=================================================== Selecting a
Search Engine Optimization Company
===================================================

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A Search Engine Optimization Company can be an invaluable asset
in your Internet marketing campaign. They specialize in knowing
how to raise your search engine positions, monitoring those
positions on the regular basis, and adjusting their strategies
to account for undesirable results in any given month. Since
this takes a lot of time, effort, and specialized knowledge, it
can be in your best interest to go to an outside source rather
than try to maintain high search engine positions on your own.

However, like every business, there are good companies and there
are lemons. Knowing the right questions to ask and the criteria
to look for will help you in choosing an affordable, effective
search engine optimization company.

When looking at different companies, begin by considering the
approach they employ to raise your search engine positions.
Steer clear of companies that use cloaked, doorway, or bridge
pages to raise your positions. These techniques violate most
search engine policy, and in the worst case scenario, will only
get your website severely penalized, if not removed entirely
from a search engine’s index.

A cloaked page is a page that is created which is invisible to
the regular visitor to your website. The cloaked page is coded
to detect a search engine spider and divert them to this special
page, which is set-up to artificially boost your search engine
position. Doorway or bridge pages utilize the same concept, but
often reside on an entirely different server. Google, one of the
largest and most important search engine on the Internet, will
remove your website from their index if they detect you have
cloaked pages. Never, never employ any company that uses this
technique!

Another important element is to get a guarantee that the company
you hire will not work with your competitors while they are
working for you. Obviously, this would seriously compromise the
effectiveness of the search engine optimization campaign. Be
aware that some companies will use the success they achieve for
your website to sell their services to your competitors. So get
your guarantee in writing, and make sure it is legally binding.

Of course, one of the most important factors you want to check
out is the company’s track record of results. However, don’t
take the company’s word for it. They will undoubtedly be
slanting their results in order to sell their services to you.
To go beyond their simple statement of success, ask them a few
pertinent questions, and verify their answers.

Ask them which engines they have achieved the best results on.
The ones that are important are the most popular engines, and
these are the ones you want to see good results on. Since the
popularity of search engines can change with the landscape of
the overall Internet, check out the Nielsen Netratings page at
Search Engine Watch. You can access this at

http://www.searchenginewatch.com/article.php/2156451.

Next, find out what keywords and phrases they are claiming great
results with. It’s easy to get high rankings with unpopular
words. For instance, the keyword “cat leashes” will get high
popularity ranking because no one else would think of using it.
What you are looking for is good results using popular keywords.
Check out the software Wordtracker, available at
www.wordtracker.com. You can order a free trial, or a
subscription ranging from 1 day to 1 year. This software rates
the popularity of keywords and phrases based on actual search
engine use.

Next, look for good results over an entire site that the company
claims to have successfully worked for. You want to see a wide
range of positions over a number of different search engines
using different keywords or phrases for the entire site. Request
a report for any client the company claims to have done well
for. This report should show good positions on a number of the
most popular search engines for a variety of different, popular
keywords and phrases.

When you are checking out search engine optimization companies,
make sure they have actually done the work they are claiming to
have done. Some companies will use other company’s results in
order to get you to sign on with them. If you are in doubt, call
the company they are showing you results for, and ask for the
name of their search engine optimization company.

It’s important to keep in mind that a successful search engine
optimization campaign will result in maximum exposure across a
wide range of popular search engines using a variety of keywords
and phrases. This is the formula for a successful campaign, and
you should keep it always in the forefront of your marketing
strategy.

Ask the search engine optimization company you are considering
for a report that shows you rankings across a number of popular
search engines for a period of at least six months. Remember:
search engine marketing is a process that is continual, and you
need a company that not only understands this, but keeps
constant tabs on your search engine positions. That company must
also be able to adjust its strategy in the event that search
engine rankings drop.

Since search engine marketing is an on-going process, your
positions must be constantly monitored. If you want your search
engine optimization company to do this for you, request a sample
of a monthly report. It is essential that this report should
show rankings for the most popular search engines. Don’t be
impressed by a report that only shows great results for a
limited number of small search engines. These are fairly easy
results to acquire. Also confirm that the popular search engine
results they are showing you are indeed the popular search
engines currently.

Be sure the sample report the company shows you is in a format
that you can easily understand. For example, it could be in the
form of a chart that covers a period of at least six months and
presents data such as the top 50 positions broken down on a
monthly basis or the top 5 pages each month. Then, ascertain
that the company you are considering actually monitors these
positions or pages every month, and that the sample report they
show you includes findings and recommendations for the specific
site. This insures that the company will actively monitor and
make adjustments to their strategy on a continual basis rather
than simply gather statistics on your positions. You need a
company that is actively participant in your search engine
marketing campaign, not just an information gatherer.

Obviously, your finances have to figure into your choice of
company, but bear in mind that a search engine optimization
company is crucial the success of your marketing campaign. It is
not just a casual accessory. If you cannot afford a company that
will do a thorough and reliable job for your website, you might
consider waiting until you do have the finances in place.

If you have to find a company and can’t wait for your finances
to catch up, you may be able to find an affordable company that
will also be able to supply quality, reliable work, such as a
fairly new company. Just remember that there are risks involved
with using a company without a proven track record – and that
risk is your money! Don’t take that leap unless the company can
supply you with a least a few references.

References are the most reliable indicator of a good company.
Don’t use a company that won’t show your references because of
any reason, confidentiality included. Remember – even doctors
will provide references! The firm you choose should provide you
with a minimum of two references, one that is from the past, and
one that is current.

When you contact these references, be prepared to ask precise,
specific questions so that neither of your time is wasted. Ask
them what their experience was like with the company, such as
their availability to answer questions and deal with problems
and their ability to meet deadlines. Ask the reference to rate
the overall performance of the company.

Find out if the company requested that the reference make
significant changes to their web pages that affected the
visitors coming to their site. You are looking for a search
engine optimization company that can balance the needs of both
search engines and site visitors without compromising either.

The most essential question to ask is whether the work of the
search engine optimization company resulted in higher profits
for the reference. Without profits, it doesn’t matter whether
your positions are at the top of the list or not

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Pssst… I’m going to let you in on the worst kept secret of search engine optimization:

It’s all about getting links to your website .

I’m serious. While on-page factors such as keyword density and title tags are rudimentary techniques that almost every new website has picked up on (quite a difference from three years ago), link building is something that still eludes many webmasters, and for good reason: It involves work.

In fact, search engine optimization is about 90 percent effort and 10 percent experience. You need experience to recognize which keywords are more profitable, which techniques you need to learn in order to get more visitors to your website, etc. etc. After learning all that, it’s just a matter of getting down to doing the work itself. And that is why search engine optimization software such as SEO Elite are so effective: They cut down on the sheer load of work involved and provide intuitive ways for you to use your experience and get the most out of your investments (in this case, your website AND your time!)

In this lesson I’m going to talk a bit about the techniques you can use to get more links to your website. There’s nothing special about them; they all involve some work, but they all pay off in terms of targeted traffic. In fact, that should be the prime goal of your link building campaign:

Use inbound links to build traffic

All the strategies mentioned below can be used to get more links to your website. It goes without saying that the more of these strategies you use, the faster you’ll be able to get more links.

A common pitfall for most people new to SEO is that they often get sucked in by catchphrases such as ‘the best way to get links to your website’ or ‘the top 3 strategies you can use to get tons of links to your website’. The truth is that none of these techniques is the ‘best’. In reality, your website and your business model (in other words, the nature of your website-customer interaction) will determine the most fitting strategies for your linkbuilding campaign.

In fact, when you launch your linking campaign, you’ll probably have varying degrees of success with the strategies below. For example, article submissions are a great way to earn more subscribers to your newsletter, while affiliate programs work wonderfully well if you have a decent list of proven products (or a great product). The methods below are not separated in any specific way; I’ve listed the ‘free’ methods first and the paid methods later. Use this list as a reference through your link building campaign, and for best results, mix and match these techniques in the way they suit your website the best.

Just ask…

The traditional way of getting links is to directly ask potential link partners to link to your website. This can be a one-way link or a reciprocal link (more on reciprocal links later). The key factors here are to identify potential link partners and then to contact them and offer either a reciprocal link, an offer to their visitors, or both (we’ll cover paid links later).

Finding potential partners is a difficult business. It used to be that you would search on a major search engine like Google or Yahoo for your target keywords, and then check each website in the top 50 or top 100 listings manually, evaluating their similarity to your niche and noting their contact information. This is a tedious process, and is fraught with the primary obstacle of most link managers: ‘What if they say no?’

You could make them an offer they can’t refuse (which you will, and I’ll tell you how) but to improve your chances, use technology to your advantage. As before, use your target keywords to search for the top websites in your niche, but instead of contacting them, use a search engine optimization software to evaluate the back-links of a top website.

The idea here is to find out which websites link to the top competition in your niche – the websites in the top 10 or top 20 results for your target keywords.

The second step is to make the approach, sell the idea, or like I said before, make them an offer they can’t refuse. Part of this approach is to ability to write convincingly (you’ll find samples online of successful link request emails) and it is something you learn with time – test your link requests by sending different letters and measuring the response and repeating what works.

The other half involves the offer itself – what your website (or you) can offer to the link partner that will compel him/her to link to you. If you’re looking for free links, this offer can include a reciprocal link, site-wide links or maybe just the quality of your website content. The idea here is to sell your link even before they visit your website to check if it’s worth linking to, and this can only happen if you can the right pitch.

Write an article

The idea is quite simple. To establish yourself as a knowledgeable expert in your field, you need to be able to project your knowledge beyond your own website. In this case it involves writing articles on a particular topic in your niche, and distributing them to article directories online.

While this is a crude approach, the method can be refined by offering an article to potential link partners – thus providing them with valuable content for their visitors. Article syndication is a powerful tool and if used properly can generate hundreds, even thousands of visitors for you.

A quick search within your niche can help you find article directories where you can position your article, but a better option is to look at content aggregation websites in your niche – sites which regularly post articles from off-site authors. This not only gives you a chance to build your links but also gives your reputation in this field a boost, something that you can leverage in later techniques.

Run an affiliate program

If you sell a product, or a range of products, or even a membership service, launching an affiliate program is the quickest way to get inbound links. Of course, you’ll need to promote the affiliate program beyond your own website, and you can combine the above two techniques to promote not only your website but also your affiliate program.

In addition, if you have an e-product (an e-book or software) and you sell it through a portal like ClickBank, you can be assured that your affiliates are managed directly through their website. In case you want to run your own affiliate script, you can find several for a low price and even some good ones for free.

http://www.easyclickmate.com is a good Clickbank affiliate script…

An affiliate program offers your visitors and potential link partners the chance to make money by doing a little promotion of your product. For other webmasters that could simply involve posting your link or even posting your article promoting your product on their website; a sure bet for getting a link.

Directory submissions and site submissions

Second-tier directories and niche directories are seriously under-estimated in terms of their impact on your website traffic. If you’re just starting out and looking for free traffic, steer clear of the paid listings of Yahoo and ilk and concentrate on smaller hubs. They may not receive hundreds of thousands of visitors every day, but if you can garner 10 visitors a day from one directory, and get 10 or 20 such directories to which you can submit your link, you have a free stream of 100-200 daily visitors for only an hour’s worth of work.

The same goes for submitting your website’s link on sites that have a ‘links’ page and require a reciprocal link in exchange. While this is not the best strategy to get links by, it will help you in the beginning to get some traffic and hopefully, natural links as a result of that traffic.

Paid links

If you’re looking for a high value link (for example a link from a PR 7 page) and your website is fairly new, you’re not going to get in through normal means. In this case, the offer involves money, and this can usually be judged through the site’s own advertising policies. Search the website for its media kit, or something similar. Alternatively, you can email them asking them about advertising opportunities on their websites. In this case being direct is the best approach, and will save both your time and theirs.

Of course, the catch here is the amount of money you’re willing to pay. Some websites charge a monthly fee, others charge a ‘per impressions’ fee (for example, your ad would be shown for 10,000 page views only). In these cases you won’t have much room to negotiate if you are just starting out, so it’s advisable to shun the big guns and go for the smaller fish – people who won’t ask you for too much money and will accept a combination of reciprocal linking, money and some other ‘free method’ such as an article submission. Once your website carries its own weight in traffic and Page Rank, you can target the PR 7 and PR 8 websites.

The advantage of such websites is the sheer amount of traffic they get. A news site in Pakistan gets about 60,000 page views a day. Even on a CTR (click-thru-rate) of 1%, that amounts to 600 visitors a day, or 18,000 visitors a month.

The question is, what will you do with this traffic? The possibilities are endless.

Paid listings

Similar to paid links, paid directory listings are essentially directory inclusions for your website. For some directories, like Yahoo, this is a yearly arrangement, and even then there is no guarantee of inclusion; your website must pass certain editorial criteria. On other, less known directories, the payment is simply a one-time fee plus a request for a reciprocal link.

In many ways paid listings and links are the ‘extra’ tweaks that you give to your online business. Even if you have the cash at the start, it’s a prudent strategy to pursue free linkbuilding strategies alongside paid methods to ensure that you don’t invest too much in your business before it starts to show a profit.

The key to a successful link-building campaign is the consistency of effort you put in. Cut out the hard work in finding link partners (and for that matter, niche directories) by using a linking software such as SEO Elite, with which you can simply plug in the website URL, select your search engine and get a list of all the websites that link to it, the anchor text of those websites as well as their Page Rank. Lists like these, of your top 20 competitors, should be your target link partners during your link campaign.

Link-building is a simple business. All it requires is consistency, and some hard work (which you can eliminate using a simple search engine optimization software such as SEO Elite). And with things being so easy, don’t be surprised if you follow these steps and find yourself in the top 10 results for your keyword in just a few months Click Here To Get Your Free Copy of 7 Days To Massive Website Traffic by Optimization Expert, Brad Callen

sebastian foss
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Selecting a right software development company is really a tough job. The manager needs to check various aspects before finalizing the software development service provider to handover the project to them.

Prior to approach a software company to develop software, you need to work on some basic things like Identifying exact requirement, analyzing the requirement as per end user point of view, Design a basic architecture or workflow. To After doing the basic analysis, you could approach some reputed software development companies with your specific requirements.

What things you should check with every software solutions provider?

You could choose a right software development company by analyzing the following factors.

a. Technology Expertise: Technology is the most changing factor in software industry. So selecting the suitable technology for the software application is also important. Therefore check out that in which technologies the company has expertise.

b. Timely Delivery: Timing is very important in software industry because you must launch your software product or service before your competitors. It will help you to achieve the big share in the market. So make sure that your software product / application will complete within the estimated time frame.

c. Quality of Service:
Error-free software creates the good image in the market. So test your software from user point of view to check the quality of software before putting it into market.

d. Support: Post software development support is the integral part of smooth functioning of the software application. Ensure that the company provides the proper software support system.

e. Past Experience: You should ask the software development work they have done before for other clients. Then you would be able to find out the strengths and  weaknesses of particular Software Development Company and whether the company is able to fulfill your Software requirements or not.

Where should I get quality software development services?
There are many software development companies in market, but as per my information Tandoninfo is one of the best Software Services Provider Company based in India having branches in USA too.

Many of them provide complete custom software development solutions, project management as well as application development, Quality testing and Quality assurance services to various kind of business areas. TISPL also offer web-marketing services such as Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click Management, Link Building, etc. It will help you to get top keyword ranking and maximum traffic through major search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.

TISPL have professional expertise in all latest Software areas like C, C++, Java, VB, VB.NET, ASP, ASP.NET, SAP, RDBMS, Linux and many more. The consultants in TIS are skilled in multiple platforms, languages and applications and receive continual cross training in world-class development facilities to ensure that TISPL stays at the leading edge of technology.

SAP Business One Software Solutions:
If you are looking for integrated software services to manage your business functions efficiently then you can find Tandoninfo, which offers advanced SAP Business One Software Services at affordable cost. They are expert in SAP Business One Customization, Implementation, Integration and Support as well.

Manish Kum Bansal
http://www.articlesbase.com/software-articles/you-can-use-right-software-development-services-provider-723561.html

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One of the more recent secrets people are using to get their
websites in the search engines, the last couple of years, is
with Blogs. Blogs are short for web logs and are like daily
dairies on the web.

Blogs started out as ways for Internet reality types to share
their lives with other people on the web, without having to
learn very complicated web design applications like Dreamweaver
or Microsoft FrontPage.

Dreamweaver, the standard professional web design program takes
a least 6 months to master. While FrontPage on the other hand
looks a lot like Microsoft Word, and therefore can be used a bit
more quickly by people just starting out.

Blogs are much easier to use than any web design software. They
can be used to change web content from a browser, email, and
even simple desk top software. Blogs are web pages created with
automated software that date stamps all changes to content.

One of the secrets the web marketers use to get their new
websites into the major search engines like (Google – Yahoo! and
MSN) is called blog and ping. So many Internet fortunes are
being built on this simple technique.

If you want your new website to be indexed (or included in the
search engine database) you shouldn’t submit it to the search
engines — instead you should blog and ping.

There is a new feature with Google and Yahoo! known as sitemaps,
which will also get your site indexed, but most of us will do
fine with learning first to blog and ping.

Blogs index and file your web pages automatically according to
the way you specify in advance.

Google loves blogs and has its own web based application called
Blogger. You can set up a Blogger account for free at
Blogger.com.

You should use Blogs for your business to give updates to your
customers and supporters every few days on your company’s news
or inside information. You can also reflect on industry trends
with your business blog.

What’s nice about blogs if you want to get your site in the
search engines or keep the search engines up to date with your
latest optimization or content efforts. You can post your new
website or page to your blog page and link to that page.

The search engines will visit the blog page more frequently and
index your new pages or web sites some times in a day or two.
Also make sure when you post a new blog in Blogger.com you set
up your account to ping (or notify) the other major blog
directories that your blog has been updated.

Or if you want to get your new site into Google go to a high
ranked blog listed in Google. If the Blog allows comments give a
good comment on the blog. Then link back to the page you want
indexed in the Blog.

Make sure you give a worth while or useful comment or it will be
considered blog spam by the website administrators. Sometimes
blog publishers disable the comment feature for this reason,
therefore it is important to have your own blogs especially if
you have more than one site. This will get the Google spider to
index your new sites or web pages within a few days and consider
your site for its database given the criteria of its algorithm.

If you are looking for a fast, inexpensive and efficient way to
build a lot of content on your site, which the search engines
will pick up, go to Blogger and open up a free blogging account
and join the blogosphere.

- The Love Affair between the Search Engines, Blogs and RSS I
have been extolling the SEO benefits of Blogs since almost two
years ago. Although blogs and search engines don’t seem to enjoy
the free for all love affair they once had, the search engines
and blogs seem to still be married “for better or for worst”.

The romance and infatuation phase between search engines and
blogs has waned because of blog spam. However search engines
dare not divorce blogs because they tend to cook up regularly
updated content.

Blogs are also search engine friendly in design. As publishers
we love blogs because it is an easy way for us to update our
sites with new content.

Many top marketers are extolling about the power of blogs and
their natural extension RSS feeds. Almost every successful
Internet Marketers today is using some variation of blogs and
RSS feeds.

Everywhere you go the web gurus are talking about the great
upside potential of blogs and RSS. RSS for the purpose of
discussing this issue stands for Really Simple Syndication.

RSS is presently being used by Internet marketers to share their
blog headlines with websites and desktops all over the world.
Think of RSS as giving you the ability to blog without
boundaries.

People on other websites and with downloadable RSS newsreader
software can read your newest blog posts without visiting your
site. Sites that value your expertise will in a viral fashion
feature your RSS feeds and help generate traffic to your site.

This allows you to leverage traffic from other peoples sites who
feature your blog. Moreover, your subscribers who read your RSS
headlines on their desktop software will avoid email filters.

Before you explore or upgrade to RSS marketing experiment with
desktop newsreaders like Tristana or News Gator. If you prefer
to read RSS from your browser download and install Mozilla’s
FireFox Browser.

RSS feeds will be the next phase in Internet marketing following
the search engines, email marketing, affiliate marketing, and
joint ventures.

By having people subscribe to your blog’s RSS feeds, or having
them syndicated on other people’s websites you will be getting a
running start on the explosion in blog and RSS marketing once
Internet Explorer integrates RSS into its browser

Kamau Austin
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1. Organize your site, of course, in outline form. Your first page should only offer links to the main cluster. Each of the clusters pages should provide links in the outline below. Do not go below three sub themes, however. Neither the visitors nor the search engine optimization of the details now. To ensure that your entire website is completely crawled by search engines, consider creating a site map for search engines to follow.
2. Use a tag line or slogan on your page. Must be a practice sentence for his top keywords in plain text at the top of the homepage.
3. Group like items in sections and provide information about the relationships between them. State the main theme of a paragraph, in either the header or the first couple of words. Focusing on your keywords as the subject of a section, use the headings and subheadings of the group of pages of long blocks. Use header tags such as H1, H2, etc headings, subheadings, column headings and descriptions of the page are all excellent means to feed engine spiders clues about the page issue and help users to scan the contents or listen to a page with special needs software. Studies show people exploration-related items in groups before moving on.
4. Providing the keywords in the text-based links such as “Please click here to learn more about the keyword” provides clues and subject helps the user to stay on track while maneuvering around the site. Using the standard hyperlink points is always a good idea because it’s what users expect.
5. Use common language that users recognize quickly when scanning a page. Keep your keywords stronger and more important information in the upper half of each page.
6. Adding titles above or below graphics to help users and search engines. Use keywords if possible. Adding to the label alt text behind an image (using key words, of course) is a good way to provide additional information about the image. This is a great help for those who surf with images off or use screen readers – not to mention the benefits provided to search engines. If you do not add alt text, use “” in order to screen readers skip the picture. See our article on the website design of Accessible.
7. Minimize animation. Movement of distraction

Web design related articles and guide details Web design articles

Visuals India
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Title : How to Promote your small business web site without costing you a nickel.

Desc : Organizing a Cost Effective Small Business Web Site Promotion And how to promote your website!

How to: Promote your small business web site without costing you a nickel.

Small Business Web Site Promotion

The most important thing to remember when you want to encourage visitors to visit your web site is to make sure they will want to return again. ‘Visitors’ means not just human web surfers, but also the search engines and directories. Small business website promotion, no matter how much you promote your site, will be the look of the site that will keep visitors there and hopefully buy your products or services.

Optimize your Site for Search Engines; Check your links

Small business website promotion starts with a search engine spider indexing or cataloging your site by following the links from one page to another. Just as human visitors dislike a broken link, so do the spiders. If a link doesn’t work they’ll simply move onto the next page. No matter how sophisticated the search engine software is, it can’t index what it can’t find. Also remember that a spider will not be able to follow a link that requires a form submission or Java Script so small business website promotion is very important.

While considering the subject of links, if you are using HTML and CSS on your site, make sure that both work properly. A certain minimum level of requirements must be met so that your pages will display correctly. It is only if these are met that a spider can do its work. There are free facilities online that can check both of these for you.

* Make sure your links work.

* Do not use forms or Javascript if you want a search engine spider to find your pages

* Check that HTML and CSS work properly.

Do not make your Pages too big!

Most of us have heard the expression ‘size isn’t everything’. While this may not be true of many things, it does matter when it comes to web pages. People do not like having to wait an eternity for a web page to load. Search engine spiders may not fully index a page bigger than 150k in size. Remember that the size of a page does not simply depend on the actual HTML file itself, but includes everything on the page such as images, banners etc.

If you have a lot of images on your pages, then either reduce the number of them, or use a program such as Macromedia Fireworks to optimize them for the web. If the page has a big file size because there is a massive amount of text in it, then you should consider splitting the text into smaller, more manageable pieces and putting them on several pages and linking one to another. SEO Chat has a tool called “Page Size Lookup” which can tell you the size of your web page; you can check it out at

http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/page-size/

* Keep the file size to below 150k

* Optimize images for the web

* Use a free page size checker to find out the actual size of the page.

Search Engines and Directories; What is the difference between a search engine and a directory?

People frequently use the term ‘search engine’ as a catch-all expression for anything they use to search the Web. They are different things though, and an understanding of the differences will enable you get use both effectively to promote your site more successfully.

How does a search engine work?

Search engines use highly sophisticated software to search the web for new pages. It then automatically creates and updates their indexes. Whenever they find an active hyperlink, they will follow it and add that to the index and so on. These ‘crawling’ programs are generally referred to as ‘spiders’.

Normally, all this is totally automatic, but sometimes human intervention is involved. The spider will return periodically to the pages and check for updated content. Often there will be a delay between you uploading your page, and the spider finding it, unless you submit your URL directly to the search engine itself. You can submit a web URL to Google ™ free of charge.

* Search engines are usually automatic

* They will revisit your pages.

* Spiders will find all the pages on your site as long as there are active hyperlinks for them to follow.

* You can submit a site to most search engines free of charge.

How Directories Work.

The primary difference between a search engine and a search directory is that a directory is compiled by a real person. Frequently the site owner will submit a short description of the site together with its URL to the directory compiler to be considered for inclusion. Directories are arranged into categories to make it easier to find what you are looking for.

When you submit your site to a directory, you choose the category you want your site to be featured in. A reviewer then checks to ensure that your site is in the most suitable category.

Another difference between a search engine and a directory is that whereas a search engine could list every individual page in your web site, a directory will generally only contain a single entry covering your entire site.

* Directories are compiled by real people.

* They are categorized.

* A reviewer checks to ensure your site is in the best category.

* A directory will usually only contain one entry for your entire site.

Shared Indexes and Hybrids

Things are never so straightforward though. Some search portals are a hybrid, combing a search engine and a directory. The search engine part returns automated results, while the directory gives human found results.

Normally, a hybrid will supply hits from the directory as the primary source, with the search engine results of individual pages as the secondary source.

Getting your Site Ready

It cannot be stressed too strongly that search engines and/or directories are by far the most important way of getting your site noticed. To do this, you have to properly prepare the site and submit your URL to them.

Keywords are important: Choose the right keywords

Think what your web site is all about. If you had to describe your site in one word, then that word is your first keyword. Then think about other words to describe your site. Make a list of them, with the most important at the top of the list and so on. You want a list of between ten and fifteen words. Since these keywords will be used in a variety of ways, it is important that you take some time selecting them.

Keywords are important because they are possibly the most important thing that a search engine uses to determine whether a page is included in the search results. Even although different search engines use keywords in different ways, most experts agree that the frequency and position of your keywords is an important factor.

* Select keywords to describe your site.

* Choose 10 – 15 keywords.

* Take your time picking keywords – they are extremely important.

Pick a Good Title for your Web Page

When you write a web page, there is always a tag. This goes into the section of your web page. The tag is what is shown at the top of your web page when it is displayed in a web browser. Search engines, however, often use the tag as the title of the listing in the results.

The tag looks like this

The name of my Web Page

Not only is it good practice to make your tag have a good description of the content of the page, but if you can manage to work into it some of your keywords, so much the better.

Why you should use Meta Tags?

What are meta tags?

Meta tags are a special type of HTML code that goes into the section of a web page. Site visitors do not normally see them, but search engine spiders do. Just as some HTML tags have an attribute with a value, so too do meta tags.

As far as optimizing your web page for search engines is concerned, the most important meta tags are keywords and description. The syntax for the keyword tag is as follows:

The description tag is as follows:

Unlike some HTML tags, it is not strictly necessary to have the meta tag closed, but if you want to have valid XHTML, then you do need to close all your tags.

Consider your URL

Since we are discussing matters that will influence how a page appears, it is worth considering the actual URL of the page itself. Since the URL that appears in your browser reflects the file path for the page, it makes good sense to have the file name reflect the navigation of the site.

You can see at a glance that this page refers to the Lower Square, which is part of the Castle, which in turn is part of Stirling. Not only does this meaningful URL impart information to the visitor, but for the web designer it makes sense to have the separate files arranged in a logical manner. This will only apply to pages that have not been dynamically created by a database program, of course.

* Choose a meaningful title for your page.

* Put your keywords into the /www.dmoz.org/). This is the largest human-maintained directory of the Web. Because it allows virtually anyone to access its resources, many search portals such as AOL, Netscape and HotBot take advantage of this and include their data into their own systems. This means that once you are included on the ODP database, you are also included in many others.

* There are places you can submit your site free of charge

* Google is probably the most important place to submit to.

* Yahoo is a good second choice if you don’t mind registering with them.

* Do not forget the Open Directory Project.

Paid Listings

Although Google and Yahoo do not charge you anything for submitting your site to them, they do not guarantee where or when your site will appear in their listings. However, they do have sponsored links that appear either above or beside the listing of search engine hits. These are useful for promoting your small business web site since they are targeted links. If, for instance, someone searches for “bagpipes”, then not only will they get a list of bagpipe related sites returned, but they will also see the ‘sponsored links”.

Free Promotional Techniques

Ad Swapping

This is one of the easier ways of getting your web site promoted. What it involves basically is that you display an advertising banner, button or text link on your web site, and other sites do the same for your ads.

The simplest way of swapping banner ads is to join an existing banner swapping network:

Banner Advertising

Banner networks work because you are provided with a few lines of HTML code to include on your web pages, usually near the top. The HTML creates banners from other sites on your pages. When a visitor clicks on them, they are re-directed to their web site. At the same time, you provide the network organizer with your own banner to display elsewhere.

There are many banner ad networks available, so choose with caution. Try to find one that will direct traffic to your site, by displaying your ad on related sites. In order for the network to make money, they will perhaps ask you to display 2 banners in return for displaying yours once.

No network will promise a 1:1 ratio, so avoid those that do. Do not consider paying for extra banners until you have proved to yourself that the free ad is generating enough visitors to your site. Although most networks will promise not to display ads for pornographic or other unsuitable sites, in reality you have no control over them.

* Banner ads are free

* Try to choose a network that is related in some way to your business.

* Avoid those that make extravagant claims about the ratio of ads.

* Be aware that you have virtually no control over what ads appear on your site.

* You might get buttons or text links instead of banners.

Peer to Peer Swaps

Although banner swapping can yield increased exposure of your site, sometimes a more targeted approach is required. The object of the exercise is to get your ad seen by as many possible visitors as possible, therefore if you can arrange a deal with the webmaster of a busier site than yours it could be advantageous.

You may have to compromise. In return for prominently displaying an advertisement for a busier or better known web site than yours, you might have to agree to less prominence on the other site.

Web Rings

These are networks of similarly themed sites which creates links from one to another to form a chain. You will display a web link icon and a list of at least some of the other sites in the ring. If you are just launching your web site it is probably best to try to join an established ring.

There are possible flaws in joining a web ring. You will need to allow space on your pages to display the ring logo. Visitors might think that you are part of an organization, and if some of the sites are badly built, you might be associated with the rest of them. You will have no control over which sites join the ring, and link to you and vice versa.

* Web rings are free.

* They are normally similar web sites to your own.

* You have no control over the quality of the other sites in the ring.

Article Submission Sites : What is an Article Submission site?

An article submission site, and there are roughly 250 of them, are an effective way of promoting your own goods and services as well as generating traffic to your web site. Their purpose is to provide webmasters, e-book editors and e-zine publishers with free content for their own publications. The articles are usually arranged into different categories, and the site is normally searchable.

How they work

You write an article or series of articles about what you have to offer on your web site. The purpose of the article is not to directly sell your goods. Let us suppose that your web site sells a wide range of possible gifts for all members of the family. Your article might be about, for example, birthday gift ideas for teenage boys.

The purpose is to make your article interesting enough and informative enough for it to be used somewhere else. Since you have included some biographical details about yourself, including your own URL, and your article is published exactly as it appears on the article site, your URL appears in the end-user’s web site. Thus you are getting free publicity, and the publisher is getting free content.

* Article submission sites get you free publicity.

* Publishers get free page content.

* Your URL appears wherever your article is used, and so generates traffic to your site.

Paid or free submissions

All article submission sites will allow you to submit your article for nothing. You register with the site, and you can select what category you want your article to appear in. When you write your article you will include the same keywords as you did when you wrote the HTML for your web site. Thus a search engine will find your site, as well as the article you wrote about it.

Some article sites will allow you to bid for better placement within their pages. Basically, the more you bid, the higher prominence you will get on the article site’s home page. Thus you are the first thing a publisher notices. Even if you are outbid for top spot, chances are you will still be on the home page. Since a lot of the sites also have separate front pages for each of the categories, even if you don’t achieve prime position on the site’s home page, you likely will in the category pages.

* Use the same keywords you used on your web pages.

* You can bid for increased placement on the article site’s pages.

Summary

As you can see, there are many ways that you can promote your small business web site. By far the simplest way is to ensure that your web site has carefully chosen key words for search engines to find. You can also submit your web site to search engines, ad exchange networks, web rings and article submission sites free.

About the Author:

Rajesh V. Tavakari, Senior SEO of http://www.website-promotion-ranking-services.com/. Offering affordable website promotion and natural optimization services since 1998. Website : http://www.website-promotion-ranking-services.com/ . You may freely reprint this article on your website or in your newsletter provided this courtesy notice, author name and URL remain intact.

Rajesh Tavakari
http://www.articlesbase.com/small-business-articles/how-to-promote-your-small-business-web-site-without-costing-you-a-nickel-129732.html

Technorati Tags: Business Website Promotion, Css, Desc, Expression, How To Promote Your Website, Human Visitors, Human Web, Java Script, Javascript Search, Links Html, Search Engine Software, Search Engine Spider, Search Engines And Directories, Search Spider, Small Business Web, Spiders, Submission, Web Promotion, Web Site Promotion, Web Surfers

Here’s a list of 10 advertising mistakes I have made while developing my online business.You can avoid these pitfalls by reading this article. I started my first online business back in 2004. I knew absolutely nothing about e commerce.

I saw a pop up ad that guaranteed I would make $500 dollars within 30 days after making a $25.00 investment, to sell Satellite TV subscriptions. Since I had no clue about selling on the Internet, failure was pretty much inevitable. At least I got my money back.

10. My first mistake was investing any amount of money in an Internet business, without doing at least some research on how to market an online business.

I thought if I threw up a website, people would “appear” and they would all sign up for Satellite TV! I was expecting to make money right away, with no targeted advertising.

When you have a small online business it’s impossible to make money if you don’t advertise to potential customers, who already have an interest in what you’re selling.

9. When I finally did begin to understand the importance of online advertising, the mistake I made was to buy “hits” of traffic. I didn’t know the difference between “hits” and actual “unique” website visitors. “Hits” are how many times your web page and the graphics on your web page are loaded.

“Unique” visitors are supposed to be actual human visitors to your website or blog. I later found out that a lot, if not most of these websites that sell what they describe as website visitors or “traffic”, are really simply using automated scripts that load your web page over and over again. The script simulates live visitors to a website. You’ll end up with great statistics, but zero sales and or sign ups.

I also used one of those “automatic hits machines” that I received with something I downloaded. This software again simulated live website visitors by pinging my website from hundreds if not thousands of assorted domains. No actual human visitors. At the time I didn’t know this type of software existed.

I thought these “hits” coming from real domains were real people! I think that because I used this software my website, which had zero page rank, but had been indexed by Google, eventually got banned by Google. Because shortly after using that automatic “hits” software my website began to show the infamous “Grey” page rank box.

Don’t use automatic scripts that claim to bring “traffic” (as in website visitors) to your online business. Sure, the numbers will be encouraging. But it’s an illusion. In reality you may get your website banned by the major search engine, and besides, you can’t sell to an automated software script anyway.

8. Next I tried the free Traffic Exchanges. On free traffic exchanges, you sign up to view other people’s websites. For every one or a few website that you view, the traffic exchange will display your website once. The problem is, from the sales perspective, if there are for the most parts real human eyes viewing your web page, (and not a script) these eyes probably belong to other’s who are trying to get their online business advertised at no cost.

Which means that they are probably not going to buy whatever it is you’re selling, unless it’s going to get them what they have already shown an interest in. That would be getting more free traffic to their Internet business. I have used several of the free traffic exchanges, and my websites have never benefited from the effort whatsoever. I also wrongly assumed that the free exchanges would provide a back link to my website. They don’t.

The only thing I have found the free traffic exchanges good for is the opportunity to see what some of my competitors are selling, and how they have written their web page’s. I also think that the free traffic exchanges may be a good place to advertise if you have a website or blog that have “freebies” as in free download e books and or software. Again the folks who actually click on ads at these free traffic exchanges have already shown an interest in free resources. But for making money, for me they were useless.

7. After the free T.E.’s I tried using the software that submits your website to 500 search engines automatically. Another waste of time, although I did get the software for no cost. The only real problems with this process is that of the 500 search engines, most people probably only use 2 or 3 of them for web searches. Next even back then the 3 major S.E.’s preferred manual submissions. Automatic submissions are considered “Spam.” Always submit to S.E.’s and Directories manually.

6. I also paid to be listed on a search engine network. My site would be listed on all of the websites in their network. I was allowed to choose one keyword phrase. If it was available, I was charged a flat fee, to be paid quarterly. In three month time, I received maybe 20 clicks. Dismal. No results. And 97 percent of those clicks didn’t register on my web server files. The other peculiar thing about this search engine “network” was that the majority of clicks registered on their statistics that I received, came during the period of time when it was almost time for me to renew the account. Call me suspicious.

5. Next on my list of learning experiences, I dived into the Pay Per Click industry. I decided to start off on a less expensive so called “Search Engine.” I won’t name the company, but their name, if they are still in business, starts with the number7. This small S.E. if I remember correctly charges either 25 or fifty dollars to be paid upfront. That money goes into your p.p.c. account. You bid on keywords, and then your ad is displayed on their so called anonymous “network” of distributor websites. Each unnamed distributor website has a minimum bid amount for ad placement.

After a few days I began to notice website ads that were totally unrelated to Web Hosting ahead of my ad. Gambling websites were placed higher than my website for the keyword “web hosting.” And I was paying for my ad placement based on my keyword. I became suspicious. I called the company. They told me they must have missed it. But it was happening on almost every keyword!

After being with the account for a couple of weeks and getting zero clicks, I began to research just who these anonymous distribution network of websites actually belonged to. When I performed a back link check on my website, I began to see links leading to my website, on websites’ that were completely unrelated to my online business.

One of the sites that I found my link on, was a one page website titled Greek Poetry. Most of the other websites that were linked to my site, were hardly more than starter pages. One site was a one page website about horse grooming! I was at the time selling and using keywords for “Web Hosting.”

All of those ridiculous distribution network back links led directly back to that so called Search Engine. Apparently this company bought a lot of domains, threw up some starter pages, and then decided to sell them off as a network of active and highly visited websites. To that Search Engines credit though, they did give me a prompt refund. If you decide to advertise on a network of websites, be sure to research and determine if these are real websites, that get lots of real human visitors.

4. After that didn’t work out I bought into a service that would distribute an ad for my website on a so called “network” of Ezines. That only cost me $15 dollars. $15 more dollars flushed down the toilet. When I did a back link check on this so called “network” of Ezines, I noticed that at least 90 percent of these Ezine websites had the exact same template and look of the website that sold me the distribution service.

Call me suspicious. But how can 20 or thirty supposedly different Ezines and websites all have the same template right down to the colors, and not be owned by the same company? I didn’t even try to get a refund from that website. I just considered it a lesson learned. Oh yeah, naturally I got zero traffic for my money, and my ad was misspelled, along with being on a page that had about one million other ads that made outrageous claims of overnight profits.

If you buy advertising to be distributed to a group of Ezines, make sure you know exactly what Ezines your ads will be published in, how many subscribers they have, and also what type of ads are being displayed on the same page as your own. Your online business will look dishonest if your ads are displayed with other ads that make these unrealistic claims of overnight success.

3. My next advertising adventure was to submit to as many directories as possible. It was too tedious to submit to them one at a time, so again I bought into a service that claimed they would submit my website to 50 directories. After paying, I found out that least 95 percent of the directories had very low or no page rank at all, not to mention being totally unheard of. Plus even today when I do a back link check, only maybe 5 to 8 of the 50 directory listings that I paid for, list my website.

More money wasted! Whenever I see the phrase “our network of advertisers” I become a little suspicious. Especially when they don’t specifically name the individual websites in their so called “network.” Again I didn’t request a refund. I just considered it a lesson learned.

2. Moving up my list of advertising mistakes, this time I decided to open a Pay Per Click campaign with Google Adwords. After spending money with so many questionable websites, and getting no results, I figured that a company as large and well financed as Google, would surely not do anything to raise suspicions. I like everyone else at the time was told by Google that for as little as a five dollar sign up fee, and 50 dollars per month I could begin advertising on the most utilized search engine in the world. It sounded like a no brainer. Wrong.

What I didn’t know was that spending fifty dollar per month on a Google Adwords advertising account is practically useless. Especially if you bid on the keywords that your potential customers are most likely to use. I completed sales using Adwords, but in the end when I added the click fraud that I was being charged for, (I once received 131 clicks in less than four hours, after making an unpopular statement on the Google Adwords forum.) along with the constantly increasing bid amounts for ad placement, and not knowing what my competitors were bidding against me, it became cost prohibitive to continue advertising with Google Adwords.

If you are considering signing up for a Google Adwords account, the best advice I can give you is to read the Adwords Help Forums before you spend any money. Start off in the Basics section. Read the New Post first. Then go back a few months into the older Post. Look for patterns in user problems and frustrations. Expect to be treated the same way and to have similar problems when you have your own account.

1. Which finally brings us to what has probably been my biggest online advertising mistake. Not taking the time to master keyword research. The whole idea of it bores me to tears!

Plus when I did try to understand keyword research, I was getting conflicting information, which again makes me suspicious. What I learned was this…

Every online keyword tool available, from Wordtracker (and I have paid to use their service) to Google’s keyword tool, to Overture’s keyword tool and Microsoft’s Adcenter’s keyword software, they all give different results for keyword popularity, and search volume. It’s as though each company has their own “turf” when it comes to certain keywords.

For example Overture will say that a keyword is very popular and gets a high volume of search traffic. You may try that same exact keyword phrase on Google’s keyword software, and their keyword tool will indicate there is not enough search volume to even determine search keyword popularity or volume! Now are we to assume that the people who made this a very popular search term with Overture’s keyword research tool never tried to perform that same keyword search on Google. The number one ranked search engine in the world?

It doesn’t seem very likely does it? So why all the contradictions with search volume and popularity. I believe it’s another pay per click profit mechanism. That’s the main reason I don’t spend an excessive amount of time worrying about keywords. Although I should try to learn more. It couldn’t hurt. But you may have heard that within the past few days, Google has deducted page rank from several websites, for no apparent legitimate reason.

Just because one website improves, or websites in a particular genre become more competitive is no legitimate reason to penalize a website, that was okay and making progress 3 months ago. Webmasters, and small online business owners have worked dilligently trying to master keyword research and web page optimization only to get penalized.

All of the work and money spent on website and search engine optimization down the toilet again. If these guys really wanted to have the BEST search engine in the world, they would hire humans to evaluate websites.

At least until technology catches up with the demands being made of computer software, when predicting human behavior, and text recognition, juxtaposed with intent.

So for now I just do the best I can with keywords and search engines. But I’m not going to lose any sleep studying keywords, or pay any so called SEO experts, when my website can be penalized at any time.

I really believe this entire penalty fiasco and the P.P.C. Quality Score gimmick is simply a dishonest method of rotating which websites occupy the first page top ten rankings.

No matter how good we are at SEO skills, we can’t all be listed on the first page of the search results! And the penalizing of websites is another great way to rotate websites in and out of the first page rankings, and also to persuade some website owners who don’t want to lose their traffic, to invest in Pay Per Click advertising. A win, win situation for the Search Engine industry.

I hope this article saves you time and money! Always remember “Any pursuit is great… when GREATLY pursued!”

Copyright © 2009 Nicholas Busbee All Rights Reserved Worldwide

“Live in Concert” Series DVD’s, MP3 Downloads, and CD’s powered by amazon.com http://www.djnickb.com/

Nicholas Busbee

Technorati Tags: Amount Of Money, Clue, Failure, First Mistake, Human Visitors, Internet Business, Investment, Pitfalls, Satellite Tv, Scripts, Selling On The Internet, Sign Ups, Statistics, Subscriptions, Targeted Advertising, Traffic, Unique Visitors, Ups, Web Page, Website Visitors

Here’s a list of 10 advertising mistakes I have made while developing my online business.You can avoid these pitfalls by reading this article. I started my first online business back in 2004. I knew absolutely nothing about e commerce.

I saw a pop up ad that guaranteed I would make $500 dollars within 30 days after making a $25.00 investment, to sell Satellite TV subscriptions. Since I had no clue about selling on the Internet, failure was pretty much inevitable. At least I got my money back.

10. My first mistake was investing any amount of money in an Internet business, without doing at least some research on how to market an online business.

I thought if I threw up a website, people would “appear” and they would all sign up for Satellite TV! I was expecting to make money right away, with no targeted advertising.

When you have a small online business it’s impossible to make money if you don’t advertise to potential customers, who already have an interest in what you’re selling.

9. When I finally did begin to understand the importance of online advertising, the mistake I made was to buy “hits” of traffic. I didn’t know the difference between “hits” and actual “unique” website visitors. “Hits” are how many times your web page and the graphics on your web page are loaded.

“Unique” visitors are supposed to be actual human visitors to your website or blog. I later found out that a lot, if not most of these websites that sell what they describe as website visitors or “traffic”, are really simply using automated scripts that load your web page over and over again. The script simulates live visitors to a website. You’ll end up with great statistics, but zero sales and or sign ups.

I also used one of those “automatic hits machines” that I received with something I downloaded. This software again simulated live website visitors by pinging my website from hundreds if not thousands of assorted domains. No actual human visitors. At the time I didn’t know this type of software existed.

I thought these “hits” coming from real domains were real people! I think that because I used this software my website, which had zero page rank, but had been indexed by Google, eventually got banned by Google. Because shortly after using that automatic “hits” software my website began to show the infamous “Grey” page rank box.

Don’t use automatic scripts that claim to bring “traffic” (as in website visitors) to your online business. Sure, the numbers will be encouraging. But it’s an illusion. In reality you may get your website banned by the major search engine, and besides, you can’t sell to an automated software script anyway.

8. Next I tried the free Traffic Exchanges. On free traffic exchanges, you sign up to view other people’s websites. For every one or a few website that you view, the traffic exchange will display your website once. The problem is, from the sales perspective, if there are for the most parts real human eyes viewing your web page, (and not a script) these eyes probably belong to other’s who are trying to get their online business advertised at no cost.

Which means that they are probably not going to buy whatever it is you’re selling, unless it’s going to get them what they have already shown an interest in. That would be getting more free traffic to their Internet business. I have used several of the free traffic exchanges, and my websites have never benefited from the effort whatsoever. I also wrongly assumed that the free exchanges would provide a back link to my website. They don’t.

The only thing I have found the free traffic exchanges good for is the opportunity to see what some of my competitors are selling, and how they have written their web page’s. I also think that the free traffic exchanges may be a good place to advertise if you have a website or blog that have “freebies” as in free download e books and or software. Again the folks who actually click on ads at these free traffic exchanges have already shown an interest in free resources. But for making money, for me they were useless.

7. After the free T.E.’s I tried using the software that submits your website to 500 search engines automatically. Another waste of time, although I did get the software for no cost. The only real problems with this process is that of the 500 search engines, most people probably only use 2 or 3 of them for web searches. Next even back then the 3 major S.E.’s preferred manual submissions. Automatic submissions are considered “Spam.” Always submit to S.E.’s and Directories manually.

6. I also paid to be listed on a search engine network. My site would be listed on all of the websites in their network. I was allowed to choose one keyword phrase. If it was available, I was charged a flat fee, to be paid quarterly. In three month time, I received maybe 20 clicks. Dismal. No results. And 97 percent of those clicks didn’t register on my web server files. The other peculiar thing about this search engine “network” was that the majority of clicks registered on their statistics that I received, came during the period of time when it was almost time for me to renew the account. Call me suspicious.

5. Next on my list of learning experiences, I dived into the Pay Per Click industry. I decided to start off on a less expensive so called “Search Engine.” I won’t name the company, but their name, if they are still in business, starts with the number7. This small S.E. if I remember correctly charges either 25 or fifty dollars to be paid upfront. That money goes into your p.p.c. account. You bid on keywords, and then your ad is displayed on their so called anonymous “network” of distributor websites. Each unnamed distributor website has a minimum bid amount for ad placement.

After a few days I began to notice website ads that were totally unrelated to Web Hosting ahead of my ad. Gambling websites were placed higher than my website for the keyword “web hosting.” And I was paying for my ad placement based on my keyword. I became suspicious. I called the company. They told me they must have missed it. But it was happening on almost every keyword!

After being with the account for a couple of weeks and getting zero clicks, I began to research just who these anonymous distribution network of websites actually belonged to. When I performed a back link check on my website, I began to see links leading to my website, on websites’ that were completely unrelated to my online business.

One of the sites that I found my link on, was a one page website titled Greek Poetry. Most of the other websites that were linked to my site, were hardly more than starter pages. One site was a one page website about horse grooming! I was at the time selling and using keywords for “Web Hosting.”

All of those ridiculous distribution network back links led directly back to that so called Search Engine. Apparently this company bought a lot of domains, threw up some starter pages, and then decided to sell them off as a network of active and highly visited websites. To that Search Engines credit though, they did give me a prompt refund. If you decide to advertise on a network of websites, be sure to research and determine if these are real websites, that get lots of real human visitors.

4. After that didn’t work out I bought into a service that would distribute an ad for my website on a so called “network” of Ezines. That only cost me $15 dollars. $15 more dollars flushed down the toilet. When I did a back link check on this so called “network” of Ezines, I noticed that at least 90 percent of these Ezine websites had the exact same template and look of the website that sold me the distribution service.

Call me suspicious. But how can 20 or thirty supposedly different Ezines and websites all have the same template right down to the colors, and not be owned by the same company? I didn’t even try to get a refund from that website. I just considered it a lesson learned. Oh yeah, naturally I got zero traffic for my money, and my ad was misspelled, along with being on a page that had about one million other ads that made outrageous claims of overnight profits.

If you buy advertising to be distributed to a group of Ezines, make sure you know exactly what Ezines your ads will be published in, how many subscribers they have, and also what type of ads are being displayed on the same page as your own. Your online business will look dishonest if your ads are displayed with other ads that make these unrealistic claims of overnight success.

3. My next advertising adventure was to submit to as many directories as possible. It was too tedious to submit to them one at a time, so again I bought into a service that claimed they would submit my website to 50 directories. After paying, I found out that least 95 percent of the directories had very low or no page rank at all, not to mention being totally unheard of. Plus even today when I do a back link check, only maybe 5 to 8 of the 50 directory listings that I paid for, list my website.

More money wasted! Whenever I see the phrase “our network of advertisers” I become a little suspicious. Especially when they don’t specifically name the individual websites in their so called “network.” Again I didn’t request a refund. I just considered it a lesson learned.

2. Moving up my list of advertising mistakes, this time I decided to open a Pay Per Click campaign with Google Adwords. After spending money with so many questionable websites, and getting no results, I figured that a company as large and well financed as Google, would surely not do anything to raise suspicions. I like everyone else at the time was told by Google that for as little as a five dollar sign up fee, and 50 dollars per month I could begin advertising on the most utilized search engine in the world. It sounded like a no brainer. Wrong.

What I didn’t know was that spending fifty dollar per month on a Google Adwords advertising account is practically useless. Especially if you bid on the keywords that your potential customers are most likely to use. I completed sales using Adwords, but in the end when I added the click fraud that I was being charged for, (I once received 131 clicks in less than four hours, after making an unpopular statement on the Google Adwords forum.) along with the constantly increasing bid amounts for ad placement, and not knowing what my competitors were bidding against me, it became cost prohibitive to continue advertising with Google Adwords.

If you are considering signing up for a Google Adwords account, the best advice I can give you is to read the Adwords Help Forums before you spend any money. Start off in the Basics section. Read the New Post first. Then go back a few months into the older Post. Look for patterns in user problems and frustrations. Expect to be treated the same way and to have similar problems when you have your own account.

1. Which finally brings us to what has probably been my biggest online advertising mistake. Not taking the time to master keyword research. The whole idea of it bores me to tears!

Plus when I did try to understand keyword research, I was getting conflicting information, which again makes me suspicious. What I learned was this…

Every online keyword tool available, from Wordtracker (and I have paid to use their service) to Google’s keyword tool, to Overture’s keyword tool and Microsoft’s Adcenter’s keyword software, they all give different results for keyword popularity, and search volume. It’s as though each company has their own “turf” when it comes to certain keywords.

For example Overture will say that a keyword is very popular and gets a high volume of search traffic. You may try that same exact keyword phrase on Google’s keyword software, and their keyword tool will indicate there is not enough search volume to even determine search keyword popularity or volume! Now are we to assume that the people who made this a very popular search term with Overture’s keyword research tool never tried to perform that same keyword search on Google. The number one ranked search engine in the world?

It doesn’t seem very likely does it? So why all the contradictions with search volume and popularity. I believe it’s another pay per click profit mechanism. That’s the main reason I don’t spend an excessive amount of time worrying about keywords. Although I should try to learn more. It couldn’t hurt. But you may have heard that within the past few days, Google has deducted page rank from several websites, for no apparent legitimate reason.

Just because one website improves, or websites in a particular genre become more competitive is no legitimate reason to penalize a website, that was okay and making progress 3 months ago. Webmasters, and small online business owners have worked dilligently trying to master keyword research and web page optimization only to get penalized.

All of the work and money spent on website and search engine optimization down the toilet again. If these guys really wanted to have the BEST search engine in the world, they would hire humans to evaluate websites.

At least until technology catches up with the demands being made of computer software, when predicting human behavior, and text recognition, juxtaposed with intent.

So for now I just do the best I can with keywords and search engines. But I’m not going to lose any sleep studying keywords, or pay any so called SEO experts, when my website can be penalized at any time.

I really believe this entire penalty fiasco and the P.P.C. Quality Score gimmick is simply a dishonest method of rotating which websites occupy the first page top ten rankings.

No matter how good we are at SEO skills, we can’t all be listed on the first page of the search results! And the penalizing of websites is another great way to rotate websites in and out of the first page rankings, and also to persuade some website owners who don’t want to lose their traffic, to invest in Pay Per Click advertising. A win, win situation for the Search Engine industry.

I hope this article saves you time and money! Always remember “Any pursuit is great… when GREATLY pursued!”

Copyright © 2009 Nicholas Busbee All Rights Reserved Worldwide

“Live in Concert” Series DVD’s, MP3 Downloads, and CD’s powered by amazon.com http://www.djnickb.com/

Nicholas Busbee

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There are as many ways to design dental websites, as there are ways to create and build dental practices. When designing your dental facility, you need to take many things into consideration: funds available, your technical needs, the image you want to project, the number of patients you want to be able to treat, remodeling or new construction, etc.

Dental website design also requires that you consider many elements and deal with them as prudently as a building project if you want the results you expect.

Some dentists just want to have a basic presence online; other dentists want to challenge or overtake the competition. When they consider the artistic design they want to see in their dental Internet site, some are not too worried about it and others demand nothing less than award winning beauty and class.

Which type of dental website is the best form of dental marketing? Which dentists need exceptional website design? Who should pay more for their dental website? When should design take precedence over content? Is a Flash animation Internet site better than a SEO (search engine optimization) content rich website?

Let’s look at each type of web site design so you can make a more informed decision. There are at least 6 categories of dental website design and price ranges you might find in an Internet search:

1) Business Card Dental Websites : price range is $0 to $500*

2) Informational Internet Dental Sites: $500 to $2,500*

3) Image Builder Dental Websites: $2,000-$5,000*

4) Comprehensive Dental Internet Sites: $5,000 to $10,000*

5) Leadership Dental Web sites: $5,000 to $15,000*

6) Search Engine Optimized or SEO Dental Internet sites: $3,000 to $20,000*

Conclusion: You need a Dental Web site Design that Reflects Your Practice Image

For each design style, answers to these specific questions will be provided:

• What kind of dental website is this?

• Who needs a dental web site like this?

• What can it do?

• How is cost determined?

• What should you pay?

*These are just close proximity costs for all dental Internet marketing firms and depend on the website design qualifications discussed in this dental marketing article. Your brother’s friend’s cousin’s neighbor might be able to design a dental website for less.

1) Business Card Dental Websites: $0 to $500:

What kind of dental website is this?

There is very little design (usually) involved in this site. Often it is one page, the dental logo (if the dentist has one) and some mention of services with address, phone and email. The navigation and header bar might match the color of the dental logo, but artistic cohesiveness is minimal.

Who needs a dental web site like this?

This type of website is for dentists who know people are looking for them online, but are not very interested in growing their business or aren’t concerned about being found in general search engine searches (Google, MSN, or Yahoo). It can also be a good plan for the dentist that wants something now – they have printed up marketing materials with their dental web site address and are just not ready to do more. If you are just starting out – want to be online like everyone else – but are not ready to develop your “complete” dental image – this could be your destination. Cosmetic dentists focused on bringing in more cosmetic dentistry patients or increasing their large restorative smile makeovers clientele would not benefit from this type of site in most markets. The competition in cosmetic dentistry requires more than one or two pages of “evidence of value”. Family dentists who also want to do a few cosmetic cases each month would only want to use this as a short-term strategy.

What can it do?

It can provide a bridge to that day when the dentist is ready to more. For those who are looking for a basic presence for the long run, it will provide a base to direct their marketing and a way to hook up to various dental Internet directory services such as FindADentist.com or SuperPages.com so prospective dental patients can get more than an address and phone number.

How is cost determined?

The zero dollar cost can come from you creating the site yourself, a relative “who knows design”, or various “free” web site design sites. These “free” companies usually require some type of monthly “hosting” fee. The larger amount comes from a more sophisticated design and someone who will take more care in your design needs. The higher cost design means you hopefully get more than someone cramming your photo and dental logo into HTML code.

What should you pay?

If you’re a dentist in a small market or rural area or are not in need of tons of dental patients today, you might want to test out some of the lower cost options like your telephone or yellow pages company Internet directory. Dentists who want to do more soon or are in a highly competitive market should not create a “cheap” look that might damage their image for the long-term. Even if it’s a small, business-card-sized dental website, you might want to find a designer that knows how to create an effective transition image website. While I believe very few should go this way – if you want to be successful – there are good ways and bad ways to go about it. Choosing the platform for your dental Internet site can be thought of in terms of building a dental practice next to a Black and Decker outlet store versus a Day Spa. Which will reflect better on your dental brand?

2) Informational Dental Internet Sites: $500 to $2,500

What kind of dental website is this?

This type of design brings more “evidence of value” to the fore. There is some artistic and branding cohesiveness involved in this type of dental Internet site design. However, mostly it is about providing information on the dentist, the dental practice and its dental services. There are usually a few more photos than a biz card site and you might have some custom “artistic choices”. This type of dental website is often pleasant to look at, just not beautiful or breathtaking. It might be 3 to 15 pages in size (or bigger) depending on what route you take. The design is mostly a navigation bar on the left and header bar on top and text/photos to the right. Your dental logo colors might be part of the design if it’s not a “restricted” stock Internet site.

Who needs a dental web site like this?

This type of Internet site better serves dentists who want to provide a context for the value of their dental services beyond the “grocery list” of services group. A cosmetic dentist needs to explain why the dental consumer should want this type of service and why they are the right choice for cosmetic dentistry. Family dentists and orthodontists need to create a story to prove the value of their services too: if there are ten competitors in the community, you don’t want to be the last choice. An informational site works good as a “starter site” especially if you just want to test the waters. If you are in a highly competitive retail market or segment of the dental arena like extreme makeovers, than this design probably won’t give you the boost you want. Posting all your smile makeovers (before and after photos) will help: but informational design, which might include some blended branding elements, does not usually have the Wow factor many extreme makeover type candidates will expect.

What can it do?

This dental web site design will “tell” people you know what you are doing. It might not be a design that Wows, but it can provide information that is very helpful in the decision making process: before and after photos, testimonials, and an explanation of what cosmetic dentistry, orthodontics, or other services can do for their lives, and the dentist’s expertise, etc. Whereas a business card Internet site will verify that you exist, an informational dental website will actually start creating more patients.

How is cost determined?

This kind of website design takes more thought, more planning, copywriting and much more programming than a one or two page business card site. Should you have 15 links on your home page that link to every page that can overwhelm the visitor or 5 links that narrow down their navigation choices to better define your brand? Which should be more prominently featured: the dental practice’s look and feel, the dentist or that you are a Sedation dentist? These decisions can slow the process (and make for a better product) but this requires some amount of time, which is money. Usually you will get a page limit (5 or 10 page website), and then a per web page charge. Some web design firms charge upfront for copywriting or it is extra. You might get a per photo limit. All these factors control the price and as you can probably tell, the price can keep going up.

What should you pay?

Some dentists are not very interested in design artistry or advancing their “visual brand”, but want their ideas and the value of their services and dental expertise to be explained effectively: those dentists will benefit from this type of website design structure. A web site design firm that does all kinds of sites and has thousands of clients might do it for less than a grand, but a dental marketing firm can add the type of insight that puts your site in a league all by itself. It all depends on your perspective of value: something you probably discuss with your patients everyday. While you could develop a dental website like this on your own or with a “bulk” web design group (for “near zero” dollars), it is not as easy as it seems to create an effective dental Internet site. When you are ready to take the leap, make sure you know what you’re getting. Going too shallow on price can mean you go without some specialization you really need: like the contractor that has never built a dental practice and forgets to put plumbing in the operatory.

3) Image Builder Dental Web sites: $2,000-$5000

What kind of dental website is this?

This type of website design provides a level of image, brand and identity development that many dentists believe is necessary to encourage people to accept comprehensive dental treatment and/or a cosmetic smile makeover. Since the consumer makes choices based on many stimuli, it is important to try and cover all the bases. You can tell them till you are blue in the face about the effects of bad hygiene on your informational web site, but often it is a visual stimulus that gets them to stop and consider your plea. Creating a dental Internet site that incorporates an above average visual theme (best when designed with your dental logo as a theme element) encourages the visually inspired consumer to take another look at your evidence and read more thoroughly about your value.

Who needs a dental web site like this?

About one in 10 dentists would need to move to this level. If you want to standout from the crowd, this web site design style offers the capability to do it. A good informational site is like a very functional dental practice that offers nice but basic amenities with efficient service. A good image dental website is a facility where fresh flowers greet you at the front desk and a coral aquarium comforts you in the reception area. Dental patients who have only been to the “functional one” will think it is just what a dental practice (or website) should be. But if they are ever exposed to the comforting practice (or image web site) it will be difficult to make them believers in “functional” again. If you believe there is no competition for patients in your area, you probably don’t need an image website. However, if you want to capture the dental consumer who wants a higher level of care, then an image dental website can make the difference for many people. Remember you may not be visually inspired, but many of your target dental patients will be.

What can it do?

This type of dental website design provides many consumers with a positive and powerful link to your personality (or the personality of your practice) that words and even pictures (before and after photos, beautiful models or photos of your dental office) cannot. Imagine a beautiful dental practice with a national expert dentist, and a superior dental team, all the latest technology and every spa amenity built five miles down a scenic yet dusty, dirt road. While you got the land cheap and the county promises they will pave it in the near future, visitors will be infrequent. There are many dental Internet sites built like this: without a dental brand that has been paved properly. You could be the top website on the top five search engines and never get someone to go deeper than your home page. In many sites there might be a blob of text here or a photo there, but nothing guiding their visual journey. A good image website will bring in dental patients that want exactly what you’re offering: nothing more, nothing less. It depicts your level of customer service, smile design, and comfort. It encourages “dental patients” to become “smile enthusiasts”.

How is cost determined?

When creating a website like this, designers and writers want to know a lot about you. They want to understand where the design should go and not go. Should a photo of a beautiful model be employed within the design? What design elements of your dental logo can be accented or enhanced to create a seamless web design? Do you have a lot of before and after photos or is there some aspect of your expertise that can be highlighted (smile makeovers, neuromuscular dentistry, dental implants, etc.)? There is more artistic work required. An informational or starter website has a navigational bar on the left and a header bar on the top. An image site creates a seamless design from top to bottom and from side to side. Bluntly, there is more for you to critique so the designer needs to do more careful work and research so the final design is completed in a respectable amount of time. Throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks is not a good plan.

What should you pay?

No one should pay more than is necessary, but it mostly comes down to what kind of “image” design you like and who can produce it. It might be the guy down the street, it could be a big corporate website design group and for many dentists it is a firm specializing in dental marketing that knows what patients want. Should you pay more for a Van Gogh or for a Picasso? If you want to be the TOP dental Internet site in the state, you pay more than the dentist who just wants to feel good when he looks at his website and wants his new patients to feel good when they see it.

4) Comprehensive Dental Internet Websites: $5,000 to $10,000

What kind of dental website is this?

This Web site is basically a larger version of an informational or an image website. It just holds more information and has more visuals (photos, etc.) than its cousins. It has anywhere from 20 to 100 or more pages and probably is written by a dental copywriter. It might have Flash animation to spice up its look and boost the value of some of its information presentations.

Who needs a dental web site like this?

About 1 in 50 dentists could utilize a dental Internet site like this. Dentists with a large library of before and after smile makeover photos, an extensive history of dental CE, teaching, speaking or lecturing, and/or a good background noted in several dental public relations efforts can best use this type of site. No one is going to read or look at everything presented on a site like this, but it provides enough evidence to prove any expertise claims you might be promoting. You pick the “real” dental expert: 1) “Hi, I am really, really, really good at what I do: now look at my 5 page website. 2) “Hello, I have learned from the best, but you should review my qualifications first: take a look at my comprehensive website filled with all kinds of proof.”

What can it do?

This dental website design level will encourage, enlighten, inspire, transform, and cajole. Encourage belief in your values. Enlighten consumers about what is possible now. Inspire them to take action to make their lives better. Transform them from dental insurance reliant to cosmetic dentistry aware. Finally: Cajole them to call you ASAP.

How is cost determined?

Dental websites like this are not very common. The big website behemoths are really not ready to create this site for you: cookie cutter is much more profitable for them. This is really where custom work starts. Even doing an image website can be “stock” because it is a home page and a few other pages. Many design websites that seem to promote custom design are just changing colors, photos, reversing design elements, etc. and are not actually starting from scratch. However, once you get to this level – over 15 or 20 pages, the dental web designer needs to be intimately involved with your concept. You don’t want someone else’s design for this type of site. You also don’t want 50 links on your home page to every page on your site – unless you want to confuse visitors about what your dental brand is. You determine what the five or so most important parts of your brand are and then everything else branches off from there. Think of comprehensive dental website development process as you would creating a new dental practice. What would happen if you asked the contractor who put in your foundation to furnish your office? Even I could furnish a dental office! But some things that “we all can do” should be left to someone who has the actual talent and experience. Of course, if you want me to furnish your dental office, my cousin loves to go to garage sales and I’m sure he could find you something NICE.

What should you pay?

I figure this type of dental website should generate “at least” enough to pay for itself in the first six months to a year. Therefore, I would not pay more than what you make off of one good smile makeover case or three or four 6 or 8-unit cases. This is for the initial Internet site design phase not additional updates or maintenance. Family dentists, Pediatric dentists, orthodontists and other specialists (if a web site like this needed in their market) the cost should reflect the value of 3 new patients every month to one every other month: depending on your per patient profits. Also figure the website will have a shelf life of 5 years: give or take one year, depending on how competitive your retail area is. Of course, many dentists will not be satisfied with these results, but this gives you a basis for making some ROI decisions. Depending on your retail area some Internet dental marketing will be required to encourage better ROI site activity.

5) Leadership Dental Web Sites: $7,500 to $15,000

What kind of dental website is this?

This Leadership website has many amenities besides a news page to announce the latest happenings at the dental practice and a complete image blend. It can have a Flash animation dental logo presentation, Flash smile shows, a large before and after smile makeover library, public relations elements and features, educational presentations (Flash), lecture schedule, etc. It might be a Flash website with links to HTML pages. The size is usually over 25 pages – especially if it is not a Flash site. It should be a dental website design award winner.

Who needs a dental web site like this?

About 1 in 200 dentists or fewer require this level of web site design. You don’t have to be a lecturing dentist or a celebrity dentist to go this route. It might be that your retail market is very competitive and you want to stand out from the crowd. You might be producing the income you want, but see the need to head off the competition. The market can change quickly and many dentists recognize today’s method might not be tomorrow’s success. If you are not too concerned about being first on the search engines and just want to Wow and inform, than a website designed completely in Flash animation could be advantageous in developing a leadership position.

What can it do?

This dental Internet site design can enhance every element of your dental brand so you gain and/or hold a high level marketing position. It should create a different level of patient: more informed and more excited about the value of restorative, esthetic or cosmetic dentistry.

How is cost determined?

Much of the cost of this dental website design is determined by time (the size and complexity) and the custom elements you want. There are stock Flash designs and “half-custom” designs, which are on the low end of the spectrum. Then there are from scratch custom dental marketing elements that will be on the higher end. If you write it yourself, you will save money on dental copywriting.

What should you pay?

It really depends on how much time you want to put into it. If you want great custom design with very good copywriting, employ a firm that specializes in dental marketing design and writing. If you want your site to kind of look like someone else’s and read like it too than a “half custom” firm will do just fine. However, sometimes you can get custom work for the same price as “half custom”. Watch out: there some big dental agencies that have so much overhead that they need to charge as much for “not really custom work” as smaller design groups do for custom.

6) Search Engine Optimized or SEO Dental Internet Sites: $3,000 to $20,000

What kind of dental website is this?

This type of website is liked by search engines: Google.com, MSN.com, Yahoo.com, etc. Type in a term like cosmetic dentistry, neuromuscular dentistry or cosmetic dentist or just plain dentist and the state and/or city you live in and you will see why many dentists want this type of website optimization. It is a text rich website: Flash sites need not apply at least most of them. You can make a Flash dental website more friendly to search engines but never as good as a non-Flash site. (A complementary HTML Internet site is one way to increase your Flash site’s exposure to search engines.) However, you can have Flash animation elements and still get great search engine receptivity. It probably should be at least 20 pages and continue to grow and change each quarter if not each month. It should have an updatable page where you can input news regularly about your dental practice. This design can be an image or informational website and can have a lot of images (before and after photos and practice photos). To create a search engine friendly site requires special coding and copywriting enriched with dental SEO friendly terms.

Who needs a dental web site like this?

This really depends on whether you want to be near or on the top of search engine searches. This is a marketing strategy more than a design per se. It is not a one-time deal: it requires constant changes and monitoring of the search engine rules. Because they regularly change their search algorithms you might be on top on day and down or out the next. It works best for those in areas where few sites are optimized. Say you have a cosmetic dental practice in Springfield, Illinois and no other dentist is marketing cosmetic dentistry. Then a site focused on this topic could have a good chance of being ranked number one. However, if you are in Los Angeles, CA, your chances are much lower of getting a high ranking unless you are focused on a narrower concept such as neuromuscular dentistry.

What can it do?

It can increase the number of phone calls and emails especially in the first few weeks of a high ranking such as one, two or three. This lets you know your website is actually working for you. After that it should keep creating leads for you at a good pace until another dentist takes over your spot. Unfortunately, for some areas it might take many tweaks of your dental Internet site design and SEO content before anything occurs. One argument against reliance on search engine optimization is that you don’t really create new converts you are just waiting for the current ones to locate your dental website. Proactive, external dental Internet advertising such as magazines, direct mail or newspaper presents new ideas like smile makeovers to new people. Meaning if you are not willing to do both in some consistent form, you might only have limited success. (SEO is just one-way to get noticed on search engines: search engine advertising is another way: with Google or Overture, which is MSN, Yahoo and others.)

How is cost determined?

The cost of a SEO dental web site design is determined by the number of pages and images you need optimized. There is often an initial fee to do the basic changes along with the per web page charge and an ongoing fee to keep you near or on the top of the search engines you want to be on top of. Once again there are SEO firms that specialize in search engine optimization for all kinds of websites and there are dental marketing firms specializing in dentist web sites who have SEO expertise. Which is best for you? Maybe an analogy using dental practice construction might help: Imagine getting the most productive, highest profile contractor in the state to develop your dental practice versus getting a contractor who has developed five really nice practices in your area to design it. One might have a deeper background in contracting, but which one will be more likely to anticipate all of your needs from a dental perspective?

What should you pay?

If it is an image website design with Flash animation and has many pages, you will be paying on the high end. If you choose an SEO group – not a dental marketer – you might pay more for optimization but less for image design, which they won’t probably do very well. You can get good SEO coding and SEO rich content (copywriting) and keep the page numbers down under 15 and get a less expensive site. However, a smaller Internet site probably would not battle the behemoth dental competitor, but it might work in a smaller and/or less competitive retail community. If you are cranking in 1.5 million dollars per year with one dentist and want to keep that pace in this changing environment – a $20,000 SEO image website probably makes sense. Few doctors will get the number one spot so the cost can vary greatly to get near or on top. Expect to pay more the tougher your dentistry market is and if you really want the top spot. Google.com has a good primer on SEO and pay per click. Here is a place to start: Google SEO reference page.

CONCLUSION: You Need a Dental Website Design that Reflects Your Practice Image

When a dental marketing firm designs dental logos, brochures and presentation folders, they don’t design them to favor the image of a family and pediatric dental practice when the client runs a cosmetic dentistry and spa dental practice. You also need to make sure your website does not stray from your image. Therefore, if you have just purchased an older dental practice and have one year of experience, a leadership web site would be a stretch. Conversely, if you have a dental CV a mile long and/or dozens of before and after smile photos, a business card web site shoots your potential in the foot.

From a cost perspective, never pay more or less than you have the potential to garner from the dental Internet marketing generated. If you’re serving a middle class clientele that will focus mostly on what their dental insurance pays for, a Lexus dental website would not make sense. Then again, dentists who want people to promote their extreme makeover expertise should not drive up in a used Ford Taurus. Of course, you could create a web façade that makes you seem more than you are. But once the patient walks into your dental practice, this façade of a website can cause significant consumer confusion, which means they are a lot less likely to commit to your treatment plan.

Your dental practice image and the web image should correspond to create true brand cohesion to build your dental practice long-term. Patients will recognize inaccuracies. Remember, referrals are still important. For example, if you are in an older dental practice and are not going to build or significantly remodel in the next two or three years, your web site, and the rest of your image, should reflect much of this reality.

There are patients for every type of dental image: from both sides of the fee spectrum. For example, a “low cost looking” dental web site (done well) can attract even high-paying customers because they perceive you as taking care of business first and worrying about your image second. Not “wasting” your money on “frivolous” extras. Of course, another spectrum sees this as cheap and lacking the comforts they require. Therefore, knowing who you really are (and/or want to be) helps you decide which level and type of dental website is best for your practice.

Dental marketing firms are no different. There are about 200,000 dentists in the US and Canada: one in 400 will want and benefit from the services of my dental Internet marketing company over the next 10 years. They will see and believe something positive about me that others do not. If they believe something about me, or my marketing company, after reviewing my website and that turns out not to be “true”, I will not gain a client or the relationship will be very short.

They might be wrong – but my dental marketing website needs to speak correctly to the type of client I want or I gain few clients. That’s because my website is me, and my company, to a large extent. You will need to think of your dental Internet site in the same way.

Finally, when choosing a dental Internet site developer, consider three things:

1) Have a “buyer beware” attitude. “Free” might not be free. No obligation might include some obligations. Etc.

2) Do some cost versus benefit competitor research. Every dental marketing firm comes at it from a different direction. Cheaper might mean less benefit and higher cost might mean they have too much overhead not better products.

3) Call me old fashioned, but I still believe in people… Don’t let the “Internet” be the final arbiter of your decision: make sure you feel comfortable with your choice including the person you are directly working with. They should get to know you beyond your payment method and the colors you like. A dental website is a major part of your image and Internet site building software alone can’t flesh that out.

Good Luck. I hope this helps in your decision.

Sincerely, Dick Chwalek

Dick Chwalek
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/dental-website-design-what-is-best-for-my-practice-201085.html

Technorati Tags: 3f, Artistic Design, Dental Facility, Dental Internet, Dental Marketing, Dental Practices, Dental Web Site Design, Dental Website Design, Dental Websites, Design Style, Flash Animation, Image Builder, Internet Search, Internet Site, Practice Image, Precedence, Price Ranges, Search Engine Optimization, Seo Search Engine Optimization, Web Site Design

Website Development is one of our core businesses. We at FIN Infocom provide quality Web Development Services which assure our customers utmost satisfaction. We adopt state-of-the-art technologies and, thus, bring out best quality products to our customers. As part of that, we take great pains to understand our customers’ business needs, analyze their complex problems, develop a strategic plan for the different layers of their business, and create a refined website design that suites their needs. Our customer-based approach helps us serve our customers best because we look at each customer as a separate entity and not as a bunch of customers and understand his unique needs. Then, we work with him like his partner and, thus, we get the best results for both the customer and ourselves.

This holistic approach of ours helps maintain consistency in website design and enhance its functionality time and again. Our knowledge and experience of combining Graphic design and Web Development technologies separate us from many of the run-of-the-mill web designing companies. This empowers us to give the website we create for our customer a distinctive look. Our experience of serving our customers to their utmost satisfaction has made us bulge in confidence vis-à-vis our approach and look forward to serving our new customers as well with the same spirit.

We as a Web Development Company spread our services to incorporate various web-related functions. Our Web Development Services include designing new websites, improving the existing websites, maintaining content for the websites, developing search engine optimization articles, etc…. Besides, our services are extended to providing web hosting to our customers at relatively less cost and high productivity. FIN Infocom’s web hosting services ensure better quality, and are user-friendly and cost-effective products.

Apart from Web Development, we provide customer support services to our customers whereby they can enhance their productivity and customer satisfaction. Our knowledgebase system enables our clients to give their customers easy access to the information they require so that their customers need not worry about where and how to obtain product-related information. In addition, it will also help our clients to cut down their operational costs as it reduces their necessity to answer more queries and spend more time training their new employees. Thus, we turn our customer’s vision of serving their customers with greater satisfaction and with high returns into reality.

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Uday kalangi
http://www.articlesbase.com/web-design-articles/fin-infocom-it-services-web-services-outsourcing-software-database-web-designing-and-development-services-683184.html

Technorati Tags: Art Technologies, Best Quality Products, Bulge, Consistency, Core Businesses, Database Web, Graphic Design, Holistic Approach, Infocom, Mill Web, Quality Web Development, Search Engine Optimization, Software Database, State Of The Art, Strategic Plan, Utmost Satisfaction, Web Development Company, Web Development Services, Web Development Technologies, Web Hosting Services