How-To Guide: Important Things to Consider When Building Your Own Website

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Having the capacity to build your own website can save your business thousands of dollars. If, however, the site is built without the proper considerations, it could cost your business much more down the road.

Questions To Ask

Before you start, ask yourself:

  • What are the goals of your website?
  • Will content need to be updated regularly?
  • Who will update the website?
  • Is there a call to action?
  • What are the costs associated with running and maintaining the website?
  • How will your visitors most likely view your website (desktops, tablets, smartphones, etc.)?

Goals: Understanding what you’re attempting to achieve with your website should influence every decision you make during its construction. If you’re using your website to sell a particular product, the design should funnel traffic to the point where the visitor is faced with a decision to make a purchase or leave. If the site is built for branding purposes, what content are you providing that will entice the visitor to return? Define your goals and design around them.

Content: Content is still king. You’ll need to understand how your site’s content is getting updated, who is updating it, the cost of content generation, and the frequency with which the content is updated.

Costs: In general, websites can be built and run on the cheap. However, there are several cost considerations, including hosting (using a third-party service or setting up your own server), domain registration, content creation, ecommerce systems, email accounts (some service providers do not provide unlimited email and charge a fee for additional addresses) and bandwidth capacity (some service providers charge based on bandwidth needs).

Usage: Think about who your customers and visitors will be and how they will want to use the site. For example, if you expect your website will be used on a lot of touch- screen devices, such as iPhones, eliminate (or at least minimize) the number of rollover items. On a touch device, there is no mouse to roll over an object. If you plan to allow visitors to post items on your site, who will monitor the activity?

SEO: From the domain name you select to the titles of your webpages, all of these decisions help search engines rank your website. It’s important to embed a good SEO strategy in the foundation of your website. Start with descriptive page titles that focus on your niche; then back that up with strong meta keywords and related content.

Social integration (and other tools): For many people, Facebook has become their homepage. Integrating Facebook and other social tools into your website is imperative. First, it provides a contemporary feel to your site (can you remember the last site you visited that didn’t have a Facebook or Twitter button?). Second, these tools are an easy way for users to share the content of your site. Third, these tools are free and are extremely easy to implement. Here are tools to consider:

Name Website Price Function
Facebook www.facebook.com Free To share and connect everything
Twitter www.twitter.com Free Live conversation, 140 characters at a time
Feedburner www.feedburner.com Free Feed distribution, analytics
LinkedIn www.linkedin.com Free Social network connecting professionals
Flickr www.flickr.com Free Photo sharing service
YouTube www.youtube.com Free Video sharing service
Digg www.digg.com Free Social sharing service
StumbleUpon www.stumbleupon.com Free Social sharing service
AddThis www.addthis.com Free All-encompassing social sharing service

Must-Have Web Site Features

  • “About Us” page
  • “Contact Us” page
  • Site Map (for navigation and SEO purposes)
  • FAQ
  • Social Integration (It’s free marketing)

Catalyst Squared can help you complete this exercise and determine your next steps. Catalyst Squared has a dedicated team of successful and experienced designers with internet marketing know-how who want to help you. Establish your web presence!

Link Building – 100% Commitment and You’re Invited

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Could you see yourself choosing one thing and becoming 100% committed to it? Like meditating every day without missing a single meditation? Or writing creatively every day for at least 30 minutes?

I’ve learned so much from self-improvement and business development courses over the last several years and I’d like to share this challenge with you as an additional way to motivate myself.

Here is my 100% commitment; It’s the one and only thing I am making as a total commitment in my life.

I hereby commit myself to visit and comment on 10 new websites each and every day, until the time when I feel that this is no longer necessary. I will do this 100% of the time, every day. If I slip, I will not judge myself, I will not hate myself – I will brush myself off and recommit. I’ll do this starting today.

Feel free to join me =)

Is there one thing would you like to become 100% committed? What is it?

…know this good accessibility equals good search engine…

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…know this: good accessibility equals good search engine optimization. Think about those darling little Google bots just like screen readers. They can’t look at your images, they don’t care about your fancy CSS tricks, they certainly can’t see inside your flash content. They read your HTML just like a screen reader does.

http://css-tricks.com/accessiblility-basics-turn-your-css-off/

Quick Tip Consider your visitors first impression when…

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Quick Tip: Consider your visitors first impression when they land on your site. You might be using the latest 24″ iMac and view your site through Safari 5.0, but if your visitor is using a 13″ laptop with Internet Explorer (IE) 6 or 7, things could look much different. First, keep your header height to a minimum. Too much header pushes your content below the break line. Then try viewing your site using Adobe Browser Labs. It’s a free tool Adobe offers and will show you how other browsers read your site.

Attention Spammers – Even Homer Simpson Thinks You’re All Idiots

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Homer Thinks You're An IdiotToday I logged in to discover that someone (or something) had managed to insert links for a product (not going to name it here) that I would never endorse. Now I’m getting a bit tired of all the unscrupulous marketers out there and this completely ridiculous idea to get traffic called SPAM. Either these people are completely morons or they’re simply doing it to be vicious.

I mean who could possibly think it’s a good idea to pick a site with absolutely 0 (zero) page ranking, hack into the persons blog, and then place links to a site completely unrelated to the topic? My site has been sitting dormant ever since I lost all of my data moving the content from GoDaddy to my GVO servers. Every post from December 2008 to December 2010 GONE because I failed to properly download a MySQL database. Oops, lesson learned. =)

Anyway, I’d really like to understand the methodology behind SPAM and why so many people think it’s a viable alternative to actually doing something productive with their life.

What are your thoughts?

Have you considered using, are currently using or have used in the past some type of SPAM application to do your marketing for you?

Or do you hate SPAM as much as I do and use some cool tools to wipe it clean from your life?

Leave a comment, I’d love to discuss this further.

So yesterday I decided to start blogging again…

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So yesterday I decided to start blogging again. I scrapped my old theme and posts for this new, cleaner, more social blog theme. My intension is to share what I have learned about building an online business, various techniques for driving traffic, list building, etc. but even more than that I’m going to get a little controversial. There are a few things in life I believe to be slightly obtuse and I intend on doing my best to straighten them out.

4 Ways to Get Natural Backlinks

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4 Ways to Create Natural Backlinking1. Create link worthy Websites
If your website is only a collection of affiliate links then you cannot expect that other webmasters will link to your site. Create a website with good content. People like to link to “How to” articles, top 10 lists and controversial statement. The more interesting your web pages are, the more likely it is that other websites will link to your site.

2. Solve other people’s problems
Do you have an article on your website that solves a specific problem? Contact related websites and point them to the interesting content on your site. Contact the webmasters of sites that are related to the topic of your website and bloggers who have written about that topic. Inform these people about your article. Chances are that these websites will link to your site. You can find related websites and blogs with this tool.

3. Put your website into the right context
The direct effect of links from Internet directories has decreased but they are still a very good way to put your website into the right context. If many Internet directories list your website in the category, then search engines will know that your website is related to that category and it will be much easier to get high rankings for keywords that are related to that category.

4. Get links to different pages of your website and vary your link texts
The structure of a natural backlink pattern depends on the website. Some websites get the most links to the home page. Other websites get many links to specific pages. In general, the websites that link to your website should use the keywords for which you want to get high rankings in the linked text. The texts should vary. If all web pages use exactly the same text to link to your site, this will look unnatural.

The 7 Characteristics Of A Successful Entrepreneur

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There Are 7 Important Characteristics Every Entrepreneur Must Have

Are you planning to start your own business? Do you know the right qualifications and characteristics an entrepreneur must have to succeed? Does your profile match that of a successful entrepreneur? I’d like to share with you the essential characteristics that every entrepreneur must have to succeed. There are several important traits and values that are common among successful entrepreneurs. Before you begin building your enterprise, it will be very helpful to think and consider whether you have what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. If not, you can start by developing these 7 character traits.

The 7 Characteristics

  1. Successful Entrepreneurs are Self-Confident – to succeed in the highly competitive business world, confidence and trust in oneself is an indispensable trait. Self-confidence means trusting your own powers and capabilities. The world of entrepreneurship is not alien to failure and disappointments. To survive in such a cutthroat world, an entrepreneur must have the ability to look within himself and find the drive and persistence to pursue his enterprise. An entrepreneur must have the gumption to face any adversity and tackle any problems that may be met in the world of business.

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  2. Successful Entrepreneurs are Risk-takers – being an entrepreneur means having the ability to trust your hunches and acting on them. Great business ideas sometimes start as a hunch which enterprising individuals acted upon. There is always the risk of loss in any endeavor, and entrepreneurs have just the right confidence to take calculated risks to meet their goal. However, an entrepreneurs risk-taking does not depend on luck, but on sheer effort and hard work.

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  3. Successful Entrepreneurs know the value of money and are careful about their finances – to succeed in any business; an entrepreneur must understand the value of money and the cost of things. Typically, successful entrepreneurs learned how to earn and value money at a young age. Most of them started out by earning loose change as teenagers mowing lawns, doing groceries, babysitting for neighbors, etc.

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  4. Successful entrepreneurs have the so-called head for business – many entrepreneurs are gifted with intuition: they know what product or service is going to click next. However, this ability does not involve clairvoyance or extra sensory powers of some sort, but rather, keen observation and understanding of what is going on around him. A good entrepreneur is always on the look out for new ideas and new ways to make money.

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  5. Successful Entrepreneurs are competitive – the world of business is a very competitive environment. An entrepreneur must be aggressive enough to pursue his goal despite having many rivals and competitors. An entrepreneur must know how to stay ahead of his competitors, either by introducing new ideas and exploring new ventures, all in the spirit of expanding his business.

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  6. Successful Entrepreneurs are honorable and have a good work ethic – although it is a fact that the business world is ruthless, but the successful entrepreneur will strive to make every business deal honorable. The mark of a successful entrepreneur lies in a good personal work ethic that ultimately leads to good business practices, excellent reputation and good association with industry peers and business partners.

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  7. Successful Entrepreneurs know the importance of leisure time – hard work and determination are very important values every entrepreneur must have. However, a good entrepreneur knows when it’s time to take a step back from all the rigors of business and enjoy some downtime with their family. Besides, we all do need a little relaxation to refresh the body and mind before plunging back into the challenging (and stressful) world of business.

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These are just seven of the most important characteristics of an entrepreneur. Of course, the characteristics every entrepreneur must have are not limited to the ones mentioned. Having these characteristics is not a guarantee that you will be a successful entrepreneur. But with these characteristics, you have just the right ingredients for success.

All you need to do is to find the right mix of these values, excellent timing, perhaps a bit of luck and, of course, faith in yourself. So, do you have what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur? Go over these characteristics and values mentioned and say if you do have these.

Leave a comment below, I’d love to hear what you have to say =)