You also need to avoid using frames when you are creating pages for your website if you want them to perform well within the search engines. Frames end up slowing things down and can even end up confusing the search engines as well. Javascript also should be avoided in large parts, since this can cause your pages to load slowly. While graphics can be a nice part of your pages, you’ll also find that they can slow down page load if you end up using too many or if your graphics are too large.

Research and Use Good Keywords
If you want to have a website that is search engine friendly, researching and using good keywords is going to be very important as well. When you first start coming up with the website design, use a good keyword tool that can help you come up with keywords that will work well for your website. You should have a nice range of keywords, although you don’t need to concentrate on all the keywords on one single page. Once you have those keywords researched, you need to work on incorporating them into your website. This can be done in meta tags, title tags, links, and more.

Remember That Content is Always the Most Important
The content on your website is always the most important part of your page when it comes to catering to the search engines. However, content should not just be written with search engines in mind. You also need to write with your visitors in mind too. Most search engines look through text and they identify the keywords that are in the text, which helps provide good rankings in the search engines. Ensure that you use keywords in prominent parts of your text for the best results. However, avoid using keywords too much or this will end up causing problems with the search engine. Too many keywords will also hurt the quality of your text as well, making visitors less likely to come back to read your content again.

Make Sure the Homepage Loads Quickly
First, when you are trying to make your homepage a successful one, you need to make sure that the homepage loads quickly. You have a short amount of time to grab the attention of your visitors. However, if you waste time with a homepage that takes a long time to load, there is a good chance that you will lose visitors. Try to use only a few images to keep it from taking a long time to load. Also ensure that your HTML has no errors. Keeping your pages less than 20kb in size can also help as well.

Don’t Simply Throw Up Some Images
Some people think that creating a homepage simply involves throwing up a few images on the front page. This is not the case. Homepages that only have graphics or flash intros don’t end up being ranked well within the best search engines. Make sure that your homepage has more to offer the search engines and the visitors to your site.

Ensure You Have Plenty of Content
When it comes to your homepage, content is going to be important. Since you shouldn’t just throw up images on the page, you will need to fill some of the area with good content. You can add content that is related to your products or you can simply show your products on your homepage and add some content to go along with them. Just ensure that your content has related keywords included for the best search engine results.

Add in Headings and Subheadings
As you are making your homepage, you should add in headings and subheadings on the homepage as well. Big blocks of content are not a good options, since they look extremely daunting. Use short paragraphs and use headings and subheadings on them to break things up. This makes your text more readable to those who visit the page.

Never Use Popups
You should never use popups on your homepage, since this is especially annoying to people that visit your webpage. In fact, most people will end up leaving your homepage and never looking at another page on your website if you use popups on the main page. In fact, it’s actually best to avoid using them on any part of your website. Most people use popup blockers anyway, so your popups may not even be seen anyway.

Tip #1 – Ensure the Name Goes with the Site
First, it is definitely important that you go with a domain name that goes along with the site you will be putting up. Don’t make the mistake of choosing a name that has nothing to do with the site. For example, if you are selling car parts online, don’t make your domain name about something unrelated, such as flowers. Names that don’t go along with the topic of the site can be confusing to visitors and it will make the name difficult for them to remember.

Tip #2 – Keep it Short
It’s best to keep your domain name as short as possible for your website. It’s a lot easier to remember shorter web addresses than it is to remember long ones. You want people to be able to remember your site, so keep it short.

Tip #3 – Use Your Keywords
At this point, you should have keywords for your website. Make sure that you try to fit some keywords into your web address while keeping it short. When you can get a keyword or two into the domain name, people are more likely to remember it as well. It also can help you to get better search engine placement as well. So, instead of going with sarahssite.com, going with sarahsflowers.com for a flower site will be a much better option.

Tip #4 – Consider the Use of Hyphens
Sometimes you may find that the domain name that you really want is taken. In this case, you may want to consider using hyphens within the name. For example, if sarahsflowers.com is already taken, sarahs-flowers.com may be available to you. However, you definitely want to avoid having visitors accidentally forgetting the hyphen and ending up at a competitors website.

Tip #5 – Register for Multiple Extensions
Not only can you get .com extensions today when it comes to domain names, but you also can end up getting .org and .net extensions as well. When you sign up for a website, consider registering for those extensions as well. So, not only will you want sarahsflowers.com, but you’ll want sarahsflowers.net and sarahsflowers.org as well. The reasons that this is important is because it keeps someone else from trying to copy your domain name.

#1: Make sure you really need flash.

Flash isn’t something you should do just because you can. There should be a unique concept that cannot be carried out without flash. The flash should add to your website in a valuable manner. It should feel like a natural part of the overall site concept, rather than feeling like something flashy and extra.

If the flash isn’t a unique idea just for your website, then maybe you don’t really need it to make your website a huge success. Think about this seriously before moving forward. It will save you from being one of those sites with horribly bad flash scaring away visitors (without knowing it!).

#2: Don’t make your text itsy-bitsy.

One thing that many flash sites have in common is very small text on the flash screens. This is very hard to read, especially if there is a lot of sound and motion on the screen at the same time the text is displayed. If the text is necessary then it is necessary to make it easily seen and read by your visitors.

Don’t make them squint! Bump up the font.

#3: Make sure the navigation system is easy to use and very clear to users first finding the site.

The flash may be impressive, but if they can’t figure out how to get to the more useful pages of your site that contain the information they want to find, they will go elsewhere. Enough said.

#4: Consider how many users may not have the plug-in required to load the flash page.

If it takes forever to load your site or many visitors cannot load it at all, you are going to lose more traffic than you gain. Flash operates off of a plug-in and not all of your visitors are going to have that plug-in. If you really need the flash, make sure there is an HTML version of the site for those that cannot load the flash. Make sure there is an attractive way of telling visitors that they need a plug-in or need to click to the HTML version.

#5: Set it up so visitors only see the flash intro the first time they come to the site.

It is best to do this through a cookie, rather than having the “skip this page” option. The flash will never be seen by anyone if they can skip it. You are implying that it isn’t worth watching. If it is worth creating and essential to your site, it should be viewed. Visitors just shouldn’t be forced to view it every single time they visit your site.

Flash can be a good thing for some websites, but for others it is simply unnecessary. That right there is the very first decision you have to make when deciding if you need flash, how your flash should be designed, and how you should work around certain issues that come along with a flash site.

Cool Colors

First, you have cool colors that you can use when you are designing your website. One of the colors that is considered to be cool is blue. Blue can be an excellent color for use on a website because it makes people feel calm. It also brings about feelings of trust and intelligence. For this reason, many health and financial sites use this color. Another cool color is green. This color can stand for wealth and money. However, it is also associated with green and jealousy, something you need to consider. Purple is also a cool color that is known to stand for being creative.

Warm Colors

There are several warm colors that you can use on your web design as well. However, it’s important to know more about these colors and what they mean and the emotions that they evoke before you use them. Yellow is a warm color that can stand for happiness and warmth. Orange is another warm color that can stimulate appetite and it is often associated with Halloween and Fall. Pink is a warm color that is associated with romance and innocence. Last, you have red, which really draws the attention of the visitor. It can raise blood pressure and may also stand for passion and anger.

Neutral Colors

A variety of different neutral colors are available to use when designing your website too. White is a neutral color, standing for cleanliness and purity. Black is also considered to be a neutral color. It is associated with elegance, power, and sophistication. Grays are very conservative and they also exude feelings of reliability too.

Information on Color Schemes

When you are planning to design colors for your website, you also need to learn about color schemes and how to use them. One type of color scheme is a single color scheme, which makes use of the same color but in several different shades of that color. Contrasting color schemes are another option that you can use for your website. With this type of a scheme, dominant colors help you design an effect that really grabs the eyes. Complementary color schemes are another option where at least two complimentary colors are used in the scheme and this makes an very appealing look for those who visit your website.

Hiring a website designer can be expensive, this is why some choose to design their own websites. There are several factors to consider before you decide to hire a professional web designer or whether you decide to do it yourself. It is important to consider the level of expertise that you or the person you plan to hire have in web technology in order to create an attractive, and professional looking website that functions insync with your goals. It all comes down to skill levels- the ability to add features you want or need, the image you want to project for your website, and the amount of free time you have to devote to building a successful website.

Here are some skill you need to have when building a website:

1. Knowledge in HTML coding

This may or may not require some training courses on basic HTML. You can also make use of a good web design software to help you with HTML coding.

2. Creativity

A good eye for color combination and general good taste are important for a web designer to create an aesthetically attractive website.

3. Expertise in graphic software

Knowledge in graphic softwares such as Picasa and Photoshop is needed to produce clean and attractive photos and site graphics. It is also needed to optimize the pictures from the smallest possible file size for quick loading.

4. Expertise in site navigation

Some knowledge in web development such as functionality and usability as well as website navigation design and implementation is an important skill.

5. Programming Expertise

Basic knowledge in CGI, JavaScript, or database programming is needed so you can add interactive web pages or integrate it with an online database.

6. Experience in internet marketing and business experience.

In building a personal website or a business website, some major business and marketing aspects are need to be taken into consideration right from the beginning of the design stage of the website.

Are You Capable of Building a Website on Your Own?

Ask yourself if you have the time or the skills to build your own website. If you don’t then you can hire a professional to do it for you. You can find a list of professional web designers on the Internet. There are freelance boards that allow you to hire individuals with the expertise you need: web designers, programmers, SEO specialist, copywriters, and more. They can be part of a team or they can work on their own. You also have the option to hire a local web design firm, although free lancers are cheaper to hire because they live in countries where there is a 5:1 ration in salaries. This means that $1 USD is equivalent to $5 USD in their country. So paying a freelancer for $5 an hour is equivalent to paying $25 an hour.

As for web content writing, you can hire a native English speaker for $0.05 per word and up, while non native speakers can be hired for around $0.02 per word.
You have to ensure open communication between you and the web designer and the web developer,as well as the copywriter. A good web designer knows how to include web marketing into site design to make it search engined optimized.

How Much Does Out Sourcing Cost?

You can expect to pay anywhere between $100 up to $1, 500 for a simple five or siz page website including the entire site with graphics and content. A more complex interactive site would cost you around $599 for programming,to about $10,000 and up for the entire website.

Your time will also be spent as well. The project will need some managing so expect to write the project specification, spend time writing to freelancers via email, doing some assurance testing, and many more. There maybe cases that developing a website on your own is cheaper than hiring others to do the job.

It’s not about the money you’ll spend, but about keeping your reputation professional. Hiring a professional web designer can help you maintain the image of professionalism.
It’s all about dedication. The decision of whether to outsource or not is based on your dedication to make the most out of the website. If you think you can do a better job than a professional web designer then by all means, D-I-Y is the way to go.

When you are planning your web pages, don’t get all caught up in the cool things that do neat things. Add the elements that you need that stick with the layout and motif of the other pages across your site. But along the design street you are following, keep your ultimate goal in mind. That goal is probably sales conversions.

The one, single element you want to pay special attention to is your text. That has to be current, relevant and targeted to your bull’s eye mark. As long as your page text stays on task and provides the information necessary to the reader, your job is basically done. The rest is all cosmetic and aesthetics.

What I am trying to say is this: don’t overdo it with all the flashy, splashy tech toys that make web design a challenge. Keep to the point at hand, make your statements, get your points across and hold your audience captive. That is the key to web design success.

For example, say your three year old draws a picture of a tree and gives it to you. Chances are you may not even see a tree in there, BUT it goes up on the family message board for display and remains there for a LONG time. That picture has served its purpose and represents good design, despite the fact that it looks nothing like what it is supposed to be.

Likewise, if you design a web site that you want to attract X amount of visitors the first year and you make that mark, that is a good design. It works. It may not be flashy and have streaming videos or animated backgrounds or even a company logo up there. But it works, so the design is good and gets you where you want to go.

Consider the possibility that you spend a month coding every possible type of bell and whistle into your pages, and then they don’t attract a single visitor. Just because you have all those design elements on there does not mean it is a good design. What it does mean is that you know how to code a page and do a lot of cool stuff that may be useful in other places. If it doesn’t achieve that goal you set at the beginning, it ranks as a bad design.

So keep your focus on the product or service you are offering, pitch to your readers and give them what they really want; relevant information. It doesn’t matter if it flashes or blinks or scrolls across the screen. It gets the job done and THAT denotes good web design.

Take all the tips and tricks with you and practice them, but use them intelligently and you cannot go wrong in your web design adventures.

If you have spent any time at all writing web pages, you know the frustration of writing and not being able to see what the page looks like. So you need to save once in a while, open your index file and view the results of your HTML. This takes time and if you are using tables or vertically arranged images and elements, you need to know that you have everything where it belongs.

The simple way to do this is to use one of the many free HTML editors. This is a simple downloadable program that lets you do a lot of work in a short period of time. After you get the program on your computer, you can copy and paste the HTML of any or all of your pages into the editor. Now you are able to work on your pages and not worry about publishing a mistake-ridden document.

An HTML editor lets you place elements on your page that you would normally have to program yourself. Things like dropdown menus, tables, sidebars, forms and more are at your fingertips. The best part is that you do not have to write one single character of HTML for any of it; the editor does it for you. You simply choose the element you want, add the values and the rest is magic.

Entering the main body text is a snap with an HTML editor. Just write the text and you can change the style, size or color of any word of it at any time. Sort of like the way you do it in a Word document. The whole thing is designed so that anyone can create dynamic, eye-catching web pages quickly.

Now, after you get all the elements in the right places, all you have to do is copy the code and paste it into the corresponding page file on your site. All web hosts give their members access to a set of tools and options for managing their pages. In there somewhere is a file manager. This is where your pages are stored in a way that lets you view the HTML, change it and republish your page(s).

Aside from those amazing benefits, there is another one that cannot be ignored. Many of the editors available let you actually SEE the results of your HTML in a split screen view. One side has the HTML entry area and the other displays the code as it appears to visitors. This allows you to correctly place your web page elements where you want them the first time.

Remember that HTML is primarily a display language, so being able to use the editor this way greatly increases your productivity. Rather than having to type all those tags and attributes, you just tell the editor what you want and it applies the HTML for you. In addition, it writes the proper syntax so you don’t have to worry about broken or bad HTML.

Your white space is also optimized so loading time is not adversely affected either.

All of these benefits are yours for a free download of an HTML editor. You have everything to gain and nothing at all to lose, folks. Get one soon and turn out pages like a pro.

Another web page language is XHTML. The acronym stands for eXtensible Hyper Text Markup Language. In context, XHTML looks like standard HTML. The difference is that this language has more rules that MUST be followed to achieve the desired outcome. In that sense, XHTML is more exacting and a bit cleaner.

A worthy note here is that the two languages, HTML and XHTML, can work side by side in the same document. That is to say that you can write a web page using both languages and it will work just fine. This is because XHTML is a combination of HTML and a les lenient markup language called XML. XML is designed as a descriptive element to data while HTML is designed as a display element. Therefore, the two are compatible.

The reason we want to use a clean language on our web pages is cross browser applications. Technology has given us many different types of browsers. Some of these run on our laptops and home PCs. Others run inside mobile devices like phones, blackberries and PDAs. These browsers are not able to read and effectively display bad or broken HTML. So the exacting syntax of XML makes XHTML compatible across all these browsers.

There are four main differences between the two languages. First, elements in an XHTML document need to have proper nesting syntax.

This means that you need to close the LAST tag first in nested tags, like this:

<i><u>This text is underlined and italicized</u></i>

Notice how I closed the “underline” tag first even though it was opened last.

Next, all elements in an XHTML document MUST be closed. Each and every opening tag you write HAS to have a closing tag. This is not the case with standard HTML.

Third, all XHTML tags or elements are ALWAYS written in lower case. No exceptions. No upper case letters in any tags.

Last, you must have one root element. This is usually the <html> tag you put at the top of the document. Everything else must be nested between that opening root tag and the closing </html> tag at the end of the document.

Several more rules apply here as well, as follows:

All tags or commands in lower case.

All values called or designated in the tags must be enclosed in quotation marks.

Making tags smaller, or minimizing them, is not acceptable.

There are mandatory elements that MUST be present in the document, ie…a doctype declaration and tags for html, body and title. These MUST be include in the document.

You can get started on switching your HTML pages to XHTML very easily. Start looking for open tags with no closings. Then look for capital letters in the attributes (tags) and make them lower case. Finally, be certain that you have a doctype declared BEFORE the HTML tag.

Do this and you’re on your way to writing your pages in one of the most widely accepted markup languages on the planet. Your pages will be visible to all users regardless of the device they are using. This gives you a larger audience and the possibility for more visits and success.

When your visitors get to your site, they want to be able to get to the information they want quick. The average web surfer stays on a page for approximately 7 or 8 seconds. During that time they are looking at how easily they can get around, or navigate your pages and information. Your navigation elements need to be readily available, easily seen and the right ones even increase your results in the search engines.

Remember that search engines can only read text. For this reason, simple text based navigation buttons or links are the best option. Just write the phrase &quot;about us&quot; and link it to the &quot;about us&quot; page. It is important that that link goes directly to your &quot;about us&quot; page. The same applies to the other navigation links on all your pages, no matter how many or few you have.

Now, on to the search engines and what works best. As we said, the search engines can only read and assess text. That is why your page content has to be relevant and current all the time. This helps your site remain in the top listings for your niche or market. The web is a competitive place, so the top 5 to 7 results listed will grab 95% of the visits. That is a hard statistic.

If your navigational links are text based, the search engines can read them. The result is simple. The search engine will return a link to your site’s pages. Have you ever noticed that when you search for an established web site, you get links to all the pages associated with that site? You can go to the contacts page, about page, links page or any page that the SE sees a link for.

On the other hand, if you get fancy and layer the text over a graphic like a folder style tab or a pre-made button, the search engine does not see that. This reduces your results and gets you less visitors. Since the aim of your web site is to either inform the visitor about a product or directly sell them the product, your navigation needs to be simple and straightforward.

Other types of navigation elements are even less effective, such as dropdown menus. Not everyone is a web expert. If they cannot see the link clearly, they may just go away. So keep the navigable links visible and easy to see. Specify them with colors, bold text, underline them or make them appear different on mouse over. All these things call attention to the link and urges them to click.

Location is important, too. I like to keep mine at the top of the page. This is where most folks look for them to be. Placing them down the left side is acceptable as well, but not as effective and it makes them have to look for them. Too much work makes a surfer turn away.

Lastly, remember the 3 click rule. Keep all your pages no more than 3 mouse clicks away. It has been shown in studies that most web surfers are only willing to click a maximum of 3 times to reach their desired information. Make your navigation easy and within a click or two and your site will succeed and be effective.