How To Create A Website – Tutorial For Beginners

admin    Adobe After Effects     Beginners, Create, Tutorial, Website

How To Create A Website – Tutorial For Beginners

A free tutorial site that teaches beginners how to create a website and make money. Want to learn the ABC’s of creating a website? You can use our Free Website Creation Tutorial as a set of guidelines! This is a free web building guide for everyone who wants to learn how to build a website.
Free Website Creation Tutorial is a step-by-step web site builder.
No need to pay for books to learn how to create a website and make money online.
The only guide you will ever need is right here and it’s free! Having a website is great for promoting, for selling a product and giving information.
There’s a lot of information on this site. I created this quick guide just to give you an idea of what’s involved with creating a website.

Would you like to have your own blog?
People feel the need to share their thoughts and opinion with other people. Nowadays the most effective way to do that is to create your own blog. But how to start your own blog? Fortunately, starting a blog site is a really easy task. You do not need to know anything about web design or development to start blogging.
All you need to know is on this website.

Would you like to have your own Domain Name
Websites are everywhere today. There are websites for business, information, blogs and personal reasons. Connect to the Internet and you be able to search for many websites. Each one of the websites has a Domain Name. The Domain Name is the address of that Website.

There are two basic steps to getting your site online and registering/reserving a domain name is the first.A domain name makes up the address of your site and can end in.com,.net,.org,.info,.us,.biz,.tv and more. Throughout this site you will also see the domain name referred to as the “dot com name”.

Choosing a Web Host
Website beginners need an ideal web hosting service to host their site on the Internet. An ideal web hosting service is the one providing beginners with website building means and tools

When you decide to start a website, you need to get some space and service from a web hosting provider. There are cheap hosts and expensive ones that could be found on the internet. The price doesn’t make a hosting service inefficient or qualified.

All this and more you can find on this website.

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A Forex Tutorial for the Beginners

admin    Adobe After Effects     Beginners, Forex, Tutorial

A Forex Tutorial for the Beginners

With the current general decline in economies across the globe, many people are wondering where they can invest time and money to make bigger profits. Enter the Forex market. What is Forex, you ask? This Forex Tutorial will give you an overview to explain the largest market currently available in the world.

Forex is a common name that refers to the Foreign Exchange Market. Other people and institutions may also refer to it as the “FX”, “Retail FX”, or “Spot FX.” For the purposes of our discussion in the Forex Tutorial we will use the term Forex. The latest figures show the Forex has a daily trading volume of Trillion. By comparison, the New York Stock exchange has a daily trading volume of billion.

In the New York exchange, and other similar exchanges around the world, stocks and bonds are the main items bought and sold. However, in the Forex, money is the item being bought and sold.

A typical transaction involves buying one currency and selling a different currency at the same time. The profit is made from the differences in the values. The original intent for the Forex was aimed at a “big boys club” mentality, where only the world’s largest banks could participate. International banks would commonly trade millions of dollars in currency in a single day.

However, the Forex is very different from the various stock exchanges because there is no one central location for the transactions. With the rise of the internet, retail brokers began offering their services to individual investors, allowing them to make some tidy profits without the need for millions of dollars.

The way that money is profited from the Forex is fairly easy to understand, at least in concept. Most currency pairs move up and down in value throughout the day, but normally no more than a cent or two. Even with the international banks making their transactions in the millions of dollars range, the currencies rarely fluctuate more than 1% in value, which makes them a very stable and attractive investment.

The profit is made by the volume of the transactions. If you buy a million Euros and sell a million Dollars in the same transaction, and profit 2 cents per currency, you effectively made ,000 with one transaction. When you combine the stability with the availability mentioned earlier in the Forex Tutorial, you can see why so many people are excited about investing in Forex.

For many years people have been touting the benefits of investing in the stock markets. Numerous books, seminars, and videos have been produced to explain the benefit of one method over another and to showcase which of the so called experts have made their millions.

However, it is also widely known that many people, as well as large investment firms, lose money each and every day trying to find a balance in their portfolio. We hope that with the information presented in our Forex Tutorial you can see that there is a clear, and profitable, alternative to the stock market.

Photoshop Video Tutorial Success For Beginners

admin    Adobe After Effects     Beginners, Photoshop, Success, Tutorial, Video

Photoshop Video Tutorial Success For Beginners

Many people have heard the word \”Photoshop\” but are not entirely sure if it is a type of camera or a place where you get your photos matted and framed. Actually, it is neither or these.

Photoshop is a photo editing software program used mainly by professional graphic artists and photographers. However, you don\’t need to be a professional anything to use and enjoy this program. If you enjoy photography then Photoshop can help turn your ordinary photos into incredible works of art through easy to use tools.

Nearly everyone will agree that Photoshop is the most powerful photo editing program on the market today. Photoshop comes with features and tools that allow you to edit photos to such a degree that even the most discerning eye will be unable to tell which photo has been edited, and which one has not. This is the incredible power of Photoshop.

A whole host of professions use photoshop, including web designers, poster designers, advertising agencies, and desktop publishing firms. If you are a photo enthusiast, regardless of whether you are an amateur or a professional, I would bet that Photoshop would be perfect for you as well.

Photoshop CS4, released in September 2008, is the latest version of the software. It includes a huge amount of advanced tools that allow you to create and edit digital images.

If you are unfamiliar with the program, here are a few of the incredible things this program can do.

To be honest, if it your goal to edit or manipulate a digital photo or image, Photoshop will do it all. For instance, you can paint directly on 3D graphics, wrap 2D images to 3D objects, give depth to text and layers, provide better print quality output with the latest ray-tracing providing engine, supports 3D formats, fluid rotation of the canvas, convert gradient maps to 3D objects, and CS4 is also 64 bit compatibility.

I have only listed a few of the things that Photoshop is capable. of. If you have been looking to create your own digital photo lab to take your images from humdrum to amazing, then you will absolutely love Photoshop. It doesn\’t matter if you are an amateur or professional, Photoshop will make your job easier and more enjoyable.

The nice thing is that Photoshop interacts with other Adobe products such as InDesign, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, After Effects, and even the Adobe ImageReady software. All of these easily integrate your Photoshop images and makes creating intricate projects easy.

Without a doubt Adobe Photoshop is one of the most powerful imagery and graphics software programs on the market today. Photoshop will make your job easier, regardless if you are a photographer, a poster maker, advertiser, or as a web designer.

Photoshop is filled with amazing features that enable you to manipulate and edit your images easily. If you want to take your ordinary photos and turn them into something extraordinary then Photoshop is the program for you. With the click of the mouse you can easily edit and enhance your images. However Photoshop can do a lot more than that, but you can only find out the exact magnitude of Photoshops tool box by viewing Photoshop video tutorials.

Photoshop video tutorials are made in such a way, that you just have to play a video and then hit the pause button after each simple instruction. They are available on the Internet either low quality style on Youtube or Professionally made Photoshop tutorials like those produced by David Peters, who is considered to be the expert coach in this field. Photoshop video tutorials make it that simple to mastermind Photoshop software in no time at all.

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How to (and How Not To) Start your Own Website – Website Promoting for Absolute Beginners

admin    SEO Flash     Absolute, Beginners, Promoting, Start, Website

How to (and How Not To) Start your Own Website – Website Promoting for Absolute Beginners

Before you read this article: I’m not an expert – this is just a short (and hopefully amusing) account of my own experiences with starting up a website! I WILL however give you some very useful links to the real experts at the end of this article BUT DON’T SKIP TO THE END JUST YET! I still have a lot of funny, insightful and useful information to give you : D

About 8 months ago I got a great idea! I’M GONNA MAKE A WEBSITE WITH FLASH GREETING CARDS THAT PEOPLE CAN SEND TO ALL THEIR FRIENDS!!! No, I did not think that I was the first person to get this idea. I’m not THAT naïve. However I was naïve in a lot of other ways about what it takes to build a website but I will get to that later.

Anywho, I thought this was a great idea for ME; I love making little animations in Flash, I love thinking up little stories, I love working for myself (as opposed to working for a boss – but you can read about that on my website!), and I thought it would be really cool to have a website that people from all over the world would visit and use. WOW! Sort of my 15 minutes of fame, I guess. AND if somewhere down the line I could make just a liiiiiiiittle money on it; GREAT! And I’m not talking millionaire money, just enough to cover my expenses. Okay okay, and maybe a liiiiiiittle bit more than that : ) Being able to afford red wine in bottles instead of cartons would be nice.

I started working on ideas (had lots of those) for ecards and then I started making the very first card (that I intended to send to my parents on their 50th wedding anniversary as a “test” to see if other people would think my cards were as funny as I did). Then a funny thing happened (no, not on the way to the Forum); my mother (who has absolutely no knowledge of the Internet or ecard websites or anything of an electronic nature and who knew NOTHING of my idea of starting my own ecard website) had cut out an article from their newspaper for me. It was the (success) story of a British artist, Jacquie Lawson, who at the tender age of 57 created an interactive flash Christmas ecard and emailed it to her friends and yada yada yada now has a VERY profitable subscription-based ecard website. And we’re talking MILLIONS OF DOLLARS here, folks!

I thought: “MY GOD! THIS IS A SIGN! This must be what I’m put on this planet to do! It’s my CALLING!” You see, my mom has NEVER EVER given me any newspaper clippings about ANYTHING before, so why now, why about this? MUST be a sign. I’m not a religious or superstitious person, but this was just a little too much to be coincidental, I decided! So I kept working my lower-part-of-my-body (no, not my legs!) off. I finished the first card JUST in time for my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary and emailed it to them on the morning of their big day. It was a big success : ) It was a card with two bored, cats picking their noses (I know! It doesn’t really sound like the kind of card you would send to your parents on their 50th wedding anniversary, but – what can I say? It worked great!) – check it out here: http://www.carlsencards.com/ecard-01-happy-birthday-bored-cats.htm. I have later changed the message to Happy Birthday.

So wanting to be serious about the whole thing, I needed a domain and I decided on the name carlsencards(.com) and purchased the domain. All the great keyword stuffed URLs were of course taken (always good to have your most important keywords in your URL!). So I thought I might as well promote my name a little. If that was a wise decision I still don’t know – jury’s still out on that one. Then again, who would have ever thought that “yahoo” or “google” were great names for websites?! I rest my case. But here is the first lesson to be learned; CHOOSE A LESS COMPETITIVE MARKET IF YOU CAN! Not something like… say; ECARDS! Search for “ecards” and you’ll get 34,500,000 results in google! Good luck getting to the top of THAT list! I don’t want to state the obvious, but… I do anyway; it’s also a good idea to choose a product, a service or a theme you are interested in yourself and LIKE working with.

For the next 6 months I worked on my site. Every weekend, holiday and vacation I got up around 6am so that I could get to work on my BIG IMPORTANT PROJECT! I had decided that 20 cards would be enough to launch the site. This ecards site is all about QUALITY not quantity, you see. I put a lot of work into each card; first the story, then drawing and animating, then composing and recording the music and sound effects, and finally putting the card on my site. A card takes 2-4 days to make, so it took me about 6 months to complete the 20 cards I thought would be enough for starters.

I intended to keep making cards after the big, GRAND opening, so the site would continue to grow and my users (“my users” – Oh, I like saying that: MY USERS! I have USERS!) would have new cards to send every time they visited my site. And – for your information – I still make cards. Every free minute I have is spent working on my ecard website. But I like it.

And here’s another lesson to be learned (but I already knew that); people expect websites to change, be updated and grow ALL THE TIME. It’s like children! You can’t just have a baby and then expect it to grow up all by itself. Or so I’ve heard. I don’t have children myself. Not the human kind, anyway! Only the furry, four legged kind with whiskers. But they need caring and looking after, too!

Then the big day arrived; I WAS READY TO LAUNCH MY SITE. And here’s where I was REALLY naïve. I thought that all I had to do was send ecards to all my friends, and they would love the cards and find them utterly cute and funny and they would send cards to all THEIR friends who again would love my cards and send cards to… I think you get the picture.

Lesson to be learned: That happens like once in a blue moon. Or once in 10 blue moons. Okay it happened for Jacquie Lawson. It happens SOMETIMES in real life. But it certainly didn’t happen in my real life. Only in my dreams!

Hmmmm, what to do, what to do… I definitely wasn’t ready to give up just yet (another useful lesson: DON’T GIVE UP!). So I searched the Internet and found a site that listed free stuff of all kinds. Hey, I have free stuff on my site, maybe I can get them to link to my site. Wow, they were way ahead of me on that one; they actually had a button that said “Submit site”. Great! I submitted my site, but – oh – what’s that? “Reciprocal link” – what is that? Oh, so I have to link to you, and you’ll link to me. Hmmmm, sort of I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours. Oh, but that’ll ruin my great design. There must be other ways.

Lesson number… I have lost count! Anyway, lesson to be learned; reciprocal linking is hard to avoid. I have later learned that one-way links are better, but to get things started and to get people to visit your wonderful site, it’s a good idea to find sites that will link to you and generate some traffic. And so what if you have to put a couple of little buttons and text links on your site. So I exchanged links with a free stuff site, and – WOW – people OTHER than my 20 or so friends visited my site!

We’re not talking several thousands a day. Actually not even hundreds. But around 60-80 a day, which is way better than 3-4. Now we’re cooking. Yes, but the cooking started to slow down after a week or so. Okay, now what? I guess I just have to find a couple more sites to exchange links with.

So again I searched the Internet. Lo and behold, there are lots of sites that list free stuff out there! And to make a long, boring story a little shorter; I exchanged links with about a dozen free stuff sites and I did get a little traffic. But there must be other ways….

DIRECTORIES! There are (probably) hundreds of thousands of directories where you can get listed and most do not require a reciprocal link. Or a yearly fee to list your site. Again I spent hours researching and googling (I know google don’t like us to use that word – to “google”, but it’s such a GOOD word) the words “free directory submit site”. And if there was one thing I learned, it was that I STILL HAD A LOT TO LEARN ABOUT PROMOTING A WEBSITE!

SEO! What the hell is see-oh? Oh, it’s S-E-O! Search Engine Optimization – still have no idea what that is. So I researched – isn’t the Internet a wonderful invention? Oh my; keywords, href title tags, alt tags, text content, file names, keyword density… I thought I had done everything I needed to do in that department by just placing some nice keywords in the meta tags (you know; title, description and keywords)! But, noooooooooo, search engines don’t care about that anymore. Now you have to put your keywords into all those other tags AND the content. And you have to choose your keywords VERY carefully (google has some nice tools that can help you research and find the right keywords – link at the end of the article). Aha! Wish I had known that BEFORE I started building my website. Another very useful lesson! I won’t explain exactly how to do all this, but I’ll give you some links to great sites, that explain this much better that I ever could. I just want you to know that this is something you have to do.

Okay, so that’s it! NOW I’m all set to attract millions of visitors. Well, what’s your pagerank, Martine? My what? My “pagerank”? Where can I get that? Can I buy it on ebay? Oh no, pagerank is something you EARN so to speak. But how? Get lots and lots of QUALITY inbound links – preferably one-way links (meaning that THEY show you theirs, but YOU don’t have to show them yours! Well, actually THEY show everybody YOURS, but you don’t have to… You know what I mean). Google likes that! And you do what google likes. Because most people find sites by searching google. And they seldom get past page 1 or 2 in the google results. So how DO you get to the top of google’s search results?

Good question. Very good question. Very few people know a lot about that and a lot of people (like me) know very little about it. But people like me (who know just a little) have a good excuse, because IT’S A SECRET! Only the people who work for google – actually only SOME of those people REALLY know what google likes the most and thereby goes to the top of the list. And you know what? Doesn’t pay to try to find out, because they CHANGE IT all the time!

Google uses something called algorithms to determine which sites to put on the top of the list (if you’re interested you can find tons of information on that on the Internet). And they keep changing these algorithms. Yes, I think that’s really sneaky, too. But it does serve a purpose. Otherwise clever – even more sneaky – webmasters would find out and take advantage of this knowledge and get THEIR websites to the top of the lists even though their sites are not the most relevant. See the point? So I guess that’s okay. But it certainly doesn’t make my life easier. I have to guess and try out different keywords and keyword placements and keyword density until I just give up and say “That’ll do little piggy. That’ll do!” That was a quote from “Babe”, and if you’re not familiar with that movie; RENT IT, BUY IT, SEE IT!

Another thing google likes, is a nice, simple sitemap. It makes google’s job a lot easier. But that’s no biggie, this site will do it for you: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com – and let’s all give a big hand to xml-sitemaps.com for helping us out with that one.

So, to sum it all up:

- optimize you site (this is the SEO part) – doing this from the very beginning is a lot easier than after you have created 167 pages! I know from experience. And this includes making a sitemap.

- get lots of inbound (one-way) QUALITY links (that’ll give you pagerank and a higher position on google’s search results). Directories are good. But don’t get them all at once; getting too many links too fast will seem like spam to google, and you don’t want that to happen!

- get some links to your site that can generate some traffic (it’s okay to reciprocate some links – I think!). And it’ll be good for you self esteem to see that your site gets visitors that are NOT closely related to you : )

- and do what I’m doing right now; write funny/informative/useful articles and submit them to sites all over the Internet. And remember to include your name and URL : ) That’s sort of the whole purpose of doing this. Not that I didn’t write this article to amuse you. I did. Of course I did!

And finally – and this just might be the best and most important advice of all; STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM THE “Guaranteed 100,000 Visitors ! Very Cheap Traffic” SITES! 100.000 unique visitors – YEAH, RIGHT! Don’t do it! It’s a scam, it’s a waste of money and google doesn’t like it! You may even get your site banned from google by doing that. I know it’s tempting, but so is robbing a bank and getting million in 4 minutes. But it doesn’t pay in the long run.

So, I guess that’s it. I hope you had fun reading about my experiences promoting my website. And I hope you learned a little as well. Good luck with your website!

And here’ s the list of REALLY useful sites with REALLY useful information that I used (and still use) promoting MY website:

Great tools:

http://www.iwebtool.com

http://www.selfseo.com

http://www.seobook.com

http://www.webuildpages.com

http://www.seocompany.ca

http://www.xml-sitemaps.com

http://developers.evrsoft.com

Keyword tools:

http://www.google.com (search for “google trends”)

http://www.google.com (search for “KeywordToolExternal”)

Lists of directories:

http://www.submithelper.com

http://info.vilesilencer.com

http://searchenginewatch.com

http://strongestlinks.com

… so has my website become a great success with thousands of visitors every day? Well, my site is still very new, so it’s too early to say. But I hope and I believe and most of all I still work hard on promoting my site and adding new cards every week! So who knows? Beware, Jacquie Lawson, there’s a new kid in town!

How Twitter Tutorials For Beginners Accelerate Learning

admin    Adobe After Effects     Accelerate, Beginners, Learning, Tutorials, Twitter

How Twitter Tutorials For Beginners Accelerate Learning

It is difficult to disagree that Twitter tutorials provide an excellent medium through which one can learn about Twitter. 2009 has been the year Twitter entered the mainstream and became the most talked about website in the world.

Companies, celebrities, schools, universities and people from all walks of life have taken up this social networking tool in huge numbers. Therefore, it would be wise to decide to learn something about it.

As a consequence of this increased interest in Twitter, many websites have appeared with the sole purpose of educating newbies on how to effectively use Twitter for either personal or commercial purposes. They have achieved this in various ways. Some has chosen to write ebooks on the topic of Twitter for a wide variety of uses such as business and education. Most ebooks are available for free but others require you paying a small fee to access them.

Others have chosen to use Twitter Tutorials to teach beginners about it. This has been done through simply audio or a combination of both video and audio. If you want to expand your knowledge in the shortest possible time, then video tutorials are by far the best choice.

There are numerous benefits that accompany video tutorials about Twitter:

? Visual demonstration of core concepts is possible. Seeing how things are done is a much faster way than just reading about it.
? Information can be absorbed much more quickly through video. The great thing about video is that information which would normally take 30 minutes to absorb on paper can be absorbed in as little as 10 minutes.
? Any written material that comes with the video tutorial can be readily understood and applied. Videos can certainly explain and clarify any concepts in the written material.

Whether you’re a beginner of just looking to expand your skills or knowledge, finding Twitter Tutorials is certainly the way to go. There are 2 ways you can find video tutorials. Firstly, you can simply do a Google search for ?twitter tutorials? and visit the most relevant sites. On the other hand, you can visit some of main video sharing sites on the Web, in particular, YouTube, Vimeo or Viddler and find Twitter Tutorials for beginners there.

SEO Tips for Beginners – Where to Start

admin    SEO Video     Beginners, Start, Tips

SEO Tips for Beginners – Where to Start

You’ve landed on this article and I assume you’re interested in internet marketing, namely search engine optimization (SEO). Congratulations! Hopefully this topic will change your life as it has for me. SEO and internet marketing in general have been my passion for over 10 years and, as the world becomes more e-centric, the internet is becoming more important by the day. For this reason, now is the time to become familiar with SEO, even if it’s on a very basic level. 

Learning the basics of SEO is truly imperative. SEO applies to all forms of internet marketing whether it be blogs, viral videos or website design. Understanding the basics of SEO will ensure a solid foundation is established and knowledge/research can be built from that point forward. Like anything else one learns, it takes time. Lots and lots of time. 

 

The 3 most important tips for SEO beginners are:

1) Optimize Website Meta Information 

Be sure to optimize meta information on every page of your website to ensure it’s relevant and targeted. Every page (e.g. product page, blog post, etc.) has a meta title, meta descriptions and meta keywords. The meta information is what the search engines “crawl” and display in their results, also known as search engine result pages (SERPS). 

2) Provide Relevant Content 

Believe it or not, SEO itself is almost useless without relevant, interesting, targeted, unique content. If you’re not a good writer, now is the time to break out your old, dusty English books and do a little refresh. Or, what many companies do is simply hire an individual or company to create keyword-rich, targeted content. Keep in mind content for each page should match the meta title, meta description and meta keywords. 

3) Research 

Researching keyword placement, the amount of searches keywords receive per month, competitor websites, and other factors is very important. Failing to research key information will leave you in the dark — not a good place to be. 

 

I hope the above information has been helpful. Be sure to check back often for new articles on internet marketing, search engine optimization, web design, photography and a host of other fun topics. 

 

Sincerely,

Aaron Schoenberger

The Brainchild Group 

Search Engine Optimisation for Beginners – a Layman’s Guide

admin    SEO Flash     Beginners, Engine, Optimisation, Search

Search Engine Optimisation for Beginners – a Layman’s Guide

If you own a website, you’re probably aware of Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO).  A little time spent applying some simple SEO techniques to your website will be worth the effort in terms of increased visitor numbers. 

 

But where to start?

 

The best time to think about SEO is in the planning stages of your website so it can be written and designed with SEO in mind.  This will save you time and money, especially if you have engaged the services of a web designer or copywriter and you have to go back to them to make costly changes.

 

Your website must appeal to its intended market.  Remember that no matter what the purpose of your website is – be it to sell products or services, share information, ideas or specialist knowledge – design and write your website for your visitors.  No matter how highly the search engines rank you, it’s not Google who’s going to place an order for your products or services – if users aren’t immediately engaged by your website they’ll wander off in search of your competitors’.  So make your website attractive, relevant and interesting and make it easy for visitors to navigate and to find the information they’re looking for.

 

If, like the majority of people, you only discovered that SEO existed after your website went live, don’t worry. There are plenty of things you can do to crank up your site’s popularity.

 

Research your Keywords: It’s worth doing some keyword research to find out what search terms users are typing into the search engines.  This is a big subject area to cover in a short article, but there are some very good resources available to help you.  Google has a very good (and free) keyword research tool that will help to get you started, but if you don’t mind paying for an all-singing, all-dancing, report generating keyword research tool, look no further than Wordtracker’s website.

 

Choosing which keywords to use is a bit of a balancing act.  If you find a popular keyword or phrase that thousands of users are searching with every month, you’d immediately think, “Great – I’ll use that to optimise my site”. 

 

But hold on for a moment.  There’ll be a huge amount of competition from other websites using that same word or phrase.  Take, for example, the phrase “Website copy writing”.  Type this into Google and look at the number of results returned at the top of the page.  At the time of writing it shows a figure close to 13 million.  Are you ready to compete with that?  How many pages do you think you’d need to scroll through to find your own website? It’s not impossible to rank well of course – somebody has to get that number one spot.  But let’s be realistic.  Let’s shorten the odds a little in your favour.

 

Try this next: type the phrase “Website copywriting” (all one word this time).  Google returns just under a half million results.  Now we’re getting somewhere.  

 

To reduce the competition even further, try narrowing your key phrase to a geographical location.  Type the phrase “Website copywriting in Somerset”.  The field has narrowed to a mere 13,200 results (at the time of writing).  Of course, not quite as many people will be looking for a website copywriter specifically in Somerset, but those that are will stand a much better chance of finding your website than your competitor in Dorset! In summary, then:

 

·        Find a balance between a keyword’s popularity and the competition for using it

 

·         Look at common misspellings and alternative spellings for your keywords

 

·         Think about targeting your potential visitors using geographical parameters.

 

Keyword research is a fascinating and rather addictive hobby once you get started.  There are lots of good books on the subject and many online resources, too. 

 

Meta Tags: Meta tags are an element of your website that a visitor won’t see, part of the coding behind the scenes. The title tag tells the browser what text to display in the browser’s title bar. The description meta tag is particularly important, as it helps the search engines decide what your website is all about and appears under the title in search engine results.  The description should persuade visitors to click through to your website, so it should be well-written and relevant, but should also contain some keywords.

 

Website Content: This is the text and images that visitors see when they visit your website.  Search engines love content.  It helps them decide what your website is about.  But be careful – make sure that your content is unique (i.e. don’t just copy someone else’s – the search engines have ways of finding out!), and don’t repeat the same information on each page. Each page of your website should have a unique purpose and identity (and by the way, the meta tags should reflect this on each page, too).

 

It goes without saying that your content should be well-written, grammatically correct and free from errors.  If this is not your strongest point, engage the services of a copywriter experienced at combining website copywriting and Search Engine Optimisation. The text is the backbone and purpose of your website and it will be money well spent.

 

Make sure that you update the content on your website regularly.  There are two main reasons for this.  Firstly, fresh, interesting and relevant information gives your visitor a reason to come back to your website.  Why would they bother if nothing ever changed? Secondly, the search engines like new content on a website – it tells them that the website is current and therefore more likely to be useful and relevant to search engine users.  This is why blogs are often very successful at ranking well in search results, as they are updated regularly.

 

Optimise each page of your website for two or three keywords or phrases at most.  If you try for any more, the search engine may not fully understand what that page is about.  Sprinkle your keywords throughout the page (in headings is a good way of showing the search engines that the keyword is an important one), but don’t over-do it.  If keywords account for more than about 15% of your content, it may harm rather than help your ranking.

 

Build Links: It used to be the case that if you provided a link to someone else’s website, and they returned the favour, everyone was happy and the search engines smiled on you.  Not anymore.  The search engines are way more sophisticated these days and can detect artificial attempts to boost a website’s ranking. Reciprocal links are still fine if the site you’re linking to contains content that is relevant to yours, but it may actually harm your own website’s ranking if it doesn’t.  

 

One way links pointing to your website are far more valuable to you.  The best way to encourage other websites to link to yours is to make sure your content is well-written, informative, relevant, helpful and unique.  This will make your website a good resource for others to link to and perhaps even establish you as an authority on the subject.  Relevant links to your website not only boost your ranking with search engines, the increased amount of traffic improves your chance to generate more business.

 

There are many ways of building links to your website:

 

·        Submit your website to the many free directories (but make sure that they’re relevant). Some directories give one-way links, others ask for a reciprocal link

 

·        Exchange links with similar websites to become part of a large, pooled resource of information

 

·         A blog can be linked to your website and updated regularly

 

·         Professional forums can be useful as they often enable you to include a link in your forum post when you contribute (but not always – check their rules)

 

·         Write articles that include a link to your website and submit them to article directories

 

·         Make use of online social networking and media websites

 

·        Ask your visitors and satisfied customers to provide a testimonial and link to your website

 

Link-building takes some time and effort but keep plugging away and you’ll be surprised how soon your links grow.

 

Pay for Results: Everything we’ve talked about so far will reap results with no cost to you whatsoever (unless you’ve already taken fright and engaged the services of the first SEO company to promise you page one ranking). But it does take time and effort. 

 

If you want quicker results, have you considered paying for your website to appear higher in the search results? You might have heard of sponsored advertising campaigns, or “pay-per-click”. The most well-known is Google. 

 

Put in very simple terms, you set a budget, write a short, well-written advert that gets your message across and select the keywords that you want your advert to be found for.  The idea is that when a user types in one of your selected keywords, your advert will be scooped up and displayed among the sponsored ads.  If the user clicks through to your website, you will pay a fee to the search engine.  This is where you have probably heard of the phrase “pay per click”.

 

There are all sorts of variables involved.  For example, if you choose very competitive keywords, you may have to pay more per click to get your advert shown more often or nearer the top of the sponsored ads than someone else.  If your budget is not set very high, your advert won’t appear every time your keywords are used.  You can bid on each keyword or phrase, setting a maximum that you are willing to pay per click.

 

It all sounds very complicated but take a little while to look at Google’s Starter Edition which helps you to create and manage your adverts.  Once you’ve got the hang of it you can graduate to their Standard Edition, which puts you more in control and offers many features for you to play with.  Be warned though – this is addictive!  Once you start seeing which of your ads are working and which are not you can’t help but tinker with them constantly!

 

The main benefit of PPC adverts are that you will get instant results.  An appealing advert will start generating extra traffic to your website almost instantly, unlike SEO.  You can pause your ad campaign at any time, change it, promote time-limited special offers etc. and analyse the data generated by your campaign to see what is working and why.

 

What Search Engines Hate: You should have lots of ideas to help your SEO along by now, but here are a few things to avoid, things that don’t help the search engines at all:

 

·         Websites that use frames:  Search engines have trouble navigating them and may not be able to index a frame-based website.

 

·         Cut and pasted text from MS Word: Don’t cut text directly from Microsoft Word and paste it into a web page.  It will contain all sorts of formatting clutter and search engines hate having to navigate clutter.

 

·         Flash animated landing pages:  Some websites use Flash animated landing pages that require the user to click through to the home page of the website.  Not only can search engines not index Flash intros, many users are irritated by being yet another click away from the page that might contain the information they’re looking for.

 

·         Buried pages: A web page that is more than three clicks away from the home page may not be found by the search engine.  Just as importantly, it may not be found by your visitor, either!

 

There are lots of other things to avoid, but we’d be getting into rather technical realms that are beyond the scope of the true lay person.  If your web designer isn’t aware of them, he should be, and you should be looking for one that is! 

 

You’ll have reached the conclusion by now that search engine optimisation is a very big subject.  But it’s not rocket science.  A little knowledge will take you a long way and if you’re prepared to put in the time to research the best way forward for your website, you will reap results.  It’s an ongoing process, though, requiring continuous tweaking and experimenting over a period of time.  It’s also a learning curve, but I have found it to be an enjoyable one – a fascinating insight into search trends, and very, very addictive!   

Search Engine Optimisation for Beginners – a Layman’s Guide

admin    SEO Flash     Beginners, Engine, Guide, Layman's, Optimisation, Search

Search Engine Optimisation for Beginners – a Layman’s Guide

If you own a website, you’re probably aware of Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO).  A little time spent applying some simple SEO techniques to your website will be worth the effort in terms of increased visitor numbers. 

 

But where to start?

 

The best time to think about SEO is in the planning stages of your website so it can be written and designed with SEO in mind.  This will save you time and money, especially if you have engaged the services of a web designer or copywriter and you have to go back to them to make costly changes.

 

Your website must appeal to its intended market.  Remember that no matter what the purpose of your website is – be it to sell products or services, share information, ideas or specialist knowledge – design and write your website for your visitors.  No matter how highly the search engines rank you, it’s not Google who’s going to place an order for your products or services – if users aren’t immediately engaged by your website they’ll wander off in search of your competitors’.  So make your website attractive, relevant and interesting and make it easy for visitors to navigate and to find the information they’re looking for.

 

If, like the majority of people, you only discovered that SEO existed after your website went live, don’t worry. There are plenty of things you can do to crank up your site’s popularity.

 

Research your Keywords: It’s worth doing some keyword research to find out what search terms users are typing into the search engines.  This is a big subject area to cover in a short article, but there are some very good resources available to help you.  Google has a very good (and free) keyword research tool that will help to get you started, but if you don’t mind paying for an all-singing, all-dancing, report generating keyword research tool, look no further than Wordtracker’s website.

 

Choosing which keywords to use is a bit of a balancing act.  If you find a popular keyword or phrase that thousands of users are searching with every month, you’d immediately think, “Great – I’ll use that to optimise my site”. 

 

But hold on for a moment.  There’ll be a huge amount of competition from other websites using that same word or phrase.  Take, for example, the phrase “Website copy writing”.  Type this into Google and look at the number of results returned at the top of the page.  At the time of writing it shows a figure close to 13 million.  Are you ready to compete with that?  How many pages do you think you’d need to scroll through to find your own website? It’s not impossible to rank well of course – somebody has to get that number one spot.  But let’s be realistic.  Let’s shorten the odds a little in your favour.

 

Try this next: type the phrase “Website copywriting” (all one word this time).  Google returns just under a half million results.  Now we’re getting somewhere.  

 

To reduce the competition even further, try narrowing your key phrase to a geographical location.  Type the phrase “Website copywriting in Somerset”.  The field has narrowed to a mere 13,200 results (at the time of writing).  Of course, not quite as many people will be looking for a website copywriter specifically in Somerset, but those that are will stand a much better chance of finding your website than your competitor in Dorset! In summary, then:

 

·        Find a balance between a keyword’s popularity and the competition for using it

 

·         Look at common misspellings and alternative spellings for your keywords

 

·         Think about targeting your potential visitors using geographical parameters.

 

Keyword research is a fascinating and rather addictive hobby once you get started.  There are lots of good books on the subject and many online resources, too. 

 

Meta Tags: Meta tags are an element of your website that a visitor won’t see, part of the coding behind the scenes. The title tag tells the browser what text to display in the browser’s title bar. The description meta tag is particularly important, as it helps the search engines decide what your website is all about and appears under the title in search engine results.  The description should persuade visitors to click through to your website, so it should be well-written and relevant, but should also contain some keywords.

 

Website Content: This is the text and images that visitors see when they visit your website.  Search engines love content.  It helps them decide what your website is about.  But be careful – make sure that your content is unique (i.e. don’t just copy someone else’s – the search engines have ways of finding out!), and don’t repeat the same information on each page. Each page of your website should have a unique purpose and identity (and by the way, the meta tags should reflect this on each page, too).

 

It goes without saying that your content should be well-written, grammatically correct and free from errors.  If this is not your strongest point, engage the services of a copywriter experienced at combining website copywriting and Search Engine Optimisation. The text is the backbone and purpose of your website and it will be money well spent.

 

Make sure that you update the content on your website regularly.  There are two main reasons for this.  Firstly, fresh, interesting and relevant information gives your visitor a reason to come back to your website.  Why would they bother if nothing ever changed? Secondly, the search engines like new content on a website – it tells them that the website is current and therefore more likely to be useful and relevant to search engine users.  This is why blogs are often very successful at ranking well in search results, as they are updated regularly.

 

Optimise each page of your website for two or three keywords or phrases at most.  If you try for any more, the search engine may not fully understand what that page is about.  Sprinkle your keywords throughout the page (in headings is a good way of showing the search engines that the keyword is an important one), but don’t over-do it.  If keywords account for more than about 15% of your content, it may harm rather than help your ranking.

 

Build Links: It used to be the case that if you provided a link to someone else’s website, and they returned the favour, everyone was happy and the search engines smiled on you.  Not anymore.  The search engines are way more sophisticated these days and can detect artificial attempts to boost a website’s ranking. Reciprocal links are still fine if the site you’re linking to contains content that is relevant to yours, but it may actually harm your own website’s ranking if it doesn’t.  

 

One way links pointing to your website are far more valuable to you.  The best way to encourage other websites to link to yours is to make sure your content is well-written, informative, relevant, helpful and unique.  This will make your website a good resource for others to link to and perhaps even establish you as an authority on the subject.  Relevant links to your website not only boost your ranking with search engines, the increased amount of traffic improves your chance to generate more business.

 

There are many ways of building links to your website:

 

·        Submit your website to the many free directories (but make sure that they’re relevant). Some directories give one-way links, others ask for a reciprocal link

 

·        Exchange links with similar websites to become part of a large, pooled resource of information

 

·         A blog can be linked to your website and updated regularly

 

·         Professional forums can be useful as they often enable you to include a link in your forum post when you contribute (but not always – check their rules)

 

·         Write articles that include a link to your website and submit them to article directories

 

·         Make use of online social networking and media websites

 

·        Ask your visitors and satisfied customers to provide a testimonial and link to your website

 

Link-building takes some time and effort but keep plugging away and you’ll be surprised how soon your links grow.

 

Pay for Results: Everything we’ve talked about so far will reap results with no cost to you whatsoever (unless you’ve already taken fright and engaged the services of the first SEO company to promise you page one ranking). But it does take time and effort. 

 

If you want quicker results, have you considered paying for your website to appear higher in the search results? You might have heard of sponsored advertising campaigns, or “pay-per-click”. The most well-known is Google. 

 

Put in very simple terms, you set a budget, write a short, well-written advert that gets your message across and select the keywords that you want your advert to be found for.  The idea is that when a user types in one of your selected keywords, your advert will be scooped up and displayed among the sponsored ads.  If the user clicks through to your website, you will pay a fee to the search engine.  This is where you have probably heard of the phrase “pay per click”.

 

There are all sorts of variables involved.  For example, if you choose very competitive keywords, you may have to pay more per click to get your advert shown more often or nearer the top of the sponsored ads than someone else.  If your budget is not set very high, your advert won’t appear every time your keywords are used.  You can bid on each keyword or phrase, setting a maximum that you are willing to pay per click.

 

It all sounds very complicated but take a little while to look at Google’s Starter Edition which helps you to create and manage your adverts.  Once you’ve got the hang of it you can graduate to their Standard Edition, which puts you more in control and offers many features for you to play with.  Be warned though – this is addictive!  Once you start seeing which of your ads are working and which are not you can’t help but tinker with them constantly!

 

The main benefit of PPC adverts are that you will get instant results.  An appealing advert will start generating extra traffic to your website almost instantly, unlike SEO.  You can pause your ad campaign at any time, change it, promote time-limited special offers etc. and analyse the data generated by your campaign to see what is working and why.

 

What Search Engines Hate: You should have lots of ideas to help your SEO along by now, but here are a few things to avoid, things that don’t help the search engines at all:

 

·         Websites that use frames:  Search engines have trouble navigating them and may not be able to index a frame-based website.

 

·         Cut and pasted text from MS Word: Don’t cut text directly from Microsoft Word and paste it into a web page.  It will contain all sorts of formatting clutter and search engines hate having to navigate clutter.

 

·         Flash animated landing pages:  Some websites use Flash animated landing pages that require the user to click through to the home page of the website.  Not only can search engines not index Flash intros, many users are irritated by being yet another click away from the page that might contain the information they’re looking for.

 

·         Buried pages: A web page that is more than three clicks away from the home page may not be found by the search engine.  Just as importantly, it may not be found by your visitor, either!

 

There are lots of other things to avoid, but we’d be getting into rather technical realms that are beyond the scope of the true lay person.  If your web designer isn’t aware of them, he should be, and you should be looking for one that is! 

 

You’ll have reached the conclusion by now that search engine optimisation is a very big subject.  But it’s not rocket science.  A little knowledge will take you a long way and if you’re prepared to put in the time to research the best way forward for your website, you will reap results.  It’s an ongoing process, though, requiring continuous tweaking and experimenting over a period of time.  It’s also a learning curve, but I have found it to be an enjoyable one – a fascinating insight into search trends, and very, very addictive!   

How to Use Wordpress – The Beginners Guide

admin    Adobe After Effects     Beginners, Guide, WordPress

How to Use Wordpress – The Beginners Guide

WordPress – the Killer application of the twenty-first century! Never before in the history of man has it been so easy to get your message across to – potentially – millions of people with no knowledge of computer code and with absolutely no cost!

Once installed, Wordpress gives you the power of the Gods! Just log in to your account, write what is important to you, press a button and whamo! You’re published!

No software coding required. Wordpress is made for everyone – from the complete newbie to the hardened code hacker, Wordpress provides anyone with any skill level to publish their thoughts for the entire world to see and appreciate.

Using tools such as “Fantastico” (available with most hosting companies), you can install Wordpress is mere minutes with never knowing the difference between a byte and a nibble. You can make your installation as simple or as complex as you wish … from a basic one-page blog to a complete corporate web presence.

It’s all in your hands.

WordPress is Open Source software. This means that it is free for anyone to do anything with it that their heart desires. You’re free to install it … you’re free to change the code (if you have the skills) … you’re free to sell web sites built with it without worrying about royalties.

It’s yours to do with as you please.

So, what are some of the things that you CAN do with Wordpress …?

Well, you can:

Build your very own blog site, of course! This is how most people get started with Wordpress. But, blogging is only the very beginning.
If you’re an Internet Marketer (or considering becoming one) Wordpress coupled with a sales page theme can be just as effective as hiring a graphic designer!
WordPress makes for a powerful business web site alternative. You no longer need an army of web developers on your business premises pounding out code in order to keep your site up and maintained.
For the moment, let’s just say that you are an online marketer who wants to have a stable of affiliate review sites promoting the very latest in ClickBank offers. The power and ease-of-use of Wordpress quickly becomes apparent when you need to start building those sites.

Following domain registration and acquisition of web hosting, the next logical step is to build the web site itself. This can be easy enough using something like DreamWeaver – assuming you have the mountain of development skills necessary to make it work. I sure don’t!

This is where the power and elegance of Wordpress come into the picture.

Using nothing more than Wordpress and a sales page template such as “WP-SalesPage”, you can very quickly put together a classy and professional-looking review page that “Gets The Sale!” And, you can have the whole site finished within an hours’ time!

Try THAT with DreamWeaver.

Instead of fiddling with all those technical details that you really don’t want to spend time learning, you can instead concentrate on promotion. I can’t think of any good reason NOT to use Wordpress for an online business!

How to use Wordpress? The possibilities are endless – you’re limited only by your imagination and your ability to browse the web for a theme or plugin that will provide what you’re seeking to do.

Not too bad for free software!

Affordable Website Design – Everything You Need To Know For Beginners

admin    SEO Flash     Affordable, Beginners, Design, Everything, Know, Need, Website

Affordable Website Design – Everything You Need To Know For Beginners

We may hate to admit it, but some of us just aren’t that good at web designing. If you’re one such person, don’t despair. There is help for you. You can always hire a web designer to do it. But wait, not all designer companies are made equal. Some are pricier than others. Don’t let them fool you. Just because you need a web design service doesn’t mean you’re looking for literal designer prices. So how can you find more affordable website design?

To start with, professional web design is hard work. A designer will be responsible for many things, which may include some or all of the following: layout, content, graphics, SEO, flash, animation, hosting and more. If you want affordable website design, the best thing you can do is this: Do as much of the work as you can, and leave only the hardest part to your designer.

How to Get Affordable Website Design

Check their web site and portfolio. Before anything else, view their own home page design. Then look at their previous clients. Is that how you want your own site to look?

Domain and web space hosting. It’s better to host your domain name and space elsewhere than with your web designer. Doing so gives you the freedom to find a cheaper host. You can also opt for simple domain forwarding without space hosting. Also, if you do get your designer to register the domain for you, make sure it’s in your name.

Create your own graphics. Getting custom-made artwork is one of the most demanding and most expensive phases of personalized web design. By providing ready-made art for your designer, you greatly reduce the amount of work they have to do. You also save money.

Negotiate whenever possible. Your designer might give you a discount in return for a banner or button link to their site.

Keep it simple. The bigger the project, the more it will cost. Keep your project simple.

Prepare your content. Even if you can’t program for your life’s worth, you should be able to write decent paragraphs at least. Prepare your articles beforehand. Learn the basics of SEO too. Working on the text content yourself means the designer won’t have to be copywriter as well.

Be available. If your web designer charges by the hour, you’ll want to be in constant touch with them throughout the project. Any delay would cost you-literally.

Draw a plan. Put down on paper exactly what you want. Do you want everything customized? How much do you want to be made your way? How much is open for the web designer to experiment with? The more freedom you give the designer, the less hassle. But you also risk not getting the exact look you want.

Getting affordable website design from someone else can be tricky. Now if you devote enough time and effort to it, you might not need to hire a web designer at all. There are one-stop webmaster sites where you can get free tips and tricks, tutorials, and affordable web authoring programs. Not only is it cheaper to do it this way, in the end more rewarding.