Website interactivity with your potential customers is of utmost importance and there are many ways of doing this. Information is key here so you should try and provide as much information as possible so that visitors feel confident in doing business with you.

At the very least you should provide an email address, but beware of a simple hyperlink on your webpage as this will quickly get harvested by the spammers and your inbox will be clogged in no time. The email address can be disguised by just stating it in text without the @ symbol, or you can use a simple script that does not reveal your actual email address to a browser. If you get an enquiry, be sure to always respond as soon as possible. Quite often big businesses are not able to do this and you will boost customer confidence if you reply to an enquiry promptly.

A ‘contact us’ form on the website is another good way to interact. This way you can find out more about your visitor and where they come from. Form scripts are readily available on the net, but be sure to use a secure one.

A telephone number is an important contact detail to include, but it is surprising how many sites do not give this information. You may not wish to put your address on the web site if you work from home, but it is easy to set up a post office box number address if you prefer.

You may also like to include a newsletter sign up facility to harvest the email addresses of potential customers, but not everyone wants to reveal this information. If you are normally on line during your business hours you could set up an on line help system so that a customer could ask a question and get an immediate response. This is a big commitment but can work very well

When the Internet first began gaining popularity, W3-Compliance wasn’t as necessary because there were fewer browsers, fewer users, and overall fewer technologies in use. With the growing popularity of the internet, new developmental tools are created daily. With these tools come new challenges – marketing, design, cross-browser compatibilty, etc. All of these can be a daunting task for those who aren’t well-versed in the W3C Standards.

There are numerous technologies used by programmers like ASP, PHP, and Javascript to name a few. W3 has a set of standards for both XHTML and CSS, and making a website W3-compliant ensures that all viewers will see the site exactly the same way no matter what browser they’re using. Validation also helps with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) because clean code means easier search-engine spidering.

Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, is a technology often used in sites with many pages to make aesthetic changes easier. The style sheet is an exterior file that runs interdependently with the HTML of a site. The style sheet serves as a template for the entire site’s color and font schemes, while also controlling borders, sizes, and more. Being able to edit a single file, instead of 100s of changes in many files saves a lot of time. Validation is essential to get the most out of a website. A user can upload or copy/paste their CSS file to the W3C site, and they’ll be given a list of any errors it contains.

Another of the technologies becoming more popular is Extensible Hypertext Markup Language, or XHTML. XHTML is an extension of HTML 4.0. XHTML conforms to standards moreso than HTML. As such, it is more search-engine and user-friendly:

- XHTML documents conform to XML. XML Tools can double as XHTML tools.
- XHTML is an extension of HTML 4.0. It is more user-friendly and streamlined than HTML.
- XHTML is a combination of HTML and XML in that it can run scripts and applets that use both the HTML and XML DOM (Document Object Model)
- As XHTML grows, XHTML 1.0 documents will be able to interoperate among other XHTML documents making it a more browser transitional language.
(Source: www.w3.org)

Using the standards of web development lined out by the W3C is imperative for users to get the most out of a site. Often, making a webpage W3-compliant is the first step of SEO, a marketing tool to get the most out of your advertising money. Validation is easy, and can be completed if a user has a basic knowledge of HTML-editing and FTP. Using these tools, coupled with the set of W3 standards can save a lot of money and help the site’s overall functionality.

Some specific web services:

File hosting service:
This type of service does not hosts web pages but files. A file hosting service or online file storage service is an Internet hosting service specifically designed to host static content, typically large files that are not web pages. Typically they allow web and FTP access. They can be optimized for serving many users or be optimized for single-user storage.

Image hosting service:
An image hosting service allows individuals to upload images to an Internet website. The image host will then store the image onto its server, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view that image. Because many users do not have personal webspace, Image hosting service have become massively popular as the demand for hosting services increases. With the explosion of the popularity of blogs, forums, auctions, and other interactive pages, image hosting services have become extremely popular among end users.

Video hosting service:
A Video hosting service is similar to an image hosting service. This service allows individuals to upload videos to an Internet website. The video host will then store the video on its server, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view that video. Because many users do not have personal webspace, Video hosting services are becoming increasingly popular as the demand for hosting services increases.

Blog hosting service:
Weblog software also called blog software or blogware is a category of software which consists of a specialized form of Content Management Systems specifically designed for creating and maintaining weblogs.

PHP can run on both Unix and Windows servers, which makes it more accessible than its Windows counterpart, Active Server Pages (ASP). PHP uses are widespread, and can include any kind of server functionality that takes user’s input and displays or manipulates the input. Some pertinent examples of such work are message boards, auction sites, shopping carts, and more. There are numerous free (open-source) scripts out there for PHP newbies to use. This synopsis is meant to serve only as a gateway to other works; although the main goal is to give a reader enough information so they can make educated decisions about what their web developer should do. For those looking to get into PHP, there are many free tutorials and primers available out there .

PHP generally uses the mySQL database system. MySQL is a server-side system that is included on many Unix, and some Windows servers.

On the other hand, Active Server Pages runs – for the most part solely on Windows servers. This can cause some problems. Windows hosting or private servers generally cost more than Unix servers, making it less accessible than PHP. Like PHP, ASP can do just about anything. There are considerably fewer open-source scripts written in ASP, another testament to its inaccessibility.

ASP can use many different database systems. Many users prefer Microsoft Access. Access, unlike MySQL, offers a WYSIWYG editor as part of Microsoft’s Office suite. In fact, you may already have a copy of Microsoft Access on your computer and you may not even be knowing about it. It’s uses aren’t limited to databasing, it’s also used as a basic spreadsheet application for those who need a more programmer-friendly environment than Excel. ASP can also work well with MSSQL or MySQL.

A third programming language with growing popularity is Asynchronous Javascript and XML, commonly referred to as AJAX. It creates interactive web programs just like its cousins ASP and PHP. AJAX uses XHTML and CSS, along with the Javascript Document-Object Model to create interactive pages designed for speed and overall usability. Although AJAX hasn’t gained the acclaim of PHP and ASP, its future is certainly bright. It’s difficult to say which of the three programming languages, or the numerous others for that matter, is the best. There will always be disputes, and no standard is set. With the varying interpretations of what a programming language should be, bias to PHP or ASP arise. PHP is certainly more widely used, but isn’t necessarily the best. When a site is being created to be interactive, a professional can give an educated opinion on which technology should be used.

Many a times you might have come across question online like ‘How to get a site listed in Dmoz?’ or ‘How long it takes for a site to get listed in DMOZ?’ This is because DMOZ is almost like a quality control directory of sorts. The Dmoz Open Directory Project reviews every page submitted to their directory, and they are picky about what they include. Therefore, their directory is a trusted source of high quality sites for many search engines including Google. In many cases, getting listed in the Dmoz ODP will get your site listed fairly quickly in all major search engines.

About the time to get a site listed in DMOZ, well there is no precise answer to this but there are certain steps to be followed to make your site listing process in DMOZ easier and faster.

Patience is a virtue when it comes to getting a DMOZ listing.

1. Submit once, to the correct category and within the guidelines.

2. Write your description carefully. Read the guidelines – they want objective descriptions and not hype. Have a look through the category that you’re submitting to, and copy the style of description writing. The easier you make it for the editor, the quicker you will get in.

Getting a DMOZ listing is very beneficial and even critical to your business since it is an Open Directory listing. As an open directory there are many other search directories that use ODP’s results to generate their pages. In addition, a multitude of webmasters use scripts to list all or part of the DMOZ directory on their site, and this in turn boosts a site’s Page Rank.

If you are a website owner you will want to know how many visitors you are getting to your website, sources from where the traffic came from, what country they are from, etc. This information may interest you just for curiosity or for development of your business but it’s very difficult to take right decisions if you don’t have complete information.

What do the visitors do when they arrive to your website? Are your potential customers leaving your site just seconds after their arrival? If you don’t have an answer to these then how would you create a good strategy to offer your visitors a better experience on your website?

The key is not getting lost in a mountain of numbers, but really focusing on the few statistics that are more important to your business. The concept is simple: keeping users engaged on your site will help to retain them, increase conversion rates, and consistently help deliver more revenue.

There are many hit counters and web site traffic statistics services on the Internet. Some of them are free, some of them are paid. Some of them are very simple and provide you with minimal information, some of them provide in depth information about your website visitors.

What is important is to identify your real needs, and find a service that satisfy all of them, or at least the most important ones. Don’t pay for services you don’t need or services you can find elsewhere for free.

Some features you may need are:

Unique visitors and pageloads: More pageloads per visitor means your visitors are more interested in your website, but this may also mean that they are looking for something and they are not able to find it on your website.

Referring URL’s will let you know which other web sites are driving traffic to your website.

Search engine statistics and keywords used.

Popular pages: what are the most visited pages on your web site, and which are the ones least visited.

Most traffic comes from which countries.

Visitor browser, screen resolution, operating system.

Having all these web site statistics will let you know who is visiting your site, what web pages are the most popular and also the ones that are very rarely used. You will learn which search engines are sending you traffic, and what keywords they are using to find your web site. They can even tell you what browser and screen resolution your visitors are using.

Your web site traffic statistics are an extremely valuable information for your business. You will be able to make decisions on improving your site through the information they give you. Observing your visitors’ behavior will help you address the issues they are having with your website.

The page Title

The title of your page can be seen in the top left hand side of your browser. The title of each page should be relevant to the information on the page and be unique for each page. The title is a very important part of the web page and must be treated accordingly.

Meta Descriptive Tags

The Description meta tag is normally used to describe your listing in the search engines. It is important that this description entices people to click on your link. Have the same listing description for each page is not gonna help so make sure each page has a unique description.

Content

Unique content is king. The more relevant content you have on your website the better it is. Make sure that the topic of that page, the page title, paragraph headings and text relate to each other. The content should be well written and semantically correct. Headings actually have an order within the code, so ensure that this rule is used. It is the content that will be catalogued by the search engines and this is how they will understand what each individual page is about.

Sitemap

It is important that the search engines can see all your pages. A good way of doing this is to add a sitemap which is accessible from the homepage. This sitemap will list all your pages by the topic of that page allowing a search engine to find every single page on your website.

Navigation links

Ensure that your menu links contain the text of the topic or page they are linking to. Do not forget the links that are within your content. Try and use relevant text with your content to link to other pages within your website.

Dynamic page names

Search engines have difficulty reading sessions (sessions are codes appended to the web address to identify users on the website). If you have session variables on your site, search engines may not index your pages.

Fast loading pages

Are your pages quick to load. If they are not the search engine may not hang around to index them. The average age size should be less than 110Kb. If it is not then it is important to identify what is increasing the size of the page and correct it.

Web Standards

Have you updated your website to the latest web standards. The Internet is a forever changing media and standards have been suggested by the World wide web consortium (www.w3c.org) . By rebuilding a website using the latest standards you have the ability to separate the content of the website from the design. Benefits of this include being able to supply search engines with clean text, not blurred by coding. Also the ability to change design more regularly becomes affordable.

Summary

These are on site areas to look at and will allow the search engines to determine what your site is all about. Never forget the need to look at off site promotion!

The Google Sitemap Protocol allows you to inform search engines about URLs on your websites that are available for crawling. A Sitemap that uses the Sitemap Protocol is an XML file that lists URLs for a site. Sitemaps are particularly beneficial when users can’t reach all areas of a website through the browseable interface. Also by submitting your site’s sitemap to the search engines you will help the search engine crawlers do a better job of crawling your site.

Everytime you add/delete webpages on your site, you should update your sitemap.xml too. But if you just update your current webpages i.e adding contents or articles,

Go to Google Webmaster Tools – sitemap page
Login into your account
Choose your sitemap of your website
Check the box at the left of your sitemap name and click Resubmit Selected button. Your sitemap status become “pending”.
Logout from Google sitemap page. After a few minutes the sitemap status will become “OK”.

Alternately, you can also use a Sitemap generator to update your sitemap whenever needed.

Cheap websites are abundant these days and there are many web design companies and web hosting companies out there who offer sitebuilders that allow you to build a website in a relatively short period of time. Sitebuilders are normally extremely user-friendly advanced website builders that let nearly anyone create and handle a successful website quickly, and are extremely affordable.

Sitebuilders are a package, some allow you to change almost every aspect of your site and there are some that will limit you to only a few modifications. Pricing varies according to the features they offer. Some have upfront setup fees while others will allow you to jump right in and start building without any setup fees. Most good sitebuilder offerings will allow you to try the sitebuilder out for free, build your website and when you are ready to pay, you sign up and then publish your site to your destination.

The one thing that people get hung up with with sitebuilders is that they can never find the right template that matches their site or business. Many people forget that they are using a sitebuilder and start to move to the custom world. One thing not to forget if you choose to go with sitebuilder technology as opposed to a custom designed system is that you will be locked in to what the sitebuilder offers. Some builders will allow you to edit the HTML after you have published while others will not. The general recommendation is to go with a sitebuilder that will allow you to edit the HTML once you have published so that you can make your site search engine friendly. Make sure your builder provider doesn’t include those annoying tags linking back to their site at the bottom either. They shouldn’t stick their link on your site unless you give them permission so read the terms of service before you sign up.

The bottomline with sitebuilders is that if you need a quick site put up, they are great. However, if you need special functions or features on your site, a sitebuilder may not be the best solution to your needs. A custom design will always give you more movement to do what you want and make your site stand out from the rest.

Protect Your site from playing in Sandbox

Sandbox is a filter added to the Google algorithms sometime back around March 2004.
It is pride for Google to ensure that the results it displays to its users within the SERPS lead to highly relevant, up-to-date, useful websites. Relevancy is key to the search engines success so it will take all steps it can to ensure the relevancy of its search results. Filtering out new websites and monitoring them may allow them to provide more accurate results within the real SERPS.
So most new websites under newly registered domains will get relegated to the sandbox.Google will find these newly created site by following an Inbound Link (IBL) from another site that the Googlebot crawls. You will then see the website in the normal Google SERPS if you search for the actual domain name. Now Google know that your pages exist and knows what they contain, but doesn’t list them in the main SERPS. In other words, because your website is new, it is under probation in the ’sandbox’.

But one question may arise in your mind,How Long Will My website Stay in the Google’s Sandbox?
It is difficult to say how long a website will stay in the Google sandbox.It totally depend on the types of keywords a site is completing for in the real SERPS. It can be up to 6-8 months and the only way to get out of the sandbox is to wait.

While Google sandbox is not something you can control, there are certain steps you can take in order to make the sandbox effect less destructive for your new site.There are ethical and unethical tips and tricks and unethical tricks can get you additional penalties or a complete ban from Google so beware for unethical tricks and as a new comer don’t go for that.You cannot fight the sandbox the only thing you can do is to adapt to it and patiently wait for time to pass till Google crawls your site.

There are many initiatives you can take, while your site is playing in sandbox :

1) Actively build content and good links : –
Try to build relevant and fresh content and good links for your site which take you to the top.When getting links don’t over do that. keep in mind that they need to be from trusted sources or from reputable places.If possible try getting links from .edu, .gov, and .mil domains this might help you because these domains are usually exempt from the sandbox filter. Don’t get 500 links a month – this will kill your site! or you would consider as spam. Instead, build links slowly and steadily.

2) Buy old or expired domains :–
The sandbox effect is more serious for new sites on new domains, so if you buy old or expired domains and launch your new site there, you’ll experience less problems.

3) Plan ahead :–
Try to launch your site when couple of pages are completed don’t wait for its total completion,This will start the clock and some traffic parallel to your site development efforts.

4) Host on a well Established host :-
Take care to host your new site on a subdomain of a well-established host (however, free hosts are generally not a good idea in terms of SEO ranking). The sandbox effect is not so severe for new subdomains (unless the domain itself is blacklisted). You can also host the main site on a subdomain and on a separate domain host just some contents, linked with the main site. You can also use redirects from the subdomained site to the new one.

5) Concentrate on less popular keywords :–
Try to find keywords which are less popular for your site and use them at different places.You could top the results for less popular keywords , it is better than nothing. And while you wait to get to the top for the most lucrative keywords, you can discover that even less popular keywords are enough to keep on traffic for you, so you may want to make some optimization for them in future.

6) Rely more on non-Google ways to increase traffic :–
It is often reminded that Google is not the only search engine or marketing tool out there. So plan your SEO efforts to include other search engines also, which either have no sandbox at all or the period of stay there is relatively short, this will also minimize the damages of the sandbox effect.