- What segment of the market are you catering too? What age group, race, and gender are you trying to reach? What
about their education; are they college grads, high schools grads, or non-grads? What movies do they identify with? Who are their
favorite musicians? Are they trying to emulate a certain lifestyle, such as hip hop, professional, etc? Do they dress this way
after dark, on the weekends, or all the time? How much of their disposable income will they commit to maintain this lifestyle?
- What colors in your website might relate best to your customer’s lifestyle and education? Colors evoke
emotion, what are you trying to convey? Colors that are too bright make it hard for the user to read your written message; harsh
colors play havoc with the eyes. Use bright colors to attract and deliver your message in the shortest word form possible, then
tone it down to deliver the body of your message.
- A picture can say a thousand things, but what does your customer see when they view your website? Use pictures to
create a mood, and follow that mood throughout your website. Customers like to know where your services begin and end. It is best to
avoid, attempting to sell, customers music and end trying to sell bicycles. This can quickly bring your message and credibility into
question. Do you have a Graphical Interface Format (gif), Joint Photographic Experts Group (jpeg), Portable Network Graphics (png),
Windows Bitmap File Format (bmp) or other picture type to put on your web page? What size should you use and how do you optimize
your pictures to show best at that size? Should you consider which picture type will load the fastest or look the best? Did you
give the picture a name that reinforces your written article and influences the “bot” of the key words that are used
to increase your ranking in Search Engines?
- What is a “bot”? From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A bot is common parlance
on the Internet for a software
program that is a software agent. A bot interacts with other network
services intended for people as if it were a person. One typical use of bots is to gather information. The term is derived from the
word "robot," reflecting the autonomous character in the "virtual
robot"-ness of the concept.
The most common bots are those that covertly install themselves on people's computers for malicious purposes, and that have been
described as remote attack tools. More generally they are websoftware
agents that interface with web pages. Web crawlers or spiders are web robots that recursively gather web-page information, as does the bot used by Google ("GoogleBot").
They may also be used to interact dynamically with a site in a particular way, as by exploiting or
locating arbitrage opportunities for financial gain.
Some bots communicate with other users of Internet-based services, via instant
messaging, for example, or via Internet Relay Chat (IRC) or another
web interface. These chatterbots may allow people to ask questions in plain
English and then formulate a proper response. These bots can often handle many tasks, including reporting weather, zip-code
information, sports scores, converting currency or other units, etc. Others are used for entertainment, such
as SmarterChild on AOL
Instant Messenger and Jabberwacky on Yahoo!
Messenger.
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Promotion of your website is referred to as Search Engine Optimization. When your message is written,
your products or services should be displayed to best advantage. Prices should be competitive. If selling a product, you
should have a method to receive payment, be able to communicate by email and phone at the customers’ discretion, and
promote your website to the public. It is imperative to notify the major search engines. An effective website requires
code that their “bots” can read and interpret, so that their search engine can list you correctly. You need
fresh information for the “bots” to come back and report to their search engines. Why? There are always
hundreds of thousands of new websites coming online and old ones shutting down. So, the job of a search engine is to find
and rank relevant information every day. The relative ranking of your website depends on creating new, relevant
information, and doing a better job than your competitors. For example, let’s google “Knives.”
There are 50,400,000 results for knives with no Google Ads (Sponsored Links) on the side. Will your website be found
if you are selling knives? That really is too broad of a category. It would be better to Google “Damascus
Knives”, with 848,000 results and Google ads on the side.
- Reciprocal links are also very important! They are the websites that allow you to post your website
information on theirs. This gives search engines an additional method to rate your website. Your website must be popular
because other websites are pointing to you with information and providing a link to your website.
- Code must be readable to the “bots” that comb websites for location, interpretation, and
correct designation of your website. Codes must also be regularly updated to maintain highest ranking. For instance, if you
use Micorsoft’s Front Page, or Microsoft’s Publisher, or any of their other programs to produce web pages, a
hybrid “html” is produced, that cannot be interpreted by the “bots” and your website will not be
rendered correctly in the several browsers available on the market. Two major loses in gaining significant ranking in
search engines and other customers can not read your web pages. Poof, all of your hard work, time, and money just went
out the door.
- Your company’s news and information needs to be current to customer’s
needs. “Bots” report back the contents of your website to the search engines, for interpretation and then
come back to check for new information to compare to old information. The better you are able to pick up a theme and
keep maintaining this fresh information has a lot to do with your rankings and placement in these search engines.
- The best codes for websites include Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), JavaScript, Perl, and
Cascading Style Sheets (CCS) is just a few languages needed for your website. They all are appropriate; trying to
use each one is an issue though. These codes should all be integrated into your website.
- Browsers allow you to view the Internet. Some of the better known browsers available to the general
public for download are Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Apple’s Safari, Netscape’s Netscape Navigator,
Mozilla’s Firefox, Opera Software’s Opera, and Advanced Search Technologies Ace Explorer. Your web pages need
to render properly for these different browsers. If not, you may be losing a good chunk of your customer base.
- Macromedia’s Flash is a very cool tool that creates animated movies that can really catch the
eye! Unfortunately “bots” cannot read Flash! Integrate Flash movies sparingly into your website design in
small sections of your overall web page to catch the eye, but let HTML dominate your website for the best “bot”
review.
- Advertisements on search engines are paid by per click, with an hourly rate for airtime, and a
percentage of the sale, with one advertisement requiring payment in three ways! Advertisements will definitely put your
website on the first page, but to be cost effective, you’ll need very marketable products, with plenty of stock on
hand to ship out. Watch out for Click Fraud! Competitors can drive up the cost of your advertisements by clicking your ad
repeatedly.
- News or information needs to be current to customer’s needs. “Bots” are reporting
back to search engines the contents of your website that they can interpret and they come back to check for new information
to compare to old information. The better you are able to pick up a theme and keep maintaining this fresh information has a
lot to do with your rankings and placement in these search engines. Develop long term goals to keep advancing your website
in these rankings.
Timothy Starling
President
On Fire PC Systems LLC
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