A website, also written as Web site,[1] web site, or simply site,[2] is a set of related web pages served from a single web domain. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet address known as a Uniform resource locator. All publicly accessible websites collectively constitute the World Wide Web.

A webpage is a document, typically written in plain text interspersed with formatting instructions of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML, XHTML). A webpage may incorporate elements from other websites with suitable markup anchors.

Webpages are accessed and transported with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which may optionally employ encryption (HTTP Secure, HTTPS) to provide security and privacy for the user of the webpage content. The user's application, often a web browser, renders the page content according to its HTML markup instructions onto a display terminal.

The pages of a website can usually be accessed from a simple Uniform Resource Locator (URL) called the web address. The URLs of the pages organize them into a hierarchy, although hyperlinking between them conveys the reader's perceivedsite structure and guides the reader's navigation of the site which generally includes a home page with most of the links to the site's web content, and a supplementary about, contact and link page.

Some websites require a subscription to access some or all of their content. Examples of subscription websites include many business sites, parts of news websites, academic journal websites, gaming websites, file-sharing websites, message boards, web-based email, social networking websites, websites providing real-time stock market data, and websites providing various other services (e.g., websites offering storing and/or sharing of images, files and so forth). credit 

This could be one of the greatest areas that is left behind when a user decides to build a website themselves. The lack of knowing and pushing what the website is for has a dramatic impact on whether the website will drive sales or not. The message you are trying to portray to users should happen within the first 10 seconds of the user coming to your web page and at least a phone number and email address where they can get more information are critical to your website producing sales for your company. The sad thing is that we have talked to many decision makers that have said that they have not done business with certain companies because there was not any contact information readily available on their website, so they went to a competitor that did. Keeping the sales goals of the website in mind, whether it’s to give a phone number, send an email, fill out a form, or inquire today is a key part to having your website be a success for your business. (credit)

The hosting and domain name renewal has been another issue that has come up. It is very important that dates for the renewal of hosting and domain name are put on a calendar or checked on a regular basis. Often times, renewal dates are forgotten and another company buys the domain name, leaving you with printed materials with an outdated domain name. Or the website hosting is shut off and the business misses a sale from a prospective customer.

It is difficult to see a business that has worked so hard on their website and has their email address @yourbusiness.com on all of there business cards and they forget to renew the domain name and someone takes their domain name. We have seen it happen more than once. For this reason, I would highly recommend a complete website solutions provider to take over this task for your business. The major domain name registrars will send out email alerts, but if they are blocked or never get to the person in charge, the domain name will expire. If you choose to go with a professional web design company though, they will usually try to contact you via phone and make sure that you would like to renew the domain name so that it does not get picked up by someone else.

Hosting is a very important piece of having a professional website and can have a huge effect on the success of the website. Many people we talk to are so concerned about saving a few bucks on the website hosting that they forget what they will not be receiving if they go the cheap route. Usually the cheaper the website hosting, the more people there are on a web server. The more people on a web server the slower the web server. This translates into slower load times for your website along with search engines not being able to crawl your website. Ultimately your website receives a lower search engine ranking, potential customers lose interest from the amount of time it takes to go from page to page on your website and they leave and go to your competitor. Our word of advice, don’t go cheap in the hosting arena. A solid foundation goes a long way for future success. It is also important to know when your website hosting is due. Hosting can also be tied to the company emails; if the hosting is down, so are the emails and the website. This is another reason why it is important that the due date is tracked and made aware of.

Website backups can be critically important if you have databases that run your website, or if you have data that is stored on a server. Once again, it is not a good idea to go cheap on hosting if this data is valuable to your business. The hosting company should have great customer service, get back to you relatively quickly and give you some type of backup option. I know you may be saying, “yeah, yeah, yeah….”, but when push comes to shove and the hosting company decides to go out of business and you are left without backups, you will have wished you had worked with a professional web design company that took care of all of the backups. They could have had your website back online with another hosting company within a matter of minutes, rather than gone forever. (credit)

Bad Web Site Design 
Why are there so many bad web design techniques in use today? Anyone that spends time online sees them everyday, and they make us all crazy. With a wealth of good web design information available, you would think that these web sites would change their ways. Below is our TOP-TEN list of the worst web design techniques. 

#1 - Pop Ups and Broken Back Buttons 
You hate the site and just can't hit the back button fast enough, but the web site has broken your browsers back button, locking you down to throw popup ads at you faster than you can close them. 

Do these %$*@#? Web sites truly believe, that if they bombard you with popup ads fast enough, that you will actually buy something from them? 

I wouldn't buy water from them if I were on fire. 

#2. Huge Flash Intro Screen 
How about making a visitor with a slow dial up connection wait 5 minutes to load your site, so they can watch some Flash effects first. Visitors don't want to wait to see a cartoon, or a fireworks display, just to see your products on your site. Most will hit the back button if they have a dial up connection. 

#3. Horizontal Scrolling 
Web sites can really drive people crazy making them scroll left and right to read each line. I don't think anyone likes horizontal scrolling. So why do so many sites have horizontal scrolling? It is a result of poor design, period. 

To all you sites with horizontal scrolling, either make your site width 800 or 100% to fix the problem already. 

#4. Slow Load Time Problems 
Slow load time, is usually the single biggest problem for an e-commerce site. When customers try to navigate around the site, looking for items they want to buy, the site drags at a snail's pace. Most visitors leave and find a faster site to purchase from. 

Most often this is caused by: cheap web hosting, too many graphics, un-optimized graphics, or poor coding. 

#5. Overuse of Banner Ads 
I have visited e-commerce sites that must have been in 20 banner ad exchange programs. Frankly, the site looked like the classified section of the back of a cheap magazine. Banner ads for casinos and lingerie don't belong on a golf equipment site. It looked like this site was actually selling golf products, but the average user would be very confused. 

#6. Poor Spelling 
Computers come with built in spell checkers. Why do some people just go out of their way not to use one? You are broadcasting your intelligence level to the world when you display your poor spelling on the Internet. (Buy sum cool thingz on mi sight!) 

#7. Lots of Moving Things 
Banners flashing, graphics twirling, words scrolling, with a string of fireworks chasing your mouse pointer. 
Now, try and read the white text on the black background with all of that going on. 
It makes my head hurt just thinking about it. 
Please limit your site to only one moving or flashing object per page. 

#8. Plenty of Music 
Make sure your site cranks up some really loud, meaningless music, so you get everyone browsing the Internet at work in trouble. That is a super-fast way to make someone hit the back button. A lot of people surf the web at work, and could be potential customers, so don't scare them off with pointless music! 

#9. No Contact Information 
You have searched the site high and low and are ready to buy. But now, you can't find how to buy it, or how to contact anyone for more information. What is the site for then? No way to buy and no way to contact anyone. Did they forget an important part? 

Please include contact information, or a contact link, on every page of your site, so your visitors can contact you if they want to buy something or make an inquiry. Maybe your visitor wanted to give you $10,000 for your domain name, but unfortunately now you will never know. 

#10. Garbage Sites 
Yes, make sure you include 10,000 words related to products you don't even carry, just so that I find you on the search engines and then waste my time looking all over your site for it. Trust me, I am not going to buy what you're selling if you trick me to your site with items you don't even carry. I found a site on a major search engine that had about a thousand pages of garbage, that all took you to his Ebay link.  (credit)

#1 Guaranteed RankingsMany SEO scams center around some sort of guaranteed rankings. Claims like “Guaranteed #1 ranking on Google”, “Guaranteed first page ranking on Google”, “Guaranteed #1 ranking on all search engine” are simply impossible to substantiate (when referencing organic results). If you read the following article from Google, you’ll see a section titled No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Google goes on to say “Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings”. Since you’ve heard it directly from Google, you should make sure to avoid any company that offers such a guarantee.

#2 They know someone at Google, or have a special relationship with GoogleFalse! Again, no SEO company has “special relationship” or access to a “priority submit” for Google. Any SEO firm that makes this claim is simply lying to you.

#3 Offering free SEO trial servicesSEO is tedious and very involved. The process required to achieve great results requires days of work, and no legitimate company is going to do this for free. Additionally, if in return for the “free trial” they ask for your FTP username/password or ask access to your hosting account, just imagine what they could do. Avoid promises that sound too good to be true!

#4 Submissions to thousands of search enginesSo what. Google, Yahoo, MSN/Bing, and AOL accounting for over 95% of the search market. Just focus your attention on the ones that matter.

#5 Undisclosed or secret SEO strategiesHmmm, a magic potion? A crystal ball? Is Harry Potter involved? Any legitimate SEO company should be able to explain what they will do to your site, as well as outline their link building strategy. Firms who reference “SEO trade secrets” are likely planning to use black hat SEO techniques that will get you banned by all major search engines at some point.

#6 Top Ranking within 48 hoursWe’ve already discussed the concept of guaranteed top rankings; LET ALONE adding a deadline to this promise. The only way to guarantee this would be with Pay Per Click (PPC).

#7 The lowest priced SEOIf an offer sounds too good to be true, it is. As we mentioned, SEO is hard work and takes some serious time to do correctly. You’re better off learning how to do it yourself, rather than paying some “SEO expert” who claims that he can do it for an absurdly low price. You get what you pay for!

#8 We work with someone at Google, or are partners with GoogleNo they don’t, and no they are not. Google has no such partnerships in the SEO world. Plus, no Google employee would jeopardize their jobs by illegally associating with any such firms.

#9 We know the Google Algorithm, we are Google Algorithm expertsThe algorithms used by search engine are complex, and dynamic. At best, people may know about certain aspects (link popularity, content, meta tags, etc). By the way, knowledge of the important aspects of SEO should be a given if you’re in the SEO world.

#10 Avoid SEO companies that take ownership of contentAnything you pay for, should belong to you. Make sure that any agreement you sign does not give ownership to the SEO agency you work with. This content can be held hostage, or even worse, be sold to a competitor.

We hope that this article will help you avoid the most common SEO scams.

1. Make Your Site SEO-Friendly From the Start
Plan and build your site with SEO in mind. If you’re just beginning, check out these helpful tips. Keep your page topics focused, add keywords to your content, and tag your images, too. If you’ve already built your site, go back and revamp. (Another reason it’s great to be able to update your own site!)

2. Help Your Customers Find You
Before your future customers can visit your site, they’ll need to find it, which means that first, search engines need to find your site. Make your site more attractive to search engines so they can index it by strengthening your site’s SEO (search engine optimization). Start here for some helpful hints, and read on for even more ideas.

3. Help Your Neighbors Find You
Optimize your site for local searches (keywords plus a location) with these helpful ideas.

4. Create Great Content and Keep It Fresh
Keep your content lively and current. Start with good, informative content and update it regularly. Include seasonal messages and offers, change images, add current products. Your site should look and feel open for business every day, with new information that keeps customers coming back.

5. Key Up Your Keywords
Use the most-searched keywords to raise your chances of being found. Google’s Wonder Wheel keyword research tool is one great, free way to find the top search terms for your business.

6. Set Your Site Apart with Metadata
Add unique title, description, and keywords to each of your site’s pages. Search bots pay close attention to this metadata. Also, make sure subheads on each page contain a keyword or two, and don’t forget to tag your images.

7. Build Your Own Buzz

• Start a blog to share your expertise, connect with new customers, and build your network.
• Reach out to bloggers, local news sites, and online journalists who write about your area of business. Promoting yourself online takes some initiative – but with a little work and these tips, you can give your site a higher profile.
• Add social media to your site to expand your reach and get the word out. Place Twitter and Facebook buttons on your site. Share your site through Digg or StumbleUpon. And take a look at this post for more great ideas.

8. Research, Analyze, Measure
It’s also important to measure and to analyze your growing traffic to see how you’re doing and where you could improve. Check out our top 20 free SEO tools to help you achieve your goals. Your site is a work in progress, and you can always keep improving it.

- See more at: http://www.smallbiztechnology.com/archive/2011/06/8-free-ways-to-grow-your-site%E2%80%99s-traffic-and-3-that-cost-money.html/#sthash.rPJwIggw.dpuf