6
Jan/11

A Successful Website Owner

by under Design & Development, Web Design

So what’s it really like to own a website which both generates profits for your business and helps (forces) it to grow?

Here’s a breakdown of a typical day of a successful website owner…


1. You Check Your Emails

  • You wake up in the morning and switch on your laptop (or PC), open your email account and check how your website has produced overnight.
  • If you sell direct online, how many sales were made?
  • If the aim is to generate sales leads, how many new leads have you received?


2. You Check Your Stats

  • You login to your Google Analytics account.
  • How much traffic did you receive yesterday?
  • Is it increasing or decreasing?
  • Where did the traffic come from?
  • Are there any areas of opportunity that small effort can result in big payoff?
  • You implement.


3. You Check Your PPC Performance

  • You login to Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing.
  • How many conversions did you receive?
  • What is the CPA?
  • Are you still profitable at this rate?
  • How are your text-ad split tests going?
  • You optimize.


4. You Check Your Rankings

  • You either run your ranking software or you manually type in your top keyword phrases.
  • Are you still in the top 5 positions for your major keyword phrases?
  • How are your competitors doing?
  • Who has just broken into the top 5?
  • What are they doing?
  • You check their linking strategy.
  • You review your strategy.


5. You Check Your SEO Strategy

  • You’re in the top position in Google, but you know that it is fiercely competitive.
  • How many articles have you syndicated this week?
  • Are you releasing a new press release this week?
  • Are you social bookmarking your valuable content?
  • Are you contacting other site owners to exchange links?
  • What are you doing to maintain your rankings?


6. You Check Your Website’s Performance

  • You login to Google Website Optimizer.
  • How is your website performing?
  • What is your conversion rate?
  • How is the latest split-testing going?
  • Is it time to test a new version of your PPC landing page?
  • Is it time to test a new version of your ‘money’ page on your main website?
  • You setup new split tests.


7. You Check Your Content Strategy

  • You know that continually providing valuable content will give you the competitive advantage you need.
  • What new content are you adding to your website?
  • What new tools are you adding to your website?
  • What can you do to build value to your prospects so that they trust you more?


8. You Check Your Emails Throughout the Day

  • You’ve setup your email account to automatically check for emails every 5 minutes. Expectations have now been set.
  • You expect a new sale or a new sales lead every 30 minutes.
  • If you haven’t received a new sale or a new lead in a couple of hours, you check that everything is okay.
  • Is your website still up?
  • Are your forms working?
  • You audit.


9. You Review Your Email Strategy

  • You login to your email management system.
  • How many new people have joined your email list today?
  • What emails will they be receiving?
  • How many people are now on your email list?
  • What value-add can you send to them?
  • How can you build the relationship with them?
  • You write a new email.


10. You Look For New Sources of Traffic

  • Your sales process is refined. A new sale or lead comes through and it automatically goes into the sales funnel.
  • How can you drive more prospects into the sales funnel?
  • You research additional keyword phrases you can add to your PPC campaigns.
  • You research additional keyword phrases you could be optimising for.
  • You design new banner ads and place them on new sites.
  • You track everything for ROI.


11. You Manage Your Business’ Growth

  • You continually try to balance the cost of growing your company vs the profit you are currently making. As your sales increase you need more staff and better systems to handle the growth.
  • What are you doing to support this growth?
  • What new systems are you putting in place?
  • Are they scalable?
  • What happens if your business doubles overnight (again)?
  • Who do you need to hire?
  • What do you need to outsource?


12. You Read Online Marketing News

  • You have a folder setup in your Firefox bookmarks toolbar with all of the online industry publications you follow. You right click and ‘open in all tabs’. You read all of the blog entries and find out what new developments are happening with SEO and PPC, especially Google.
  • What new developments could affect your SEO rankings?
  • What new developments could affect your PPC results?
  • You review your strategy.


13. You Review Your Marketing And Education Strategy

  • Online marketing moves at an incredible pace. Staying ahead of your competitors requires strategic thinking and continual education. Your SEO rankings are supporting 5 to 10 full time staff.
  • What if you lose those rankings?
  • What backup strategies have you got in place?
  • What are you doing to stay ahead of the curve?
  • What do you need to learn to be successful tomorrow?
  • Where is the online market going?
  • How can you learn what you need to learn in the most efficient and effective manner possible?

So there you have it. The life in the day of a successful website owner.

It’s not easy, but it is fun.

Of course, if you use an online marketing agency to manage your strategy, you only have to check your emails and bank balance each day, the agency does the rest.

A successful website is one of the most exciting and profitable assets your business can own, because it generates profits and helps your business grow 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days per year.

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6
Jan/11

How to Choose The Best Web Hosting Service

by under Online Advertising, Web Hosting, Webmaster Resources

Choosing a host for your web-site is no small decision. Once committed to one, it will become very difficult to move your business elsewhere – not to mention the damage that can be done to your business if you make the wrong choice. This makes it very important to “get it right the first time”. Find out as much as you can about your prospective host before making any decisions.

When evaluating your host, you will obviously be considering price. But price is, of course, not the only important factor. You will also need to take into consideration:

1. the speed and reliability of the servers and hardware
2. the features the host offers and whether these mesh with your own requirements, and, of course
3. the quality of their support services.

Let’s look at each of these in turn:

1. Speed and Reliability of the Servers and Hardware
The speed and reliability of your host’s servers will depend on several factors, including the quality of their connection to the internet, bandwidth, and the availability of back-up systems in case things go wrong. Here’s a checklist of points to consider when checking out your prospective host’s servers and hardware:

* A T3 Connection (or better), close to a primary internet backbone.
A T3 connection is approx 30 times as fast as a T1 connection. Smaller hosting providers – for example, the proverbial “garage operations” — will often use T1 connections, with no backup at all. They may be very cheap – but, be careful here, you can get what you pay for!

* Effective Bandwidth Management
In addition to having a fast connection to the internet, your host should be able to manage how its available bandwidth is used . As a guide, it should typically not be using more than 50 percent of its bandwidth.

* Backup Systems
If there is a systems, network or power failure, the last thing you want is to lose your data or to have your web-site go down for a long period. Good hosts will have back up systems in place to guard against this.

Look for a host who can provide:

* Regular, daily back up of your data
* Backup power supplies

Look for an uninterruptible power supply system (often referred to as “UPS”) – a back up power generator available in case of emergencies.

* Redundancy
Do they have more than one connection to the internet, in case one of their connections goes down.

* An “Uptime” Guarantee
These typically state “We guarantee 99% (or 99.5%) uptime”.

Here’s a sample of the kind of information that the web host should be supplying

“Our Internet connectivity is supplied by three separate diverse backbone providers: UUNET, SAAVIS and Goodnet. If one of these lines goes down, traffic is automatically routed through the lines that are still online. Our data center is supplied by multiple redundant power sources – centralized automatic UPS system with a battery-powered backup system. The batteries are also connected to three diesel power generators in the event of a power outage to the building.”

2. Features
As well as checking out the reliability of the servers and hardware you will also need to evaluate and compare the features provided by your host.

A full range of hosting features in http://akkhorsoft.com/linux-server-hosting-plan.php, which compares hosting providers on both price and features. This is an excellent facility for comparing features when choosing a host – but to make the best use of it, you will need first to prepare a list of features you require.

Here’s a checklist of things to consider:

* Shared or Dedicated Server?
Depending on your requirements, you may be better off with a dedicated server than a shared server. Dedicated servers are typically used in cases where there is a high level of traffic, there is a strong need for security, or the user wishes to run their own customised software and applications rather than the standard ones supplied by the host.

* Compatibility with Existing Software and Skills
Is your host’s server, software and support services compatible will the skills and software that you (or your design team) are using? If, for instance, you are used to working in a Unix environment, then it probably makes little sense to choose an NT host.

* Flexibility and Room for Growth
You do not need a database solution now, perhaps, but you may need one in the future. Similarly, a shared hosting arrangement may be fine for you now, but what if your traffic levels explode, and you need one in a years’ time? It is much easier to remain with one host than to change. So, when choosing a host, keep in mind your possible future needs, and whether the host will be able to accommodate them.

3. Support and Service
Once you have checked out the reliability of the servers and hardware, and located a host that provides the features you want, the final task is to evaluate the quality of their support services.

Most hosts now promise 24/7 support as a standard feature — but, do they really live up to that promise? It will be a good idea to find out before committing to them! Here’s a checklist of things to consider before making that all-important decision

* Quality of existing customers
What is the quality and calibre of the sites currently served by this host? If they generally host high-calibre commercial clients, then, if you are running a commercial web-site, they may be a better bet for you than if they mainly host, for instance, or small businesses with 2 or 3 page static web-sites. (There may, of course, be cost trade-off here.)

* Opinions of existing customers
A host may boast of its popularity, the fact that it hosts lots of web-sites. However, the most “popular” are not necessarily the best — they may just be the ones with the largest advertising budget!

Indeed “popularity” can be a double-edged sword — support resources may more thinly spread, and bandwidth may be squeezed as a result of the numbers hosted.

So don’t go on numbers alone. Get in touch with some of the host’s existing (or past) customers, and ask them what they really think of the service and reliability of their host.

* Stability
The last thing you want is for your host to go out of business. So try to get some idea of how stable they are. Number of years in business is sometimes (not always, of course) a good indicator.

* Support and Responsiveness
Try asking the support staff a few technical questions of the type you anticipate you will be asking when you host with them. Then monitor how quickly and efficiently they respond.

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6
Jan/11

Common mistakes to get rejected by search engines

by under Google

Spam your pages with keywords
When it comes to search engine ranking, ’spamming’ is trying to fool the search engine into ranking your site higher. Key words are crucial to your search engine rankings but it’s equally crucial that you don’t go overboard with your keywords or you risk being penalised. Your keywords should relate directly to the content of your webpage. Don’t gratuitiously list keywords one after the other (except in your keyword meta-tag). Instead, they should be integrated into your body text as naturally as possible.

Repeat the same keywords repeatedly
While it used to be common practice to load your meta-tags (and visible copy) with the same crucial keywords repeatedly, websites are now being penalised or removed from search engines for this practice. Don’t repeat a word in your meta-tags more than half a dozen times.

Similarly, don’t use the same title in more than one page. I know I often do this by accident by forgetting to change the title for each new page. This means you don’t need to repeat the business or website name in every subpage’s title. Effectively, what you’re telling the search bots is the content on all your pages is the same. Less pages on your site will get indexed and hence less traffic.

Don’t duplicate any pages on your website – search engines view this as spam. Also don’t repeat tags in your HTML. For example, using the TITLE tag more than once.

Repeatedly submit your page
Theoretically, you shouldn’t even need to submit your site to search engines. If you have other websites linking to you (which should be a priority in your online marketing), eventually a search engine’s spider should follow that link to your website and index your pages. It can speed up the submission process if you manually submit your site (and who wants to wait?) But be patient – search engines have cycles where they crawl the web, indexing new sites. Don’t resubmit your URL if it isn’t appearing immediately – it can take up to 2 months for your site to get listed (submit-it.com have a table of the estimated listing time for the major search engines). If you submit your site more than once within 24 hours, you may be penalised.

Dynamic URLs
Many search engines won’t index dynamic URLs. These are webpages (usually database driven) with %, &, Session ID’s in the URL. For example, http://www.akkhorsoft.net/categories.php?category=Computing&parent_id=877 If you are using database driven pages where you need to pass parameters through the URL, use mod_rewrite or some other URL rewriting technique to convert all your URLs to a search engine friendlier version.

Use frames
There are many reasons not to use frames, attractiveness and functionality not being the least. However, just the fact that search engines have trouble indexing framed websites is enough reason for me to give them a wide berth. Google explains their own troubles with frames in their page explaining why your site isn’t listed.

Make your text invisible
An old-hat technique to trick search engines was to hide paragraphs worth of keywords by making the text the same colour as the background. Nowadays this can also be achieved with layers by hiding text behind pictures or other objects. Search engines have wised up to this trick and if they find invisible text, may penalize or black-list your site. Don’t risk it – even accidental invisible text can burn you.

Use a splash screen for your homepage
A splash screen (also called doorway page, bridge page, etc) is a ‘welcome’ page visitors are forced to view (usually animated) before taken to the ‘real’ website. Two good reasons not to use them: firstly, many users (including myself) are frustrated by these time wasters which serve little practical purpose. Secondly, many search engines visiting your homepage won’t go further, resulting in none of your webpages being listed. But if you really, really want one, at least include a ’skip introduction’ link (it’ll be the most clicked link on your website).

Use graphic intensive design
A latest trend in web design has been the use of text links in navigation rather than graphics. Two good reasons to opt for text links over graphic links is they load quicker and search engines are more likely to follow the links to other pages in your site (and index them). Using keywords in your text links doesn’t hurt either – both for the page with the link and to improve the ‘relevancy’ of the page being linked to. But if you do have to use graphics in your design, at least insert a couple of keywords in the ALT tag used to describe the images.

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4
Jan/11

Web Design Resolutions for 2011

by under Design & Development, Web Design

Akkhor Web Design Resolutions for 2011
A new year always brings up new hopes and wishes. These days everyone is occupied with things we want to accomplish in the next 12 months. We here at Akkhor are occupied too. Occupied with the future of web design and the changes and challenges the new year will bring.

We don’t want to try and predict what 2011 would look like on the web, but we sure have some hopes for it. These are our top five resolutions for web design.
Wishing you’ll  you a sensational and creative 2011!

1. Return of the Text:
While we certainly don’t want to resurrect 90′s style full text pages we’d definitely love to see some more text integrated into web design. The greatest benefit here is that more text means more typography, and more typography means a lot more experimentation and fun.

2. No More Distasteful Embedding:
The post-modern website is a dynamic one. It adds and drops embedded elements so fast, with each element leaving its mark on the design. We’re always sad to see beautiful websites turning bad for using an app that simply doesn’t blend in with their layout.

To avoid misfortunes, both embedded object and website should correspond with each other. Embedded widgets and apps should be designed compliment each other. True, new usabilities are important, but not at the cost of scarifying basic design principles.

3. Space it Out:
No, we don’t mean adding Star Wars clip art. We’re talking about leaving reasonable spaces between elements. Cramming too much information together is tasteless and extremely disorienting for site visitors. In 2011, give each element of your design enough room to make an impression.

4. Effects & Animation? Less Is more:
While some animations are cute and some effects really are useful, the popular use of animations and effects is mostly wrong. We keep running into websites that look like 4th of July gone wrong – too much motion and too much commotion. If you don’t want to scare your visitors away or leave the impression that you’re a Justin Bieber fan, please remove your animations or at least tone them down.

5. Abolish Automatic Audio Players:
Despite what some web designers believe, music is not always a fun addition to a site. Most internet users feel helpless when they open a page and, out of nowhere, strange music is coming out of their speakers. It is extremely uncomfortable in public spaces, not too mention that it slows down the loading of the website.

If you feel convinced that an auto-player will contribute to your website, please use a visible player that will be easy to turn off and on.

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4
Jan/11

Plan and Design a Web Site Structure

by under Design & Development, Web Design

An effective Web site structure enhances user experience and allows search engines to determine the subject matter and relevancy of your site. You should create a blueprint of your site before you begin your design and content creation. It is important to keep all related Web site content grouped together into categories.

For example, if your Web site is about gourmet food, you would have a cheese section, a sauce section, and a section on dry goods. Each of your categories should have unique directory and file name structures, so that when your Web site is indexed by search engines, your site demonstrates a wide breadth of content related to the subject.

By doing this, your Web site can be viewed by the search engines as an authority across various areas of gourmet food. You need to spend time working on your Web site structure. Failure to have a properly structured site can make it difficult if not impossible for search engines to properly index your Web site. Such a failure may lead search engines to omit your Web site from the search results and conclude that you are not an authority on the subject matter of your site.

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