Creating an Effective Website for Your Company

Many companies have or want a website. It's one of your best marketing tools. Discover how to make sure your website looks professional, gets noticed and is working to bring you qualified leads.

Recordings Listed Below

Here's the problem:
In today's economy you need every advantage you can get. Your marketing efforts are more important than ever. Your website can play an important role in helping you become the contractor of choice, but you're not sure what to do with your site or even how to go about creating one. You need a website that entices customers to contact you, and now is a great time to make it happen.

Here's what to do:
Watch this special seminar conducted by veterans who know what it takes to start, maintain and optimize a successful website. These no-fluff seminars that will demystify the inner workings of the Internet. Then hit the ground running, armed with the knowledge you need to set up and maintain a successful website as part of your marketing efforts.

• If you've been thinking about creating a website or want to improve what you already have, this seminar will give you everything you need to create the successful website you've been dreaming about.
• If you already have a successful website and want to discover more about how your site works, what improvements could be made and how to improve your search engine rankings, you'll also benefit.

You'll also receive tips and information like:

• How to get control of your critical website setup and control panel information.
• Doing your own website analysis.
• Choosing your domain name.
• XSitePro information and tutorials.
• Why your website is now the hub of all marketing efforts.
• Helpful Downloads and Links. Some great resources to help you with your website.
• How to use Google Analytics to see who is visiting your site.
• And more&...

This course will cover eight topics where you'll discover everything you need to know to have a quality website that brings in leads.

1 - Getting Started
Discover the critical things you need to get started with a new website. You'll see exactly what to do and how little it costs.

• Choosing and purchasing your domain name.
• Setting up a hosting account - (renting hard drive storage space on the internet)
• Transferring your name to your new hosting account. HostGator.com
• Setting up your new name with your host.
• Overview of your websites control panel - CPanel.
• Setting up email accounts with your new URL.
• Setting up your computer to receive email from your new address in MS Outlook.

2 - Posting Information On the Web
How do you get your information on the web? Discover different methods of creating the pages that will become your website and how to get this information onto the internet.

• Online website creation tools.
• XSitePro website software (recommended for new users or those that want to start over. It makes site creation as easy as a word processor. We'll be using XSitePro for this class.)
• Another Great software choice (but not discussed in this class) is Xara WebDesigner
• Setting up the necessary codes to publish your things to the internet.
• Using an FTP program. (File Transfer Protocal)
• Viewing the files on your web host server.
• Uploading and linking to files on your server.
• Creating a PDF, uploading and linking to it.
• Choosing how your website should look.
• Setting up the navigation for your site.

3 - Getting Noticed (Search Engine Optimization, or SEO)
There are many ways to get your site noticed. In this section we'll discuss both inbound and outbound marketing techniques and things you can do to get your site noticed by search engines.

• Driving traffic to your site with your traditional marketing.
• How search engines find and index your site.
• Setting up Google Analytics to track your site's information.
• Making sure your pages have the right meta tags and descriptions.
• Determining what the right keywords are for your company.
• The importance of new content on your site.
• How Google Adwords works and how to determine if it's for you.
• How inbound linking can help your site and how to get links.
• How a blog can help your site get noticed.
• How social networking like facebook, twitter and others can help.

4 - Developing Content
Setting up a website is easy. Adding the content is easy. Knowing what content to add is the hard part. In this section we'll discuss the different pages of your website and what should be on each page.

• Examples of good website pages and what makes them good.
• A look at the emotions you're trying to capture.
• How to build instant trust at your website.
• How to decide what to say on each page of your site.
• What should be on the:
  • Home Page - Building trust with the first thing people see.
  • Contact Us Page - Why should someone want to contact you?
  • Home Page - What's the number one thing you want people to know about you?
  • About Us Page - Your history, people, philosophy, awards, charitable giving.
  • Testimonials Page - Let others tell the world how great you are.
  • Photo Galleries - Past Projects you want to show off.
  • News Pages - What's new about you and your industry?
  • FAQ Page - What questions do your clients have that you can help answer?
  • Surveys - How to create and use them.
  • Links - Can you supply links to things that your clients might be interested in?
  • Project Ideas - Is there any way that you can share ideas for projects that you like to do?
  • Educational Content - Is there any way to educate your visitors?
  • Privacy Statement - Every site should have one.
  • Site Map - Help your visitors get around and the search engines navigate your site.
• Resources - Where can you get help with writing and other elements of your site?

5 - Looking Pretty
Pictures are a very important element in your website. Properly formated, sized and tagged graphics can enhance your visitor's experience and help search engines better understand you. In this section you'll discover the correct way to add pictures to your site.

• Overview of digital pictures and how they work on the internet.
• How to properly format and size pictures for your website.
• Using online photo editing for your pictures.
• Using software called Snagit to capture and edit pictures.
• Creating a photo gallery in XSitePro.
• Uploading pictures to online accounts like Flickr.
• Creating online photo albums that you can use on your website.
• A glimpse at Web 2.0 and how it affects what you do with graphics.
• Creating Flash photo galleries and implementing them on your site.
• Resources you can use for your photos.

6 - Making Friends
Did you know that one of the best ways to get search engines to rank your site higher is to have inbound links  to your websites? The more links you have pointing to your site the better. In this section you'll discover ideas that you can use to get more people mentioning your site.

• What is inbound linking and why do search engines like it.
• What does YouTube have to do with search engines.
• How can you create your own video and post it on Youtube and other video sites.
• How can your involvement in user groups, chat groups and other forums get you noticed more.
• How blogs help with linking.

7 - Blogging
The big buzz on the internet now is something called blogging. Should you have a blog? (Web Log) It's a commitment that many don't understand or want to take on, yet it can have dramatic results for your rankings with search engines and build your relationship with your visitors.

• What is a blog and should you have one.
• How do blogs help your search engine rankings.
• How can a blog help you talk to your customers.
• How to set up a WordPress blog and what sort of tracking can you do.
• How to integrate a blog into the XSitePro software.
• What sort of things should you post in a blog.
• Links to other blog software.

8 - Email Marketing (Permission Based Email)
Should you have sign-up forms on your site? Should you do email marketing? Creating a list of customers to send your emails to can be a great way to stay in touch with past and future clients. Here you'll discover what is involved in collecting email addresses, adding sign-up forms to your website and how to send mail.

• How can your traditional marketing tie into your online email system.
• What is list building and how do you get email addresses.
• Review of single and double opt-in email.
• How do you get people to leave their information.
• Overview of Constant Contact mailing system. - (Single Opt-In)
• Overview of Aweber mailing system. (Strict Double Opt-In Mailing System)
• What could you offer your clients in return for their information.

Summary
We cover a lot of information about websites. A website is a long term commitment that is ever-changing. Don't think that everything needs to be finished at once. In fact, a website with a few well-done pages will get better results than a large poorly-constructed website with lousy content.