local search engines are a growing area of the web and are the next natural step for a society that is looking up addresses online more and more.

Either way, local search engines are the obvious area to target if you want to be in on successful online marketing in the next few years. More people are moving toward using local search engines when they used to use a phone book, and large search engine companies like Google and Yahoo are developing their own versions of local search engines wherein the algorithms are set to show results for businesses that are in a specific geographical area.

Why do people like doing business with a local search engine? There are several benefits to utilizing a search service that is geographically limited. Though world-wide searches are quicker and more efficient than digging through the yellow pages, they also return with hundreds of thousands – often millions – of options when you may simply be looking for a video store down the street. Localized search engines allow for more concentrated searches to be undertaken automatically, without having to dig through a ton of results or refine your search parameters over and over.

So what does this mean for your online marketing strategies? Start running campaigns with local search engines now and familiarize yourself with the game relatively early. As technology improves, local search engines are going to become the standard across the search engine industry. Features like local searching for mobile devices are already in development, some on devices that are location-aware so as to give you real-time directions to a type of business of your choice.

Most of these sites are supported by local advertisers who understand that a person searching for something specific in a specific location is more likely to seek out a local search engine than do five searches with a global search engine. It is probably only a matter of time before searches like these from devices like these are standard throughout the country. The increasing sophistication coming to local search engines run on hand held devices makes it possible for advertisers to reach anyone at anytime, pretty much anywhere.

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Before you advertise on TV, on the radio or in a newspaper, you must read this article. Search Engine Land is a great site about all things “search.” Recently, it featured an article discussing how options are expanding for those who advertise through Google.

Pay per click or PPC advertising is immediately recognizable as an ad medium that is easy to track. The exact where and when of each click and subsequent sale can be recorded, making it easy to monitor its efficiency. This is rather expensive, though costs have mostly been kept down due to widespread use of an auction system. Is it possible to create television, audio and print ads that have the same kind of easy traceability for the same price they have always had? An online company is carving out new paths in long-familiar media that have been advertising assets for years.

Ironically, web-based company Google are the ones leading the way in traceable television, audio and print ads. This is probably due largely in part to the fact that Google has not discounted the impact of television, radio and print. Even though web-based advertising has exploded over the past ten years, it is important to keep in mind that people still entertain and inform themselves via TV, audio and print. Google has found a way to track ads which works just like PPC ad-tracking, but is primitive in its methodology. Within each ad, Google will list a specific web address or phone number through which customers will order goods and services. Calls pass through Google’s unique number and on to the business’ main phone line. With today’s abilities to trace calls and discern which call went through which number, Google is able to tell you when and from where calls are coming. This same idea is used when advertising a specific webpage.

Online marketing campaigns are necessary in this day and age. Most everyone accesses the internet at least a little bit. Some companies have spent most of their advertising budget in recent years targeting the online audience while seemingly forgetting about the huge number of people who still get their news from a daily newspaper. Almost all of us still watch TV.

Google has dubbed audio advertising “audio” rather than “radio” in recognition of the fact that the way we experience music and talk is shifting from an old-fashioned analog system to high-def radio, satellite radio and podcasts. It is possible right now to advertise via all of these mediums, and with the inclusion of special phone numbers and websites it is possible to track how effective your advertising really is.

Through Google’s advertising programs, advertisers will be able to track which ads are actually bringing in revenue in terms of time of day, location and sales made. The innovations being made by Google right now have significance for the future of advertising. As Search Engine Land points out, the tracking available through all types of media will eventually bring a level of accuracy to advertising which it has never seen before.

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It’s funny - we always seem to have the same conversations with potential clients who know a little bit about online marketing:

I hear that possible to get my website to the top of the search engine pretty easily.  Can you make that happen?

As much as I’d like to say "Yes, we can definitely do that for you!", I also can’t lie and set false expectations.  First off, if someone can guarantee top rankings in Google, they’re selling you snake oil.  It might work for a day or two, but it won’t last.  That is one guarantee I can make you.

While there is no guaranteed way to always be #1 in Google, it is very possible to be among the top results.  It might take a bit of work to get there but it is possible.  Even better than that, there is a way to get a pretty good idea of what you need to do to get to the top of the Google rankings.

Google Rankings were Built on Math

The founders of Google created the search engine to prove out their doctoral thesis at Stanford.  While I won’t go into the excruciating detail of it, the important thing to note is that rankings are based on a mathematical formula of the number of sites that link to yours (or your competitors’ sites). 

A lot of changes have been baked into their search rankings since the search engine first came to be but the same math still sets the foundation for all search results.  That means that most of the rankings you see are based on some characteristics of a website that can be quantified

What Do I Care About Quantifying Search Rankings?

If your website shares the same quantifiable characteristics of similar websites ranked at the top of Google, your website should rank towards the top as well.  Or to put it another way, you should be able to rank above your competitors for a particular search term if you have the same or better quantifiable characteristics as them.

1. You can rank higher
2. You can get more visitors
3. You can generate more new clients

What Are These "Quantifiable" Characteristics"?

There are 2 numbers that I look at when doing a competitive analysis for some search terms:

• PageRank
• Inbound Links

These are the best indicators of where a site is going to rank for a particular term.  If you do a search for a term and look at the top 3, top 10, and top 20 results, you will see that most of the time, the average PageLink and number of inbound links decreases the further you go down in the rankings.

If I Get More Links, Will I Be Ranked Higher?

Not necessarily.  Like I said above, there are a lot of factors that determine the rankings of websites.  That takes a much more in-depth analysis of your competitors.  But if you’re interested in getting one of the top results, and you can get a similar or higher value for the characteristics I listed above, you’re in the game.  You will probably show up somewhere in the rankings and you can start making small changes to see what gets you even higher.

What’s Next?

Before you start diving into this competitive analysis, you need to determine what the goals of your website are for you.  There may be some easier and less expensive ways to get more traffic to your website and you should look through those options as well.  But if you know that you want to get top search rankings in Google, this is a pretty good way to get an idea of what you need to do to get ranked higher.

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In case you hadn’t heard, Microsoft put a bid in to purchase Yahoo and create a formidable software and online behemoth. For all the publicity that Google gets, you can’t forget that Yahoo is the most trafficked site on the Web, and Microsoft has a monopoly on Operating Systems and a near-monopoly on web browsers. To this point though, they haven’t had much of an impact on the marketing efforts of businesses. Google has ruled that arena, which is why they are worth $165 Billion. But a merger of these two big players will directly impact your business and your bottom line.

The Latest

While Yahoo has spurned Microsoft’s initial offer of almost $45 Billion, most analysts thinks this is just the first round in drawn-out negotiations that Microsoft will eventually win.

Let’s say that this does follow through - how will it affect your business?

Why Some Think You Won’t Be Affected

Analysts of the online industry don’t think this merger will do anything to decrease the sizable advantage Google has over both companies. Technically and culturally, Google is just far superior so “two wrongs don’t make a right”. I agree with that assessment - that Google is still the superior company than the two combined… but

Why You Will Be Affected

Businesses can advertise (and should) advertise on each of the three search engines. If anyone suggests that you should advertise elsewhere, they’re just trying to get your money. Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft make up 90% of the industry so you’re reaching 9 out of 10 people searching for you online - pretty good percentages if you ask me.

The problem is that most people only focus on Google. With their dominant share, it makes more sense to focus all your effort on one advertising platform that reaches over 50% of potential clients than split that attention among two other systems. The fact is, we do the same thing. We only move to the other search engines when we’re trying to get a larger target market. It’s just not worth our limited time to go after the additional search engines when you won’t get as great of a return.

But if it’s two platforms, and they both reach an equivalent amount of people online, we’ll start rethinking our marketing efforts (and our clients’). All of a sudden, it makes sense to work on both. So by moving two platforms to just one and increasing the viewership, a lot of smart marketers are going to rethink their strategy.

You Will Be Able to Reach More Potential Clients, with Less Effort

If you’re marketing online and you’re seeing a new influx of clients from these efforts, you will now be able to double this effect. If you’re not marketing online, your competitors who are already online will move on to this new platform and continue to attract new clients who are searching for everything online.

So we think the merger is good for businesses. Fair competition great for the consumer and this will only make online search and Pay-Per-Click marketing even more dominant as the most efficient way to reach potential client.

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