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You know the importance of your business having a presence on the internet. You may have heard or read about the buzz surrounding the new local search initiatives on the part of Google and other major search engines. Maybe you already know that 73% of all searches are somehow related to local searches and that 51% of people who search for product information characterize themselves as shop online purchase offline?

There’s a huge hungry crowd of customers out there. But you just don’t have the time or resources to put up an efficient, effective website. You’re too busy doing what you do best, running your business.

Maybe you’ve done a few things like signing up with some directories. Maybe your industry has a directory service as well. You get your name and contact info out there along with millions of others. But have you ever received a lead or a sale from those efforts? Would you even know if you did?

The Challenge

Marketing is a vital part of any business. You can have the best bicycle shop, or be the best tax accountant in town but if nobody knows you exist it just doesn’t matter does it? That’s why you spend money on the yellow pages and local advertising.

But websites are different in your mind aren’t they. With the yellow pages you call your account representative, work out an ad, pay the bill and it’s done. You don’t need special skills. But a website? A website takes technical skills and knowledge of search engine optimization so it can be found. Specifically local search engine optimization so it can be found by local people who are potential customers or clients.

You simply don’t have the time for that which means you’d have to pay big bucks to outsource the job right?

The Solution

Actually the answer to that question is not necessarily? There is a remarkably functional, flexible and user friendly free website software called WordPress. It is an open source platform available to everyone and millions have used it for their blogs and small businesses. The only costs associated with it are the purchase of a domain name ($10) and a hosting service ($10 a month).

WordPress websites are loved by Google because they are structured in a way that makes it easy for the Google spiders to crawl. It’s loaded with automatic features that even let the search engines know immediately when you update the site with new content.

But the design and the structure of a blog is not ideal for either the professional look of your business or, more importantly, local search.

There is a solution though that is effective both in terms of ranking in the search engines and low maintenance. The SmallBiz WordPress Theme provides a professional business theme and design that can quickly get you in front of local customers and do it with a minimum amount of time required by you. You can have an effective presence on the web without digging into the time you need to run the business. That of course does not count the time you spend responding to customer requests that are generated by the site.

If you want to take advantage of the enormous marketing power of local search, visit check it out today and at least investigate the possibilities of a search optimized website for your business.

(Please note: The wordpress here refers to ” wordpress.com’ not the themes that are used to create websites.)

The two main hosted blog types Blogger and WordPress – you’ll find that whenever a discussion about where its best to host your blog, if you’re not hosting it yourself, that these two are rated the highest.

So which of the two services is better?

Ultimately, both services will offer you a strong and solid base to blog from, but there are a couple of distinct differences between Blogger and WordPress.

WordPress (platform)

WordPress hosted services are not designed to be used for commercial purposes – nevertheless, most people do.  You get a choice of themes (and without paying, you can’t design your own theme) and a choice of plugins.  You can ‘map’ your domain to the site, for a fee, giving you the appearance of  hosting it yourself.

WordPress hosted (at http://wordpress.com) is almost identical to hosting it yourself, other than the obvious ‘bonus’ of not actually needing to look after your install.  But its disadvantages include being at the mercy of a third party site, and needing to pay for additional ‘services’.  These still cost less than buying hosting and setting the blog up yourself.

Blogger

Blogger is owned by Google, and is designed around ease of use.  You can ‘ftp’ your blog onto your own site, or host at a  domain (yourblogname.blogspot.com) of your choice.  Blogger doesn’t use plugins, but does let you use your own theme, within certain limits.

A huge community has been built around Blogger, but unlike WordPress.com they allow commercial based blogs as well as non commercial, which means they are more prone to spam.

In conclusion.  If you really can’t host your own blog at your own site, play with both WordPress and Blogger, because ultimately, the main difference will be between which one your more comfortable with.  And that’s the one you should use.

http://whatkatieate.blogspot.com.au/  is a very successful blogger site.

Site Speed

Keep your design simple but professional!  Optimise your graphics and avoid unnecessary use of animation or audio files so those visitors can access your page within a reasonable amount of time.

Flash is a great technology but it has been over used. Websites need fast loading and above all must be search engine friendly.

Kiss principle – Keep it simple and stupid

Make simpler and cleaner design don’t let too many choices distract your visitor! Use consistent fonts and colours.

Web research shows that users start to feel overwhelmed when faced with lots of choices on a website.

Leads generation site focus on getting customers’ email and name, online shopping site display products into section so people can make the next move fast, or a take away shop will put the phone number at the very obvious position.

When have  too many pages within the site  then group them as a drop down menus.

Logic and organised navigation

Nothing is more frustrating than going to a website and you cannot find what you want.

• Make things easy for your visitors to find and easy to navigate.
• Have the titles be descriptive
• Organise information into blocks or by thumbnails
• Think in terms of what your visitor will be looking for
• Use the terms that the customers use

Establish creditability- ways to earn trust:

Include details of your business no matter you are brick and mortar or internet based

• List out your physical address
• Phone number/Fax numbers
• Email addresses
• Hours of operation
• Key contacts
• Social media
• Include verifiable testimonials from previous customers (video is best)
• Offer 100% satisfaction guarantee / Money back guarantee
• Authority sites endorsement
• Ensure visitors that you will protect their privacy

Use mobile ready design (or mobile friendly website)

How often do you check emails and websites on your phone? You might use it to:

• Get directions
• Search for information
• Shop online or pay bill
• Find restaurants or local services
• Play games during waiting for train or bus
• Social media etc.

Wireless technology has changed internet usage forever; People are relying on mobile devices more than ever.

Having a mobile optimised Website will increase the number of people able to access your information or service, improve your search engine rankings, also ensure your customers have a good user experience browsing your site on Mobile Phones, as opposed to ‘standard’ websites and which will definitely save you a loss of business and increase sales.

Domain Name Registration

The place I go to get all of my domain names is 1and1.com. I also use Namecheap and Godaddy.
At 1and1 you can purchase domains for as low as $4.99 for .com 1^st year registration from 1and1, you also get free privacy registration which other providers will charge you for extra dollars.

Keyword Research tools

Either using your personal or company name or a keyword for your domain, Domain Samurai is a great tool to help you choose the best domain….

• Market Samurai: The best tool for keyword market research, they have a free trial here.
• Google Adwords Tool: A Free tool that is part of the Google adwords system, but could be used to find out which keywords are in demand on the Internet…

Website and Blog Hosting

For hosting I use HostGator. Their customer service is THE BEST in the industry!

• Hostgator hosting: If you are looking specifically for wordpress blog hosting, I would suggest using Hostgator WP hosting as they allow unlimited hosting and one click wordpress install.
• iPage Hosting They also provide great support and Blog Hosting, also another good provider BlueHost

 Blogging Platforms – WordPress Themes and Templates

Except for a few sales pages that I’ve created, aLL of my websites were built using WordPress. Some wordpress theme also support sales page now such as Socrates wordpress theme.

WordPress is a free, open source tool that you can use to create a variety of websites. It’s highly customizable and most online marketers use it because it’s great for getting organic SEO. WordPress: By far the best blogging platform ever created, you also need WordPress Plugins: WordPress has this unique capability of improving its functionality and features with free plugins, you could find the plugin directory here

Once you have your blog setup, your next worry would be on selecting and setting up a good theme for your blog..

Free themes I recommended:

• SkinPress: http://www.skinpress.com, this website theme is one of Skin Press Free themes

Premium Themes with Great support

• Elegant Theme
• Thesis Theme

Email Subscriptions & Marketing

I highly recommend that you make a small monthly investment and sign up with AWeber. You can get started for just $1.00 . Their service is extremely user friendly and they also provide you with access to templates lates that you can immediately begin to use. Aweber – internet’s most powerful email opt-in service and email marketing/broadcasting tool.

I also use TrafficWave auto responder Service which is only $17.95 per month …you can read the review here, they offer free 30 day trial..

Testing Results/Web Tracking

Google Analytics: Google’s free website tracking and analytical tool. It helps you keep up with the statistical information for the traffic and marketing for your website besides the Stats you can get from your hosting control panel. If you have WordPress, there’s several plugins that you can use to quickly add it to your website. And the only thing you need to sign up for Google Analytics is a GMail account which is also free too. Go here to sign up for your Google Analytics account: http://www.google.com/analytics.

Alexa – Alexa is also a free service and this one helps you keep up with your traffic and online rankings. Setting up your an account with Alexa is simple and easy. Go here to get your free Alexa account: http://Alexa.com

Product Distribution system

Clickbank: This is the best affiliate system to sell your own products on the web. They have one time setup fee for vendors and you can sign up a free affiliate account to promote other people’s products.

Best Affiliate Networks to sign up with..

The following are the best affiliate network programs I used:

Google Adsense

Amazon

Commission Junction

ShareASale

Neverblue

ValueClick Media

1) Keep your layout simple

Keep layout simple so mobile users can navigate easily on the small screen
Use clear and concise headlines
Keep scrolling simple
Reduce clutter
Make search easy

2) Prioritise content

Make it easy for customer on the go to find content that is most relevant to their needs and take quick action
Select valuable content for the users on the go
Provide an action –oriented experience
Make site navigation and load time fast

3) Use uniquely mobile features

Users can interact through touch, sound, sight and location on their mobile device, take advantage of this functionality to maximise user experience.
Offer users most relevant information based on their location
Leverage native phone functionality
If applicable, build a  mobile to store experience

4) Design for thumbs not mice

Remember most smart phone user will interacting with your web site through a touch screen
Design to prevent accidental clicks
Avoid hover over menus

5) Make it it easy to convert

Make it easy for users to convert on the go
Shorten the conversion process
Keep calls to action clear
Make account access easy
Click to call – connect with your customers.

“Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.”

What does this mean for your web page rankings? Unfortunately, Google doesn’t go into detail. As mentioned in Google’s statement, Google uses “characteristics of links” to figure out the topic of a linked page.We’ll take a look at the characteristics below. Then we’ll try to find out which element could have been changed.

Google link characteristics

Characteristic 1: the text of the link

The anchor text of a link has been the most important factor for a long time. If many sites link to a page with the anchor text “green apple” then the page will get high rankings for the term “green apple”.

Characteristic 2: the link power of the linking page

Links from pages with many inbound links have a higher influence than links from pages with few backlinks.

Characteristic 3: content and page proximity

If you sell shoes on your website then the link to your website will have a bigger impact if the text that surrounds the link to your page is about shoes. If the link to your website is surrounded by totally unrelated text then the link won’t count as much.

Characteristic 4: link attributes such as nofollow and title

Links that use the rel=nofollow attribute don’t affect the position of your web pages on Google. Some webmasters think that using title attributes can have a positive effect if these contain the targeted keywords. Others think that this could trigger a spam filters.

Characteristic 5: redirects and shortened URLs

Redirects and shortened URLs such as http://bit.ly/a4X4th are URLs that redirect to another URL. Should these URLs carry full weight when it comes to calculate the position of a website?

Characteristic 6: the age of a website

The older a link is, the more Google tends to trust that link. Links that remain for a long time seem to have a bigger impact than links that come and go.

Characteristic 7: the affiliation of the linking sites

Links from websites that have the same owner and links from affiliates may have a different influence on the rankings of a web page than links from websites that are not affiliated with the page.

Of course, we can only speculate what Google has changed. It is likely that Google now only considers the anchor text of a link if that link is placed in the right context (page and content proximity). Another possibility is that affiliate links (redirected or with page variables) will have less influence on the rankings of a page.

Article by Axandra SEO software

Google XML Sitemaps

Making your whole blog directory writable is NOT recommended anymore due to security reasons. Activate the plugin at the plugin administration page Open the plugin configuration page…

W3 Total Cache

Improve site performance and user experience via caching: browser, page, object, database, minify and content delivery network support.

Fast Secure Contact Form

This plugin allows a webmaster to easily create and add contact forms to WordPress. The contact form will let the user send emails to a site’s admin, and also send a meeting request to talk over phone or video. An administration panel is present, where the webmaster can create and preview unlimited forms.

WordPress SEO by Yoast

Improve your WordPress SEO: Write better content and have a fully optimized WordPress site using the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast.

S2 Membership

s2Member®, a powerful (free) membership plugin for WordPress®. Protect/secure members only content with roles/capabilities.

Add Link to Facebook

Automatically add links to published posts or pages to your Facebook wall, pages or groups and more

Sharebar adds a dynamic and fully customizable vertical box to the left of a blog post that contains links/buttons to popular social networking sites.

WordPress Website Security Protection. Website security protection against: XSS, RFI, CRLF, CSRF, Base64, Code Injection and SQL Injection hacking…

 Spam Free WordPress

Spam Free WordPress is a comment spam blocking plugin that blocks 100% of the automated spam with zero false positives. There is no other plugin, or service, available for WordPress that can claim 100% accuracy with zero false positives, not even Akismet. Manual spam is blocked with an IP address blocklist.