Guest Post
Emma’s Camping Story–Pretty soon Emma is going to go camping. She is going to eat donuts. They’re going to go hiking until they reach the clouds.
All the kids from the “When I Grow Up” class learning about Blogging!
All the kids from the “When I Grow Up” class learning about Blogging!66+ Sites to Promote Your Blog/Portfolio for Free!
Search Engine Optimization is all the rage these days, and who can blame it? Because really, how effective is a site that nobody can find from a search engine? A key ingredient necessary to getting some exposure (and better index rankings) is to self-promote via other blogs and sites. I recently stumbled upon an excellent list of sites you can self-promote from! Which is fantastic considering I was about to start compiling a list myself! Low and behold someone has done the hard part already, so I can finish this post and get back to eating Chips and watching Saved By the Bell & Friends re-runs! Here it is peeps! Happy surfing!
Why You Shouldn’t Use a Canned Website
If you’ve ever done much looking around for web designers, you’ve probably come across a dozen or so companies out there that will build you a website for less than $200. They have specifics on the number of pages the layout for you to pick from. In some cases some of the process allows YOU to build it using their automated walk-through. In the end, you end up with something that resembles a website, after all, it is on the web! Meanwhile your competitors who spent money on a custom site are laughing at you. Let’s go over a few of the comparisons and find out why!
- Graphics–Unless you yourself are a graphic artist and can upload your images to your canned site, you’ll likely end up with cheesy stock photos or basically none at all. Images are an excellent way to grab attention and draw the use in! Custom logos need to be done by a professional and add so much to your brand marketing!
- Layout–Let’s be honest, those canned layouts are so 2002 and lock you in website layout purgatory! If you wanted to do anything outside the basic framework, the layout would be prohibitive. You’re much better off with something that can be designed custom to fit your needs, something that can be tuned exactly how you want it.
- Interface–A subset of the aforementioned “layout”, a key component on the web now is an application-like feel. Menus that drop down instantly, items that can be clicked and dragged, something more than just plain old links and text. A canned website will get a D- on its interface report card, why would you choose to get a D-?
- Marketing–Two parts of marketing that differ greatly. The first is the overall marketability of your site. The canned site sticks out like a sore thumb on the internet today. When visitors go, are they going to be impressed with your canned site? If not, you may lose a sale, lead or prospective regular visitor! Custom sites that are done well have a WOW factor that increases the marketability of your brand. The second part of Marketing is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). While, it is possible to do this with a canned site, it is much better to be built from the ground up properly, with search engines in mind.
