I have come to realize that many of my clients had no clue when it came to purchasing these services… which has been verified over and over by their own admission.

This article will hopefully help you identify the best route to follow when choosing  your Domain Name and Hosting services. It is not designed to promote, compare, or recommend, any particular company or companies.

Domain Names

Your Domain Name is your internet address, and how people are going to find you and identify with your site or business. Get one. You need it.

Free Domain Names that come with services like Blogger are useless because all you are doing is promoting traffic to Google (they own Blogger).

Example: www.computertactics/blogspot.com may look like a identifiable web address for my site if it was hosted on Blogger (it isn’t). Sure, my name is there but the problem is, all the traffic generated to this URL benefits blogspot.com, NOT me. The search engines recognize blogspot.com, not computertactics.

Bottom line… if your site URL does not end in yoursite.com, you will not see much success.

Top level Domain Names (.com, .net, .org) are cheap to own; usually around $10 per year. Many other Domain extensions are available like – .info, .biz, .us, .eu, .gov, etc., some are cheaper, some are more expensive, and some are not available to the general public.

Wikipedia maintains a great list of Top Level Domains, including availability requirements.

Your best bet is to get a .com as this is what most people think of when it comes to looking for an internet site. It is the most popular, and most widely recognized Domain extension.

If you can afford it, purchase multiple years up front. The overall cost will usually be reduced and you will gain more credibility with the search engines, specifically Google.

Google does have a weight factor in place that favors “long term” Domain Names over “single year,” or those that are soon to expire. They know that most “scam” and “affiliate only” promotion sites use multiple “single year” domains (throwaway domains), and tend to judge everyone this way.

This does not have a major effect on SEO and is almost insignificant in it’s weight factor but, nonetheless, it is still in place and something to consider.

Choosing a Domain Name is important and should be taken seriously. Try to use a name that is relative to the content (niche) of your site. Remember, this is how people will initially identify with your site and the search engines read this as well, so it is most beneficial to use keywords wherever possible.

Short one word names are the best because they are… short, and easy to remember. Unfortunately they are all pretty much taken.

Don’t use initials unless you are a recognized, major company. They are meaningless, provide no insight into what your site is about, and offer no SEO benefits.

Hyphens can be used and do not affect SEO but the problem is, most people forget to use them when typing in a URL and it is difficult to communicate your URL verbally. If someone types in your hyphenated URL without the hyphens, they may go to a different site, or no site at all. This could confuse or frustrate a first time visitor which could send them elsewhere.

The best advice is to use a short phrase – bestcoupondealsandoffers.com, writingforsuccess.com, joeslawnservice.com, or whatever. Just keep in mind that it should make sense when read and spoken.

Where to buy your Domain Name. Domain Names are traditionally sold through companies called “registrars” who will register, manage, and protect your Domain Name.

A good Registrar will provide you with a control panel of sorts where you can manage your own Domain(s).

For most of you,  setting the Domain Name Servers (DNS) and renewing Domains is about all you would do here.

DNS is a set of Hosting addresses that tell the Domain service where to “point” your Domain Name.

Let’s say that you bought hosting at ABC Hosting and created your site – joeslawnservice.com. Well, your Domain service has no way of knowing this unless you tell them.

ABC Hosting will provide you with their unique DNS. It would look something like this:

ns1.abchost.net

ns2.abchost.net

You would login to your Domain service control panel, find the DNS management tool for your Domain Name – joeslawnservice.com – then type in the two DNS addresses provided by your hosting company.

Your Domain service will then connect your Domain Name to your site by “pointing” it to the DNS you provided.

Most Domain services will tell you that it may take up to 72 hours for the Domain Name to propagate (connect) to the site. Some will connect quickly and some may take a day or more, depending on the quality of your Domain service.

There are many Domain Name services to choose from -  GoDaddy, Name.com, Network Solutions, and Register.com. These are a few of the more dependable and respected names out there and any of them would be recommended to do business with. I suggest you comparison shop as there may be special deals available.

My Domains have always been managed by GoDaddy. I have been very happy with their service and have had no issues for over 10 years.

Hosting your Domain Name. I strongly recommend that you DO NOT combine your Domain Name and Hosting with the same service.

GoDaddy for instance, does an excellent job at managing your Domain Names but are one of the worst Hosting providers I have ever had to use. Quite a few of my clients have fallen into the trap of buying their Domain Name at GoDaddy and then get sucked in to using their Hosting Service. Big Mistake.

GoDaddy Hosting is way behind the times. Their Hosting Control Panel is archaic, difficult to use, and somewhat limited. Troubleshooting MySQL or MyPHP is a nightmare and their overall interface is terrible.

iPage is another terrible Hosting service that will offer to sell and manage your Domain Name. Their Servers are horribly slow and the Domain Name service they offer purchases from an outside source. You are forced to manage your Domain Name within the iPage portal which  is very confusing. Decide to leave with your Domain Name and you will be required to pay an additional fee.

Note: When choosing a Hosting service, make sure they offer cPanel or Vistapanel for your control panel.

There are also many Hosting companies that will include a free Domain Name in their package. If you go this route, read the fine print and make sure that you own the Domain Name and have complete control over it… even if you cancel your hosting account.

Otherwise, you may find out their Hosting service is not good and want to move to a better Host, then find out that you cannot move your Domain Name, or may  be required to pay a fee.

Should you get upset and move anyway, you will soon find out that you cannot re-purchase the same Domain Name through a registrar because your previous hosting company has it tied up.

Please keep these services separate. You will have total, independent, control over each service and be much better off in the long run.

What services do I use?

GoDaddy for Domain Name management – 10+ years

ByetHost for free web hosting – 10+ years

HostGator for paid hosting – 5+ years

Ironically though, this is one of the downfalls for Wordpress as there literally thousands of themes to choose from.

A good theme should not only look good, it should also have some configuration options. Most Wordpress users are not familiar with HTML, CSS, or PHP coding. They find a theme they like but want to personalize it in one way or another and there are no options other than re-coding.

If you are somewhat serious about your blog you may want to consider investing in a premium theme that provides extensive options including, alternative layouts, page templates, color and background choices, advertising options, and more.

A good premium theme will allow you to use it for multiple blogs, if you have them, and you can change the look and feel for each one. Premium themes also include support and upgrades.

There are two premium themes that I highly recommend – Flexx Professional and Thesis.

FLEXX PROFESSIONAL (my #1 choice) provides more versatility for your blogs and websites. It gives you the edge with built in SEO features, easy plug in graphics and backgrounds, plus many other features that will save you time with no code learning involved.

Flexx is the most versatile, feature rich theme I have ever used. I personally stand behind my recommendation for this theme and provide support to all my clients that use it.
My Wordpress Services site was built using Flexx Professional.

A few of the many features available…

• 1,056 possible layout combinations – pick and choose your layout with a mouse click.
• Page Templates – 10 page templates allow you to customize different sections of your site.
• Multi-Level Dropdown Menus – with Page Templates, plus menu dropdowns can show off all your Page and Subpage content.
• Header options – keep our rotating images script but include a text overlay of your blog title and tagline, add your own header images, or none at all. Easily upload your new header images and set the Flash-like transition effects.
• Feedburner widget – a cool Feedburner widget that you can easily put into your sidebars for getting feed and email subscriptions.
• Billboard Ad Management Feature / New ad management feature – lets you easily manage display ads on your site.

Flexx Professional sells for $79.95 and includes a multiple use license, support, and 1 year of upgrades.

about Flexx Professional…

THESIS (my 2nd choice) is not just a great theme (it always has been the best for SEO and XHTML compliance), it’s probably the only theme you’ll ever need and it won’t look like any others when you are finished.

Simply put, Thesis is powerful. It has a remarkably efficient HTML + CSS + PHP framework and easy-to-use controls that you can use to fine-tune each and every page of your site. The days of worrying about your in-site SEO are over—with Thesis, your strategy is “just add killer content.”

Not a coder? Not a problem. The Thesis option panels allow you to command your site with ease, while Thesis does all of the heavy lifting behind the scenes. There are many controls available that require no coding, just click and select. Changing layouts, sidebar sizing, and multiple appearance options, will let you easily design your site without touching any code.

Should you be familiar with some CSS, HTML, and PHP coding you will find Thesis to be amazing. There are only two files you would use to edit – custom.css and custom_functions.php. This not only allows you to extend the capabilities of Thesis, it also makes it quit easy to upgrade WP and the theme without losing any of the formatting you might have added. Simply save these two files, upgrade, and replace the files. Done!

What about customizations and design changes? Thesis contains a futureproof customization system that allows you to produce unique designs without having to touch any core code. And thanks to a revolutionary layout generator (with 1, 2, and 3-column layout combinations) and pinpoint font controls, testing tons of different layout variants has never been easier.

Thesis sells for $87.00, includes single user license, lifetime upgrades and support. You can currently upgrade to a multi-user license for an additional $77.00.

Along with the user licensing, another downfall is that they require you to leave their link in the footer.
This can all be avoided by paying $164.00 for a Developers License which allows you to use the theme wherever you want (on sites you own) and delete them from the footer, thus my rating of 2nd choice.

about Thesis…

To begin with, a blog is a website. Blogs contain pages, navigation menus, written text, graphics, video, audio, and anything else you would put on a static website. You can also set the front page of your blog to be static and have your articles (posts) appear on a separate page if this is the look and feel you desire.

Building and maintaining a blog takes much less time than a website. You don’t need to know HTML, use any site builder software, or even hire someone to build it for you. If you did hire someone to set up your blog, it would be much less expensive than having a website built.

Blogs are easier to maintain than websites. With the great free blogging software available, like Wordpress, adding content is quick and easy. You simply log in to your private control panel and type your content, add a video, or whatever, and publish your new information in minutes.

Blog platforms like Wordpress have “Plugins” that can streamline almost anything you want to accomplish.The layout and structure is automatically programmed in. Websites, however, require coding, HTML editors, and technical knowledge. or pay someone to do it. This could take hours.

The biggest advantage of using a blog is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). When you write a new post, or add any content, and click the “Publish” button, it is immediately “Pinged” to online services that notify the search engines. This is an invitation for the search engines to visit your site, which they happily do. Your new content is usually picked up within a day, if not sooner, and your blog is indexed.

The use of certain plugins can also immediately send your content to social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc. which further enhances your viral exposure. You cannot do this with a static website and it could take months (or longer) to get noticed, depending on the strategies you use.

Furthermore, blogs allow you to “Tag” and “Categorize” your posts and pages which makes them easily searchable for visitors and search engines alike. Good for SEO.

What blog platform should I use?

This is probably the most asked question.

The “Big Three” are Blogger (owned by Google), Wordpress.com, and Self-Hosted Wordpress. All three are free and have advantages/disadvantages.

Blogger:

Advantages -

• Free and fairly simple to set up online.
• Allows multiple blogs.
• Advertising is allowed.
• Use of your own domain is allowed.

Disadvantages -

• No self-hosting available.
• Google has rights to your content.
• Limited plugins and customization.
• No automated “Pinging.”
• Your blog can be shut down at any time, for any reason. Blogger has a public “Flag” system in place where your competitors, enemies, or whoever, can “Flag” your site and Google will shut it down, without notice. Google will also shut you down for violating their Terms of Service (read it carefully). Many have had their blogs shut down and all content is lost.

Wordpress.com:

Advantages -

• Free and fairly simple to set up online.
• Multiple blogs allowed.

Disadvantages -

• No javascript, flash, or plugins, and you are not allowed to have ads or pay per post, etc. Also, retailing is subject to staff approval and you won’t be able to use ecommerce features without getting an external page to put them on.
• Limited customization. No access to theme files for alteration/editing.
• Your blog can be shut down at their discretion.
• They charge to use your own domain name.

Self-Hosted Wordpress:

Advantages -

• Fairly easy to use once set up.
• You control your own content. Advertise all you want.
• Many customization options available.
• Extensive availability of themes and plugins.
• Use of your own domain.
• Alter/edit any files or themes.

Disadvantages -

• You need to set up a hosting account and install the software. Most reputable hosting companies have an “Automatic Script Installer” that makes this simple and only takes a few minutes.

  Note: the cost of hosting does not need to be an obstacle as ComputerTactics offers Free Hosting which includes an Automatic Script Installer so you can easily install Wordpress.

Wordpress.com and Self-Hosted Wordpress use the same software. The difference is that Wordpress.com provides the hosting for you and restricts the capabilities of the software. Self-Hosted Wordpress has no restrictions.

No matter which blogging platform you choose, there will be a learning curve. Self-Hosted Wordpress may require a little more understanding simply because of the many great options available.

Self-Hosted Wordpress is not only our recommendation, but it is the preferred blogging platform by many professional and personal bloggers alike.

If you are ready to start your Wordpress blog and don’t have the time or technical patience to set it up… ComputerTactics will completely set up your hosting and Wordpress blog for a one time fee of $35.00. Visit my Services page for details and ordering.

This guide should help you get things set up and familiarize you with the Admin Panel.

The left side of your Admin page is where you will find settings for everything. Each tab heading has a small gray arrow to the right, which you can click to show the options available.

Personal Settings

Find the “Users” section, expand it open, and click on “Your Profile.”

The first setting is the color layout of your WordPress admin panel. You can change this from gray to blue if you like.

The next section shows your username as “admin” and this cannot be changed. This is also used as your Author name when you post. This can be changed.

In the boxes below you can enter your full name if you want along with a Nickname. I simply enter a Nickname that I want to appear as my Author name. The box below allows you to select the name you want to use for Authoring.

The next section is contact info. make sure your email is correct and fill out any other contact info you want.

You can also change your login password if you like. Don’t forget to write it down.

Click the Update Profile button and you’re done.

Site Settings

Expand the “Settings” tab and click on “General.” This is where you put the Title of your site, Tagline (description), Site URL, email address, time zone, etc.

Tip: Leave the Title and Tagline blank if you are using the “All in One SEO” plugin.  Use the Title and Description sections in the plugin control panel instead.

Adjust these settings to your preference then click the Save Changes button.

Now click on the “Permalinks” tab and adjust these settings. Permalinks are the URL structure of your posts. To keep this simple, choose either the “Day and Name,” or “Month and Name” option.
This will make your Permalinks friendlier.

Click the Save Changes button.

Cleanup

Now you want to go to the top of the page and just click on “Posts.” This opens a page showing all your posts. You should only have one, “Hello World.”

This is a default post, and unless you really want this showing, hover your mouse over the title and a sub-menu will appear. Click ‘trash” and get rid of it.

You will also want to go to the “Comments” section and do the same as there is a default comment posted there.

Nuts and Bolts

The basic settings are done and now would be a good time to fill out your “About” page. This tells visitors about you and/or your site. If you do not plan on using an “About” page you can either delete it or change the name to “Contact,” or whatever you like.

Your next step should be to find the theme you want to use and install it.

Read my post – Adding Themes and Plugins to WordPress

Themes Junction has tons of free themes to choose from.

Once you get your theme installed and activated you should browse through the “Theme options” if there are any. These are usually found either in the “Appearance” tab or under “Settings.”

Get to know how the theme works and adjust any settings to your preference. Not all themes have their own control panel, but many do.

Write a practice post or two, insert a picture, experiment with the “Widget” section, and get to know how things work.

The next step is to add some functionality, automation, and SEO to your site.

Read my post - Recommended Plugins for WordPress then install the plugins that you want, activate, and configure them.

Time to Go Live

Write your first post, check it over carefully, and save as a draft. Check your About page, Contact page, sidebar content, ads, etc.

If everything is satisfactory, go to “Privacy” in the settings tab and check the top option enabling everyone, including search engines, to see your site. Save this setting.

Go back to Posts, click “Edit” under your saved draft, and make sure it is ready to publish. Don’t forget to add Tags and set the proper category (s).
You should also check all the settings below to be sure your plugins are set correctly.

If all is OK then click “Publish” and you are live. Start working on your next post and promote your blog.

Good luck and have fun!

The first thing you will want to do is download the theme or plugin to your computer and remember where you saved it. DO NOT unzip the file, just leave it the way it is.

Now log in to your WordPress admin panel and click on “Add New Themes” or “Add New” under plugins.

Click “Upload” in the menu at the top of the page then click the “Browse” button on the next page. This will take you to your computer where you can navigate to the file you downloaded. Select the file by clicking on it, then click the “Open” button, then the “Install” button.

WordPress will automatically upload, unzip, and install your theme or plugin. All you need to do at this point is to activate the theme or plugin and configure any settings that may be available.

There may be times when WordPress cannot upload a certain theme.This can happen when there are additional folders or files included by the Author which need to be manually installed.

This is easily accomplished by unzipping the theme package on your computer and using a free FTP program like FileZilla to upload the necessary folders/files to your wp-themes folder in the root directory of your site.

Usually, the additional folders included in your theme package is a Plugin folder which can be uploaded to the wp-plugins folder in the root directory of your site.

NOTE: When uploading themes or plugins via FTP you will want to upload the entire folder with all the contents included. DO NOT open the folder and upload the contents individually.

Planning the future of your blog is an essential element for overall success. A solid plan will allow you to see a more fluid layout, guide you in content writing, and help streamline popularity.

A good way to begin (using paper and pencil) is to write down what your blog is about and what you are looking to accomplish, for example: provide a service, advice, sell product (s), promote a business, etc.

This is simply the overall concept and you should KISS  it (keep it simple stupid). The details will follow. (Be sure to write everything down.)

You want to begin with a list of …

• WHO is your target audience?
• WHY would they want your product/service?
• WHAT benefits does your product/service provide?
• HOW will your product/service improve their lives?

Answers to these questions will give you plenty to write about. Give them a reason to stay on your site with personalized, interesting content.

Put yourself in their place and think about the type of information you would like to see when first visiting a site.

Research

Use Google to find out what your future customers want or need, and what your competition is doing. This will give you more ideas to add to your plan.

Message boards and review sites are very helpful when it comes to peoples opinions of what’s good or bad – use them.

Join a few forums and ask questions about your product/service. The responses you get will be invaluable.

Knowing what others want, and do, is key.

Strategic posting

Make a list of all the information you have gathered so far and do a keyword analysis – Google Adwords keyword tool is most beneficial for this.

Decide on a posting schedule. How often can you consistently post to your blog… daily, weekly, or monthly?

There are no standards but you should try to maintain some consistency, and let your readers know what to expect.

You can now begin creating posts using the above information.

Lead your visitors with posts that relate to one another while using keywords and product/service links in the content. These should be fairly short, but informative.

NOTE: A good idea is to set up a “Page” that describes your product/service, then refer to this page in the content of your articles. By doing this your blog posts are meeting the customers wants, needs, and desires, while giving them a single location to view the product, detailed information, and make their purchase (or whatever).

WordPress allows you to create posts and save them as drafts, or schedule them to publish at a future date. It is highly recommended that you NOT publish many posts at one time as the search engines frown upon this.

Good strategy would be to create your posts, save them as drafts, review for perfection, then schedule them for staggered dates to publish. See “Write a Post” in our WordPress Tutorials section.

Promote your post

Social bookmarking is one of the best ways to let the world know your blog is alive and has something to offer.

There are hundreds of social bookmarking sites where you can “suggest” your articles (posts), such as:  Digg, Technorati, MySpace, Twitter, and maybe a few more. A little investigation will reveal where your target audience hangs out.

Sign up to 5 or 6 of the most popular and submit every post you create to each site. Consistency, along with good content, will make your blog popular.

It is accepted practice to submit your own articles and should be included  as part of your plan with every post made.

Conclusion:

The above steps should get you well on your way to a successful blog.

Please keep in mind that your blog should be fully optimized before initiating the above steps.

Optimization (SEO) tips and strategies can be found on our sister site – asiteable.com.

Though the ease of set up and use is tempting, there are some serious drawbacks you should consider before going this route.

Blogger is owned by Google and you may think  this is an advantage but it is not. First and foremost, the Terms of Service (TOS) gives Google rights to your content. Secondly, your URL address will end in blogspot.com which drives traffic to Google, not you. (An SEO disadvantage) Last but not least – when you realize that self hosting is much better and you choose to move your blog to a new Host, you will find that it is quite difficult, if not impossible.

Blogger is also very restrictive when it comes to customization and plugin availability, compared to the WordPress platform.

WordPress.com is probably worse because your site advertising is limited and many plugins are not supported.

Note: WordPress.com does not use the same platform as the WordPress download for self hosting (free).

You can easily avoid all this and set up free hosting with the full WordPress platform, thus eliminating any restrictions while having complete control over your blog’s appearance, behavior, and SEO.

Computertactics.com was created, and is hosted, using the following information.

Domain Names

The first thing you want to do is get a domain name that is relevant to your business or service. If this is going to be a personal site with no intent on making income don’t worry about it.

It is highly recommended to get a .com domain name. These cost less than $10/year from GoDaddy and are well worth the small investment. This will give your business credibility and show the search engines that you are for real.

If you really don’t want to spend the money www.co.cc will provide you with a domain name free of charge. Let’s say your business is selling books and you chose newnusedbooks for a name, it would then become newnusedbooks.co.cc. For the rest of this article we’ll assume you used co.cc.

Register your name and write down all the particulars like the domain name, date of registration, and login info.

Free Hosting

Computertactics offers the best free hosting available at InstanetFree, which is powered by Byethost. There are no forced ads or any requirements whatsoever.

What’s included:

• 250 MB disk space
• 6 GB Monthly transfer
• 5 Add-on domains
• 5 Sub domains
• Park Domains
• Web mail
• POP email accounts
• Vista Panel
• iVista Automatic installer
• Password protected folders
• FTP account
• Online File manager
• 3 MySQL databases
• Php MyAdmin
• Clustered servers
• Free Site Builder
• Free Support

Once your account is set up log in to your Vista Panel and click on “addon domains.” This is where you will enter your new domain name newnusedbooks.co.cc. At the bottom of this window you will see “name servers.” Copy down the first two, they should look like ns1.0lx.net and ns2.0lx.net. Note:the 0 in olx is a zero, not the letter o.

Go back to www.co.cc, login, click on “Domain Settings,” then click on your domain name. You will now see a gold button that says “setup” – click this and the next window is where you enter the name server info. When you finish entering the name servers click the “setup” button again and you are good to go. Keep in mind that it could take up to 72 hours for the name servers to transfer.

Free WordPress Blog installation

Simply go to your Vista Panel and find the “iVista – Easy Script Installation.” Click this open, locate WordPress and click install. You will install this into the root directory of the domain name to be used.

The install window should show a textbox with a forward slash “/” – leave this as is and click “Complete Install.”

That’s all there is to it. Your WordPress login information will be listed here; write it down so you can access your admin panel.

WordPress is designed to be managed outside of your hosting panel, therefore, it has it’s own address which is the url for your domain followed by /wp-admin (http://yourdomainname.com/wp-admin).

Your login ID is admin and your password is the same as what you use for your hosting service. These can be changed in the “Profile” section of the admin panel whenever you want.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

The first thing you should do is go into your Instanetfree control panel > click online file manager > click yoursitename.com > click .htdocs > then click “edit” for the wp-config.php file.

copy and paste this code:
____________________________________________________________

if(is_admin()) {
add_filter(‘filesystem_method’, create_function(‘$a’, ‘return “direct”;’ ));
define( ‘FS_CHMOD_DIR’, 0751 );
}
____________________________________________________________

at the very bottom of page. DO NOT leave any spaces or blank lines after the code.

Once you do this, click the blue square disk icon at top left to save, then click the blue arrow to return to file manager.

log out of Instanetfree.

This will allow you to automatically perform upgrades to WP and other components such as plugins and themes. This also enables you to upload themes and plugins from the WP control panel.

Should you decide that you do not have the time, or not want to deal with the technicalities, we can set all this up for you plus add themes and plugins so you are ready to start blogging.

Please visit our “Services” page for details.

• Get the customer to your site.
• Present your product, or service.
• Close the sale.

Although fundamentally correct, this is simplicity at it’s best. Each step has a number of requirements to work effectively, and this is what I would like to explore.

Getting the customer to your site is a combination of advertising, networking, and search engine awareness.
A successful site needs to be attractive in two distinct ways; visually and structurally. The visual appearance will catch and hold the customers attention, while proper structure invites the SE’s to rank favorably. You need both.

A few points:

Colors – Others may not like what you like. Try staying as neutral as possible.
Ask yourself, do the colors strain my eyes? Can I easily read the text? Are the colors too violent? Passive?

Consistency – Maintain your theme throughout the entire site. If the header, navigation links, or background, varies from page to page, the visitor can become easily confused and leave.

Layout – Make it easy for the visitor to navigate. They came here for a reason, what was it? To find a Widget?

Don’t make them dig through your life story, or any other unrelated crap. Put up some good quality, useful info, about your product, how it will benefit them, why this widget is the best, etc.
They came for information on something that they hope will better their lives… give it to them.
If they want to know about you they will read your “About” page.

Content – As stated above, your text content is the “sales pitch” to the customer, but it is also an invitation to the Search Engines.
Integration of keywords throughout your site is very important. This can be the tricky part. Your wording needs to obviously make sense to the customer, be grammatically correct, yet rich in keywords.
This is how NOT to do it… “This widget is the best widget there is in the widget world according to widget experts.” It sounds stupid and will be flagged by the Search Engines for keyword stuffing.
WHAT does the widget do? WHY does the widget exist? WHO buys the widget? These are some of the questions you will want to ask yourself to determine any number of good keywords to use.

* Don’t sell price, sell the product.

Bear in mind  that people tend to scan a page, rather than read word for word. Headers, sub-headers, highlighting in bold and italics, bullet/numbered lists, attract attention. You will want to use these to capture immediate interest.
Breaking up your article into blocks using 2 to 4 sentences per block will make it much easier to scan and your visitor is more likely to read the entire article.

Site tips

• Images – pictures are very useful when it pertains to your product, period. Large graphics that are not related to what you are selling take up room, distract from the intent of your site, take valuable time to load, and have no distinct advantage when it comes to SEO.

*Any images you do use, should have an “alt” tag using a keyword related description.

*Advertising images should be held to a minimum. Large banners, flashing graphics, pop-ups, peel pages, and redirects, look cheap, and turn off most visitors.

• Any advertising, affiliate or otherwise, should be related to your business. Subtle, inline, contextual advertising works the best.
• Flash and JavaScript will slow your site down. Have you ever come across a site and have to wait 5 seconds, or more, for it to load? Your potential buyer will most likely leave you for a speedier site. Also, many people have these turned off in their browsers. Unless you are a designer, and Flash is a key to your business, leave it behind.
• Meta Tags – learn about them, and use them. They are still effective.
• Title and Description – Both of these tell the customer and SE what your site is about. Use keywords here, but use them wisely. They should make sense to the reader.
• Structure Code – Make sure your site conforms to current CSS/HTML standards. You want it to look the same in different browsers.

Closing the sale with a customer should be much easier now that your site is “tuned” properly.
Make sure the checkout process is easy and secure, and by all means, tell this to the customer.
Allow them see a total price, including tax, shipping, and any other charges, BEFORE they give any personal info.
Thank them for the sale and offer a print invoice, email invoice, or both.