FIRST THINGS FIRST – you must have a strong design. Clean and simple is all you need. Bells and whistles can be effective, but when it comes to websites and especially your homepage — less is more. You do not want your design to be congested. You want to differentiate your website from your competitors, so you make a good first impression to prospective clients.  This initial introduction can be one of the keys to your success. An attractive design alone will not keep visitors on your website, however it will capture their attention long enough to take a look around.

Contemplate your user interface — the user interface is the foundation of a high-quality, fully-functional website. Remember you must take into consideration those who will visit. Who is your principle customer? Are they technological? It is imperative to create an image of your ideal visitor and have them in mind when preparing your design. Be sure you offer everything on your site they want to discover. Make sure your navigation is easy to find and consistent throughout your entire website. Make it obvious where the user should click in terms of your primary navigation, as well as for links within your content areas.

Keep it above the fold — on an easy to navigate website the crucial menu options, (in other words the links to the important areas of your site), must be placed above the fold. You must consider today’s larger computer monitors and increased screen resolutions when determining where the fold will be. Features to include above the fold are your logo (which you should link back to your homepage), as well as links to the main sections of your site. Here is a simple example – put Home | About Us| Products | Contact in an easy to find location at the top of your website.

Consistency is essential — be sure to place your primary and sub-navigational links in the same spot throughout the various pages of your website.

Include navigation in the footer – if you use/include images for your main navigation, it is vital to offer a duplicate set of navigation links in your footer. Even if you use text links at the top, the duplication is still helpful. The footer should link to additional information, things that should be easy to find but not necessarily something you want taking up space in the primary navigation area of your website.

Content — when writing the copy for your website, it is critical to provide helpful, knowledgeable information about your company, products, and services. It is important to sell your company, but do not oversell.  Your customers want to know how you can help them.

Make your about page relevant — people are curious. They want to know who is behind your company. Include information about how your background pertains to your own business and expertise. The about page can help establish a more personal connection. You want to create a connection and have your clients relate to you on another level, rather than just becoming a faceless organization.

Contact information — if you want to frustrate a prospective consumer then make it hard for them to find your contact information. If someone is interested in your services but cannot find a simple contact page with a quick way to get in touch and employ you, they will go to the competition. You want to provide more than one method of contact. You must include and email and contact form, as well as a phone number and (if possible) a mailing address. People will see a phone number and physical address as an added sign of stability.

Search feature — if you have a large website providing a search field is very helpful. If a potential customer cannot find something easily on your site, they are going to go find a site where the content is easily searchable.

Sign-up and subscribe – if it applies, you want to make it as easy as possible for people to sign up for updates. If you want to offer subscriptions to an email newsletter, for example, you need to setup and manage a mailing list. You want to be able to collect email addresses of potential prospects.

Sitemap — there are two kinds of sitemaps, one for humans and one for the search engines. A PHP sitemap meant for visitors to your website can be an invaluable tool for finding just what they are looking for. Creating a structured list of all the pages on your website — (which is what a site map is) — is practical. A good sitemap will list out every page on your site in an arranged format which will clearly show the relationship of pages in terms of primary pages with sub-pages, etc.

Separate design from content — with the separation of content from design, the search engines no longer have to wade through all of the excess code to find out if your content is relevant. With separate files the content can load quicker, which is always a positive for visitors.

There are numerous websites available that appear to be amazing and feature the most recent styles in design; however they frequently fall short of the true goal, which is perfectly combining design with functionality. In the end, any website project involving qualified designers and developers will pay for itself a million times in return.

*Did you know? Even though there is not a definite answer, according to researchers as of March 2012, there are 644 million active websites on the Internet.

Before you choose a hosting company for your business hosting needs it is imperative you do your research. There are numerous companies who provide exemplary business hosting options, but you must determine what is best for your company.

A website business hosting service is not just storage or bandwidth. There are many factors that determine a quality hosting company. Review the tips below to get on the right track.

·         A top-notch service is useless without customer support. Your hosting provider needs to be there for you 24/7 and give you the instant support you need to solve your problem, so you do not lose customers and money.

·         There is no host which is safe against different types of technical failures, so make sure the hosting company runs scheduled backups.

·         There is no unlimited bandwidth, nor unlimited web space. Host’s pay for each GB of bandwidth themselves. Hard drives also are not free. When a hosting company says unlimited it is false advertising in order to allure potential clients. The average website does not use more than 1GB of bandwidth per month. However, if you have a website using more bandwidth than an average site does, and you signed up with a business hosting company offering unlimited traffic, your host could suspend your account and inform you your site was using too much bandwidth.  For example, there are hosting companies who offer unlimited bandwidth and have a statement on their terms of service explaining that unlimited bandwidth means 40GB.

·         You should check if there is an uptime guarantee offered. A quality provider will give a money-back guarantee, offering a discount or free service as compensation for downtime. Do not select a business hosting solution promoting 100% uptime. There is no server with 100% uptime.

·         Do not sign up for a free business hosting plan because it does not provide the required features and security options necessary to operate your online business.

·         Finding a reputable hosting company is crucial. You can discover the reputation of hosting companies by searching for reviews on the internet. In addition, hosting forums are available where users discuss business hosting companies, their plans, etc.

·         Website hosting companies can have hundreds of clients per server; therefore you should check your business hosting company’s acceptable use policy. You do not want to put your business at risk and have your website hosted on the same server with illegal pornography and software websites. Hosting your site on a neglected server can result in low speed. Also, if someone on the same server sends SPAM the server’s IP address can be blacklisted and you can have problems as recipients stop receiving your emails.

·         Cost is important and you should compare different business hosting provider plans, but features and reliability should be given priority.

·         Remember for an ecommerce business, security is essential because you have your clients’ personal information – credit card numbers, social security numbers, phone numbers, addresses, etc. This means the business hosting company you select must provide superior security to protect the data from theft.

*Did You Know– A network is only as powerful as its weakest link. Running a low-end server for network management may slow your entire system. Think of a server like an extension cord, it has to be able to pass enough electricity (or allow enough data through) to run everything.

Many changes are happening in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). People using the internet can find websites of their choice, since the search engines narrow down search results and brings up sites which are recognized and fully informative. Personalization is one of the latest trends in Google and other top search engines. With Yahoo! and Bing joining hands, searches there are similar as in Google. Since social networks like Facebook and Twitter are greatly in vogue, SEO will need to take full advantage of these sites to engage attention. Most online marketing companies today use these social networks to promote their marketing campaigns and hire competent SEO professionals to increase web traffic.

The main objective of SEO is to increase conversion rate and improve return on investment. Current trends in SEO include creating more inbound links and submitting articles to reputed blogs and forums. These external links are great for increasing traffic. SEO professionals have to target sites used by competitors and create maximum external links in those sites. With keyword research being a top priority for SEO/SEM, page ranks, link exchange, anchor texts, specific geographical optimization and personalized search, using social media, making use of blogs, forums and business directories are the latest trends in SEO. To increase maximum visibility for content in search engines, it is absolutely necessary to follow these trends and techniques.

Some tips:

* Use the tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty.
* Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other websites are linking to different pages on your site? It tells a search engine you have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the homepage? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site.
* Offer articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. The links stay live often for many years in their archives.
* If you must have image links in your navigation bar, include also text links. However, make sure the text links show up first in the source code, because search engine robots will follow the first link they find to any particular page. They will not follow additional links to the same page.
* If you have several topics that could each support their own website, it might be worth having multiple domains. Search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might warrant two. Directories usually accept only home ages, so you can get more directory listings this way.
* Do not overdo the anchor text. You don’t want all your inbound links looking the same, because that looks like automation – something Google frowns upon. Use your URL sometimes, your company name other times, etc.
* A big site needs a sitemap, which should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks. A small site needs a sitemap, also. It is called the navigation bar.

Call Prestige Technologies today and take advantage of our amazing SEO Promotion Package – 888.519.2763.

*Did You Know – Who hosts your website can often times play a large role in search rankings. Always use a reputable hosting company. Also, we recommend a dedicated IP when you can.

A content management system (CMS) supports the creation, management, distribution, publishing, and discovery of corporate information.

It covers the complete lifecycle of the pages on your site, from providing simple tools to create the content, through to publishing, and finally to archiving.

It also provides the ability to manage the structure of the site, the appearance of the published pages, and the navigation provided to the users.

The most common use of a CMS is to manage web content. In some circles, these systems are called web management systems (WMS).

How do I know if I Need CMS?

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do I want to add announcements or news of my business or other enterprise?
• Is there any part of my site that should be updated on a regular basis?
• Would I like a photo gallery on my website?
• Would I like an events calendar on my website?
• Would I like to change the look a little for various holidays or other occasions?

If the answer to any of those questions is “Yes” you should consider getting a content management system.  You still have the option to pay a web master to make those changes for you, but that will add up to a lot of money in the long run.

If we are running a substantive web site without a CMS, you will hit a wall where your eBusiness is no longer sustainable because you can’t update your site reliably or quickly enough. From that point, you will need to tear down almost your entire web infrastructure to put a CMS in its place. As more and more companies are hitting this wall, it’s no surprise, then, that the CMS market is at the start of an escalator.

So the question now is what should I search for in a CMS?

Look for these features in a CMS:

• Add/Edit Pages
• Add/Change Images
• Free Automated Software Updates
• Remote Hosting Updates (FTP)
• Dynamic Navigation
• Add Pages w/ Automated Navigation
• Multiple Websites
• Supervisor Review
• Template Control
• Attach Files (Word, Excel, PDF, PowerPoint, Flash)

*Did You Know? Content Management Systems (CMS) allow non-technical contributors to maintain and update site content without programming knowledge or special software tools. Typically content on the website is editable using a “What You See Is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) model. In addition to maintaining existing content, CMS administrators can upload images or videos, create pages, sections or categories, and add or edit menu structures.

It is time to BECOME VISIBLE!

As a business owner when you decide to go online and have your website developed, search engine optimization is one of the last thing that comes into the mind. But website development is not just about designing a site & making it live on the internet, you want the website to bring in business for you and work as a place to showcase your products and services. This is where SEO comes into picture, properly SEO optimized website design and development can go a long way in promoting your business & online presence.

Here are some of the important aspects of website development:

1.    Using appropriate heading & bold tags: Web developers while creating the site should properly use heading as well as bold tags at important places to emphasis important sections of text to search engines.

2.    Image optimization: Search engines such as Google and Yahoo cannot read text which is written in an image. To let search engines what the image is about you need to add correct ALT text for the image and help with better visibility of your images in search results.

3.    Canonical URLs: It would be hard to believe but search engines treat site.com, www.site.com & www.site.com/index.htm as 3 different pages, creating duplicate content issues for you. Solution to this is to do a 301 permanent redirection of the URLs to URL with www, i.e., www.site.com.

4.    Session IDs in PHP based websites: In PHP sites, unique PHPSESSID variable gets added to URL’s end in case cookies are not available and looks like this: PHPSESSID=24487890. This creates problems for your site in search engines as every time a webpage is visited they see a unique session id in the URL & think of the page as a different page, thus creating duplicate content problems for you. As a solution to this is to use url_rewriter.tags.

5.    External files for JavaScript & CSS: Nowadays all sites use CSS & JavaScript; if you put all the code on the page itself then it will increase the page size as well as page’s load time, thereby affecting how search engines rank your site. The solution to this is to put the code in external files and include a reference to them on the page.

6.    Page Titles and Meta Description: It is of vital importance in website design and development to make certain all the pages on the site have unique Meta description and page titles.

If you want to understand how search engines interact with your site and find potential issues before they impact your traffic, you need to verify your site and sitemaps with the three key search engines — Google, Yahoo, and Bing. You also must monitor your statistics regularly.

Register your website with Google Webmaster Tools. Create an account and verify your site by uploading a small piece of code to your server for Google to find. Then create an XML sitemap of all your site pages and upload it by using your Webmaster Tools account. Once you have completed this process, you will be able to check the following:

1.    How many pages Google has indexed and how often

2.    What errors Googlebot found while indexing

3.    What keywords are helping users find your pages

4.    How many incoming links each page has from external sources

5.    How many internal links each page has from other pages on your site

6.    How well your site is optimized for target keywords

7.    How fast your site loads

8.    How many broken links are on your site, where they point to, and on what pages.

There is a similar registration process with Yahoo Site Explorer and Bing Webmaster Tools.

One of the biggest mistakes online businesses make with SEO is targeting the wrong keywords.

You should create a list of keywords. Include all the keywords and phrases you believe your potential customers might type into a search engine to find products and services like the ones you provide. Think to yourself, “What would I type into a search engine if I wanted to find a site like mine?” Try and come up with at least 50 keywords/phrases. Once you have your list enter it into an online keyword research tool such as WordTracker or the Google Keyword Tool. These tools show you how many searches each keyword/phrase receives daily. Do not consider keywords that generate less than 20 searches per day. Take the most popular keywords in your list and select the ones that relate specifically to your site content.

For a search engine to find a site relevant, it has to find the keyword within the visible text on your pages and in link text pointing to your site. So, placing your keywords into your Meta tags is not sufficient for Google to find your site a relevant match for related search queries.

You will need to rewrite your content to incorporate your keywords into your pages. Do not repeat a keyword phrase more than 3 or 4 times in a single page. Rewrite your page titles and META tags, alt tags and headings to include your new keywords. Also remember, every page on your site should have a different Title and META Description tag, tailored to the content of each page.

Install Google Analytics on your site. If not, then do it today. Google Analytics is a free site statistics package that provides insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. The program allows you to see and analyze your traffic data in new ways and you can learn how your visitors interact with your website.

Fresh content keeps a search engine coming back to your site. By adding new pages and information to your website on a regular basis, you are sending a signal to search engines and visitors that you have a great deal to provide, and they need to come back regularly. If you have more content you are providing your visitors more ways to find you in search engines.

The way you link between your own site pages can have a huge impact on the search rank of those pages. This is because Google and other search engines are influenced by the keywords that are used in the links themselves.

Looking for assistance with SEO? Contact us and speak with a specialist – mention this email and receive 25% off your SEO Plan. Become Visible Today!

*Did You Know– A recent study showed that Fortune 500 companies spend $51 million per day in aggregate on 88,792 keywords, and only 20.82% rank in the top 100 of natural search result. This means that 80% of the $51 million a day or $40 million per day is completely wasted.

There is a new age of Influence upon us!

Social media is a broad term used to describe the various tools, networks, and technologies for sharing content, ideas, and knowledge, while connecting and collaborating online. It encompasses wikis, podcasts, blogs, social networks, forums, message boards, and other viral-type platforms where communities of people come together.

Read these statistics if you do not know what I am referring to:

• 21% of US companies report their activity on Twitter has led directly to sales.
• 20% of tweets published are actually invitations for product information, answers or responses from peers or directly by brand representatives.
• 8% of those who came into contact with a brand name on Twitter went on to search for additional information on search engines with 34% searching other social networks.
• About half of Twitter users who were introduced to a brand on Twitter were compelled to search for additional information.
• 44% admitted they have recommended products in Social Media and 39% stated that they have discussed a product specifically on Twitter.
• 46% of Facebook users talk about recommending products on the 500+ million strong social network.
• 27% reported that they were receptive to receiving invitations for events, special offers or promotions.
• 25% stated that they visited a site after learning about a product on their social network of preference.
• There are more than 500 million active users for Facebook and 75 million for Twitter.
• People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook.

Globally, social networks and blogs are the most popular online category when ranked by average time spent, followed by online games and instant messaging.

People in the U.S. continue to spend more time on social networking and blog sites as well, with total minutes increasing 210% year-after-year and the average time per person increasing 143% year-after-year.

The statistics are staggering and endless, but, while everybody is discussing Twitter and Facebook, not everyone knows how to use it.

How are businesses making the most of this social media phenomenon? What are they doing to manage their Twitter and Facebook accounts?

Here are some tips for using Twitter and Facebook:

• Build an account and immediately start using Twitter Search to listen for your name, your competitor’s names, words that relate to your space, etc.
• Add a picture – people want to see you.
• Talk to people about their interests.
• Point out attention-grabbing things in your space, not just topics about you.
• Share links to important things in your community.
• Be helpful, in other words suggest relevant materials.
• Do not only promote your business, your interests, etc. Also talk about non-business-related topics.
• Establish a business account if you don’t already have one.
• Follow the Twitter and Facebook rules regarding business accounts.
• Install appropriate applications to integrate feeds from your blog and other social media accounts into your Facebook profile.
• Limit business contacts’ access to personal photos.
• Post your newsletter subscription information and archives somewhere in your profile.
• Obtain a Facebook vanity URL so that people can find you easily.
• Add your Twitter and Facebook URL to your email signature and any marketing collateral (business cards, etc.) so prospects can learn more about you.
• Post business updates on your wall.
• Share useful articles and links to presentation and valuable resources that interest customers and prospects on your wall, to establish credibility.
• Combine the mediums — for example, when someone asks a question on Twitter, you can respond in detail in a blog post and link to it from Facebook.
• Before traveling, check contacts locations so you can meet with those in the city where you’re heading.
• Research prospects before meeting or contacting them.
• Upload your contacts from your email client to find more connections.
• Look for mutual contacts on your contacts’ friend’s lists.
• Find experts in your field and invite them as a guest blogger on your blog or speaker at your event.
• Market your products by posting discounts and package deals.
• Share survey or research data to gain credibility.
• Use Facebook Connect to add social networking features to your web site.
• Suggest Friends to clients and colleagues — by helping them, you establish trust.
• Start a group or fan page for product, brand or business.
• Add basic information to the group or fan page such as links to company site, newsletter subscription information, and newsletter archives.
• Post upcoming events including webinars, conferences, and additional programs where you or someone from your company will be present.
• Update your group or fan page on a regular basis with helpful information and answers to questions.
• Join network, industry, and alumni groups related to your business.

Social Media Optimization (SMO) is a great technique to get more traffic and business for your website. It is the method of using social media activity with the intent of attracting unique visitors to website content. SMO is one of two online methods of website optimization; the other method is search engine optimization or SEO.

Start your SEO and SMO today with Prestige Technologies.  SEO packages start as low as $500.00/month.  Please call today to inquire about SMO.

*Did You Know– The first social networking website was SixDegrees which let people make profiles and connect with friends in 1997. This kind of interactive, social web application style became popularly known as “Web 2.0” and it really gained momentum with Friendster around 2002-2003. This was followed by MySpace in 2004.

Increase in market share helps organizations to grow. The only way to attract more and more customers to buy your products and services is through promotion. Today’s competitive environment makes it essential to have email marketing services for bulk email delivery,to the masses. This will help you to make your product popular among your potential customers.

Communication is important

Your quality products and services will fetch you nothing till they are sold. To sell them you need to inform your prospective customers about them. No one does this task better than our professionals at Emercury.Net. We understand how important it is to communicate the right message at the right time, to the right person. Our professionals are best at bulk email delivery and other email marketing services. We provide services to all types of businesses. So, if you want to establish your brand name in global markets, you can rely on us for your needs.

Customer is the king

If you already have a large customer base and aspire to increase it even further, Emercury.Net is the right place for you. We are experts in bulk email delivery services and have efficient professionals who can handle any number of emails. A constant watch on customer feedback is essential to maintaining good customer relations. Our professionals are skilled enough to manage all your existing customers and convert your potential customers.

Affordable and high quality services

We provide high quality services at the most competitive prices in the market. Apart from normal bulk email delivery services such as software development, tracking mails, and list management, our professionals are ready with many other innovative ideas to create a difference. For instance, we have come up with a new aspect called an email calendar to make a new addition to our existing bulk email marketing services package. So, if you are looking for service providers who aspire to exceed your expectations, Emercury.Net is the best choice for you.

Bulk email marketing is sure to make your business touch great heights. So, do not waste time and get ready to increase your customer base with us.