Anyone with a little knowledge, resources, and tools can create a website. Getting ranked high in the search engines and traffic to your website is another story and takes a little work.

Every website success is dependent on customer traffic. How do you improve your search engine ranking and drive traffic to your website? There are many ways to accomplish this. Some are free and some will cost money. Find out how to get traffic and increase your ranking in the search engines by reading the tips.

•Create a site with valuable content, products or services. Content gives the search engines substance and something to grab a hold of per say. When someone searches for information, the search engines crawl sometimes millions of pages looking for a particular search phrase you enter and content. Relevant and valuable content will capture the attention of the search engines and increase your ranking, and traffic to your website.

•Place primary and secondary keywords within the first 25 words in your page content and spread them evenly throughout the document. The keywords the internet visitor uses to search for information is the words your site will focus on. Placement of these keywords is important so the search engines can find the information. It is best to place the keywords at the beginning of your content. Have you ever looked for something and searched so many layers down you gave up? Same thing with the search engines. Your primary and secondary keywords buried in your website will bury your site in the search engines.

•Research and use the right keywords/phrases to attract your target customers. This cannot be stressed enough. Keyword research is very important to the success of your website. Using keywords that do not target your niche market is a waste of time and could be money. Keyword research should have been one of your top priorities in researching your business idea.

•Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Some web developers recommend using your keywords in your Header, Title, Meta Tags, and of course throughout your website. Depending on whom you talk to or what you read, keywords in your Meta tags are not as important as the web expands. However, this is never a bad idea just to cover your basis for website traffic and ranking.

•Keep your site design simple so that your customers can navigate easily between web pages, find what they want in your products and services and give it to them. This should be a part of your niche business research.

•Submit all or your web pages to the most popular search engines and directory services. You can do this manually or hire someone to do the submissions for you. Some do not recommend automated submission services but as a last and inexpensive resort, you can engage in this service. Submit your web pages to the popular search engines monthly for increased website traffic and ranking.

•Keep and eye on your competitors and the top ranked websites to see what they are doing right in the way of design, navigation, content, keywords, and products. As the saying goes, “when in Rome do like the Romans”. That does not mean copy literally but if the site is successful duplicate their efforts to increase your sites traffic.

•Most all of the web hosting companies will have available some type of analyzer to view your traffic, where traffic is coming from, ranking, and other reports relevant to your website. You can determine if the traffic is coming from search engines or links. Review the information to see what you are doing right and what needs work.

•Other ways to increase traffic to your website, which will increase your rankings in the search engines, are to provide relevant content. Write a newsletter, submit articles to ezines with links back to your site, join a forum and promote your website, give away something free are great ways to drive traffic to your website and increase your website ranking.
 
•The last way is to use some type of ad program like PPC (Pay Per Click), adwords, adsense, link sharing, and many more.

Implementing at least one of these suggestion will help increase your traffic to your niche business. Can you image what would happen if you did a little of everything?

How many times have you visited a website that you were interested in just to sit there while the page slowly loads because of large graphics, or tried to find something and the navigation links didn’t work?

If you were frustrated just think how internet visitors or maybe  potential customers may feel when they visit your website and have the same thing happen to them. They probably will not stay around long. They will just click off and go to the next website they find in the search engine that pertains to what they are looking for.

You can stop that from happening and keep those customers right there on your website. How can you do that? Here are 5 tips to improve your website design so you keep your customers on your site and keep them coming back.

Tip Number 1. The first method is to make sure your typography of your content is suitable. Make sure your lines are spaced out accordingly to the text and sentence structure. Check your font and font size that you are using. You may like using a 10-Pixel text in Times New Roman but is that big enough for all to read. Do you have to strain to read the text? If so increase the text size and maybe change the font. As we get older our eyes are not like they use to be so make sure your font size, font style, and sentence spacing is easily readable.

Tip Number 2. Reduce large images so your web pages load quickly. There is nothing more bothersome than to have to wait on images and graphics to load before the entire website displays. Make sure the important parts of your website loads quickly so you do not lose visitors. Some say a website should load within 15 seconds. After this time, people tend to get disinterested in the site and click off the site. Continuously check your website design for loading time as you are building your website.

Tip Number 3. Content sells a product or service. Updated content will sell your product and service repeatedly. Your website design should include relevant content for the visitor and for search engine optimization. The search engines love content and they love fresh content that is relevant to your keywords. Be sure to break the content up and do not write a paragraph a page long. You are not writing a high school report you are writing website content for your internet visitors. Break the content up by using short paragraphs and white space. It is easier for the reader to read.

Tip Number 4. Have a simple and clear navigation area. A good website design will have a navigation area for the internet visitor that will take them from one place to the next in the website. Test the links to make sure they are directing the visitor to the right page and most importantly are working. The navigation links should be easily read. That means the text size, font size, and color should be distinguishable from the rest of the content. If it is hard to read people will leave the site. In addition to the navigation for navigating throughout the site include a “contact” or “about us” link to your navigation area. This gives creditability to your website. People want to be able to contact someone if they have a question or something is wrong. They also like to read about the business owner. What the business owners credentials are and a little about the business. This builds relationships and people buy more from people they have a relationship with.

Tip Number 5. This last tip involves testing your website. What do I mean by testing your site? I mean to test it out like you are the internet visitor. Whatever HTML editor or program you use to design your website you should be able to click on a button to preview your website in a web browser just how it would look on the World wide Web. Test the links to make sure they direct you to the information that they pertain to and you instructed. Pay close attention to your load time, and your layout of your website. Is the content easy to read and understand? How does my graphics look? Are they overwhelming? Is the color scheme of my website off and not matching the feel of my website style? Are my paragraphs justified properly and is all spelling correct?

These tips above will help you in your website design process to ensure a professional appearance of your internet business. Step back and look at your website from your customers perspective and ask yourself is this a site that I trust to provide me with the type of service or product, I need. If you answer yes then you have completed a successful website design and if you answer no just go back and correct it until you get it right. Remember Rome was not built in a day.

What do I look for when searching for a web host for my internet business? There are many things to look for when setting up your web hosting account. With a little research and information, you can find the perfect web host provider for you internet business.

Even though you have a computer, you do not have the capability of hosting your website from your home computer so the website is live 24/7. The exception to this is if you have your own home server. Having your own server is expensive and a lot of work. The majority of internet businesses host their websites through hosting providers on remote servers.

There a numerous ways to find a host provider. The easiest is by doing a search in your favorite search engine for web host providers. You will find a return of numerous providers. I recommend HostGator as my hosting provider of choice. Their services and support are excellent. CLICK HERE TO SIGNUP FOR HOSTGATOR.COM

Some web host providers offer more features than just web hosting. If you are in need of a complete package web host, website, and domain name this may be an option.

However if you are just looking for a host for your website then compare the features of up to three different web host providers. Below are features you will want to consider when selecting your web host.

• Uptime guarantee

• Money back guarantee

• Customer Service

• Email and Phone Support

• Number of Domains allowed

• Do they require a contract?

• E-mail features (unlimited)

• Cost to transfer Domains or DNS

• Web Hosting Features it supports

• E-commerce features for security

Are these all the features you must consider? No, these are a few very important features.

You definitely want to review the hosting provider’s uptime guarantee. This is the percent of time the host’s servers are up and running so to say and your website is visible to the masses. If their host’s servers are consistently down, your website is not accessible on the web. This means potential lost customers and lost revenue.

Customer service is a very important item when comparing web host providers. Do they have 24/7 customer service via phone and email. When do we always have problems with something? Doesn’t it seem like it is always after business hours? If so, how do I resolve this problem when it is not the normal business hours of the provider? This is very important. I go so far as to call them after hours or email just to test them prior to selecting their services. Test run the company yourself before deciding on a web host provider.

Another must have feature with your web host account is unlimited domain name options. If you have to pay for an additional web host account every time you want to set up another domain name do not do it. This is very costly at the beginning of your new internet business venture. Purchase from a provider who offers unlimited domains.

The additional domains will actually be subdomains of your primary domain but that is okay starting out as a new internet business owner. Internet visitors finding any of your domains will not see your primary domain or see that any domains are subdomains of another account. Therefore, this is an easy and inexpensive why to start additional internet businesses.

Again the hosting provider is your own personal preference but I do Highly recommend HostGator for all of you hosting needs.