Use Templates Or Design Your Own Site?

by lawmacs | 21. July 2009 19:34 Filed under: Web Design   5  Comments

There are some pros and cons to using a template. If your website needs to be unique then a template is most likely not for you. If you need to just jump into the internet world and don’t want to spend a lot of money then a template is perfect! You really need to analyze what you hope to gain by entering the internet game. Really take a look at what you think your customers are going to expect, will they even care if it is a unique site? Some will some won't. Certainly, if it is a design-oriented site then a template is not an option, you will want something fresh and creative. Do you think that your customers will even spot a template? Many people who own sites don’t want the look and feel of a template as they want to stand out from the pack. If this might be you then skip over the idea of using a template. Use Templates Or Design Your Own Site? - Is it easy to spot a template?

Well if you are a seasoned designer then it will be easy to spot a template. But then today’s templates can be modified so much that what was once a template then becomes a fresh new site. Of course the idea of using a template is to save money and if you're going to take a template and modify the heck out of it will you really be saving money? It has become much cheaper these days to have a site built from scratch so you will really want to do a cost analysis to decide which will save you more money. Sit down with your designer and see what they have to say. Sometimes it can be more work to modify a template. Also a number of today’s blogs are templates, if not all. The blogs that aren’t templates still kind of look like a template. Obviously the folks who are creating templates are getting their ideas from sites that were started from scratch. Use Templates Or Design Your Own Site? - What about creating a site that is part new design and part template?

Yes, many people do a mix and match of sorts. You can do some of your own design then plug some features in like a shopping cart for example, even using Pay Pal is a way of using a template. Anything that is pre written code or is pre built is a form of a template. With people requesting so many features on sites, it has become very commonplace to use a template. They even have templates for social networking sites these days! There are so many options available but whatever you choose to do look at your customer base first and ask yourself are these the kind of folks that would notice? Will it affect your business or could you save a little money and use it to market and promote? There are a number of factors to take into consideration when choosing a template or a completely new design. Sit down with a couple designers and see what they have to say.

Ones you have finalized on the templates part, you can study some web hosting packages available on the net. You can select the most suitable for package your business web hosting considering the cost and requirements.

What A Blog Is And Is Not?

by lawmacs | 19. July 2009 20:29 Filed under: Blogging   8  Comments

A good working definition of a blog is simply a journal or newsletter that is frequently updated and intended for the timely reading. It often provides opportunities for unfiltered and immediate feedback, sports an informal or even partisan attitude, and is written in a more personal style than traditional press outlets. Blogs come in all shapes and subjects, from the maunderings of troubled teen souls to displays of classical photography to breaking news and commentary.

They can be online journals, locked with a password shared by a few trusted friends, or they can be page after page of source code, sharing useful and free computer programs with the world. A blog may be an online journal tangential to a company’s main business, where users of a company’s products give feedback and ask for help. Blogs can be hosted by single individuals, shared by teams, or produced by entire companies. They may be hosted on a dedicated blog server using fancy templates or lovingly hand-crafted in HTML on a page that resembles a bulletin board. But a blog is not simply a syndicated column or a newspaper that is online.

Many news outlets feature their content online and even allow readers to respond to stories. However, the newspaper’s business does not change just because it has a new medium. Editors and writers still do the same jobs they did before the advent of online distribution; the newspaper does not view itself as any different from what it always was. And perhaps therein lies the difference: attitude.

The newspaper sees itself as presenting all the news that’s fit to print, written by objective professionals, while the blogger sees himself as presenting a piece of his own world and his own expertise from his own perspective. As blogs become more popular, more columnists are becoming bloggers and more bloggers are becoming professional in what they write. Perhaps in a few years, the distinction between the Old Media and the New will be irrelevant in the mind of writers; for many readers today, it already is.

The number of individual blogs has topped 20 million and readership is exploding. In fact, the trade magazine Ad Age reports that during 2005 alone, American workers will spend the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs, rumor sheets, and online diaries. Hundreds of millions of readers worldwide get their news and entertainment from these independent sources, supporting their favorite bloggers through donations, link usage, and purchase of blog-related memorabilia.

Link Building

by lawmacs | 16. July 2009 00:25 Filed under: Link Building   10  Comments

Link building an important step in search engine optimization. Many people build a website, and then don’t take the time to promote the website. When you build back links to your site, it becomes stronger, and the search engines will find it easier.

When a search engine sees a lot of incoming links to your site, it looks at that and sees it as a relevant website, since many people are pointing to it. The question is how do you build back links? Where do you get back links from? There are a lot of different places where you can gain back links.

You can ask other similar websites if they’d like to exchange links.
You can write articles and submit them to directories, adding in your links.
You can submit your website to directories.
You can create special pages like Squidoo pages or Hub pages and add back links to your site
You can join “on-line carnivals” where similar topics come together and link to each other
You can add your link as your signature on forums and message boards You can do a press release to gain back links
You can comment on other websites and blogs to get back links.

Regardless of where you get the back links, remember it’s also important to remember to use relevant anchor text link that leads back to your site. You’ll want to target your main key phrase or keyword. Many people overlook the relevance of link building. When it comes to gaining visibility for your website, link building is an optimum step you don’t want to skip. One last tip, while link exchanges will help build your links, one way links are even better! If you can get incoming links to your site, while not having to link back to the site linking into you, these are seen as stronger links.