Daily Web Dev

Keeping Webmasters Informed: SEO Website Promotion and Tips

How To Make A Website

Making A Website
This guide is designed to (in a user friendly way) teach new webmasters how to create a website. The world of website creation is limitless. If you you want to make your own website you’ve come to the right place. Making a website isn’t extremely difficult and it’s certainly not as expensive to make a website as people would lead you to believe.

Creating a website involves a few simple steps outlined below. By following all these steps you will be able to bring your first website online. Features include:

  • Your own @yoursite.com email
  • Search Engine Submission
  • Premium (No Ads) Web Hosting
  • Your own Domain Name
  • Your own store
  • A shopping cart for your store
  • And many other features can easily be added on once you have started!

Step 1 - Register A Domain Name

A domain name is the first step. Before registering a domain name, you must think of one that will fit your topic/subject matter. You a domain name that is relevant to your website content and be easy to remember. Once you’ve decided on an pursuing a website idea you must register a domain name.

Domain prices have come down in price recently and can be found for as little as $1.95 with a reputable domain registrar. Some companies run upwards of $35 per year and there is no difference the quality of the domain. The only difference you’ll find is a few of the free benefits from certain registrars. (Private Domain Name registration, email accounts, and other addons)

There are many domain name registars out there. We recommend TopGrabs.com because they provide quality domain name features with a low price. They are now holding their $.195 Cheap Domain Name Sale! With TopGrabs.com you will receive a free website starter page, online photo sharing, blog software, email forwarding accounts among a few other things for only $1.95 per year. 

 
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Step 2 - Choose How You’re Going To Build Your Website

There are a lot of different options when it comes to making a website. Do you hire a web designer or do you build it from scratch or do you use an online website builder?

All options have their pros and cons. If you have HTML or other web coding knowledge, building it from scratch would be best. If you have no experience and are looking for a professional upstart, a web designer would be best (they are expensive). If you are looking to just try out some features and not worry about costs, using an online website builder would be ideal (topgrabs.com gives you one for free when you register a domain from them).

Using an online website builder is easy and inexpesive. The only problem is that you lose some flexibility in regards to the site.

If you’re wanting to make a website from scratch or use a website template you will need experience in web coding.  Web coding will give you the flexibility to do pretty much anything you’d like to do (add on any features you like; proper experience is required).

Lastly is a web designer, it’s going to cost you more but you’re free of all of the knowledge to get a professional website online. No matter which path you take, you must have a web hosting provider.

Step 3 - Find A Web Hosting Company

Once you decide how you plan to create your website you will need to find a company that serves as your web host. This company provides the space on their servers to publish your website online.

There’s no reason to pay a lot for web hosting.  There are companies out there taking advantage of people’s lack of knowledge about web hosting and charging $20 and $25 per month for very basic hosting that offers no help (web building tools) for beginners.

When looking for a web hosting company you want to pay attention to the following:

  1. Price (for a beginner, only look at plans from $3.00-9.00)
  2. Space (range from 3gb-10gb would be ideal)
  3. Features (mysql, cpanel, fantastico are all useful features to look for)
  4. Support (A hosting provider with 24/7 phone support can be trusted because you know they are an established business.)

You can find options for as little as $3.99 per month and offer more space & features that you’ll ever need. We trust TopGrabs.com because they are an established website selling webhosting and domain names for many years now. They also offer affordable web hosting and 24 hour support. Their hosting plans provide you with a free domain name as well.

Making Money Online

Ultimately I’m assuming the purpose is to make money online and eventually be able to work from home. Earning money is not a one day thing. It takes months or even years to establish a well known website.  Everything you earn, especially at the beginning is going to be earned through hard work.

Using ads is a great way to boost revenue. Google Adsense provides a secure, easy to use, interface that can earn you your first couple of bucks to get you started.

If you are not looking to make money, there are also several other routes you can take to optimize your content. Forums, blogs, and other interactive features are great for drawing users and making them come back.

The web is a treasure chest of information. You must dig your way through it and find what you are looking for. Dailywebdev will be updated with more tips on money making and website creation. Stay updated!

Google Adsense has quite recently added new types of Google Ad Types. These ad types bring forth a variety of choices for publishers. Since Google Adsense’s first lauch many years ago, many changes have occured in the Adsense Program. Google has improved their Adsense interface to a full extent.

We can now appreciate:

AdSense for Content

Display ads that are targeted to your site’s unique content.

AdSense for Search Improved!

Offer your users site search or web search while earning revenue from ads relevant to their search terms.

Referrals

Earn more by referring users to useful products and services.

You select the ads you want to appear on your site

Video units

Add YouTube partners’ video content to your site, and earn extra revenue.

AdSense for Mobile Content

Unlock the revenue potential of your mobile site with targeted Google ads.

Ads by Google [?]
Linked Title - Ad text here - www.ad-url.com - Call: Phone Number

With all these choices, publishers have room to juice up their web pages.

Adsense for content has always been a killer in profits. Adsense for content is the base of advertising including text ads and banner ads. Revenue is counted by clicks and impressions. Google Adsense has improved Adsense for content by releasing its new JavaScript which allows publishers to update their ads without replacing the previous code.

Adsense for Search has been “Improved”. The concept of it lacks a lot of characteristics that motivate publishers to use it. Of course it has its pros, but the search tool is a way to draw users away from the website. The search tool is inconveient to users because it does not search the website. It searches Google’s database, which is not what most site search boxes do. It also only generates publishers revenue when the “sponsored” links are clicked. Adsense for Search surely needs more improvement.

Referrals is a major set up for Google Adsense. In the past, Adsense refrained from using third-party influences. Adsense only had a Firefox and Adsense referal program. Naturally, with little choice, publishers did not use these very often. To many publishers and advertiser’s delight, Google allowed third-party referrals to be shown. For example, each product that is bought through a referral from your website, you earn a set amount of commission. Google also states they plan to “expand” on their referrals program.

Video Units has been influenced by the now wide-spread YouTube. Video Units allows publishers to display video advertisements. This ads more variety and a way to sharpen a website’s page. Instead of dull images and text, publishers can now earn revenue from videos.

Adsense for Mobile Content has brought Google to the next step. Mobile ads. Google advertisers and publishers in the Mobile industry can take advantage of the Adsense Program.

Google has really spiced up their Adsense program. With the steadily rising web industry, Google continues to keep itself above all competition.

Huge Traffic to Your Site from Social Boomarking!
What is Social Bookmarking?
Social Bookmarking sites are sites that allow users to store, classify, share and search links, articles and feeds on certain topics. Users store sites which they found useful or interesting. Many of these sites allow users to add tags to describe the sites they like. Sites also allow users to leave comments or reviews of articles, pages and feeds. Social Bookmarking has become very popular and there are many social bookmarking sites out there. However, there are a few main Social Bookmarking sites, including, Digg, Del.Ico.Us, Technorati and StumbleUpon. There are also many smaller sites out there. You may have been on a social bookmarking site and not even known it!

What does this have to do with promoting my website?
You can use the popularity of these sites to help grow your own website. On a website of mine, I received extremely high rankings on many of these social bookmarking sites and the site received over twenty thousand uniques the weekend that I opened the site. You can also get success like this to your site with social bookmarking sites. However, you must make sure your website is the best it can be first. The only way Social Bookmarking sites can work for your website is if you have unique content or something interesting about your site. Basically, you need something that you can create buzz about. Using social bookmarking sites are a great way to bring visitors to your site. Although the quality of traffic from these sites is not great, I have seen many people discover, and become avid users of my sites from Social Bookmarking sites.

Blogs and Social Bookmarking:
Blogs and news sites are by far the most applicable for Social Bookmarking sites. They have the most content and are updated often compared to other sites. Also, some of these sites are based on feeds. Personally, the best way to setup a blog for social bookmarking sites is to install a mod, that has icons or text to send each post to these sites. For wordpress, my favorite such mod is: This one . You should be able to find mods for other blog software as well.

What about Every Other Site:
You can also use social bookmarking sites for other types of websites, however, some might not apply. Social bookmarking sites, such as Digg as well as a few other Social Bookmarking sites, are based on articles or feeds, so you probably wont be able to submit to those sites.

About the different Social Bookmarking Sites:
There are many social bookmarking sites out there, but I am going to give you some basic info and instructions to get the most out of the most popular Social Bookmarking websites.

Digg:
This is personally my favorite Social Bookmarking site. It gets tons of traffic and is Alexa rank 73. This site is geared more towards technology related articles, but there are also sections to post about many other topics. This is the main social bookmarking site to go after, as the traffic is the greatest. If you have one link on your blog or website, put it up to your digg page. People can “digg” your site, which will move it up in the rankings and give it more exposure. When submitting to Digg, make sure you write an interesting title and description, as this will be a big factor in who ‘Diggs’ your site. Also, be sure to submit all your posts and articles to Digg.

StumbleUpon:
This is another good social bookmarking website. In this site, users put in topics they are interested in and a little bit about themselves. Then, with the StumbleUpon toolbar, you can “stumble” sites. The toolbar sends you to a random site based on your intrests. Stumblers can give sites they like a thumbs up or a thumbs down as well as being able to comment on websites. The more thumbs up you have increase your chance of people stumbling on to your site. In this program, it is important to have a quality site, as it will determine the amount of thumbs ups you get as well as if people just stumble again or look at your site. If you get a good amount of thumbs up, you can get some really good traffic through this site.

Technorati:
This is one of those social bookmarking

 

 

 I recently stumbled on an article abot Microsoft’s Adcenter. It seems to me to be their response to the success of Yahoo Overture and Google Adsense. I have seen little news about the program, so I thought it would be good if I shared and discussed it on this blog. Here is a Link to the Program.

The program looks promising, in my opinion. There are some interesteting and new features, including Video Advertisements which I predict will become very popular. Microsoft adcenter also had some neat keyword features such as keyword forecast and keyword clustering. The program looks good, however, it does not seem like it can take on Adsense or Yahoo because of Microsoft’s limited search marketshare. I have not yet signed up for the program, but I plan on applying soon. If I am accepted, I will definetly post my response to the program.

 

Building Links to Help Search Engine Rankings

Websites are becoming more and more common these days, especially with user-friendly programs that allow you to build websites with a few clicks of a button. With all this competition, the true challenge comes with how to get attention from the major search engines. When people search for information relevant to your website, you want your pages to come up first so that you can receive the most traffic. The best way to boost this search engine visibility is by building links.

Building the most quality links you can is the name of the game, you want your websites’ link profile to be as strong as possible. The stronger your link profile, the more credibility you will receive from major search engines. Even if other webmasters are reluctant to link to your site, there’s plenty of other ways to get good quality incoming links.

A common method of link building is to submit your website to free or (better yet) paid SEO friendly web directories. Web directories allow you to submit your website into relevant categories. This way, web directories give you a great opportunity to get relevant one-way backlinks to your website.

Submitting articles to article directories is another popular method of link building. The resource box at the end of the article allows you to put in usually at least 2 links back to your website, thus building on the strength of your link profile. You’ll also recieve traffic from the article itself as well - interested readers will click on your link after reading your article.

If there’s blogs related to the content of your site, take the opportunity to visit a few and leave comments on some of the posts. In your comment, don’t forget to leave a link back to your website. Search engine spiders will pick up your link and add it to your link profile. This might not work all the time, though. Some newer blogs have nofollow attributes attached to the comments section, which prevent you from getting any benefit from the link.

Link building is a super important aspect of search engine optimization that should not be ignored. Your traffic depends on it.