Did you ever wonder how search results in search engines are arranged? The answer is search engine optimization (also known as SEO). Optimized websites have higher page ranks and it appears more frequent on search engines. The more optimized it is, the greater the chance of getting it to the first page.
The huge advantage
You might be wondering what is the advantage of having your website listed on the first page of search results. The answer is simple – popularity! If you have a website for your business, it is most likely that you want to get customers using your website. Having your website optimized is like getting free advertisements for your website. People spend millions or sometimes even billions of dollars just to advertise but by using SEO, it is like advertising your website for free and best of all, the people will find you. People go to the internet when they are looking for something especially when they need something. If your website is found, it simply means that they are probably looking for your website.
If you are making money using your website, the more you can make money if your website can be seen on the first page of every relevant search results. Imagine how many potential customers that you can have locally or even across the globe.
Is SEO hard?
SEO is not hard to understand. The process is simple but the amount of work is a long term process. Achieving first page in search results is impossible overnight. It takes time and a lot of effort. Before starting the SEO, you must understand that this is a long process and that you need a lot of patience, hardwork and sometimes a little money too. Take note that the more time and effort that you put into it, the greater the results you will be able to accomplish.
Where to find SEO in UK?
There many SEO specialist in UK. SEO Newcastle team are among the best. You can find many SEO specialist online. You know that they are good if they rank in the first page of the search results in Google.
Introduction
WordPress is a simple to use and install program that makes developing and editing websites a simple task that almost anyone can use with competence. Blogs and even major websites can easily be edited by using WordPress that allows you to edit web content from almost anywhere; this is a simple step by step guide that will walk you through the process of how to install WordPress to the root of your website’s domain.
Step 1: Downloading and Unzipping
The first step to installing WordPress onto your site is to obtain a copy of the software. The relatively small sized file (3.0 MB) can be downloaded for free from WordPress.org. Once the zipped file has been downloaded it is necessary to unzip using Winrar or some other similar program.
Step 2: Creating the Database and a User
If your site is hosted by a hosting provider it is important to check to see if it is already installed in which case it will not be necessary to install WordPress. Most hosting providers use cPanel as its main interface with your site, this step will walk you through the process of configuring it to install WordPress as the editing tool.
Step 3: Setting up wp-confic.php
To install WordPress it is necessary to go back to the files that you downloaded and unzipped, look for the file “wp-config-sample.php” and rename it as “wp-config.php” and open it in the text editor of your choice. You now need to enter your database information in the necessary fields such as “database_name” for the name of the database which you used, “database_user” for the user which you assigned to the database and “database_password” for the password which you assigned to the user. Zip the files and name it as WordPress.
Step 4: Uploading the Files
Using your FTP client upload the zipped file and extract it to the directory where your domain is pointing at. Make sure that the files were unzipped properly.
Step 5: Running the Installation Script
Using the web browser of your choice enter the URL of your site with the proper extensions as shown in the following example, http://example.com/wp-admin/install.php . All that is necessary now is to enter the proper information in the fields of this page and you’re all done.
Forms are very useful in getting information from your website readers. Your form can be a survey form, a contact contact us form or even a multiple choice question and answer. To get the answers from the online forms which your readers submitted, you can receive the results via email. In our example, we will teach you how to create a contact form in PHP and email form results.
Basically, you will need an HTML script to create the form and PHP script that will catch the results from the forms and send it to your email. In our example, we will use a contact form that will send the results to email.
Below is the HTML code for contact form. You may edit this depending on fields that you need for your website. The code “send_email.php” refers to the file name of the php script that you will use. Make sure that your PHP file will be the same with this one.
<form action=”send_email.php” method=”post” name=”contactform”>
<table width=”557″>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td valign=”top”>
<label for=”first_name”>First Name *</label>
</td>
<td valign=”top”>
<input type=”text” name=”first_name” size=”30″ maxlength=”50″/>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign=”top”>
<label for=”last_name”>Last Name *</label>
</td>
<td valign=”top”>
<input type=”text” name=”last_name” size=”30″ maxlength=”50″/>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign=”top”>
<label for=”email”>Email Address *</label>
</td>
<td valign=”top”>
<input type=”text” name=”email” size=”30″ maxlength=”80″/>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign=”top”>
Your age
</td>
<td valign=”top”>
<input type=”text” name=”age” size=”30″ maxlength=”30″/>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td valign=”top”>
Message
</td>
<td valign=”top”>
<textarea style=”width: 374px; height: 130px;” name=”experience” rows=”6″ cols=”25″></textarea>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style=”text-align: center;” colspan=”2″>
<input type=”submit” value=”Submit”/>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</form>
The output of the code above will be:
So that you can receive the results to your email, you will need the PHP script below. Open a notepad and save it using the file name “send_email.php”. You may change this provided that you also change the file name indicated in the HTML code. Make sure that the file name extension .php remains
<?php
if(isset($_POST['email'])) {// EDIT THE 2 LINES BELOW AS REQUIRED
$email_to = “enteryouremailhere@email.com”;
$email_subject = “Contact form results”;function died($error) {
// your error code can go here
echo “We are very sorry, but there were error(s) found with the form you submitted. “;
echo “These errors appear below.<br /><br />”;
echo $error.”<br /><br />”;
echo “Please go back and fix these errors.<br /><br />”;
die();
}// validation expected data exists
if(!isset($_POST['first_name']) ||
!isset($_POST['last_name']) ||
!isset($_POST['email']) ||
!isset($_POST['age']) ||
!isset($_POST['message'])) {
died(‘We are sorry, but there appears to be a problem with the form you submitted.’);
}$first_name = $_POST['first_name']; // required
$last_name = $_POST['last_name']; // required
$email_from = $_POST['email']; // required
$age = $_POST['age']; // not required
$message = $_POST['message']; // required
$chk = $_POST['chk ']; // required$error_message = “”;
$email_exp = ‘/^[A-Za-z0-9._%-]+@[A-Za-z0-9.-]+\.[A-Za-z]{2,4}$/’;
if(!preg_match($email_exp,$email_from)) {
$error_message .= ‘The Email Address you entered does not appear to be valid.<br />’;
}
$string_exp = “/^[A-Za-z .'-]+$/”;
if(!preg_match($string_exp,$first_name)) {
$error_message .= ‘The First Name you entered does not appear to be valid.<br />’;
}
if(!preg_match($string_exp,$last_name)) {
$error_message .= ‘The Last Name you entered does not appear to be valid.<br />’;
}
if(strlen($message) < 2) {
$error_message .= ‘The message you entered do not appear to be valid.<br />’;
}
if(strlen($error_message) > 0) {
died($error_message);
}
$email_message = “Form details below.\n\n”;function clean_string($string) {
$bad = array(“content-type”,”bcc:”,”to:”,”cc:”,”href”);
return str_replace($bad,”",$string);
}$email_message .= “First Name: “.clean_string($first_name).”\n \n”;
$email_message .= “Last Name: “.clean_string($last_name).”\n \n”;
$email_message .= “Email: “.clean_string($email_from).”\n \n”;
$email_message .= “age: “.clean_string($age).”\n \n”;
$email_message .= “message: “.clean_string($message).”\n \n”;// create email headers
$headers = ‘From: ‘.$email_from.”\r\n”.
‘Reply-To: ‘.$email_from.”\r\n” .
‘X-Mailer: PHP/’ . phpversion();
@mail($email_to, $email_subject, $email_message, $headers);
?><!– include your own success html here –>
<h1>Message Sent!</h1>
<p>Thank you your interest in joining us! We will respond to you as soon as we have evaluated your application. Further instructions will be sent to your email. Please check your email regularly.</p>
<p>Have a great day ahead of you!</p>
<?php
}
?>
As a small business owner the opportunities of going global on the web is often an idea that never leaves the imagination. This can be either from the lack of experience working on the internet or the lack of time and resources a small business owner might have in house. One of the options is to hire a dedicated webmaster, you can hire a single person to do the work or a company can also do the job, this is often times expensive and if you’re just looking to see if it’s viable for your business to be on the net this may be a deal breaker. Having a website is an investment and as with any investment it’s a gamble, however the amount of money you put into it will not always be equivalent to the money you’re earning from it.
One of the cheapest solutions for a business owner is to outsource work; there are several websites that allow you to post project details and often times you can save lots of money. This too however may be a gamble because you aren’t sure of the quality of work the people you are hiring. When choosing to outsource work it is always important that you know that the person you’re paying does a good job, asking for a portfolio is always a good idea, to get a look at their previous work. Make sure you can communicate with this person at all times through every step of the way to make sure that your website is going along as planned. For the best results I suggest that you write all of the major content yourself and just have the webmaster you hired to encode the data, you know your business better than anyone else and it would only be natural that you can put the most compelling content on your site.
When you finally get a hold of a webmaster over the net and they build your site it is always a good idea to ask about any support that they offer after the site is up and running should any bugs and glitches come about. If your website takes off and you start making revenue off of it, it may be necessary to hire a full time webmaster. However in the infantile stages of your web site this is not advisable since you’re never sure if it’s going to be a hit or miss.
There are many flashy outrageous sites out there, chocked full of flash animations, and all matter of java code. These sites may seem and scream “Professional” but yelling doesn’t make things true nor does it attract a lot of people. These sites often actually reach less people due to the loading times that may be necessary to work all the doodads. The best way to reach a large number of people over the internet is to offer a site that everyone can browse with ease. Sure plain text may seem boring, but it gets the information out there. If your site really needs all that flashy animation chances are you’re not intent low cost web design and may cost you money that will only shoo away potential visitors.
A picture’s worth a thousand words, as long as you don’t use a picture as your background image; a background image takes long to load and makes it difficult to read the text, those thousand words might as well be a loop of words such as “amateur, hard to read, illegible, attention” and other synonymous terms. If you do chose to use a picture and it is absolutely necessary for your background there is a proper way of executing it, the picture should be pretty low contrast and be either on the dark or bright side; choose a picture that does not have a lot of features in it which may make reading the text difficult and confusing.
As with anything in life moderation is the best policy; there are such things as too little and too much. Depending on the intent of your site the balance point may shift further in one direction or the other. Finding this balance is up to you as a web designer and always keep the end user in mind.
The big mistake most people make when designing a website is they try to please themselves and in the end may turn away a lot of potential visitors. You should always keep the end user in mind; and this is simple since you are the end user to many other websites. The best way to produce a quality cheap design is to adhere to other practices that you like when you are browsing the internet. You know what a pleasurable online experience is over a confusing irritating one; the bottom line is if you were browsing your site, none of the elements should irritate you while perusing the pages.