Developing the appearance of your website can often be streamlined by purchasing professionally designed themes or templates and using them on your site. However, it is important to know what design elements contribute to an effective and flexible layout for your website. Using Web Design on a Shoestring you can learn the foundations of web design and, more specifically, the details that need to be documented in order to get the website your business or organization needs.

The summary on Amazon.com also notes that the author discusses how employing good markup and adhering to Web standards can make your site work on the widest range of browsers and devices and even goes over some fine points of proper XHTML. She finishes with some sage words on choosing and registering a domain name and comparison shopping for domain hosting. The book offers useful tools and reviews of content management systems and free resources to help a small team (or a team of one) to effectively plan and manage the development of a website.

Managing Content

If you have a website it is essential to think about updating your content to highlight news, events or draw attention to your products or services. The days of setting up a simple HTML site and creating multiple pages that require extensive editing any time the content changes have been replaced by a widespread reliance on content management systems (CMS). Numerous tools exist but two open source options tend to be easier to use when you are looking to manage your own website.

WordPress started out as a blogging tool and has evolved into a very flexible content management system that is well-suited for small to medium-sized websites. Despite the title, WordPress For Dummies, 3rd Edition has practical guidance for both beginners and more experienced users. With this book you can become better acquainted with WordPress functionality and management tips including: how to set up a MySQL database; the anatomy of a template tag; ways to enhance your blog with themes, polls, ratings, and widgets; how to manage multiple blogs and users; tips for tackling spam with Akismet (an anti-spam plugin); advice on optimizing for search engines; how to use WordPress as a content management system; and ways to style with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).

Another powerful and scalable CMS is Joomla, which also enjoys a strong developer community and numerous source of website theme templates and add-ons. In Joomla! 1.5: A User’s Guide: Building a Successful Joomla! Powered Website (2nd Edition) the author helps you to understand content management, what Joomla! does, and how its components fit together. He also explains how to build Joomla! sites from scratch and systematically customize them to your needs. What may be particularly useful is the included case studies showing how to build Joomla-powered websites for a school, a small business, and a blog.

Getting Noticed

Once you have your website set up, the next step is to ensure that is gets noticed by search engines and can be found by visitors and potential customers (for commercial sites). This is where search engine optimization (SEO) becomes an essential aspect of your online marketing efforts. Certainly, there are companies and consultants who offer excellent services to help you improve your search engine rankings and visibility but this requires an additional investment beyond your website development and hosting. In some cases, particularly for non-profit organizations and small-medium businesses, there simply isn’t a large budget available for SEO consulting. With Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day, a website owner or manager can review and apply practical guidance on developing keyword strategies and planning advertising campaigns.

The book also looks at how business goals, creating appealing marketing messages and designing human-usable web sites form the foundation of effective SEO strategy. The authors include spreadsheet-based worksheets that you can use to accomplish specific SEO-related goals. The book’s guidance can be applied to small, individually-owned or large businesses.

Tracking Your Website Metrics

The final tool for website management involves measuring how and where visitors interact with your website. One of the more powerful utilities for this task is Google Analytics. The Google Analytics site describes the service as:

Google Analytics is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features now let you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. With Google Analytics, you’re more prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites.

In Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics, 2nd Edition you will learn about the installation, configuration, tracking techniques, and best practices of Google Analytics. Since this is a 2nd edition, the content has been updated to reflect changes in the Google Analytics interface and also addresses topics such as how to optimize your online and offline marketing campaigns and integrate Google Analytics data with third-party systems and applications, including your CRM system.

A useful overview of the importance of website metrics and how Google Analytics can be a valuable tool for small business is available on YouTube from justynalam in her video presentation entitled “Small Business Marketing – Why You Need Google Analytics”.

Relying on other sites

When you rely upon other sites, like the ones above, you are usually confident that they will be around for a long time. However, if you are looking to create an identity that travels with you and can be crafted to reflect your experiences or professional achievements, creating your own web presence becomes a necessity. Spend some time creating and developing a website and you definitely appreciate the investment of your time and effort — but it doesn’t have to be costly in terms of monetary expense.

Create to fit your needs

Start out with a basic solution (e.g., shared hosting rather than dedicated hosting) and expand your site as needed. Consider using website building tools (e.g., WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla) that don’t require a commercial license. And you can use stock photos or your images (from Flickr) to add color and pictures to your site.

Your website (either a blog, photo journal or pages on social networks) makes it easier for people to find you and then begin to rely on you for advice, ideas and, possibly, partnership or professional collaboration. Depending on what you want to achieve you can use different types of websites -

• Web blog (or blog) – create a blog for a specific project or trip and then connect it to other blogs each with their own identity
• Portfolio website – a good way to showcase photos, projects or writing samples (white papers, brochures, creative writing, etc.)
• Professional Services – promote your expertise and increase visibility on search engines by adding content on a regular schedule
• E-Commerce stores – sell products (either manufactured or information) through a dedicated portal with secure transactions
• Affiliate sites or blogs – promote other people’s products and services by creating a blog or website that highlights the benefits of the products
• Learning Online / Teaching – use a content management system or a learning management system to deliver training course for as a public service or for profit
• Single page – sales letters, mini-sites, article directories, audio and video podcast websites can attract visitors in specific niches and offer highly specialized content for search engines

Find what you need to get started

The links above can connect you with the sites where you can download the content creation tools you need to set up a website. These tools are also available as part of the hosting accounts offered at Expat Internet Services. There are well established communities that support tools such as WordPress, Drupal and Joomla (and other tools) where you can find free add-ons (plugins and modules) to add audio, video and image galleries to your website.

With the increase in electronic products and services delivered in digital format or online, it can be a challenge to make new products stand out. In order to improve the visibility of a digital product, such as an ebook or special report consider setting up a keyword-specific domain name. A few examples of such specific domain names include:

• masterbusinessblogging.com – Business Blog Mastery with Denise Wakeman of The Blog Squad
• breakthroughemailmarketingsecrets.com – A product offered by Bob Bly (bly.com)
• findyourniche.co.nz – Recruitment specialists research, consumer insights and analytics

If you are looking at creating information products or are delivering services via the internet, you might consider setting up a separate website (or sites) to better differentiate your products and also, as a secondary benefit, create additional links between your primary website and your product or service-specific site.

Top level domains (“TLDs”) are often the first stop for people as they set up their websites or explore options for establishing a primary, or multi-site, destination for their online activities. When you think of how you can search for domains, the simple form and the drop-down box with different domain suffixes defaults to “.com” rather than any other options.

If you are looking to set up a local presence in an international market, finding a local domain name, meaning a name with the local country domain attached, can be a challenge. In some cases the domain names are not open for purchase through domain name registrars. Peru, for example, has a domain name registration option that can be completed by non-Peruvian individuals and companies, but doesn’t make it easy. You need to be comfortable navigating their website in Spanish and then finding, and completing the registration form. Once it has been submitted, you then need to submit your registration payment through a bank transfer. Online payment isn’t an option.

Thinking about mobile users

The internet is increasingly relied upon by people with mobile devices – smart phones, iPhones, multimedia devices (e.g., iPod touch) and netbooks. They are reading websites on smaller screens and sometimes as text only. If you are using a standard .com domain then there are ways to alter your website, if you are using a content management system (such as WordPress) to make it more friendly to mobile devices. An alternative is to set up a .mobi domain with a simpler website design and navigation plan that is more readable on smaller screens.

Localizing your content

If you are providing content to users in multiple locations, you might need to make it easier for visitors to access your websites using country-specific domain names. In some cases, you might be able to create domain names that use a local language (e.g., Spanish, French, Russian, etc.) rather than an English word, which might not be as well-known.

From a marketing perspective, your use of international TLDs (Top Level Domains) can make it easier to tailor a promotion or country-specific content to a unique domain name. Plus, the links between your other websites (if you have multiple domains for your business or organization) can help to improve your ranking in search engines as you add content across the various websites.

Learn more about domain names

You can see all of the domain name options that currently exist by looking through our domain name glossary. If you are interested in registering a new domain name you can do that too.

GaleriAd is using a hosting package from Expat Internet Services and has built a Flash-powered site to promote their “integral consumer connection” services for clients in Peru and Latin America.

GaleriAd’s mission (the “unofficial” translation from Spanish) reads:

GaleriAd is an independent agency and creative leader that creates strong and provocative emotional connections between good companies and their consumers. Using ideas that are relevant, inspirational and disruptive

Their website offers information about their vision, values, who works there and their methodology they have entitled “Connector Tool”.

The post mentions “choosing words, content, and design. . . to meet the needs of search engines” – this translates into having a well-organized website that has a clear hierarchy (e.g., home page, other main pages, sub-pages) with links that can be followed by the search engines. There are a few ways to achieve a search engine-friendly structure for your site:

• Small content = fewer pages: if your site is concise and can express all of your key messages in just a few pages, you can have a very simple website structure that is easy to follow and index
• Rely on a content management system: when you have more content, it needs to be organized logically and a content management tool (such as WordPress, Joomla and Drupal, just a name a few) can help you build the structure and maintain your content with less emphasis on coding and more on writing.

Search engines want to find new and changing content. When you take the time to create a website, you should expect to invest some time each week into maintaining and expanding your online identity. When you consistently update your site’s content, search engines will create new index connections and make it easier for other internet users to find your site and link to your content.

When you supplement the standard search engine results with search engine marketing, you can draw attention to specialized content on your site or highlight new services and products. Google AdWords is a popular example of search engine marketing. You can spend some time and learn about how to use AdWords at the Google AdWords Learning Center. If you are just getting started, the online training can provide some practical background and explanations about online advertising and website promotion.

Good luck and don’t forget about other major search engines and the importance of looking at more localized resources and multi-lingual tools. You can find examples of international search engines with local language versions in the Wikipedia article on search engine marketing.

In fact, his media team is looking continue the practice of being directly engaged with the people who support his ideas and have a vested interest in seeing the impact of President Obama’s decisions. The objectives of engaging with citizens and keeping them informed through something more than a press conference has a parallel lesson for anyone who is building an online identity, especially a global identity.

Communication

When you establish a blog, an e-newsletter, an online forum or a website with all of this things you are looking to communicate more effectively with your clients or readership. There are increasing opportunities to use video and audio content as part of your communications tool kit as well. YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe and Viddler, just to name a few.

If you are looking to use video on your website or blog, you can create accounts on the services mentioned above then embed links or small video players on your website. Many blogging services allow you to embed these links and make it easy for you to share video content you have created and stored elsewhere on the Internet.

Transparency

If you have a business or operate as an independent professional (e.g., freelancer, consultant or advisor), your reputation and the value of your services is a key to maintaining and growing your client base. Building a reputation takes time and, for a business, is founded on the feedback of clients. How can you make potential customers aware of the value of your services? Having a means to publish and comment on the feedback from existing clients and colleagues.

Success in a business, especially for global professionals, increasingly relies upon partnering with other organizations. Your online identity can be an online record of your work and enable potential partners to find you and understand how your expertise can help them be successful too.

If you are an established professional and are looking to increase your reputation and presence in your field, having an online identity is an increasingly valuable tool to differentiate your work and achievements. When you set up a blog or professional profile site (essentially an online resume and portfolio), you make it easier for potential employers and colleagues to find you and understand what you can offer an organization.

Participation

Simply pushing information out to a mailing list doesn’t enable people to give feedback or truly engage with you or your organization. While it might seem like a chaos-inducing idea to make easy for visitors to your website to suggest services or propose ways to make your organization more useful, that is exactly what can make your online presence stand out.

Forums and sites with interactive tools (Facebook, InterNations, Google Groups, Yahoo! Groups, Ning, PBWiki and others) can make it easy for people with specific interests to gather together and comment on services (being provided or ones that are needed) and find people who can help. There are plenty of “solutions” represented on the Internet, the goal is to create the opportunities to connect the people who need products and services with those who can deliver them. If your website can make this process easier for people you are interacting with, then you create not only an advantage for yourself but can help others as well.

More perspective

If you want to read more about what people are thinking of how the US President will use the internet there is a related blog post at O’Reilly Radar.

Tools to create your own global identity

if you are looking to get a “quick start” to developing your online identity, you might consider using the Quick Blogcast service to begin creating and publishing content immediately. This service also has the option of using your own domain name to build more awareness in search engines and other blogs.

If you are looking to establish a clear name for your organization, business or simply for a personal (professional or social) website, having your own domain name is an important first step. And, finally, if you are setting up an online community – either large or small – you can use a variety of open source tools that integrate into your website.

3. Be a source of information. Virtually everyone on the web is looking for specific information. Whether it is for a product, service, or just educational, sharing your expertise and experiences sets your website apart from the others and adds value to the content.

Your website can be a means to share advice, demonstrate your expertise, a way to promote a cause or organizatio or the starting point in a sales process. Regardless of what your ultimate goal is, you need to think about why people will want to visit your site and stay there once they have found it. If you are thinking about offering information that applies to more than one country or region, you have the added “adventure” of thinking about the different cultures of your audiences.

14. Take advantage of the “worldwide” web. The world is a big place and more and more people are coming to the web. Don’t be afraid to expand your web presence beyond your local niche or country. As long as the information you are providing is useful, the visitors will come to learn more, regardless of where they are. Ideas transcend borders.

if you have experience living and working internationally you already have an advantage when putting your website together. You can draw upon your own “lessons learned” and add the benefit of your foreign-but-local perspective to the topics you address on your site. When connecting with more than one culture, you can also draw upon the variety of popular icons or prominent themes from the cultures to make your messages more relevant.

When you find new contacts in an overseas location, you have an opportunity to build a friendship and, if you are involved with business there, expand your visibility locally. People increasingly look to the internet to find reviews and news about products or services. Your website can offer a local “flavor” that makes it easier for new contacts to see your work as both trustworthy and legitimate. There are many programs that make it easier for you to localize your content (examples include WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal) but if your domain name is still in English, your potential clients or visitors, who don’t happen to speak or read English as a first language, might not find your website. Because of this, you might want to establish multiple “internationalized” web domains.

You might be wondering how registering a domain name could help you or your organization establish itself on the Internet. More specifically, you might be considering if it is worth the time to go through the whole process.

The good news is that the “whole process” is actually quite simple. The better news is that having your own domain is rather like owning your own home versus renting – without all of the maintenance hassles! Domain names enable a person or an organization to establish a unique identity. This new identity can be a local one or a global identity. There can be a clever play on words or a simple statement that captures the essence of who you are or what you are doing on the internet and in the world.

If you are involved in international activities or have a portable career, establishing a more consistent global identity is more than desirable – it is essential. The people you interact with will want to know how to contact you or be involved with your organization. Establishing your presence on the internet makes it easier for people to get in touch and stay up to date on the latest news and events in your part of the world.

Being known internationally is a fact of life

Consider that the huge variety of expatriate internet sites all offer you a unique set of information about a given location (or a whole set of locations). Each site wants to provide you with specialized information and draw you to their site. As an individual or organization, this makes sense for you too.

The unique information you can offer might be a collection of professional achievements (e.g., professional articles, graphic designs, fiction and non-fiction literary works). Your global identity may be best characterized through a series of events spread across several years time and multiple locations. These types of information can be quickly and simply communicated through a online presence characterized by a descriptive domain name.

You may be affiliated with an organization or business that has partners in multiple locations. It is increasingly a business standard to have contacts throughout the world. In some cases, your organization might be targeting multiple, international locations in order to improve their market opportunities or reach a specific group of people. All of these cases underscore the importance of creating a global identity that you can develop into a platform for your operational needs.