BHS Web Design – Toronto Web Design Blog

Many advertisers that are just beginning to promote their websites, begin to consider pay per click advertising. Usually whenever they discover pay per click advertising, the most obvious choices are Yahoo Search Marketing or Google AdWords. However out of hundreds of choices for pay per click companies out there on the Internet, these are only two. There are many more options for pay per click advertising. And often enough, advertisers will realize that as popular as Yahoo and Google both are, they do not fill the advertiser’s needs. It is important for advertisers to remember that there are alternatives out there for Yahoo and Google, whether they are new and just now emerging into the pay per click advertising market, or veteran supporters of smalltime business advertising. A couple of these choices are reviewed and described below.

ChaCha.com

In the beginning of September in 2006, ChaCha.com was released as being significantly different from the typical search engine advertising company. One of the things that make ChaCha.com so different is that they incorporate actual human beings into their company, as search guides. This service is free of charge and applies to users and advertisers that might be having trouble finding their target audience, or what they want through organic search engines. But what makes ChaCha.com truly unique is that there are two different ways to use the search engine. An user can do the standard search, using a keyboard. Or they can do a search with the assistance of a real live, –human, guide to assist them in finding the right links to solve their queries. Also, the guides are specifically trained in different types of knowledge, this way the user making the search has high chances of connecting with the researcher that actually knows what they’re talking about and want from their query. A user can even request a specific search guide to help them with their search, for a guide based on their areas of knowledge in what’s called the “ChaCha Underground.” There were about 2000 ChaCha search guides in 2006, and at that time there were 5000 more ready to be added; so by now, there has to be around 10,000 search guides willing to assist customers and users and their queries. Search guides are paid for every search, they assist in and are able to cash in their payroll at any time they choose, after any period of which they been working, no matter how long they have actually been working, whether it’d been an hour or a week.

One of the great things about ChaCha.com are that the search guides are very polite and they ask pertinent questions in order to help the user find exactly what they’re looking for, in a fast and efficient manner. There are also plenty of cost per click and cost per action advertising opportunities available with ChaCha.com, but they give no actual details, unless whomever is interested in advertising contacts the sales area of their service. This can benefit an advertiser in a lot of ways, for instance, there won’t be a lot of competition, and they can be assured of a certain amount of professionalism within the company.

Some of the negative things about ChaCha.com, although they are a great search engine, with great opportunities available for advertisers, for instance, is that even if the search term has already been searched thoroughly by a guide, the user making the query may be presented with that search even if they’ve chosen to search without the assistance of a guide. Also, some standard searches that are made generally show, sponsored links that are generally pretty relevant to the query, but when searching with a guide the sponsored results can show completely unrelated paid ads.

RedZee

The pay per click advertising program offered by RedZee.com, is equally as inviting as the animated red striped zebra that is its online mascot. They also use the clean screen interface, that was made famous and popular by Google, and initially they were famous for the fact that they were a family-friendly search engine. Compared with search engines that have been operating since the late 90s, RedZee is fairly new to having begun operating in 2002. The founders of the search engine have strived to keep any kind of pornographic influence away from their search engine, and in order for adults and their children to be able to safely search the web, without encountering any ads that incorporate adult themes. However, by way of controversy RedZee.com offers a certain custom toolbar download for searchers, that many forum threads claim, hijacks your browser. Although this hasn’t been investigated it hasn’t exactly been substantiated, one report claimed that the toolbar disappeared from view when a spyware scan was ran after the installation of the toolbar. Following the claim, the suspect item had a different name than that of RedZee, and was afterwards removed from the registry.

The more positive aspects about RedZee.com, is that they do filter out a high percentage of pornographic sites in order to keep their search engines “kid friendly.” They can also check for the availability of a search term without the users having to open an account with the site first. The highly pertinent and organized information provided within their results, also highly appeals to consumers and visitors.

However, there is still a large amount of concern revolving around the toolbar. Advertisers choosing a program want real results; not PPC programs that offer damaged and unsafe tools for their visitors. Also, there are many concerns from the advertisers who are using the program, that the majority of visitors are not making it past the home page, or landing page. Both of these factors are very bad for prospecting advertisers. Although, there may have been significant changes made; in 2006 the site was still in Beta, so there may have been some modifications made for the better. Hopefully, the site will improve itself to a more efficient degree, making it more popular for users and advertisers alike.

Many people don’t realize the importance of content on a website, if you have made one in the past then you will be familiar with the role it plays in your sites performance. If you simply copy and paste from other people’s websites then you will be penalized and your pages will go into the supplemental results page. This means that your content won’t rank for its keywords unless it’s the only page based on that keywords, in other words you have no chance of ranking for that page. If your whole site is built from these kind of pages then you see how much of a waste it will be as nothing will rank, you wont receive any traffic which means you will have zero revenue.

The best option is to write the content yourself, this way you know if it is unique or not, you might think to yourself that if you write the content yourself there is still a chance someone wrote something similar to it – making it duplicate content. There are tools which can check for similar versions of content on the internet, a popular one is copyscape. All you have to do is type the URL into the search box and it will check for similar pages, if it doesn’t come back with any then it is unique. Sometimes it may come back with a very small amount of pages, you need to check those because it may be that you use a lot of the same words. The other pages could be on a totally different topic for all you know.

Don’t worry if you can’t write lengthy pages of content, especially if your website is not a very interesting topic. You can find plenty of freelance writers who will be more than happy to write content for you, although this will cost, it will give you a greater return in the long run when your website gets indexed. The price for such a service varies depending on the skill of the writer, don’t expect to get professionally written content for a low fee. These often have spelling/grammar mistakes which may need changing if you can spot them.

If you allow other people to write content for you, be sure to run it by copyscape to see if they have copied and pasted information. If this was to get onto your website it would do more harm than good! If you ever found someone to be doing this you should always get a refund if possible or not send them the money over. As well as adding your new unique content onto your website you can submit it to article directories, this will provide your site with a back link and can generate good targeted traffic to your website for doing no extra work. This has been proven to be a successful method in increasing your rank for desired keywords as people can use your article for their website so you are best imbedding a few links back to your site making them even more valuable.

There are literally thousands of small business owners out in Toronto and the world today struggling to find a way to somehow get there company known and recognized above the rest of the field. If you are one of these people, there are low cost ways to stand out above the crowd. For all business owners in Toronto, whether it be a small business, new business, struggling business, or whatever; a smart way to attract business is by launching a do it yourself public relation campaign.

Any real business owner in Toronto will tell you that you need to have good publicity in order to have a good flow of business. This way people will start referring friends and family members to go to your store or use your business. The main idea is to attract customers through do it yourself PR, then get referrals, and then become a successful business. For those individuals who need a bit of assistance on getting started with the do it yourself public relations part of this idea, here are some helpful steps to get you on your way.

Before you start to do anything as far as public relations goes, it is well advised that you do a bit of research to see what techniques are most successful. See what low cost marketing strategies have worked the best to influence customers. The best thing is to learn from others mistakes and recognize who has been successful and how they did it. After you have all your information gathered and you have a good idea of what to do, start setting up your public relation idea. The next thing you want to do is to go to your local Chamber of Commerce, trade associations, and clubs to speak for free about your business. This way you can verbally tell people about yourself as well as pass out fliers and business cards. A nice thing to do is to collect business cards and have a drawing at the end of your speech. The winner can get a free something from you. It´s a good idea to attract people as well.

The Internet is a great low cost tool which can help with your do it yourself PR as well. By starting up a website and creating a blog is a terrific way to get attention for your company. For people who read your blog or visit your site, you should post frequent newsletters and information about your business in order to keep everyone informed about your company. Keep in mind however, that you do not want to over promote. The best thing you want to do is build trust and a good relationship with your customers. You don´t want to come across as a corporate jerk who just wants everyone´s money.

By utilizing the do it yourself PR campaign, not only will you get more business, you don´t have to spend a whole bunch of money to advertise. If you are a business owner consider do it yourself PR because it is a great way to become a successful business.

Social media is the interpersonal interaction of individuals through a global digital platform.  Content is shared via online discussions, evaluations, collaboration, commentary and feedback.   Unlike industrialized media, social media tools are open to everyone and typically has little or no cost.  Additionally, social media can be instantaneous, has no constraints on length or time and is fueled by human interaction via technology.

Social media can be a variety of forums including:

Blogs:  WordPress, Vox
Microblogs: Twitter, Jaiku
Social networking: Myspace, Facebook, Linkedin, Bebo
Video Sharing: Avatars United
Virtual Reality: Second Life
Reference: Wikipedia, Google Groups
Social Network Aggregation: Plaxo
Photo Sharing: Flickr

Social Media Marketing exposes your site to large audiences spontaneously and can increase traffic without interfering with any of your standard advertising.    The exposure and gaining popularity on social news sites like Reddit or Digg will get you links and exposure worth thousands of dollars if you were to buy them.  In turn the popularity can increase your site’s income potential as it gains better search rankings and links.  Obtaining popularity on specific social media sites like StumbleUpon or del.icio.us will drive both primary and secondary traffic to your site.   (Primary traffic is the number of visitors you attract from social media sites.  Secondary or referral traffic is from sites that linked to you and then in turn send you visitors.)

A social media marketer is someone who understand the tools they are using and the community they’re involved in.  Good social media marketing requires an emotional involvement.  Social media marketing doesn’t require a degree or special training; it can be done yourself or with a freelance programmer/designer.  Remember as in any human relationship there is a level of trust – successful social media marketing demands that you contribute meaningfully to the community and gain that level of trust.  This is people to people interaction, it is not traditional marketing and many communities will ignore you if you present yourself as a “Marketing Agent”.

The more supporters your site has, the quicker word spreads about your site.  Social media marketing is an low-cost way to entice people to your site and grow your visitors.

In the first part of this aritcle, you learned how PPC advertising works. You learned about the more popular PPC networks as well as two PPC options available to you: PPC advertising on search engine results pages and PPC advertising on other sites. In this article, you’ll learn a few tips on how you can create effective PPC campaigns.

There have been books devoted to Google AdWords and other PPC networks. It’s a good idea if you can get a hold of these books to educate yourself about PPC advertising, but there are a number of basic things we’ll discuss in this article that you can immediately use to improve your profitability.

1. Choose the Right Keywords

If you want to succeed in PPC advertising, you must be able to choose the right or profitable keywords to use. There are two key factors you need to consider and strike a balance on: the popularity of the keyword you want to use and the cost of the keyword.

The keyword or keyword phrase you use for your PPC campaign must b one that people are actually searching for. Wordtracker and Keyword Elite are two programs you can use to determine how many searches your keyword or keyword phrase gets every month.

You also need to consider how much it will cost you to use a keyword or keyword phrase in your PPC campaign. It’s not cost-effective at all for you to pay $1.25 per click if every visitor who clicks your ad and goes to your site only nets you $0.50.

You will need to identify the keyword or keyword phrase that receives a good number of monthly searches and doesn’t cost you a high cost per click (CPC) so that you can actually turn a profit from your PPC campaign.

2. Use Prequalifiers

Since you are paying per click, you want to only generate people who are likely to buy from you. A visitor may click on your ad but he may not buy anything from you. That means you spent money to get that visitor to your site even if he did not purchase anything from your site.

You need to discourage information-seekers from clicking on your link by mentioning price in your PPC ad. While this isn’t entirely foolproof, this will at least discourage people who are simply looking for information. If they see your ad with a price in it, they are less likely to click on it and cost you money. They can go somewhere else to ind the information they need.

3. Write Effective Ad Copy

You want to compel people to click on your link so you need to learn how to write ad copy that accomplishes this. There are tons of articles online you can read that will help you learn how to create persuasive copy and come up with powerful headlines.

4. Test Your PPC Ads on a Regular Basis

If you want to be successful in PPC advertising, you need to constantly test your ads. Testing will help you control your advertising budget because you’ll see which PPC ads are not working and which ones are working. Constantly test your ad’s headlines and copy. Ditch the ones that don’t work and increase the budget on those ads that are performing well.

5. Continue Learning

Engage in continuous learning. Look at your competitors’ ads. If you keep seeing the same ad again and again, you can safely assume that it is converting well for the person using that ad. Analyze what makes their ad works and try to apply what you learn on your own ads.

In a world filled with trends, it is no wonder that people want to make their websites as presentable and appealing to the eye as possible.  In the same way that people want to wear the latest fashions, website owners want their website design to reflect what is current and fashionable in the online environment.  No wonder so many Toronto web design companies are spending time working with their clients on designing websites that are customized in such a way that sets them apart.

When you have a company that has an online presence it makes sense to want to present that company in the best light possible.  This starts with having a website that is both professional and polished in its appearance.   Take a look at a few things to consider when it comes to making sure you have a top-notch webpage.

Color Schemes

This may seem obvious, but make sure to select a color scheme that works well together.  Background colors and accent colors should always complement each other (and vice versa).   Also, think about what works well based on the type of website you are building.  If you need a more professional website design, using colors like purple and yellow might not be the best idea.  In this case it would depend on what your goals are for the website.

Themes

The theme is equally important.  You wouldn’t want to develop a website for your catering company and have graphics of wildlife throughout.  Make sure you choose a theme that suits the image of your company.

Fonts

Be sure to choose the proper font for your website design as well.  A professional Toronto web design company would advise against using fonts that are too artsy for a website that is for designed for selling office supplies for example – it just wouldn’t look right.  In addition, make sure that the font size is appropriate as well.  Fonts that are too big or too small can have a negative impact on your website.

In conclusion, the important thing is to put yourself in the mindset of your potential visitor as best you can.  This will help you in customizing your website to the specifications that make the most sense based on the goals you would like to accomplish through the use of your website.

Many website owners are discovering social bookmarking as an effective way to drive traffic to their websites. Social bookmarking websites are basically all about communities and participation. Social bookmarking sites let users interact with each other as well as create their own content. These sites are very different from static sites and blogs.

There are two ways in which social bookmarking sites operate. There are social bookmarking sites that let you bookmark your favorite links in one central place. This is especially handy and convenient for users who get online on different computers. They can always access their favorite sites from one central location.

There are social bookmarking sites that let you create a list of favorite sites public or viewable by other users who are within the social bookmarking site. This is a great way you can generate traffic to your own websites and articles since you can bookmark their URLs and make your bookmarks viewable by others.

And then there are social bookmarking sites wherein you can submit articles that can be voted on by members of the community. The articles that receive the highest votes are the ones that get featured on high-traffic pages. If one of your articles are voted to the top, you can expect to receive a lot of traffic to your site as a result.

When creating some of your articles, keep the social bookmarking sites in mind. Create a few articles on controversial issues or hot topics and then submit them to social bookmarking sites. If one of your articles catch the attention of a lot of readers, it can be voted and your site may may get hundreds, if not thousands, of new visitors.

Here’s a tip: encourage visitors to add your site to their list of favorite sites by including bookmarklets at the end of every web page you create. Bookmarklets are small icons from each social bookmarking site and display to your web pages. Whenever a visitor clicks on a bookmarklet on your site, your page then automatically gets added to their favorite sites list.

There are plenty of social bookmarking sites you can submit, but the more popular ones include Blinklist, Del.icio.us, Digg, Fark, Furl, Netscape, Reddit, Simpy and Stumbleupon. Don’t limit yourself to these social bookmarking sites. Find others that are particularly geared towards your niche or target market.

Here’s another tip: Get yourself rolling in the social bookmarking scene by creating multiple profiles in each social bookmarking site. For instance, if you have 12 accounts in one social bookmarking site, that’s 12 votes already for every page you submit. However, be careful about this method. It’s actually a “black hat” method, and you can get your accounts deleted and your sites permanently banned from the service if you get caught.

First and foremost, what is a blog? A blog is a popular outlet for non-techies to easily maintain their own content based website. It is a pre-packaged program that can be setup on any web server, or there are other free alternatives available such as blogger.com that allow anyone to quickly and easily setup their own blog and begin sharing their thoughts with the world.
The word “blog” comes from the two terms “web” and “log”. The blog contains regular commentaries from the blog owner about interesting or informative information, website links, pictures, videos and more. Blogs can be setup as a stand-alone feature, or easily integrated into an existing website.

Blogging can be a great way to promote your company’s products & services, and also be recognized as an authority on the subject you’re blogging about. You can also gain visibility for your website by commenting on other people’s blogs. It’s smart business to find blogs about your company’s industry and make insightful and helpful comments. These comments will help drive traffic to your website and the readers will recognize you as an expert. Technorati.com is a great resource to find other blogs to comment on.

Blog Writing Tips:

1. Write about something worthwhile.

2. Follow the 5 W’s in the first paragraph – who, what, when, why and where.

3. Follow the KISS rule – Keep It Short and Simple! Most people scan when they’re reading, particularly online. Get to the point immediately.

4. Write attention grabbing headlines.

5. Write like you’re talking to someone – you are.

6. Keep the information clear – you want to gain their trust so they return.

7. Use keywords to try and get search engine traffic.

8. Link to other bloggers, who in return will link to you, and everyone gets more traffic.

9. Make sure your links are highlighted and say where they’re going not just “click here”

10. Time stamp your posts so everyone knows how current they are.

11. Proofread, check grammar and content before posting.

12. Pose a question to your readers to make them want to participate and comment.

These guidelines should be enough to allow anyone to take the leap into the world of blogging and promote your products / services, and most importantly, yourself!

Paypal has established itself as the easiest way to set up payment reception on a Web site and one of the easiest ways for customers to make payments. As an online business owner or manager, you have more than one type of Paypal account you can set up. You also have multiple ways by which you can use Paypal to receive online payments. As such, it is essential that you at least know what Paypal has to offer you and how it works.

1. Setting up Paypal can be as easy as clicking a few buttons on a wizard and generating code to paste into your website to create a payment button.

2. Paypal allows you to accept secure payments, giving your customers a greater sense of security.

3. Paypal allows you not only to accept payments directly from Paypal users, but it also processes credit card and check payments for you.

4. Most of Paypal’s merchant payment processing plans have no fees accept for a small percentage of each transaction. These transaction fees are much less than those charged by the average credit card payment processor.

5. In addition to payment buttons, Paypal offers full shopping cart options for your website. For those with many products on their sites and who aren’t masters of databases and Web scripting, this is a very alluring feature.

6. Paypal does not require that you have buttons on your website to receive payments. In fact, it doesn’t even require that you have a website. Payments can be made to you using your email address as an identifier.

7. Paypal Pro members have a monthly fee they must pay in addition to the standard payment processing individual transaction fees.

8. Paypal’s standard payments, business, and premiere membership levels all allow you to accept payments by phone, fax, and mail. Pro members do not have to pay an additional fee for these options.

9. Pro members have the additional benefit of being able to process payments through interfaces on their own site, rather than redirecting them through Paypal’s site.

10. Paypal members with a standard account can only accept payments from Paypal members who have a cash balance in their Paypal accounts.

In addition to the above notes, further distinction needs to be made between the Paypal business accounts and Paypal premiere accounts in order to avoid confusion. They actually offer pretty similar options, but the premiere account is more for a sole proprietor or independent contractor. The business account is set up more to be in the name of your business. As such, the business account also allows you to add multiple users to your Paypal account. Otherwise, you as the owner of the site would have to do all of the financial work for your business even if you have a full staff of employees.

If you’ve got an online company, any web design expert will tell you that your website is the heart of your operation. This means that your website design is equally important to the success of your company. Because a person cannot be seen physically as a representation of your when you operate online, that image must be transmitted via the internet. It then makes sense to put a lot careful thought and planning into your website design.

Think for a second on what impression you would make on customers in a physical location if when they walked in the door they were greeted by a salesperson dressed in wrinkled pyjamas. Do you think this salesperson would be representing the proper image of your company? Do you think customers would take you or your business seriously? Well, these same rules apply when it comes to putting together your website.

If you have a website that looks like it was made from some common website template or appears thrown together it can, and will, greatly affect sales of your products. The important thing is to make sure your website speaks of quality without you ever having to say word, which is important since you won’t be there to say one.

Conversely, if your website design comes off polished and professional it will go a long way towards winning over prospective customers. By paying close attention to all the details that others won’t, you will be able to give customers that much needed confidence necessary to choose you over another competitor. A top quality Toronto web design company can assist you with making this goal a reality if you are not an expert at website design yourself.

Also keep in mind that you want to have all materials associated with your online company well thought out and designed. Items like brochures, letterhead, and business cards are also important to creating a polished image for your online company. It will be these inches which will cause you to step miles ahead of the competition and represent your company in the best light possible. Now when customers encounter your website they won’t meet the “salesperson” dressed in pyjamas, they will feel as though they got the one dressed in a tailored suit!