WebDevoMan – Web Development blog

The topics so far have been about simple things for everyone and seeing that we have talked about seo and promotion I figured we should talk about starting out.

#1 – Building or Obtaining a site

So, you are looking to get your feet wet on the web with your own site! It is easier than you think! I would suggest going to a site that sells websites and look for something inexpensive you can handle such as an imagehosting site, a blog or even a directory. The point is to find something you can use to learn….

If you have a bit of know how you can put together your own site using Frontpage or Dreamweaver… if it is your first time though I would suggest just buying a site that is ready to go…

#2 – Hosting

Find a reasonable host such as www.novahosting.com or http://vethost.com/ and have your new host help you move the site to your server. You will have to go to the site where your domain is registered and point your dns(domain name servers) at your new site. Hosting should cost you barely anything for a single small site.

#3 – What now?

You have a new site and it is running smoothly on the internet. What now? Well, now you practice and play and best of all you learn!!! Submit your site to search engines and directories and social bookmarking sites and see what happens. Start reading about html and seo and mess around. Throw some ads up on the site and see what works and what doesn’t……

If you would like some help getting started feel free to post here anytime. I am always happy to help.

Stay Strong and Live Long…

WebDevoMan!

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If you read yesterday’s entry you noticed that the theme was based on simplicity. Today’s topic is going to be focused likewise. I will bring up some very basic seo related tips that can be done very easily with only basic experience. These tips are in no specific order and it doesn’t matter which order you use. As always, please feel free to correct me if needed and don’t hesitate to add additional information.

#1 – Title, Keywords, Description-Let’s start by talking about your site’s title and meta tags. Meta tags are used for a wide variety of things such as redirection. I am only talking about metatags in relation to seo. Your title is a very easy thing to change and I believe it is more important then many developers think. Basically a good title consists of some decent descriptive keywords. Remember, your title is your websites branding. It is what everyone will see when they bookmark your page and it will be at the top of your search engine listings. A good example of a title <title>Joe’s Webdesign and SEO joes.com</title>– Developers differ on this but it is my opinion that any characters in your title or description are no good.

So you have a decent title now. Next you have to have keywords and a description. Metatags are really not that important anymore like they used to be. Having good, relevant, keyword laden content is much better but I still think that taking a few minutes to write some decent keywords and descriptions is well worth it.

 It is very simple really. Your description should be no longer than 35 words.. I believe 15 or 20 is good. Write a description describing your site in detail using keywords. For keywords, use a comma to seperate and use 15 to 20 and no more than 35 words that represent your site. There are many, many tools out there to help with this…

Another important tip regarding metatags is to try and have individual tags for each page. Many sites will use the same tags all through the site. It is much better to describe each page seperatly…

#2 – Robots.txt  This is one of those very easy things that is often overlooked. I am going to only give you the basics here to get everyone started and I will provide a sample. 

Supposedly when a search engine spider or bot comes accross a website, the robots.txt file is the very first file they look for. This file blocks them from accessing what ever you put there.  Every site is different so I cannot tell you what you should block but what needs to be indexed into a search engine and what does not? Put down the directories that you do not want indexed. This will keep the spiders focused. You can also use the robots.txt to block certain bots from entering your site.

This is a basic robots file..

User-agent: * 
Disallow: /news?output=xhtml&
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /groups
Disallow: /images
Disallow: /catalogs
Disallow: /catalogues
Disallow: /news
Disallow: /nwshp
Disallow: /?
Disallow: /addurl/image?
Disallow: /pagead/
Disallow: /relpage/
Disallow: /relcontent
Disallow: /sorry/
Disallow: /imgres
Disallow: /keyword/
Disallow: /u/
Disallow: /univ/

#3 – Sitemaps – There are many helpful sites that have tools to tell you if your sitemap is configured correctly..

Your Google Adsense code should be here, but you forgot to edit the plugins/adsense.php file and replace the code there with your own.

 There are also many sites and tools to help you create a sitemap.  I use http://gsitecrawler.com/ I also use google webmaster tools and yahoo to check things out. Simple, do a bit of research on sitemaps and make sure your sites have them. I am not talking about a sitemap to help your members find a page on your site. I am talking about your site being formatted in simple html or text. Search engines work better with simple html and text and that is really the whole reason for doing a sitemap..

#4 – Content – I belive content is the single most important aspect of any site regarding seo. Make sure you have decent content where ever you can. If you have a forum make sure you add posts that are content packed and add articles and rss feeds. Content is vital to your site getting into the search engines…

I have mentioned some really basic topics here so far. Remember the idea of this blog. Simple, Simple, Simple. These are some things everyone can do fairly easily and quickly and if you need help feel free to visit our forums and ask.

There are many more simple and easy things that can be done too. Here is an easy tip. make sure all of your images have alt”description”– Just put a keyword or two describing the image in the “”. 

Be sure to register with google and get webmaster tools and analytics and register with yahoo and use thier tools also.

I am going to cut this short right now but I will be adding onto this thread as time permits. Please feel free to participate and add some tips. Keep them simple though. We will be discussing more complex procedures in the near future..

Thanks

webdevoman…

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Today I am going to just share some simple, basic promotion tips that can be benificial for everyone. Most of these promotion tips are free and the tips that are not free are very reasonable.. Please don’t hesitate to add more tips to the list if you have some easy tips or information to share…

• The first think I am going to talk about is social bookmarking. It seems to be all the rage today and that is actually a good thing for us website owners! There are not many easier ways to promote a website! There are many, many of these sites available and I am only going to mention a few for now but I believe almost all of these sites can be benificial in some way…

The basics of getting your site listed into a social bookmarking site could not be easier. Just register! I use and recomend a toolbar called web2.0. I use this toolbar because it has a list of a ton of these sites linked in a dropdown menu. Instead of having to find the sites they are all right there. I have everything else disabled in the toolbar but the list.

Now that you know where the sites are, visit them and register and start submitting your links. Make sure you use titles with descriptive keywords and write down a decent description. Make sure to read my next blog entry because it will relate to simple seo and it will cover meta tags etc. Once you submit your site make sure to rate it and resubmit every few days. Some sites are different than others.

Once you have your links listed into the sites you prefer it is now time to share the links with your friends. The more people that submit your sites, vote for and rate your site, the better your sites will do! It could not be simpler than that and you will not believe the results. I have only done a bit of research on follow up stats for social bookmarking site submission but I have found that it helps get sites and pages indexed into the major search engines. It can also generate a bit of traffic.

One site I want to bring up seperatly that can be a major help is Digg.com and related sites. This is a bit diffrent than just submitting a link but still very easy and very benificial for sure. As with the others you need an account first. Click Here to register!Next there are a couple different ways to submit. You can either write a short article about your site or you can find something on your site and link to it. Be sure to write a description… As with the other sites it helps to get others to rate your submission and make thier own submissions from your site too. Here is a sample submission I did for one of my sites. Register, follow this link to my article and click “Digg It” to rate it.

The final suggestion I want to make regarding social bookmarking sites is to make it easy for others to add your sites and links. If you visit this link you will see the button images at the bottom of the thread. These make it easy for members to submit the links.

• The next topic is also very simple. Submitting your sites to directories, search engines, topsite lists and other sites will help add traffic to your site but can also increase your site’s paga rank(pr). Many sites are free and some require a reciprical. The key is to try and find sites that have related content and keyword if you can. Either way it helps to list your link in as many reputable directories as you can. Setting aside some space in the footer of your site for recipricals is a good idea. Find directories and topsites with decent pr if you can and related content helps..

These days it is really not as important as it used to be to have your site submitted to the search engines because if you do things right they end up there anyhow usually. I still believe it is a good idea and it doesn’t hurt to submit your site. At the very least it gets your title and description in plus I believe it helps make things faster as well. The link below for free submission is an easy way to do it..

Here is a short list of a few sites that are fairly new. Growing directories means getting in while prices are low!

www.afreeurl.info Great Directory with excellent exposure and very cheap prices!

www.forum3000.com Forums Directory

www.seolater.com Free SEO Tools and search engine submission to many of the top engines.

• We have covered the basics of social bookmarking sites, directory and search engine submission so what else is there that is free and simple and will help my website? The final topics are just as easy and free as the others. Forum involvement, article submissions, blog participation and link exchange are excellent ways to promote. It is only a few months old and doing very well already!

1. Forum Involvement I would never reccomend that anyone spams forums. The best way to let forums help your site grow is to find some forums that can help you learn about your content. Remember, the key to promotion is always using sites that contain related keywords and content.  Add your site link in your signature if the forum allows it and just be a part of the community. A forum signature on a decent forum can have major impact on your sites growth.
2. Article Submissions Write articles with content related to your site and submit them to sites that have articles. There are too many for me to list here so a simple search will do the trick. A well written article with a few well placed links to your site can work wonders.
3. Blog Participation Of course the best way to use a blog for promotion is to create one, write some decent blogs and have it contain a few links. There are many free blog scripts available but in order to use  is for promotion you will have to have a domain name and host the site yourself. The alternative is to participate in some popular blogs and have a signature containing your link. There are many blogs that allow this. I never endorse spamming of any kind so when I say participation I mean exactly that. If you write a decent comment or reply in a blog that contains your signature/link you will have a much better chance of getting indexed then if you write a 2 word post just to get your link displayed…

There are many, many other ways to promote your website that we have not discussed here. Just have an open mind and be imaginative. You would be surprised at the things you can do to get your site out there. That is really what promotion is…getting your site out there! I didn’t list the other sites out there that can help as long as you participate. Sites like myspace.com, Zoints can get you some traffic for sure. Create a decent profile and make friends!

That is all for now folks. Please share any suggestions you might have for simple website promotion!  look for the next entry coming soon on simple seo for everyone…

Thanks all!

WebDevoMan!

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