Is your website getting great traffic? Are pageviews and other metrics improving or stable? How many pages does the average visitor read on your site? If the answers to these questions are negative, you need to find ways to boost page views and increase website traffic immediately.

More pageviews means more opportunity to advertise products & services.

There are a few ways you can improve your website’s pageviews. These tips are not blackhat or unethical in anyway. They’re simple solutions that become force multipliers.

With the expense and time involved in driving raw visitors to your site, you need fixes and updates that can be done once and allow your site to capitalize on it’s user base overtime.

Increases in page views can greatly increase income or even jump start earnings where there weren’t any. What usually stimulates multiple page views is relevancy. The more specific and targeted a website, or section of a website is, the more likely there will be a click on a similar page. It’s instinctive and impulsive for highly related pages to have an appeal to users.

Interlinking, popular pages and related pages

Always link to other pages within the body of your content. If this is a blog or article type site, and the site is highly targeted, there will be plenty of opportunity to link to related pages within the paragraphs. This is called interlinking and is pretty much common practice among the pros.

Related pages can be displayed just below the article or somewhere close to the main content of the page. These pages must be similar in topic to the current page’s content but with a slightly different focus. This will take advantage of users who are generally interested in the broader topic.

Popular pages, especially for article sites, can be displayed on a sidebar or footer area. This is a great way to drive hits to already successful pages. I would recommend having a tabbed box on the sidebar with one tab for popular pages and another for Editor favorites. This is great for promoting pages with lower page views. If it’s a simple corporate site, then a main nav is a must on all pages.

If there is sparse opportunity for interlinking, try displaying small summaries of current pages on the sidebar, footer or header areas with a link to read more. This will work great for services, testimonials and other rich content pages.

RSS Feeds & Other Syndication Channels

To draw the user back to your site, display a synopsis of articles in RSS feeds and make the user click to view the full article on your site. This is not recommended if you are tracking RSS views and have RSS ads.

When syndicating entire articles, making sure the links within the body has an absolute URL. This means that the entire domain is included in the link. If this is not in place, then links will point to the current syndication site or simply be dead.

Other types of syndication includes content scrapers, article directories, product databases, etc. The main thing here is making sure your inner article links are in place and pointing to your site. You also want to make sure that there is proper attribution with a link back to your home page.

Member Profiles, Author Profile and About Page

Your site may have a good amount of steady users and participators. Require membership for social interactions and give a profile with a backlink as a benefit. This allows you to get additional content for your site that’s user driven. This will greatly increase page views.

The same for Authors, if there is more than one author, allow profiles and make them public. As for the About page, that’s like the profile for the website. Create a great about page. You will be surprised that a large portion of users read the about page intently. Use it to highlight content, and link to that content.

Categories List, Archives and Search Form

3 of the most powerful ways to increase pageviews is with an easy to access categories list, archives list and a search form. These make it easy for users to find the content they’re interested in, thereby increasing site traffic.

A categories list is the lazy mans search. All content is neatly arranged and users can find something their interested in within seconds. Place this on the side bar or a separate page for maximum effect. Usually blogs will have a link to the category the post is in. Utilize this built in feature to increase hits to that category.

Take it a step further and provide an archives list that’s well presented, and arranged by date. This will compliment the categories list and drive pageviews up. Put the archives on the sidebar or a separate page like the categories.

Another very useful item is a search form (and technology to accompany). Most blog software have search technology built in. Utilize this to satisfy users with immediate needs. The search form should be clearly visible and provide a clean, easy to read list of results.

Social postings, Sharing, Emailing a Friend

Use Facebook, Twitter and other social networks to spread the word about your business. Post about every new article or page on twitter. Chat about casual related information and offer promotions on Facebook.
Use share and like buttons. Every time someone clicks one of those buttons, there entire friends list can see a post about your page. This also applies to email a friend buttons. People love sharing content, encourage them to.

Conclusion

There are many ways to boost pageviews without spending more time or money driving raw hits. Provide links to other content and especially if it’s related to the content the user is reading. Syndicate your content and let other websites promote your pages.

Make sure to add links to older pages, popular pages and user profiles. Also social buttons and interactions will increase website traffic because this is part of the search algorithm now.

5 Ways to Increase Website Traffic by Boosting Pageviews is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

In this guide I will teach you how to get an online business started so fast it will make your head spin. Oh, and this will cost you no more than 20 dollars.

You might think I’m crazy.

But I’ll show you how anyone with the passion and desire to make money online or even run a none-for-profit can have the foundation of their business established in ONE DAY.

Now I’m not about to give you some vague BS. I will give precise instructions and even files and scripts to download and use. I will tell you where to go and what to buy.

I must warn you that this is not a how to make money guide. Rather, this is a production blueprint to get your site built and published. I will not discuss things like taxes, or how to incorporate. Those are formalities that can be dealt with before or after production is done.

What is the bare bones of websites.

Websites can seem like complex things. And to most people they are . But, you should not be concerned about a website’s deeper technical specifications. Because what you will have to deal with is absolutely easy as a child’s toy to understand.

There are millions of plug and play software available that can handle most types of website models. Limit your quest for knowledge only to the most important things that drive foot, phone or click traffic. That means leads. This will cut your setup work down to just a day.

What technology to use and how will this affect the deadline.

You will need the usual things…like hosting, domain and the actual software that runs the site. Because acquiring these things is relatively easy and usually takes only a few minuets to install, this makes it dramatically faster than setting up a brick and mortar business. It’s also much faster than the conventional way of setting up a website.

It’s important that a software package is used for your site because it’s free to get and more advanced than 90% of websites.

What I’m talking about is free and Open Source Content Management Systems. These are Drupal, Joomla, WordPress and hundreds more.

For this guide I will use WordPress and recommend you do also. Although other CMS software are relatively easy to setup and have similar features, I feel WP is the most versatile, has a very large community of developers and users and have thousands of plugins and themes available for free.

The actual work…step by step

Setting up the server.

Go to Godaddy.com, check for that domain you’ve had your eye on and register it. They might be offering a first year discount on the domain if you take hosting. Go ahead and do that, take the plan costing around 6 bucks and add nothing else to the order.

When you check out the total cost should not be more than 11 dollars. Only notable option during this process is choosing your server type and configuration. I would pick Linux with PHP5+ and MySQL 5+.

Accessing server.

Check the email you used at checkout, grab your username and password info and login to the hosting control panel. In case you have to create new login info, login directly to Godaddy, click on the hosting link on the left menu.

Then click manage account to the right of the domain name. Once inside the hosting panel, click the big button close to the top that says Your Applications. This will take you to the Godaddy Hosting Connection.

Installing WordPress.

On the left menu of the hosting connection, click the link that says Blog. Then click on WordPress. Now go ahead and install WordPress here. Document any username or passwords you choose for future reference.

This will take a few hours. Only notable option here is choosing to install the software in a sub folder instead of the main root folder. Select the main root folder.

Setting up File Access.

You will need to access the raw files of the website. You will need to upload some files and the most efficient way is to use an FTP Client. Download a free and popular one called FileZilla. When it’s installed and opened, click the File option at the top left and select Site Manager. In the site manager click New Site, give it a name, and make the host www.yoursite.com. Select logontype as normal and enter the username and password you just created for your hosting account.

Then hit connect. You should be logged in to the root of the site if all goes fine. If authentication fails, then go back to the hosting panel, click Settings and then Manage Ftp Users. There you can create a new user. Assign rights to the user for the root folder.

Configuring WordPress.

Go to the login page by typing into the address bar www.yoursite.com/wp-login.php. If the page shows a login form, then enter the login details you created during installation. And you should be taken to the Administration area of your website. If the form is not there or you get an error, then installation is not complete.

The first thing you want to do here is go to the Settings menu on the bottom left. Select General from the drop down options. Give your site a Title, and a Tagline which usually appears below the logo. You might want to also adjust your time zone and date settings. Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

Next you will go back to Settings menu and select Permalinks. Change the setting to Month and Name or just select custom and enter /%postname%/. Save Changes at bottom.

And that’s it…your website is now configured on a basic level and ready for content and advance configuration. Up to this point all of this should have taken you less than 3 hours.

With other hosting companies, it should take no more than 5 hours. And that’s stretching it. Now you can visit your website at www.yoursite.com and see your new site in action.

Advanced Configuration of WordPress.

I could leave you high and dry here with your new website, but it would be cruel. So I will tell you how to do some upper level configuration to bring your website up to professional standards.

The first thing you will notice after the initial setup is that your site is an ugly standard looking thing. You have to bring it alive. One way of doing this is by selecting a different Theme. You can build one your self or hire a professional, but that’s not the point here. We want it quick and cheap.

So you can Google “free wordpress themes” and there will be thousands to choose from. Find something you like and download it. Unzip and upload the entire theme folder.

To do this use the FTP Program mentioned above and simply drag the theme folder to sub folder wp-content/themes. After the theme is uploaded, login to the admin system where you did the basic configuration. Here you will go to Appearance menu on the left side, and select Themes. Select the theme you just uploaded and activate it.

Now go to the site and see the new theme in effect. Don’t worry if it might be used by others, after your site matures a little, the theme will take on a look of its own. Also a little bit of styling down the line will completely set it apart from other sites.

You will also need a few plugins to enhance the system. These are commonly used and can make a big difference to the optimization of your site. Get the plugins here. Unzip and upload them individually (in their respective folders) to wp-content/plugins using FileZilla or other FTP program.

Configuring Plugins.

To configure the plugins, the first thing to do is activate them. Do this by going back to the admin page, go to Plugins menu and select Installed. This will give you a list of plugins in the system, Activate the plugins you installed. You can leave Hello Dolly and Askemit disabled for now.

Once activated you will get a warning for the All In One SEO Pack. Click the link it gives and this will take you to the configuration page. Enable the plugin, fill in Title, Description, and Keywords then save changes.

Now go to Settings menu on left and select Google XML Sitemap and check if the sitemap was built. This will be displayed right at the top of the page.

If all seems well, go back to Settings and select Privacy Policy, this will build your privacy page and allows you to make edits as needed.

There are lots of plugins besides these you can install. Feel free to add whatever you need as your site grows. You can find additional plugins by selecting add new from the Plugins menu on the left.

Running tests and basic SEO.

Try to test the system by creating pages and posts and checking the site itself to make sure updates are working. Also test the comment forms and move through the system to verify there are no unusual errors.

If you do encounter an error, not to worry, there are plenty of free resources available online to help. WordPress it self has a wiki called codex, that provides solutions to most questions.

Each page you edit will have the SEO fields at the bottom of the edit page. Just enter title, description and keywords as needed. This will go a long way towards optimizing the site for search engines. You will want to enter a max of 120 characters for title, 160 for description and at least 3 keywords.

Recap.
Setting up a website is no longer a highly technical issue. Most hosts offer one click install of many Content Management Systems, and other useful software. Setting up the domain, hosting and CMS is a very quick process. Adding plugins and themes is also a very easy and quick process.

If you follow this guide, the only problem you might run into is the ftp access. In which case you can bypass this and use the internal FTP client offered by Godaddy. To access this, simply go to the hosting control panel, select Content and then FTP Client. Other hosting companies probably have a similar feature.

Now go ahead and spend the next 5-10 hours creating content. Please note: Newly registered sites will take a few days to display in the web browser. To view your site use the ip address provided by the hosting company in substitution for www.yoursite.com. This is usually in the welcome emails or it can be accessed from the hosting control panel.

Also, if the Google XML plugin failed to build the sitemap, there are plenty of sites that will build one for you. Simply upload it to the root of the site.

Rapid Website Setup in Only a Few Hours is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

Too many people rush into the development of their website without any initial planning. I will offer some advice and insight into the way you prepare your goals for a website setup project.

The first thing you need to consider is demand. What kind of demand is there for what your website will be offering. This is called the market. Rarely does a new company create a market for their product or services. Most enter an already established market where others have proven success. You will want to spend some time researching and tweaking your offerings to match.

The next thing to take into account is promotion. How will you promote the site. Do you have an advertising budget? If you don’t, do you have the time or man power to do free promotions? Think seriously about this, because it will make a any top notch site fail miserably or achieve great success. You have to promote it. You will often not get free love from search engines. If you do, then the market you chose above is seriously under served.

Another thing to consider is site features. Please do not think that all the fancy buttons and slick sliders is what has to be on a site. Think practically about what your visitors will need to do to convert for you. Adding filler features may do more harm than good. Often it’s the users that will request certain features added to a site. Only then will you truly know what they want. Weigh that against what you want and come to some kind of balance that benefits both parties.

Now this is not nearly the complete list of things to consider before website development starts. But they are the core of the pre plan faze and spending some time on this will only help you towards your ultimate goal of having a successful online business.

How to Pre Plan a Website Before Development is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

User Interface Design refers to the production of the system Users will interact with. This can be a website, a content management system, applications, software, wireless devices and more.

I will cover 5 common mistakes website developers make when designing the user’s system. Although this topic is extensive with many advance principles, I will try to cover these mistakes generally when related to website design. Principles for software and physical gadgets will not be touched on in this guide. After identifying problem areas I will outline several improvement techniques you can use to increase usability on your website.

Navigation

The navigation of your website is difficult to understand. Various items are not related or collated properly and seems jumbled. Users are often frustrated when moving through the site and bump up to screens they didn’t expect. Often there is a learning curve which increases demand for support.

Labels & Messages

Labels are confusing. success and error messages are vague and not informative enough. Users don’t understand what is being asked or what is being stated. They are stuck making guesses about what just happened or have to take a risk when moving through screens. This makes users feel like they have no control.

Color Schemes

The screen is hard to look at and strain the eyes. The background color is too bright or the text doesn’t stand out enough. The color combination seem ugly and displeasing. Indicators and sections are not properly marked and distinguishable.

Simplicity of Use

Users find it difficult to get to the areas they want. Often moving through several screens and moving back and forth to complete a simple task. The system is hard to learn or understand even after several visits. There are no quick routs to important and commonly used areas. There are also no apparent guiding instructions or labels.

Misuse Considerations

When a user makes a mistake there is no recovery or fallback options. Double clicking on payment buttons create double charges or create duplicate entries. Sometimes the use of a character throws the whole system off or causes warnings. The abandonment of forms for previous screens is almost impossible. The system locks up with hyper movement through screens.

These are 5 common mistakes Developers make when creating a User Interface. It is important that these problems are addressed before production begins. Understanding how your system will be employed by your users is critical to success.

Next I will expand on these points and provide some solutions to help improve the overall usability of your website or web application.

How to improve usability of a website, have happy users and increase revenues.

The point of a good design is to make the interface easy to use and fulfill the users needs. Moving through your website or web application screens should be simple. Using the system should not be difficult or leave a person frustrated. The movement from one item to another should be logical and almost predictable. The physical layout should conform to Western standards; that is text is done from left to right and top to bottom.

When designing the navigational structure of your application, several considerations must be taken. The movement of the users as they go from one screen to the next. This is called flow. Drawing a flow diagram will allow you to visualize the necessary steps a user must take to fulfill the use of the system correctly. Build the navigation in a way that directs the user from one item to the next. Group similar options together and enforce a Hierarchy or separation of controls. Clearly defining main sections from subsections. It it also important that the navigation options are easy to see and use.

This leads into design of the labels and messages. When something happens based on the users input, give some sort of signal that it was a successful change or an error occurred. These signals must be properly communicated and fully understood by the user. All items must be properly labeled so the user knows where they are in the program. This entails not just adding labels and messages, but making it clear and not vague.

As for color choices, this is usually obvious but mistakes are common. Colors should contrast or balance each other. Dark background demands light text, and dark text needs light backgrounds. Some people may have problems seeing colors, in this case another way of making colored items stand apart is critical. One set of colors should be used through out the site. This helps maintain consistency.

Making commonly used and important tasks easy to complete, navigate to and understand will effect the overall ease of use of your system. Menus and screens should be logically presented and predictable to some degree. Guides and instructions must be presented for complex transactions between the user and the system. And also simplification of forms and multi-screen processes.

If a user should make a mistake there should be an attempt to provide the ability to undo changes. Double clicks should be suppressed and ignored unless intended otherwise. There must be some advance filtering of input data to reject special characters that may throw an error or produce undesirable results. Users often abandon forms and try to go back to the previous screens. This must be allowed to some degree, but not forgetting security considerations. Sometimes a user will hyper surf, jumping from screen to screen above normal speeds. Some kind of cache should be in effect to reduce server loads for screens previously loaded in the same session.

This is just a general overview of how to improve your User Interface design. Make it easy to use, easy to understand and this will improve usability. Consider the user and their movements through the system. Provide clear labels and messages and provide a fail safe for misuse.

User Interface Design Improvements in 5 Critical Areas is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

What is standards compliance?

Standards Compliance refers to a set of best practice principles that can govern any given industry including web development. There are a few organizations that regulate these principles, most notably the World Wide Web Consortium. Web Browsers and other web interfaces are often developed to comply with the standards the W3C puts forth. If a website is not validated as complying with these principles, then there might be errors in the final output.

How important is it?

Being standard compliant is not the end all be all of web development. I have websites that are validated and a few that are not. In many cases, a site validates 100%, but other dynamic elements might bring that down a few points. If your site validates as Standard Compliant, some directories might list you just for that reason. In fact it can improve your sites overall ranking on many search engines. This also improves how many devices can actually interpret your site accurately, which is directly linked to the amount of users that will find you.

Shortcuts and Tips

Achieving full or almost full compliance is not that difficult. Many software and applications used for web development can help find errors in a site. For example; Dreamweaver has an option that allows this. The web development extension for Firefox can help you here also. And the number one place to go is validator.w3.org.

W3.org also offers a corrected, fully compliant version of any unvalidated pages.

Conclusion

Standard compliance is very useful as a search engine optimization method, and insuring proper compatibility with various devices. Although some might overlook this for various reasons, the benefits are clear. It’s a good idea to check your code for errors at various intervals of production, avoiding simple mistakes. But generally, validation is done as part of the final edit and review process.

What is Standards Compliance? is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

Some example HTML for the busy web developer.

When I started building websites, I often looked for ready made blocks of code I can quickly customize and deploy. Often these would be Tables. I never really figured out how to write a table from scratch and have it layout the way I intend.

So here goes.

This is two rows and two columns. A square with four partitions. The letters represent where information is placed from left to right.

This is one row (or column).

This is four rows and fours columns, but with a twist. The top row is joined to make one.

This is similar to the above, four rows and fours columns, but with this the first column or left most column is joined to make one.

Another set I find very useful is lists.

For un-ordered list

For ordered list (numbered)

I will leave you with something a little more advanced, a styled list box. This box will be styled locally for easy cut and past. But I would suggest moving the style into an external style sheet.

it should look like this

HTML examples useful in the basic web page is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

Images on the web are not implemented like your favorite magazines. There are a number of things you must know in order to properly add and optimize images using HTML (and maybe Photoshop). These are:

1. Editing images
2. Creating custom art
3. Integrating images
4. Understanding Copyrights.

Let me discuss these briefly;

Editing Images

It’s said…by who? I don’t know, that you can tell how experienced a person is in managing a website by how they use images. Worried? If you are, then the terms bellow might be helpful.

• Pixels – how images are usually measured.
• Canvas – the space an image can occupy.
• Width – length (in pixels) from left to right.
• Height – length (in pixels) from top to bottom.
• Image Size – Width and Height of actual picture, not the canvas.
• Canvas Size – Width and Height of Canvas, not the actual picture.
• Distorted – A negative visual interpretation.
• Crop – reduce length of Width and Height of the Canvas
• Re-size – reduce or enlarge actual picture, not Canvas.
• .png, .gif, .jpg, .bmp – common file formats for web images.

Creating Custom Art

Of course we all know graphic art can be done by hand. With the invent of the scanner, this old form of expression is not lost. Now I’m no graphic expert, but I do have strong pencil art skills. These (hand) abilities did not transfer easily to the personal computer. In fact, unless I have a digital pen, I can’t draw crap on the computer.

For the creativity that exists in so many of us, there are bountiful amounts of software that can assist. Adobe Photoshop is one such tool. Oh, and what a powerful application it is, allowing professional grade image editing.

Integrating Images

Integrate, install, program, upload, style are all terms associated with the publishing of images to the Internet.

Adding an image to a web page is as simple as <img src=” ” alt=” ” />, with the value of src being the URL to the image. Of course the image must reside online and accessible via a web browser. The alt is optional but recommended as an alternative text if the URL is missing, incorrect or the image is unavailable on the server.

To upload an image, use an FTP program to access the server or a control panel provided by the host.

Understanding Copyrights

If an image did not originate with you, where it came from is unknown, no one gave permission to use it either in writing or verbally, then don’t publish it on your website or anywhere for that matter. There are serious financial consequences for using Copyrighted Materials without permission.

The same for images originating with you. If they are copyrighted or a date of creation can be verified then your rights may be protected. Now this is certainly not a substitute for legal advise, but protecting your assets is very important.

Conclusion

Images online can be tricky. It’s also very important website owners understand the significance it has in web presentations. With the ability to easily negatively or positively impact the bottom line, images should be used wisely.

Using HTML to Insert an Image is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

Web Design is a lot of fun, if you know what you’re doing. Otherwise it can be time consuming and frustrating. Taking the time to learn the basic principles of this field is very rewarding. In the process, many new opportunities will present themselves.

A Website is a multi-media presentation in a virtual space we call the World Wide Web. We are able to use this space for storing files and folders. The files may or may not have content “written” onto them. Content is constructed of various characters. It is the combination of these that produce Software Programs. These programs will be experienced by the user through a Web Browser or other Web Interface.

A person may possess several skills or just one to participate in the development process. Regardless of your position on the team; there are basics every person involved in web design should know.

1. What is a Domain Name, and how do I get one?
2. What is a Host?
3. What is FTP?
4. What is HTML?

What is a Domain Name and how do I get one? A Domain Name (a.k.a. URL – Uniform Resource Locator) is a alpha and/or numeric representation of a computer’s IP Address. An example of a Domain Name is www.YourDomain.com. It is not case sensitive. A maximum of 63 characters (excluding extension) can be used. Any amount can be registered annually for less than twenty dollars each.

What is a Host? A Host is a company that rents space on their computer network usually to store web site files. Hosting is a bit more expensive than registering a domain. You can obtain hosting online for less than twenty dollars a month. There are also free hosting providers available. Larger companies usually host there own sites. In which case it’s usually referred to as the server.

What is FTP? File Transfer Protocol is what’s referred to when the term F-T-P is used. Simply put, it’s a Domain Name that requires a username and password login to view and edit the contents. Usually desktop software is used to access these files. FTP is used as a secure option for access to your host’s computer where your files are stored.

What is HTML? Hyper Text Markup Language is the basic programming language used for Website Design. Even if you are not a programmer, you should understand how HTML work. HTML standards are maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium.

Web Design encompasses several skill set, but a thorough understanding of the basics of domains, hosting, FTP and HTML is important for the best results. Many people think it’s not important to have at least a basic understanding of these principles, but they are wrong. If you intend to be a website owner, then knowing the above will only strengthen your online presence and improve the site’s overall impact.

What is a Domain Name, Host, FTP and HTML? is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

What really is HTML?

Before you start to learn HTML, I must tell you what it is.  It means Hyper Text Markup Language. As per the definition of a language, it is a combination of symbols that serves as a form of communicating.

It allows communication with each other via a computer (machine). Effectively, we talk to the computer using this language and it’s presented to others (users) in a format they can understand. This format is usually text, images, video and audio.

HTML symbols are a combination of 1 or more letters enclosed by angle brackets ( <, > ) and are called Tags or Elements.

For example “<body>, </body>“.

The first being the opening tag and the 2nd being the closing tag. Quotation not included of course.

A basic HTML web page

When coding a web page, always remember that Tags must match case. In other words, lowercase opening tags must follow with lowercase closing tags. I wouldn’t recommend using uppercase in Tags.

You can copy the above example HTML page into a blank text file and save it as “basic.html“. It’s important you are able to edit file extensions. Once the file name is updated, simply double click it and the web browser should load with your new page.

At the very top of the screen on the (usually) blue bar is the title of your page and in the main area is the content.

To Recap

There are many tags to use when writing HTML. To get a feel for how pages are constructed, simply browse to your favorite site, press and hold ctrl + U and you will see the source of the page. Here you will get an idea of how others write web pages.

Learn HTML Coding Starting Today is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com