SEO For The Common Webmaster

Many times when a webmaster decides to start a website, they often times struggle with choosing the right topic or niche to start a site about. Blinded by visions of huge profits, they jump into a niche of the latest greatest thing just to get bored later. What is it right now, proxies, social sites, melanoma cancer, or something all new?

My view is when choosing a niche, decide on something that you know about. Make sure it is interesting to you and make sure you can either gather information or know enough to keep adding fresh content to your site. A website or blog loaded with articles copied from elsewhere will bring a quick buck but it will be short lived and you will find yourself chasing the next big niche to earn from.

It is much better to build a website slowly and develop it over time so you have something to be proud of and an opportunity to earn money for the long term.  Readers want to visit sites that have fresh content written by the website owner or at least purchased from a competent author.

Build, write, and promote your website with vigor and no matter what niche you choose, you can have success and make a little money doing it.

Have something to add to this article, feel free to leave a comment.

One of the first steps in creating a website or blog is registering a domain name. When doing so, you need to make sure you are dealing with a Domain Names registrar that is reliable and easy to deal with. There are certain factors you want to look at.

First, you want to make sure that you are able to transfer your domain to another registrar if you are not happy with them. All registrars are required to allow you to transfer a domain but some make it very difficult. The other thing you want to check is how easy it is to transfer to a new owner if you wish to sell the domain name. I used a company by the name of Ipower and they required you to have forms signed by both the buyer and seller and have the form notarized before you could switch owners. This made it impossible for me to sell a name I no longer needed so I lost the name. There are many that allow you to just transfer to a new owner if the owner has an account with them. These are normally free accounts. Make sure your registrar does this before signing up with them. I know for sure GoDaddy and Namecheap both offer this service.

Next, you want to do your research to see what others are saying in regards to problems and support. A domain registrar should be able to provide great customer service and quick help. I have dealt with several companies and I can honestly say, the one I am with now has been the best so far. I have been with NameCheap for over two years and I have not had any problems and the service is excellent. The manage domains interface is easy to use and when I did sell a domain name, it took seconds to transfer it to a new owner.

The final thing to look at is price. This to me means very little if the rest of the factors do not add up. Be wary of great first year offers. Make sure you know what the cost will be for renewal. Several companies offer free WhoIs Privacy for the first year free then they charge from $2.88 to $9.95 a year after that for the WhoIs protection. Make sure you know this upfront. I was with GoDaddy and their’s went from free to $8.88 and it was a pain to try and figure out how to get it off my account without paying for it with the renewal. With NameCheap, it was free the first year and $2.88 for the renewal. However, you could just choice it or not choice it and it was not automatically applied to your bill.

One last piece of advice. Never ever register your domain the same place you have your hosting account. If you do this and your site is ever shut down for any reason, you lose both the access to your site and to your domain name. At least if you have the domain at a separate place, you can use file back ups and a new host to get your site up and running.

This article will get you started, make sure you do your research before buying any service.

Have any advice or question to add to this advice? Please leave a comment and I will do my best to answer or add your advice for others to read.

How much is my site worth? That is the question I hear quite often by webmasters. It is not an easy question to answer because there are many factors involved in an evaluation of a website. Many think the current earnings from the site is the only factor, this is not the case, there is much more to consider.

The big one is the domain name. The shorter the better in most cases. Does the name apply to the content of the blog? Is the name marketable? These are some of the questions in regards to the domain name. Other factors are how old is the domain name, when does it expire, and where is it registered.

Once you get passed the domain name, potential buyers want to know how much traffic there is and where that traffic is coming from. If it is all from social bookmarking sites, the traffic is of almost no value. Buyers are looking for good traffic from search engines or from places that have targeted traffic towards what your site is about. For example, if I was selling women’s cloths, I would want my traffic coming from sites for women and not a men’s health forum.

Another key question comes in the terms of backlinks. How many backlinks does the site have and where are they placed? As with the traffic question, links from non related sites are worth much less than targeted links from related topics. Many buyers will also look at the Google PR numbers when deciding to buy. A site with some PR will be worth more than a site with PR0 when all factors are close.

The final and certainly one of if not the most important parts of a website, content. I wrote about quality content before and I can not stress it enough, unique well written original content is what makes or breaks a site. If your site has lots of original content that is well written, it will dramatically increase the value of your site.

Other features that affect the price are template or design, the scripts used and how well the site is laid out. These all work together to give you a general idea of what a site is worth. DO NOT rely on the crappy website evaluation tools on the Internet. I have yet to find one that even comes close. They vary so much that nobody could take them serious.

Look at the factors I detailed in this article but when you are ready to sell your site, the laws of economics takes place. A website is only worth what a buyer is willing to pay. However, you have to go where the buyers are to find the best price.

Hope this helps answer the common asked question. If you have something to add, please leave a comment and share with all of our readers.

When advertising your website or blog, one of the most important things is to choice the right keywords to place in the anchors. Choosing the right keywords will affect where you rank in the major Search Engines. These should be related directly to the content of your website. For example, I often use SEO for the Common Webmaster or Search Engine Optimization when advertising this blog.

Sometimes you have a website or family blog and you have no idea what to use as a keyword. At this point, it is smart to seek some help. You can spend money and buy the latest greatest software or you can use many of the free online keyword tools to find out the best words to target. You can easily find such tools by searching Google or other top search engines with the term “keyword tracker” or “finding keywords.”

One of the best tools I use that is quite handy because it shows you the competition for certain words is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. This tool is designed for use when you are planning to advertise through Adwords but you can use it to find the keywords relevant to your website or blog. There is two ways to search, one is by placing a keyword or key term in the box and see what relevant terms are related and what the search volume and competition is. The other way, the one I prefer, is to put in your URL of the website and let the tool extract keywords for you. Once the keywords are extracted, the tool list all of them with search volume and competition.

There are several other tools that are handy and useful and can be easily found by searching. Keep in mind that when entering a niche market that has high competition, it will be much harder to rank in the search engines for those keywords or terms. It is best to find words related to your topic that have a good search volume and low competition and focus on those terms.

If you have some additional advice about choosing keywords, please leave a comment for the benefit of all the readers of this blog.

Customized website design Chicago offers something worthy. Its importance shall never be underrated. Web design is as a process of perception, preparation, and final execution of the website. Jacksonville web design studio knows, that it is important for this process to be carried out effectively. Despite wordpress themes, available online for home-made websites, the creation of a custom professional web design requires skill that can take several years to master.

A newbie without essential knowledge, combined with rich experience is not able to execute the task properly. Only a skilled web designer, who has acquired abundant proficiency in this field is the right person who can give your website the required artistic appeal in its look and add a professional feel.

When your website has a professional look, you need to think about its aims. It’s important to remember the undoubted fact that your website primarily targets your visitors. These people are your prospective customers, who come seeking some kind of information. And it’s the job of your website to manipulate the user’s preliminary insight of the website’s implication and convince these people to survey deeper into your company’s website.