• Use the Services of a Professional Web Designer/Developer.  You may have heard about the many website development tools endorsing the possibility that “anyone can create a website” with their software.  Relatives, friends, volunteers, and current employees might be able to do this for your business.  However, there are many other tasks that professional web designers and developers do to make your website truly effective.  These include ease in navigation, effective placement of content, color and font usage, graphic options, and handheld device considerations.
• Hire an Internet Marketer.  Or, I can do this for you at my current hourly fee.  This could cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars with a major marketing consultant.  At this time, I do not have a referral for a reputable consultant and hesitate to make any recommendations to my clients.
• Business-Related Directories.  Get listed in current website directories pertaining to your business.  For example, if you are a restaurant, you might want to get listed in www.restaurant.com.
• Online Phone Directories.  Ensure that you are properly listed in the online phone directories.  That is, if someone does a search on your business type in your area, your business will appear in their listing.
• Have Other Websites Link to Yours.  Find other websites that will link to your website.  Offer to link to their website.  This is one of the top methods that can be used to drive traffic to your website.
• Use Google AdWords and/or the Yahoo Sponsored Search.  With Google AdWords your business would be listed next to the search results based on keywords that you define.  Yahoo Sponsored Search also lists your business above and next to search results based on predefined keywords.  Both of these can be costly, with the Yahoo service being more expensive.
• Social Networking.  Create your business presence in the “social networking” arena.  This includes Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter (major networking blogs/websites/forums).  Yes, they are essentially gigantic weblogs (blogs).  Also, it is very important to link your business between these networks.

The above information can be helpful to your business.  If I can be of assistance, please contact me.

• No One Really Knows How They Work.  Yes, it is a secret and they change the algorithms that are used to find websites based on keyword searches.  The major search engines are Google, Yahoo, Bing, and MSN.  If someone tells you they can get your website ranked on the first page of a major search engine, they are lying.  Maybe they can do this in the short-term by using some kind of “coding trick,” but the search engines will eventually “catch it” and your website could get eliminated from their rankings, possibly indefinitely.
• Use Proper Coding.  There are certain tags in your code that need to be set up correctly.  These include your website’s Title, META Tags, and HTML coding in your content.  The Title is the most important, but all the other tags and coding need to be related.  It is easier for the search engines to find your information if your website is properly coded.
• Submit to Search Engines.  Your website, if not already ranked by the search engines, needs to get submitted to the major search engines.  They only need to be submitted once and can be resubmitted when major website changes occur.
• Be Patient.  It can take weeks or even months for your website to show up in the major search engines.  Periodically, I review my clients’ websites to see how they’re doing in the engine rankings.  I then recommend the actions mentioned in this note, if they have not yet been done.

The above information can be helpful to your business.  If I can be of assistance, please contact me.

• Use the Services of a Professional Web Designer/Developer.  You may have heard about the many website development tools endorsing the possibility that “anyone can create a website” with their software.  Relatives, friends, volunteers, and current employees might be able to do this for your business.  However, there are many other tasks that professional web designers and developers do to make your website truly effective.  These include ease in navigation, effective placement of content, color and font usage, graphic options, and handheld device considerations.
• Use Standards Compliant Code.  My clients’ websites are coded using “hard-coded” HTML.  What this means is that I do all the coding without using website building software (e.g., FrontPage, Dreamweaver, Microsoft Office).  This gives your website a greater chance of working in all the web browsers even when they change their code.  These browsers include Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Chrome.
• Keep Your Layout Simple.  In most cases, your website has only seconds to keep the attention of an Internet user.  It needs to represent your business identity, be attractive, contain simple content, and be easy to navigate.

The above information can be helpful to your business.  If I can be of assistance, please contact me.

All websites created by PML Web Creations are custom designed.  The website templates and website builders that are available from other companies did not meet the needs of my current clients.

Businesses have created websites from templates, but still needed modifications.  Most templates and website builders are limited in the amount of changes that are allowed.   In most cases, a web developer is needed to make any desired changes or additions.

Some considerations needed to develop a website are not always included in a template.   For example, search engine optimization tags are not always included in templates and website builders, and even if they are, guidelines need to be followed so that the tags are effective.

Templates and website builders often include code that is not search-engine friendly.  Often, there is extra code included in the web pages that could possibly cause a website to loose ranking in a search engine’s resulting list.

And, your website can be unique!

One recent, and seemingly fast, change involves the types of computer monitors utilized by Internet end-users.  Without getting into too much detail, these changes have affected two major things:

1. the size of monitors and
2. the monitor’s resolution (ppi or pixels per inch)

So, the monitors are bigger and can get more information in a certain amount of space.  Because of this, websites are being designed differently; the layout is changing.

Just a couple of years ago, websites were designed to try and get a web page to appear on a computer monitor so that the end-user would not have to scroll up or across.  Now, websites are being layed out to get more information on a page even if the end-user needs to scroll down.

I recently redesigned my own business website with the above considerations in mind.  You can view it by clicking on the image on the left.

What might this mean to you?  If you already have a website, you might want to consider getting it redesigned.  This DOES NOT mean that you have to do this, only that you might want to start thinking about a redesign in the future.

I can do this for you.  Feel free to contact me, if you would like your website redesigned to accommodate these changes.  If you do not have a website, I can develop one for you to fit these needs.

Yet another new thing has been learned and done. Check out the “Portfolio” tab HERE on the PML Web Creations Facebook page. It is a box that was created using Facebook’s FBML code.

If you need something like this done on your Facebook page, please feel free to contact me.