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Successful Web Development Strategies and Tactics

Nov 2

Web development positions

by harley

Here’s a quick rundown of the different roles a web developer may take on. These are general terms and relatively simple summary definitions. There are plenty of alternate terms that are used to describe these positions and specialist positions which reside in a larger group, however these are the most widely recognized. This is by no means a comprehensive explanation of what is involved in web development.

Webmaster

The webmaster is the person who takes care of a website and keeps everything on the site current. On large websites, this task is often shared by several people. For instance, the World Wide Web Consortium (w3.org) has an entire team of people who keep that one website up to date and running smoothly.

Web design

The web designer breaks down fairly well into two main areas, though many web developers take on several roles, and the job is often lumped into one position. Web design is the front end and the back end of a website.

Front end designers work on the interface – it’s what you’re looking at right now as the user of the website. The forms, links, graphics, and content placement on a webpage you’re browsing are part of the front end design.

If you’re in front end design, you might be putting together layouts; combining the different elements of a website together to form a cohesive, slick, easy to navigate interface for the user. On the other hand, maybe you specialize in graphic arts, and you produce in logos, graphics, banners, and other presentation oriented work. You might be using tools like Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Quark, or Flash to create a visually appealing layout. You may also be creating styles with CSS (cascading style sheets).

Back end designers build the code behind the interface. Take a forum for instance: the programming that runs the forum, the scripting that displays the pages, the database that houses all the information about user accounts and which information belongs to which bulletin board, the code that made a particular thread come up when you clicked on a link… this is all encompassed in back end design. This website has a forum, and forums have tons of code you as the client never see. So, that’s what back end web developers do: they design the interior workings of things like our forums.

Some web designers deal with building the front-end or back-end of a website exclusively and work in teams to complete jobs, and some build it all from start to finish.

Search engine optimization

SEO is the process of developing and designing a website to be compatible and “friendly” to search engines, in order to achieve the highest positions in search engine results, sending more traffic to the site. SEO experts use copy writing, keyword placement, and targeted linking campaigns among other strategies, in order to get a website ranked very high for certain highly searched terms particular to a product or service. Some terms are widely used generic searches, and they get searched very often. Others are simply spur of the moment popular culture media buzz words. SEO web marketing focuses on long term benefits to a client’s website by using good site building technique and very targeted and deliberate linking campaigns among similar websites, as well as submitting properly to web directories like DMOZ Open Directory and Yahoo Directory. The benefits of search engine optimization are not fully realized for months, as it takes quite a while for search engines to fully crawl, evaluate, organize, and index new content on the web. These SEO efforts can provide steady, sustainable, high quality traffic from search engines for long periods of time, and when done properly can be one of the most cost effective means of advertisement.

Copywriters are people who specialize in writing content that specifically promotes keywords, in order to boost search engine results for those keywords and keyword combinations. They would take the website content and rewrite it to include specific keywords dispersed properly throughout the text. They would build good header tags and a keyword rich title, and may setup the meta tags. When a search engine deep crawls that page it will note a healthy repetition of those key terms and rank the page accordingly when those key terms are searched.

Web marketing, site promotion, and advertising

This profession is about targeted advertising campaigns. They use PPC (pay per click) advertising, as well as employ linking strategies and linking campaigns to get relevant inbound links to a particular website, increasing it’s exposure to visitors likely to be looking for what the site is selling. These methods also benefit the search engine results for the website. These people specialize in maximizing the advertising dollar. Search engine positions are more of a secondary benefit and not the main focus here.

A linking campaign is simply a set of strategies to get as many websites with related content to your target website to send traffic to it, while keeping advertising costs to a minimum. This strategy works well in the short term and long term, and long term link campaigns can have a very positive effect on search engine results, generating additional free traffic. Building targeted traffic from many different places is an important skill in this profession, because being totally at the mercy of a search engine (or any single source) is a bad, bad state of affairs. Like any investment adviser worth his/her salt will tell you, DIVERSIFY!

The domain name business

Some web professionals deal in domain names. That’s what they do, and for some domains are all they do. The domain names business is much like the real estate speculation. A domain name is how people get to a website, so prime ‘location’ (relevant, short, easy to remember website names) go for top dollar.

Improving your web developer skills

You’ve now got a basic overview of what different web developers do. The next step, if you’re still interested in pursuing one of these fields, is to learn as much as you can about the position that interests you most and get established with other developers. There’s a ton of competition on the web and nobody should expect to master everything, so specialization becomes much more beneficial than trying to do it all. Anyone serious about making it on the web needs to have an in depth understanding of the trade they wish to pursue, though becoming a well rounded web developer will come in handy.

theory

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Oct 28

Introduction to the domain name business

by harley

How do you make money from domain names? This is one of the areas of the web where to make much money you really need to have some money first. This business is very much one of speculation, and you can just as easily lose your shirt as make your fortune. Here’s a basic breakdown of the domain name business.

Domain Brokering

There are ways to make money on domains without ever putting money into them. However, this is more difficult than simply selling a domain, because it requires coordinating a buyer and a seller. This is called domain brokering. Furthermore, to sell other people’s high value domains you’ll likely need to exhibit an expert level of knowledge in the field, because these folks are looking for someone who can maximize the profit from their domains. So this is a bit of a catch 22 for a beginner. You need to be well schooled in this business and have some credibility before many people will agree to let you sell their domains and keep a portion of the profits, and you need money to get that experience buying and selling domains.

Type-in Traffic

These are usually generic words, dictionary terms, famous people/places, pop culture references, or a new fad that lots of people are trying to find. A few examples of this type of domain might be www.internet.com, www.britneyspears.com, www.gorilla.com, or www.2004election.com. Typo’s of popular domains, like www.hotmali.com can also be profitable. It’s safe to say the market for getting unregistered generic .com/net/org domains is basically over. All these domains were registered back in the early days of the internet. Generic domains are also watched extremely closely by many people in the domain business that have advanced, automated methods of getting the domains the instant they drop. Your chances of registering an expired generic domain name with lots of type-in traffic by hand are virtually zero.

Some businesses exist whose sole purpose is to grab a domain the instant it drops from registration, and sell it to whoever purchased the drop, or to put it up for bid among interested parties. These businesses have million dollar facilities and backbone level internet connections with speeds that make the fastest broadband look like a 1400 baud modem from 1991. Regular folks simply cannot compete, so it’s best not to waste time trying. You can either pay these businesses to catch the drops you want, or work around them to make money in other ways. When registering a famous persons name or domains with a registered company name included, you’ve really got to watch your step. What looks like a great opportunity can often be a trademark issue, and these situations can bite back hard.

Most people make money from type-in traffic domains by finding motivated sellers bargaining for a good deal. They will purchase the domain and may develop it into an information based, service oriented, or ecommerce website. Other people who have money to invest for long periods will buy these domains, and park them at a place like Sedo, that offers a page with links to relevant advertisers. They would make money on a pay per click basis through this company. Parking pages are a very hands-off method of generating income. However, it’s far from maximizing profits and more often used when a person doesn’t have the time or interest to properly develop a website for the domain. Months or years later they may sell the domain for as much or more than they paid for it, profiting from all the pay per click revenue generated while they owned the domain.

Expired Traffic

These are domains that used to have a developed website, but the owner has let the domain registration expire. Expired traffic domains are usually listed in search engines and have links from other websites, sending traffic to the domain and giving it credibility in search engines. Those in the domain business will buy these names and profit from the traffic. Sometimes they’ll develop a website related to the traffic, but generally they’ll park the page somewhere like Sedo.

Developed Websites

Many web developers make their living selling websites in different stages of development. Some build the website infrastructure, apply a design, and sell it as is without traffic. Others will develop a website with at least one revenue stream (advertisements, products, or services), work on link building, getting traffic to the site, and getting it listed in search engines. Then they’ll have proof of revenue, which they use in pitching the sale of the website. Web marketers will buy these sites, work on the marketing end of the website, and make money from it that way.

More on domains

In the subscribers section, I discuss in great detail the methods to go about actually purchasing and selling domains, including what information to look for when deciding on a domain, how to determine the validity of traffic, evaluating the potential for development, what’s important in a domain name, and determining the maximum you should pay for a particular domain. I don’t discuss brokering domains because I have no experience in that area beyond what I’ve heard from other people. If you decide to get into this business, I would recommend having some disposable income to invest. From my experience I’d say have at least 500 dollars ready to invest in domains before you begin. Otherwise the benefits of investing in a decent domain will probably not end up being worth the time and effort your put in.

strategies

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Oct 22

Viral marketing, making it work for you

by harley

The process of developing a promotional tool that propagates on its own is called viral marketing. An excellent example of viral marketing is a game written for the web browser, most often written in Flash, Shockwave, or Java. These games are viral because they spread across the web like wildfire, and they contain links back to the author’s website. As more and more webmasters post these games to their own website, the author’s website continues to gain exposure. While the term ‘viral marketing’ has become an over hyped buzz word, the process behind it is still a very valid, effective marketing method: it’s the internet version of an ancient sales technique called ‘word of mouth’.

Methods of viral marketing

Games are not the only method of marketing in this manner, though they happen to be one of the best. Offering free to use content of any type can build diverse streams of traffic to your website and raise your rankings in search engines. The only two things needed for a successful viral marketing campaign are materials other people want to use, and a simple way to spread the material. A few of the more popular types of viral marketing include:

  • donating content to an ezine directory
  • offering awards to other websites
  • providing a free service that self-promotes (email addresses, eCards, etc)
  • offering free to reproduce content to other webmasters (games, screensavers, scripts, etc)
  • writing an eBook and allow free reproduction

Make sure to include instructions, and be clear

If you write a license to reproduce your works, be sure you are clear and explicit with what can and cannot be done, and how it must be displayed. Copyright does not need to be given up in order to allow works to be freely reproduced. Some excellent expertly written licenses are freely available to use, such as the creative commons license which outlines distribution, attribution, and derivative works rules. No matter what conditions you license your work under, for viral marketing to work properly you must be sure valid author and contact information (a link to your website) remains in tact.

Turning a profit with viral programs

This method of marketing is not going to turn a profit by itself. After all, people do not make money by simply giving everything away. Often times a person will build both a free version and a pay version of their product. In software, this is referred to as shareware. This can be an effective way to generate sales from viral marketing, however the correct balance must be found between the trial version and the paid version. If the trial version doesn’t showcase the additional features included in the pay version properly, a sale is not likely to be made. Likewise, if the trial version contains most of the good features and has no time limit, any reason to buy the paid version is effectively eliminated.

tactics

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Oct 15

Good traffic is targeted traffic

by harley

One of the things many people have a very difficult time getting a grasp on when it comes to the web is advertising. I still learn new things about it regularly, and I’ve been studying and learning this stuff for years.

There is much to consider when researching where to purchase web traffic, but there is one aspect that must be nailed for a successful advertising campaign: the demographic. If your website sells household appliances and you advertise on MTV’s website, how many potential customers are you likely to get? Not many.

Targeted traffic: the demographic

Assuming your business is motorcycles, my first guess at your target demographic would be 16-25 year old males and 50+ year old wealthy retired couples. Breaking it down further, if you sell Suzuki crotch rockets, you can safely discard the wealthy retired group. Narrow the demographic as best you can to target potential customers. Paying for traffic that isn’t dense with people interested in what you’re selling is a waste of your advertising dollar.

Once the demographic is well defined, you can begin identifying and sorting out perspective advertisers. Determining whether a particular advertiser or marketing group is going to work for you can be rather difficult, unless you’ve personally used them before. This is where experience and networking with other webmasters comes in very handy. Talk to other webmasters who’ve advertised with the company, find out what they were advertising, and ask them how the campaign went and if they’d advertise there again. I don’t use an advertiser unless I’ve heard very good things from other webmasters or they have a trial ad setup, where you can commit a small amount to testing out the traffic before you make a real investment and buy several months of advertising with them.

An important consideration when buying ad space on a specific website is the focus of that website. If you’re considering advertising on a service oriented website, make sure your product or service compliments that website’s service. For instance, if you sell shoes, advertising on hotmail.com is going to be very inefficient and expensive. You’ll be paying to advertise to a bunch of people, the mass majority of which aren’t looking to buy shoes. However, if you’re selling a spyware removal tool, email services could be a great place to advertise. Most internet users have spyware on their computers, and most are aware of and concerned about spyware.

Advertising on content based sites

When I need to advertise, my favorite place to go is still a content oriented site with a close relationship to my product or service. If I’m selling Gregory backpacks, I’ll look for advertising opportunities on websites related to backpacking and hiking, such as outdoors guides and wilderness survival websites.

Web traffic at some content based sites is not particularly targeted, while others have a specific topic, like a gardening tips website. Finding a website with a very specific interest may or may not be as important, depending on what product you’re selling, or what service you offer. T-shirts may sell well on lots of different content based sites, whereas the gardening weasel isn’t likely to do well on places not related to gardening.

An update schedule of content based websites you’re considering advertising on is rather important, depending on how you advertise. A website that updates every other day or weekly will have many visitors who come for the updates and leave. A website that updates sporadically will have more people who come just looking for something new. When there is nothing new they’re more likely to look for other related links, which is where good advertising kicks into high gear. Of the three major advertising types, I tend to believe in doing my homework and paying flat rates for given periods of time. This seems to work best, because it depends more on you to build an intriguing advertisement, and rewards you for doing so.

Buying ad space on a per click basis can be a better bet if you’re trying to build a brand name, because your ad might get 50,000 impressions before the 1,000 click-through you paid for happen.

Conversion rates are key

For most of us on the web though, our main goal is to sell the product or service. This is why I contest doing your research, finding the best websites, and purchasing ad space on a weekly or monthly basis is the best method of promotion in the long run. If you’re smart, you’ll monitor your traffic from different sources and determine the cost per sale to see which sources are providing the best conversion rates. In the case of buying click through traffic, the monitoring program should give you the traffic conversion rate.

More targeted traffic suggestions

Additional information can be found in the subscribers area, specifically information on what to look for when considering traffic trades with other websites, where to get started with traffic building, good approaches when requesting a link trade, how to jump start your traffic building efforts with very minimal cost, and methods to making your website so attractive webmasters will be knocking down your door with link trade requests.

strategies theory

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Oct 11

Effective linking strategy, anchor text, and three way links

by harley

To speak about the value of a specific inbound link is fairly complicated. To speak about the value of inbound links in general is simple: links coming in to your website from other websites are among the most powerful influences to how a search engine ranks your page. Links from a website with content similar to the content on your website will give you much better results than links from an unrelated site. A link from a quality website will have a positive effect, regardless of content or topic, though the effect may be small.

Anchor text is high value

The text used in making a hyperlink to another website is called anchor text, and it’s very important to search engines. Suppose website A was linked to from 15 different websites, all related to the content of website A, but all using different anchor text in the hyperlinks. While the site will gain importance with search engines, it won’t have particularly “high value” for any specific keyword or keyword combination. Suppose that same site was linked to from those same 15 websites. This time every site used the anchor text “Website Development” when linking to the site. The website will still gain importance with the search engines from having 15 relevant inbound links, but it will also gain very high value for the search term “Website Development”. This is where good linking strategy can turn a mediocre link building campaign into a huge success.

Standard link trades

Website developers and promoters are very familiar with the practice of link swapping: offering a link on your website to another site, in return for a link back to your website. These are sometimes referred to as link exchanges or trading traffic. While this practice isn’t likely to hurt your rankings, it certainly doesn’t help nearly as much as it used to (as far as search engine rankings are concerned). Search engines have been aware of this practice for years, and they have adjusted the value of traded links. While trading links with other sites related to your content can still be an excellent promotional method, swapping with everyone you can find isn’t necessarily beneficial.

You can bet your bottom dollar search engines stay on top of the latest tricks and gimmicks used to artificially inflate rankings, because their business depends on providing the most relevant, high quality search results they can. Attempting to trick a search engine will often result in your entire site being dropped from the listings altogether, which can be a painful experience.

Three way link trades

Instead of using standard link trades, try applying a different method: the three way link trade. This requires at least one person in the trade to have two websites. For the additional search engine benefits the sites need different domains, and preferably should be hosted on different IP addresses (search engines are becoming wise to “networks” of sites all owned and operating from the same server). Assuming you had two websites (one named Trade and the other named Swap), you would offer a link from Trade to the other persons site, and in exchange they would link to Swap. In this situation two websites get the full benefit of an inbound link. They still get traffic traded between the sites, and the links also appear non-reciprocal in the eyes of a search engine.

strategies

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