Archive for April, 2008

Websites can cost a fortune, or they can be free. I have heard of websites that cost in the millions of dollars to build and require a staff to maintain them. Consider sites like Amazon.com. I would say that most businesses pay a few thousand dollars for their websites. If you are on a tight budget, then spending a few thousand dollars may be impossible. Here are a few ideas that might get you started for nothing, or darn close to nothing.

http://www.myspace.com/ – This is the most popular free website service. Many people identify with MySpace as a hangout for kids. More and more businesses are learning the value of having a presence in the MySpace community. Start paying attention and you will see www.myspace.com/myname plastered on business cards or even on those magnetic car signs. Yes, MySpace is a good choice for a one-page business website. If you cannot figure out how to customize it yourself, ask any teenager to help.

http://www.wordpress.com/ – WordPress is a blogging tool. It is a far more customizable than a MySpace page and you can have as many pages as you like. Because it is a blog, you will have to maintain it by adding new content on a regular basis. You can also point your own domain name to the site if you have one. By using http://www.wordpress.com/, you will not need a hosting account; it is free to use. If you want to download WordPress software onto your own web hosting account, then get the software from http://www.wordpress.org instead. (Notice the ORG instead of COM at the end).

http://www.ning.com – Think of Ning as a more advanced tool that lets you create your very own version of MySpace. Think about it. You can build your own community with registered members, member profiles, blogs, and so on. This is really popular for creating niche online communities. On MySpace, people create a profile page. Your visitors will be able to create profile pages on your Ning site. Basically you become another MySpace. Then you just promote your online community. Building a Ning site is surprisingly easy. This is a great choice if you want to build a community. Maybe you are part of a club or organization and your members would enjoy participating in a niche community site.

If you are willing to do the work yourself, then you can build an elaborate site without spending a dime. Add content to your site using videos from YouTube.com, or use some widgets from other sites. There are numerous content widgets and plug-ins that you can find to put on your site. You can start you own Internet TV station or Internet radio station. All for free.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is actually more complicated than most people realize. After all, not every business needs results from the search engines. Some businesses only need local results. Then there are businesses that rely on search engines for 100% of their revenue.

Once you figure out what your basic needs are, then you have to determine who your real online competition is. In traditional terms, your competition is the business down the street. On the Internet, however, your competition is the website that is beating you out on your keywords. Your competition might not even sell the same products or services as you. If he is getting your search engine traffic, he is the competition.

Know Your Keywords

Your keywords are your “turf” on the Internet. Your success depends on two things. First, what are the keywords that represent your products or services? You should be able to figure that out on your own. Secondly, what are the keywords your clients are searching for when they want the products or services you offer?

Let’s say that you sell cars. If you sell Chevrolet vehicles, you can easily guess a few keywords. It is not a surprise that “Chevrolet dealership” is a key phrase. Since your prospective customers are generally searching within one city, you do not have to beat out the whole world for “Chevrolet Dealership”. You must have to beat out the local competitors. Phrases such as “Chevrolet Dealership Houston” or “Houston Chevrolet Dealership”, will be easier to target and will produce your best results.

Know the Competition

Search Google.com, Yahoo.com, msn.com, and see who comes up in the top five results for your most important keywords. It does not matter if those sites sell cars. You want to be on top for your phrase so whatever comes up … that is your competition.

Beat Them at Their Own Game

Analyze those sites for the most common SEO tactics. Then whatever they are doing, you should one-up them in every respect.

Here are a few tips on what to look for:

Keyword frequency – How many times do they use the words you are targeting? Count them. Use those words and phrases more frequently and more times.

Inbound links – How many links do they have coming in? Search google.com using this format: link:www.anythinginternet.com

Prominent Keywords – Bolded keywords, keywords in the website address, keywords in the title bar, and keywords in headings are all considered important.

There are many other things to look for. I recommend you hire a professional SEO consultant if search engine results are important to you. These tips will help you optimize a few of the most obvious parts of your web page. There are a lot more things to do. You want your keywords in your page title, your META tags, and you want to optimize every page on your website.

Increasing the number of inbound links can be a lot of work. If your competition has a lot of these, you should hire a professional to help you compete. Experts can add hundreds of new inbound links for you quite easily.

If you make changes to your website, prepare to wait a long time for those changes to be 100% effective. Some things could take six months to become fully effective.

I have been encouraging people to write more content for their website. It could be by adding new pages or by making blog posts or whatever. What is important is to keep adding content as often and as much as possible. You can even get others to write some of it for you with a well-promoted blog or forum. But what do you do when you find out other websites are copying your content and putting it on their site?

Step One – Decide. Is it really a problem?

Having your web content copied may not be worth worrying about. In fact, if it mentions your company, it might actually benefit you. If the content has links to your website, it might even benefit you. It is possible that stolen content does more good for you than it does for the thief. Or, at worst, it might be fairly harmless to you. If the content is a critical violation to you and you want it stopped, it is possible.

Before The Plagiarism Occurs

There is a special bit of javascript you can add to every page that makes it difficult to copy/paste the text on the page. This stops human plagiarists. The javascript will not stop programmed scripts that steal content. This can slow down the individuals who might copy/paste your content somewhere else. This also encourages those people to come back to your site whenever they need to review the material.

The next level of defense is a service called CopyScape.com. CopyScape.com is a website service that scans the internet for copies of your content. You can do limited scans for free, or pay them for more capabilities such as automated scans. CopyScape.com gives you a banner that you can place on your website that warns thieves that you are watching out for them.

Copyrights and trademarks are essential tools for protecting your most important intellectual property. Because this is such a touch legal arena, this is where you call your attorney and give them small piles of your hard-earned cash in order to avoid giving them much larger piles of cash in the future.

After the Plagiarism Occurs

The first step is always to try to contact the webmaster with an email, fax, or phone call and ask them to remove the content. In most cases, they will do it immediately without any issue. Many people wrongly believe it is okay to copy from other sites. They will back down right away once confronted.

The next step is to send them a certified letter to the address of registration for the domain name. This is rarely required.

Then finally, you have the option of having your attorney take over the process.