Host Monster Review - I will be reviewing host monster soon.

HostMonster Front Page Hosting is only $6.95.

Go Daddy Review - I have used GoDaddy for over three years now and they are really great.  More on this Go Daddy Review to come.

Check out GoDaddy here.

So I'm browsing around right after posting the bit about the sale of the domain name Money-AtoZ.com and I see that MakeMoneyOnline-247.com is for sale.  I am not sure which domain name is going to fetch a higher price, or if they sell at all since they both use a hyphen.  It will be interesting to see how it plays out.  While one is short and has a high demand keyword, the other contains a three word keyword that is searched hundreds of thousands of times a month.  The three word combo is really good for SEO - better than Money-AtoZ.com.  And the opeing asking price for MakeMoneyOnline-247.com: $250.00.

Many people know that MakeMoneyOnline.com sold for $95,000 last August (I think it was last August).  Of course it does have a site built around it and MakeMoneyOnline-247.com has no site.  I wonder what was the actual value - the site or the name.  Seeing the site, I can see that it is just a bunch of affiliate links with little content, so I think it is the name that was the value.

With the added "-247", I wonder what the value hit is.  I'm guessing it will end up going for about 5% of it's older brother.

MakeMoneyOnline-247.com is also listed at Sedo.com.

 

Money-AtoZ.com is for sale.  The keyword term "Money" is searched for millions of times each month.  Granted this is a highly competitive keyword, and this is a new domain name (amazingly not taken much sooner), but since it is short and easy to remember, it should sell for a medium price.  Plus it's pretty good for SEO.  When browsing the auctions for domains with "money" and only one other word, I found that the starting price is usually around $10,000.  Money-AtoZ.com is listed with a starting bid is only $200.00, but I doubt that it will stay that way once the bidding starts.

It's on Sedo.com here: Money-AtoZ.com up for sale.

It will be interesting to see what happens with this one.  Can you really flip a domain name and make some coin?

 

To write content around a low competition keyword phrase to get a higher search engine rank for that keyword, you need to do the following:

1. Include the keyword phrase in your title.
2. Include the keyword phrase in your meta description and keyword tags.
3. Include the keyword phrase in at least one header tag at the top of your page.
4. Include it 3 to 4 times in the first paragraph.
5. Sprinkle it throughout the rest of your text.
6. Put your keyword phrase in italics and/or bold in a couple of places in your content.
7. Do not exceed 7% keyword to content.

Then submit different content with the keyword phrase to article websites to get back-links and do all the other SEO work – be sure to create a different version of the content to avoid Google counting it as duplicate content.  This article describes one effective method to get a higher search rank – you should always employ more than one method to achieve the best results.

There is a lot to SEO.  If you want to learn the ins and outs of SEO in detail, I suggest checking out SEO Book by Arron Wall - it is worth every cent.

If you are not familiar with HTML, then you may need some help with this.  In either case, here are some examples of what I am talking about.

Examples (HTML):

The title tag for the phrase “free weight loss exercise program” could be as follows (the red color is for emphasis):

<title>Free weight loss exercise program with tips and advice for losing weight.</title>

The Meta tags could look like this:

<meta name="description" content="This unique free weight loss exercise program is a proven system to lose weight and keep it off for good. Includes tips and advice from leading experts.">
<meta name="keywords" content="free weight loss exercise program, weight loss, fat loss, exercise">

The content could look like this:

<h1>Free Weight Loss Exercise Program Rocks The Pounds Off</h1>

<p>Loosing weight is difficult to say the least.  If you are looking for a <b>free weight loss exercise program</b>, you’ve come to the right place.  With this new free weight loss exercise program, you can not only lose weight, but you will keep it off and have more energy for enjoying life.  Most programs cost money, but this is a free weight loss exercise program for you to get started on the road to better health and vitality.</p>

(you would probably want more text in between your keyword phrases to make it more informative and easier to read – but this is just an example.)

And so on ... of course, as you go on, you don't have to use the keyword as frequently - that would make it annoing to the reader.

There are four basic rules to follow for good website design:

1. Easy to Read
2. Simple Navigation
3. Consistent Design
4. Light Page Weight

1. Easy to Read

First and foremost, your website should be easy to read. People should understand right away what the website is all about. When you write your content, remember that most web page readers do not read every word of a page. In fact, they only scan quickly to find what they want.

Break up Your Pages

Since people scan websites for quick information, break up your pages and use headers between major ideas. If possible, use headers between each paragraph. But always us good writing practice - sometimes a single concept may span over two or more paragraphs. Additionally, avoid long paragraphs that run on and on. You should break up any long paragraphs into smaller paragraphs.

Color and Font Matters in Easy Readable Website Design

Using high contrast colors between font and background helps website readability. White background against black text may seem stark, but it is very readable. If you want to make a web page easy on the eyes, try an off-white background and a dark gray (almost black) text color. Another easy to read combination is black background with white text color.

Things to avoid with content color:

• Avoid using vibrant background colors like green, purple or yellow. Such backgrounds make any color text difficult to read.
• Avoid using a large graphic image behind your page text.
• Avoid using vibrant text colors as they cause eye strain for the reader.

Fonts Matter

Rather than give a million examples of different fonts, I will boil it down to one simple statement:

Simple fonts are the best; the more fancy the font, the harder it is to read.

Use standard fonts. Many browsers only have the standard font set (there really is no “standard”, but there are fonts that are included on most browsers). These include Arial, Verdana, Tahoma and Times New Roman. Use one of these fonts. If you use other fonts, your readers may not have them – so they will see something different than you see.

Keep in mind keywords that users may type into a search engine to find the information your website provides. Use these keywords frequently in your content, however, do not over use them. The percentage of keywords compared to the rest of your text is called “keyword density”. Use a keyword density checker to be sure your keyword density is between 5% and 7%.

Use a Standards Compliant Browser

Special Note: When developing and testing your site, use a Standards compliant browser like FireFox. If you make your site standards compliant, it will work in almost any browser, including MicroSoft's Internet Explorer (IE). Also test your site using the latest and last browser versions of IE (IE6 and IE7).  TredoSoft has a free installer that will install multiple versions of IE and allow them to run separately from IE7 and on the same machine - at the same time.  It works great!

2. Use Simple Navigation

Website navigation is the menus and links that take the reader to other places on the site. When designing your website, keep in mind how people will get around. Keep in mind what they will be looking for. A visitor to your site should be able to get to what they want within three clicks of their mouse.

Have multiple navigation points. Use a top menu and repeat that menu at the bottom. Use a left or right navigation menu. Use links within your text.

Side note: Using links within your text to other areas on your site is also a very good search engine optimization (SEO) technique. When you use links within your text, there are two ways to do it:

1. The wrong way: "To find out why search engine optimization is important, click here."
2. The right way: "Search engine optimization is very important."

The right way uses link text that describes what the link is about. When search engine spiders (programs that automatically browse websites and index the contents) visit your site, they “read” links. If the link is descriptive, the spider can index it into a subject or keyword category. If the link is a “click here” link, the spider has nothing to work with until it reaches that page.

The links within your text is called cross linking. Cross link as much as possible when it makes sense to do so when writing your content.

3. Consistent Design

Visitors to your site should not be constantly presented with different layouts. At most, one or two layouts should be used. As a reader browses your site, they should be able to get used to looking in the same place for your content, the same place for your navigation and the same place for your sub-navigation. You get the point.

4. Page Weight Should be “Light”

There is a thing called page weight. That is the total size of your site in bytes – code, text and images. Your site’s page weight makes a huge difference to your viewers. The lighter your site, the better it will be for your readers because it will download faster. The faster it downloads, the faster they will get to the content.

What is Means to be Light

• No large elaborate images.
• Fewer images are better.
• Image files should be optimized for the web at no more than 72 dpi
• Image files should have as small a dimension as possible for the given design.
• When solid color backgrounds are used, use a table td bgcolor attribute or a background style attribute.
• When your design requires a gradient background, make it horizontal or vertical (not diagonal) so that you can use a small image “strip” and repeat it.

How Big Should a Web Page be?

Some say 64K is a good maximum size for a website page. 64K is a good maximum, however it is still, in my opinion, huge!  A smaller page is better. 25K is good, 15K is even better. There is a balance between design and function. It is a good idea to focus more on function.

As you develop your site, you may want to put pages on your web host server so you can test it as you go.  Once you get your website up online you should take a moment to test the page weight of various pages to be sure you are on track.

 

Ways to make pages lighter:

• Use linked style sheets
• Use <div>s instead of <table>s where possible
• Use simple repeating backgrounds for effect

Summary

Websites should be easy to read, easy to navigate and find information, have consistent page design and have pages light enough to transfer quickly to any reader regardless of their connection speed. Follow these four basic principals and you will be on the way to building a successful website.

Achieving a higher search engine rank for your website will both increase traffic and increase profits.  The question is: how exactly do you get a higher search engine rank?

First: what does it mean to have a higher search engine rank?  

Search engine ranks vary for each page on your site and each keyword that is searched for.  So basically, you rank for certain keyword search terms.  To get a higher search engine rank, you need to choose a keyword phrase and optimize your page for that keyword phrase.  Each page in your site will rank differently for certain keywords.  You can use keywords to position different pages and target different sub niche markets within your niche.

Ok, so how do you get a higher search engine rank for a given page?

Optimize your page for low competition keywords.

You do not want optimize your pages for high a demand keyword like "used car" - although there are 694,272  searches for "used car", there are 9,360,000 sites competing for "used car".  Getting in the top 10 out of 9 million sites is not going to happen unless you are Ford or CarMax.  To get a higher search engine rank, find a related keyword with less competition, like, for example: "used car - Albany New York" which has over 14,000 searches and only 814 results - only 814 competitors for this exact phrase.  Now that is a keyword you can get higher search engine rank for!

As shown above: an important factor of getting a higher search engine rank for a given keyword phrase is to pick keywords that have numerous searches, but little competition.  To do this, you can use a keyword analysis tool or use free online tools such as Overture for number of searches and Google for number of results (competition).

The effect of page rank

Google's page rank (PR) will affect how well you achieve a higher search engine rank for a given keyword.  If your PR is low, your rank relative to other pages will be lower - unless you do a great job of optimizing your pages, but PR will still have an effect.  Increasing PR involves back-links, SEO and more - it is another very large subject and is not addressed here.  However, since we are shooting for low competition keywords, even a page with PR of zero can rank in the top 4 Google results.

Finding good keywords

Using a good analysis tool, like Keywords Analyzer, can help with finding in demand keywords with low competition.  But you can also spend the time and use Overture and Google.

How do you do this?  User the Overture suggestion tool to find keyword variations and then plug each variation into Google with quotes around it.  Keep track of the keywords, the number of searches from Overture and the number of results from Google in a spreadsheet.  Then sort by Google results.  You will be able to identify low competition keywords and see if they have enough searches to warrant dedicating a page to.

OR - you can save time and money using a tool like Keywords Analyzer to find low competition keywords that you can use to get a higher search engine rank.

It is common knowledge in SEO promotion (search engine optimization promotion), that the best way to get noticed in the search engine rankings is to have other high-ranking websites link to your website. These SEO links are called one way links or backlinks, and they not only get you a better ranking in the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN, but they will also generate a large amount of traffic. In most cases, the traffic that will visit your site will be highly targeted visitors who are interested in your products and services.

Often, website owners who are just starting their online business, and are learning the SEO basics are aware that to get a good page ranking, and generate traffic to their sites, they must get those SEO links up and running quickly. Once links have been added, they will start being indexed by the search engines, and it is here that many website owners make their first fatal search optimization mistake:

In their search for a quick fix that will increase their website rankings instantly, website owners may be tempted to use link farms to get their one-way links. Often, these link farms will advertise that they can provide hundreds of organic, relevant links that will quickly boost search engine rankings.  The idea of a link farm is to provide one-way links to website owners, which they usually charge a fee for. A link farm is nothing more than a website that is created to store hundreds of links to other websites, but has no real value other than that.

Search engines were designed to store, and quickly provide useful, and relevant information to visitors. The major search engines, such as Google, soon began to notice that these link farms were popping up everywhere, taking up a great deal of indexing space without being of any benefit or no value to the visitor, or person's search for information.

At one time, the major search engines changed their criterion to favor established websites, and websites that over time had earned the attention from other related, and established websites, when their products, or services were similar, but not necessarily the same. It was a way of rewarding valuable websites with an edge over their competitors, which was the reason that link farms were generated in the first place, to provide one-way links to other websites.

When link farms started to become a nuisance to the search engines, they had to change their approach to one way linking strategies. This is when the search engines got tough on link farming, which they consider to be much like spamming, to fix this problem, banning, and the 'sandbox' come in, which is designed to stop the practices of link farms, and website owners linking to them.

If you are at all tempted to use a link farm to generate one way links to your website, think again. You are more than likely going to get caught by the major search engines multi-million dollar sophisticated software, and end up either being sand boxed, or worse still, being banned from the search engines all together. Once banned, a website owner is given little choice but to start all over again, or rely on paid advertising to generate traffic to their websites.

The number of links that a website has is important, but not the olny important factor.  The real importance is the quality of the links, and where they are placed on other websites. The only ethical way to get proper SEO one-way links that will be favored by the major search engines is to email other websites who have complimenting products and services, and ask them if they would be interested in swapping links, campaigning, and writing articles with useful content for readers, and placing them in article directories. These practices take time, but they are the only proven ethical SEO practices, and will provide you with the right types of links. You can also outsource and have someone else do the link building for you. 

Another good SEO practice is to regularly check on your links, and who is linking to you. In some cases, competitors, or other website owners have been known to sabotage each other by placing competitors in FFA, free for all sites, or link farms to purposely get them 'sand boxed', or banned from the search engines. A simple search of your domain name on Google, or Alexa can tell you who is linked to you, if you find a site that you feel is unsuitable, or attached to a link farm or FFA site, immediately request that they remove your link from their site.

When starting acmeWebResources, I spent a lot of time making it look good.  I used a website template and made many modifications – until it became my own.  The template was the springboard.  However, while studying other very successful sites, I discovered something interesting about information sites, affiliate sites, and sites selling ads: no one seems to care about "flashy" design.  Some of the most popular sites out there have very simple layouts.  They are not flashy in the least.  I have found that, at the core, the internet is just about information – and getting it fast.  In fact, I toned down acmeWebResources quite a bit – but I had put so much effort into it that I couldn’t abandon it entirely - until now - now I am using a simple template - simple is better.

Keep Your Website Simple

The point is: if you are creating a site to market information and make money with ads (like AdSense), don’t get caught up in making your site look like an award winning graphics artist built it.  Put that energy into giving your readers really solid good quality content.  THAT is what will make your site a success.  Of course, the previous statements hold true mostly for folks who want to build a site that will generate income off of ads and affiliate programs.  It also applies to sites that sell certain e-books and other electronic media.  And sometimes it applies to sites selling products – but it depends on the products.

Simple Websites are Not a Rule

Keeping your site simple is by no means a rule.  If you have a site selling high fashion clothing, you WILL want a site that looks fantastic!  The site makes the first impression.  So if you are selling high end stuff or trying to drive customers to your brick and mortar store front, you will want to make a professional and really nice first impression.  Then it is well worth the effort.  But for a site like the first version of this one, I could have saved hours and hours and hours.  C’est la vie.