So you own a website, now what?

There is an old adage - "If you're not living you're dying".  This is also true of websites.  Websites require monthly maintenance as a rule, enterprise websites are monitored daily, and almost all websites need to be reactive to security threats and upgrade warnings.

Web Hosting

Web Hosting is commonly talked about as if it was all the same.  The reality is that there are vastly different types of web hosting.

The most common form of hosting is shared web hosting.  This form of hosting typically has several hundred and more commonly several thousand websites all using the same bandwidth, computer processors, hard drives, and RAM.  The cheapest ones are located in the USA, and some third world countries. These web hosts allocate a shared IP address (its like a post office box that everyone uses), a limited amount of hard drive, and a fragment of RAM and processor power.  The servers that host these websites are usually on archaic equipment that is being phased out, with old single processors , and less than 1 Gb of RAM.  If your website is expected to be more than a brochure website and you don't want it to be very slow, then cheap shared hosting or overseas web hosting is not for you.

Interweaving shares its dedicated servers across a very limited number of clients based on their monitored resource needs.  The servers are optimised to be used with our content management systems with support for database hungry applications.  The specification for the servers we share with our clients is 32 GB of RAM, Duel 3.0 Ghz Quad Processor chips.  These servers are located in Brisbane, which means that organisations with primarily Brisbane and Australian customers will have the fastest service possible with virtually no lag.  Your clients wont have long waits to be allocated a processor, struggle with RAM, or bandwidth.  These are new top of the line servers which are over-configured to ensure that websites are served in the optimum conditions.

Having a unique IP address located in Brisbane is essential to your organisation.  You can not properly secure your website for e-commerce and privacy unless you have your own unique IP address, and search engines will give you preferential listings on searches coming from Brisbane residents if your IP is also in Brisbane.  Interweaving only hosts websites on their own dedicated IP addresses on Search Engine Optimised Hosting as a professional practice.  Interweaving hosting provides you with your own unique Brisbane IP address, Brisbane name servers, and Brisbane web servers which are essential to having Google and Yahoo give preference to your website for Brisbane and Australian users.

Website Maintenance

The Internet is a still quite a wild place.  It has frequent security threats and the working environment changes constantly.  Various web browsers and software companies often change their systems and many of them don't follow established web standards.  Microsoft with the Internet Explorer 6 web browser chose to ignore most of the established web standards in order to try and monopolise the browser market a few years ago.  They failed but this has led to many web applications not showing up properly in IE6 to this day.

Web Hosting is generally well maintained within professional Internet companies.  However, they are not responsible for keeping your website up to date. Typically, once a web developer turns over a website to a client - that responsibility is up to them for ongoing maintenance. There is one disadvantage with having access to so much technology within a CMS system, and that is that each and every programming component needs to be maintained.  Each program actually has its own security vulnerabilities and upgrade issues which need to be individually monitored to keep up with the changes in the Internet.  This creates quite a burden for most website owners, which is why Interweaving believes that website maintenance should be an integrated part of managed hosting.

Interweaving monitors all of the program upgrades and security alerts, and then upgrades, maintains, and repairs as required.  One added benefit is that a single upgrade can potentially disable your whole system if done incorrectly.   Interweaving controls a wide variety of websites that all use the same content management system. As many of the same modules are used between websites we have developed, it is cost effective for us to maintain everyone's system as a service - so they don't have to.  Most maintenance by nature is reactive maintenance and cleaning up system artifacts.

Optimisation

Optimisation comes in many forms.  It is creating proactive change to improve, rather than maintain a website.  It involves search engine optimisation of website content; security optimisation to prevent commerce and privacy breeches; server and database optimisation to improve speed, performance, and reliability; and content editing to groom new content as it is added to the system.  Optimisation also offers the development team a chance to review and recommend installation of new technology or upgrades of technology that are already used on your system.  Most of the time these upgrades as part of a management program cost very little to keep up to date.

Support

Once your website is created - then what?  What if you have questions? Something breaks? Ghosts start showing up in the machine?  Even great website administrators need help on a regular basis.  That's ok, Interweaving is here to help.  Although generous timed support is part of each web development package, eventually you may run out of support time.  That isn't really something to worry about, we honestly want to help.  Here is a good tip: if you save a number of queries you may have up to discuss them all at the same time - your support hours will last much longer than a long series of single queries.

You will probably find that we will call you to see how your going on a regular basis too.  Feel free to ask us any questions you would like for free when we do!

So you have spent your time and money developing a great website. Now people are just going to find it, use it, and buy whatever you're selling right?  Unfortunately that isn't the way it works, but we can fix that.  Marketing online isn't about creating short term advertising campaigns.  It is more like a cross between having ads in the yellow pages, a sales team, billboard advertising, and classified ads.

The most effective way to market online is to market all the time.  Consistent marketing allows you to have a controlled advertising expenditure with measurable results.  When you try to spend money in a hurry it becomes very inefficient.   Your website needs to be visible and marketed daily, with bursts of expenditure when you need to market something time dependent.

Balanced Marketing Campaigns

Domain Name

Why is a domain name so important?  Domains are the real estate of the Internet.  If you have one that is effective it will save you an enormous amount in marketing expenditure.  When users see a good domain name in search engine listing, it is more likely they will click on it - leading to higher conversions and lower advertising costs.  Every brochure, business card, billboard, and taxi cab that you advertise will be more effective with the right domain name.  If you don't have a good domain name you will literally lose half of your marketing dollars down the drain.  Interweaving is an expert in domain selection and acquisition.  Even if a domain is already taken we have means to acquire domains that are not being actively used, or can find a very viable alternative for you.

Cross Marketing

Everything that your business owns or distributes should have your website address on it.  If you have a good domain name - people will remember it through repeat exposure.  The domain name needs to be prominent on your advertising material - not just shoved in the corner is small font with no colour.  Try to think of every way you can push people to your website.  It will increase your revenue, provide better service for your customers, and cut your costs.
Search Engines

The big G.  Google is the 500 pound gorilla for search engines.   It has a grossly dominant market share and is a very useful utility for web users.  Yahoo is a distant second, and Microsoft and even more distant third.  Search engines are the yellow pages of the Internet.  When people search they find relevant contextual websites that are specific to the user search queries.  You absolutely have to be in the search engines to have a well marketed website.  It is also your most cost effective proactive marketing solution.

Search Engine Optimisation

The best type of search engine listing is the one you don't have to pay for again and again - organic search listings.  There are two ways your website is selected for being shown is search results:  relativity to the search request, relative locations, and page rank.

Search Request

When someone types a phrase into a search engine they are looking for something.  The search engine will try to offer search listings that are the closest match to what the user is looking for.  Simple isn't it?  Not quite.  The reality is that search engines need to know where to find the right websites for each query.  They do this by indexing all the websites on the web and using an algorithm to find the best ones for each search query.  Optimisation for search requests is a science and a little art too.  Your website needs a list of search phrases that you would like to be found on in the search engines.  This list needs to be as wide and deep as possible to collect as many organic search queries as possible.  That includes typos and misspellings as well.  Then your website needs to be optimised for those terms with page titles, descriptions, and meta data all being optimised on a page by page basis to be the most specific result for search engines to serve.  Although search engines are algorithmic they still depend on website owners to tell them what each page is about, and more importantly offering descriptions that users will find attractive to click on.  If a search engine doesn't find a description to serve for the web page - it just makes one up.

Relative Location

Every user accesses the Internet through what is called an IP address.  IP addresses are assigned geographic locations and distributed accordingly.  Websites can be hosted anywhere in the world.  The most common mistake is when website owners host their website on a cheap foreign host, which is commonly the domain registrar where they originally bought their domain.  These hosts are allocated IP addresses that are for their geographic location not yours.

Search engines are like dating agencies, they try to pair up the best websites with the most specific users.  Today modern search engines are weighting the websites that they list by how close a user is to the website that they are served for listings.  Unless you want to be selling your goods to customers in someplace like Phoenix, Arizona, USA instead of Brisbane or Australia - this can be a major problem.  Your website needs to have its own SEO IP address located as close as you can to your average customers location. 

Page Rank

Page rank is a mysterious thing to most people, but to Interweaving it is very simple.  Search engines want to list the pages that will give users what they actually want.  To get the best search rank you should do a number of things.  There are a great deal of factors that contribute but the most important ones are: to have

• Volumes of original textual content
• Links from other websites to yours
• Local IP address with a local host
• Frequent updates to website content
• Create a good site map
• Give it time to ferment

Search Engine Advertising

If you can beat them, join them.  Although organic search listings are the most cost effective way to advertise, you can also buy advertising in search engines.  In Google these are the ads with or on the right side of the page, and sometimes at the top of the organic search listings.  They also can now be found in Google maps which offer paid listings.

Search engine advertising is very effective and offers a great return on investment IF you advertise consistently and target your ads to the right phrases and locations, for the right price per click.  Does that sound complicated?  Interweaving is very experienced in all forms of Internet marketing.  If you would like us to create a marketing campaign for you and manage it monthly that can be arranged.  Campaigns start for as little as $50 a month.

Community Building

Community building is about building relationships for your website.  Most of those relationships will be with your existing or new customers.  Others will be through interactions and association with other websites.  Websites that stand alone and are not cared for don't do well.  They tend to be outdated quickly, and users lose interest. The goals of community building are to attract users to your website, get them to interact with it on a regular basis, entangle and market to them on a regular basis, and to link to it from other websites in the same global community.

Relationships are built through communication, and interaction. Your website needs to establish a user base.  Once it has users you want them to interact with each other through forums, chat, newsletters, they may even create their own blogs on your website. Community software can allow the exchange of messages and a real community to be built.  Communities are very useful.  You can market to them, gain market intelligence, and even some friends.

The other type of community building is link building.  The number of links you have going to your website will have a strong impact on your page rank for search engines.  One of the ways to do this is through adding your links in posts that you may make in other website forums and blogs.  Advertising on some websites in the right way adds direct links to your website and attracts customers.  You can also post news releases and articles which can receive quite wide distribution from other websites looking for content.

Building a community is hard work.  It takes patience, skill, and enthusiasm.  If you would like to learn how contact Interweaving.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is about creating a sales team online that promotes your website.  This usually takes the form of paying for leads or sales that these third parties generate.  It also usually involves tracking those conversions through another third party for a commission of the commission paid for leads (usually 20%).  Affiliate marketing can be hit and miss.  Certain types of offers do very well through affiliate networks.  Typically your business needs to have something very commercial to sell and enough profit to share around.

Affiliate marketing has another advantage.  If it is done well it generates links to your website.  Affiliates place banner ads, text ads, and forms on their websites hoping to generate leads.  These all have links embedded in them if they are not masked.  Every link counts for link popularity and page rank.

Social Marketing

Social marketing is different to community building.  Community building is about attracting users into your website.  Social marketing is how your business interacts with external websites and communities.  Typical social marketing includes Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and MySpace.  Organisations use these external communities to raise awareness of what they stand for, how they are different, and what they have to offer.  This is usually done through a more passive form of marketing.  If you post articles of interest to other people, participate in forums, and make friends online it all helps.  Most importantly you can build up a network of people that are also in your industry.  Many of these people will link to your website and you can link to theirs.  This form of reciprocal linking within an industry is seen as a vote of confidence by search engines and adds value.

Growth Consultants has direct relationships with the strategists and market leaders in Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft.  We have managed Internet marketing through industry giants worth more than $10 million per year.