Just 4 quick essential points to remember when running a website - fairly random but essential points for today! Part of a series looking at essential aspects of running a successful website.
1. Create lists - Email subscriber lists help you build your business, lists of people to rep about your business/promote too, lists of what you need to fix/create/re-design, lists of people/ip’s you don’t want on the site, spam artists!
for example we have had spam from 6 different IP’s in the last 5 days, but using .htaccess we can essentially block them for life:
deny from 209.47.94.52
deny from 211.172.225.137
deny from 211.174.63.148
deny from 24.166.249.218
deny from 76.214.29.123
deny from 218.234.21.33
Only problem is that they could be using pooled ip’s or dynamic ones at least - so its best to check them up before they go on your list!
2. Used good opensource software, add plugins - Its good to use opensource software to run a website, wordpress, phpbb, gallery2, oscommerce are all excellent examples of quality releases that will take all of the pain out of running a website. But almost as good as the software for a link is the contributions from the community’s that surround them. SEO mods are plentiful and you can get mods for wordpress that will turn your blog from a blog into almost anything!
3. Write your own additions, plugins, addons - Your opensource software is great - but there will surely be some improvement you can add, but make sure someone hasn’t already done it well as a release. Submitting additions to the community can only help move your website along.
4. Be outrageous - the loud, crazy, quirky all stand out online - ‘another business blog’ won’t attract half as many people as ‘Blogathon - why jesus wore dresses’ (or similar.)
That’s it -four random but essential tips to running a website/e business!
Submitting your site to search engines, potential link partners and directories is a good place to start when beginning a new web project. It won’t give you a million hits, but it’ll act as one of 20 or so things you can do to help (excluding creating good good content.)
So as soon as your site is legible (make sure its good enough to be viewed - because submissions will be checked or crawled!) Get on with submitting. You should also bare in mind that as good as it is you shouldn’t spend days on submissions. It will take a long time to get up the list like that. I would recommend the following because it shouldn’t take more than 2 hours.
1. Check site completely - perhaps obvious but you should thoroughly check your site for broken links and in various browsers. An ugly site may put people off and broken links are irritating and unhelpful to your seo efforts.
2. Decide on keywords, titles and description - You will need to decide what your keywords are (150 charectors worth) as well as a short description and a long description (250 char and 400+ char respectively) and a good keyword rich title. These will be used when submitting.
3. Get Roboform - Very important to get this before even starting, the time it will save you is immense (essentially you set some default answers to forms and then at the click of a ‘fill form’ button or even automatically it will fill the form and/or submit it.) It also works with a lot of the programs I am about to suggest because its integrated with browsers.
4. Get Web CEO - Excellent Excellent bit of software - well worth the download. I am not going to go into it too much, is very intuitive, but excellent tool for anyone running a website - seo based!
5. Get IBP & Arelis - Again similar kin to Web CEO but with very good features, would highly recommend - will go into more detail below.
6. Create a special Email address - Under the domain you want to submit, or elsewhere - create a new email address to the one you usually use (for 2 reasons:) 1. it will keep your normal email from potential spammers, as the email you use for submitting might end up online. 2. it will keep the process concise - all the emails relating to submissions will go to this other inbox and therefore processing them will be easier.
7. Set up your programs - Once you have the above programs installed, and perhaps some other directory submitters and such (submit helper is also good) learn to use the programs a bit - you will need to set defaults in all of the programs: in roboform set up default login, email, username etc. information and test it works on a form, in webceo and ibp&arelis set up your websites with descriptions, keywords, titles and your email and contact details. Remember to use your newly created email to keep it separate!
8. AutoSubmit - Open Web CEO and under ‘promote your site’ click ’submit URLs’. Select the project you created for your new site, or make a new one for it. If you havent yet then enter your details, including the email address you set up (do this under the ‘general information’ and ‘page details’ tabs in setup tab.) Then skip to auto submission tab at the top. Select all the engines from the list (click ‘list of engines’ - 120 on my list) and then click ’submission’ tab and click ’submit’ - leave this too work - it will submit your site to as many as possible and give you an audible message when its done. Also do the similar process to this in IBP & Arelis (Search engine submitter.)
9. Manual/Semi Auto Submit - Open up Web CEO / IBP & Arelis / Submit helper and go to the ‘manual’ or ’semi-automatic’ submit areas. The basic process is to go through a list on the left, click the website address and it will take you to the submit page - select the ones which you remember - because these will probably be the bigger directory’s/engines. If not then go through the lists, although the list might be huge! This is where your roboform helps - once you open the submit page right click and you should see ‘fill form’ on the list - like with your other browsers - this will 90% automate your submission bar the clicking. Submit helper does a similar process. This will provide you with as many directory entries as the auto submitter does - if not more - but is time consuming.
10. Check your email - A lot of the submissions - especially about 15 of the search engines Web CEO submits too including anoox etc require you to click a link in their email to complete submission, so check the new email you made and go through them clicking the links. Some of the engines require you to re-enter your email address - this will sign you up to their mailing list but will get you on the engine.
Hopefully these 10 steps will help you get a little more web presence! - although probably not necessary for more established sites it can be a good place to start if your site is brand new. After that go and write some damn good content and build some good web relations!!!