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.

When setting up a forum for your website, you will have to make a choice on the piece of software that you want to use to ensure that a forum can be easily run and accessed on your website; there are many different pieces of forum software out there, so it is important that you make the right choice when you setup one for your website so that your visitors are able to discuss topics with each other, and should help create a sense of community for all the visitors that you receive to your website at the moment, as well as new visitors who might discover your website through a search engine keyword search. There are many different factors that you should consider when looking for a piece of forum software to use for your website; this is because forum packages normally contain many different features - some which you might find are surplus to your requirements, or you might find that the software you have chosen doesn’t contain features that you need it to have. You should also consider the factors which might be affect the visitors that you receive to your website, since after all, the visitor is the most important asset to your website; if your forum isn’t accessible to the visitors of your website, this might mean that they will go to some other website or forum community to discuss or view what they might already be using your website for. You should also take on board the technical side of the forum software that you are looking at, in relation to the specifications and features of the web hosting package on which your current website resides; this is because you might end up with a piece of forum software that is unable to function within your shared website hosting environment because it is designed to run under one environment, which is not the same as what you have. If you are webmaster who likes to be able to find their way around with the administration areas of applications, then you should take on board the design and functionality of the administration interface of the applications which you have decided to look at in your hunt for a piece of forum software; in this case you should consider the placing of links and other important items since these play an important part in your ability to be able to adjust to a new administration panel with ease. Other things that you should consider when looking for a piece of forum software which you can incorporate into your website include the level of skill that may be needed to incorporate the chosen program into the design of your existing website, as well as how far you are able to customize the program - for example, you might be able to complete incorporate it into the existing design of your website, but are unable to remove the copyright and trademark footers from the bottom of all the pages which are contained within the forum software - this will be in the case in most situations since the piece of forum software being used is open source, which means that it is being used freely and does not have to be paid for.

Theming

One of the most important things for webmasters who are using third party applications within their website structures is the ability to skin/theme the applications which they are using; this is because they, like anyone want the designs of these third party applications to try and blend in with those of their main websites as much as possible, since it looks more professional and in some cases such as where the data being entered into the third party application is of high confidentiality, can also boost the trust that visitors and customers have in you and your website. With the ability to theme an application so that the design of it suits your main website more, you are able to customize it in a way so that you can make it look and in some cases function in the way that you want it to; this means that you can build a highly functional and interactive website for your visitors, without the need for you to put in any hard work to make it function in the complicated way that it does, since all you have done is taken a third party application which has all the functionality there for you already, and added a design of your own choice so that it looks and feels the way that you want it to be for yourself and your visitors. With the using of skinning and theming, you can also give the third party application that you have chosen to use a unique identity from the default identity which is provided with it, and is most probably used by many other websites who have chosen to use the same piece of software as you but haven’t chosen to skin or theme it in any way; this means that your installation of the third party application will be much more distinguished than the other installs of it there are since you will be using your own design, whereas others will most likely be using the default skin/theme which was already applied to the application concerned when they installed within their website hosting space. When using a piece of forum software along side your main website, you should always skin/theme it to ensure that it blends in with the design that you have chosen and applied to your main website which is separate from the piece of forum software that you chosen to create a community within your website; this is because it should hopefully become a community point for all the visitors that you receive to your website where they can all discuss topics related to any subject that you or they want, which means that it should have some sort of custom design since you don’t want such an important part of your website to look ugly and ’standard’. The design of the piece of forum software which you are using can also denote the amount of visitors that it actually receives, and whether your existing visitors choose to stay or not; this is because that if you use your own design which looks rather nice, then people are going to want to stay on your website, but if you haven’t used such a nice design then people won’t be as willing to return to your website in the future.

Features

Because of their nature, many piece of forum software contain many different features that main allow for members of the forum concerned to communicate with each other both privately and publicly; this means that the features which are built into the piece of forum software which you choose to use will help you build a stable community for your website which your visitors can then join if they want to - this should then build up over time meaning that your website will be more attractive to first time visitors who might have reached your website through a search engine keyword search. The most basic features that most piece of forum software include are private messaging for members, the ability to see who is online in your forum at one time as well as the main feature which is their purpose - allowing members to communicate with each other through the means of topics which they can create and respond to within the forums/message boards that you have set up and configured; these features put together mean that you are able to monitor the people or search engine robots who are visiting your forum at any time, and also mean that your forum members can easily communicate with each other in public via the means of forum topics which they can create and respond to - if they feel the need to, then they should also have the ability to communicate with one another privately via the means of the private messaging system which she be provided as standard with the piece of forum software which you have chosen to use as part of your website to help create a community for your visitors. Most pieces of forum software allow you to download third party add-ons for them which you can then install within your install of the forum application which you have chosen to use in your website; this means that you can easily extend the functionality of the piece of forum software that you are using quickly and freely - in most cases the functions which are carried out by these third party add-ons are ones which are not normally handled by the application itself, which means that the new features that you are adding to your forum can help make it more interactive for both your website’s visitors as well as the members of your website’s forum. You should also look at the management features that are provided by forum software packages when you are looking to choose one which you are going to be using within your website to help create a sense of community; this is because you might need to delete and edit threads and posts which are created within your forum effectively and quickly, this idea is reinforced by the fact that forums can easily attract spammers and hackers since they see them as places where they can easily paste up what they want to with the likelihood of them going unnoticed for a while which means that many people are likely to see the adverts of text that they have posted up on the piece of forum software which you have chosen to use.

Add-Ons

Almost all the major players within the forum software industry have websites at which you are able to download third party add-ons that allow you to extend the functionality of your install of the piece of forum software which you have chosen to use; this means that you can easily expand a basic piece of forum software so that you can give your website’s visitors an interactive community where they are able to communicate with each other both publicly on certain subjects, and privately on any subject that they wish to discuss between themselves. Most add-ons that are available for pieces of forum software allow you to extend the functionality of the basic features which come integrated with your chosen piece of forum software once you have installed either on your dedicated or VPS server or within your shared website hosting space; this means that these features give you the ability to create an amazing forum which is much more enhanced than those of others websites who happen to be using the same piece of forum software as you - this is because the basic features of the piece of forum software have been changed and enhanced within your forum so that your website’s visitors and forum members are given much higher quality features that they can utilize when using your forum. However, add-ons don’t always have to be about enhancing the user expierience which you give your website’s visitors and forum members; in some cases you can get add-ons which can enhance the experience for you as the webmaster who looks after the day to day running of the forum concerned - this means that you can normally get add-ons for the administration panel of the piece of forum software which you have chosen to use, these add-ons can make managing your forum much easier for you since they normally extend management capabilities such as the editing of posts and the removing and banning of trouble members who might be spoiling the community atmosphere that you have created within your website for the visitors that you receive to discuss topics which are related to the main subject of your website. Other add-ons give you the ability to manage the and view the traffic/visitors which you receive to your forum, and not your main website; this is because the add-ons concerned are only set up to monitor the pages within the forum package which you have chosen to use - however, this does mean that you can monitor the activity of your forum and see where you might be succeeding and in some cases, failing. When choosing a piece of forum software, you should always consider its ability to accept add-ons when you are wanting to expand its abilities so that you can make the most of the piece of forum software which you choose to use as part of your website to help create a community; you should also make a note of the types of and number of add-ons which are available for the chosen package since these two factors can affect your ability to expand the piece of forum software concerned.

Commercial or Open Source

One main factor that can affect your choice of forum software is the fact of whether the pieces of software that you have been looking at are open source or commercial; commercial piece of forum software are ones which will cost you to have the ability to use them since you will have to buy a license in order for you to be allowed to use them, open source pieces of forum software on the other hand are completely free meaning that you can even download the source code for them so that you can construct your own add-ons based around their infrastructure so that the piece of forum software which you have chosen to use functions in the way that you want it to - this wouldn’t be possible with commercial forum applications since in most cases, you aren’t given access to their source code. In terms of support, you are normally given phone support with commercial applications, since you have paid them money and in turn will provide you with one to one professional support - in most cases this will only last a year meaning that you will have to renew your cover for it when you’re six months is up; there is no official support for open source forum applications since you are not paying anyone for the right to use it, meaning that there isn’t the money there to pay people to provide telephone support for the piece of forum software concerned - however, there are normally dedicated forums which are normally able to provide you with a good level of support if you are new to the world of forum software, and have come across some sort of problem - whether it be not being able to install the application correctly or forgetting the administrator account’s password and not being able to reset by yourself for whatever reason. In most cases you will find that commercial pieces of forum software are much more secure than their open source counterparts - this is because you are paying for a license which means that there are paid developers who are there developing the product day in and day out, which means that if a security flaw is found in the application then it can be rectified by the paid developers more or less immediately; open source pieces of forum software on the other hand are usually much less secure than their commercial counterparts, this is because there is nothing to pay for a team of developers to develop the application day in and day out, which goes along with the idea that these applications are normally developed by a few developers within their spare time - this means that is a security flaw is found within a piece of open source forum software, then it isn’t going to be rectified immediately since the developers don’t have the time to stop their paid job to correct the problem concerned.

Conclusion

In conclusion, when choosing a piece of forum software which you want to use so that you are able to create a sense of community for your website you should always consider the most important points such as the availability of support for the applications which you are considering to use, as well as the option for using add-ons to expand its capabilities at a later date; you should also take into consideration the level of support received in relation to the amount that you are paying for a license to use the piece of forum software concerned if you happen to choose a commercial piece of forum software in the case that you have the money to pay for it. Other things which you should take into consideration also include the basic features provided by the pieces of forum software which you are considering to use for your website; this might be because you don’t have the appropriate knowledge to allow you to install add-ons to extend the capabilities of your chosen piece of forum software - although this process may be simple, it may still be quite complicated for some people who aren’t computer literate. In the end, the piece of forum software which do choose to use your website can affect the success of the forum which you are trying to set up on your wesbite; this is because if you choose a rubbish piece of software which doesn’t contain many features then people won’t want to be visiting your website or forum since they can be easily put off by your choice of software, surprisingly. If you are starting out with your forum, and your website doesn’t receive many visitors, then you should consider an open source forum solution for your website - this is because the piece of forum software that you choose to use is free, and although official support isn’t provided, you can still get pretty good support from dedicated forums and from the documentation which should be provided; on the other hand, if you require a scalable enterprise solution then you should consider a commercial solution since these are much better maintained by the creators, and you can normally get official support via telephone and email.

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

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.

Blogs are online journals in which people write about things - whether it be the ramblings of their life or tutorials to help others along. The word ‘blog’ comes from the word ‘weblog’, and has many words which derive from it; these words being: blogger and blogging. The word blogger is the name given to the author of the blog, and blogging the name given to the process of writing to a blog; the world blog can also refer to the process of writing to a blog. Blogs have been becoming more popular over the last 2 years, and as of July 2007 there are around 70 million active blogs on the internet. If you are looking to start your own blog, there is no time better than now to do so.

To start your own blog, there are certain factors which you need to work out before you start anything, there are:

• What you are going to blog about.
• Your intended target audience.
• The name of your blog.
• Whether you are going to use a free or paid blogging service.
• If you are going to pay for a hosting service: what blog software you are going to use.

What You Are Going to Blog About

The most important factor to consider when starting your own blog is what you are going to blog about; this is because the content of the blog will determine how successful it is: if you write about personal stuff then your blog is not going to gain much traffic, as the only visitors will probably only be friends or family; if you write posts which will help others out in any way then they are most likely to recommend your blog to others which means that it will gradually gain traffic.

Identifying Your Intended Target Audience

Once you have worked out what you are going to blog about, you need to work out who is most likely to visit your blog, and why; this is important because when you come to promoting your blog, you want to make sure that you are promoting it to the right group of people. This also plays a huge part in the amount of visitors that you receive; if it’s only family and friends visiting your blog then the amount of traffic that you receieve won’t be a huge amount, however, if people are finding and visiting your blog from web searches then they are most likely to be returning visitors, and will recommend your blog to others.

The Name of Your Blog

You can name your blog anything you want, you can even name it after yourself. However, most blog names are normally linked to the blog’s subject in some way or another. The name of your blog must be simple to say, and easy to remember; simple names are more likely to stick in people’s heads which means that if people can remember the name and address of your blog then they will most likely recommend it to others.

Using a Free or Paid Service

There are many different services which you could use to host your blog. You could use a free service which gives you a sub of their main domain name; the main downside of free blog hosting services is that they normally fill your blog with unwanted adverts. The following is a list of free blog hosting services which you can use to help get you started:

• http://www.blogger.com/ - Blogger is Google’s free blog hosting service. It is one of the most popular in the world. The adverts that they place are rather discrete and blend in with the chosen design. The address given is normally ‘blogname.blogspot.com’.
• http://www.cjb.net/ - CJB.net run a free blog hosting service along with a range of other free services. Adverts placed by them aren’t that discrete and don’t blend in with the blog. The url provided is normally ‘http://blogs.cjb.net/blogname’.
• http://www.wordpress.com/ - Witth Wordpress.com you can create your own instance of the popular open source WordPress blog system, but hosted on their servers. The url provided is normally ‘blogname.wordpress.com’.

If you are not tempted to use a free blog hosting service, then you buy a cheap web hosting package with a web host along with a domain. With paid blog/hosting services you have full control of your blog and don’t have forced advertisements displayed. You can then install one of the following free blog software packages:

• http://www.wordpress.org/ - Wordpress is the world’s most popular open source blog system.
• http://www.b2evolution.net/ - B2Evolution is another piece of popular blog software. It is different from Wordpress in the way that you are able to create multiple blogs within one installation.
• http://www.mephistoblog.com/ - Mephisto is a relatively new piece of open source blog software. It is different from both Wordpress and B2Evo since it was written in the up and coming RoR scripting language.

Websites can be used for many different purposes; you can make a personal website about yourself where you may want to post family photos that you might want to share with friends and family, or you may want to build a business website so that you can sell your products online and promote your business through the means of the internet. Many people would love to be able to create their own website, but don’t necessarily have the knowledge to do so; although there are many web-based products which claim to let you build your own website, they don’t necessarily let you customize your website as much as you want since your are limited to certain templates- because of this you should always learn how to build your own website from scratch with HTML.

Learning Languages

To build the most basic of websites you need to start off by learning HTML and CSS. HTML is the basic language of all web pages - without it you won’t even be able to create one page. CSS stands for ‘Cascading Style Sheets’ and is the language used to style elements on a web page - you need to know this if you want to make your web pages look good. If you want to extend the features of your website to include something dynamic, such as a shopping cart then you will need to learn a server side web language such as PHP or ASP.

There are many resources on the internet that you can use to learn web languages, including:

• http://www.w3schools.com - This site has tutorials for languages which are widely used on the internet. This resource if perfect to get your from being a novice to having intermediate knowledge of web languages.
• http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/ - This site has many different articles, tutorials and code examples which can help you to learn ASP.NET, and its older sister - classic ASP.
• http://uk3.php.net/tut.php - PHP.net - the home website of the PHP scripting language has put together a simple tutorial to help out beginners.

Once you have learnt the basics of HTML and CSS, you are ready to start building your website.

Choosing the Design Software

When building a website you need to design what piece of software you will be using to do it. When choosing web design software, there are several variables that you should always take into consideration, these are: cost of the software, the complexity of the software and whether you are going to build using your own code or by using a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor. Website design software can range from nothing to around £500; if you are going to be building your site using your own code then you have no need for a WYSIWYG editor meaning that all you need is a text application, such as Microsoft Notepad or jEdit - a piece of software specifically built for this kind of scenario. If you are after a piece of software which you would like to do all the coding for you and that lets you see the final outcome without having to do anything complicated then you want a piece of software which is known as a ‘WYSIWYG’ editor; these pieces of software generally cost, and examples include NetObject’s Fusion and Adobe’s Dreamweaver. WYSIWYG editors are generally more complicated to use than normal text editors since they have more built in features to help someone along with the building of their site. Listed below are some of the most commonly used website design programs:

• http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/Default.aspx - Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express Edition is a free piece of Microsoft software created to encourage more developers and designers alike to take up ASP.NET coding. It can be used as both a WYSIWYG editor and a plain text editor, and has many features built in.
• http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/vstudio/default.aspx - Microsoft Visual Studio is VWD’s bigger brother and it’s costs vary since there are various different editions of it.
• http://www.jedit.net/ - jEdit is a free plain text editor that was created specifically for web designers. You can use it to script in any language, but it doesn’t come with a WYSIWYG editor.
• http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/ - Adobe Dreamweaver (formally Macromedia Dreamweaver) is probably the best known piece of website design software throughout the world. It comes with both a code editor and a WYSIWYG editor, but is quite costly priced at $399 (approximately £199).

Getting Your Website onto the Internet

Getting your website onto the internet doesn’t have to be the complicated process that many make it out to be. All you need to do is purchase a domain and website hosting and you are all set to go. A domain is the address which you type in to go to a website - the cost of these is relatively low as you can pick a domain up for about £5/year these days; web hosting as well is relatively cheap as in most cases you pick a package up for £22.99/year. After you have purchased both of these you should be given access to an online system known as a ‘control panel’ where you can control all aspects of your website and its hosting.

To upload your website to your web space all you need to do is establish an FTP connection with the FTP server for your site (normally ftp://ftp.yourdomain.com). You will be asked to login with your FTP account - these can normally be created through your control panel. Once a connection has been established you have to copy your website files into the root of your website, this is a folder normally named ‘public_html’ under Linux hosting or ‘httpdocs’ if you are on Windows hosting.

Once the files have been copied, all you need to do is open a fresh browser window, type your domain into the address bar and your website should appear as if by magic!

Promoting Your Website

You’ve got your website completed and on the web now. The next thing to do is to get your website promoted so that you can start receiving visitors. You can submit your website online directories under a category that fits your website and sign up to online advertising services so that your website will be advertised on other websites; you should also make sure that your website is listed in the results of popular search engines such as MSN, Google, and Yahoo - this will ensure that your website receives visitors. You should find the links below helpful when promoting your website:

• http://www.google.com/adwords/ - Google AdWords is Google’s advertiser network which is known as a PPC (pay per click) program where you can create your own adverts for your website which will be then shown on the websites of Google publisher’s.
• http://www.url-free.net/ - This is a prime example of a website directory where you can submit your website to a certain category where it can then be found by others who are browsing the category.