Houston Websites

Who We Are And What We Do!

2009-08-17T16:05:00.002-05:00

Houston Websites provides tools for the "Do-It-Yourself" website developer.

Tools from domain name registration, hosting, web page building, ftp, promoting, and more.

The 5 step process is simple and easy to use. Do-It-Yourselfer's get all the help that they need to have a website up and running fast.

And, if they really don't want to do-it-themself, Houston Websites will be happy to do it for them.

Our team of architects, designers, graphic artists, photographers, and promotion specialists are available now.

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Article Spinning

2009-08-17T15:56:00.002-05:00

As an internet marketer, you are probably not pleased with the current economic yo-yo. Trying to put together a long term strategy with a short term fiasco is really difficult for all of us. And, you are probably still trying to get used to the trends of online businesses. Most likely you've also faced all kinds of new ideas and suggestions in forums, blogs, and other online sources related to internet marketing. In them you are sure to notice that the professional internet marketers discuss different strategies and internet marketing tools that they recommend to increase web traffic, conversions, and eventually actual sales.

For this article, we will be talking about one of the more interesting tools being used, especially for the content of sales pages, blogs, and websites, which are the article spinners. If you've never heard of an article spinner before, then continue reading because this might be your ticket to increasing sales and bursting traffic.

An article spinner is basically a writing software that rewrites and modifies the wording and structure of sentences in order to produce different and unique copies of an original article. Not only that, it is able to retain the message of the original article in all of the copies it can produce, which makes it a productive tool when trying to post several articles in different blogs and websites.

Internet marketers who do not have the time and the energy to reproduce, rewrite, and post numerous articles in their blogs and websites would simply use article spinners to do the job. It's not only convenient but affordable as well when compared to hiring ghost writers to do the job.

So why do internet marketers need to create so much content? Writing good articles and blog posts is usually the key to earning a lot of money through internet marketing. By being able to come up with wonderful content, you are discreetly yet at the same time effectively advertising your products to customers who can only read about the products being sold online.

But as mentioned before, writing and rewriting can take a lot of time and effort on the marketer's part, so they use article spinning software instead. Another reason why they use article spinners is because submitting one original article to numerous directories can be detected by search engines like Google, creating the possibility that only one of your articles being linked to the entered keyword and leaving out all the rest in the next three to four pages. This lowers your chances of gaining more traffic, and of course, more sales as well.

But take note that not all article spinner software being sold online produce well-rounded rewritten articles. There are those that do not function well or are actually fake software being sold by scammers in order to earn money from you.

Learn more
Get Article Spinning Software here

Email and Newsletters

2009-08-17T15:22:00.002-05:00

Email marketing is effective IF you don't over do it.

Everybody we have met is way too busy to wade through a ton of emails. So, if you are going to use email as a marketing tool, remember the "KISS" method: "Keep It Simple, Stupid!"

Our recommendation is to send an email note that highlights the topic or the essence of your message. Then link it back to the entire presentation or newsletter on your website or blog.

If you can keep your email message to a short paragraph, you stand an excellent chance of it being read. Then if it appeals to the receipient, they will visit your site and read the whole thing.

Your email marketing program should parallel your offline marketing strategy. In this way you will appear to be consistent in the messages that you are delivering to your audience.

We have chosen to call our newsletters - "articles" on our blog. These articles are usually a definition of the subject along with answering the question of what to do with it. We put a blurb on our website and refer to the article on the blog. On our site, we also link to sources that can expand on the topic we are discussing.

Now, about your email list. If you are like most of us, you don't have one. so, how to go about getting one is next.

If you have a storefront, simply put a sign-up sheet on the counter for your customers. Surprisingly, this works.

Put a sign-up form on your website. We have one that says simply, if you would like to know when we have written an article on a topic within our website, sign up today.

Run a contest. Drawings are fun. Lots of people sign up for these things. Make sure that they know that they will get emails from you, too.

Brainstorm various ideas with others to come up with novel ways to get people to sign up. Then be sure to follow up.

When setting up your email list, be sure to confirm with the people that they really want to be on your list. This is the approved method for adhering to the CAN-SPAM law.

More information
Email Tools available here

Promote Your Website!

2009-08-17T15:13:00.002-05:00

Now that you have a website presence, the world will beat a path to see it. "NOT"

With so many websites now available, it is impossible to be noticed unless you promote your site.

Word of mouth advertising is by far the most effective method of being found. So tell everybody you know to visit you on your website. Be sure to print your web address on all of your stationery, business cards, and existing advertising channels.

If you also have a storefront (brick and mortar), be sure to have some sort of hand-out that includes your website address. Remember, any existing customer is also your best prospect for future business.

Search engines (and some directory services) represent the webs most important source for new business. And, key words (words or phrases that describe your business) are the key to using the search engines.

This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) come to play. These structured processes maximize your key words within your web pages and submit them to the major search engines and directory services.

In addition to these activities, you should also explore purchasing advertising in selected search engines and directory services. They offer a variety of methods.

A word about the directory services: If it serves a niche market that you feel you want to reach, then that is a good target for your advertising dollar. If, however, it is either too broad or does not serve your target audience, stay away.

Trade links with other websites, if their audience is similar to yours and they are not in the same business as you.

Check your vendors, see if they have any offers that can help you (like co-op money or credit). They might even have a place on their website that points to you as an outlet for their goods.

Contests, giveaways, newsletters, and more are also effective. If you can build a list of interested people, then you have a way to send them your weekly special. Which will keep your name (website name) in front of them and then they'll remember you when they want something that you offer.

More Information
Check out our SEO/SEM tools

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

2009-08-17T15:02:00.002-05:00

FTP is a standard network protocol used to exchange and manipulate files over the internet.

With most of the software packages on the market today, you simply drag the file located on your computer and drop it onto the server where you are hosting your website (see the article on Hosting Services).

The way we handle our web development process is we write our content on our computer (development area). Once we are pleased, we drag and drop it onto the internet server (production site). And, as a final security measure, we copy the files to our backup system as well.

In this way, we always have a "work in progress" on our computer and an exact copy of the production site on our external backup drive.

The FTP software that we use allows us to drag and drop the files at nearly the same time.

Learn More
Get FTP Tools Here

HTML and WYSIWYG

2009-08-17T14:14:00.003-05:00

The language used to build web pages is called HyperText Markup Language (HTML).

We use editors (Text and WYSIWYG) to create the HTML/web pages. The text based editors require that you know HTML, while the WYSIWYG editors do not.

A text based editor is like Notepad or Word For Windows. You are responsible for putting in all the proper HTML coding to make your page show up on the internet.

A WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) editor allows you to put down your words and graphics as you would like them to appear on your website. The editor creates the HTML in the background for you.

Some WYSIWYG editors include: Dreamweaver, Rapidweaver, Blinkweb, Coffecup Software, and more.

The w3schools' tutorial teaches you everything about HTML. And, it is easy to learn - you will enjoy it.

The w3schools tutorials are available free. You can learn just about everything that goes into making a website. And since it is online, you can learn at your own pace.

More information on HTML.
More information on WYSIWYG.
Get tools here.

Building Web Pages

2009-08-17T11:34:00.003-05:00

General Information

A web page contains content which impart a message to the viewer. The same page frequently contains graphics that support the message.

Links are a way to navigate. A web page can contain one or more links to other web pages either on your site or on the internet.

A website consists of one or more web pages. Some folks like to build just one page that "sells" a specific product or service. These often have a description, benefits, features, testimonials, and a way to order now.
Our site is an example of multiple pages. We start with our main page and "link" to various sub-pages that cover specific topics or actions.
The content on a web page is written using a language called "HTML" which means - HyperText Markup Language.
There are normally two kinds of tools used to make web pages: A) Text Only editors (like notepad); and, B) "What You See Is What You Get" editors (WYSIWYG pronounced: wiz-ee-wig).
The first (text only) requires that you know HTML. There are tutorials all over the internet to learn this simple language.
The second (WYSIWYG) allows you to simply type what you want to say and point to the images you want to display. Some of these editors are quite extensive and you would be smart to get a tutorial for them. Many are extremely easy to use, however.
Graphics used on your website should be sized to fit the space that you want to display them. This is where your graphics editor comes to play. Photographs are images. They too should be sized correctly. This allows your server to deliver the entire page quicker.
Note: There are still some people out there using dial-up modems to access the internet. Dial-up systems are really really slow. So, make your images as small as you can and still look good, particularly if your audience is using these older technologies.
If you are going to shoot your own pictures, we offer some tools on our website for you to learn more about taking digital pictures.
File Organization
You can organize the files on your system your way. We built ours like this:
File folder #1 contains our main content
Under folder #1 is folder #2 - images
Under folder #1 are folders #3 and so forth - articles, directly related web tools, indirect web toolsand so forth.
Under folder #1 is a folder called "Work Files"
This is where we put our testing stuff. We'll send this folder to our backup system when we have finished building our site. We do not transfer any of this folder to our hosting servers. (See the article on Hosting Services.)

We build many websites for clients. We organize all of them the same basic way. First, it is easier for us to remember where something is supposed to be; and, Second it is a simple system.
If you are going to send a folder out (see our article on FTP) to the internet on your hosting server, be sure to name one file in that folder either "index.html" or "default.html". We always use our primary navigation page as "index.html". This is our Main or Home page.
Note: we also always name one file in our sub-folders "index.html". Our "index.html" file in these sub-folders often does nothing more than re-direct the user to our main page. This keeps people from peeking into our folders.

More information.
Get tools here.

Hosting Services

2009-08-14T13:36:00.003-05:00

The host server is where your web pages are stored so that internet users can view them. The website hosting servers are set up to handle all of the technical stuff to deliver web pages.

You can think of a hosting server like a hotel. It has a whole bunch of rooms. Each room would represent a different website. The things that you would find in the room would be like the pages and images on your website.

Many hosting services offer email addresses with their packages. Many have unlimited number of email addresses available.

The hosting services also provide limited reports on the activity on your website. This includes the number of "hits" your pages get and other general things about the activities on your system.

They cannot identify specific individuals, however, they can identify other servers that access your system.

These statistics are quite useful to determine how much activity your pages are getting. Which ones are getting visited most and so forth. When compared to earlier reports, you can gain some insight into trends on your site.

Visit us for more information.
Sign up for services.

Domain Name Registration

2009-08-08T10:41:00.001-05:00

Simply stated the domain name is the official reigistered name of a computer connected to the internet. You can think of it as your internet identity or brand. A URL is a Uniform Resource Locator. Think of it as a networked extension of the standard filename.

The way the system is designed, no two domain names exist anywhere in the world. This is extremely unique when you compare it to the number of business names just in the United States and the number of them that are duplicated from one state to another.

A domain name is used for identifying and locating computers on the Internet. This is actually accomplished by converting the domain name into what is called its Internet Protocol (IP) number. Numbers are very difficult for most people to remember, while names are far easier. Computers, on the other hand, work better with numbers.

Translating the name into the IP address is called "resolving the domain name." The goal of the DNS is for any Internet user any place in the world to reach a specific website IP address by entering its domain name. Domain names are also used for reaching e-mail addresses and for other Internet applications.

In these times, there have become an overwhelming supply of domain name registration options including such extensions as "com", "net", "org", "info", "biz", and more.

More information.
Get tools here.