WSpider.com

What Can A Website Done Well Do For You?

A well designed and well promoted website can attract visitors and drive traffic like no other form of advertising can do. Naturally, your type of business model and your own unique goals will define all of the specifics of what your website should do for you. But why not start off with a few of these potential ideas?

· Inform New Customers About Your Product Or Service – This is a common goal for websites to set in the sights. Others might call it branding or awareness, but all in all, it’s simply making sure your potential customers can find you online and know what you are all about. This strategy is also popular for promoting a cause of some type.

· Create Online Sales – Another very common online ambition, a website is a wonderful tool for selling directly online. Whether it’s the traditional “shopping cart” type of e-commerce or it’s another way of selling a product or service online, this is a respectable goal.

· Establish A Source Of Lead Generation – Building leads is another extremely popular goal that many businesses demand their website produce for them. It works very well when done right. In fact, many industries and business models rely solely on their lead generating machine websites to keep them booked up and busy. Here at WSpider, we’ve deployed this tactic numerous times with quite a bit of success for our service professional clientele.

· Drive Visitors To Your Offline Location – That’s right, your website can certainly be used to help produce more foot traffic to your physical location. This method works especially well with locally oriented businesses—restaurants, retail stores, health professionals, and so on. Would it work for you?

· Achieve Monetization Through Online Advertising – Many businesses do their business exclusively online…without actually selling anything directly. By providing a quality source of information online via their websites, they’re able to promote third-party products and referrals (affiliate marketing) or sell advertising directly on the website. It’s definitely another popular way of doing business online and one that almost anyone can achieve with some good planning and hard work.

This is all important stuff. Defining your goals that you’ll aim to achieve through your website is a vital step along the way to being highly successful online. WSpider helps customers every day drive traffic like nothing else through well optimized websites and streamlined SEM strategies. But to make what we do most effective, the question remains…what can a website done well do for you?

What Is Your Niche Topic Online?

Thinking about ramping up your web presence (or starting a brand new identity online with a new website and online marketing portfolio)? If so, congrats in advance. Getting started along this road can be a confusing and complex process…one that many folks don’t make it past very well at all. You are definitely going to succeed, though!

There are several reasons for this, of course, but one of the primary ones is because by reading this post, you will be fully aware of one of the key rules to success online. What is that rule?

Pick a tight niche and truly OWN your niche.

It’s that easy. You hear about some people that are starting online businesses that initially try to open up an e-commerce property selling anything and everything. Others buy some program that tells them how to start 200 different mini websites covering a huge range of topics that each represents some theme that’s popular in the search engines.

Tactics like these might work just fine for the lucky few—but for those of you looking to actually try something that’s been proven to work time and time again (and something that’s actually fun and interesting to do as well), the key is to own your niche.

So, how does the niche model work?

First of all, you’ll be narrowing down the list of online business concepts to something that you’re passionate about. That’s priority number one—it makes working on your new e-biz both exciting and fun, helping entrepreneurs thorough even the most discouraging times.

Secondly, by selecting the narrowest niche possible, and one that you’re passionate about, you’ll be ready to be the best source online for information (and therefore for your product, service, or advertising market) for that small unique niche. The internet is a very huge place—you’re simply not going to beat major established businesses and corporations covering broad topics. But certainly can own and dominate your very own little slice of the web (your niche, that is)!

By focusing on a smaller area, you’ll not only be able to get more done and face less competition, but SEO will come easier as well. The search engines absolutely love niche topic websites that are full of authoritative information. This is practically what the internet is all about—folks that work hard and take pride in what they represent. That’s your niche.

Niches work, but there is still much more to learn.

Based here in sunny San Jose, CA (the technology center of the world), WSpider loves helping our entrepreneur and small business friends get started online. We’ll be happy to work with you step-by-step, providing helpful tips and advice along the way to help you succeed. After all, your success is our success, right?

So whether you’re here in San Jose, San Francisco, San Mateo, or anywhere else at all, please contact one of our knowledgeable pros here at WSpider today, and together, let’s get your new online business established and on the path to success!

5 Ways To Improve Your Conversion Rate

1.  Use Strong Call To Actions – Ever hear of asking for the sale? According to most traditional expert sales gurus, asking for the sale is the key to success (and the part that so many overlook). Now, the same holds true on your website—you’ve got to ask your visitors to take the next action, or at least to contact you for more information. The cornerstone to increasing online conversion rates is using effective call to actions (CTAs).

2.  Present A Clear Way To Get Contact Information – Statistics prove that most visitors, once they find your website, will probably never come back again. This means you’ve got just one precious opportunity to convince them to save your page or take the next action. Getting them to subscribe to your e-mail list by making it worth their while (perhaps with a free bonus) and by presenting the subscription form prominently on the website, you’ll have a perfect way to convert one time visitors into lifetime visitors.

3.  Show Your Commitment To Privacy – The privacy of your website visitors and customers, that is. Tell them exactly what you’ll do with any information they provide and make it easy and clear for them to find and understand this. Example: Under a subscription form, give a clear “We Hate Spam” statement followed by an opportunity to read complete privacy details. And of course, you’ve got to stand by your policy, not just claim it.

4.  Give Your Visitors What They Expect – If a visitor to your website lands on your page and doesn’t immediately see what they’ve searched for, chances are, they are as good as gone. The attention span of a typical web user is slim to none—they’re looking for precise information and don’t want to have to look around on your website to find it. That’s why they’re using search. Don’t let your conversion rate tank by not providing the complete information that you’re promising visitors.

5.  Use Catchy Headlines And Taglines – It’s an age-old tactic, but it continues to work time and time again for boosting conversion rates online. Once again, the attention span of your visitor doesn’t allow you much leeway—you’ve got to step right up to the plate and grab their attention right from the get-go. This is done by using effective headlines. Attaining and keeping your visitors’ attention is the first step to enhancing your conversion rate; after all, once they click on the back button, you’ve lost your opportunity altogether.

Need more ideas on how you can increase your website’s conversion rate and skyrocket your online sales and ROI? Please contact us here at WSpider today!

4 Minutes, 4 Hours, Or 40 Hours – The Choice Is All Yours!

Building, growing, and maintaining a full-fledged online marketing campaign can be a difficult thing. This is especially true when you consider all of the ins and outs that go along with the job—things like SEO, link building, on-site optimization, blogging, copywriting, SEM, Pay Per Click, and more. It takes a lot just to get it all done, and it takes even more to get it all right!

But sometimes, it’s easy to make it all much more complicated than it really should be. Today, let’s consider three different approaches to online marketing for your business or organization—putting in 40 hours, 4 hours, or just 4 minutes...

The 40 Hours A Week Approach

This is the one many small and midsized businesses tend to take. Having a dedicated e-commerce or e-business employee on staff that works full time to cover all of the bases of the online marketing projects. For some, it works out alright; but in reality, there are definitely some pitfalls to this approach.

First of all, 40 hours in real world employee time is really only a small percentage of that in actual time and energy spent developing the plan—the rest comes with a lot of wasted time and mental overhead. Secondly, because of the diversity required in today’s high success online marketing campaigns, one employee jack of all trades approach is likely to have diminishing returns.

The 4 Hour Week Approach

Here, we’re talking about the common scenario for many entrepreneurs and micro businesses—those with just one or two key players where time is certainly spread thin to say the least. Putting in a good 4 hours a week on the online marketing strategy in this case might even be having high expectations. Ever get that feeling that there’s just not enough time to get it all done?

Some results can probably be achieved with a laser-focused 4 hour a week approach. But the chances are good that it’s only going to be about enough time to get a new task started before the next thing comes up and the plan gets cut short before it has a chance to be effective.

The 4 Minute A Week Approach

This is the strategy that is most ideal. It’s outsourcing all of the website design, SEM, SEO, and other important online marketing projects to a fine tuned online marketing machine (or in other words, professionals like WSpider). Our experts can handle all components of a rock-star online marketing plan with ease—it’s what we do day in, day out.

With a 4 minute weekly review to see how the results are stacking up, your time is free to handle those other important business tasks. And at the same time, having a team of professionals, each specialized in a specific niche of online marketing and web development, your results will surely be better in both quality and quantity. The best part is that with a high ROI online marketing campaign, it’s not that you’ll just save money over the traditional 40 hour employee plan—you’ll actually be making money with your web strategy!

Questions To Ask When Thinking About A New Website

Are you in the process of brainstorming a new website for your organization? If so, it helps to be well prepared in order to get web design and SEM quotes that are most likely to be reliable and successful when implemented. To follow are some common questions that a web developer is most likely going to ask you during the planning process:

· What is the topic of your website?

· Do you already have an existing website or existing web copy created?

· Could you provide a list of sites that you’d consider to be competitive with your site?

· What are you aiming to achieve through your website?

· Can you provide examples of websites that exemplify what you’d like yours to be similar to?

· If so, for what reasons are you attracted to these sites?

· Are there any parts of these websites that you’re not quite sold on?

· Are you familiar with SEO and how it works?

· Who will be doing the SEO for the website?

· Do you plan on building a blog into the site?

· Will you be targeting a local or regional market?

· Need to attract customers nationwide or worldwide with your website?

· Have you given any thought to using any type of paid advertising or PPC to promote the website?

· Are you aware of the benefits that integrating social media with a website can bring?

· If you are planning on adding content on the site on a regular basis, have you thought about adding a CMS to the website?

· If you hadn’t given thought to CMS, are you aware of its benefits and long-term potential cost savings?

· Have you worked with a professional web designer or SEO company before?

· Are you aware of the benefits of quality white-hat SEO?

· Are you up to date with the recommended SEO guidelines provided by Google?

· Do you already have a domain name that’s already registered that you’re planning to use for the website?

· Will you be selling any type or product or service on the website—and if yes, how so?

· Will the product require a full scale e-commerce system with a shopping cart and payment system?

· Is there a company or organization logo or branding “look and feel” that you want to maintain or convey with the website?

· Are there any other special considerations or examples you could provide that might be helpful?

And of course, this list could go on for pages and pages. The bottom line is that it’s always better to prepare and plan ahead of time than it is to just wing it and expect the best. And whatever you do, remember that WSpider is always here to help at any stage in the game—just give us a call.

How Can You Ensure That Search Engines Don’t Think Your Site Is Spammy?

First things first, we should say that you probably don’t have anything to worry about. Sure the search engines are constantly doing everything they can to crack down on spam sites that offer little or no value to their visitors—but the part that most of us tend to forget is the fact that the search engines are actually pretty forgiving.

What does forgiving mean, exactly?

Well, don’t get me wrong—if you’re a bonafide spammer, you’re going to get caught and penalized or blacklisted from the search engines in due time. That’s just the way it works (and the way that search engines protect their product, their customers, and their revenue stream).

But if you’re basically doing mostly everything right on your site, trying to provide value and be one of the “good guys” on the web, chances are slim that you’ll be penalized by the search engines—even if there is maybe one little thing that comes across as spammy. More often than not, they tend to give the benefit of the doubt. It’s almost always the real spammers that get caught and make a lot of noise that they’re being unfairly targeted for doing something wrong.

How to avoid getting in trouble as a search engine spammer?

Again, it’s simple—play by the rules and provide value to visitors. There are a few areas though that you might want to think about just in case:

Shared web hosting with bad neighbors – If your website is hosted on the same shared server or IP address as an identified spammer, you might end up getting penalized as well. Use reliably good quality hosting (like what we provide our customers with here at WSpider).

Email – Most of the time, your email and your website are connected. If anyone using your company’s email sends out mail that could be classified as spam, your site could be at risk as well. Play by the rules when it comes to email.

Don’t try to game the search engines – The complex algorithms used by the search engines today are very good at identifying natural content and natural link profiles for a website. If anything appears to be overly forced, like keyword stuffing or coming up with 2,000 new links in one day all having the same anchor text, the search engines will know. This is why WSpider always promotes a safe and steady SEO growth plan in favor of guaranteeing any kind of overnight results.

If you follow these guidelines, you really shouldn’t have any trouble with having your website targeted as being spammy.

15 Ways To Build More Backlinks To Your Website

1. Link to it from your other sites. Many people have multiple websites; most forget to link them to one another.

2. Build a healthy twitter campaign. Besides the links to your site within your twitter profile, the social viral effect will lead to even more incoming links down the road.

3. Submit articles to the article directories. One article written and submitted to a few good article directories can lead to dozens of incoming links over time.

4. Get “Dugg.” Writing an awesome quality article that works its way up the Digg ranks is practically guaranteed to attract automatic incoming links from all around the web.

5. Submit news and updates via PRs. Sending out regular press releases, both online and to relevant traditional news outlets grows backlinks very nicely.

6. Write more blog articles. Blogging is the perfect medium to attract incoming links and trackback links. Think good conversation, not blog comment spam—being a good netizen brings good link karma.

7. Get listed with your local BBB or Chamber of Commerce. Doing so often comes with free incoming links as part of your online profile on those sites (in addition to the other benefits of participation).

8. Ask your friends from links from their sites or blogs. This simple strategy works pretty well, as you might imagine.

9. Spend 15 minutes a week searching and submitting your websites to niche directories. Niche web directories can be a fantastic source of backlinks. Steer clear of obvious “link farms” though.

10. Build a high-quality Squidoo page. Do this and link to your website from within the page. Make an excellent quality page and achieve popularity there for superior results.

11. Follow the exact same strategy as #10 with Hub Pages. It’s been proven to work well.

12. Arrange to write a guest post on a blog or site related to your niche. Over deliver and you’ll probably get repeat offers and offers from other sites too. Of course, each of these posts will include a link to your website.

13. Actively participate on a few blogs. Comment and participate fully—not just for the purpose of achieving a link. Follow their link inclusion policy and this can work quite well.

14. Do the same as #13 with web forums. Again, to do this right, you’ll actually need to actively participate and build up a good reputation there rather than just plastering your link everywhere.

15. Contact WSpider. We’re located right here in San Jose and we’re experts at building high value backlinks for our clients. Ask us for proof—we’ll be happy to show you!

For Best Results, Be Transparent Online

Transparency is a major plus factor for those doing business online. However you feel about the matter, there is simply no denying the fact. Fortunately, there are a few simple ways for any online marketer to maintain a decent degree of transparency without overexposure.

Step One: Have A Good Contact Page.

Every website needs a basic contact page. Providing as much information as you’re possibly willing to share here is a good thing. At very minimum, it’s vital to provide a Spam-proof contact form. Sharing email is up to you—but if you do, take steps to prevent spambots from getting hold of your email address. Phone numbers are good here, and of course, addresses too. The logic behind all of this is simple—customer trust is earned when they’re convinced there’s nothing to hide. Naturally, search engines like to see this page.

Step Two: About Pages Are Good Too.

A website with a well-written and complete “About Us” page usually shines more positively in the eyes of its visitors. Not every visitor will look at this, but those who are on the fence when it comes to trusting the information or products being presented will certainly take a look at the About page and the information it contains. Be honest and give visitors a good background of who you are.

Step Three: Privacy Policy Pages Are Important.

A requirement in many cases, maintaining a clear privacy policy on your website is a staple of being transparent. This policy needs to explain to website visitors what information your site is collecting from them and how it will be used. Transparent privacy policies are also seen as a plus by the search engines.

Step Four: Being Transparent With The New FTC Requirement.

We’ll refrain from sharing all of the lengthy details, but as of late 2009, the FTC has introduced new requirements for some websites that promote affiliate products, do blog posts that promote products or services, along with several additional factors too. You’ll need to check in to the guidelines and see if they apply to you—but if they do, it’s going to be important to be transparent with this new policy.

Step Five: Share Your Domain Registry Information If Possible.

Many websites set their domain registry information to private in order to reduce spam (and for a few other good reasons too). But there are ways to avoid the pitfalls associated with keeping this information public. If possible, it’s probably a good idea to provide public and accurate information here. And once again, it’s been noted that there could be an SEO benefit to doing so as well.

Need more advice on how you can be more transparent online? Please contact us at WSpider for complete details on why it’s good policy and how to develop a transparency strategy.

Is There A Better Way To Do SEO?

There are lots of companies and individuals out there that claim to be SEO experts. Many of them are. And probably most of them are not.

Either way you want to look at it though, SEO tends to be a race of sorts—it’s a battle of wills; a battle of who can out-optimize the next guy and get a position or two ahead in the search engine results pages. This is just the way it’s been since search optimization began to prove itself as a high-ROI way of doing business on the web (and it does actually work).

But the question that many are asking rings true nonetheless: Is there a better way to do SEO?

Well, the answer is YES, there is a better way to do SEO. And we’re pretty sure we have hit the nail on the head here at WSpider with our patented automated SEO software technology. Without getting into all of the smallest little details and technical specifications, here are the basics of what our SEO Essentials system is all about…

1. Ongoing Analysis

The first step is to really look at what a website is doing right and what it is doing wrong. By measuring countless metrics and coming up with an accurate picture—and then comparing this picture with what is known and proven to work successfully on the web, our automated technology is designed perform painstakingly accurate analysis and make recommendations down to the very smallest detail.

2. Simulation Testing

Naturally, the next step is to test these details and potential changes in a realistic environment. Our simulation testing process does exactly this—we test the variables against numerous real-world metrics and samples to ensure that the recommended changes are not only correct, but perfected before implementation. Which leads us to the next step…

3. Automatic Implementation

Once the suggested optimizations have been completely tested via simulation, the next thing is to begin implementing the changes. Sure, this has traditionally been done manually—requiring hundreds of hours of expensive by-hand work. But WSpider’s automatic implementation process is cutting-edge technology that does exactly what it promises—it makes real time changes on the fly to tweak and adjust at just the right times. It works!

4. Reporting

Finally, it’s always important to visualize what changes and improvements have been made and how they’ve helped a website’s SEO factor. This is where it’s important to have access to crystal-clear reporting. And that’s exactly what we deliver.

Want to learn more about WSpider’s cutting-edge SEO technology? Just give us a call or schedule an appointment here in the San Jose / San Francisco / San Mateo / Bay Area today. We’re ready to prove that there indeed is a better way to do SEO!

Creative Vs. Practical: Which Works Best On The Web?

Here is another question that comes up quite frequently when it comes to designing, developing, and implementing a web presence. Should it strive to be creative and catchy? Or, should it aim to be practical and reliable?

For most businesses, it’s probably a good idea to just stick with the tried and true instead of trying to start the newest and boldest next trend.

Why so?

First of all, practical simply works. It’s been well tested and documented that there are certain conventions of web design and online marketing that are proven to work time and time again. They’re timeless, and so far, appear to be steady enough to depend on in the foreseeable future.

What are these practical aspects of web development?

There are lots of them—most being conventions that we all use every single day but do not give much thought about one way or another (most likely because they just work). For example, here are a few practicalities that we can rely on:

· Traditional Navigation – Visitors expect to find a website’s navigation in a few very select locations. Getting overly creative and putting them elsewhere is pretty much just asking for trouble.

· Conventional Page Layouts – Once again, most visitors expect the content of a website to be presented in a standard fashion. This can be anything from the way it scales horizontally across a screen to the spacing used between paragraphs of text; it could even be the color scheme used. There’s a way that is best perceived, and to try and re-invent that mindset would be awfully risky.

· Search Optimization – Right now, and as it has been since the beginning of search, having as much optimized written content as possible is a standard cornerstone of quality SEO. Sure, you could try to search optimize a site that contained only images and no written text whatsoever; but the results are going to be marginal at best.

There are many more good examples, but it all kind of makes sense, doesn’t it? When something has been proven to work, it would be downright silly to try and reinvent the wheel—especially for small businesses and organizations that are on a tight budget. Leave it to the artists and those with big budgets with lots of room to experiment to develop the next web trends and the next creative gimmickry.

WSpider focuses on the practical components of creating excellent web presences for our clients. We have done seemingly endless testing and our experts have learned the ins and outs of the web; we know exactly what has been proven to work time in, time out, and we want to share that with you, whether you’re here in San Jose or anywhere else in the world for that matter!