Here are some questions to ask yourself before designing your website:

1. What kind of knowledge does your audience have?

A hobby gardener might linger around a general site on gardening, but a professional botanist might turn his nose at the very same site. Similarly, a regular person will leave a site filled with astronomy abstracts but a well educated university graduate will find that site interesting.

2. Take your audience’s emotional state into consideration when building your site.

If a visitor searches for a solution and comes across your site, you will want to make sure you offer the solution right up front and sell or promote your product to him second. In this way, the visitor will put his trust in you for offering the solution to his problems and is more likely to buy your product when you offer it to him after that.

3. What is the age level of your targeted website visitors?

When you design the layout for your site, you have to take into account the characteristics of your audience. Are they old or young people? Are they looking for trends or are they just looking for information served without any icing on the cake? For example, introducing a new, exciting game with a simple, straightforward black text against white background page will definitely turn prospects away. Make sure your design suits your site’s general theme.

At Websites Are Us, your San Diego web designer, we create websites with your targeted audience in mind, so you will be able create a sense that your audience is on common ground with you. This in turn builds a trusting relationship between you and your audience, which will come in useful should you want to market a product to your audience.

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So, what can you do to keep your visitors coming back to your site?

1. Start A Blog

Keep an online journal, or more commonly known as a blog, on your site and keep it updated with latest news about yourself. Human beings are curious creatures and they will keep their eyes glued to the monitor if you post fresh news frequently. You will also build up your credibility as you are proving to them that there is also a real life person behind the website.

2. Start A Forum

When you start a forum about a subject related to your products or services, you are providing your visitors a place to voice their opinions and interact with their peers. As conversations build up, a sense of community will also follow and your visitors will come back to your site almost religiously every day.

3. Create Polls Or Surveys

Polls and surveys are other forms of interaction that you should definitely consider adding to your site. They provide a quick way for visitors to voice their opinions and to get involved in your website. Be sure to publish polls or surveys that are strongly relevant to the target market of your website to keep them interested to find out about the results.

4. Hold Sweepstakes Or Add Games

Just imagine how many office workers procrastinate at work every day, and you will be able to gauge how many people will keep visiting your site if you provide a very interesting or addicting way of entertainment. You can also hold competitions to award the high score winner to keep people trying continuously to earn the prize.

5. Update Your Website Frequently With Fresh Content

Update your site frequently with fresh content so that every time your visitors come back, they will have something to read on your site. This is the most widely known and most effective method of attracting returning visitors, but this is also the least carried out one because of the laziness of webmasters. No one will want to browse a site that looks the same over ten years, so keep your site updated with fresh bites!

Websites Are Us, Your San Diego Web Designer can help you with all of the above, just contact us to talk about your web design plans!

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Get Free Online Advertising For Your Business – Even When You Don’t Have A Website

It is estimated that 30 to 40 % of all online searches are made with local intent. If your business offers a service that is relevant to a local area, you are missing many visitors if your website is not showing in the local search results. Local search is clearly a growing segment. Mobile search, which is rapidly increasing, will make local online listings for your business even more important in the future.

Even if you business doesn’t have a website, it is a good idea to submit it to online local directories. If this is done strategically and consistently, and you ask many of your happy customers to submit positive online reviews for you, you will have excellent chances that your business will show up among the top local online search results soon!

There are a multitude of local search websites ranging from Google, Yahoo and Bing Local to established directories like Yellow Pages and Super Pages, and city specific online guides like Yelp, Judie’s Book or Kudzu.

Most businesses don’t realize this, but to get your business ranked high in the top local search results you need to have the right strategy.

Here is our quick-start guide to help you submit your business yourself to the most important local search directories:

1. Prepare at least one picture with your logo or a photo of your store or office in .jpg format (this is optional but adds to your credibility and helps customers remember your business).
2. Prepare a description of about 150 to 200 words about the services you provide. Do not spam, and describe your business without exaggeration. Include your keywords (e.g. ‘graphic design San Diego’) in your company description.
3. To submit your business to local directories, you will have to set up accounts will all of these websites. For the sake of keeping the overview it is wise to make notes of all log-ins, email addresses and passwords you used. You will have to come back later to most of these websites and enter an activation code emailed to you. You also may have to update your listings over time. It is also a good idea or to check from time to time whether you have received positive or negative reviews. A great help to securely keep track of all your online passwords is the software program ‘RoboForm‘ that completely automates password entering and form filling.
4. If your main email is somehow ‘unprofessional’ like thecoolguy123@hotmail.com, you need to get a more professional email address like yourbusinessname@gmail.com. You can get it for free at Google GMail. GMail is excellent, it’s easy to use and has many options, and one of the best spam filters out there. If you don’t plan on using this GMail address regularly, you can set it to forward your emails to your regular email address. In any case you need to make sure you check all emails related to your business listings.
5. Very Important: Make sure that all listings are EXACTLY the same on all local directories. You want to use always the exact same business name, street address and phone number on each listing. This is very important to get high search engine rankings at Google, Yahoo and Bing!
6. Providing as much information as possible and uploading some photos is time consuming and doesn’t help your ranking, but it’s a good idea to enhance your business profile and make it stand out from your competitors. Include your description and add information about opening hours, payment types, etc. On some websites you can easily add a coupon which might appeal to your potential customers. Choose the best possible category for your website, and if you have the option to select more than one category, select all that apply.
7. Be aware that listing your business online will make it easy for disgruntled customers to give you a negative review or rating! However, even if you do not list your business with local directories, you might be rated without your knowledge anyway as these websites give their users the possibility to review just about any business they know by name and address. Listing it yourself gives you at least control over the way your business is presented, and in worst case you can click on the ‘report abuse’ button.
8. Encourage all your happy customers to leave online feedback for you, so negative review will hopefully be outranked by positive votes for your business. Also, more ‘stars’ will usually give your listing a higher position. Do not rate or review your business yourself! Faked reviews will be noticed, and your listing might get banned, or potential customers might avoid you!
9. On most local directory websites your listing will show immediately, but on others it might take a couple days or weeks to get approved. After you have set up a listing, always look for the direct link to your published listing and make sure to bookmark the exact url to your listing in your internet browser so you can get back to it. If you are using Internet Explorer, right-click with your mouse somewhere on the website and select ‘add to favorites’, or copy and paste the link from your browser’s navigation bar into a Word document. You should regularly check your listings for any reviews you might have received to stay always informed about your online reputation.
10. With the above ‘rules’ in mind, it’s now time to start visiting the following websites to set up accounts and create profiles.

Are You Ready For Do-It-Yourself Local Search Submissions Of Your Business?

Google Local Business Center

When you register your business, Google will call you to verify your listing, so make sure you are next to the phone number you provide, or save and finish your listing later. The other option is to get an activation code to your business mailing address by snail mail which will take a couple weeks. You have to type that activation code into your listing before it will be accepted.

Yahoo Local

The ‘Basic Listings’ option is free. You’ll need to set up a new or use an existing Yahoo account to be listed. Yahoo will review your submission for inclusion within 3-5 business days. You can check the status in your account

Bing (MSN City Search)

After you have submitted a new listing, MSN City Search will send you a confirmation code by snail mail in about 2-3 weeks. You’ll need to enter the code back into the Local Listings Center to activate and confirm your business submission.

Other Local Directories

Note: The more local directories list your business, the better. We know that it is time consuming, but you can always outsource it to another internet savvy person. Just make sure to have her follow the ten important bullet points as mentioned above.

On some of these websites the link to adding a new business is not easy to find. If you can’t find it, just type your business name and city or ZIP in the search field, and usually if it is not found, you will get a link to add it as a new business.

Note: Superpages, Info USA and Yellow Pages will call you and try to upsell! Feel free to upgrade your listing, but in our opinion this is not necessary.

City Search

Insider Pages Search for the business that you wish to add. If it is not listed, click on the ‘Add a Business’ button at the bottom of the page.

Kudzu

Yelp

Super Pages

Yellow Pages

Tupalo

RateItAll

Info USA

LocalEze

NavTeq

Merchant Circle

HotFrog

Brown Book

San Diego only: Mojo

Useful Paid Directories

Angie’s List

If you don’t mind paying for a listing, Angie’s List is a good choice. The fee is reasonable and you will get good value for it. They are known to refer high quality contractors, service companies and doctors and have over 1 million registered users. As it is members only, and you can even get help when a project goes wrong, many consumers feel safe to select a business that is listed at Angie’s.

Here is a tip how to save the $10 application fee: create a login, exit and wait for the email with the offer to waive the application fee when you join ‘now’ (worked in the past, may not work anymore)

Judy’s Book
Judy’s Book is around since 2004. They claim to have over 1 Million Users, basic listings start at $9.95 per year.

In addition to being listed in the local search results, it is important to be listed in the regular results on Google.

These are the most important websites for local listings, and as mentioned before you don’t need a website to be listed there. If you do have a website however, it is a good idea to search online for more local directories for your specific city, or directories related to the services you provide, and submit your website to these. It will help your search engine ranking when you have many links from other reputable websites RELEVANT to your business.

Websites Are Us, Your San Diego Web Designer, will help you optimizing your websites, and getting it on Google’s first result page for the keywords you target.

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• Internet Marketing Search Engine and Banner Advertising Do a search on Google Yahoo or Bing and you will notice the websites showing up on top and on the right side are labeled ‘sponsored results‘. These are the paid search results. Search engines have different paid advertising programs that guarantee the preferred listing....

Search Engine and Banner Advertising

Do a search on Google Yahoo or Bing and you will notice the websites showing up on top and on the right side are labeled ‘sponsored results‘. These are the paid search results. Search engines have different paid advertising programs that guarantee the preferred listing. If done right this can be an excellent way of generating targeted traffic.

Paid advertising doesn’t have to be costly as all search engines offer marketing solutions even for a budget on a shoestring.

However, if you don’t know the intricacies of search engine marketing you will most likely waste your money and don’t get the desired results.

Other Online Marketing Methods

Other online marketing strategies include banner advertising on other websites, or paid listings in business related directories.

Important questions to ask before you select a website to advertise on:

• How much qualified visitors related to your business do they get?
• What is their conversion rate, meaning are their visitors are actually clicking on ads, or just reading their content?

What Websites Are Us Will Do For You

If you decide to pay for advertising, we will use specific SEO research software to thoroughly analyze your competitor’s advertising strategies, before creating an online marketing campaign for you. We have in-depth knowledge of Google Adwords, and will select the most profitable keywords for you. We will then set up and monitor your campaign. We can also create Flash or regular banner ads and write ad copy.

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• Website Optimization – Case Study 3 Within one month we were able to get our client's website on Google's front page for two very competitive search terms, her best selling product 'Learn And Master Guitar' and the broader keyword 'learn guitar fast'. The website is on the 2nd page of Google for 3 more keywords, as...
• Add Your Business To Local Search How To Get Your Business In The Top Local Search Results Get Free Online Advertising For Your Business – Even When You Don’t Have A Website It is estimated that 30 to 40 % of all online searches are made with local intent. If your business offers a service that...