Optimizing Your Website for Search Engines

Submitting Your Website to Search Engines and Directories

One of the most important but easiest ways of bringing traffic to your website is via the use of publicly available search engines and directories on the internet where you are able to submit your website to so that others are able to find it. For those who don’t know, search engines are websites where people are able to enter keywords which the search engine then processes to provide the visitor with pages of results which contain links to website which fit the visitor’s search criteria; directories on the other hand do allow people to search through them, but websites are normally categorized meaning that you are usually able to find a website in the subject area that you want without having to search for it.

Most people seem to think that submitting your website to search engines is a complicated task, and that you have to pay to have your website listed - that is actually incorrect since in most cases you can submit your website to the major search engines for free, meaning that your largest source of traffic can be gained without having to pay a penny; on the other hand, you might have to pay to submit your website to directories in some cases, although basic submissions are normally free and you only have to pay if you want to have your website ‘featured’ so that it is shown off to more people who are browsing the directory website concerned looking for a website such as the one which you run. In the cases of the larger search engines, you don’t always have to manually submit your website or individual pages to the engine to make sure that they are displayed within the search engine’s results pages; this is because search engines employ ‘bot’ technology which means that computers automatically find your website and then index the content and pages of it - this means that the crawled and indexed content is displayed to people who enter search terms which are related to content on your website.

The good thing with search engine bots is that they generally automatically pick up any changes within the content of your website meaning that they automatically crawl it again to update the indexed data; this is because bots will come and crawl your website at least once a month - if your website is one which has regularly updated content then you might find that they will come and index your data much more often, and less often if the content of your website is rarely updated. Although the bots of the larger search engines will come and index your website, smaller search engines will require that you manually submit your website to them in order for their bots to detect and index the content of your website; larger search engines with bots will also provide web based submission forms if you wish to have your website indexed more quickly rather than having to wait for a bot to come and index your content.

Unfortunately, submitting your website to search engines is not a method that you can class under building up back links, since search engines are actually the ones who will be basic the score which they give your website on the number of back links you have; directories on the other hand are a site which you can use to build up the number of back links which you have to your website - this is because directories will not give you any score, and that directories will automatically create a separate detail page for your website once you have submitted it to the directories which you have chosen to. To ensure that your work in submitting your website to search engines so that people who are looking for a website which meets the same specification or subject as yours, you should use the other techniques that have been mentioned in part 1 of this series of articles to ensure that your website is placed as near the top of the results pages as possible; this is because people who are using search engines don’t tend to go any further than the third page of their search when they are looking for something in particular.

URL Optimization

Another method which you can use to help optimize your website for search engines is to optimize your actual URLs and file names within your website; although this method may sound like one which won’t work, the renaming of your directories and page file names to reflect the subject of the content which is contained within the page can help improve the score that search engines decide to give you. One technique which most people don’t know about is to use URL rewriting programs which will automatically create search engine friendly URLs from the existing content that you already have on your website; if your website is a CMS based one or uses dynamic pages to call data from data bases, then you should deploy a URL rewriting program which will make the URL to the content more search engine friendly, if your website uses static pages and folders then you have no need to use a URL rewriting program since you can easily rename your web pages or folders through the control panel that has been provided with your hosting account or via a standard FTP connection.

If you run a blog or other CMS based system such as an online shop, then you will find that you most probably already have some sort of URL rewriting system deployed on your website; for example you will probably find that the directory which preceedes the actual file name of the file which is trying to be reached will probably be named after the category which you have placed your shop product or blog post in, the file name will then most likely be the title of the product or blog post which you have added to your shop or blog. By relating the file name and directory name of the file which is trying to be accessed to the subject of the content which is contained within the file which is trying to be accessed, search engines are able to see that you have put in the effort to ensure that both your URLs and content are keyword rich; if both the content and URLs are keyword rich then search engines will find it much easier to match your website to searches made by people with certain keywords which are related to your website. Another method which is part of URL optimization is to use a URL rewriting program to remove the file extensions of files within your website - you aren’t removing the actual file extension, but when a visitor looks at the file name within their browser’s address bar, they will not see any file extension for the file which they are viewing; this means that you are able to create much cleaner looking URLs which only contain keywords which are related to the subject and content of your website.

You should always try and make your URLs as keyword rich as possible, this is because the more keywords which are related to the subject and content of your website which you use, then the higher the score a search engine will give you and the more visitors that you will receive to your website through searches from search engines which have used keywords that you have used on your website; you should also ensure that the keywords you have used within the URL for your web pages are repeated within the title tag of the pages which you have designed for your website.

As mentioned previously, most content management systems choose to employ URL rewriting technology to ensure that the URLs which they produce are as search engine friendly as possible; this is because that without the URL rewriting technology the URLs which were produced by a CMS system wouldn’t be SEO friendly since they would contain query strings and other pieces of content which are not related to the subject and content of your website, and no keywords related to the subject and content of your website at all. One thing to note when optimizing your website’s URLs is that you don’t want to make them too long since long URLs are not liked that much by search engines, since they take into account that it would take a human a while to type in such a long URL.

Hiring a Professional

If you feel that you don’t have the necessary knowledge to carry out the work needed to ensure that your website is a success with the extra SEO work, then you should consider hiring a professional who has both the time and the knowledge to carry out the work needed to ensure that your website is able to benefit from the effect that search engines are able to have on the amount of traffic which you receive to your website; one thing to bare in mind though is that hiring a professional can cost you a lot of money, even hundreds of pounds in some cases.

Although it will cost a lot, it is important that you take into consideration the benefits that professional search engine optimization will have on your website; for example, if you are running an online shop then you should take into consideration that the amount of money which you earn from selling your products online will increase if the amount of visitors which you receive who are looking for a website just like yours. In some cases, the experts which you hire to carry out your SEO work for you will know people who work for the big search engines, this in turn means that they might be able to give your upper hand when it comes to being shown at the top of results pages for searches involving certain keywords; at the end of the day, the higher up in the search engine results your website is then the higher the amount of visitors which you receive from search engines will be, since you should always take into account that most people don’t go any further than the third page of results when they are looking for a website on a specific subject.

Professionals will also be able to do a better job than amateurs when it comes to search engine optimization, since it is something which they have probably done a numerous amount of times; this means that you should always take a look at the portfolio of an SEO expert before you ask them to do any work for you, since you want ensure that you are guaranteed success from what you are paying the expert to do for you. SEO professionals are also able to use other techniques which have not been listed in this article to ensure that your website reaches the top of the rankings and receives a high search engine score from the search engines that choose to index your content. Another thing to consider is that search engine optimization professionals might have premium accounts for certain directories, meaning that they can easily submit your website to the directory concerned so that it can be displayed in a featured place to the visitors of the directory concerned; this means that if someone has come to a directory to specifically search for a website which meets the same criteria as yours, then they will come across your website first since it will most likely be a featured one.

If you don’t have the money to hire a professional to optimize your website for you, then you can use the basic methods as outlined in this article to optimize your website by yourself, although this will not achieve the same results as a professional would, you will still increase the amount of visitors which you receive to your website, and in the case of an online shop your revenue as well; this means that if you successfully optimize your site then you could do it for others at a small fee, and start to charge more as you build up a successful portfolio.

Conclusion

It is hoped that with the help of this article, you have been able to optimize your site to ensure that you increase the number of visitors which it receives, and in turn increasing the revenue which you receive from your website in the case that you run a shop alongside it or you have chosen to place adverts alongside your content to help monetize your website. With the use of this article you should have learnt where you appropriately place back links to your website so that more visitors come and see your content; this will mean that the visitor count of your website will increase but at the same time ensure that search engines pick the back links up meaning that they will see your content is of back link quality since they will think that someone else has gone to the trouble of linking to your content since they have taken a liking to it. You should have also learnt where to place keywords within your content as well as in the title bar and how you should use keywords within the addresses to the files and directories within your website to show that the content of your the directory or file which is trying to be accessed is related to both the title (the page title) and address bar (the actual URL) content.

Another SEO technique which you should have taken on board is the design and layout techniques which you should use in the development of your website to ensure that search engines can easily crawl and index the actual content of your website; without the use of these tags, search engines might just give up trying to index your content after a certain point since it starts to become hard for them to read, just as it would for a human. You should have also learnt that you can easily hire a professional for a fee if you find that you don’t have the time or necessary knowledge to optimize your website - this should however be following with caution since if you don’t optimize your site correctly then you could end up reducing the amount of visitors which your website receives; at the end of the day, you don’t want to reduce the amount of visitors which you website receives since you will only give yourself or an expert more work to do when you get around to optimizing your site properly in order to increase the amount of visitors which you receive.

Optimizing Your Website for Search Engine Rankings

Optimizing your website for search engines is probably one of the most important tasks that you will carry put in order to increase your website’s visitor count, and to help you reach a wider audience; search engine optimization is one task which should be taken seriously and carried out professionally, since if it is done incorrectly then a search engine might even choose to lower the score that it has already given you - thus reducing the amount of traffic to your website which might be sourced from such a search engine, if done correctly then a search engine might increase the score that it gives you thus increasing the amount of traffic your website receives from the search engine concerned which might even help boost your turn over.

Search engine optimization has gradually grown to become its own industry in a sense, since there are many people who are setting up businesses whose sole service is SEO - there are also a number of experts in this area now who claim to be able to increase the amount of visitors which you receive to your website and increase your revenue, but at a cost; this expanse of the industry has only come in recent years since most people have only just started to take SEO seriously after realizing the benefits that it could bring to them and their website.

In most cases, if you want to make the most out of SEO, then you should leave such work to be done by professionals since time and commitment is required to achieve the best results - existing knowledge of how search engines and the internet in general work is also a big plus, which is not something everyone possesses; there are also many different areas of SEO which are required to achieve the best results which not everyone knows about, which means that if you pay a professional to do your SEO work for you, then you can be assured that the best results will be achieved. Most people consider SEO work to be the basic action of simply submitting your website to as many search engines as possible, not considering anything else such as their website’s search engine score and how keyword rich their content is; this is not the case since there are many different methods of SEO including:

• back linking - the method of building up links back to your website from other websites which host similar content to yours
• keyword optimization - the method of ensuring that your website’s content is full of keywords related to the subject concerned
• layout/design - in some cases the layout of your website and the structure of the code it is based on can affect its search engine score.

Once you have successfully optimized your website for search engines, you should start noticing the affects of your work within two weeks of completing the work concerned; this is because most search engines only crawl websites once a month, meaning that your changes will not be picked up until search engines come around to crawl your website again - however, they might crawl other websites on which you have advertised your website before meaning that they will start taking notice of changes related to your website before they get around to crawling yours in some cases.

Although the techniques listed above are complicated in terms of the time and effort required, one should not brand themselves as an ‘SEO professional’ since they have knowledge of basic SEO methods; you should only brand yourself as knowledgeable or as an ‘SEO professional’ once you have successfully completed many SEO projects to show off to others, as this will boost the confidence that they have in you. With the use of this article, you should learn the different techniques involved in optimizing your website to achieve the best results when it comes around to increasing your visitor count, and in some cases the revenue which you receive from your website; to ensure success with the SEO work you do, you should make sure that you have a lot of time on hand so that you are able to carry out the work effectively, and also because SEO work can take a while to do to achieve the best results - if you don’t have a lot of spare time then you should consider hiring a professional to do it for you.

Back Linking

Back linking is the SEO method of building up the number of links to pages within your website from external websites which are of the same subject as the page that is being linked to, or just your website in general; you should always try and get links back to your website placed on other websites which receive large volumes of traffic, since this is where you are able to make the most out of back linking - having links back to your website being placed on low traffic websites will not help you at all, it will only put your work to waste. When placing back links, you should try and place links back to content on your website which is related to the same subject as the page on which the link is going to be placed is, placing links to content which is not related to the subject of the page on which the link is placed is not going to help you out at all - any search engine will discount the link and in some cases might even lower your website’s search engine score; if you place links on pages which are related to the same subject as the content that you are wanting to link to, then people are more likely to click on your link and visit your website thus increasing your visitor count - search engines will also take more kindly to this and might even increase your score if they see fit.

For back linking to be effective, you need to build numerous links from external websites to your website, as the more back links you build up, the more visitors you will receive to your website through the use of them, and the higher the score search engines will give your website. You might be able to gain more back links to your website if you choose to exchange links with the webmasters of websites based on the same subject as yours is; this works in the way that the webmaster of the other website places a link to your website, and vice versa - this can be a lot easier than placing links in blog comments and forum signatures of other websites.

The most simple form of back linking is signing up to forums and other webmaster sites, and then adding a link to your website within your signature - this means that every time you respond to a thread or topic within the forum, a link back to your website will be added which means the more you respond on forums, the more back link you will build up. Another method back linking is commenting on blog posts related to the same subject as your website is; when posting comments on blogs, most forms allow you to enter your website address which will then be back linked to - in some cases you are also allowed to enter your websites link within the comments body, although this might result in your comment being deleted if it is not allowed.

If allowed, then you can post links back to your website on wiki articles which are related to the same subject as your website; this is because many people view wikis day in and day out meaning that you can gain a large number of visitors through them, and since they are high traffic sites and the link has been placed in the right subject area means that search engines will take a shine to your website and deliver you with more visitors. Other forms of back linking include traffic and banner exchanges; although these can also be classed as advertising mediums, they mean that banners and links for your website will get placed on other websites, and links and banner for others websites will get displayed on your website - not the most convenient method of back linking, but it still works in the same way. One thing to note with back linking is that you should always be careful as to where you place your links when building them up yourself; this is because some forums have rules and guidelines on signatures, and some wikis don’t like people editing articles just so that they can get more visitors to their website.

Keyword Optimization

Another important SEO technique is to ensure that the content of your website is full of keywords related to the subject that your website is based around - the more related keywords that you use in your content, the more people that search engines will refer to your website since they will pick up on the keywords and then relate to them when someone uses the search engine concerned to find something using similar keywords; by using keywords which are related to the subject of your website within your content, you are able to ensure that search engines will pair your website with searches by people who are using keywords which are the same or similar to those which you have used within your content.

Keyword rich content can also be more interesting for your website’s visitors to read; although this means that new visitors who are attracted might not be able to understand the keywords contained, it can help gain experienced visitors to your website, especially if your website is aimed at an audience who are interested in a fairly complicated subject. Search engines take more of a shine towards websites which use keyword rich content since it allows them to specifically pair the website concerned to advanced and specific searches which are being made by the general public; keyword optimization will also help search engines categorize your website more specifically, which will make it easier for people searching for it using search engines to find. For those who don’t know the meaning of ‘keyword’, a ‘keyword’ is a word which is strongly related to the subject which is being discussed, and is one which is most likely to be searched for frequently by people through the use of search engines; this means that you should always think carefully about choosing the right keywords that you want to use within your website’s content - you don’t want to be using keywords which can be classed as jargon since this will not bring your website many more visitors, but at the same time you don’t want to be using keywords which are too basic since then your website will end up with a lower SEO score and in turn will end up being a few pages in on the results pages for certain keyword searches.

You should always try and avoid using large words which you might class as keywords, but might not actually be related to the content or subject of your website in any way, which means that you might end up getting visitors to your website who have stumbled across content which is the opposite of what they want; the idea of SEO in general is to try and build up the amount of visitors which you receive to your website - if you use keywords which aren’t really related to your content then you will receive other visitors to your website, but you will in the main defeat the object of your SEO work since your visitors won’t end up returning. By optimizing the content in your website to contain keywords that are related to the content itself and the main subject of your website, you will be able to increase the amount of visitors that your website receives from search engines, since they will take more of a liking to your website and content; this means that if you run an online store or other money making venture within your website, you could ultimately increase the amount of sales you make and in turn, the amount of money which you make.

One thing to note with keyword optimization is that you should always be careful as to which keywords to use, as mentioned previously, you don’t want to end up using words which your visitors can’t understand because they are too complicated but at the same time you don’t want to be using simple words since they could make your content sound dull and boring.

Website Layout/Design

The design or layout of your website as well as the way in which it has been coded is also another factor that is able to affect your search engine score in the case of some search engines; for example if you use nested tables to structure your website then you will typically have a lower search engine score since some search engine bots give up crawling after they have reached a certain point in the code because it becomes unreadable for them, which generally means that it would be unreadable for a human viewing the same page as well. The use of certain tags within your website’s code is also another design and layout factor which can affect a search engine’s ability to crawl your content and your site’s search engine score; for example the use of lists within web page code enables search engines to crawl content more easily which means that out final score will be much higher than if you didn’t use lists - one thing to note is that list tags (ul) are usually much easier to style than other options available to you to create the same affect such as tables.

The title tag of a web page is also another place where you can easily increase your search engine ranking; this is because you can use this small place to enter keywords related to the content and subject of the website - search engines will take a liking to this because they will see that the content of the web page that they are crawling is related to the title of the page, and vice versa meaning that when your website is displayed in the results pages of keyword searches made by people on search engines, they will be able to see that your website is related to what they are looking for by just looking at the title of the page rather than having to read the description to ensure that it is exactly what they want before clicking the link.

You can also use meta tags with the ‘head‘ section of your web page to add a description of your page and keywords related to its contents for search engines to pick up on; these tags are used by search engines to categorize your website by another form so that their decision is not based purely on the actual contents of the page - this means that you should try and fill the tags which as many keywords as possible so that you can try and boost your ranking by as much as you can.

You should also consider the layout of your website when you are designing it based on how search engine friendly you decide to make it; as mentioned previously, if you use large amounts of nested tabled to display your content in, then it might not all be crawled by search engines since they do have a tendency to give up after a certain point - in this case you should consider more modern and search engine friendly methods such as ‘divs’ to display your content in, they are also much more flexible in terms of design and what you can do with them - one thing to note is that the actual design or ‘look’ of your website will have no bearing on the final score which search engines decide to give you. Keyword optimization is also another factor which plays a part in the actual optimization of a website through the layout of its code or actual design; this is because the actual content which needs to be keyword optimized is contained within the layout and code of the website which you have built.

If you are designing your website using a WYSIWYG editor, you should note that many come with special tools these days to help you with the search engine optimization of your website; if designing your website by hand then there are many tutorials available on the internet discussing how you can apply these practices more practically.

It is hoped that with the help of this article you have been able to optimize your website in terms of the keywords used, and have learnt how to make it search engine friendly in the way that you have built it; you should have also learnt as to where you should be placing back links to your website as well as how you do it effectively to ensure that you receive the maximum number of visitors that is possible through this method. In the next part we will be discussing how you can target search engines, and how you can submit your website to them and other directories on the internet to help build up the amount of visitors which you receive; this is because submitting your website to search engines seems to be a process which is more simple than it sounds, because many people without the knowledge seem to think that you have to pay to get your website listed, or do it in another way which is not the way in which you do it.

Ecommerce is the collective name given to online shops, or any online practice where products are sold. Many businesses are slowly opening there own eCommerce stores - in other words, an online shop; if you are a business wanting to setup one then the process of doing so can be a complex one. You can either choose to use an existing eCommerce store system, or you can develop an in-house one; there are both free (open source) and premium (paid) eCommerce store solutions available, before you choose a system you should be aware of all your needs as well as all the different systems which fit your needs. Before beginning, you should identify all your needs within an online shop so that you are able to make informed choices.

Universal Needs

Once you have identified your needs, you will then need to identify the available eCommerce solutions which are able to fit your needs; there are universal needs which you should always take into consideration; there are: end-user accesibility, administration accessibility and search engine optimisation. Making sure that your shop is accessible for the end user is of the utmost importance, since you could be easily sued if a disabled person, or anyone for that matter can’t find their way around your shop with ease. In order to make your shop successful you want to make sure that the systems you look at are good with SEO; SEO stands for ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ and is the processed involved with optimising a website to gain traffic from search engines. You want to make sure that the administration interface is easy to use and navigate, to that colleagues or employees can find their way around it as well, thus allowing them to add products and administer the shop as well.

Looking at Solutions

Once you have worked out all your needs and have found the systems which suit them, you will need to start looking at the different types of systems which are available to you. Free and premium systems are all available with different features, although many add-ons are normally available for free systems; if you are a new shop and aren’t expecting to earn much when starting off, you should consider using a free system as many of them can be quite powerful and should suit your needs for months, or even years to come. If you are going to be running a shop receiving thousands of visitors, or are going to be listing a large amount of products, you should consider a premium system since they are normally more scalable than free systems and should serve your needs for as long as your business is running. The following is a list of free eCommerce systems which you should take a look at:

• OSCommerce - http://www.oscommerce.com
• Magento - http://www.magentocommerce.com

Premium systems to look at:

• Actinic - http://www.actinic.com
• CactuShop - http://www.cactushop.com

CMS stands for content management system; these are systems where you are able to create and modify web pages on the fly since they are database driven applications, most of the best known CMS solutions are open source meaning that they are free. By using a CMS you are able to create and edit the content on your website with easy from any internet connected location; with most CMS applications, add-ons are available allowing you to extend your system to cover many different functions. All systems come with a default design, but theming a CMS to suit the design you want can be done easily through the use of templates. You should only use a CMS if the content on your site needs regular updates, or if your site is a rather large one with alot of content; if you have a small website then a CMS will be of no benefit to you in anyway, it could become an annoyance in certain situations, for example if you’re not going to update your content regularly then you could end up forgetting the administrator password.

Choosing a CMS

Choosing CMS can be either an easy task, or a hard one; the decision of where it is easy or hard is based upon your requirements. If you have fairly simple requirements, for example what operating systems it can run on and whether it is XHTML compliant then you could be in for an easy search since there are CMS solutions available which will run on any operating system, and if the chosen system’s default template isn’t XHTML compliant then you can easily code yourself a custom template which you can make XHTML compliant if you wish. However, if your requirements are much more strict then you could end up having to pay for a premium CMS, or face a hard search for an open source CMS that fits your requirements.

There are universal factors which you should also take into consideration, such as whether the systems you are looking at are SEO friendly and how secure they are. SEO friendly CMS systems will convert your pages to friendly URLs such as ‘http://www.my-cms-site.com/new-article/cat-falls-down-drain-after-slipping-off-tree-branch’, in that case the CMS has taken the article title o ‘Cat Falls Down Drain After Slipping Off Tree Branch’ and converted it into a URL which search engines will consider friendly - these types of URLs can end up with a search engine such as Google giving you a higher rank. Security is also a big factor concerning CMS systems; open source systems are remarkebly insecure since they are available to anyone meaning that a hacker can easily get a copy and find the exploits within, once they have found the exploits they can then go on to targeting websites based on the system concerned; SQL injections are also easily executed on open source systems.

The following is a list of open source CMS systems which you should consider trying out:

• Joomla - http://www.joomla.org
• PHPNuke - http://www.phpnuke.org
• Drupal - http://www.drupal.org

You will find that all of the ones listed above are powered by PHP and MySQL; these two systems are used in most open source CMS, and both are available on most operating systems.

Installing a CMS 

Installing a CMS can be a very easy task; all you have to do is download the system, upload it to your web space via FTP, setup a blank database and then set permissions on some files to ‘777′ - thats the technical part done. Most systems have specially built setup wizards ready made to make the installation as easy as possible. There is also a range of open source CMS available for instant installation from the CMS category within Fantastico, if you are on cPanel based website hosting. The following is a list of free guides which you can use to help you install some of the most popular open souce CMS:

• How to Install Joomla - http://www.joomlatribune.com/joomla-tutorials/how-to-install-joomla-cms.html
• How to Install Drupal 5 (Videocast) - http://www.lullabot.com/videocast/installing_drupal_5
• How to Install PHPNuke - http://www.trap17.com/index.php/how-install-php-nuke_t22493.html
• How to Install Mambo - http://www.siteground.com/tutorials/mambo/mambo_installation.htm

Forums are online communities where people can join to become members and discuss topics with other members of the forum; forums are normally divided up into different ‘boards’ (also known as message boards) which are basically different categories where threads and topics can be opened. Many people would like to start a forum on their website simply because they know it will give their website an active community where all visitors can chat and discuss topics related to the website or any other subject that the webmaster wishes for them to discuss; however, starting one can be daunting business because of the many factors involved, such as the choosing of forum software and the skinning of the chosen package to match the existing website - also, many people with new or small websites don’t have the sufficient knowledge to market their forum, meaning that it isn’t fulfilling its potential.

Choosing Forum Software

Choosing the right forum software for your website can be hard because there are so many to choose from - some free, some premium. The quality of free forum software is often as high as premium software, the only difference being the type and quality of support that is receieved; free forum software if often supported by an active community of volunteers whereas its premium counterpart is supported by paid and trained individuals who are normally also available via phone support. The type of software you pick in the end is down to your requirements; if you run a small site with not many visitors then you should only really go with a piece of free forum software such as PHPBB; if your website receives a large number of visitors then you will most likely need a piece of premium software such as vBulletin which is scalable to a large number of visitors. Examples of free forum packages to get you started include:

• PHPBB - http://www.phpbb.com
• SMF - http://www.simplemachines.org
• MyBB - http://www.mybboard.net

Examples of premium forum packages which can scale up to a large amount of users include:

• vBulletin - http://www.vbulletin.com
• Invision Power Board - http://www.invisionpower.com

Marketing Your Forum

To make sure that your forum is successful you should take steps to promote to ensure that as many people as possible know about. You could try and utilize PPC programs such as Google Adsense or Yahoo Overture. If you already have a client base or a mailing list with many subscribers, then you could use that to email people who are signed up to let them know about your new forum; they will most likely join up and if the topics discussed are of high quality and interesting to read, they will most likely refer your forum to their friends who inturn shouls sign up. Link exchanges with other companies/websites is also becoming a popular way of promoting forums amongst other types of website; the more link exchanges you do, the more incoming links you will have, and the more incoming links you have the higher your Google PageRank will be. By having a high Google PageRank, you are more likely to be in the top pages and sections of search results meaning that you will get more visitors the higher your page rank is. The following is a list of PPC programs and link/banner exchanges which you should look at:

• Google Adsense - http://www.google.com/adense
• Yahoo Overture - http://www.overture.com
• Adbrite - http://www.adbrite.com
• UK Link Exchange - http://www.uklinkexchange.com
• Link Exchanged - http://www.linkexchanged.com

Conclusion

If you use the correct forum software which is applicable to the amount of visitors you receive and the type of forum/website which you will be running, along with the use of good SEO should make your forum successful. When building incoming links you should always aim for exchanging links with websites which are the same or similar to your website, so that the people who follow the links are more likely to be interested in your website.

Reseller Hosting allows you to host multiple websites which in most cases is impossible with regular Shared Hosting; most Reseller Hosting packages also allow you to create separate sub-user accounts for each website allowing you in effect to resell your assigned web space onto your clients – reseller hosting is seen as the starting point for web hosts. Getting started with reseller hosting can be a complicated task because of the many factors which you have to take into consideration when planning your web hosting business. Most webmasters and website designers would like to setup their own hosting business because of the appeal that it could have to their existing customer base, but don’t have the necessary skills to administer a dedicated server; this is the audience which reseller hosting is designed for – it allows you to host multiple websites for multiple clients, yet the administration of the hosting server is normally taken care of by the web host itself. To get started with your reseller hosting package, you need to make sure that you have a billing package of some sort and are able to receive support requests via any form of communication, whether it be phone or email; you also need to have your own active website so that the general public are able to find your web hosting plans, and purchase them if they find that they suite their needs. Once those two pre-requisites have been checked and complete, you can get on with starting out with your reseller package.

Where to Start

In general, your main starting point for getting starting with your reseller hosting package should be organising packages so that your web space can be divided up and sold on to clients; this process can be a lengthy one since you have to take into account the space and bandwidth that you have been provided as well as the likely needs of your clients. As well as the specifications of your web hosting packages, you should think about the different features which are provided such as an auto-script installer or a statistics tracking system. You will need to remember that all your clients have different needs, and you will most likely have people coming to you asking for custom hosting quotes – this is something which you should train prepare yourself for so that you quote the right price. You will also need to work out different pricing scenarios so that at the end of the day the prices you charge are making you a profit so that you can continue to pay for your reseller package but also have some money which you can keep for yourself as well as an amount which you can then invest back into your venture so that you can upgrade to a VPS or dedicated server when the time comes; working out the pricing structure of your business is critical to your success, because setting your prices too low can result in little to no profit leaving you out of pocket and could result in the business failing altogether.

Your Website

Your website is the first thing your customers see before they order any of your hosting packages; it is for this reason that it is important that you make it look as good as possible and that you use it to show case your hosting packages and any other products or services that you wish to sell. As well as having a good looking website, you should also make sure that all the text on the site is free from spelling errors and is readable as well as grammatically correct. Your website should be the place where your TOS, AUP and privacy policy are located so that they can be viewed by both current and prospective customers. SEO and link backs should also be used to ensure that your website receives the highest Google PageRank available and to ensure that it gets ranked high within search results - both of which can lead to increased custom.

Selling Domains

Selling domains can give your web hosting business a big boost and will definitely help you to make the most out of your reseller package, the main reason being that you can make a large profit out of selling domains alone. To begin selling domains, you must first sign up with a reseller registrar such as eNom or DirectI; eNom accounts are pricey but you can normally get a free one through your web host, DirectI accounts on the other hand are completely free. Once you have chosen a reseller registrar, you should then move on to choosing a billing package which can then register the domains for you.

Billing Software

Once you have your hosting packages and prices sorted, you will need to choose a billing package so that you can bill your web hosting customers as well as manage them with ease; there are many different web host billing systems on the market so choosing the right one can be difficult. You should always make an informed choice when choosing your billing software, meaning that you should always read reviews of the software which you are thinking of buying over at forums such as Web Hosting Talk, and also on the testimonials section of the software vendor’s forums. Things which you should take into consideration when looking around for a billing package include whether the package supports the control panel you are using, the domain registrar gateway you are using and what payment gateways are supported by the package; these 3 factors are the most important because you want to make sure that you are able to interact with your server from the package so that tasks such as auto-setup will run, registering domains is also something that most billing packages do so you must make sure that the one you choose supports the domain gateway which you are planning on using. Considering the available payment gateways within the package is important as well since you want to be able to receive payments from your customers online.

Legal Documents

Any hosting business, whether it is large or small, has several publicly-viewable legal documents accessible at all times; all clients agree to them whilst signing up for a hosting plan. These documents are known as TOS (Terms of Service), AUP (Acceptable Usage Policy) and then the standard privacy policy which nearly every business carries. A TOS normally consists of the full terms of the business including issues related to billing, support and ownership of the contents of websites as well as the minimum age a customer must be; AUPs normally consist of information to how a customer may use their allocated web space, the detailed information normally covers issues such as server overloading, the hosting of illegal content, the hosting of adult content and bandwidth overages; the privacy policy should consist of a description of what information is collected when a visitor visits your website and whether the information is passed on to third parties, and if that is the case then the third parties should also be stated – the sharing of information section should also be extended to cover information which is entered on the purchase of a domain or web hosting package. It is always good practice to have the three listed legal documents in place and easily viewable by anyone because it can give the customer assurance as well as giving you as a business something to fall back on or to refer to if a customer is no longer wanted because of reasons which you should always state within your TOS and AUP.

Conclusion

With the use of affordable web hosting packages along with a website where SEO has been applied in an effective way with an appealing design, you should receive a good amount of visitors which should lead to a good amount of custom at your benefit. Also, with the implementation of reselling domains and other services you should build a solid hosting business; all of these factors added together will help you make the host of your reseller package.