Organic กNaturalก Search Engine Optimization versu

Organic กNaturalก Search Engine Optimization versus PayPerClick Search Engine Advertising

by: Matt Hockin

When you purchase visitors or ขclicksข from a search engine, this is called ขpayperclickข (PPC) search engine advertising (or PPCSE). PayPerClick Search Engine Advertising allows you to quickly get top search engine placement by ขbiddingข (paying) for keywords related to your product or service.

ขOrganicข or ขNaturalข search engine optimization (SEO) is accomplished by optimizing your web pages and by increasing your ขlink popularityข by acquiring or paying for links that point to your web site. This gives you high rankings at the Search Engines for your chosen search terms.

In this article, we will explore the strengths and weaknesses of both methods of search engine marketing.

ขNaturalข Search Engine Optimization

Today, there is a big myth that natural search engine optimization is inexpensive and easy. For example, if you wanted your web site to rank high for the keyword phrase ขlife insuranceข or ขdebt consolidationข you’re going to need to budget a minimum of $50,000100,000 a year!

Yet still, natural search engine optimization usually gives you a much higher return on investment than pay per click. This is true for two main reasons:

1. More searchers click the natural search engine results versus the pay per click ads, so you’ll get much more traffic for less.

2. One of the biggest factors to improving your rankings with natural search engine optimization is by boosting your ขLink Popularityข by acquiring or paying for links that point to your web site. These links give you lasting results by giving you top rankings and traffic from the search engines. Plus, the links themselves will provide a significant boost in long term traffic.

With that said, the biggest weakness of natural search engine optimization is the time required to generate links and ขtweakข your web pages and keywords to get those prized high rankings you so desire. It can literally take 3 months or more to finally enjoy the benefits of your search engine optimization campaign.

Pay Per Click Search Engine Advertising

The biggest benefit of pay per click is the fact that it will provide you with an immediate boost of qualified visitors, lead and sales giving you fast results within just hours or days. In fact, a pay per click advertising program is your best option if you seek fast results and a good return on investment while you are waiting for your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program to กramp up.ก

Depending on your traffic goals, you can budget $100 or $100,000. PPCSEs also give you the added benefits of being able to quickly test your web site and track your conversion rates (leads, optins, and sales) and turning keywords (visitors) on and off easily.

So, as a short term strategy pay per click gives you the clear advantage over SEO. But, the disadvantage is the cost involved. Depending on the market demand for your keywords and clicks, your PPCSE campaign can generate tons of traffic and can cost hundreds, even thousands per day. With various optimization strategies you can lower your costs, but over the long term natural search engine optimization will give you a higher return on your marketing dollar.

In Conclusion

The golden rule in marketing is that you should constantly strive for maximum results and ROI for your budget. In other words, if your marketing is making you a profit even if it’s a thin profit it’s worth it. By this model, pay per click is worth doing, but overall pay per click will leave you with thinner margins.

The reason for conducting a natural search engine optimization campaign is to significantly increase your margins over the long term.

By Matt Hockin

Interactive Marketing, Inc.

http://www.interactivemarketinginc.com

About The Author

Matt Hockin is President of Interactive Marketing, Inc., a small business marketing consulting company and the editor of the Interactive Marketing newsletter, one of the Internet’s leading free small business marketing newsletters. Subscribe now at http://www.interactivemarketinginc.com.

This article was posted on November 08, 2004

by Matt Hockin

Why Optimize Your Site For Search Engines?

Why Optimize Your Site For Search Engines?

by: John Metzler

Sometimes a search engine optimization company will miss that glaring question posed by potential clients and assume the benefits of search engine optimization are obvious to everyone. While shelling out a couple thousand on an SEO campaign is common sense to some, others may find it hard to part with the cash unless they know it is an investment in their business that is sure to bring a good return.

Search engines account for a huge portion of traffic to web sites. Data varies depending on what sources you read, but the bottom line is that search engines are used millions of times each day by consumers searching for goods and services. And having your business displayed at the top of search results is essential if you want to do any business from the major search engines. Nine in every ten users will find what they’re looking for in the top 10 results and won’t go to page 2.

Itกs obvious that people can make a lot of money from online sales, but how you advertise your products has a large bearing on what kind of profit you make. If you buy advertising space on Google AdWords or other services that charge per click, you may only shell out 10 cents for every visitor to your site But what if it takes 100 clicks to make one sale? If your products only sell for $10 a piece, then there is no profit being made. Payperclick (PPC) campaigns will also never stop costing you money. Search Engine Optimization, on the other hand, can be very affordable over months and years.

Many SEO and Internet Marketing companies will say that ongoing maintenance is needed to reach and keep top search engine rankings. While this is true, be careful how the company says they do it. There is an affordable way and then thereกs a way to pad the pockets of the กexperts.ก For more on this issue, read my other article entitled กWhat Constitutes a Complete and Effective SEO Campaign?ก In short, the affordable way will involve an intense content optimization followed by work to raise link popularity. This link popularity development should be the bulk of any ongoing maintenance. A couple times a year keyword research should be done again and the content should be looked at. Search trends can sometimes fluctuate so you want to make sure your content is still aimed at the right audience.

What is affordable and what isn’t varies greatly from company to company, industry to industry. In the bed and breakfast industry, $30 per month may be enough to keep a top 5 ranking on Google if the market is not very competitive. A web site competing for a top spot in a database administration field may be looking at several hundred a week if not more. The bottom line is, if you pick the right Search Engine Optimization company, your return on investment from an SEO campaign can be over 1000%.

While there are other ways to advertise a web site (No, search engine optimization is not the beall and endall of online advertising) very few can match the wide targeted audience and affordability that search engines provide.

About The Author

John Metzler is the cocreator of Abalone Designs, Inc. www.abalone.ca, a Search Engine Optimization company in Vancouver, Canada. He has been involved in web design and web marketing since 1999 and has helped turn Abalone Designs into one of the top SEO companies in the world.

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 09

by John Metzler

The Secret of Search Engine Optimization

The Secret of Search Engine Optimization

by: Peter Faber

How to do search engine optimization is one of the best kept secrets in the world. Even though you would think it is all out there in forums and other websites, when you try to figure it out, you will find you can’t find the forest for the trees.

Let me put it plain and simple. The secret of search engine optimization is not about keywords, or titles, or meta keyword tags, or meta descriptions, or heading tags, or keyword density, or alt attributes, or what ever other onthepage factor you can find. Even links aren’t the secret.

The real secret of search engine optimization is Harmony!

Harmony between all the factors I just mentioned and many more other factors as well. And that is exactly why it is not easy to find a great SEO company for your website. Every SEO can talk about the importance of a title, or any of the other factors, but try finding one that talks about how it all works together.

Harmony is the real power of SEO and it needs to be supported by lots of hard work, especially focused on link building. But here too harmony comes into play.

Many SEO’s that I talk with about harmony tell me that of course I am right and that it is so obvious it isn’t worth mentioning. But the truth is that not that many people (SEO’s included) are able to bring real harmony to their pages and website.

Putting keywords in title, meta keywords, meta description and heading tags, that’s easy. But that’s just the most basic form of harmony in a web page. Just think of how keywords fit into text found in the title, description, heading tags and the copy. Should you just place the keywords in there somehow, or may it be better to be a bit more considerate when choosing what to write in all these places?

What about topical structure? Is your site completely structured according to a logical topical structure? There are so many indirect factors that are as powerful as link building. And it is hardly possible to put it into words as it is more an art than a science to get it right.

About The Author

Peter Faber is the Implementation Director of http://www.ibrane.com; a search engine optimization company located in Brazil with a focus on Brazil, the USA and Europe. He also has his own SEO Blog in http://www.seoworks.com.

This article was posted on April 16

by Peter Faber

Guide to Software Marketing

Guide to Software Marketing

by: David B Mahler

Intro

This concise article will tell you in plain English how you can promote your software easily and effectively.

Submit your software

I recommend submitting your software to upload.com. It costs $79 dollars a year, but is well worth it. It will display your product on download.com and its partner network made up of 20 other major download sites. Download.com is so popular that if your product was only listed on download.com it would still be worth the yearly fee.

Use Rudenkoกs (submit.rudenko.com) software submission service to submit your software to hundreds of software archives. Unlike autosubmit programs, Rudenko has employees manually submit your software to each archive so it is less likely to be rejected.

Rudenkoกs software submission service is also beneficial because most of the software archives will have a link to your website. Relevant pages that link to your website increase your link popularity. The higher your link popularity the better your search engine ranking will be, especially in Google. Rudenkoกs software submission service costs $70 and if you include กDavid Mahler 10% discountก in the comment field you will receive 10% off.

Promote through your website

If you have a website than you can promote your software for free by utilizing effective search engine optimization techniques.

The two key factors for search engine optimization are effective titles and clear body text. Make sure that the titles are relevant, unique to each page, and include key phrases that are likely to be searched. Body text should be clear, concise and saturated with key phrases. Feel free to add your key phrase as many times as it seems natural to do so. Before you publish your masterpiece, test your website copy by reading it out loud to yourself or to a friend. If it sounds awkward you probably need to take a few of those key phrases out. Remember it is important to write for both people and search engines.

For more information on search engine optimization I highly recommend highrankings.com.

Have someone else do the work

Websites like shareit.com and cj.com allow you to partner with affiliates that distribute your software for you. This is an easy way to get your product out there but you can expect to pay a commission to the affiliate.

Conclusion

Whether you are a sole proprietor or a major corporation, these software marketing techniques will be effective in promoting your software.

About The Author

David Mahler started his business (Small Business Services) creating websites in 2002. His company has since extended his services to Intranet design, database design and website copywriting.

This article was posted on February 25

by David B Mahler

Search Engine Optimization A Must

Search Engine Optimization A Must

by: Alec Duncan

As you surf the web take a look around at many of the sites you see. Do you notice anything that seems strange? Well, let me point it out to you. There are hundreds of thousands of web sites that just don’t get much traffic. Some of these sites house hundreds of articles, reviews, tutorials, tools, products, forums to mention a few things, yet still they do not receive large amounts of traffic. What is their problem? They have the content. What is left?

The problem is these sites aren’t optimized for the search engines. SEO, Search Engine Optimization, SE Friendliness, however you refer to it doesn’t matter, the fact is it works and Iกm going to tell you whatกs involved.

Before we continue let me familiarize you with some relevant terminology in my own words.

**Search Engine Optimization**

Search engine optimization can be referred to as the addition and modification of all variables and extended variables of a web site in hopes of achieving a better position in the search engines. By variables I mean components of a website such as META tags and content. By extended variable I mean things such as links from other sites.

Different SEOs, search engine optimizers, may have different opinions on this but alas this is only my own.

**What is a Search Engine Optimization Company? **

A search engine optimization company is a company that offers the service of creating and adjusting all the variables involved in search engine optimization in order to get your web site the best ranking they can achieve, during the designated project period, for all the major search engines.

**Search Engine Optimization Hurdles**

Back to the question of why these sites rich with content aren’t bringing in the numbers. There are several reasons why sites small and large aren’t optimized for the search engines, fortunately these can be remedied.

1. Many webmasters/site owners believe in กIf You Build It They Will Comeก. This attitude will get your web site no where fast. Sure if you build it you will get users maybe even a decent amount of users but you will not be unleashing the real potential of your web site.

2. Not feeling that your site can do better than it is. Websites can always be further optimized. Search engines change their algorithms all the time so what worked 2 months ago may not work as well or at all in present times. For any of you that fee you can get your site optimized better, think of the story of the Little Engine and don’t think you can, KNOW YOU CAN.

3. Laziness is also a major contributing factor. Many webmasters feel it is just too hard or too time consuming to do search engine optimization.

This is partially true. Search engine optimization is not easy but then again, anyone can do it. It does take time though and time is a precious commodity. In situations where you just can’t devote the time to search engine optimize your site I would recommend seeking the services of a professional search engine optimization company. You can choose one here http://www.lilengine.com/seocompanies.php

4. Time + cost = a deterrent. For a situation like this I would recommend optimizing little by little on your own. Eventually you will become better and better at it and be able to accomplish more in less time.

5. Another problem is many people think กWell my site is only a small site, there is no way I will be able to compete with the larger sites that have top spots in the search enginesก. If you think like this I’d like to say this to you. It is possible that that if you optimize your web site you may not be able to compete with the larger sites and may not be able to get a page 1 or 2 ranking in any of the search engines, BUT, what if you did. Always shoot for the stars so if you fall short you will at least hit the sky.

Now for those of you who plan to better your websites via Search Engine Optimization here are the stages you need to follow in order to have an efficient and effective SEO campaign.

**Planning Your Search Engine Optimization Campaign**

Planning is an essential factor in your SEO campaign. Knowing exactly what steps you are going to make and in what order and how you are going to go about achieving each of those steps will save you not only time but it will save you frustration as well. Planning is essential.

**Researching the Most Effective SEO Strategies**

What works and what does not. You will need to learn as many optimization strategies as you can that are currently effective with the search engines. This will be one of the most time consuming steps in your SEO campaign as you will have to sift through information as well as participate in SEO related forums to get additional information from professional. You can take this process in stages and apply your newly gained knowledge as you get it. There is also some useful software available both free and paid that will greatly help with this effort. WebPosition Gold is one of the more popular ones.

**Search Engine Optimize Your Site**

This should be done in stages so you can see the effectiveness of the applied strategies you are using. Don’t change your entire site all at once, instead, change a few areas at a time and see what results they produce. If you are satisfied with this then move on and optimize another section.

Search engine optimization does not only deal with your site it also deals with the relationship other sites have with yours and yours with theirs. Keep this in mind when utilizing your link building strategies.

**Monitor Your SEO Progress**

There are many ways to do this you will have to find the best method for you. You will need to monitor your search engine ranking for the keywords you are targeting after each update. Changes should be recorded and used as references to monitor progress and for strategy adjustments. There are many tools for this process as well. I recommend SEOCount.com for monitoring your progress on the Google search engine as it is very easy to use and you can monitor several domains and keywords all from within the same account. It also gives you the option of viewing the number of backlinks.

These steps follow the Plan Do Review methodology which is a proven strategy for engaging in any task. It is again unfortunate that there are so many webmasters who overlook this entire process; hopefully this article will stop you from making this same mistake. For more information on search engine optimization visit http://www.lilengine.com.

Copyright © LilEngine.com 2003

About The Author

Alec Duncan is the founder of Liกl Engine a search engine optimization site. Get more great SEO tips at http://www.lilengine.com and visit their new Web Hosting Resource at http://webhosting.lilengine.com as well as http://www.grindinggears.com for Open Source Development information.

[email protected]

This article was posted on October 17, 2003

by Alec Duncan

When to Hire a Professional SEO Firm?

When to Hire a Professional SEO Firm?

by: Corey Wenger

In efforts to increase sales and profitability, more and more companies are turning to online marketing initiatives – specifically, search engine optimization. Search Engine Optimization or (SEO) is the art and science of blending technical and marketing skills together into a finely tuned website that is both search enginefriendly, ranks well for specific keywords and phrases, and is tailored to your audience from a buyer and seller perspective.

According to a recent U.S. study, only 20% of all businesses outsource search engine optimization programs to professional SEO firms. The remaining 80% either do not conduct search engine optimization at all or they believe they have the resources and skills to do it inhouse. Of this 80%, it is probable that 90% of these companies can’t be found on the web – they don’t exist. In order to generate any amount of significant web visibility, your website must typically rank within the top30 results.

So, the question comes down to what is in your company’s best interests?

Conduct your SEO program inhouse or outsource it. To answer this question, let’s first take a look at the knowledge, skills and resources necessary to implement and maintain a successful search engine optimization program.

SEO knowledge and skills required

1) Basic understanding of how search engines and directories work.

This may seem overly obvious, but you would be amazed how many people do not understand how they actually work. This knowledge provides the foundation for your SEO program.

2) Website design

Although SEO is not completely a technical marketing process, it does require a fair amount of technical knowledge of what constitutes search enginefriendly web design. Certain web design elements can either help your search engine rankings or hurt them. You simply have to know which is which.

3) SEO experience

This is the most important and most difficult knowledge to obtain. If you have never implemented a SEO program, then you are in for a big surprise. Search engine optimization programs require a lot of research and are extremely time consuming. Most importantly, they require actual SEO experience. This means knowing what SEO strategies and tactics work and which ones don’t.

Inhouse vs. outsourced SEO programs

If your company is considering conducting your search engine optimization program inhouse, here are some questions to consider.

Who will be responsible for analyzing, developing, implementing and measuring the success of your SEO program?

Is this considered the role of your IT department, Marketing department or some other individual(s) within your company?

Do they have the time, knowledge, and resources to successfully implement and maintain your search engine optimization program? And do they really care if it works or not?

IT Department

Typically your IT department handles multiple daily tasks from troubleshooting your company’s LAN or WAN to fixing the sales department’s laptops? Out of a busy IT person’s day, what priority and focus do you think he or she will commit to for your SEO program? And even if your IT department has some skills in web design or development, these skills make up only a small percentage of the knowledge required for a successful search engine optimization program.

Marketing Department

Typically, your marketing department juggles many marketing projects at once and faces strict completion deadlines. From handling new print collateral campaigns to getting ready for new product or service launches, marketing personnel’s time is spread very thin. In addition, how knowledgeable is your marketing department in the technical aspects of web design and search engine optimization? Do they have the time to become wellversed? Do they have sufficient internal resources? Often the answer to both questions is no, they do not.

Other individual(s) within your company

Ok, so the responsibility falls onto someone outside of your Marketing or IT department. Who will that be and why are they responsible for your SEO program? Providing these individuals with a new ขproject of the month,ข will typically result in another check mark off of their monthly todo list and frustration by top management of why their website is not producing any sales results.

Summary

From a business standpoint, it makes sense to try to leverage internal resources to maximize your company’s productivity and profitability – whenever possible. However, there must be a line drawn in the sand between knowing what your organization’s capabilities are and what they are not.

As you can see, there is more to search engine optimization than meets the eye. In order to implement and maintain a SEO program, you must acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and resources. This can be done by hiring a professional search engine optimization firm. Professional SEO firms have dedicated resources and experience to support your company’s web marketing initiatives. By leveraging their experience and knowhow, your company can quickly and more efficiently implement a successful search engine optimization program.

About The Author

Corey Wenger is owner of Key Position Web Marketing and is a professional Search Engine Optimizer and Consultant who has over three years of experience in helping companies increase sales and profitability through strategic web marketing programs. For more information, please visit www.keyposition.com or email him at [email protected].

This article was posted on October 22, 2004

by Corey Wenger

Jump on Blogging and RSS Feeds or be Left Behind!

Jump on Blogging and RSS Feeds or be Left Behind!

by: Craig Desorcy

Viruses and the deluge of the cyberspace version of junk mail, spam, has forced marketers to look for new ways to get back into the surfer’s eye. Spam filters hinder many of today’s marketers. That ezine you spent hours producing is often routed to the garbage bin without your intended audience ever seeing it. Now that’s not nice, but overwhelming piles of unsolicited emails are thrown into virtual mailboxes around the globe. Do you read your spam mail?

The wise and prudent are jumping on a trend that was relegated to personal use until about a year ago blogging and RSS Feeds. These new tools have become the latest marketing craze to hit the Internet. Why? The advantages they present are amazing, cost effective, and can get your site indexed in the blink of an eye. No wonder marketing gurus are smiling like the Cheshire cat!

Andrew logged onto his usual My Yahoo! page early in September 2004, and was startled to see that it had had a makeover. Really, he thought only women did that! What was this RSS feed information blaring across the screen anyway? It took a little bit of investigation, but Andrew soon discovered that this news could mean extra money in his pocket.

He nearly spilled his lukewarm coffee on the keyboard when he realized that he could get his website in front of more than 20 million viewers with such amazing ease! People everywhere were touting RSS feeds and blogs as the backdoor to Yahoo! and what a place to be! He’d spent endless hours trying to implement search engine optimization techniques in order to do this very thing.

Andrew is still shaking his head in wonder even after several months of high web traffic and amazing profits. ขSuch a simple way to get your product in front of people, save money, and escape spam filters should have a catch!ข he constantly says to himself. But so far, he only has extra money in his account to show for jumping on the blog and RSS band wagon.

( Get Blogging and Using RSS Feeds Now> http://www.effectiveinfo.com/blogsrss.html )

What techniques have you employed to get your site listed? The great lengths people will go to amaze me. I recently wrote fifty search engine optimization articles about baby strollers for an gentleman desperately attempting to get his website noticed. How much can you say about baby strollers, and how many ways can you say it without becoming buggy yourself? RSS feeds and blogging take the hard work, sweat and tears out of marketing. The current search engine optimization techniques are now becoming a relic of the past.

We all know that the virtual world is constantly changing. Anyone who is going anywhere on the Net has to be on the ball, and ready to get in on the first level of these new changes. Are you going to be left behind in the marketing realm?

About The Author

Fast and Easy Way To Get Blogging and Using RSS Feeds

Click here> http://www.effectiveinfo.com/blogsrss.html

This article is copyright © Craig Desorcy

Craig Desorcy is an Internet enthusiast who Lives and works in Japan, spending most of his free time on the internet running his blog and websites of interest.

Craig(at)effectiveinfo.com

This article was posted on February 05

by Craig Desorcy

What Constitutes a Complete and Effective SEO Camp

What Constitutes a Complete and Effective SEO Campaign?

by: John Metzler

Unfortunately, not many Search Engine Optimization companies know what this involves. You may see a กone size fits allก package, link popularity development in the form of submitting to link farms, or even the dreaded กSubmit Your Site to 1000กs of Search Enginesก scam. While the basic premise of each of these ideas is true, the execution of them is extremely important.

First of all, your web site needs human attention. A real person should thoroughly analyze your site before any work is done. Get them on the phone and ask them questions. There should be a clear process that the Search Engine Optimization company uses and tailors to each client. The SEO company should also have a clear idea of what your goals are for your web site.

The first step in any work that is done should be keyword research. Like any kind of advertising, you need to know where your target market goes and how they find businesses like yours. The keywords chosen should apply to the theme of the web site. High rankings for these keywords should also be obtainable given your budget. If you are a computer repair shop with one or two locations in a city and can not service computers outside your area, then targeting a term such as กcomputer repairก is overkill. The cost for obtaining high rankings for a term such as that will be far greater than what you will make from the exposure, as much of your web site traffic will not be targeted enough.

Once keywords have been chosen for the web site, the content should be updated to reflect them. This may include subtle changes to the meta tags, page titles and text headings; or it could involve adding additional sections to the site, rewriting content and reorganizing the web siteกs structure. It all depends on the specific requirements of the site and market.

Once the onpage content optimization is complete, link popularity development needs to be done. A link development campaign should be done to acquire quality incoming links to the web site. This phase of search engine optimization should take place as soon as possible and can be continued as needed. Reciprocal linking is fine as long as some caution is used. There are many sketchy services out there that use huge networks of gambling and pharmacy sites with no unique content. Always make sure that each incoming link can be interpreted by the search engines as a กvoteก by that site for yours. It is worthless and possibly dangerous if the site links out to link farms and FreeForAll sites (FFAกs). Writing articles with a link to your web site, getting people to post on forums and message boards, and advertising or getting links to drive targeted traffic to your site are great methods to use in improving your link popularity.

For the most part, you get what you pay for with Search Engine Optimization. A quick fix will rarely works, and if it seems too good to be true it probably is. Talk to the search engine optimization company about your concerns and make sure they understand your goals. Read their site and make sure they seem legitimate. Ask for results theyกve obtained for previous clients. Methods that not effective and have a chance to get a site banned include hiding text or links, participating in link farms, keyword stuffing, repeat search engine submissions, and copying web sites to multiple domains.

Proper SEO does not involve tricks. Web sites that have well written and well focused content, have been advertised in one way or another (including link popularity development), and overall are a good informational resource will get traffic from the search engines. Search engines are constantly updating ways to weed out the spamming and illegal SEO methods, so think long term with any search engine optimization campaign.

About The Author

John Metzler is the cocreator of Abalone Designs, Inc. www.abalone.ca, a Search Engine Optimization company in Vancouver, Canada. He has been involved in web design and web marketing since 1999 and has helped turn Abalone Designs into one of the top SEO companies in the world.

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 09

by John Metzler

Website Maintenance: What does it take to manage y

Website Maintenance: What does it take to manage your website?

by: Donald Nelson

Every action has a beginning phase where you launch your activity, a middle period in which you must sustain and develop it and a conclusion. Many people set up a website enthusiastically but then they find that they don’t have the skills or knowledge to maintain and develop it. So, what are the challenges in this middle phase of a website’s life and how can you meet them?

Updating the site: The beauty of a website is that it is not static like a brochure or printed document. You can change it to reflect new products or new developments in your enterprise. You can launch new campaigns, and at any time you can add more content.

The problem for some companies and individuals is that after they have paid a good amount of money to have their site built, they do not have any personnel who can make changes to the website, such as adding new text or photos etc. One solution to this is to make sure you have a good maintenance plan included in the contract or agreement you make your with your web designer, so that minor changes can be made by your original designer

Another solution, and one that gives you more flexibility, is to train someone in your organization to be able to work with an html editor (like Frontpage, Dreamweaver, or other similar programs). While not everyone has the skills to design a site from scratch, someone who is able to use the normal word processing programs can learn how to modify text and upload files to the server.

Promoting the site: If you just sit on your hands you cannot expect your website to live up to its promise. Many web designers do not have a clue about things like search engine optimization or submission, and the new website owner is left with a nice looking site, but no traffic. Furthermore there are other website related promotional tasks such as reciprocal linking, newsletter editing and mailing list maintenance which do not fall into the duties normally performed by the site’s original designer.

Once again check with your web designer or developer and see if they can perform any of these tasks economically or give you some help. If not, then some of these activities may have to be outsourced. Search engine optimization and submission, and even reciprocal linking, the activity of finding link partners, can be contracted from among the hundreds of companies offering such services.

You or a designated member of your staff can learn some of these tasks by reading online tutorials, ebooks and newsletters (like this one!). Though this takes time, again it gives you flexibility and an ability to work at your own pace and within your budget.

Finally if you can’t afford the outside services needed to maintain and develop the site, and if you are not sure how to train yourself or your staff, a third solution exists in the form of Ken Evoy’s Site Build It (http://buildit.sitesell.com/webpromote2.html). In which powerful hosting, design, maintenance and promotional tools are provided along with stepbystep guidance enabling complete beginners to build, develop and manage effective websites.

Even before you start your website you should be thinking one step ahead, so that you can develop the site intelligently and vigorously, and ultimately be successful in your web project.

About The Author

Donald Nelson is a web developer, editor and social worker. Hehas been working on the Internet since 1995, and is currently the director of A1Optimization (http://www.a1optimization.com), a firm providing low cost search engine optimization, submission and web promotion services.

[email protected]

This article was posted on April 13, 2003

by Donald Nelson