Many people who are trying to dream up a domain name for their business discover just how common a unique idea might be. Welcome to the web! Trying to find a domain name that has not been taken is classic needle in a haystack. You can short-cut the process by doing your keyword research first.

If you know what search terms people are using to find your products and services you can back your way into a domain name that gets more merit in those searches. And that’s just the beginning of understanding how to take an idea online.

What I have also come to discover is that there is a proliferation of people out there with great ideas and many of them may even have an idea similar to yours. EXECUTION is what turns an idea into an enterprise. And that is what separates the men from the boys (and the girls from the women).

Execution is a matter of process. I mean process in the literal sense. A successful business needs a roadmap. No successful business that I know of flies by the seat of its pants and many may get there after a lot of failures, trial and error and sometimes costly ventures. But ultimately, a successful business lands on a formula, a process that allows them to deliver consistent results for their clients.

I work with a lot of people who want to start an ecommerce business for many reasons. For the most part, they all have good ideas and most have a good general knowledge about their wares. But very few know how to manifest their ideas online.

There are two roads to take in light of this. The first is to “jump in” – wing it! The second is to find a process that will work for your business. Even if you have to pay more money initially for the second option, you will save time, money, head-aches and heart-ache by the time your business begins to generate a return. If you go the first route, you may in fact never get there. By our conservative estimate, 70% of new online ventures fail.

The good news is that the process for developing your online business is quite easy to execute if you get a little guidance. Here are some of the basic things you should research and understand before embarking on an ecommerce business.

Keyword Research

Keyword research equals market research. People that skip this step are not only shortcutting the process planning stages, they are undermining their ability to succeed! There are plenty of free resources on the web to not only do your research but also educate you with respect to what you should be looking for.

For example, if you decide that the most general search term in your category is one of the ones you’ll focus on, you might as well just beat your head against the wall! The point is, there might be a LOT of searches relative to that keyword BUT you may not ever show up in the search engines for it. The scope of this article doesn’t afford time to explain the process of choosing keywords that you can rank for, so I’ll save that for a future article. But rest assured that this is one of the most important steps in the process.

Site Planning

Once you have your keywords, you should begin site planning. We recommend you build your site outline first and then see where your chosen keywords go into the site map.

Your site outline generally mirrors your site map. You’ll find that the keywords that you have chosen belong under certain headings in your site map. You may have to plan separate pages for specific keywords, and that’s OK. Part of your business planning will be to understand how to write for the web. Plan on a 500-700 word article, appropriate pictures, and apply basic on-page SEO. This gets most of my new clients glassy-eyed again and it will take another article to explain “basic on-page SEO”.

Think Outside The Box

Your keywords define a set of articles. These articles don’t all have to go on your site. You should plan to write articles for distribution as well to help promote your site and start building links to your site. “Article Marketing” is one of the most effective means to promote your products or services and get links referring back to your site. The links, by the way, are keywords hyperlinked to appropriate pages in your site.

Get Connected

Start blogging. Set up a You-Tube channel specific to your business. Set up a social media business page on Facebook. Set up a Twitter account and start following people in your demographic. They’ll start following you too! Get on Linked-in if it makes sense (B2B).

Marketing and gaining business exposure is a function of being a part of the web community. Once your site is set-up with basic SEO guidelines, the search engines will start to find it (if you’ve chosen your keywords carefully). But that’s not enough. You business is not simply just having a website. Start engaging in as much of the social web as makes sense and plan on a significant amount of time reaching out, helping and contributing. The return on your effort will pay off.

Every SEO uses different tools and resources. Some tools are paid, some are free and some are internally developed tools that we use for ourselves and our clients – but we all use them. Very often I get asked what tools people should use if they’re looking to optimize their own sites and what resources they should use to keep up with the latest going’s on. While telling people how to optimize their own sites and what the tools we use isn’t generally the best of business practices – I just can’t help myself.

If your budget doesn’t allow for the hiring of a professional SEO company – trying it yourself may be the only option. I also try to remember that once-upon-a-time I was optimizing my own sites and was new to SEO and without the open advice of others already involved in the community – I wouldn’t be running a successful SEO company today. To this end, it only seems right to provide a list of some of the main tools we use on virtually every site.

When I initially started writing this article I was going to cram a slough of various tools and resources into one article but the article was going to end up running WAY too long to hold your attention (or mine) so I’ve cut it into three EZ parts (as opposed to three EZ payments which you’ll be familiar with if you too watch late night TV with a laptop in front of you writing things like SEO articles). But let’s get to the meat of this article shall we? The series will be divide into three parts:
Firefox
Free & Affordable Tools
Resources

So let’s begin with Firefox. Let me first say, I don’t know if Firefox is officially the browser of SEO’s but if not – it should be. You can download it here.

And now the extensions that make this browser invaluable to SEO’s …

SEO Quake

If I had to lose all but one of my SEO tools – this would be the one I’d keep which is why it gets listed first. This little tool allows me to quickly look at the top 10 results in the SERPs and within seconds see all the PageRank, indexed page numbers, backlinks to that page, domain backlinks, the age of the site and much much more.

This tool doesn’t provide any revolutionary information in that it’s all data that can be accessed directly however it reduces tasks that would take many minutes down to a few second. It then provides easy links to more detailed information. A fantastic tool. Oh, and it also adds a line through all nofollowed links. Very handy when link building.

SEO for Firefox

Aaron Wall over at SEO Book has added a great tool to the mix that duplicates a lot of functions of SEO Quake but which has enough additional features to be very useful. Basically – neither is a replacement for the other.
Like most tools – it provides information that can be accessed without HOWEVER with this Tool Aaron allows users to find tons of relevant site and keyword information quickly and painlessly. From keyword traffic to keyword trends, from backlink counts to social media mentions – this tools gives quick access to tons of information.

SEO Link Analysis
A HUGE tumbs way up (two of them in fact) to Joost de Valk who made all our lives simpler when this tool launched. What this tool does is displays the PageRank and anchor test of every link when you perform a backlink check on one of the major engines. I suppose you could visit every single site and get this information yourself and there’s value in that to be sure but when you need a quick analysis of a site’s backlinks – this tool is invaluable.

As a note – works VERY well with SEO Quake.

Web Developer

With this tool we’re getting a bit more advanced. For those of you who understand coding or are learning (and you should be) this tool is incredible. It allows for quick testing and viewing of a site for it’s structure including inage info, table and cell information, W3C compliance, CSS details and MUCH MUCH more.

I can’t possibly list off all the functions this tool offers and admittedly – I don’t use them all but I use enough of them regularly for this tool to make my top 10 list.

IE Tab

This is an odd tool to add and it’s purely a convenience tool but like adding a second monitor to your system – once you have it and realize that it saves you just a few seconds but it saves you that dozens of times per day you quickly realize that your productivity relies on it.

With a simple click of a button this tool loads Internet Explorer into your Firefox tab so you don’t have to go back-and-forth between browsers when testing. I could survive without it but since you have Firefox anyways …

Search Status

This is another tools with many uses. On the surface it simply displays PageRank, Alexa and Compete rank and mozRank data but with a right-click of the icon you get access to a whole sleugh of additional information including fast links to whois, the robots and sitemap files, keyword density information, Archive.org info and it’ll even highlight nofollow links.

A lot of these features overlap other tools noted above but I will say – I have it installed and so should you.

Now this is the main sleugh of extensions I have installed for Firefox (read: the ones I use virtually every day). This isn’t to say taht’s all there are and I can’t stress enough the benefits of visiting https://addons.mozilla.org/ and looking for more useful extensions specific to your needs (RSS, Twitter, coding, etc.) I have about a dozen more installed than are listed here but those above are the main Firefox SEO tools I use daily.

Building a great landing page should be on top of your priority list if you want your website visitors transformed into customers.

While a great looking website can grab the attention of your visitors, a strong landing page will keep them involved and get them to buy your products/services.

Wikipedia defines a landing page as:

The page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link. The page will usually display content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link, and that is optimized to feature specific keywords or phrases for indexing by search engines.

Wikipedia’s definition sums it up nicely but there is certainly more to a great landing page then relevant and keyword rich content. Here are 10 things that you should be looking at when optimizing a landing page:

- Relevant Content

A landing page’s content should be directly related to organic search results, PPC campaign, anchor text in inbound links and any other targeted inbound advertising, online and offline. If people don’t get what they expect, they will be more likely to leave.

- Multiple Landing Pages

A landing page shouldn’t necessarily be your homepage. In many instances a homepage is a good landing page. However, for more targeted traffíc and better results, you want a landing page to be focused on a specific offering and specific call for action. To accomplish this, a given website should have multiple landing pages. Create some deep link landing pages that will focus on a specific proposition and your conversion rate will be higher.

- Focus on Functionality

More and more visitors seem to judge the professionalism and credibility of a site by its design. To satisfy this, many website owners concentrate on the design aspect instead of focusing on its functionality. A well-designed landing page is essentially worthless if the prospect can’t accomplish anything. While I wouldn’t suggest skimping on the design, it shouldn’t be your priority. Focus on the exact steps you want your visitor to take and design a page with that in mind.

- Call To Action

You got visitors to your landing page, now direct them to take action. Make it clear and highly noticeable without overwhelming your audience. Whether it’s a sign-up form or a “buy now” button, make it the focus of your page.

- Send a Clear Message

Keep your landing page clean and clutter free so your visitors stay focused on your message. Emphasize the biggest reasons that they should carry out the applicable call to action with larger text, contrasting colors, images. Make it easier for them to scan the content by using lists and getting right to the point.

- Provide Incentive

Bribing your visitors with freebies and samples is a proven method of enticing them to sign up. Provide more than your competition but don’t sell yourself short either. Provide a list of reasons why your offering is better and what exactly the visitor can expect. Provide references and testimonials.

- Make Visitors Stay

Avoid sending your visitors to another page unless it is absolutely necessary. That includes any internal navigation as well as external banners. If you eliminate all distractions and limit navigation options, you stand a better chance of keeping your visitors around.

- Simple is Better

Make it easy for your visitors to complete the action you want them to. Less confusion and decision making for your visitor means better conversions rate for your landing page. Don’t provide multiple choices and throw in optional extras. Focus on the pitch the page was created for.

- Power of Freebies

Everyone likes free offers. They are hard to resist and can be a powerful conversion tool. Whether a call to action is free or something free is receíved as a result of carrying out a call to action, it certainly doesn’t hurt. If your competition charges for something and you provide it for free, you’ll win the customer. Remember, just because you make a free offer doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be quality.

- Testing

In a recent post “How to Turn Website Visitors into Buyers”, I’ve stressed how important testing is in finding out what your visitors like. Testing various text, call to action forms, layouts will give you a true idea what produces the best results as far as conversion.

Using a tool like Google’s Website Optimizer you can easily monitor the conversion rate, bounce rate, and tons of other useful metrics found in most modern day web analytics apps. Using these metrics you can easily figure out which version will be your optimal page, one that maximizes the results.

Creating a successful and effective landing page takes a lot of work but should be the focus for anyone involved with a website. Whether you are a website owner, web designer, web developer or a web marketing specialist you must be aware of the components that comprise a solid landing page. After all this can mean a website’s success or failure.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is more difficult than rocket science. Becoming a Jedi-level SEO master requires years of practice for most mere mortals, and like a Jedi, if one falls out of practice, one’s skills quickly wane.

This is not a static science. Search algorithms change constantly, and as they are carefully protected secrets, one can never know what those designing the search engines are really doing under the hood.

No, it’s not rocket science; A more apt analogy would be trying to reverse engineer a UFO that one can only see from afar, the specs of whose propulsion system constantly change.

Do not kid yourself: Becoming a genuine expert in this field is no easy task. In addition to all the knowledge needed, competition can literally be fierce. Your competitors may even actively sabotage you. One mistake can undo months of hard work.

If working on behalf of a client, you had better be darn sure that you keep your methods above board so that you do not get their site exiled to the far reaches of the Internet where it will never be found.

Meanwhile, some of your competitors will be using very underhanded techniques to try to make that happen. Like I said, it’s hard to reach Jedi level, and once you do, you have to take care to stay on the bright side of the Force.

If you are in business, it is extremely important to choose the right SEO company or employee.

If you want to become the right SEO company or employee, here are a few suggestions on ways to train yourself (and being self-taught is the only way to do this):

1. Build at least five websites and administer them for at least a year. Keep each one separarate from the others, its own little sanitary petri dish not to be sullied.

2. Go about it scientifically. Test hypotheses rigorously until you have a few bona fide theories. Keep good records and track results. Take special note of changes in search engine behavior and the keywords and descriptions that draw your visitors. Connect those changes to your SEO activities.

3. Learn how to identify effective keywords. Despite what you may have heard, this is not as easy as finding words that are both searched for and non-competitive. It’s best to be somewhat intuitive. What keyword combination are potential customers likely to use as opposed to bored or curious web surfers?

4. Use different tools until you find one that works. I have my favorite, but I’m not allowed to mention it in this article. Follow the link in my bio and surf around the blog. You should be able to determine what that tool is. Try it free.

5. Success before sales. Once you have at least 20 pages to the top for fairly competitive keywords, you can turn prospects into clients.

6. Play your cards somewhat close to your chest. Once you have some success, take a cue from the people who write the search algorithms and keep your exact methods to yourself. Also train and improve continuously so that your skills do not slip.

If you go through that training course, you will become a Jedi-level SEO expert who commands top dollar and deserves every penny.

Corporate branding is the process of establishing a name and image for your business. It is something, which should be done by every organization, and establishes a name for your product or service.

While you can have a successful business without the use of corporate branding, it is much harder to remain in the minds of customers when you do not have a brand or logo for them to associate your business with. Corporate branding begins with the designing of a relevant logo, website, business cards, letterheads, and any other promotional materials that you might need.

With these items in place and the corporate logo established, you will begin to see why corporate branding is the key to success.

Why is Corporate Branding so Important?

When you think about Nike, what comes to mind? I can guarantee that most of you just pictured a check mark in your head. This is because Nike has spent a lot of time and money to ensure that their logo and “just do it” motto have been set into the minds of consumers for years.

This is just one example of why corporate branding is so important. Without a brand image to quickly associate your business with, you are instantly out of the minds of consumers.

If you can on the other hand, provide consumers with a lasting memory of your brand, then yours will be the first business that will come to mind when they see that image or logo. It will also allow them to spread the word about your business much easier.

Sometimes people remember logos better than the names of businesses.

You Can’t Do It Alone

The first thing you need to understand about corporate branding before you begin selecting a logo or other merchandise, is that you can’t do it alone. Even if you could design the image, you would not be able to produce the merchandise such as business cards, letterhead, and other promotional items by yourself.

For this reason, it is important to enlist the help of professionals. Companies who provide marketing services can conduct research based on your business, and help you choose a logo, motto, and merchandise that can help you create effective corporate branding.

While you may spend a little bit of money by using one of these companies’ services, it will be well worth it when your business has a successful brand, and your traffic and sales increase. While you are new to the idea of corporate branding, these professional companies have had years of experience helping businesses get their start.

Developing a Logo

The first step that a marketing service company will introduce you to, is the development of a logo. This is the most important step in corporate branding, because it creates an image that will always be associated with your business.

A logo can be serious, humorous, or just about anything else that you like. It can communicate to consumers what type of services or goods that you offer, your quality of service, or any other important information. It is essential that you choose a logo that can’t be interpreted the wrong way.

It is also important to choose a logo that makes a statement about your company, and is not just a random choice. The more content you are with your brand image, the better your potential customers will react to it.

Completing the Image

Choosing a logo is not the last step in corporate branding. In order to effectively brand your business, you need to display that logo and brand image consistently on and in all your marketing efforts. A company’s letterhead, business cards, and any other promotional items used should reflect the logo and brand image that has been created.

If you are inconsistent, your attempt at corporate branding will fail. Corporate branding is becoming increasingly popular with local small businesses and large corporate companies as well. When you associate a specific logo, image, or motto with your business, the consumers are more likely to recognize your brand as one they know and trust.

Remember though, that it cannot be done alone and that is best to enlist the help of a professional marketing service when working on this strategy.

For months (or is it years now?) we have been reading articles on how businesses should develop a presence on Twitter and build a Facebook Page as part of their SEM objectives. Now, with social media firmly established in the armoury of our online marketing efforts, how can we best take advantage of these two social media giants?

As if to demonstrate their power in the market these days, both Twitter and Facebook (to a lesser extent) have been targeted and dealt painful denial-of-service (DoS) attacks and, as a result, many hours of downtime.

With hackers determined to bring Twitter down to earth, it was acknowledged that although defensive measures had been taken on the company’s part to repel further attacks, third-party developers whose applications have been using their application programming interface, were found vulnerable.

In a similar vein, the social-networking site Facebook was also hit with a DoS attack, but it didn’t appear to be quite so threatening as the one that knocked Twitter off its perch on the same day.

Social media, as a phenomenon, has taken marketing online by the scruff of the neck and placed it in the control of the general public. In essence, traditional search engines, where votes have often been bought and traded by sleight-of-hand SEM tactics, have now been delivered on a platform where we decide our preferred content. Not ideal, but popular.

But how do we achieve success in this and what should the marketing mix be? Let’s take a look at how some of the “big guns” treat social media?

One of the best marketing campaigns I have seen on Facebook Pages is that of Coca-Cola. They employ very sophisticated marketing methods, like the post, “Random Coke Fact: Coca-Cola translated to Chinese means “Delicious Happiness”.

And not to be outdone by the world’s addiction to everything green, another post from the company reads: “Recycling Week in the United Kingdom, and to celebrate, Coca-Cola’s unveiled this massive sculpture made from recycled aluminum cans! So when your Coke is empty, please Give it Back.”

Their posts are multi-lingual also. But I did notice the trends employed in their “open marketing”: no sooner did they try to have the Chinese and environmentalists in their pocket, they went after dog lovers with, “Puppies love Coca-Cola, and the feeling is mutual!”

This is not exactly a line that can easily be lifted by the SEM community: “Puppies love Google Sitemaps, and the feeling is mutual!” doesn’t quite work, does it? Conversely, their tweets have been styled to be far more interactive with the public and in many regards this company has the marketing mix about spot-on.

Because of Google’s business model and its customer base, it is, of course, different. It has to be. Many of its posts on Facebook describe new products and services with a mix of more interesting posts such as, “Check out this cool video showing the Google Chrome logo being built out of legos!” and “Have you explored the Moon in Google Earth yet?” Not to be left out of growing environmental bandwagon posts, they wrote: “Should you spring clean your solar panels?” in which they have “assembled a 1.6 MW solar panel installation at our headquarters in Mountain View in 2007…”

The BBC have registered their Facebook Page under the Entertainment & Arts ? Television section and provide a modest link to their website and have provided a poorly-used discussion board ? in my humble opinion. As a news outlet, they seem to be far more concentrated on exploiting Twitter, because of their Breaking News alerts, with 172,756 followers.

Search Engine Watch and The Guardian newspaper provide a profile and leave their social media posts to the rightful platform of Twitter, as most major media companies do. So, it’s really a case of creating the right media mix for your clients. Nothing here is set in stone. You have to identify who your audience is, what they want and what is the best approach you should take to your marketing.

If you have articles or press releases or are looking to improve your relationships with your customers, both Twitter and Facebook Pages allow you to do this. According to the owners, your Facebook Page allows you to “leverage connections” between “friends” and allow your “fans” to become “brand advocates”. Your posts will also appear in their news feed. Essentially, when Facebook users become a “fan” of your brand, they will be notified of your updates via this feed. You can also share other content options, such as videos and photos, etc.

In summary, although there are many applications that can automatically post to both Facebook and Twitter, you need to make sure you have thoroughly researched how you intend to market yourself and your clients to determine your unique marketing mix.

Simply posting the same information to both sites may well do for now but as social media marketing becomes ever more sophisticated, it may be a highly inappropriate and a tired marketing response for the future. As a first step, take a look at how the corporates have organised themselves.

Two weeks ago, Adobe released a critical patch for Flash Player and Acrobat Reader. According to online security company Trusteer, about 80% of users are still vulnerable, and perhaps more startling, the company views this as being possibly the biggest security hole on the Internet today.

That 80% figure is based on Trusteer’s installed base of over 2.5 million online banking users of the company’s security service.

“The penetration of Adobe Flash and Acrobat is unparalleled,” a spokesperson for Trusteer tells WebProNews. “According to Adobe, 99% of Internet users run Flash.

So so many people on the web are running Flash, and Adobe released the patch two weeks ago, why are so many still vulnerable? Trusteer thinks Adobe just has issues with distributing patches.

“Adobe is facing some major security challenges and one of its biggest hurdles is its software update mechanism. For some reason, it is not effective enough in distributing security patches to the field,” says Trusteer CEO Mickey Boodaei. “Given the lack of attention this situation has received to date, it appears that few people understand the magnitude of the problem. We recommend that all enterprises and individuals install the latest Flash and Acrobat updates immediately.”

Accoreding to Trusteer, targeting products like Flash and Acrobat is attractive to wrongdoers because they reach such a huge portion of Internet users. Browser use is much more diversified with Internet Explorer reaching about 65% of users and Firefox reaching 30%. Targeting Adobe’s products just covers a lot more people.

The combination of the Internet, the Web, and technology has democratized business almost beyond recognition. Today the small, nimble, clever adaptor has the competitive advantage over their bigger, slower moving, ‘we’ve-always-done-it-this-way’ competitors; but the confluence of the Web environment and digital technology is one thing, how to use it effectively is another. Not every trendy social networking gimmick, user generated irrelevance, and pointless viral voyeurism is a productive business communication tactic.

The Day Dinosaurs Died

Like the dinosaurs that once ruled the world, the giant behemoth corporations that once dominated the business landscape have become fat and lazy, relying on muscle rather than brains, on statistics rather than understanding, and on technology rather than insight.

As these companies got bigger, they became top-heavy, corrupt, and stagnant, throwing their weight around rather than innovating and adapting. Oh yes, the big boys are still around, still doing what they’ve always done, jumping on every trend ‘du jour’ promoted by the ‘blogosphere’ without any real understanding of what it can accomplish, but hell, they figure if they throw enough you-know-what at the wall some of it is bound to stick, or so they hope.

But the handwriting is on the wall, the giant Internet meteorite has already hit these corporations right in their balance sheets and they are tumbling into irrelevance. The list of extinct corporate giants grows, and the march to Chapter 11 continues unabated.

So how does the smart, fearless, innovative thinking, business decision-maker take advantage of the Web’s ability to even the playing field? The answer lies in their ability to use the Web as a persuasive communication medium.

Persuasive Communication

The Web is really a very simple concept: it is a place that allows you to communicate your message to your audience. What could be simpler, but like anything democratic, it’s messy: a jumble of the very good and the very bad, and a whole lot of mediocre in-between. And in today’s overcrowded Web-centric business environment there is little room for the mediocre.

In the final analysis all marketing, branding, positioning, advertising, and public relations is about communicating a persuasive message that attracts attention, generates interest, stimulates desire, triggers experiences, produces memories, and prompts action. And what Web-enabled communication tool gives you the best chance of delivering that kind of persuasive message? Web Video.

Persuasive Web Video Communication

The Web has some of the most effective creative video presentations you would ever want to see, and it also has some of the worst.

Easy-to-use and relatively inexpensive technology has created a plethora of do-it-yourself efforts. Some DIYers do it because of cost, others do it because of ego, and some just figure they’re smarter than the people who do it for a living; and in some cases they may be right. Not all professionally produced Web-video is created equal. If your Web-video team is not pushing you to be bold with a focused, defining, differentiating message, then you’ve hired the wrong people.

Communication intended to persuade is a complex undertaking, one that requires a better understanding of how messages are communicated than it does the technical production issues. When people watch a video, what they see is far more susceptible to both intended and unintended nuance than a simple face-to-face conversation.

Every Move You Make, I’ll Be Watching You

“Every move you make; every vow you break; every smile you fake; every claim you stake; I’ll be watching you.”

- From the song ‘I’ll Be Watching You’ by The Police

Everything a person does or says is a sign, not just a communication of the obvious intent but also of the underlying subconscious subtext. In person, people have a built-in monitoring system that filters-out irrelevant verbal and non-verbal distractions, glitches and eccentricities, but on your website, in a video, those performance issues get magnified and can destroy your entire presentation.

In his book ‘Messages, Signs, and Meanings’ Marcel Danesi states, “Humans convey over two-thirds of their messages through the body, producing up to 700,000 physical signs, of which 1000 are different bodily postures, 5000 are hand gestures, and 250,000 are facial expressions.”

If your website lacks a video presentation, and instead relies solely on text communication, you are handicapping your business’s ability to persuade, convince, and convert website visitors into clients. And, if you do have video on your site, but it’s not producing the intended results, perhaps the verbal communication is in conflict with the nonverbal message, creating confusion and distrust rather than confidence and understanding.

Forget all the things you think your website should be doing; its most important and most critical purpose is to deliver an effective communication to your audience.

A Recipe for Web-Video Communication

Persuasive Web-video communication is a complicated process that involves numerous creative and technical talents, as well as psychological insight into performance issues: scripting, casting, producing, directing, editing, music, and sound design, all complemented by communication psychology, emotional resonance, and business savvy are required to create effective presentations.

Ingredient One: Attract Attention

Job one is to get people to take their hand off the mouse and pay attention; it’s the equivalent of someone yelling, “hey you” in a crowded room, everyone stops and turns to find out what’s going on.

Mark Hughes author of “Buzzmarketing” suggests six criteria that provide the hey-you-pay-attention affect: the taboo, the unusual, the humorous, the outrageous, the remarkable, the secret, and the titillating. Which of these criteria you choose to use depends on your brand image, your audience, and your message.

All these elements individually or in combination can produce the stop-look-and-listen effect you want as long as they are appropriate for your target audience.

Ingredient Two: Generate Interest

Sarah Wood of Unruly Media, a company that specializes in paid viral seeding points to high value relevancy as an additional key ingredient; it’s what turns the viral-for-viral’s sake into a purposeful, persuasive, viral marketing communication.

High value relevancy is based on the connection made through your video presentation. If your video doesn’t resonate in some way, you will lose your audience. Resonance can be established through the performers’ personality, the delivery of the dialogue, the scenario presented, the subject matter discussed, the point-of-view perspective, and/or the emotional content.

Well its been a year in the making, and still going strong!. Webstyles turned 1 year old on the 14th of august and to celebrate this all new domain registrations are less R80.00 and co.za domains are free to register when signing up for any of our hosting packages. Thank you to all our clients for making webstyles a success so far.

This really is the chicken and egg question of the internet age but depending on who you ask will determine the actual answer you receive.

A graphic designer based website development company will argue in a majority of cases that the design comes first of course. And let’s face it without that aesthetically pleasing to the eye design a visitor will bounce off your site within a matter of seconds or so they would have you believe. But then that raises the big question of how did they get there in the first place?

The most common web development curve goes along the lines of website gets designed ..looks great let’s go for it. Needs some content ok, copy and paste something out of our corporate /company leaflet…..time passes and no traffic!

And then more time until eventually perhaps 6-12 months later the situation is either so dire or the company are spending a fortune on Adwords that finally the SEO expert gets called in (or somebody gets intrigued by one of those SEO e-mails that seem to hound webmasters these days), and before you know it you are on a 6 month search engine marketing campaign to try and rescue some website rankings.

Is this really the best way to go? The thousands of business owners that have been through this exact cycle will certainly argue that it most definitely is not, as this hope and pray web development criteria delays any websites success by months and sometimes years, and even more frighteningly results in thousands in lost profit, turnover and ongoing prospect capture.

What is really laughable though is that if you actually read the sales pitch on any one of the myriad of web design companies own websites many of them blatantly claim to be SEO experts as if it is a badge of honour or perhaps a must have tick in the box but a quick check of their portfolio soon reveals that if they are the search engine marketing experts, then it is clearly evident that their clients are definitely not on the receiving end of this claimed expertise.

So what is the real answer, can you really optimise a website before you launch it? Absolutely, web design and SEO should go hand in hand and the thought process of optimising a website and SEO friendly website design should form the foundations of the web development brief right from the outset, as it is the site structure, and ultimately the content that will capture free organic web traffic and also mark the website as a potential authority site or an also ran.

The search engines don’t care about what the site looks like but so often this initial chance to make the best impact when the site first gets indexed is wasted, if all the search engines find is a poorly optimised site with scant regard paid to any SEO requirements or keyword capture.

Extra time and money spent on pre development SEO (which should at the very least include keyword research and SEO copywriting) gives an outstanding return on investment as invariably when the site goes live and gets indexed it will achieve a far better website ranking from day one and even in some cases a page one result straight away.

If a web designer is not promoting web design SEO as part of your initial client brief then they are selling not only themselves short but also the client, if they don’t have the expertise themselves then best practice would be to team up with a non competing SEO professional to give the client the best possible start and return on investment on their new website.

And to any business owners who are commissioning a new website, if your developer does not offer this service then find one who does as a little extra investment will see your website many months ahead of where it would otherwise be.

Author: Dave Talbot: Correct search engine optimisation is a vital ingredient for any websites success. For new web development projects this is just as important as it is imperative to give the search engines the right initial impression of your website when it is first indexed.