Internet Marketing Central > FAQ
FAQs
The following questions include those most
asked of us by people new to the web site development and marketing
process. If your particular question is not addressed below,
please use our contact form.
Site
Development
Search Engine Optimization &
Internet Marketing
Site Maintenance
Where
do I start?
The first and most important step is to assess your Internet
objectives. By knowing where you want to go and what you want
to accomplish, you will get the most out your Internet marketing
dollars. The best place to start is with a little research.
Search on Yahoo!
or Google
for web sites within
your industry and for your competitor's sites. By doing so,
you can get great ideas and develop a better understanding of the
market and your competition within it. For a detailed
description of the process, see our Step-by-Step
Guide to Getting Your Business on the Internet.
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What are the steps of the
development process?
The basic steps in the site development or
renovation process are:
-
Establish password-protected
project work space (the necessary login information will be sent to
you and a link to your project's start page will be added to the
Client Login page of this site).
-
Evaluate and define design and
site goals to dictate direction of the subsequent design work.
-
Post design drafts and revisions
along with any development updates to this project work area until
site design is established.
-
Sign Design Sign-Off Agreement.
-
Build working version of new site
within the protected project space.
-
Integrate content into new site
and review for quality and completeness.
-
Transfer site files to domain
name when complete.
Client will be notified via email whenever changes have been made to
the project work space that require review and feedback.
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How
do I deliver the content for my web site to denning e-solutions?
All content for your web site, unless otherwise agreed to in
writing, must be delivered to denning e-solutions in an electronic
format.
Specifically:
-
Copy/text to be
included in the content areas of your site can be sent as either
Word *.doc files or simple text files *.txt (created using a text
editor like Notepad in Windows).
-
Graphics files can
be sent as GIF, JPEG, TIFF, or BMP files. If your graphics
are in another file type, please email us for direction. We may be
able to use what you have or walk you through converting the file
to another type.
-
Send files via email
to: alli@denningesolutions.com
- please see note below.
-
NOTE: Please
do not send any email attachments that total (all files together,
not individual files) more than 3 MB per message. If your
graphics files are larger than that, you can reduce the size (we
will not likely need that size for the Internet) or you can burn
them onto a CD and mail them to: 3324 Eaton Road, Birmingham, AL
35223.
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What are the payment policies of denning e-solutions, LLC?
Unless otherwise agreed to, our payment
structure includes a 50% up front deposit required in order to begin
work on the site with the balance due prior to posting the new site
files to the client's domain name.
In the event that the
site development process extends past 120 days due to lack of content
delivery or feedback regarding the site design by the client, the
balance of the development fee is due at that point unless we both
agree to different terms. > see also, development
timing
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Why is there extra space on the right or on both
the right and left of my site? Can I use that extra space for
additional content?
If you see extra space
to the right or on both the right and left of your site design, then
your monitor settings are larger than the site width. Some users
will see no extra space; it is entirely determined by the monitor
resolution settings of the user. We design most sites at a fixed
width to accommodate resolution settings of 1024x768; this is the
accepted standard and will present your site in the best way for over
90% of Internet users (see data below).
As of
January 2008, the display resolution usage statistics broke down as
follows:
|
Higher |
1024 x 768 |
800 x 600 |
640 x 480 |
Unknown |
|
38% |
48% |
8% |
0% |
6% |
|
Statistics provided by
W3Schools
The
other alternative is to build the site with tables set at 100%.
In doing so, the width of the design would fill the user's screen
width, regardless of their settings. However, the downside to
this method is that you lose precise control over the placement of the
page's design and content elements. They are stretched or
condensed depending on the user. This can render an otherwise
well-designed site strange-looking. The applicability of this
method depends entirely on the site itself and whether the design,
content and layout lend themselves to this treatment.
If you need to scroll
left and right to view your site, your monitor settings are likely
still set to the 800 pixel width. On a Windows computer,
simply go to Control Panel > Appearance and Themes > Change the
Screen Resolution. From there, change your setting from 800 to
1024.
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How
much will it cost?
Well, that depends. Isn't that a helpful answer? Really,
there are both fixed costs and variable costs
associated with getting your business on the web.
Fixed
costs include:
-
Registration and license fee for your domain
name: $70.00 license fee for the first
two years, renewable annually thereafter for $35.00. However,
registrars now offer multiple year discounts so that those fees can
be significantly reduced by signing on for a longer initial term.
See www.netsol.com for current
pricing examples.
-
Internet connection:
Offered by many providers, high speed connections, whether DSL or
cable internet, are available bundled with your other services and
can run as low as $24.95 per month.
-
Web Site Hosting - We are happy to recommend a hosting company
that fits your needs. The cost for site hosting is generally
between $2.00 and $25.00
per month, depending on the vendor and services required. We have an affiliate
relationship for hosting services with
webhero.com.
Variable costs include:
The design and development of the web site is
variable depending on the size, technological complexity, and level
of custom graphics involved. For reference, a small,
custom-designed html web site with 10-15 pages will start at about
$2,200.
Please
contact
us for a free consultation and quote for the development of your
web site.
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How
will people find my site?
A web site that is launched onto the Internet with no
attention to the marketing of the site is money wasted. People
must be able to easily find your site either by searching for your
company name or by searching for keywords related to your business.
The search engines "crawl" or "spider" web sites and store
information about them in their databases. Therefore, you must
ensure that the information they gather from your site is the most relevant to
your business. This is done, in part, by developing targeted
title and META tags in the code of the web site. Those tags include a
description of the site and a series of keywords and phrases that
people are most likely to use when searching for a site like yours.
Your site must then be submitted to the search engines so that they
know to crawl and record your link. denning e-solutions
includes Internet Marketing Services with every new site that we
develop. We are certified in web positioning/search engine
placement by the JER Group.
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Do
the Search Engines Cost Money?
Yes and no. Historically, submitting your site to the
major search engines was free. Increasingly, that is not the
case. However, most search engines still have a free option
for submitting your site (both Yahoo and Google, the two largest
search engines, have free submission options). They will
typically make no guarantees about adding the site to their database
nor will they commit to a timeframe for visiting and adding your
site, but they will still allow you to submit your site for
consideration without cost. For many of the major search
engines, this method is still perfectly acceptable and effective.
At d.e.s. we use a
two-pronged approach. First, we optimize the site for the
search engines and submit the site to the free options (the
important ones), as available. We then evaluate the site's
performance and make additional recommendations about the various
paid options (pay-per-click, paid submission, paid inclusion) if
necessary to bring the site's traffic levels in line with the
client's expectations. If you are pursuing a search engine
strategy on your own, we recommend a similar approach. Try to
get all you can through search engine
optimization tactics for free and then
supplement those efforts, if need be, with targeted paid options.
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How
often should my site be submitted to the search engines?
Because the search engines regularly spider the sites in their
databases and the Internet generally, there is no real reason to
submit and re-submit your site at a determined regular interval.
Instead, it is a good idea to re-submit any pages of your site after
they have undergone a significant change or updating.
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What
is a domain name? How do I get one?
A domain name is the address of a web site, e.g.
www.yourcompany.com. One company
that administers the licensing of domain
names is
Network Solutions. You can check
the availability a name by clicking
here. There are many extensions (*.com, *.net, *.org,
etc.) to choose from, but for most companies, you will want to stay
with the *.com extension. The
costs related to this process are discussed above.
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What
is web hosting?
Web hosting is essentially the rental of Internet server space
on
which to house your web site. The hosting company will place
your site on their server so that it is accessible to all those on
the Internet. See above for
cost information.
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How
long will it take?
As with the cost, it all depends on the complexity of the
site that you will need. A good gauge for a 5 section,
corporate web site without custom programming is between three and
seven weeks. This timeframe includes the custom graphic design
phase, assembly of needed content, and the construction of the site.
After an initial consultation regarding the specific needs of a
client, we give a more specific estimate of timing.
A simple, one-page site with corporate logo, a description of
services, and contact information can take as little as a week
depending on scheduling.
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Can
you guarantee my placement?
No. And, anyone that tells you they can is misleading
you. There are ways to ensure that you will appear on pages
for certain keywords (see
PPC for example), but these are paid
advertising options. There is no way to guarantee a particular
placement within the organic search results of any search
engine. What you can do is create a site that is as
appealing as possible to the search engines (read: easily spiderable), load it with meaningful
content, submit it properly, constantly analyze and refine your site
- and cross your fingers.
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How
will I know if my site is placing well?
You can check your
site ranking with any number of tools that are available online,
both free and for a fee. We use a program call WebPosition
(follow link to their site to learn more) and highly recommend
it. This program allows you to analyze how your ranks for a
specified set of keyword phrases in a specified group of search
engines; you can define your analysis to be as broad or as narrow as
you feel best fits with your site and its goals.
In our search
engine booster program as well as our monthly
site maintenance programs, we provide a summary report of your
site's performance. The report shows how many upward and
downward movements you had since the last reporting as well as which
exact pages within your site were found (this helps you to further
understand which of your strategies is most effective). We
are happy to provide a sample report, simply
contact us.
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What
effects my rankings?
Not an easy question
to answer. Each search engine has its own ranking criteria and
what may mean great rankings in one search engine may penalize your
site in another. However, there are some general strategies
that will optimize your site for most search engines.
While the below tactics are not all inclusive in terms of developing
the most effective SEO
program, they
are a very good starting point in terms of evaluating your site:
-
Know what your
competitors are doing
-
Use your page
titles to your advantage
-
Use page names
with keywords in them, e.g. /internet-marketing.html - separate
the keywords with hyphens so the search engines can read them
-
Include meaningful
and well-researched META tags on all important pages
-
Use ALT tags
-
Obtain as many quality
links to your site from other sites as possible - ones of
questionable quality (such as from Free For All sites) are worse
than nothing
-
Make sure that
your pages are FULL of good, quality content related to your
product, business, service etc. The search engines love
copy and it will be loaded with relevant keywords
-
Have your name,
address, and telephone number on the bottom of your home page
-
Include text links
(not just links within images) on every page - without these the
search engines won't grab your sub-pages as they won't follow
links within images
-
Don't forget the
Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.com)
- see our Glossary for more info on
the ODP.
You can obtain more
information on our SEO services
by clicking here.
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What are Google Sitelinks?
Some
times when you do a search on Google for a phrase, you will
occasionally see among the results a collection of links which will
appear below the result of a website. These are Google Site Links.
For
example: if you search for the phrase "birmingham web design" on
Google, you will see in the SERPs:
Title/Link
Birmingham web design and search engine optimization (SEO) by
...
Snippet/Desription
Birmingham-based web site design, search engine optimization, and
creative e-solutions for small to mid-sized businesses.
www.denningesolutions.com/ - 22k
NOTE:
this is snippet is taken from the meta description tag if one
exists. If there is no meta description tag in the site's code, this
snippet comes from Google-selected text on the page.
Following the snippet and link to the web site comes Site Links.
Using the sample search above as an example, you will see the
following Google site links below the snippet description.
| |
client
login
Site
Design Portfolio
Contact Us
Site
Development |
about
des
Search
Engine Optimization & Internet Marketing
Newsletters |
| |
More
results from denningesolutions.com » |
To
which sites does Google assign Site Links and where do the links
come from? The answer to this question is not known, really. But,
the following general rules seem to apply.
The
following rules are provided by John Alexander of Search Engine
Workshops.
-
Google
seems to prefer links near the top of a web page.
-
Sitelinks usually only appear for more general search phrases.
-
Sitelinks do show up most often on brand related searches.
-
You'll
notice that they always seem to be first level links on any website.
In other words, any links not included on your homepage won't be
used as Sitelink criteria.
-
Unpopular Keywords that are not searched too often don't get
Sitelinks.
-
Older
Web sites seem to be awarded sitelinks more than newer sites.
-
It
also seems that your website has to get a certain volume of clicks
for the searched keyword.
(Source: SEO Tip of the Day:
http://www.searchengineworkshops.com/)
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How will I update
my web site once completed?
You have two options
when it comes to updating your site's content. First, you can
have us do it either on a case-by-case, per hour basis or with
pre-paid (read discounted) blocks of time. Or, second, you can
update your site yourself using any number of inexpensive software
programs. Many of our clients choose the latter option, and we
can build in training time into the upfront proposal if that is your
preference. However, updating your site yourself should not be
tempted unless you, or someone in your office, has experience and a
pretty good understanding and comfort level with the Internet and
computer-related issues (windows-based software programs etc.).
Click here for more information on our
maintenance programs.
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What are natural or organic listings?
Also called "natural"
search results, this is the term given to the search results that
are returned from a search engine's database and are uninfluenced by
whether or not the company paid to be there (as with "sponsored"
results.) Having good organic search results for your company's name
and its targeted keywords is important because searchers perceive
the organic listings as more legitimate.
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