1st Nairaland Free Web Promotion & Digital Marketing Lesson For SMEs.

If you are a business owner just follow this thread and stay put as you will learn revealing tips and secret in digital (Internet) marketing. Simply reply with "following"

Ok. This course module will focus on five important areas of Web Promotion and Digital Marketing. Now these are methods I have spend more than $1000 acquiring but I am going to share them with YOU free. Of course some will be opportune to get some free materials as well. Please note that you may need to seek professional help to implement some of the strategies I will be sharing. If you have any question, drop it below

Lesson 1 - Web Design Methodology and SEO Promotion

Lesson 2 - Top 10 Must Have Social Media Marketing Platform

Lesson 3 - Top 7 Business Directories to list your business and methodology

Lesson 4 - Top 7 ways to accept payment online

Lesson 5 - 30+ Ways to promote your business and online presence

...loading...

Following

Lesson 1 - Web Design Methodology and SEO Promotion

Introduction
"We don’t need a website, all our work comes from word of mouth." "We already have more clients than
we can comfortably manage”. “A website would be nice to have, but I do not have time to organize
it.” "Who would write the content?”

These are common, compelling reasons why many SMEs and firms do not have a website or have one that is basic at best and amateurish at worst. However, a great website is a 24/7 shop window that can showcase your firm’s expertise, people and specialist
knowledge.

Internet World Stats reports that an estimated population of 45 million Nigerians has access to the Internet
as at May 2013. With the prolific growth of the World Wide Web, it has become a necessity for businesses to have a
professional Website in order to maintain their competitive edge. The design and maintenance of a
professional Website poses several challenges. This lesson provides an insight into the different types
of Websites and the existing methodologies for design and deployment of Websites.

...loading...

Lesson 1, Section 1 - Types of Websites
It is possible to categorize most Websites into the following types:

Simple Intro Page
In this case, the Website is just a glorified business card. It is a static, one page site, which
provides a little introduction about the business and the contact information.

Electronic Brochure
This type of Website provides more information about the company and the products or services.
However, it resembles an electronic brochure in that the content never really changes.
Statistics show that majority of Websites fall under this category.

Keeps Fresh Content
This type of Website is a step above the Electronic Brochure website in that the site owners take some
effort to change the content on a periodic basis. Majority of such sites have a News or Events section that
provides the latest happenings at the organization. The more elaborate sites will have frequent facelifts
for the site to keep a fresh look and feel. However, these sites are still considered static in that they do not
allow the Web visitors to interact with the organization in any way.
The most they allow would be a contact form or request for more information etc.

Allows Interaction
This type of Website is considered dynamic in the sense that it allows its Web members to perform
Online Services. The Web visitors are encouraged to become Web members in order to gain access to the
members only areas of the website. The login section and other services are database driven and provide
the Web users with predefined services that are common to all Members.

Integrated with Business Processes
This type of Website provides the most functionality because the front-end services are integrated with
the back-end databases. In this case, when a Web member logs-in, the Website provides them with a
menu of services that are specific for them. The site recognizes the user who has logged in and then
customizes the Online Services that the user can perform.

...loading...

Lesson 1, Section 2 - Web Authoring Tools

All Websites are designed using Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). HTML allows users to specify
the content of the Website and the layout commands which control how the content is displayed. Over the
years, webmasters have used the following methods to create Websites:

Direct HTML coding
In the early days, webmasters used to create website primarily by programming HTML layout commands
directly with the content of the website. This made the process very cryptic and creating websites
required a thorough understanding of HTML and its options.

<html>
<head>
<title>Home Page</title>
</head>
<body>
<div align="center">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
<tr><td width="100%">
<h1 align="center"><font color="#800000">P C Solutions (www.pcsomaha.net)</font></h1>
</td></tr>
</table>
</div>
</body>
</html>

Website Editors
The next generation of Websites got created using Website Editors like Microsoft FrontPage® or
DreamWeaver®.
They allowed users to create Web pages using WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You
Get) editors. Now users could focus on adding content and format it using tools that resemble
word processing tools.

The Editor would then create all the HTML Layout commands to format the content for the Web.
While the Website Editors make it simple for many people to author their own Websites, they are
focused on Page-by-Page Layout and publishing. That meant that anytime a new page was added to
the site, the designers would have to manually specify the layout and formatting of the page.
This led to several inconsistencies on the Website. The most prevalent problem was that of Inconsistent
Navigation. When new sections or pages were added to the Website, the navigation on some pages did
not get updated to reflect those changes. Other problems included different look and feel for different
pages for the Website, use of different colors on different pages, use of different fonts and type sizes for
different pages, etc.
All these issues defeated the marketing and branding efforts of the organization!

Content Management Systems
The problems posed by the Page-by-Page authoring systems led to the creation of Content
Management Systems (CMS). These systems allow Webmasters to program the layout of the Website
into the CMS and then allow users to add content by filling the content into appropriate fields of a form.
All content gets stored in a database and the web pages are created using the CMS.

...loading...

For the Nigeria SMEs, we will discuss two recommended platform to owing your business website. Both platform allow you to have a unique domain name i.e. www.YourBusinessName.com

1. CMS Platform (Highly recommended)

2. Google GNBO. (Very Basic site)

..loading...

Lesson 1, Section 3 - Content Management System

Making Your Job Easier
Using a content management system for your site makes your job a
whole lot easier when creating pages for your site. For example to
create a new page in Joomla, all you need to do is log into the admin
area, create new page and start writing, publish, and voila, you have a
new page on your site. The page is automatically created, it is search
engine friendly, and it's ready for indexing by the search engines.
Link: http://www.joomla.org (Home Page)

If you're looking for alternatives to Joomla, I recommend that you take
a look at the list that I’ve posted below. These are the more popular
alternatives that are in use by many webmasters.
1) Name: Xoops
URL: http://www.xoops.org
2) Name: GeekLog
URL: http://www.geeklog.net
3) Name: PHPNuke
URL: http://www.phpnuke.org
4) Name: Joomla
URL: http://www.drupal.org
4) Name: Wordpress
URL: http://www.wordpress.org

The CMS scripts that I’m about to list are not as popular or
mainstream as the ones mentioned above, but are solid alternatives.
I’ve personally used these two scripts because of the ease of use.

Name: EazyPortal
URL: http://www.eazyportal.com
Name: SNews
URL: http://www.solucija.com/home/snews/

When reviewing each script the most important aspect for your search
engine optimization is "Search Engine Friendly URLS". If it is not listed
as a feature, then do not use the script, as the goal is to create your
site in such a way that it is easy for the search engines to find and
spider your website.

...loading...

Lesson 1, Section 4 - Hiring Programmers

I know that some people may not be technical users and may not
know how to create a database and install scripts, or may prefer that
someone installs the script for them. If you fall into this category, then
you can hire a programmer to install your script for a fee. I've listed
below sites you can use to hire programmers to do the following:

Website Design
Script Installation
PHP Programming

When hiring a programmer to install your script, customize or design
your site, always check for references. Specifically ask for any
examples of sites they have created in the past, preferably relating to
the script you need installed or re-designed. These sites allow you to
post a project that will then allow programmers to compete by placing
bids for the rights to complete your project.

1) Name: Scriptlance
URL: http://www.scriptlance.com
2) Name: GetAFreelancer
URL: http://www.getafreelancer.com
3) Name: RentAcoder
URL: http://www.rentacoder.com
4) Name: Guru
URL: http://www.guru.com
5) Name: E-Lance
URL: http://www.elance.com

The five sites above are very popular and you can easily find a
programmer who can help you with the installation and design of your
content management system. Please take note I am just providing the
information in case you prefer to have someone install the script for
you. If you can follow the instructions that each script provides, you
should be able to install on your own without issues. It is also
important to note that, if using Drupal as your content management
script, help can be found in the forums.

My Recommendation:
Take a stab at installing the script yourself. If you have any issues,
review the support forums and help manuals. If after that, you are still
experiencing problems, then you can ask for help in the forums. You
may get lucky and someone will help you. Otherwise, you can
use the sites I have listed to have an experienced programmer install
your script and perhaps even re-design it to give it a 100% original
look. Better still ask a Nairalander.

...loading...

Lesson 1, Section 5 - Google GNBO Website

The Internet is fast becoming the first place customers go to find information on products and services they want to buy from businesses like yours.

As the power of the internet grows, so do the opportunities for small businesses. The internet is already contributing 1% a year to Nigeria's economy, and that is set to rise even more over the next 3 years.

That is why the Get Nigerian Businesses Online program was developed. It has been Google way of helping small businesses, just like yours, to create a website and get a slice of the action. Many people take that first step.

To continue our commitment to giving you the easiest and most effective means of having an online presence, the most flexible tools, and support whenever you need it, Google is evolving their suite of offerings for small business owners with the launch of Google My Business in Nigeria.

My Experience
I have a website I continue to host on this platform, fully customized. I spent only N1700 every year to renew the domain but I make at least N100,000 from it every year. That is simply because I do not have time to promote it. However, the profit is still worth the investment.

For just N1500 or N1700 cost of domain annually, you can own a website. To get started visit: http://www.gnbo.com.ng/

Before I forgot, just like the CMS platform, you can setup your own GNBO website. But the site is such a powerful tool and require professional setup to bring out the potential. For about N5000, you should get someone to help you with the setup.

That will do for today. Take some time to visit the site above and find out which of the web platform will be best for your business. i.e. Google GNBO or CMS website.

See you in tomorrow class. Please drop all your questions here.

Free tool for today

BrowserShots: http://browsershots.org (free online tool)
Use this site to view how your website look in various browsers.

Welldone......looking forward to today's class.

When do we get to ask questions?

cremeandchic: Welldone......looking forward to today's class.

When do we get to ask questions?

You can ask question anytime. I will reply

Welcome to today's class. Sorry I took some time. We are still on lesson one. Today we will focus on SEO promotion

Lesson One, Section six - Search Engine Methodology
What's in a Search Engine?
To effectively optimize for search engines and to better understand
what's really happening, there is value in knowing how modern search
algorithms work. This lesson will walk through the creation of a
hypothetical search engine, and will show how this impacts search
engine optimization.

Step One: Make a List of URLs and Crawl Them
Before anything can be done, a list of URLs needs to be retrieved to
initially crawl. The most popular option for this is to load the URLs in
the DMOZ database. These aren't the only sites that will be crawled.
The pages linked to by sites in the DMOZ directory are also crawled
since the crawler follows the links. It certainly helps to be in DMOZ,
especially if you don't have enough links from other sites to be sure
that you'll be sufficiently crawled.
Now, a group of computers are set up to download all of the pages on
the list. These are called the "crawlers." They will also look at the links
on those pages, and crawl those URLs as well (the crawlers will
continue following links until their hard drives are full).

Step Two: Analyze the Pages
The crawlers now go through each page and look at their content.
First, the crawler makes a table with every unique word on the page.
It gives "points" to each word based on how many times it's used on
the page, and words in bold, in the title, in meta tags, or in headers
are given extra points.
Word Points
shoes 145
athletic 78
sneakers 34
sandals 12
(etc.)
This means that you should use the most important words more often
in your text. However, using a word too often will mark your page as being spam,
which will cause the crawler to delete your site from its
database. It then creates a percentage of the frequency of each term:

Word Points Percentage
shoes 145 5.80%
athletic 78 3.12%
sneakers 34 1.36%
sandals 12 0.48%
(etc.)

Usually, the percentages are stored in the database and not the actual
points, though longer pages may be given a slight advantage later on.
As a result, adding a lot of unnecessary text that uses one term a lot
will raise your percentage for that term, but will also lower the
percentage for other terms.
More advanced engines will also cross-reference each word to other
major words based on where they are relative to each other. (Words
appearing next to each other are given more points here.) So, for example:

Word shoes athletic sneakers sandals
shoes - 20 12 7
athletic 20 - 11 4
sneakers 12 11 - 5
sandals 7 4 5 -
As a result, the placement of words relative to each other does matter.
This is why targeting phrases is usually better than targeting a variety of single words.

Calculate Link Popularity
The crawlers now take their lists of the URLs that each page links to
and combine them. So for each page there is now a list of the links on
it, as well as the text of each link. The list is then reversed, so that
instead of showing the links on each page, it shows for each page the sites that link to it.

Some search engines stop here and simply store the number of links
pointing to a given page, but Google takes it a little further.
For every page in its database, Google gives it "points" based on how
many links are going to it--just like any other search engine. Then, it
re-calculates the number of links pointing to each page, but gives
more points to links that had a higher point-value themselves in the
first count. It then repeats the process about 100 times, each time
making the points more accurate. So:

1. Points are assigned based on the number of links going to a
page.
2. Points are calculated again, but pages get more points if the
links going to a page had more points in the last step. (Because
Yahoo! had a lot of links going to it in the first step, a link from
Yahoo! would now be more valuable.)
3. The original point values are thrown out and are replaced with
the points just calculated. Now, the points are re-calculated
again, this time considering the points from Step 2 instead of
Step 3. This is repeated approximately 100 times, and every
time the points become more accurate (because it considers
further down the line where links are coming from).
Now, Google takes the point values--which could be extraordinarily
large--and converts them to a PageRank, which is on a scale of 0 to 10.
However, it does not simply convert, for example, 1,000 to 1 and
2,000 to 2. The scale is logarithmic, which means that higher
PageRanks require much more points.

WebmasterGoodies has an approximation of what the ranges most
likely are--look at the first three columns. The actual ranges aren't
available to the public, but the ranges on that site are believed to be
fairly close. Obviously, a logarithmic scale makes a difference: PR1
requires 6 to 30 "points," while PR10 requires more than 25 million
points.

Now What?
Search engines put the databases into a specialized format, and then
write the search software.
When a search is made, every site containing the relevant terms is
pulled up. The ranking is based on a combination of the points for each relevant term,
the site's link popularity (PageRank), and other smaller
factors. Each engine weighs these differently.
You should now have a better understanding of what's happening
under the hood of the search engine, and this should help in optimizing your pages as well.

Next lesson will be tomorrow. Take sometime to understand how search engine works

If you have any question, you can ask before we move on