Tips & Info
The web world can seem big and confusing at times. For the curious, eager, and motivated, here are some outside resources to help you make further sense of it all.
[All links will take you away from this website.]
Choosing a Web Designer/Web Design Firm
How can you tell who's right for you?
- 10 Things Businesses Should Know Before Building a Site
- Choosing a Web Designer
- How to Hire a Web Designer
- Why and How to Pick a Web Designer
- AllBusiness.com - How to Choose a Web Design Company
Site Content
What should you write about? How much should you write?
- Get Your Visitors Off of the Couch!
- How to Write for the Web
- Web Copywriting Tutorial
- How Your Site's Visitors are REALLY reading your website
- Web Copywriting Tips
- Why Headline Writing on the Web is Important
- Applying Writing Guidelines to Webpages
- How Users Read on the Web (old, but still great!)
Website Marketing
Once your site is live, how do you get people to visit it?
- 10 Ways to Promote Your Site
- Using Press Releases for Web Site Promotion
- Effective Ethical Marketing (Don't be fooled by the appearance of this site - Graham White is an absolute guru when it comes to online marketing; explore his site for great ideas.)
- MarketingSherpa.com
- Selfpromotion.com
- Improving Internet Marketing
- Promote Your Site on the Web
- 32 Ways to Promote Your Website
Search Engines and High Rankings
There's a lot to learn out there about this stuff. Start with these links.
- The Basics of Search Engine Optimization
- Why Search Engine Optimization Matters
- The Secrets of Keyword Selection
- Spell It Out
- What is Link Popularity and Why Do You Need It?
- Linking Matters: How to Create an Effective Linking Strategy
- Should I create a blog for SEO Purposes?
- Ten Tips to the Top of Search Engines
- Search Engine Optimization, Step-by-Step (very thorough)
- Preparing Your Website for SEO Success
- High Rankings Forum - Ask and learn from others
- I WANT TO RANK IN THE TOP 10 IN GOOGLE! (This is the timeforcake Word document we wrote up just for you!)
Design Inspiration
Here are some terrific gallery sites with many beautiful websites to look at.
- CSS Mania
- CSS Elite
- CSS Remix
- Web Creme
- The FWA (all Flash sites)
- Cool HomePages
- Design is Kinky
- WebAward
Site Maintenance and Updating
Should you keep site maintenance in-house? What about the time, knowledge, and resources involved?
- How Can I Update My Own Website? (Should I?)
- John Chow: How Often You Should Update
- How Often Should I Update My Website?
- Why Are Website Statistics So Important?
Website Tools
Now that you've got a great site, how is it doing? Are people visiting it? Are people linking to it? How is ranked in Google for various keyword phrases? How does it look to different viewers?
- LinkPopularity.com (Learn how many websites out there are linking to your website.)
- Website Resolution Test
- W3C Website Markup Validator (Does the code in your site's pages validate?)
- Live Google Page Rank
- The Prettiest Website Statistics Ever
Directory Madness
Submitting your website to online directories (think online phone books, but for websites) is one of the various steps often recommended for increasing traffic and Search Engine rankings. An example of an online directory is dmoz.org.
Directories send targeted traffic your way -- people arriving at your site are interested in what you're offering (else they wouldn't have clicked your link in the directory).
Each directory your website is listed in also helps to bump up your site's overall Link Popularity, with high-quality directories weighed as more important than low-quality, spammy, "we just want to make a few bucks by charging people for links because we know they'll pay for them" types of directories.
If your business is in Summit County, don't forget to create a free listing at the Summit Directory. Likewise, if your business is in the Vail Area/Eagle County, remember to create a free listing in the Eagle Directory.
Submission Tip
Here's a great tip for submitting your site to multiple directories in one go; we absorbed this one from the always-helpful High Rankings Forums a long while back:
Type your basic info into a Word document (basic info being URL, description, keywords, name and email). Now you can simply copy and paste your info into the submission forms in the directories.
This should save you quite a bit of retyping and time. Cool.
Also--don't forget to alter your site's description when it's necessary. Pay attention to the category in which your site will be listed in each directory--and make sure your description will sound enticing to that particular directory's visitors.