Web Site Development & Pages that Convert

Besides being able to brag to all your friends that you have your own website and a piece of virtual real estate, having your own website provides a TON of benefits for Internet marketers.

Building a website is usually "scariest" thing that you can say to someone who is just getting started with Internet Marketing. If you are feeling overwhelmed right now and telling yourself that "I can't make my own site", then it's time to change the way you are thinking. Building your own website doesn't have to be difficult and it is just like learning to ride a bike. Once you learn the fundamentals of riding a bike (pedaling and balance), you will be able to ride a bike forever. The same goes for building websites!

Having your own website is very beneficial for Internet Marketers because it provides you with the ability to create your own sales angle and voice your own opinions. This will typically lead to much higher conversions and you will have the ability to cover anything that the merchant pages are missing on. The bottom line is that you can tweak your website so that it tightly matches your sales angle and is very highly relevant to what your customers want.

There are also less obvious benefits to having your own website, especially if you are a Google Adwords advertiser. Google does not allow multiple instances of the same URL under the same search term, so if you are direct linking you are directly competing with everyone else who is direct linking to the same site. This is the HUGE drawback to direct linking to a merchant site and a benefit that having your own site presents.

Monetizing ALL website traffic is also something that you can do if you have your own website. You can collect the names and email addresses of your visitors, offer bonuses or incentives, and connect on a personal basis with each and every website visitor; something you cannot do if you don't have your own website.

Statistically, having your own website that is optimized will convert at a much higher rate than sending traffic directly to a merchant page.

First you need to look for some good hosting deals. Although you can get lots of free hosting services; i recomment that you go with the paid ones and they are more reliable.

Once you have your web hosting setup and have registered at least one domain, all you need to do is build your web site! Sounds easy and once you get the hang of it you'll agree that building a website really isn't something to be afraid of. Most of the time people love building websites and it becomes a hobby that will enable them to make a lot of money online.

I really want to help you become comfortable with websites, how they work, and how to build them. This topic is by far the number one reason why people feel that they are not "able" to make money online. DO NOT let the fear of building your own website get in your way. You can use HTML which is the absolute easiest programming language to learn, and there are literally hundreds of thousands of free sites on the internet that will help you with ANY question that you could think of.

Here are a few of the best resources for web programming using HTML:

http://www.w3schools.com/html
http://www.htmlgoodies.com
http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com

You're going to hear this term very frequently, if you haven't already. So what exactly is a landing page anyway?

A landing page is simply the page that people land on when you send them to your website. That's it! Whether you are sending traffic from pay-per-click ads or from articles that you've written and submitted to Squidoo or ezine, the landing page is where your visitors "land" on your website. It is simply a page within a website.

There are many different types of landing pages which can be used for different purposes. As you read through this section, keep in mind that a good landing page can separate a marketer that is profitable and one that is not.

In saying this, you are not going to become an expert with landing pages overnight. Often times a sale can be initiated from something as simple as a good headline, or even a relevant image on your page.

Here are some terms that you are going to hear quite often, and I highly suggest that you familiarize yourself with these:

Squeeze Page: A squeeze page is a single web page that has the purpose of collecting the email and name of your website visitor using an opt-in autoresponder form (something you will learn about in the coming weeks).

Multi-Page Site: A multi-page site is exactly what it sounds like, a website that has more than one web page. For instance, if you visit: www.eliteinfo.net, you'll notice that there is a homepage, frequently asked question page, contact page, join page, and more. This is an example of a multi-page site. Google Adwords likes multi-page sites and will contribute to a higher Quality Score.

Long Copy vs Short Copy: When we refer to "copy", we're talking about the sales text or "content" on a web page. Long Copy are pages that are very long with a lot of content on them, while short copy is a more condensed version of this. Squidoo.com homepage is considered Long Copy.

Review Page: A review page is again, just like it sounds. It is a type of web page where multiple products are reviewed and compared to one another. This is among the most effective styles of a landing page that Internet Marketers use to make money online.

We've been talking about how relevancy is integral to a fully optimized webpage, but there are other reasons why a page needs to be relevant, especially if you plan on advertising your page with Google Adwords.

Google has an algorithm called "Quality Score" which checks to make sure that your keywords, ads, and landing pages contain relevant content. In order to get a "great" Quality Score, you need to have a relevant landing page.

There are many benefits to having a great Quality Score and Google rewards advertisers who are highly relevant by offering them incentives. Adwords advertisers with a high Quality Score get better ad positioning, lower minimum bids on their keywords, and lower overall cost-per-click (CPC). The Quality Score of your Adwords account is directly related to how relevant you are with your keywords, ads and landing pages.

Google prefers that you have a multiple page site with relevant content on it. So, if you want to advertise with Google and achieve a maximum quality score, build your landing page, and connect it to other pages on the same domain. Here are some examples of pages you can have connected to your landing page:

Home
About us
Contact
Reviews
Comparisons
Articles
etc.

The more relevant content that you ad to your website, the more likely you are to achieve a high quality score in your Google Adwords account.