Choosing a domain name

I have just read a great article about choosing a domain name and thought I would share it with you all. It lists 8 quick tips for choosing a domain name including:

1. Keep it short
2. Dot What
3. Avoid trademarked names
4. Register your domain NOW
5. One may not be enough
6. Character Types
7. Ask Around
8. Don't shell out large amounts of $$$

To read the full article about choosing a domain name follow the link below
8 Quick Tips to Choosing a Domain Name

Strategies For Linking - Video Tutorial

I found this great little video while searching youtube this morning. This is worth watching for anyone trying to improve their websites pagerank and traffic through building quality links.

Google Information for Webmasters

Google's official site has a lot of questions that webmasters will want answered in regards to getting listed in google. You will find questions on topics such as:

• Getting your site into the google search engine
• Problems with your google listing
• Information about PageRank

It is certainly worth visiting if you are wanting some first hand information abut your google listing.

Check it out here

Dreamweaver Video Tutorial of the week #4

To start this week there is another dreamweaver video tutorial for you to enjoy. This one focuses more on the HTML side of dreamweaver, but users with basic skills (like me) will still be able to follow this one. It is important to remember that a well coded page should be the top priority when making a web site.

Free Logos

If you are wanting a logo for your new web page, but you don't want to pay for the privilege of getting it designed then you might like to consider the free logos on offer on the Internet.

They might not be exactly what you are looking for, but the price is certainly right. Some of the sites will even let you customize the logos to a point.

These are some good places to find free logos
GMK Free Logos
All Free Logos
Free Logo Services - US only, but you can design many aspects of your design and then they send it to you for free!

This guy offers to design your logo for free as long as you give him a link on your site. He claims to have made over $20000 worth of logos for free!
Free Logo Design

I hope these resources help. If you find something worth mentioning feel free to leave a comment. Remember you can subscribe to this blog

Choosing a web designer and developer

At the moment I am having my first commercial website designed and developed and many people have been asking me "how do you choose one out of the thousands of companies." These are my few tips for this daunting process

1. Firstly look at their own site:

• Does it look good?
• Is it easy to navigate?
• Do all the pages work?
• Does it work on all the popular browsers
  

2. Make sure they have a portfolio of pages they have designed. You can always email the webmasters of the sites in their portfolio and ask them if they were happy with the designer/developer.

3. If you are also getting them to do your search engine optimization then make sure they rank highly for their name and other popular keywords.

4. It is much easier to have one person to do all the work on the website, but remember that not all designers are good developers and vice versa so it might be worth using one of each.

5. Get a free quote on the website you want done. If they wont give a quote then move on to another company. Make sure they are friendly and will answer all your questions and emails quickly. Remember that cheap isn't always good - a professional web site that makes thousands a year can cost a mini fortune, but it is a once off cost! If the website is a hobby or simply fun then don't spend too much!

6. Give the designer and developer a really good idea of what you want. Some simple drawings of what you want your page to look like and where all the content goes is a really good idea.

I hope these few little tips help you! Good Luck!

Dreamweaver video tutorial of the week #3

Button Rollovers
This is the third video tutorial in this series and is well worth watching if you are trying to develop and your own website. This will help you create button rollovers, where the image changes when you hover your mouse over it. Enjoy!

Best Places to Register Your Domain Name

Registering a domain name can de a daunting task for many new webmasters with everyone trying to get your business offering all kinds of different incentives and prices. The best thing to do is find a site that reviews the top domain name registration companies and compares them with features as well as prices.
I have found such a site that might be useful for anyone trying to register their domain names:
Domain Name Registration Reviews
Good Luck!

Free Web Hosting Reviews

They say the best things in life come for free and for someone looking to make a personal site then free hosting is what most will be looking for. Most free hosting is sponsored by ads, but some are absolutely ad free. Its also worth noting that many will even give you a free domain name (eg. personalfinance.50webs.com), but to make your site look really professional then you can often buy your own domain name and use it.

If you are looking for free web hosting then the following site will give you some great options (and they even review most of the hosts to give you a better idea of what they offer!)
To find free web hosting or to read the reviews simply go to the Free Web Hosting Website

Auction Ads Review

Auction ads is another way for webmasters to make money by showing ebay ads on their webpage. They pay you a percentage (75%) of ebay commissions and you even get money ($25-35) if a new ebay user signs up. The best part is that you can choose the keywords of the products that you want to show up and they provide you with the code to paste into your website.

Currently they are offering $25 for free to sign up to their program! So if you are a webmaster it is definitely worth signing up! To sign up simply go to the Auction Ads Website

There is an example of auction ads below this post.

Webmaster Tip - Dreamweaver video tutorial of the week #2

This is the second video tutorial in this series and well worth watching if you are trying to design your own website. Yes the guys voice is annoying and he explains things very slowly, but there is some really good advice and tips here to be worth the 17 minutes (hell I watched it and I don't even use dreamweaver).
This video focuses on creating hyperlinks and simple menu bars. Enjoy

Websites - building one yourself or paying to have one built?

Currently I am thinking of having my first commercial website built and this question has been running around in my head. I am considering forking over a large amount of money for something I do not know will make me anything back. I have a decent amount of IT knowledge (I even run a tech tips blog), and have even built some small and crappy websites before, but lets look at the pros and cons of each. (I am assuming little or no coding knowledge)

Build it yourself

Pros

• Cheap
• You can design it exactly how you want

Cons

• It might look cheap or not work very well
• It might take you a lot longer than expected

Pay someone to do it

Pros

• It should look professional and work well
• It should be done fairly quickly
• Designers can often provide a domain name and hosting saving you the hassle
  

Cons

• Expensive
• The web designer / developer might not understand exactly what you want

My opinion
If the website is primarily designed to make money then you should probably spend some money to make it as professional as possible. If it is a personal site or just a hobby then have a go at building it yourself - it can't hurt!

Webmaster Tip - Dreamweaver video tutorial of the week

Without a doubt dreamweaver has helped spawn hundreds of websites many built with the WYSIWYG editor. The program is the best in its class and has helped thousands of computer code illiterates to build some very fine (and not so fine) pages. This video tutorial will help you start to gain a basic understanding of building a website with dreamweaver. It is filled with great tips and is a recommended watch for anyone learning dreamweaver or wanting to make their own website.

Please leave a comment if this was useful or if you would like to see more of these video tips. (commenting is open to everyone).

I am planning on starting a video tutorial of the week post so check back later for more video tutorials. You might also want to subscribe to this blog to get the fresh content first!

Webmaster Resources - Your source for free web templates

If you are having trouble designing your website or just can't get it right then the Open Source Web Design website is for you. The site lists a massive 2080 free designs for your downloading pleasure. It even offers a search feature to find the design you have been looking for.

To begin searching designs or to check it out you can go to the Open Source Web Design website

My tips for running/starting a blog

If you currently run a blog or are considering it then these are my top tips to make it a winner.

• Write about something you like - there is no use writing about something you hate because your interest will wane and your blog will become another abandoned blog on the scrapheap.
• Try to post as constantly as possible and stick to it. If you want to post once a week, or once a day then stick to that, don't post nothing for a month and then 5 posts all in one day. That type of posting doesn't encourage readers to come back.
• Make posts that people will want to read. I don't know too many people that read about Mongolian strains of grass. To get heaps of readers you can try writing about controversies, celebrities and other things that people like to read.
• Don't blog soely for money - sure you can make a few bucks with a blog, but only 0.1% will ever make the sort of cash that everyone is claiming you can make!
• Submit your blog into blog directories and search engines so people will read what you are writing
• Have fun!

Good luck with your venture and consider leaving me a comment if you have any questions about blogging. I will be happy to answer you.

HTML Tip - How to open a link in a new window

Open a link in a new window Its easy to use HTMLso that links open in a new window. This is a better way than using javascript as it will work whether the browser has javascript installed or not. You can implement it by adding the text target="_blank" to your anchor tag. For example: <a href="http://www.tipsntutorials.com/" target="_blank">click here to visit Tips 'n' Tutorials in a new window</a>

Webmaster Tip - SEO video tutorial

I found this great little tip while searching youtube today. It talks about a method of finding out how many websites have a certain word in their title. You can use this to judge how much competition you will have or to simply work out which keywords you will target. This video is very short, but it is certainly a handy thing for all webmasters to know.

Adsense - Monetize your site

Adsense Review
Ok if your a webmaster and you haven't heard of adsense you may have had your head under a rock for the last few years. In March 2003 Google launched Adsense, which runs text, image and video ads on your website that are targeted to your websites content and location of your visitors. This has made adsense an extremely popular program with webmasters because the ads are less intrusive than most banners, and the content of the ads is often relevant to the website.

Currently these ads run on a cost-per-click basis and the webmaster gets a cut of the profits each time one of the ads on his/her site is clicked. Sounds simple...? Yes well it is really!

Adsense have also released referrals 2.0 where webmasters are paid on a cost-per-action basis (An action can be a product being purchased, a form being filled, etc).

Adsense is very simple to set up (copy and paste a small section of HTML) and the rest is done for you. Adsense is a great way of making some money if you have a website and if you haven't signed up yet then I recommended getting into this great program. There is a link to the adsense page on the right menu of this page so start making some money now!

Webmaster Tip - How to link so that people will click

Don't use "click here" as link text

We have all seen it before, a site tells us to click here, but is that the best way to get someone interested in clicking? Here are some following dos and don'ts of linking:

How to link

If you want someone to click on your links, use brief but meaningful link text that:

• provides some information
  
• explains what the link offers
• is not a verb phrase

Don't do this - An example

Avoid the following sentence on your page:

To visit my blog, click here.

or:

To sign up to blogger, go to the Blogger Website and fill in the necessary form.

This doesn't explain what blogger is or offers

Instead try this - An example

If you want to call your reader to action, use something like:

Visit Webmasters Central!

A longer link text might be:

Tell me more about Blogger: A free blog creator that lets you create you very own blog.

I hope this little tip has helped. Good luck writing quality links!

How important is Search Engine Optimization

There is no doubt that most webmasters and businesses on the web put search engine optimization (SEO) at the top of the importance list. Still this really is the ultimate question most people are asking.

Ask yourself - how many visitors do I want?
If the answer is a dozen a day then SEO shouldn't be a major concern. You should simply focus on writing great content and a few people will certainly come and visit. Good content is one of the keys to a decent google ranking and rumours abound that great content will become even more valuable to your listing in the future. That is why constantly updated blogs get into the top rankings of google - their content is always being updated! If you want hundreds of visitors daily then certainly put some of your focus into SEO, but still don't forget to write great content.

In the end true long term success with google comes from genuinely good content.

What should I be doing to optimize my page...?
Heaps of information can be found on this and I am not going to go into great detail, but these are the things you should be trying to do:

• Write good meta tags - you can view my blog post entitled how to write good meta tags here
• Get Inbound Links (including directories) - you can view my blog post about submitting to directories here
• Write great content (and lots of it) and optimise it for the search engine spiders

Is there anything I should be careful of...?
There are some things that google doesn't like and these can get you banned:
Keyword stuffing - filling the page with a ridiculously high percentage of keywords

• Duplicate Content - Duplicating content on different pages in and attempt to gain multiple search engine positions.
  
• Using "doorway" or "cloaked" pages which distort the true content of the website. This includes hidden text designed to be read by the search engine spider, but invisible to human visitors (often used by porn pages).
• Paying for links - Google keeps telling us this is bad yet people keep doing it - be careful

Webmaster Tip - The biggest secret in HTML

This is a very old secret, but it certainly still works.
If you are on a website and like something the webmaster has done with HTML you can learn how to do the same thing. On most (if not all) popular browsers you can see the HTML code/tags for everything on the page you are viewing. If you like something the webmaster has done then you can find the code for it. While I don't just condone copying and pasting other peoples HTML, many people do this. I suggest either modifying it to make it your own or asking the webmaster permission to use it. This will certainly get you a better response than simply stealing it!

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7:
Click the page button (in the right hand corner) and then click view source (see picture below)













Older Versions of Internet Explorer Simply click on 'View' then on 'Source'

Firefox
Click on view and then page soruce (shortcut Ctrl - U) - see picture below











Final Stage
Now once you view the source you can copy and paste the tags you want to use.
Shortcuts for copying and pasting:
Highlight the 'section' you want hold down the Ctrl key and hit C (Ctrl C). Next you go to place you want to paste and use Ctrl V to paste the code.

Please do not use this tip to steal code - always ask first!

If you thought that this post was useful you might want to consider subscribing to this blog or bookmarking this post. I will always be updating with more tips for webmasters.

Webmaster Tip - Increasing your google page rank

When you are a webmaster increasing your google page rank, or pagerank as it is sometimes spelled, is almost the holy grail. Hours are spent trying to make your page look valuable to the google search engine gods and often it can be a frivolous exercise. Over the next few weeks I am going to include tips on how to increase your google page rank and the first tip starts today!

Tip 1 - Submitting to directories
One of the ways google ranks pages is to look at the quality and number of sites linking back to your website (backlinks). One way to increase your backlinks without pestering webmasters to link back to you is to submit your site to directories. The best thing about directories is that many are absolutely free (for the cheap webmasters like me this is great) and many have a high page rank themselves, which is important for making your site look like a quality page. Basically the higher the page rank of the directory you are listed on the better your page will end up looking. Now I have heard many things about this topic, but I always say you need at least 100 good quality back links before google will take any notice of you.

For the Cheapskates...

If you are going down the free directory route then you have to be prepared for two things:
1. To wait while someone checks your site and decides it is worthy of submission (this can take months).
2. To provide a backlink from your site to the directory.
It is possible that some will not accept you so always submit to more than you want and hope to get over about 100 (more if you are really serious)

I have money what about me?

If you have money for advertising your website (or someone providing a bankroll) then you can consider paying to be listed in directories. The price of this varies and you can find some companies who will do all of the work for a fee. There are two advantages of paying for a listing:
1 You often get a higher listing in the directories themselves
2 You are usually given a listing in the directory within 24 hours

What directories do I submit to?

Well this is up to you, there are literally thousands of the things and some are better than others. You should try submitting to directories with a high page rank (7-10) first and then hit some of the smaller ones (3-6) later. You can also take a gamble and submit to page rank 0 directories in the hope that they will rank better next time around.
You should also consider listing with directories that deal with your specific subject area of your website. For example if you have a golf page you might search google for "golf directory" and find a few directories specific to your topic to submit to.

A good list of directories and their page ranks can be found at:
addurl.nu
However there are thousands more.

Tips
Help I can't find the page rank... If you want to know the page rank of the site you are submitting to simply search google for a" page rank checker" and find out how good the site you are submitting to really is. Anything page rank 3 or over is fine.

How many backlinks do I have?
To check how many backlinks you have you can use the google webmasters tools that I blogged about earlier this week. You can read that post here: Linkback tool at googles webmasters central.
However the quickest and easiest way of doing this would be to perform a google search. Simply type in link: and then the full URL of your website

A word of warning
Don't submit to directories all at once as google gets a little suspicious if your page is nowhere and then it starts turning up all over the place the next day. Space out your submissions over a few weeks and all should be fine.

If you liked this post you might want to consider subscribing to this blog or bookmarking this post. I am always updating with more tips for webmasters.

Linkback tool at googles webmaster central

I found this little youtube gem while searching this morning and until now I hadn't realised what great tools google webmaster central offers.
Google webmaster central is a great way to find out about your site and the new feature they have added can even tell you about your backlinks, which are inherently linked to your google Page Rank (I will be posting a lot about page rank soon). This little tool is very accurate and this youtube video will tell you all about it!
I am not overly keen on the guys voice or the video presentation it has some great tips so it is well worth watching!

You can check out the google webmaster tools here:
google webmaster central

If you liked this post you might want to consider subscribing to this blog or bookmarking this post. I am always updating with more tips for webmasters.

Webmaster Tip - How to write good meta tags

Meta Tags

Basically Meta Tags are used by search engines to work out what your site is about and how to display that to people who search for your site. They will not guarantee good placement in the search engines, but they are now used by all except one major search engine. So if you don't have good Meta Tags, you are doing your website a disservice.

Placement of Meta Tags

META tags are best placed in the head of the HTML document between the tags, and before the BODY tag. Make sure you also include them on each individual framed page. If you use META tags only on the frameset pages, you might be missing out on traffic!

Useful Tags

Description Tags

Make sure you add your own description for your pages - Use the META description attribute:

<name="description" content="This blog is about tips for webmasters, including things like SEO, web hosting......etc.">

Use around 60 - 130 characters, and include a few of your keywords in the description.

Keywords tag

Keywords are how visitors find your site so they are obviously very important very and it is important you get them right.

<name="keywords" content="webmaster, SEO, increase traffic, etc,">

You can use 800 characters when writing a description tag. Include the most important keywords at the top. Don't repeat the same keyword to generate more results as most search engines ignore the spam. However, you can include keywords in both the singular and plural form.

Robot Tags

Robots are what the search engines send out to look over your pages and find out what it is about. This tag tells those robots what to do.

<name="robots" content="all / none / index / noindex / follow / nofollow">

Robot attribute:

"all" - This allows all of the files to be indexed.

"None" - tells the spider not to index any files and not to follow any hyperlinks

"Index" - Tells the spider that this page may be indexed

"follow" - The spider is free to follow the links from this page to other pages.

"noindex" - Tells the spider that this page may not be indexed, but allows it to follow the hyperlinks and index those pages.

"nofollow" Tells the spider that this page may be indexed, but the links should not be followed.

Distribution tag

<name="distribution" content="Global">

You can also tell the robots how you want the pages indexed. The options are global, or restricted to certain countries.

Rating Tag

<name="rating" content="General">

This helps the robots classify your site, you can assign a rating to your pages:

Revisit Tag

<name="revisit after" content="30days">

If you update your site often it is useful to ask the spiders to revisit your site after a certain time. The recommended time is between 21 and 180 days.

Hopefully these simple tips will help you write better meta tags and get more visitors to your website!

If you liked this post you might want to consider subscribing to this blog or bookmarking this post. I am always updating with more tips for webmasters.

Welcome to Webmasters Central

Hi
My name is Tom. I am a webmaster from Australia and this site is going to document my tips and tricks to becoming a successful webmaster. It will include topics such as:

• SEO tips (search engine optimization)
• Getting and increasing traffic to your site
• How to make money from your website
• Adsense and other alternative ad programs
• Adwords and other alternative programs
• Cheap (but reliable) hosting and domain names
• and much much more...

Keep checking back because I hope to keep this site well updated

Cheers
Tom