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Related Issue : Problems with Web Hosting in Thailand
We are not professionals in website design or promotion. Nevertheless we feel qualified to give some sound advice on the do's and don'ts when developing a website, whether it is for personal use among friends, or for serious business purposes.
We do not want to dwell on the technical aspects or the software to use when creating a website, but rather on how to make a created website successful. We assume that the purpose of creating a website is to make it visible to the outside world, and attract visitors, who may admire your creation, or even buy some goodies from your site.
To get a sufficient amount of visitors to your site, a lot has to be taken in consideration, but we will concentrate on three important factors : Content, Links, and Search Engine 'Visibility'.
Content
We suggest you make sure about the following :
- Your site should include a title, description, and list of keywords. Among these a proper title indicating the name of your site or business and/or a short sentence describing its main content, is the most important. Ideally the title should contain your most relevant keywords, while at the same time remain readible as standard English.
For reasons we do not quite understand, a description tag and a keyword tag in the HTML code, are often not included. Actually quite a few websites, developed by professional website developers, lack these data. Especially a description (around 150-200 characters) is essential, and is actually often visible in search engine results. The list of keywords should be no more than 20.
- Repeat the title (maybe slightly modified) in the body (HTML) of your webpage(s), and make sure if at all possible that it within H1 tags. H1 tags are still considered important if you use them properly, that is for only one short sentence. Plain H1 tags of course result in very large characters on your webpages, which is usually unacceptable from an esthaetic viewpoint. You should use CSS to correct the proper fonts.
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Try to avoid a flash only entry page (see also next point for an additional reason why). If at all possible make an HTML page accessible directly or make sure that your main menu is easily accessible from the entry page (post some navigation buttons next to your flash movie box)
-All your most important pages should be accessible within ONE click from your entry page (one of the reasons why it is not good to have a flash entry page) . On the other hand, try to avoid pages that contain more than 100 links.
- Especially if you have a lot of pages, make a Site Map of your website, and make it accessible from the entry page. A Site Map page (you should name is sitemap.htm, sitemap.php... so that it can be recognized as such by search engine spiders) . A site map does not need to contain major content, just links (possible categorized) to all the pages on your website. Search Engines (Google) have started to allow you to upload sitemaps to their services, so you can indicate to them which pages on your website are most important and most up-to-date.
- Update your content regularly. If you update regularly your website may gain added importance with both regular visitors, and with search engine listings. Search engines will more frequently spider your site if your content varies a lot. Changing a few words is not an update, changing a few paragraphs probably is.
- If at all possible make sure that the real content on your site is as close as possible to the start of your content code. If you use various CSS and Javascript code, make sure they are located into separate files, that your webpage can reference. This makes it easier for spiders to access your real content more rapidly and efficiently.
- If you want to have repeat visitors, make your website likeble (and provide new updated content). Things one should avoid : opening new pages from the same site in different windows ; disabling the back button ; pop-ups ; too much content on one page ; unreadable fonts ; different layout for different pages (visitors should not have the impression they go to another website, while still on your site). Common nowadays is also to find pages that look OK in Internet Explorer, but a bit scrambled when viewed with Firefox (about 20% of users now, and most likely the most savvy surfers). That is so because Firefox follows your coding more strictly, while IE lets you get away with things. We strongly suggest you use Firefox yourself by the way.
- A final suggestion : Make sure you can be reached! Personally we think a direct e-mail link should maybe not be directly accessible from your entry page, but otherwise easily reached within your site. There are e-mail spiders around that try to find your address, in order to use it themselves or transfer the data to third parties. Many times they do not look further than your entry page though. As a further precaution you can always give your address without creating a direct link for e-mail. For example : you could indicate : contact AT yoursite DOT com (visitors have to type in the information themselves in their e-mail 'send to' box) instead of providing a direct link at contact@yoursite.com. However this is highly inconvenient to most users. Furthermore, we suggest you do not use a contact page where visitors have to fill out a form. This in our opinion is a real turn-off.
Links
Links on other websites to your pages are important. They may attract visitors to your site from other websites, and lots of links (or few links from important websites) will make your website get positive marks and higher listings in search engine results. This is simply because links pointing to you indicate that your site has relevant, interesting content.
The best and most appropriate way to work on this (and it takes some work) is to link to sites that you yourself find interesting and having content that is related to your own website. AFTER you link to such a site, you contact the webmaster, and tell him/her about it with a simple request for a link back. If you get no reply, so be it. After a while you remove your link to the site in question. Do not go asking around for links with the promise that you will link back afterwards.
For your links page we suggest you do not use third party software that generates link pages. Your link pages, and the link pages of other websites where you want to be listed, should contain direct links, not something redirected.
Ex. A link to your site should be : http://www.yoursite.com NOT something like : http://www.theirsite.com/link?id=529page=X5
The reason for this is that search engine spiders will not recognize your website this way, and you will not get any good marks for it. You should not bother with websites having links pages constructed in such a way.
Construct your links page within one click from your main page, and make sure that the links pages of other websites where you want to be listed, are easily accessible and not somewhere hidden. Avoid being listed on a third, fourth, fifth etc. links page that can only be reached by multiple clicks.
Provide a relevant description for your site for links purposes. Maybe it is beneficial to have different 'anchor texts' for links to your site.
The three and almost only relevant search engines are Google, Yahoo and MSN (in that order). You will get listed without doing anything in these engines, provided some websites link to you. If you just start up, you may submit your site (sometimes they may want to charge you money for rapid inclusion, or if you run a commercial website)
If possible, make sure you are listed at DMOZ.org and in the Yahoo directory.This is rather difficult to achieve in our opinion, but you should try it nevertheless. Being listed in these directories is considered important by certain search engines.
When exchanging links with other sites, it is important to ascertain that the site you are dealing with is not involved in selling or buying links otherwise. This is a hot issue, and sites that buy or sell links are being punished as we write this. Even if you do not buy or sell a link yourself, you may be implicated by association.
Try to be listed in important web directories in the country where you operate, or in directories that cater to your type of business. Search engines likely operate with the concept of 'Authority' websites, and being listed in relevant directories may promote your site. The identity of Authority websites is not really known. (that is the list is not published and recognized as such). For example, you should search for relevant directories and local search engines for Thailand, and have your site listed there. We suggest you get listed on this site actually.
Search Engines
A lot of information on how to get prominent ranking in search engines is discussed above. The two important parameters are : have lots of relevant (and original!) content, and have other sites linking to your site. Both necessitate a lot of work actually. Do not think that making a website is a one-time event. You need to constantly modify content and try to find different ways to promote your site.
Since most links will point to your entry page and this is the front page to the internet, your 'homepage' or entry page will usually be the most visible page of your website, and will most often show up in search engine results. Your relevant pages should all be connected to this page, and the importance of these pages will slowly increase over time. You can check your Google PageRank and the pagerank of other sites if you install the Google toolbar.
If you want to promote certain pages within your website, it is probably useful if you can find other websites linking not to your entry page, but directly to a page inside your website.
If you create your websites using dynamic code like ASP or PHP, we have a relevant advice based on our own experience. Do not use parameters in the URLs of your webpages! Try to construct your code in such a way that parameters are not needed.
Up to about a year ago we used parameters. Ex. to access our travel page we used this URL :
http://www.thaiwebsites.com/travel.asp?mode=travel
Nowadays we use this URL for the same page : http://www.thaiwebsites.com/travel.asp
We know by experience on this website and other websites we developed, that doing away with the parameters results in higher ranking, and presumably higher listings in search engine results.
By the way, we think that if your site is adequately listed in the major search engines, most of your web traffic will come through search engine results. If your traffic log tells you that most of your visitors come from links from other sites, and not from search engine results, you can still improve a lot and get more visitors. We can again point to this website. It is not clear how many websites, webpages and various directories link to our site, but it are many thousands of them. Nevertheless, we get about as many visitors through Google alone (not including Yahoo and MSN) as through these websites linking to us.
If you have a budget for it, and you intend on making money through your website, we think that advertising is valuable. In our opinion, this has to be done on a trial and error basis. You can select different important websites related to your activities and ask for their advertising rates. Alternatively, and possibly more economical, you can advertise through the search engines. It is not only the clicks to your site that count, but we have the impression, still experimenting with it, that is brings more 'visibility' to your site, and more visitors in the long run. You can probably benefit most if you can promote a domain name that is easily recognized and memorable. For example, Google nowadays also allows you to advertise on sites you select yourself. Prices go by number of impressions (something that is variable, usually within 2-10 US dollars per thousand impressions) Especially if you use some non-standard banners that contain information about your content, and clearly also containing your URL, you may gain brand recognition. Lots of websites run Google advertisements, and from our experience, it is cheaper to do it this way than to pay the rates asked by individual websites. On top of that, you can stop advertising anytime. Suppose that after one day and spending just 100 baht, you discover that very few people seem to notice your ads, you just stop (or look for another website). This is not possible at all when advertising through a direct arrangement with a website. Often you will be asked to pay several thousand baht for fixed longer periods.
Add-on : Copying of content.
Some unscrupulous webmasters go around copying content from other sites, and publishing it on their own websites. Of course, this is an infringement of copyright, and you may get into trouble for doing so. If you see a successful website, and think about this, think twice. It is a simple fact that search engines have a database of the content on the web, and are capable of looking for duplicate content. They may not ban your site outright, but you will be listed lower in their search results, since you have the content that appeared later in their database. Actually, we discovered a cluster of web directories regarding Thailand, that seem to have copied large chunks of our site. But, even after more than 2 years have passes, we do not notice they have any substantial success.
If you are looking for more on all this, this is probably as good a resource as any :
http://www.webmasterworld.com/
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