How To Write and Begin a GREAT Website

October 21st, 2008

Home page online copy is expected to be an excellent abstract of everything that you or your website is all about and a general definition of what products or services you sell. If it’s a personal blog or website, home page copy is usually the “About Me” page which gives your online readers an idea of who you are. Thus, writing home page copy should be precise, but not too detailed. Good copy also means that you can hold your readers or audience to red on and navigate through your whole site.

Thus, a home page should be interesting and not a longish discourse about each and every product or services you are offering. Remember that most of your readers are browsing through the internet. Browsing is exactly what it means, a cursury reading. To make your online reader or audience to stay on your page is the first thing that matters. Your copy must be catching and interesting enough to motivate further reading of your website. The hone page is where you put ON the right details. It is much like a written “trailer” of your whole website where you pitch in the best about you and your products.

Your home page must be written geared to your marketing niche. This means that you should know your niche, or your prospective market. You must know what “tickles” and “teases” them so that they would keep on reading. Writing an inviting home page is only hard if one doesn’t know your niche. Knowing your niche means that you know what’s the latest that a particular commercial or type of readers are “crazy about at the moment”. Thus, if you are offering something like clothing and bags in your site, you should know what’s “hot” about clothes and bags. By the same token you must also know what’s the latest fad diet should you happen to be selling a diet or anything related to it. Not knowing your niche is one of the most common mistakes that online marketeers make. One does not sell mint chocolates, for instance, to low-carbohydrate dieters who are looking over the websites. If it’s a personal blog, your writing must run through about one general theme (for instance lifestyle) so that your readers know exactly what your blog is generally about.

Your copy must be comprehensible. Consider that not everyone may understand stiff high-falooting linggo. Thus, if you are selling a product, like an air balloon, say why your products are better than the rest without having to go through an explanation of the law of gravity. Instead, talk about why your balloons are preferable than that offered by your competitors. Talk about colors, size, safety and speed. Have about three of the major languages options on your site. The more people who understand your home page, the more they are bound to read and stay on your page.

Your home page must have clean copy. This means that your copy must be free from grammatical errors. Grammatic errors give the impression that you do not care enough to produce GOOD copy. Show that you care about your readers by writing RIGHT. Good grammatical copy displays that you are reliable, responsible and that you care for your readers. Besides, no one who writes “bad copy” is taken seriously, particularly online. If you have to hire a copy editor, do so.

Keep your home page neat. No one wants to read anything that hurts the eye. Avoid using irritating fonts or glittering ones. No matter how neat or clean or copy may be, if it’s something they’re in purple fonts against a glittery background, no one would appreciate your copy. Your copy must be as good as your web design. Avoid a frenzied home page sputtered by too many pictures(jpegs), pictures and glitters. Readong your copy must be pleasant, not a “feat”.

Design your words to fit into major keywords and meta tags so that search engines will “mind ” your page.There is such a thing as “designing copy” to fit most search engines. This is why a simple abstract is better. You can later have your copy (or website) submitted to most search engines. If you have to use one of these SEO word analyzers, do so if yours is a business site. The ROI is assured if your site comes out on the top ten search list.

While there is literally no such thing as a perfect copy, you sure can come close to it. Going over some of the most blogs with the most “hits” (try using Alexa) will give you an idea of what a perfect copy almost is. Keep things “tantalizingly simple”is a good start for the home page.


If You Have Money (who does?) Hire an SEO?

October 21st, 2008

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services are available to analyze your website to find out if it comes out on the top of search engine searches. If your website is a business website then you know how essential it is to hire their services because your clients or customers are those who manage to find you through the search engines. Thus, if you have a business site selling real estate in Orlando, hiring a SEO will make sure than when interested buyers search the web for Orlando properties, your website will come out in the top ten searches.

Why is this important? The fact is that 85% of all web traffic depends on engine site searches. An SEO expert determines your website copy and words and phases that can give you the maximum advantage of getting ahead in the major search engines. Most goos SEO do what they call an in-depth keyword analysis to make sure that they can guarantee you that your business website will come out tops in most of the major search engines.

They also determine the tactical advantage of your business website and may propose the use of “tactics”. The most accepted tactics are what is known in the SEO world as White-Hat tactics and Grey-Hat Tactics. White Hat tactics include internal linking, content creation and exchange linkages with some of their other clients who are likewise doing business in web related to yours. A good SEO service will tell you that your content matters and explain that you may have to make changes in your content and suggest words that will help you get a high search engine positioning.There are times when you have to do a tweak of your content and use of meta tags to optimize your web presence.

Some SEO experts may also use Grey-Hat tactics. Among them are “cloaking” which may still be legitimate. This means using affilates, mirror sites, and “other websites” to sell your products. This may also include paid links or paid posts to make your product appear as popular. Since affiliates are popular these days, this may also mean planning affiliate sites so that “more roads” lead to your business website (or a copy thereof).

There are some SEO services that utilize Black Hat tactics. Do not hire these ones. Some SEOs use keyword stuffing which is using a lot of tags and keywords to “trick” the search engine to come up with their client’s business website. Some ecen dare use “hidden texts” which is something like placing a words on the background of your website or an image file so that the serach engines pick this up. This is another form of spam however, and it does your business no good. Also, most search engines find out about these “cheating”.

The best SEOs ma be a bit more expensive, but they can make sure that you get your ROI back. They also can usually guarantee that you’re business site will be on the top ten of the search engines and they tell you how they will do it. SEOs have a code of ethics that they adhere to and most of the reliable and honest ones will not do nor recommend ant Black-Hat Tactics.

To choose the best SEO services, you can ask the search engine too. SEO services are also a business. See which are the top SEO services and in all probability, they know what they’re doing and they’re legitimate. What better proof of their services than their web site’s position on the search engine right? Go ahead and try SEO services, there is nothing to lose and everything to gain if you manage to get the right one.


One Rant About Helium

October 20th, 2008

Helium (”Where Knowledge Rules”) employs peer review plus a (patent pending and supposedly cheat-proof) ranking engine that decides which of its member-posted articles are the most useful. There’s also a payment system. According to the What Is Helium page: “Sure, Helium is an outlet for the writer in all of us, but it is also a place where you can earn not only the adoration of your peers, but money, too! We want you to be part of the success here. Helium shares a portion of revenue with you. Every article you write is an asset which can earn you revenue—into perpetuity.” Read ON… and ON..

Okay have you read Victoria Strauss? Now, my take : Helium does pay. I can’t RANT and RAVE about it being a scam because it isn’t. There is however this MYSTERIOUS rating system that made me NOT join any of those writing contests. They do pay for stuff like the MARKETPLACE and I’ve been pretty lucky THERE.

Dang… the contests SUCK though. I mean where in the CREATIVE planet can you find stuff that you have to write about like GUT? Who the heck cares about anyone else’s GUT or how a DIGESTIVE SYSTEM works unless, of course, it’s your own right? Typical starters are ..”The gut is the…. blank…” , “It is the gut that is the soul of the whole human body..”((duh???) I am sure there are better inspiration for writers than writing about the GUT! Something must be awfully weird too when someone can copy and do a re-write from Wiki and expect something original… If I were to write about the GUT, I’d do it in POETRY and praise the digestive system and it’s extraordinary design and compare it to a picasso!

If you love English composition– particularly the greade 5 type, JOIN the Helium Contest! Hey, they do PAY!!!