I did a website review for someone who created a website using Xsitepro. It was their first site and it took them only a week. I thought the site was pretty good so I left a few comments as you can see below.

The website is at http://www.creativeretouching.com/

Hi Terry

I thought I’d share some thoughts with you.

First of all, if that’s your first site….I think you did an outstanding job. To my eye it doesn’t look like any type of xsite website…and to me that’s a big plus.

The header graphic looks good and better than most. I would consider adding a background or background image to set off your page. Many people have large monitors and the way your site is now…..there’s a lot of white space staring back at you, consequently the webpage is indistinguishable from the background.

Your site is clean and functional, easy to navigate and shows your talents.

You might consider adding more descriptive information on exactly what a “retoucher” is, I’m not sure that same term is used in the US, however, if your market is limited to the UK I suppose that doesn’t make a difference. I know you handle this on one of the sites internal pages, but I’d consider putting a little more info on the first page.

In any case, your first website is good enough for you to start with and far better than many that I’ve seen. You could make improvements, however, I would leave it up until you get some ideas and hone your skills.

Your client probably had good intentions with “more classy”, and that could come from his/her perspective or their world. Many times simple is most effective, at the very least more effective. Although in your line of work, you wouldn’t want your site to look cheap I certainly wouldn’t gravitate toward anything in flash.

Most flash websites are poorly made, take a lot of time to build and most designers cannot build an seo effective flash website. I’m sure others might have a different opinion, but anythime I come to a website that says “click to enter” or I have to wait through a 30 second presentation to see any content I click away.

If you want to sell your work, obviously you need to display it…..and that you’ve done. Secondly folks need to know more about the service you provide. You touch on that, but I think I would add more articles about why people need retouching or exactly what retouching is. Do some keyword research and find markets similar to yours along with keywords that people might use to look for your service, devote a page to each keyword.

Also, I would compose a simple guide on something like “How to Pick a Professional Retoucher” or “Tips for Finding a Pro Retoucher”, invest in a service like Aweber or Getresponse and put an optin form on your website, ask people for their name and email address in exchange for your “Free Guide”…..you can start to build a list of prospective clients. Send them offers when you’re slow, you’ll be surprised how effective this is.

Tags: aweber, getresponse, xsitepro

I’m constantly amazed by what you can get for free on the internet! If you are looking for free wordpress themes…well, you can find theme in the thousands with a simple google search.

Wordpress themes are in abundance, by creating a free wordpress theme and including your link at the bottom or footer of the theme….you can get a ton of one way links back to your website. It’s an excellent strategy for creating backlinks.

Over time the themes had become rather plain looking and once the above strategy was discovered people began to create free wordpress themes for the simple reason of just getting the links….as a consequence the themes were really of poor quality. Sure they did the job and were free. But they stuck out like a sore thumb and cried out Wordpress Blog

Magazine Style wordpress themes hit the scene a year to two ago, at first they were quite complicated and were only available if you purchased the theme. A magazine style template can look like a magazine or newspaper. They are terrific looking themes and you would never know it’s a wordpress blog unless you have an experienced eye.

Although magazine style or newspaper style wordpress theme’s are available in a variety of licenses such as

for personal use

for multiple websites you own

for multiple websites for the webmaster–developer’s license

you can now find some pretty nice looking free wordpress magazine style themes. In fact I came across many in the last year and they keep getting better and better. I found a free magazine style theme that I think is just awesome, you should check it out.

I still recommend the paid theme’s since they always come with support and features are constantly being added. You can remove the link in the footer and there is usually also a user or support forum of some kind since these themes can be a little tricky to setup and use.

I recommend the following:

Revolution Theme

Woo Themes

Solosteam Magazine Style Themes

Arthemia Wordpress Magazine Sytle Theme

WP Remix Newspaper Style WP Theme….free ones also

Tags: newspaper themes, wordpress themes, free wordpress magazine themes, magazine themes

If you want more traffic then you need to find someone who understands how search engines work and that person is called a search engine optimization specialist. These guys use their understanding to make your website stick out like a sore thumb, not to be missed by the search engines…making your website and webpages the first to come up when anyone searches for the keywords that are relevant to your website. The specialist is trained in making your site more search engine friendly without ruining the context or purpose of your site. The techniques used by the search engine optimization specialist may seem simple at first but reassured they are time consuming and more involved than you think and only the professional can do the kind of job that creates waves of website traffic.

It’s important to know the basics of seo optimization but those with lack of seo experience could use these techniques inappropriately….if that happens you can do irreversible damage to your website! The search engines analyze websites for content….based on what they find, your website or webpages are placed in an appropriate position for the topic or topics displayed in your pages. Then the search engines apply a value to your site for said content and could determine your pages are amongst the best or could decide that your site has no value whatsoever.

Here’s an example, consider a search engine such as Google. Google searches for webpages matching the keywords that the searcher has entered into the search box. Watch out though! If you put too many of those keywords or keyword phrases on your website, the search engines might determine that you stuffed your pages and skip right over you. Keep this in mind, “What would you like to read?”. If a website has 10% or more of it’s content with a specific keyword or keyword phrase…well, no one wants to read content like that. The search engines can see what you are doing and if they find that kind of situation enough times on enough pages within your website….they could even ban you which means your website is invisible to the search engines. You won’t get any traffic!

That’s why it’s important to use an experienced search engine optimization specialist. They know what to do and how to use keywords and content properly. Every search engine is looking for a certain percentage for the match to what the user is looking for and the closer the percentage of the keywords on your site’s text matches the search engine’s percentage, the higher you’ll be on their list. There are many other factors that are considered when trying to figure out where you will stand in the search engine results. The placement of keywords is just one aspect, but and important one and will have a significant influence in helping to get your webpages on page 1 of Google!

A good seo professional will also suggest that you employ the use of link building. One way to do this is by getting your website in some of the directory sites which will increase your visibility to the web. Search engines love websites that people already go to a lot, so having more people view your page leads to even more people being directed there. Finding other sites that are related to yours is important, because your seo specialist will find these sites, contact them and try to get a one way or reciprocal link back to your website….it’s good for the search engines and real people will follow the link back to your site. In a way, hiring a search engine optimization specialist is like paying for advertising, the big difference is that once paid for, the efforts of the seo specialist will pay dividends for years to come.

Remember, each website is unique, so the techniques you might apply to your website and webpages are probably going to be different from anyone else’s website. The principles will remain the same but the individual application of those principles will always vary. Regardless, you will still be able to find yourself with a top position in the search engines with persistence and proper application of seo principles. If you think your capable of doing seo optimization….go for it! But for most, a general understanding of seo will prove valuable when searching for and hiring a search engine optimization specialist. In that case, you can be assured that the seo professional that you’ve hired will employ all the inherent magic of seo to create hordes of traffic to your website and maybe even get that coveted number 1 position on Google!

Search engine optimization is approached from many different angles. Simply said, you don’t have a choice of whether your website should be search engine friendly. Since there isn’t a choice regarding search engine optimization and the thought makes you want to vomit….then outsource the process.Price is always a question, most of us gravitate toward the cheaper service….but buyer beware! If someone says they will get you on page 1 of google for $300 you better start running. You’ll find professional seo management firms to charge a couple thousand to over $10,000 depending on the size of your site and scope of work.

Make it your business to read some of the articles in this blog and understand the terms and processes involved in getting your website search engine optimized. This will help you ascertain whether you are getting ripped off or not. You can save yourself some cash by optimizing your site yourself. It’s really not hard and I have some resources below that will give you more than enough information on how to start getting links, using keywords and so on.
Search Engine Optimization Equalizer
Free Seo Tools for Optimizing your Website
Everything you Could Want to Know About Links
Increase Website Traffic with Silo’s
Understand SEO
SEO Elite

Tags: website traffic, link building, seo, search engine optimization specialist, seo specialist

How in the world do I get my website on page one of Google? With pages and pages of search results the person that is new to trying to establish a web presence is stunned by the amount of competition….and it doesn’t make a difference what your business is! Search Engine Optimization Services have sprung up across the world to help anyone in this position and they all promise to get you on page 1 of Google. Let’s say you have the best business or service in town, but when you type in your keyword your company is nowhere to be seen…it makes you made and you don’t understand why you great company doesn’t show up! This is why there are professionals in the search engine optimization industry that have developed. Their seo business helps you get your webpages, website and business to the first page of google….where all the action is.

As in any business, you need to make sure the seo business you hire really is professional and not some pseudo seo expert trying to make a quick buck because of your ignorance. People who know what they are doing will get to know you and what you want from their services, rather than simply ask for a keyword and go about their business. Obviously a legitimate seo business will be of immense help to your business and will work to keep harm from coming to your site because of their work. You can identify a company that has expert status in search engine optimization by looking at the length of time they’ve been at their trade and also, they will be willing to provide you a list of satisfied customers.

You might be in the planning stage and just getting started. Since your site isn’t designed yet it would be beneficial to employ a seo service to create the entirety of your websites content and text. This is because they will be able to insert keywords and keyword phrases the the text without making it seem unnatural. Did you know that the web address or url can affect the search engines, a good seo service will help you create a proper url or web address for your business. If you are working with a search engine optimization service and you here the words “doorway page”, “invisible text” or “text on a white background or hidden in the background”…..run for the hills. This is called black hat seo and will surely get you in trouble, it could make them look good in the beginning, but sooner or latter the search engines will label you as a bad boy/girl and not send any traffic your way. Companies which get people to look at your site by these techniques ignore search engine regulations and can get your website banned from the search engines completely.

Once your site is set up with all your graphics and text a good search engine optimization service will discuss the need to build links and will have plenty ideas regarding how to get more links to your site. This should be part of their service! Link building is the process which involves the different ways to get your link along with anchor text on other sites, articles, blogs….ect. They should be on sites that have content that is related to yours and each time someone clicks on one of those outside links, the search engines consider that a vote of relevance for your website! The more votes, the higher up on the results you’ll find your site. Here’s a good example of link building, a construction company places it’s link on a website of a construction supply warehouse. You couldn’t get a better situation than that.

Rates for a good search engine optimization service will vary with the scope of work involved. It’s difficult to give any standard pricing and it could range from $500 to even $20,000 or more. That’s why it is important to research the history of the seo service. Some companies provide long-term maintenance to your site to ensure that your site keeps up with changes in the search engine guidelines. Almost all SEO Services will offer a writer to properly insert keywords into the text of your webpages or even will write articles for you to submit to the article directories. Unless you are extremely trusting, I would familiarize myself with the basics of search engine optimization and get an understanding of the vocabulary. That said, it won’t matter what your online business is…..a good search engine optimization service will do a make over on your website and you will see traffic soar through the roof…and hopefully profits!

There are many different aspect to search engine optimization. There’s no question that your website must be seo friendly. I enjoy learning things like SEO myself, you however might want to hire it out….otherwise known as outsourcing. You might hire someone for a 100 dollars but I guarantee you won’t get the kind of traffic you want. Just be careful about spending your money, get referrals, get a couple of estimates and don’t pick the cheapest seo expert because I can promise you…..you will be disappointed.

It would behoove you to understand their terms and the process. You’ll be in a better position to determine if the vendor is taking you for a ride. Hey…if you study enough, you might want to give it a shot yourself. I’ve compiled some resources that will help you understand some of the concepts of seo, more advanced and some simple stuff.
SEO Equalizer
Free Seo Tools for Optimizing your Website
The Link Bomb Report
Increase Website Traffic with Silo’s
Understand SEO
Brutally Effective SEO Software

Tags: Search Engine Optimization Services, seo tools, keywords, seo business, seo software

If you market on the internet than you know that search engine optimization is more important than anything else, however, do you know the search engine optimization rules? Search engine optimization is both simple and complex, each website is different and will require a different seo approach, in other words, you simply can’t say “you need to do this and that” and apply it to every website. The only true thing that can be said about search engine optimization rules and all websites is that “It must be done!”

All kidding aside….we can identify some basic seo elements that can be said to be required for all websites. One of these key search engine optimization rules is understanding keywords. Keywords are the words and phrases that users on the Internet use to search for the items they are looking for. You must optimize your website and webpages for proper keywords in order to generate more of that search traffic, which in turn, will result in more visitors to your webpages and hopefully more sales or more people clicking on ads that might be served on your pages.

Consider this important rule of search engine optimization…. build links that point or lead to your web pages or website. You can link your own web pages to each other, or check out different ways to get other sites to link back to your website. This is guaranteed to create an eventual flood of website traffic. This is because Google and other search engines use links to your site as “references” - in other words, they view links as recommendations to visit a site. The most amazing things about this one simple concept of “links” is that the more links that point back to your website…the higher your site will rank in the search engines, you could even get to page one of google!

The secret to “links” is getting them noticed and this is accomplished by a process which is known as “spidering”. The way it works is that search engines basically send out automated robots or “spiders” to comb the Internet for data. When these spiders reach a link, they’ll follow it and then continue their search. As you can see, getting more links pointing to your website will cause more search engine spiders that will find and index your site creating an increase in your page rank and the popularity amongst all the search engines.

Another in the list of important search engine optimization rules is to check your status. It’s not enough to simply use SEO methods on your site– you’ve got to make sure they’re working. If not, you’re just wasting your time… and who has time to waste these days? You should check your page rank, and frequently check to ensure the keywords you’re focusing on are still relevant.

One tool that can help in this process is known as web analytics. Web analytics programs can give you a wide variety of data that can help you further customize your SEO plan. For instance, web analytics can tell you which keywords are bringing people to your website, how many people they’re bringing, and through which search engines. One important aspect of any analytic program is that upon sale of a product or service to any user that signs up, you will be able to track which part or the webpage or website is most effective in the conversion process of turning a visitor into a buyer.

We’ve only looked at 3 very basic components of search engine optimization, needless to say the process is much more complex that this, however, they will give you a good foundation to the subject of seo. For more information, there are a number of resources on the web to maximize your SEO. These search engine optimization rules will give you a good start if you apply them, I suggest you make a conscious effort to keep up with current aspects of seo, you need not become an expert….but basic application of seo techniques will put you light years ahead of everyone else and maybe even get you that coveted first page of google!

Search engine optimization is approached from many different angles. There’s no question that your website must be seo friendly. The choice is to learn yourself or hire someone to do it. You might hire someone for a 100 dollars but I gurantee you won’t get the kind of traffic you want. Just be careful about spending your money, get referrals, get a couple of estimates and don’t pick the cheapest seo expert because I can promise you…..you will be disappointed.

It would behoove you to understand their terms and the process. This will help you ascertain whether you are getting ripped off or not. You can save yourself some cash by optimizing your site yourself. It’s really not hard and I have some resources below that will give you more than enough information on how to start getting links, using keywords and so on.
Search Engine Optimization Equalizer
Big Book of FREE Seo Tools
Seo expert reveals secrets
Increase Website Traffic with Silo’s
Master SEO Plan…Search Engine Optimization Rules
SEO Elite

Tags: search engine optimization rules, understanding seo, seo software, seo, search engine optimization

Do you want more visitors to your website. Of course you do! Then search engine optimzation marketing is a concept you need to become familiar with because it is one of the most important methods of growing any business that has a website. Many places provide these services for a reasonable fee and will be sure to keep your site’s content and message the same while making it more noticeable to search engines. A good seo business will include the proper components of search engine optimization marketing that are necessary for driving traffic to your website and getting on the top pages of Google and they should include things like:

-link building
-writing content based webpages
-basic seo optimization such as:

-url
-tag development
-image tags
-linking strategies

I’m going to tell you the single most important factor in developing search engine optimized website, the key is “link building”. Search engines will rank your site on a continual basis based on how many legitimate links pointing to your website from other websites and how many people visit your website from these links….you can see how linking is a vital tactic. It’s been a common practice for people to exchange links from sites with content that is dissimilar to their websites. Search engines have become sophisticated enough to realize you are trying to manipulate them and that will get you in trouble. So….try to make sure links coming to your site are from sites with a similar theme. For instance a sports tournament’s website may have a link to your sporting goods website. When people use these links to view your site, search engines will pick up on it and your status on the search results page will increase.

There are situations when your site might lack written content, maybe you’re website contains mostly images which effectively details your offer or point. In this situation you need to add written content and you might want to consider using services that will ghost write your content with their content writers. Content writers specializing in search engine optimization marketing will make articles that are about your website and use keywords that people will be looking for when they are looking for your product. The articles can then be placed throughout your website in proper locations. Content writers can help you decide where the articles would be best suited for your search engine optimization marketing. There is a saying that says “Content is King”, content writing is effective for adding more content rich material which helps develop the theme of your website through the use of proper words.

Search engine optimization marketing through website optimization simply is taking existing non-effective text and changing, adding and reformatting the content so the theme of the website or webpage is easily ascertained by the search engines. Properly composed content is just common sense writing and will naturally look more appealing to the human visitors to your website. You can make a difference in search engines by having a neater URL that gives an idea about your site and is not cluttered with unnecessary letters and symbols.

One aspect of website development that affects search engine marketing optimization are “images”. Search engines usually do not pick up images or flash animations unless these images are labeled and this is typically done using the alt tag. When the search engine comes to a labeled image or alt tag which is labeled generically with something like “picture123″ that image becomes totally meaningless to the search engine. It would be wiser to label the image tags or alt tags with a descriptive label such as “make money today” for all the images on your website. Also, it’s a good idea to use a descriptive name in the image url.

Hopefully you’ve gained some knowledge of things that can be changed on your website which will bring more traffic. You could do this yourself, but the general idea of this writing is to inform you that you can hire a service to write properly seo optimized content for your website……so, you need not become a search engine optimization expert. Most of the time you will not have to completely redo your website, but simple modifications by adding proper content will suit your seo desires as well as being relevant for your customers. Using the basic concepts of search engine optimization marketing will, over time, explode the volume of traffic to any poorly optimized website while bringing your more orders which results in more money in your pocket!

Search engine optimization is approached from many different angles. There’s no question that your website must be seo friendly. I enjoy learning things like SEO myself, you however might want to hire it out….otherwise known as outsourcing.Price is always a question, most of us gravitate toward the cheaper service….but buyer beware! Just be careful about spending your money, get referrals, get a couple of estimates and don’t pick the cheapest seo expert because I can promise you…..you will be disappointed.

Make it your business to read some of the articles in this blog and understand the terms and processes involved in getting your website search engine optimized. You’ll be in a better position to determine if the vendor is taking you for a ride. You can save yourself some cash by optimizing your site yourself. It’s really not hard and I have some resources below that will give you more than enough information on how to start getting links, using keywords and so on.
Search Engine Optimization Equalizer
Compiled by an SEO Expert, FREE SEO Tools
Links…everything you need to know
Increase Website Traffic with Silo’s

Tags: link building, written content, keywords, search engine optimzation marketing, Content writers, seo