Develop your website while you're building it--not after it's built

There are many businesses that get really excited when it comes to having a website designed and developed for their company. They start out with lots and lots of ideas, and without any real understanding of how the Internet works or how to have a website built that will meet the actual needs of the company, they go out and hire a web developer to create their ultimate site. But shortly after the web work has been completed the business executives soon realize that they've paid for a wonderful looking website, one that looks pretty, but does absolutely nothing for the company's business.

We hear this all too often. There are many fantastic web designers, but most of them are artists, gifted individuals who know how to create art, but don't incorporate other important elements of a successful website. This is why there is so much more to web development than just building websites. If you look at what real web developers are doing for businesses and how quality websites are defined, you'll soon realize that there's much more to doing business on the Internet than just creating a fancy frontpage.

Smart Internet Marketing Requires Smart Internet Marketers

No one ever questions the technical savvy and keen programming instincts of Canadians. They (we) are progressive, ambitious, and one of the most computer-literate nations in the world. And so it should come as no surprise that Canadians are also leaders in business when it comes to Internet-based marketing, web applications, and online solutions. In fact, you'll find that most Canadian businesses, such as 9th sphere, a Toronto SEO company excel when it comes to providing leading-edge solutions in web design, Internet marketing, search engine optimization, and other online resources.

The Internet is constantly evolving, and so it becomes necessary to find business solutions that can adapt to the ever-changing online communities. Search engines continue to modify algorithms, thousands of new websites populate the Web every day, and the constant flow and reinterpretation of new and existing information along with an explosion of new Internet commerce make it more of a challenge for businesses to remain competitive, and so it takes keen insight, and an acute awareness to be able to identify and understand the subtle and radical ways in which the Internet sees websites, and positions them to potential clients. Search engine marketing thus becomes all that much more critical to businesses who want to have a visible web presence for themselves.

Inexperience webmasters and linkbuilders hoping to quickly build backlinks and increase their search engine returns tend to focus too much on misleading factors such as Google's Pagerank, which is only one of many indicators used to represent "value" for a website. While at one time high pagerank (PR) was once coveted by website owner wishing to earn valuable links (whether for traffic, SERPs, or their own PR), now it is just one of many factors which can be used to measure a website's total worth.

However, due to the still apparent significance propagated by text link sellers and other marketing agents who have little else to use (Alexa being another source that offers questionable value in determining a website's worth) to measure their web product, pagerank continues to be a commodity that beginners use to purchase or exchange links.

Webmasters need to realize that there is much more to be done in order to build their own website and earn higher positions in the search engines, like the results of hard work, steady creation of unique and relevant content, and pertinent backlinking from reliable, relevant partner websites.

One of the biggest challenges for new website owners is to build a product that people are interested in, and one that will be structured and organized so that search engines will be able to navigate that site easily, index new content, and direct natural traffic (visitors) its way. Often, website owners will contract the services of seach engine optimization (SEO) professionals to streamline the website, building on its strengths to make it more attractive to search engines.

However, an even bigger challenge is finding a true SEO specialist to perform the work, as it seems anyone who has an Internet connection and knows how to submit a website to a search engine considers himself an "SEO expert".

Personally, I do all of my own website building work. I use established practices, read up on new innovations, and dedicate myself to hours of long work and study, building and improving, adapting and readapting, writing and rewriting to build and maintain products that will attract visitors, and provide a rewarding visitor experience. But those who have the money but not the time look to Internet agents or agencies to fulfill the tasks of streamlining websites that search engines like, in order to obtain top results for keywords and niches, ones that will bring in the right visitors and customers.

Unfortunately, the Internet is flooded with those who know nothing about optimization, but everything about taking your money. They post in webmaster forums claiming an expertise in something they themselves having only just started to do themselves. They figure that adding a few links to a website and flooding its pages with keywords or spamming forums is the only thing they need to do to fulfill the SEO needs of their customers.

Directory submissions can be a long and tiresome process, even if you have tools that reduce your cutting-and-pasting. While adding your websites to directories is a no-cost method of adding backlinks to your site, there is still the inherent cost to you measured in time.

Outsourcing directory submissions is a challenging and often frustrating experience. To be honest, there are few "trusted" directory submission services, as most will often state that they are "manual" submissions, however in truth, they are often using automated directory submitters, as the key to making money for them is in volume. Even for them, there is no simple method of getting a lot of submissions done in a short amount of time.

Other services will simply submit to their own networks of cloned directories, sometimes as many as a couple of hundred duplicated sites with only a separate domain name to distinguish them. Now, there's hardly any value in these services, however some will argue that "a link is a link is a link".

I've read on a few forums where people discuss the strength of a ".com" site over ".net", ".org", etc., and when it comes to search engine value, it doesn't appear that it makes any difference as to SEO, and more people emphasize that the value is place more on the keyword in the domain name, which makes good search engine sense.

The perception is more offline than online, where businesses, companies, and other entities try to obtain the dot.com version of their name as it has more weight as a tangible brand. In the world of domain selling and buying, it seems there is more attraction to the dot.com as well, maybe more for type-in traffic or other standardization.