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.

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.

In a journey to get the quick buck, many webmasters turn to automatic blogs. Basically an automatic blog is set up with either some software or a Word Press plug in to bring in feeds from other blogs. The automatic blog is made up of copies of someone else’s blog posts and articles.

There are a few problems with this. First, readers will catch up and you will lose your traffic. Readers like to read original content and when you copy other blogs, your readers will catch up and quit coming.

Another problem is that you may be infringing on copyrights of others. This could cause you to be sued, your hosting account to be suspended, or face other legal issues. Besides that, it is ethically wrong.

The final problem I will mention is the fact that many search engines like Google frown on this type of duplicated content. It could cause you not to be indexed in the SERPs or cause you to be placed so low that it does not matter of you are listed or not.

When creating a good blog, it is important to write for your readers and write original content. We all want to make some money but the short term quick buck of automatic blogs will dry up and you will be left started over from scratch.  It is better to do it right from the beginning and build your blog or website over time.

This does not mean that you can never copy a good article if you think it is useful. However, you should only do so with permission and only if you give credit to the original author.

Creating a blog or website can be fun and profitable, don’t take the cheaters way by stealing from others. Create the best you can with your talents and you will form a long term project that will attract lots of traffic and earn you money

What is your opinion on automatic blogs? Please share your opinion by leaving a comment.

One of the ways that many webmasters build their sites back links is through submission of articles to article directories. This is said to help build links when someone uses the article on their own site.

I am not a big fan of this way of building links. However, many are very successful at this. The basic concept is that you write an article and include links back to your site in the source box. When someone uses your article on their website or blog, they are required to keep the source box which includes your author information and links.

If you decide this is a method you wish to try, there are some rules. Most articles should be in the range of 500 words or more. Most directories have a set range that you must abide by. The article should be of very good quality. This means that you should be able to write good articles or hire a professional writer to do it for you. Cost for such an article would range from $.01-$.05 a word. Do not submit junk because no one will use the article and your reputation is on the line by being on the source box.

Write about a topic that is related to the topic of your website. When people place the article on their site with your links, you want links to sites that are going to interest that audience. For example, you would not write an article abut new video games if your site is about elder care. You want to target the people who are most likely to visit your site.

Here are my problems with marketing through submitting articles. First, I always want my best articles on my own site for the enjoyment of my readers. Second, many articles are used without including the links back to the original owner. There is no real enforcement of requiring the use of the author’s links. The user of the article could face copyright problems in the form of their host suspending their account but this does not always happen and your article could be floating all over with no credit to you.

My final problem with this form of marketing is that many of these articles are simply stolen by slight rewriting of the article. There are people who rewrite articles for a living and resell the article as their own or are hired in the first place to rewrite an article. I take too much pride in my work to have it stolen by others with no credit to me.

That is my opinion; many others are very successful at this form of link building. One could generate a bunch of traffic if the article is well written and a topic of mass interest. If you do not share my concerns or you hire someone to write the article, this could be a great way to market your website and build both back links and traffic for your site.

I will be working on compiling a list of article directories that are free to submit to and post the list here on SEO for the Common Man.

Please feel free to share your opinion about article marketing by leaving a comment.