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Important Announcement RE: Free Web Hosting

Posted on August 26, 2010 // 0 Comments

All free web hosting previously provided by Best SEO Web Design, has been discontinued and officially ended on 08/11/2010. If YOU were benefitting from a free hosting account, please be aware that your website no longer appears online. In order for your website to appear online once again, you will need to supply your own web hosting. I always recommend a high quality web host, such as GoDaddy.com or Bluehost.com. Once you establish your web hosting account, please email me the details so I can upload your website to the new host.

Category : Blog

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

Posted on August 11, 2010 // 0 Comments

Its been several weeks since I have been able to attend to my websites or my customer’s websites, due to personal matters that have taken priority. To save time here, I’ll skip all the details, suffice to say that for the time being I am unable to take on new projects, and I am having difficulty working on client sites. I have several websites in process, that I have not been able to work on. I am sorry for the inconvenience. Normally I do not offer refunds, but because I cannot provide a definite date for working on sites, I will as a courtesy provide a refund in the event you cannot wait for me.  Refunds will take approximately 30 – 90 days to process. Again I apologize for the inconvenience. If you need to contact me utilize the support ticket feature on this website, which I will monitor. Do not attempt to reach me by phone, or email because those are not being checked. Thank you for your cooperation and God Bless.

Todd Donald

Category : Blog

Free Templates Free Website Templates

Posted on June 22, 2010 // 0 Comments

I have compiled a list of websites where you can brows and download free templates. This is by no means all of the free website templates available online, but they represent those I feel are good examples and some of which I have even used in past projects successfully.

Free website templates for web design.

Included with my standard designs are free website templates. When I build a website, I spend a ton of time in the beginning browsing through website templates to get ideas for new designs or to modify and use for the site I am about to launch. If you can afford a few extra bucks, I also offer premium templates, but beware that most of the really snazzy designs that people are attracted to are Flash, which is SEO suicide. When choosing a template stick to plain old HTML or better still is XHTML or CSS.

Please feel free to browse through these free templates, (no pun intended), to get ideas for your website, or you can choose some of your favorite designs and then contact me to see if I can modify it for your needs and launch your site for you. To see what I can do with these templates, to customize them for your needs, see my web design portfolio.

The free website templates that are provided at these free template sites are not associated with BEST SEO WEB DESIGN, but only provided for reference if you are trying to find a free website template. If you see a template that you like at one of these sites and want me to build that website for you, please contact me.

The free website templates that are provided at these free template sites are not associated with BEST SEO WEB DESIGN, but only provided for reference if you are trying to find a free website template. If you see a template that you like at one of these sites and want me to build that website for you, please contact me.

Category : Blog

How Long Does It Take To Show Up On Search Engines

Posted on June 18, 2010 // 0 Comments

The question of “How Long Does It Take To Show Up On Search Engines?”, is perhaps one of the most frequent questions that I am asked. The process may seem impossibly long, because once a website goes live, or is launched, a ton of planning, time and perhaps money has been invested in your new website. Waiting to see whether or not your website shows up on search engines, can be an excruciatingly long wait, especially since you’re probably spreading the word about your new site and friends or clients may report that “I cannot find your website”, or “I typed in the URL you gave me and nothing showed up”.

The unfortunate truth is that although waiting is the hardest part, it does take time for a new website or rebuilt website to show up on search engines. Sometimes it takes weeks, sometimes months for a website to be “included” on a search engine and certainly at least several more months for the search engine results for your website to stabilize. For example, if you have a painting company in Dallas, you’ll probably want to be seen for search phrases like “dallas painter”, “dallas painting”, “painting contractors dallas”, etc. In order for this to happen, your site must contain relevant information that pertains to those searches first of all, and then when the search engines display your site for those key phrases, and people click through on your site, then the search engines will start to “learn” that your site is relevant for those terms.

Obviously there is a lot more to it than just that, but be assured that is the very basics and the essence of what you want to happen. Once again though, this takes TIME… Maybe a short time, but more likely a long time. Don’t anticipate launching a website and having it show up on search engines in just a couple of days or weeks, its simply not realistic.

If you absolutely need to drive traffic to your site immediately, (that means getting site visitors – not having your website show up on searches right away),  then you can opt for the sponsored pay per click ads offered by Google, Yahoo, Bing and others. The cost is usually $100 +/- to start an account and the “cost per click” is typically between $1.50 and $15.00, but usually averages out to roughly $5.00 per click-through depending on your particular market. Bidding on search terms for something common and competitive like Dallas Painter will be more expensive than something more obscure like Kokomo Candle Maker.

Over the long haul, you want to establish a solid back-link strategy to build up your website’s “link popularity”, which is term that describes how many websites link to yours. Search engines measure these back-links to establish your “popularity”. A website with 1000 other sites linking to it, will show up better on search engines than the site that has only a few. Keep in mind that the quality of the links matter too. You want links from reputable sites that are similar in content to your own.

Category : Blog

Why websites show up on Google

Posted on May 25, 2010 // 0 Comments

Why some websites show up better on Google than others do!

One of the coolest parts about my job, is that when I am asked a question by a client, I am forced to think about what I naturally take for granted and summarize that into words… Therefore I can make posts like this that other people with websites might find interesting.

Google

This question came from one of my newest clients, his website was launched within the past couple of weeks. First, I will post the question from that client and then my answer, allowing you to enjoy the full breadth of the conversation.

I am still not showing up in google searches until the 3rd or 4th page. What can we do about that?

The following was my answer. Keep in mind that it was specific to his website and application, but the subject material can be related to any search topic, or any geography.

As far as showing up on search engines, that is a really deep subject and this may not be the easy answer you seek, but the process typically takes weeks for the site to be included and begin showing up during searches, months for the search engine to determine what the site and all the pages within are relevant for and years for the site to become firmly established on search engines. Nobody, except the search engines themselves have any control over how sites are included or considered relevant. We’re talking about billions and billions of website domains worldwide, with potentially a seemingly infinite number of electronic documents to compare.

Here is the overview of the process that I provided to the client:

  1. Website URL is submitted to search engines, (I submitted yours to Google, Yahoo and Bing).
  2. Major search engines process the submission.
  3. Search engines “include” the URL in their list of websites to crawl, (for example nobody knows how many websites Google has indexed, but it is believed to be in the order of 10′s of billions).
  4. Search engines “crawl” or “spider” the website and catalog it’s content based on URL, Page Titles, Meta Descriptions, Textual Page Content between tags.
  5. Search engines begin to display the website and pages of the site, during live searches, in the organic results, for what it considers potential relevant matches.
  6. Search engines track the human click factor, to determine if the website and pages within are thought to be relevant by people actually searching for information.
  7. Search engines track the quality and quantity of inbound links, (other websites that link to your website).

Ultimately a search engine’s number one goal is to return organic search results that are as accurate as possible, as quickly as it can. Your website and it’s pages are displayed in what the search engine determines to be the correct relevance order for any given key phrase inputted by a search engine user, based on the following factors:

  • Person inputs a search query (search phrase or search word).
  • The search engine quickly compares that search string to all it’s indexed sites, (this will be billions of sites).
  • Search engine compares the URL (does the URL of the page match the person’s search query?)
  • Search engine compares the Page Title (does any page within the site have a page title that suggests it matches the search query?)
  • Search engine compares the Meta Descriptions (do any pages in the site have a description that matches the search query?)
  • Search engine compares the Body Text (does the page contain the search string?)
  • If the page is a match, the search engine compares the density combination of URL, Title, Description, Body Text against all other potential matches (millions or 100′s of 1000′s of sites).
  • If the page is a match, the search engine compares the quantity and quality of inbound links against all other potential matches (10′s of 1000′s of sites).
  • If the page is a match, the search engine compares how many real people have clicked through to the potentially matching sites, based on that search string? (1000′s of sites).

If several pages and / or websites have possible relevant matches, the search engine will also consider factors such as:

  • How long has the website been indexed at the search engine? (older sites show up better).
  • How long is the domain name registered for? (people that register domains for years at a time, are more likely to be serious and are in it for the long haul).
  • Where is the website hosted? (this is especially important for geographic related searches).
  • What is the average bounce rate of the site? (pages that nobody wants to look at for very long do worse, pages that people stay to look at perform better).

With that said (and I know that is a whole bunch of information to absorb), the fact that your site is ALREADY showing up on Page 2 at Google for as broad a search (and as valuable), as Fort Myers DJ is amazing. To put that into perspective, that means that Google considers YOUR website to be HIGHLY relevant for that term. So much so that it displays it in the Top 20 results of over 300,000 relevant matches. Imagine all the other web pages you might be competing against that have the words “Fort”, “Myers” and “DJ”.

As time goes by, you will be more an more impressed. Actually, based on my experience I’ll bet even right now I could find your website for a myriad of other RELEVANT key phrases. That is of course the main point… If you are searching for something, is YOUR page relevant for that term? Is it HIGHLY RELEVANT? Keep in mind that search engines ONLY KNOW TEXT. They can only understand words exactly as they are spelled, spaced, abbreviated, punctuated, etc. by the searcher at the end of a keyboard.

What I would suggest, is that if you open up a Google Site Analytics account, I can install the tracking code and you can then begin to see what Google thinks your site is relevant for and analyze your traffic.

If you find that your site is showing up for things it should not show up for, or not showing up when you think its should, there could be a very, very, good reason and we can then look at changing or adding to the site so that it does reflect what you want people to find it for.

Category : Blog

Power of The Personal Meet and Greet

Posted on May 20, 2010 // 0 Comments

Everyday I learn something new, or perhaps more light is shed on something I already knew, but never really saw the importance of as clearly. Yesterday’s meeting with a website client and their product distributor proved to be just such an epiphany.

My website client owns an HVAC company and his distributor handles air conditioners and furnaces, but the logic in this can be applied to ANY business quite effectively.

The territory manager for the distributor, has an extensive background and has become and expert salesman. With relation to the heating and air, he had actually started his own HVAC company that he grew from one guy and a van, to a huge multi-million per year company that was purchased by a major utility company in the Chicago area. He also ran that division for several years for that company.

He mentioned that when he first started his company, he spent $0 (zero dollars), on marketing or advertising and yet during the first three years his company grew exponentially. That was back in the hey-day of the “Yellow Pages”, so the Internet was not around and things were slightly different in that people were not so quick to find things they needed at that moment, like today. Unlike today’s business person he was not able to advertise his business in an affordable manner like we can today via the web, however the cost of phone book advertising was so staggering he knew he would have to market his company some other way. This is truly where his marketing lesson begins… Born of necessity and PROVEN to be effective if diligently employed as he did.

Meeting people is FREE advertising

  1. When you start a business, your identity must become that business. YOU are your business. Your business is you. There is no longer a separation between your job and your personal life, or your company and your career. It is virtually impossible to look at things as if you were an employee, or even a manager or executive of the company any longer… No – You must eat, breathe and sleep your industry. When people think of you, they must think of what you do.
  2. Meeting new people and letting them know what you do, (i.e.; who you are / your business / your identity), is no longer an option. Being shy will not work. If you have a shell, you MUST break out of it. The reason for this, is that beyond any other form of advertising or marketing, relational business is the absolute best kind, most effective and best of all FREE. We’ve all heard someone refer someone they know or trust “… I know a guy who…”, but this takes that mentality a step further. The person you meet RIGHT NOW, (at the car wash, at the grocery store, at a picnic, at a party, at a ball game, at a wedding, etc), MIGHT be YOUR NEXT CUSTOMER!
  3. Lastly, a business card and pen on hand at all times is imperative. The reason is simple and your business card needs to be too and here is why: In order to gain immediate trust, you have to make this person you just met feel immediately important and special. A very simple business card with your logo, your name, a bullet point or two about what you do, your website and an OFFICE number only is what you want.  WHY you ask? Simple: Because you’re going to physically write your CELL number on that card along with a quick 10% off or other freebie that makes that person feel like they are the only one in the world that you’d do that for. Your personal cell number? Wow – I’m special! It must be written in front of the potential client however. If the cell number, (or even email address), is already on the card when you hand it to them , it means nothing.

There was a whole lot more we learned from this seasoned expert that perhaps I will share very soon, so make sure that you are subscribed to my site update feed CLICK HERE and keep up to speed with site updates and valuable posts like this one.

Category : Blog

Build Page Rank With Links Manager

Posted on May 19, 2010 // 0 Comments

Having your website appear in the Top 10 organic results at major search engines like Google, is NOT just simply a matter of having a well designed, search engine optimized website! In order for YOUR website to show up as relevant for your most desired and valuable key phrases, you need to have PAGE RANK.

If you don’t want to read this whole article, that’s okay… I am making my personal recommendation to implement a solid back link strategy to help your website show up better on search engines… Its called LINKS MANAGER and its an ethical back link service that meets all the search engine’s guidelines so you won’t get banned for using it.

Tired of wasteful spending?

Page Rank, is what Google calls the rating they provide to any given website for its perceived popularity. That popularity comes in the form of BACK LINKS.

What this means is that when another website links to your website, that’s considered a vote of popularity. That website is essentially “recommending” your website to it’s visitors, thereby proclaiming to the world that your site is an authority or another resource for the visitor to find relevant information on topic with the website that they are currently visiting.

If that sounds confusing, it really is not.  Let me clarify and put this in terms you will better relate to:

Imagine that your neighbor is at your house admiring your freshly cut lawn and complimenting you on how lush and green it is. So, the two of you are chatting about the lawn and you get on the topic of conversation about various weed killers, fertilizers, patterns of mowing, etc. Now imagine during that conversation that you mention to your neighbor that you personally recommend a particular brand of lawn fertilizer which you found at your local lawn and garden center.

While that personal recommendation is good for the local lawn and garden center, its not necessarily going to make your neighbor think that you are a horticultural expert. As a matter of fact, even if they visit the lawn and garden store that you recommended, they may not necessarily consider the 18 year old clerk an expert on botanical science.

However, imagine that while at that store you meet the District manager, (who just happened to be visiting that day), and he mentions that the brand of lawn fertilizer that came so highly recommended was actually the result of their corporate decision to carry only the best brand, as a result of enormous studies and sampling by their top decision makers… Now THAT IS A STRONG RECOMMENDATION, from a reputable source.

So, putting this back into perspective from the point of website design and web marketing, (for our purpose lets pretend that our neighbor and the store and the corporation are websites), it plays out something like this:

  1. Neighbor’s Personal Home Page > recommends a local store and brand. (small popularity vote – a little credit)
  2. Local Store Website > recommends a particular product brand. (better popularity vote – more credit)
  3. Product Corporate Website > is the recommended authority on the subject. (most popular – most credit)

For the sake of argument, a search engine may give the neighbor’s website a little bit of credit for knowing something about lawn care, but its insignificant because the neighbor and the product are so far detached and not on topic. The search engine would give the store’s website kudos for recommending the brand because since they carry a lot of lawn and garden stuff, they must know what they are talking about. Lastly, the search engine would give the biggest vote to the brand’s website because the store recommended them and they are obviously an expert on the subject.

So, the lessons here are:

  • You NEED back links to make your site seem popular for a given topic.
  • The sites that link to yours need to be ON TOPIC and related in some way.
  • The sites that link to yours need to be HIGH QUALITY and experts on the topic.
  • The sites that YOU link to should be related to the topic of your website.
  • LINKS MANAGER can help you create a long term and lasting page rank building program.

To see the links manager solution in action at this website, visit my LINKS PAGE.

Category : Blog

Added New Support Ticket Feature

Posted on May 18, 2010 // 0 Comments

Just a quick update to let my clients and website visitors know that I implemented a help desk style support ticket feature to the website. Now whenever you use the “contact” feature at Bestseowebdesign.com, it generates a support ticket that you can track via a special URL that gets emailed to you. I can manage these support tickets much easier than the way I’ve been doing it via email and telephone.

Category : Blog

Added New Store Checkout Feature

Posted on May 18, 2010 // 0 Comments

Finally added an easy way for my clients to make a purchase! Whew… Its been a long time coming. Checkout the Best SEO Web Design STORE.

Category : Blog

Note to clients and colleagues

Posted on May 15, 2010 // 0 Comments

Hi, Just a quick note to some of my clients, (existing and a few that I worked with in the past), as well as a few industry colleagues who’ve been such a tremendous support throughout all my Internet marketing and website building endeavors.

I recently updated my primary site and it now includes testimonies.

It would thrill me if you could take a few moments to submit a comment at: http://bestseowebdesign.com/testimonials/

Additionally, on the home page of http://bestseowebdesign.com there is a spot to fill in your email address to receive updates emailed to you. As a website client I recommend it, because as I update my site with articles about promoting your website, the latest marketing buzz, or even notices about critical things like the recent malware attack on my GoDaddy server that had dozens of website offline for the past week in some cases, I can warn you of that too and update you on how to resolve issues. The emails you get will be RSS feeds from my website whenever it is updated and you can unsubscribe whenever you want. There won’t be gobs of emails, just highlights of what got updated at the site, when its updated. I also do not share or sell your email address.

So once again, please leave a comment at: http://bestseowebdesign.com/testimonials/

And please subscribe to my site at the home page (lower middle) of http://bestseowebdesign.com

Additionally, as a post script, some of you were aware that I was renting an office in Naperville, which had a short lease and I did not renew. Truth be told it was GREAT having an office, unfortunately it was just not fiscally responsible for me to keep it beyond my lease because my wife recently went off work with carpal tunnel, so for the time being, (at least several months), I’ll be working from home again, so please make note of my home office address and my cell phone number below:

Todd Donald
15216 S Dillman St
Plainfield, IL 60544
Cell: 815-582-0562
http://bestseowebdesign.com
http://djwebsitedesigner.com

Category : Blog

Portfolio Images Added

Posted on May 15, 2010 // 0 Comments

Uploaded the majority of my most recent sites to the portfolio for viewing. I’ve left some out, and of course there are tons of older sites I did not include, but these represent a nice sampling of my more recent work with WordPress, Dreamweaver, GoDaddy and Homestead. Click Here For Portfolio

Category : Blog

All Client Sites Back Up

Posted on May 15, 2010 // 0 Comments

All my client’s websites are back up and running as far as I know.  It took a while to get everything straightened out after the malware / hacker issue, but I am finally able to start making some forward progress.

Category : Blog

Adding Content To New Best SEO Web Design Site

Posted on May 14, 2010 // 0 Comments

Just a quick note to let my visitors know I am adding content to my new Best SEO Web Design site, so pardon the way it looks right now. Should be done fairly soon.

Category : Blog

Websites going back up!

Posted on May 11, 2010 // 0 Comments

Todd DonaldFinally websites are going back up and I have been able to attend to some client updates.

Have to build a DJ website that I had gotten delayed on.

Recovery from the Malware is going well.

If you are a client that still has a site that is not working, please read earlier posts.

Category : Blog

Progress Is Being Made

Posted on May 10, 2010 // 0 Comments

ProgressJust a quick update, to let my clients and website visitors know that progress is being made.

Full scans have been done on my local versions of websites and they are clean.

Several clients have their new hosting accounts setup and site uploads in progress.

Category : Blog

Support Requests

Posted on May 8, 2010 // 0 Comments

If your website is not working, please see the previous post about my hosting server being hacked and the malware that was infecting the sites that resided on my server.

If you have support questions, please be patient.

You are welcome to post a comment here, or send me an email or go to my Facebook.

In the meanwhile, I’ll try to address the most common problems you might be encountering with your website:

  • When someone visits my site they are directed to Best SEO Web Design: This is because your domain registration and hosting were being provided as a courtesy. If your domain now points to Best SEO Web Design, it means that your URL “www” is in my domain registrar and hosted on my hosting server, which recently was hacked (see previous post). To rectify the issue, I recommend that you acquire your own domain registrar and hosting account, (I recommend GoDaddy), then email me the login so that I can transfer your domain name and upload your website to your server.
  • When someone visits my website there is an Apache error or 403 forbidden error, or another error that results in no website at all: This is most likely because your website was hosted on my server, but you have the domain registered at your own domain registrar account. In order to rectify the situation, you will need to acquire a hosting plan and email me the login so that I can upload the site to your server and redirect the DNS.
  • You are supposed to be building a website for me, but I have not received a status update in a while, so I am getting concerned. No worries my valued client. Rest assured that I’ve not forgotten about you and you will soon have your new website up and running. Unfortunately in recent days my hosting server was hacked and its causing me a bunch of extra work I had not anticipated on. Iam trying to first serve my clients who already had functioning sites that were effected, so I’m sure you will understand and I appreciate your patience. I will send an emailed status update when I have some progress to report.

Thanks Again! Please feel free to comment below, I will be checking these periodically.

Category : Blog

Thank you for your patience!

Posted on May 7, 2010 // 0 Comments

A note to my valued clients and website visitors: Recently, the Best SEO Web Design hosting server was hacked and a malicious malware script infected literally dozens of my websites, as well as several of my client’s sites that I was hosting on that server.

The malware was discovered when a client contacted me through my Facebook account, to let me know that their AVG software was flagging the site as malicious. Within 24 hours, the infection spread to all the websites on my server and upon trying to visit any of these sites, the web surfer was greeted with a page that looks similar to the thumbnail above, warning them that the site had malware and could potentially harm their computer.

There are many new anti-virus and anti-spyware, malware software programs that are reporting clean sites as malicious due to what is called a “false positive”, which means that like most software it screwed up. In this case, my first course of action was to make sure that sites on my server were not being inaccurately flagged by a false positive, but unfortunately in this case, the warning was justified and the malware was real.

I attempted to remove the malicious script manually without resolve and investigated employing several server side anti-malware routines that may have been able to salvage the sites by destroying the malware, unfortunately the malware was irreversible and the only sure fix was to delete all infected files, which within just 2 days nearly 90% of all the files on the server were infected and had to be deleted.

What happens next? I am tirelessly attempting to resolve the issue. This may take several days because of the scale of the situation. I have local copies of all the websites, however they have to be scanned for malware as well. Once confirmed that they are clean, I can recreate the directory and upload the site again. I will have to monitor the fresh upload to ensure that it remains free of malware. This process is multiplied by the 3 years worth of websites that resided on the server. Needless to say, this is a monumental task.

For those clients who were benefiting from free domain registration and / or free website hosting, I will no longer be able to provide these free services.

If you are a client of mine, who now has a website that is not functional, it is because the website has been deleted from my server. In this case, YOU will need to provide your own hosting and domain registrar services. I recommend GoDaddy.com for these services. I will explain the procedure below:

  1. If you do not already have a domain registrar or hosting service, go to http://godaddy.com and create a new account and purchase a hosting plan. For a single site, choose the Economy Linux plan. For multiple websites choose the Deluxe Linux plan.
  2. Email me your registrar and hosting account information including the customer number, username, password.
  3. I will transfer the domain to your account and / or upload your website to your hosting server.

Again, thank you for your patience in this matter.

Todd Donald

*** Please keep in mind that during this time, I am unable to respond as quickly to emails and telephone calls. I will be leaving my Facebook open to try and respond to general questions in real time.

Category : Blog

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