Many clients of mine ask about blogs- “what is a blog?” “how can it help my website rankings?”. Well, the answer, in short, is: a blog is a type of website meant for articles. It is completely editable (meaning you can add new articles, categories, etc yourself via an online administration area) and has the potential to reach millions of people around the world in a relatively short time frame.

As websites become more and more crucial to a business’ marketing plan, a blog can compliment your website nicely by allowing you to post discussions and thoughts on topics of your choice. Blogs have an RSS feed link built directly in, which allows people to subscribe to your blog to receive new articles whenever you write them. How does this help your website? I’ll explain…

Simply creating a blog and writing your everyday thoughts may be fun (if you have the time), but that does not help your website, or your website rankings on search engines, at all. You need to create a complimentary blog website for your main website. This means the articles should be about what you do, or the products you sell, for example. This helps in 2 ways: since blogs are designed to be search engine friendly, they usually get indexed (i.e. read) by the search engines rather easily and quickly. They also allow “tagging” of articles, which means you can specify keywords for the article to help get it ranked. This is where the basic principles of search engine optimization come into play: make sure you select targeted tags or keywords for your articles, and try and choose 1-2 tags or keywords per article. Spins-offs the tags are fine and don’t worry about pluralizing keywords.

Creating categories is crucial, and making sure the categories are clear and precise makes all the difference. In blogs, like WordPress for example, if you create a category you must create at least one article within that category, or the category will not display on the front end of the website. You can provide a short description for the category if you like, this also helps the search engines when they visit your blog.

Now that you have your new blog set up and ready to go, how do you start getting it ranked on the search engines? There are a couple of ways, but the main methods I use are:

• In the URL bar of your browser, you will see a little ‘RSS’ sign or text in the corner. If you click that, it will display your articles as an RSS feed. Alternately, you can also test out the RSS feed link by typing in “feed://YOUR DOMAINNAME/DIRECTORY THE BLOG IS INSTALLED IN/feed/. Our RSS feed is: feed://evolutionindesignz.com/blog/feed/, for example.

• Now that you have your RSS feed address, submit to to as many RSS directories or repositories as possible! A good site with a comprehensive list is http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm. Another excellent site to submit to is http://www.digg.com. You can also use automated  software to submit the feed; many of them are free. Don’t forget to submit it to Google as well!

• Submit the normal URL (e.g. http://evolutionindesignz.com/blog) to as many search engines as possible. Again, there are many online services that submit URLs to many search engines for free, or you could use purchased software as well.

Once all this is done, monitor your blog’s traffic. It usually takes a little while before you start showing up in search engines, directories, etc and it all depends on how popular your topics are. Remember to be patient and keep writing new articles, and eventually your blog should start doing well on the search engines.

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When deciding on whether to get an CMS based website, or content management system based website, there are a couple of things that need to be considered. In the last couple of years, many open source, or free, CMS systems have gained popularity. This has made it increasingly more difficult for website developers to sell their custom programmed cms applications. Before making a decision on which option is best for you, l’ll explain a bit more about cms.

Content Management Systems (CMS) allow the user to log in via an online administration area to make changes to their websites, update the content, add new pages and much more. We simply refer to them as “Editable” websites, as it much clearer to a person who is not website savvy. This is a much more cost effective solution than a simple HTML website, as you no longer need to pay a developer to make updates or changes to your website. Sounds good, right? exactly what you were looking for, you say? Well, read on then…

The big decision now becomes “do I get an open source CMS or a custom programmed CMS?” This can be a very tough decision. I’ll now explain why:

Open source content management systems are FREE. That’s right, free. However, it is not as simple as that, as you still need the system installed and set up for you (aw shucks!). This can be easily done by people who are familiar with FTP programmes (File Transfer Protocol). This tool (also many free ones available) allows you to communicate directly with the server to upload and download files. So all you need to do then, is download the files for an open source CMS, upload them to your hosting package, and bang! you have a full CMS website ready to roll…. well, no (sorry). CMS sites are database driven, which means you now need to set up the “brain” of the website, so it can do all the work for you. This too is usually simple enough. You just need to log into your hosting control panel, set up a MySQL database and user, etc etc… then come back to the installation screen for the CMS, input all that info and now (finally) bang! you have your full, powerful CMS website ready to roll. But it doesn’t look anything like the sample you saw online, right? well, that’s because everything is set to “default”, so now you have the fun task of finding a template that you like (there are many free ones and paid ones available), customizing it if needed, installing it,….

Ok, by now you must have figured out that while the system is free, there is quite a bit of work involved in setting it up and getting it running the way you want. This is why developers charge for this.

So it turns out the system is not 100% free, as you still need to pay someone to set it up, install and modify a template for you, set up your basic pages and info, etc. Now this is where it gets tricky…

When you speak with a developer and let them know you want a website you can maintain yourself, they will (usually) suggest a CMS system. However, many developers will not tell you about the open source ones, as they obviously want to sell you their system, which is understandable, right? However, their system may cost big $$ which you don’t have! “Now what options do I have?”, you ask. Some will tell you to save up the money, some may offer a flexible payment plan… and some may actually suggest the open source CMS! “Aha!” you say; finally an option I can afford. Now here are some things to keep in mind when negotiating the installation and set up cost:

1. the system is 100% free, which means they do not need to charge you for the system. Some free CMS systems are Joomla, Mambo, Drupal… just to name the most commonly used ones. Go ahead and Google the names to read more about them.
2. To save more money, find a free template you like. You can then download this template and send it to your developer, who can install it for you in under 2 minutes. Make sure you find a template meant for your system though! The good thing with Mambo and Jooma is that they are more or less the same system, so many templates can be used by both systems.
3. If you are not 100% happy with the template, ask the developer what their hourly charge is to modify to your needs. Most of the time simply changing the banner image at the top will give the whole template a new look.
4. There are many free plugins that can be installed in these systems, that add functionality. Wordpress, for example, has a HUGE library of plugins that allow you to do all sorts of cool things.

Custom programmed CMS systems will be more expensive, but usually have alot of benefits that come with the added expense, like :

1. The system will function exactly the way you want it to. This means you don’t have to navigate your way around a huge, confusing and sometimes complex admin area of the open source cms, to find the function you’re looking for,
2. The system is usually alot more secure and less vulnerable to hackers. This is because the open source cms system can be downloaded and installed by anyone, including baddies with nothing better to do with their time than sit there and find vulnerabilities in the programming, which they then develop a hack for and attack everyone they can find. Keep in mind that many open source cms and even blog systems, like wordpress, use standard database prefixes, like “wp-” for wordpress. This is a dead give away to a hacker who is looking to target a wordpress system!
3. Support. Custom programmed cms systems should come with a guarantee, so if anything crashes or stops working, you should be able to call the developer who will then fix it at no cost. An open source system cannot come with a guarantee, as the developer did not create it, just installed it for you.

Ok, I think I have given you a lot to think about… Make sure to keep all this mind when shopping around (and if you call us, we’ll be happy to read you this post over the phone if needed!).

Websites are one of the most important marketing tools you have. People use the internet and especially search engines to find products and services they need; who has time to open the yellow pages?

When contacting a website design firm, be careful not to be drawn in for the most expensive options with fancy bells and whistles- chances are you will never use over half these features. Some of the first things you need to decide are:

1. Which market am I targeting?
2. Who is my target audience?
3. What age group do my potential clients fall in?
4. Will I be selling products online?
5. What kind of functionality do I want my clients/visitors to have?
6. How big will this website grow?
7. Will I need to add new functionality?
8. How often will I need to update the website?

Remember: most website development firms are reluctant to give pricing over the phone and via email. If you call prepared, sales people will be forced to narrow their sales pitch down to your requirements, which will make it harder for them to distract and confuse you. Never let a sales person use technical jargon; this is a tactic widely used to justify inflated pricing. For example, if you need an e-commerce website, you know that you need a shopping cart function, member a/c function, payment gateway to process transactions and the ability to maintain the catalogue yourself (just a few examples of the functionality). if you ask for something that seems would/should come with an e-commerce site, like specifying bestselling products, chances are the system already comes with it. HOWEVER! always ask for a complete list of functionality before going into the details of what you need. If the sales person sees you are asking for functionality that already comes with the website, chances are they will scale down the functionality and charge you separately for each additional function, even though the base system comes with it!