Parking PPC .com

Web Design
Web design limitations are the largest reason that a person may chose to create his/her own website that will display PPC advertising and affiliate links over simply directly parking a domain name with a PPC partner for Parking PPC income (or domain PPC income). You are allowed total control of the logos, graphics, layout and design of the site.

Parked Domain Designs
Some Parking PPC partners do allow quite a bit of options for the design of each Parking PPC page. Still, these designs will have limitations. I have yet to see a Parking PPC partner that will allow me to upload or host my own logo and heading background. It seems that the suits have missed this large personalization of parked pages opportunity that so many of us domainers would just love.

At this stage, Parking PPC is simply offering extremely elementary design options, if any at all. It is when you decide to host your own website that you should think about real web design. Indeed, the very design of a website needs to allow for, and incorporate, PPC advertisements. And this is the natural step for domain names that perform well with Parking PPC programs.

Designing Websites
Obviously, you can always design a website yourself. Although I myself am a web designer (at Symbiotic Design), I actually encourage you to make the attempt since a website that shows PPC ads doesn't usually make a great deal of revenue. The good thing about website PPC is that you can have lots of revenue generating sites that will add up to large recurring income streams. Therefore, custom designing each individual site isn't really very cost effective. However, if you have 40 or so websites that could share the same design, this could be an option for you. In this case, you would not be asking a designer to design a custom one-off solution for one site, but a template that would be used and identified as your unique business network and identitty across a variety of web sites.

Actually, web designs are available all over the place through templet sites. A site design templet (or template) is the basic graphic design layout and user interface that presents the site. The identity (Trademark or logo) and content is then defined by the customer. Although still in its early stages, I am estabishing a website at SiteTemplets.com that will allow customers to download the required site templets that they want to use for their own websites. Usually, all you will have to do is pay for the license to use the design on a site. The licenses are sold on a per site basis unless the customer purchases the exclusive license. The exclusive design license reserves that the design would not be sold again and the customer could use it on as many sites as he/she wanted. The exclusive design license will not negate previously sold licenses for the same design, however.

In any event, creating or aquiring a site templet around which to base your site design is a good and cost effective way to establishing a professional looking website that will command respect and qualify itself as an authority in the field you are looking to establishing a presence in. However, also remember that very large websites will use more than one template for different sections of the website, all based on the original design. And yet, one template should do just fine for most smaller sites.

Design Tools
There are a variety of great tools with which you can design websites. If you do not understand the simple HTML code formatting commands that go into building a webpage, I do encourage you to learn at least some version of HTML such as 3.2, though version 1.1 of the transitional XHTML is much more appropriate in this day and age. The reason is simple, every single WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) visually oriented HTML editor will inevitably have problems with its own code. It will actually require you to look at, analyze and correct the code. While usually the editor is having a problem because of an extra DIV tag or something ridiculous, you are much better off if you are armed to tackle the situation.

Also remember that HTML is just a bunch of formatting commands expressed in sets of "tags" that look like <title>Title Name</title>. This code can be easily written in any text editor.

Some of the best visual editors are free. The latest version of Adobe/Macromedia Dreamweaver is always free for a 30 day evaluation period. The personal version of PageBreeze is always free (for personal use or evaluation purposes).

• Dreamweaver - The industry standard in professional website design.
• PageBreeze - A great WYSIWYG webpage editor in its own right.
• Webmaster Tools BLE - From Symbiotic Design or JavaScript tricks.

Content
One must also remember that having control of the website also means that you have to populate it with material, not just the design or the ads. Although you can incorporate RSS and XML content feeds into your site, you should only use these content channels to enhance a site, not base its design on it. Examples of using RSS/XML feeds to enhance a website include for an updated news and events feed, a related articles feed. But the rule of thumb here is that these feeds must compliment existing content, not create the actual site content.

The reason for having original content on websites that show PPC ads is that as a website, you have to rely on the search engines for traffic. This is unless you have a popular domain name that people would type directly into the browser address bar (usually refered to as a "Type-In" domain). As these Type-In names are rare and worth good money, you will probably be relying on the search engines to send you traffic. And in order for the search engines to send you traffic, people have to find you when they are searching for something related to the content that you are offering. Since the very same RSS and XML feeds are used extensively throughout the internet, it is duplicated content. Duplicated content doesn't really do that well in searches because the same content is available on so many sites. It is the content that it enhances, or compliments, which will make the difference if you were searching for a phrase out of a highly syndicated RSS feed..

If you only intend to show PPC ads, you may very well be best off using a Parking PPC solution. The reasoning is that although search engines don't like Parking PPC pages, they absolutely hate websites that act like PPC directories that simply pass traffic. They see this as their job, directing traffic to the most appropriate resources. Unfortunately, they don't really do a very good job of it. Most searches are started over with more keywords to qualify the resulting listings for better and more appropriate information. This is the very reason that browsable PPC directories that cover a particular niche do have a place in the realm of the web search.

Search Engine Optimization
Although I would love to tell you differently, search engines are the big bullies of the internet. So you have to pay attention to what they are doing so that you can adjust your web design and site content appropriately. Unfortunately, I am personally discusted with Yahoo for revealing the identity of a Yahoo chatter to the Chinese government. Yahoo gave-up and sold out a reporter that was simply expressing herself to a fellow journalist. This lady is facing 10 years in prison right now.

Both Google and Yahoo are censoring themselves to the Chinese public while screaming "Freedom!" elsewhere. They do not even venture to practise what they preach, only watch what they preach to whom.

Unfortunately, even as web designers, we must pay attention to what happens in the search engine industry. While a whole industry of so-called search engine optimization professionals has cropped up around this one simple and volatile fact, the truth is that this is and always was the job of a web designer.

However, if you are grabbing a website design templet to use from the Internet to customize to your own needs, be aware that you need to pay attention to these SEO (search engine optimization) concerns and issues.

Simple SEO Steps:
• Always name your webpages appropriately for that page's content and different than all your other pages.
• Use keywords throughout your page titles, descriptions and content that are relevant to that page.
• Always make use of the alt property of image <IMG> tags, but never stuff them with irrelevant keywords.
• Check your spelling. Any misspelled word will not register well for searches at a search engine.
• Use meta tags properly. For an overview of how meta tags work, read my post at WF9.com, META TAG SEO.
• Do not submit your websites to the search engines until they are done and checked to be error-free.
• When ready to submit your site to the search engines, do so by hand to the major search engines.
• Software submission is OK as long as you do not use it to submit your site to the major search engines.
• You will need to establish a reciprocal link campaign. In order to do this effectively and effeceintly, use a capable automated script such as the WSNLinks directory.
• Niche directories that are related to your field are important. For instance, try to submit a Wedding Videography site to any and all wedding business directories, wedding related reciprocal directories, video or videography directories, or reciprocal link directories for video or videography sites.
• You may well have to buy some links in paid directories, but only a few. Good places to buy links are reputable business directories, but never place ads or pay for listings in directories you are not 100% sure of. There are so many Yellow Pages directories out there that it is absolutely insane. Use SuperPages.com, instead.

I will outline a few more steps that you can use in promoting your website in the traffic building section,

As SEO is so involved that it generated a whole new line of work, it is hard to impress more than the basics of basic SEO here. Please see other SEO venues such as SEWatch.com and the SEO forums at Webmaster Forums 9 or Domainers.Name for more detailed information on SEO.