1. The font

There are many styles of font out there, and picking one that is easy to read while still being stylish can be a tall order. For eg. you can take a look at a visitor health insurance website. Make sure to peruse other sites and see if you like the style, size, and spacing of the font. Take notes on what you like and why and let your web designer know your preferences.

2. Adding a blog

Adding a blog to a site is a great way to help with your SEO and impart more information to your readers. The only important decision to make here is if you’re going to put in the time and effort to upkeep the blog. If you know yourself and you know that blog will be updated only a few times a year, it might be best to leave it be.

3. Picking a header

This is another design decision that can really impact the feel of a site. Some headers are huge and take up most of the above the fold action. Patriot America visitor insurance is the preferred health insurance for US visitors. Other headers are quite small and let the content and graphics do the talking. Whatever header design you prefer, make sure it is branded correctly as it’s the face of your site.

4. Including social media

This is another decision that rests on your ability to upkeep your social media platforms. Having the links makes you look current, until visitors click on them and see they are never updated.

5. The navigation

Deciding what tabs are most visible will help visitors understand what you offer and what they can learn from visiting your site. Some websites choose to have only a few tabs on the top — the most relevant and important ones — and keep less necessary tabs on the bottom, in the footer. Others choose to have everything uptop. Take a look at other websites and see what you like the best . These are only a few of the important decisions you will need to make when it comes to website design, but knowing what you like and what suits your business the best will have you end up with a better site overall.

1.) Your website design should be professional. Take a good, honest look at your color-scheme, typography, and graphics and compare them to your competitors. Does your look stand up to theirs? Or do they have a more
modern feel? Having a fresh first impression will only help your site.

2.) Navigation is key. When building a website, the page navigation needs to be intuitive and make sense. Having a user-friendly experience is key to using a website to make sales. If a potential customer or client is frustrated searching for a particular piece of information, they are likely to leave your site before making a purchase. Ask a few friends or even strangers to find an important piece of information on your site and see how easily they can do it.

3.) Update to include social media. You’ve heard it before and you’ll hear it again, but social media is all the rage these days. Having a blog, and being active on Facebook and Twitter makes you look hip and in-tune with today’s current trends. If you’re putting in the effort to maintain these platforms, make sure their icons are prominent on your site.

New years resolutions are never easy to keep, but this should be the year you decide to update your website, so make sure to keep these three important factors in mind.

And just think, whether you’re a small group of experts initiating a business, or an individual with passion for a particular trade, or a mom trying to re-invent your professional front, you’ll certainly want to avoid the pitfalls that others or just beginners have experienced.
If you know the mistakes and different ways to avoid it as much as you can, then you can be on the safer side and you probably increase your chances to be successful. With that in mind, I’ve listed few mistakes you could avoid while starting a business:

1. We don’t have time to plan instead we are simply in a rush to start or to begin. But it is so true that ‘If you fail to plan, you plan to fail’. So it’s always good to plan – be it a goal, marketing plan, business plan etc. The planning phase needs a long time and it’s quite a tedious job. But it will benefit you in the long run, simply worth your efforts. Be ready to be flexible enough so that if something doesn’t fit into your business plan, you must change it!
2. Think about your specialty, your distinctive talent – say if you are getting in the business of interior decoration, it is too general to define yourself as interior designer, but if you are a health care interior expert or a kitchen interior designer, the impact is huge. If you stand out of the crowd, you are having higher chances to increase your revenue, right from the beginning.
3. You’re in charge; value the commitments – When you’ve decided to get into business for financial freedom, flexibility of time or anything like that. But you can’t sit back and relax to get the leads and clients. You have to take it seriously; you have to be attentive to get the attention itself. Define your priorities, be clear on deadlines and never compromise with the quality of your work.
4. Under-pricing – One of the most common mistakes a new business person does is he/she quotes a very low price for the job. Even when you’re just starting out, you must try to show the proficiency and maintain the level of the work. You must charge enough to be taken serious, but not too much to shock your prospects. Observe what others are charging, how mush risk is involved, what is the end result, their capability to afford your service, their convenience and so on. After going through every angle, think of the best price you can quote for your goods/services.
5. Overlooking the legal issues – There are certain legal issues involved in every business. Gather adequate data regarding that and make it a point to follow them or else you could be in trouble.
6. Overspending – you’ve just started… proper budgeting is essential. Spend wisely, think about it – do you really need to pay $5000 for a corporate website, how much to pay for other business expenditures like stationeries – business cards, envelopes, letter head, technology, computers, etc. Be careful about where and how much to spend.
7. Stop your marketing – Its equivalent to a sin for any business. Even if you have enough leads or clients, it’s never enough for a growing business, don’t let your business die, but with every day you must aim to grow, increase and boost your business…continue marketing and see the results.

The mantra with starting a business is to stay motivated and updating your knowledge. You must be aware of few common mistakes and how to deal with them.

The key to be successful is to keep going no matter what happens or how long it takes, put your 100% in whatever you do, do it wisely and see the difference!

To your Success!

You can improve your sites usefulness by knowing do’s and don’ts of search engine optimization and most importantly you must avoid some common seo mistakes.

Everyone makes mistakes and there is nothing wrong in it unless you are not willing to learn from them. From a newbie to professional and even experts anyone can go wrong, once for a while. But, we should develop the ability to point out our slip-up and correct them to get better results.

Here is a list of common seo mistakes and ways to avoid them:

Making your website too complicated to find through search engines – Look and feel or design of the site is very important but more important than that is making it search engine and user-friendly. A clean website with informative and genuine content helps your prospects find you through search engines, whereas heavy use of graphic in your site may slower its download speed. Frame based site, excessive use of java or massive use of flash is also not considered as a good website in terms of search engine optimization. In order to get higher search engine ranking, use a good blend of graphics and text content.

Website focusing on wrong group of people – The main purpose of your site is not just to show your expertise but it should also offer answers to curious questions of your readers. You get it right, put readers at first place, inform them, engage them and give them a strong reason why should they get connected with you, why should they buy your products or hire your services.

Targeting wrong keywords – It is very commonly seen that webmaster and even SEO experts target wrong keywords. Keywords are foundation of any online business, so select them carefully. Look for buying, niche based keywords and not the broad keywords, instead choose specific keywords and see how the right targeted keywords contributes to your seo efforts.

Empty title and description – Title and descriptions are amazing spaces to place your keywords with meaningful explanation.  Don’t leave them empty; use them smartly to get maximum exposure.

Neglecting your website – Not updating your site shows your lack of interest in your own business. Does your website still show a bio of employee who left two years ago? Does your site have broken links or displays 404 errors? These are clear indications that site needs your attention.

In order to execute your online marketing strategies successfully, you should conduct good SEO and avoid black hat practices. And remember, SEO is not something that could be done in a single day and you’re expecting results overnight. It requires continuous research, trial and practice.

The bottom line is if you are looking for long term traffic solution then search engine optimization is unbeatable. A successful SEO campaign can do wonders for your online business.

Hope these tips help you to understand some common seo mistakes.

All the best!

What really search engine friendly URL is?
Well, a clean URL without any string values in it can be said as seo friendly URL.

To get a better understanding about SEO friendly URL, please continue reading the post. Here I’ve discussed what is a clean URL, how it effects search engine positioning and targeted traffic. So, here’s a quick list:

The shorter, the cleaner, the better
The shorter, cleaner URL will enable search engine spiders to find the link and crawl smoothly all over the website. A clean URL would not confuse spiders as well as human readers. It will give fruitful results if you place your main keywords in the URL. So, avoid lengthy dynamic string in your URL.

Use : instead of a dash or an underscore
Using a colon, in title of page, article or post will not generate any string characters in the URL; it will convey the clear and direct URL and not a puzzling one. Whereas if you use a dash – or an underscore _ will give you some string characters if you’re using WordPress, it is my advice – avoid them in titles.

Avoid using special characters
Special characters like ‘ & $ # * @ in title should be avoided as they create some confusion, i.e. there is a possibility that it may generate special characters and make a URL like spammy one or as a dynamic URL.

URL must specify relevant information
While re-writing a URL, make sure that they should indicate users and web spiders – what the page is about. As a whole it should be significant to that particular page.

Rework your XML sitemap
Finally, after considering and re-writing the URLs, update your XML sitemap and resubmit it to Google webmaster account. By doing so, you are inviting web spiders to crawl and re-index your site.

Being an online entrepreneur, webmaster, professional blogger or an online business owner it is important to keep yourself update with the latest trends of internet.  It is next to impossible to index a site in major search engines like Google and Yahoo! without seo efforts.

Re-writing URLs might seem a small thing, but it definitely has a great impact on search results. Hope this post give you a new angle to reorganize your online presence.

In other words, put your people first.

Whether it’s your employees, your volunteers or your advocates – your nonprofit thrives because of this base of support. The challenge is then for your organization to seek out creative ways to deliver your messages through these support channels. Here are three tips to make it happen:

1. Use Video

We all love interactive, engaging video content (as of September 2009, 84% of Americans online were watching video). Find time to shoot a quick one to two-minute video with your Executive Director that explains the mission of your organization and incorporates b-roll of employees, volunteers, supporters, advocates, etc. Alternatively, get creative and find a way to integrate employees behind a unified message as depicted in the example below.

2. Use Photos

This tactic seems blatantly obvious but I’m mesmerized by the number of nonprofits that fail to use nice, large photos to help convey the human perspective behind their mission. Conduct a photo shoot, compile testimonials from your advocates and put these folks front and center on the home page. Not only does this help convey your organization’s mission through third-party credibility, but you are also empowering your advocates and further integrating them into your core online communication efforts.

3. Model After Other Successful Sites!

The best part about the Web is that we all have access to everyone else’s work. Don’t be afraid to integrate elements that work on other sites into your own organization’s site.