How to choose the right website design company

Choosing the right designer for your small business can be hard if you do not know what you should look for. Here is a simple guide that you can use to make sure you ask the right questions and make an educated decision every time.

Website Design

Any company can say they have great designs but we believe a company’s portfolio should speak for itself. To adequately judge a website you must look at:

• Quality of Design
• Ease of Use
• Initial Impressions
• How sites compare to others in the same industry
• Consistent look throughout each the entire website
• Navigation is located at the top or left side of the website

Technical Expertise

This aspect is much harder to judge unless you are familiar with web technologies. However, this can be just as important as a good design. A few things to look for and ask when looking for a web design company are:

• Do their sites load quickly?
• Does the company put an emphasis on Search Engine Optimization?
• Does the company use templates?
• Does the company test on Mac and PC?
• Does the company have a testing environment and backups?
• Does the company host their own sites or use an outside company?

Attention to Details

Sometimes the smallest things can make the difference. Look for:

• Page titles – each page should be unique and descriptive
• Terms of Use page – make sure it is present
• Copyright statement on every page
• Use of contact forms rather than published email addresses

Of course there are many other things you will want to find out, but the important thing is to go with your instincts. If you visit a web site design website and it isn't one that you would like having, then why hire them to make your website. Hopefully this guide will help save you money and hire the right website designer the first time.

This article was written and provided by Josh Collins, a multimedia designer in the Kansas City area. He has designed user interfaces and websites ranging from small business sites to large social network websites. His recent work includes:

Logicbright.com an easy to use web based contact manager

Improving Search Engine Ranking

Recently I did some research on to what makes each search engine tick. What I found was of course that they are very similar as to what they look for in a website, but one of the biggest things I found out was the site’s age plays a giant role in your search rankings.

This is true for Google especially, it is almost impossible to get a decent ranking by Google if your website is fairly new (under 18 months). Yahoo and MSN seem to put a bit different emphasis on this and in as little as 6 months you can get a good ranking with them if you build your website correctly.

The basic things I recommend to get your search ranking up are below (and in order from the most important).

1. Don’t use navigation that is Javascript based, crawlers may not be able to see all the pages in your website

2. Use your keywords in your title tags of your website

3. Use your keywords on the text of your website frequently and put them in the appropriate paragraph and heading tags.

4. Get links from other websites that have high PR rankings. Just a link isn’t great, but a link that contains your keywords. (for example if your website is example.com that sells widgets, try to get a link that goes to example.com when they click on the word “widget”)

5. Use meta tags and descriptions. They say they aren’t that used anymore, but I think it could be the difference between a good rating and a great rating. Try to be as detailed as possible to each page and not use the same description on every page.

6. Use title/Alt tags on images and link on your own website.

That about covers it, there is not amazing technology that you need to know – but people frequently don’t do the basics so if you do it will be noticed.

LongJump CRM Reviewed

LongJump is one of the newest web based CRM’s on the market today, unfortunately all the hype may not be worth much.

I reciently signed up for the 30 day trial to see what all this “custom application” and “relational database” stuff that they advertise is about. It is definintely not geared to inspire small businesses to use a CRM package. It is just much too difficult and involves too much understanding of the underpinnings to do even basic tasks.

First impressions:

The appearance of LongJump is actually pretty nice. It has a green a blue windows XP color theme going on that works quite well. The overall layout is really nothing new with the tabs across the top and some actions on the left. What was interesting and hard to get used to was to add a record of anytime you needed to click on the tab you wanted and then click “add record” from the left side of the screen. A bit odd but nothing to major.

Another thing that I noticed was the drop down menu at the very top of the page. This allows you to go between your “contact manager” and your “sales force automation” along with over 12 other modules that you can choose or ones that you have created yourself. This was somewhat neat but the more I got into it the harder it was for me to use because of this.

The homepage consisted of widgets that are “drag and droppable” which was nice, though the drag and drop was choppy on FireFox. They allow you to show a lot of content on each page but this requires a minimum screen resolution of 1280x1024 to use their product. If you have this, no worries.

Under the hood:

My biggest pet peeve when working with LongJump was that you have tabs from each area that are the same but not connected to the other areas. Ie. In the Sales Force Automation tab I have accounts and contacts but if I go to the “campaign manager” tab and try to set up a mailing list it seems that I have to import new contacts instead of being able to say “use these contacts that I have already entered. There may be a way to do this, but it sure isn’t intuitive.

The lack of intuitive actions was the bottom line to why I cannot recommend this product. Even something as simple as uploading your logo isn’t as easy as it should be. You have to click on “upload logo” then you go to a screen where you need to enter all your company information, go to another screen to upload the photo and then select that upload from the prior screen. It doesn’t even resize it to make it look decent.

Final Thoughts:

What LongJump has done is create an application that can create other applications. In theory this is fantasic, but in reality all it did was create a hard to use product that isn’t “great” at anything. If you use only the basic contact manager and ignore the other parts it may work for your company, but once you start messing around with the rest you will find it just isn’t designed as nice as it could be.

For the same price you can get an easier to use small business crm software.

The verdict is in on LogicBright’s new version

After several responses about the new version of LogicBright CRM, the consensis is that it was a great move for the product. Everyone thought the interface changes were good and made it easier to get around. A couple were really impressed with the “dragging and dropping” of custom fields. Most of the other features went over really well including the “assign to teams.” However, they felt that feature was really needed prior to this launch, but is glad it is part of the product now.
Though I only talked to a few small businesses regarding the changes, it seems that LogicBright CRM is really paying attention to what their clients want in a small business CRM solution.

LogicBright CRM Launches New Version: Is it good?

On 3/2/08, LogicBright CRM released news of version 1.5. The new version boasts "30% lighter and has innovative new features that will help users be more productive and efficient while maintaining its ease of use." For those of you unfamiliar with LogicBright CRM, they are a small business CRM application.

But what does this all mean to you? Is it better? Faster? Do the new features complicate things?

Well I tried it out and here is what I found.

As to the "30% lighter, faster" claim. I didn't really notice the speed difference on every page, I am using a 8mb cable line so it is doubtful that their old interface was large enough to impact me. But I would assume that on a slower connection, maybe one that a mobile sales person would use, it could impact them.

There were many new features listed on their LogicBright CRM 1.5 tour page. So I will go down the list and discuss a few of them.

Start-up wizard - When new users login, they get a 5 step wizard that walks them through a few basic tasks. This is really innovative and original. I think new users will really appreciate this feature and will help them understand what CRM is capable of in an easy way.

The Interface - This was noticeable from the first login. The data is shown in a clear more refined way. I found it easier to scan for the information I was looking for.

Drag and Drop - This was probably the best feature addition I could have seen. One of their weak points in the past was their inability to put custom data fields any where you wanted. But now you can easily drag them to the spot you want them. It was one of the easiest "setups" I have seen for a CRM product.

Assign to Teams - Long overdue, but done well. When you type in an employees name it allows you to choose numerous employees or choose a team that they are on. Like usual, they use their innovative instant search that searches for your users as you type.

New Widgets - I noticed the addition of a photo widget, where you can put a couple photos to have a mini slide show on the homepage. Neat, but not overly useful. I also noticed a few options for existing widgets which allowed me to read a bit about the article before clicking on the news link. Pretty useful.

Overall, most of the changes are really good. There are a few "niceties" that aren't overly useful but add to the refinement of the product. I think LogicBright CRM has sealed the "Easy use CRM" part of the market.

How Google, MSN and Yahoo Differ on Search Engine Marketing

So you are interested in advertising on Google, MSN and/or Yahoo but don't know if there are any real differences. Take it from me, there are very big differences and being aware of them can save you a lot of money.

Back-story

Recently, I was charged with the task of promoting a new piece of software that is geared towards the small business market. I felt this was a good opportunity to run a test to see which search engine is most effective to advertise on. What I found was some startling differences between Google Adwords, Yahoo Sponsored Search and MSN AdCenter and how effective each one was at promoting my product.

Test Setup

Over two months run the same advertisements with the same keywords on Google Adwords, Yahoo Sponsored Search and MSN AdCenter to see how each of them performs. Though the daily budgets were the same, the cost per click had to vary in order to keep consistent with other bids for each search engine. The goal was to bid just enough to appear in an average search position of 2-3.

Test in progress

While the test was taking place I noticed that Google had by far the most impressions to offer and had very little trouble filling my entire budget each day. Yahoo, though they said they didn't have many impressions to offer for those keywords also maxed out my budget each day, sometimes even exceeding my daily maximum. MSN on the other hand never came close to filling my budget; sometimes it only drove a handful of people to the site over a week's time.

Another thing I noticed is that the cost per click varied slightly for the same position in their results. Google was the most expensive at just over $3 dollars per click, Yahoo was $2.67 and MSN was $2.39. I realize that the costs are a bit arbitrary without the keywords but this article is for comparison's sake and not specifics.

The Conclusion

In the end the only thing that really matters is how many clicks were converted. For those of you new to the term "conversion": A conversion is any signup, purchase or traceable action that you wish a user to perform. For us, a conversion meant a sign up.

After two months we had 60% of our signups from Google, 50% from MSN and a dismal 10% from Yahoo. The biggest surprise is that Google cost 50% of our total money spent, Yahoo cost 35% and MSN cost only 15% of our total budget. In the end MSN ended up being much cheaper per conversion and even though they didn't send a ton of traffic to our site it seemed that they were well qualified people that they were sending.

Yahoo was the biggest disappointment, costing over 3x's per conversion than Google and over 6x's more than MSN. There can be a host of reasons this is so, one of the possibilities is that Yahoo's users are not interested in the type of software we were promoting. Another possibility is that Yahoo's ads get clicked on by their users at a much higher rate which also causes the quality of the leads to be lower.

In the end, running campaigns on the major three search engines can be a great help, but monitoring them can save you a lot of money in the long run. What works on one search engine many not work on another, and keeping an eye on it will help you determine this. Don't be afraid to pull the plug if one is not working, sometimes you just need to go with what works and not force something that isn't showing you results.

Keeping Press Releases Interesting

Most press releases are boring and don't appeal to the general public and many don't even appeal to the editors they are written for. The key to writing a good press release is to make it interesting from the start. A bad title or first paragraph can destroy a great press release. Here is the first paragraph and title of one that is different.

LogicBright CRM writes:

LogicBright CRM Fights the Software Obesity War

The obesity epidemic rages on and costs billions of dollars annually; one company is trying to put a stop to the obesity – in software at least. LogicBright CRM is fighting the software obesity war (SOW) by providing small businesses with a faster, lighter contact and lead management system that will save them money.

As you can see, this release takes a different approach to their announcement. They could have just said, "We have this new small business crm software" but instead they made it interesting and creative.

Choosing an Ad Network for your website

With so many ad networks how does one choose the right one? With companies like Doubleclick, Gorilla Nation, Burst Media, Blue Lithium, 24x7 real media, adBrite, Tribal Fusion and even Google, there are so many to choose from.

The biggest thing to look for is their requirements. Nothing says “shady” like an adnetwork that will allow anyone to be part of it. These ad networks will commonly show the annoying and flashy smiley faced ads that we all love so much. They also pay out very low CPM’s because of this. Sometimes you may only make 5 cents per thousand impressions. No wonder the sites that use this are usually loaded with ads and crappy looking because of it.

Most of the reputable ones have traffic requirements and even privacy statement requirements that are reviewed by an actual person. This is usually a good sign, anytime I have signed up for a service and been automatically enrolled and ready to place my ads I have been disappointed. However, I have signed up for a couple that were almost painful to become a partner on and they have been the best ones.

One thing to find out before signing up is what the ad network gives you control over. Do they have an area where you can update your information, set up your default campaigns and reject ad’s that don’t fit your site? Most of them I have found do all of this but I have run into a couple that required me to go through my ad rep to make any changes and this is a hassle.

Below is a summary of some of the better networks I have come across.

Burst Media – good control over your ads and campaigns. Decent CPM’s but lower inventory fulfillment. (you may only have 15% of your ads filled by them)

Tribal Fusion – Great interface for the partner area, offers good control of your information and helps you put your site in front of potential ad buyers. Decent CPM rates.

Doubleclick and Gorilla Nation – Higher impression requirements limit smaller sites, but good selection of types of ads.

Google – Adsense is a great 3rd tier backup for other ad networks. I wouldn’t recommend putting them as your primary ad network but they do have decent payouts and a good interface to control your ads.


The best thing you can do is experiment. Try them out for a couple of weeks and if they don’t work out discontinue them. Most of them do not bind you to a contract that wouldn’t allow you to do this.

Making money from your website’s traffic

So you have a website and you want to make money off your traffic? Anyone who has tried this realizes this is easier said than done. It is not because it is inherently hard to make money from ad revenues; it is that some ad networks make it harder than it needs to be. Here is an overview of each way you can display ads on your site.

Generally there are 3 types of advertisements you can serve up on your website. Cost Per Thousand (CPM) impressions, Cost Per Click (CPC) and Cost Per Action (CPA). Depending on your site and content you will have to experiment to find out what is best for you. But generally a mix is usually the best.

CPM rates vary by every ad network and website. Some ad networks will pay as little as .10 cents per thousand impressions and others as high as $30.00. In my experience anything in the $1 – 2 dollar range is good for an ad network. If you sell your own ads directly you may get between $5 - $30. I have seen rates higher but don’t know if they are successful in selling all their available ad space.

CPC rates are all over the board and generally is determined by the industry and competition of that ad. Take Google Adwords as an example. They do most of their ad serving as CPC. Some keywords like “Sound Effects” have little competition and demand so you may only get 10 cents a click if your website has that advertisement appearing on your site. However if you have a keyword like "Contact Manager" the market is saturated and you could make $5 dollars on one click.

CPA is the least common method of ad serving. This requires that not only a user clicks on the advertisement but also takes some required action on the website. For instance, Fire Fox offers a CPA program so that if a person clicks on the Fire Fox advertisement and downloads the browser the website makes $1.00. Other common CPA ads revolve around the user taking surveys or signing up to a website.

You can make substantial amounts of money off of your website traffic but in order to do so you must choose your ad network(s) wisely and even have numerous ad networks to capitalize on all your traffic.

Improving Google Adwords Keyword Quality Index

Whether you realize it or not, the amount you are paying per click with your Google Adwords campaign is not what everyone else is paying. The higher your Keyword Quality Index (KQI) score the less you have to pay for your keywords and the higher your position will be.

Your KQI is a somewhat direct correlation to how relevant that keyword is to your site, and more importantly, the page that your ads take the user to. So this brings up the top ways to increase your score.

1)Create landing pages for your advertisements. Don’t send every user to the same page. Send them to a variety of pages that have to do with those particular keywords. The more relevant the landing page is to your keyword the better your KQI score will be.

2)Create ad groups in order to separate your keywords. Don’t group all your keywords together if they are targeting different things.

For instance, one of my clients Logicbright CRM has two markets. One is CRM for small business and one is large corporations. The keywords that are important to each group happen to be different which means the ads that each market should see would be different. So in this case you would want to make two ad groups and have one ad group go to one landing page and the other one to a different landing page.

3)Use your keywords on your landing page and make sure they appear in the meta descriptions of those pages.

Don’t get too discouraged. It may take a while for things to happen the way you want, if you remove the keywords and start over it may take even longer since Google remembers your activity for old keywords and campaigns. So be patient, if you do it right results will come.

Using the sales cycle in your CRM to maximize efficiency

Most CRM software can be categorized in two groups. One lets the user operate the CRM software the way they want to without much guidance, and the other makes the user fit their way of doing things.

Both ways have a distinct advantage. The one that forces the user to do things a certain way typically keeps unorganized companies in check. But this is also not very flexible and doesn’t fit many types of organizations. Examples of this style can be found at netsuite.com and entellium.com.

The other way relies on each organization to train their employees on the “best” way of using the CRM product. This is not a bad thing and it typically allows a company to dictate exactly how they want to run their business. This is also allows for companies of all types to use the same CRM package. Generally this is the type of CRM most companies will choose. Think about it, does a computer company operate the same was as a charity or a bank? No, Then why would you choose a CRM that forces them to all do the same thing? Some examples of this type of CRM is salesforce.com, logicbright.com and sugarcrm.com.

One specific area of using CRM that many companies struggle with is the Sales Cycle. It can be difficult for business, especially small businesses, to use their CRM effectively throughout the sales cycle. The best way to solve this problem is to make sure that all your employees understand how leads, contacts and opportunities get moved through your CRM. Developing a “Best Practices” technique for your company is key.

Logcibright CRM has an illustrated flowchart of how Leads are found, converted to contacts and opportunities are created. Check out their CRM Sales Cycle.

The Top 3 On-Demand CRM packages

Most growing companies find themselves in need of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software at some point. Choosing the right one can be tricky and there are more things than just cost to consider.

Here are three hot CRM companies and how they fair against one another.

Sales Force – This is the front-runner for On-Demand (website based) CRM. They cater mostly towards large corporations but recently added a small business version.

Pros: They are one of the most robust CRM packages out there and have good tech support. They offer good mobile support for Blackberry and Palm OS.

Cons: Although they cost around $15/per user per month for the first year, after the first year their cost triples! Their software is so robust that for most small businesses it is confusing and may require extensive training to utilize properly.

LogicBright CRM – This is the new kid on the block. They show a lot of potential for the SMB market since they are only catering to this market.

Pros: Logicbright.com is by far the easiest and least expensive CRM’s out there. Their cost is $20/user per month and extra disk space can be purchased if you wish to use the CRM more as file-sharing software. Since it is easy to use there is little training required.

Cons: LogicBright.com is a new product and hasn’t proven itself yet.

Sugar CRM - After coming out a couple of years ago, they have launched an impressive amount of add-ons and changes.

Pros: Lots of customization if you have on staff programmers, everything is open-source. They also have on-site options if you wish to house your own servers. Great for medium to large sized companies.

Cons: Focused too much on larger companies with their pricing ($50/user per month) and their features.

There are plenty of other CRM options on the market. Most are either designed for very small businesses such as ACT! or for large corporations such as Siebal. If you are a business in the 5-10 user range I would recommend trying out logicbright.com.

How to write successful website copy

Writing for the web is a difficult task for most people, especially those who are used to writing for print. The basic difference is a viewer’s attention span. In a magazine or a newsletter you have more of your viewer’s attention. They will thumb through and read whole articles because they have to decide to read it or throw it out. They are also typically left with no other immediate alternative for that same information.

With most websites, people have the attention span of a goldfish (7 seconds). If they cannot find what they want in 7 seconds they will just go and find another site. So how do you keep your viewer’s attention?

Summarize your text: Keep your text shorter. You may want to go in-depth on a subject, but use a blog, whitepaper or a downloadable pdf if you want to go deep into a subject.
Bullets and paragraph headings: Bullet points and headings of paragraphs are very important if you are listing topics out for your audience. They can quickly scan for what they are looking for and ignore what they don’t like.

Graphics: Use graphics and colors to draw the viewer’s attention to parts of the screen. This is the same strategy magazine use; it is the same for the web.

Keywords: This is the hardest part for some. To write text properly for the web you must use your keywords over and over throughout the website. This is mostly for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but also because your audience is not going to read it in any particular order. For example: If you owned LogicBright CRM, you would want to make sure your url (logicbright.com) appeared all over the website. Also use your keywords: CRM, Customer Relationship Management, small business software and online CRM software; throughout the site. Don’t forget to mention your competitors -- you may be able to get some traffic from them as well.

Length: If you think it is too long, it probably is. Even this article would be lengthy on a website that isn’t news or information oriented.

Keep it simple, and follow those suggestions outlined above and your website will be optimized for the web audience.

Website Flowcharts and Webmaps

Planning a website’s structure is as important as the design of the site. It is also the single thing that can separate your business from countless others. Just think about it; how many times have you been to a site and couldn’t get to where you wanted to go? It happens all the time and since websites are a dime-a-dozen a user will gladly take their business somewhere else.

In fact, if a user spends about 7 seconds without finding what they were looking for on a new website, they will leave and find another website. This means there is little room to be inefficient in the layout of your website.

The best way I have found to plan a new website would be to make a list of all the pages and functionality that you wish the website to have. Once you have this list you can start categorizing it to combine and reduce pages that are related and figure out what your primary topics/links will be.

Once you have a list of your pages, it is time to see how they will connect to one another. Using a program like Microsoft Visio will give you the capability to produce flowcharts and webmaps very quickly. Below is a basic example of a website flowchart for a portion of a Banking website.


The diagram shows just a portion of what a whole banking site would be, but you can imagine this expanding into several areas that are all interconnected. Some websites may only have a few pages and some may have hundreds. The more pages you have the more important is it to map it out and see how a user can go travel through the site before you build it and find your most important page is hidden.

Flowcharts and webmaps also give you a good idea of how “deep” your website content is. Website depth is a way of saying how many layers (pages) a user must click through to get to their desired area. If a user has to drill down to more than three times you may want to see if there is a better way of structuring the website. If you must have more than three layers, using breadcrumbs is a great way to show a user exactly where they are on a website. Breadcrumbs are shown below.


I sometimes get the question, “how much time should we spend on planning a website?” There is no real answer to that question, some sites only take about 5% of the total production time and some take 40%. The larger and more complex the website is the more time you should spend on planning, it will help reduce your production time and the amount of rework you may have to do.

Website Usability

Usability on the web is a topic that many designers and business owners don’t seem to have a grasp on. For web designers this is an issue because many feel that a good, creative design should not be held hostage to standard usability requirements. While this is sometimes true, the real challenge is for a web designer to appeal to their audience. If their audience is artsy and expecting something cutting-edge, then the designer can feel free to express themselves fully because their audience will expect this. A great example of this is the tokyoplastic.com website. This site is entirely Flash based and mixes 3d with great sound effects. Language barriers asides, this site is hard to use but it is worth trying to figure out.

From a small business owner’s perspective, they want to make sure no clients are lost so usability should be the primary aspect when designing the website. Nothing says “Buy from us” like a great looking site in which a customer cannot figure out how to add an item to a shopping cart. Subsequently, a website that doesn’t look professional will turn customers away. So finding an adequate mix of professional looks with good usability will go a long way with your potential customers.

Reduce Clicks

One important factor to making a website easier to navigate is reducing the perceived number of clicks it takes to get to a page. I say perceived because if your site is well organized and categorized you can have the user click a few times to get to something without it seeming like it. Also, understanding that not all users use websites the way you or I do is important. So giving users a variety of ways of doing the same thing is key.

For example, I recently had the privilege of being a beta-tester for a new CRM tool called Logic Bright CRM. The first thing I noticed was there was several ways to do the same task. The duplicating of links really works because some users may never look at the one on the left and others may not look under the tabs, so this makes it easy for both types of users. Below is a screenshot of what I mean.

Navigation

Another aspect of usability is keeping the primary links/navigation of a site in the expected locations. This is usually at the top or left hand side of the screen. NEVER put your navigation at the bottom or the right side! There are two reasons you should not do this. First, a user doesn’t expect the navigation to be there so there is a learning curve for a user that is unnecessary. Second, if you user’s monitor is set to a lower resolution your navigation may not even show on their screen without them using the scrollbars. There are programmatic ways of solving this issue but they are generally cumbersome and create other issues with your website so you are better off avoiding this in the first place.

Colors, Contrast and Consistency

The final usability issue I will mention is the use of colors. Have you ever been to a website that has white text on a yellow background? It is just plain hard to read and for some people impossible. Your best bet is to stick with dark colors on light backgrounds or white text on dark colors. Along with using the right colors you want to stay consistent with your colors. If you have a link that is blue and underlined in one place make sure all your related links are blue and underlined.

There are countless other usability issues as they relate to resolution, accessibility, file size and scalability. But those are topics for another day.

Search Engine Optimization Tips

SEO is a big topic that comes up all the time with my clients. Everyone wants to be the number one website on Google, but don’t know how to achieve this. This article is NOT saying you are going to be able to get to number one, but it will give you some guide lines on how to increase your chances greatly.

The most important item relating to SEO is to remember that CONTENT IS KING. Without endless amounts of fresh and interesting content you will never get to the top. But it isn’t just the quality of content that counts; it is how the content is written. For example if you are selling cell phones you want to make sure your keywords appear in your text over and over again. It may seem repetitive but this is the best way to get Google, MSN and Yahoo! to notice you.

The next tips are in no particular order because they all play a similar small role, but together make all the difference.

• Use meta tags and descriptions – This is an older html technology that is considered dead by some but is still being used. Your meta description is often the description that a search engine will use when displaying your website.
  
  
• Wrap text in paragraph and headline tags. Using the proper tags will tell a search engine that your text is indeed content. Headline tags are given a higher priority by search engines.
  
  
  
• No Frames – stay away from frames, it makes it impossible for a search engine to appropriately link to your site. In-turn a user may find your site but it may not have all the page elements attached to it.
  
  
• Links – Using your keywords in your links is a great way to emphasize those words to a search engine. Never use “Click here” it is a wasted link.
  
  
• Backlinks – Backlinks are links from other sites that point to your site. Backlinks are one of the primary things that Google looks for in determining rank. The best way to build backlinks is with your content. You can syndicate your content over blogs, rss feeds and general article submissions. Each time you submit an article make sure it has your link on it. Joining forums and social networks are also great ways of building backlinks but many of them frown on blatant advertisements so you have to do this wisely.
  
  
• Use Text – It may sound simple, but actually using text instead of images allows a google bot or yahoo crawler to read you site.
  
  
• No Flash – Flash sites are bad for SEO plain and simple. Even newer Flash techniques that allow crawlers to read the site still won’t end up at the number one spot simply because of lack of perceived content since your website is only one page.
  
• Web maps – Creating and submitting a web map notifies the search engines of which pages are the most important and how often they change.Time – SEO is slow, be patient.

There are many other things you can do to increase you rank naturally, just remember do not cheat and pay for a service to do this for you.