Many companies offer free websites/blogs. Among them are wiz, webby, wordpress, blogger. If you google “free website” you will get over 3 million results.

This article talks about the differences between having your own website and having a free website.

You don’t actually own the website

You have to realise that you DO NOT own the free website. The company that provides you this facility owns everything. Some people might say that they don’t mind this. But you have to consider the following (possible) scenario. The company closes. Again some people will say that wiz, wordpress and even Facebook will never close. Well the short history of the Internet has shown that huge companies can rise and fall in a few years. Do you remember MySpace? AOL? Geocities?

What if they start asking for money

The companies can changed their business model any time. They never said that they will provide a free service for ever! So what will happen when they will start asking for money? You will pay them regardless of the amount? You will migrate to another free website? What about all that content you published? These are some serious concerns you should think of.

What if they change their terms and conditions

These companies can change their terms and conditions any time. They might not start charging you, they might do something worst. Instagram lost 25% of their users because they decided to use the photos of the users for anything they like! They later said that this wasn’t the case, but I think the rumour caused enough problems to the company.

What about support?

Here at seotiras we run many websites in many different servers. There are many times that we need to talk with the support team of the companies that provide us hosting. There are just issues that are beyond our control and we need assistance to resolve them. That’s why we always use companies that provide 24/7 support like site5.

Usually companies that offer free website don’t offer any kind of support except from forums where users share their knowledge.

How expensive is having your own website

Let’s see how much a typical website will cost.

• Domain: A domain costs around $10 per year. We highly recommend namecheap for all your domains.
• Hosting: A simple hosting costs around $60 per year.
• Software: You can always use a free CMS like WordPress or Drupal. So that’s $0 per year!

So in total you will need around $70 per year for a decent website.

Too cheap to trust

This is my final point. If you can’t afford $70 per year for your own website, how can people trust you? How can they be sure that you will provide the products or services you promise?

All these are concerns you should think about. If you want to start a simple blog for sharing your thoughts and ideas to the world then maybe a free website is just fine.

But if you have a business and you want to have a serious website that visitors can trust then you have to have your own website.

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Αυτό το άρθρο είναι απλά μια συνέχεια στο πολύ καλό άρθρο της webarts που αναλύει τη διαδικτυακή παρουσία των 3 υποψηφίων για τις εκλογές του 2013.

Λίγη ιστορία για τις προεκλογικές εκστρατείες

Ας αρχίσουμε με λίγη ιστορία. Ο Κέννετυ ήταν ο πρώτος πρόεδρος που χρησιμοποιήσε την τηλεόραση ως μέσο προβολής. Ο Ομπάμα ήταν ο πρώτος πρόεδρος που χρησιμοποιήσε το Διαδίκτυο ως μέσο προβολής. Ο Ρόμνευ έκανε μια προσπάθεια αλλά απλά αντίγραφε τις στρατηγικές του Ομπάμα. Περισσότερα μπορείτε να διαβάσετε σε αυτό το άρθρο.

Εκλογές 2013 – Κύπρος

Τώρα οι δικοί μας υποψήφιοι κάτι πάνε να κάνουν όπως αναφέρει σωστά το άρθρο. Έχουν προσωπική ιστοσελίδα και έχουν παρουσία στα κοινωνικά δίκτυα. Ας δούμε κάποια επιπλέον σημεία απο αυτά που αναφέρονται εδώ.

Πηγή: paphosnews.com

Εκλογές 2013 – Κοινωνικά δίκτυα

Η πρώτη μου παρατήρηση είναι ότι δεν χρησιμοποιούν τα social media σωστά. Δίνουν έμφαση στο media και αγνοούν το social. Σας προκαλώ να μου δείξετε μια ανάρτηση υποψηφίου όπου γίνεται διάλογος. Όπου κάποιος ρωτάει κάτι και ο υποψήφιος (ή έστω κάποιος απο το επιτελείου του) του απαντάει.

Όλες οι αναρτήσεις είναι στεγνές. Λες και γράφουν για καμιά εφημερίδα. Δεν αντιλαμβάνονται ότι ο κόσμος μπορεί να σχολιάσει, να κάνει like, retweet, να τους βρίσει…

Ο φίλος Παντελής τονίζει ότι είναι αρκετά ενεργές αλλά εμένα μου θυμίζουν πινακίδες ανακοινώσεων. Είναι σωστή και η εισήγηση του ότι πρέπει να δείξουν ενα πιο κοινωνικό χαρακτήρα και να αρχίσουν να επικοινωνούν με τον κόσμο.

Εκλογές 2013 - Προσωπικές Ιστοσελίδες

Ο Παντελής αναφέρεται στο σχεδιασμό των ιστοσελίδων και στο περιεχόμενο τους. Θα αναφέρω ακόμη 2 σημεία.

Ταχύτητα των Ιστοσελίδων

Η ταχύτητα μιας ιστοσελίδας είναι πολύ σημαντική. Ο χρήστης έχει συνηθίσει πλέον στις γρήγορες ιστοσελίδες και μόλις αντιμετωπίζει καθυστέρηση συμπεράνει ότι κάτι δεν πάει καλά με την ιστοσελίδα. Ας δούμε όμως πόσο γρήγορες είναι οι ιστοσελίδες των υποψηφίων σύμφωνα με το Google.

• Ιστοσελίδα Σταύρου Μαλά: 56/100
• Ιστοσελίδα Γιώργου Λιλλίκα: 92/100
• Ιστοσελίδα Νίκου Αναστασιάδη: 57/100

Το συμπέρασμα είναι ότι μόνο η ιστοσελίδα του Γιώργου Λιλλήκα έχει καλή ταχύτητα. Φυσικά μπορεί οι άλλοι δυο υποψήφιοι να ισχυριστούν ότι οι ιστοσελίδες τους είναι βαρυφορτωμένες απο τους χιλιάδες οπαδούς τους αλλά αυτό είναι μια άλλη ιστορία!

Τίτλοι Ιστοσελίδων

• Ιστοσελίδα Σταύρου Μαλά - Stavros Malas 2013: Πιστεύω είναι λανθασμένη η επιλογή να χρησιμοποιηθεί το όνομα του υποψηφίου με λατινικούς χαρακτήρες.
• Ιστοσελίδα Γιώργου Λιλλίκα – Προεδρικές Εκλογές 2013 – Γιώργος Λιλλήκας – George Lillikas: Ο πιο σωστός τίτλος. Αναφέρεται ο σκοπός της ιστοσελίδας και το όνομα του υποψηφίου στα Ελληνικά και Αγγλικά.
• Ιστοσελίδα Νίκου Αναστασιάδη – anastasiades.com.cy: Μεγάλο λάθος. Δεν υπάρχει κάποιο σχετικό keyword και είναι απλά το url της ιστοσελίδας.

Και ο Νικητής είναι…

Θα συμφωνήσω με τον Παντελή ότι η καλύτερη ιστοσελίδα λαμβάνοντας υπόψιν τα πιο πάνω κριτήρια είναι του Γιώργου Λιλλήκα. Είναι σε ενα γρήγορο server και έχει ενα σωστό τίτλο.

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Είδα την ανακοίνωση της Stavriana A. Kofteros στο Facebook για το meet the mentors week και αποφάσισα να αρπάξω την ευκαιρία. Είναι αποδεδειγμένο ότι ο καλύτερος τρόπος για να μάθει κάποιος είναι το mentoring, δηλαδή να δουλέψει δίπλα σε έναν ειδικό.

Φυσικά όπως φαίνεται και απο την πιο κάτω εικόνα, οι ειδικοί είναι συνήθως πολυάσχολοι ανθρώποι. Όποτε αφού είδα ότι έχω την ευκαιρία έστω και για μια συνάντηση με κάποιον ειδικο, την εκμεταλλεύτηκα…

Από τους μέντορες είχα άκουσα για τον Αλέξανδρο Μιχαηλίδη. Ένας φίλος μου δουλεύει εκεί και μου μίλησε με τα καλύτερα λόγια. Επίσης η ιστορία της εταιρείας του ΤΑΛΩΣ είναι κάτι που πιστεύω όσοι ασχολούνται startups στην Κύπρο θα ήθελαν να καταφέρουν.

Οποτε έστειλα email στον Αλέξανδρο και κανόνισα μια συνάντηση. Όταν έφτασα εκεί πλήρωσα για στάθμευση 2 ευρώ, αλλα μπορώ να πω ότι ήταν τα καλύτερα 2 ευρώ που ξόδεψα στη ζωή μου (όπως λέει και ο τίτλος).

Ο Αλέξανδρος ήταν φιλικότατος και άκουσε τις ιδέες μου για το δικό μου startup, την εταιρεία seotiras.com. Του εξήγησα ότι ο στόχος της εταιρεία μας είναι να σώζει ιστοσελίδες, δηλαδή να τις βοηθάει να εκπληρώσουν τους στόχους που έχουν θέσει.  Αυτή είναι και η γενική ιδέα αυτού που ονομάζομουμε Internet Marketing.

Αφού με άκουσε με προσοχή μου είπε τις δικες του ιδέες και πως μπορώ να προσελκύσω νέους πελάτες. Φυσικά δεν θα αναφερθώ στις ιδέες αλλά μπορώ να πω απλά ότι ήταν εξαιρετικές. Η συνάντηση μας μπορεί να ήταν σύντομη αλλα ήταν περιεκτική και θα αρχίσω εφαρμογή των ιδέων αυτών στο άμεσο μέλλον.

Ευχαριστώ και από εδώ τον Αλέξανδρο για το χρόνο που διάθεσε (ξέρω ότι είναι πολύτιμος ο χρόνος του) και ελπίζω να έχω την ευκαιρία να τα ξαναπώ μαζί του στο μέλλον.

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Spending on internet marketing is a good idea for small business which helps to reach out to the masses without any great investments. Understand the power of internet marketing to make your business grow bigger. Small business requires a lot of effort and planning to set the realistic goals which helps you to enlarge the market and sell more products. Some of the best online marketing tips for the small business are:

Identify goals of your website: Before implementing any marketing strategies, you need to identify the goals and objectives of your e-commerce website. Firstly you’re most important goal should be to increase business, and set action plan for implementation. Set goals which are realistic and measurable, can be achieved in appropriate time. Also keep the track of your website’s success.

Optimize internet marketing channels: Identify the proper online marketing channels for your business which can be Facebook, search engines, pay per click campaigns, affiliate marketing, mobile marketing, email marketing, video marketing etc. Mostly many businesses use Facebook, Twitter, and Search Engines. Also know where your competitors are focusing on, it will give you an idea on where to start.

Enhance website for traffic and conversion: Research for the targeted keywords and titles for your website. Make sure that your content is reliable and is also same with the other communication channels which company maintains. Display your address and contact numbers because some of the customers may contact through the site. Add a contact us page to website and provide email options.

Add Unique and Fresh content: Google updates its search engine algorithm very frequently and it always searches for genuine and fresh content. So update your web content frequently, blog posts, and press releases which help search engines to crawl your website. Some of the topics that you can include are on-going projects, discuss about new product releases, if any success stories which shows your business professionalism.

Keyword Usage: Make sure all your website post and content is keyword rich title and keyword rich URL. Depending upon your domain name, search for the keywords and include them in your articles that you post and in the content that you update. You can use Google’s free tools for finding the appropriate keywords for business domain.

Blog posting & blog commenting: It is one of the easiest and fastest ways to increase traffic to website. Create a blog and frequently update website with useful and meaningful content. Submit your blogs and links to search engines like Google and Yahoo which will helps to acquaints search engines about new blogs and post that you create.  Also submit your posts to social bookmarking sites like Digg, Stumble upon, and Reddit.

Use social networking sites: Social networking sites like Face book, Google+, and Twitter are not only used for connecting with friends but also used for promoting one’s business. Earlier promoting business through social networking sites was banned but they are allowed to advertise so make use of social networking sites.

For any start up or small business advertising and promoting their products and services is important and should have sufficient funds for advertising through marketing channels. If you are one such business entrepreneur and have insufficient  funds for advertising then you can take short term loans like same day cash loans.

About the Author: The guest post was contributed by Diana, Passionate guest blogger from Manchester, UK. Find out more about her  blogs @financeport

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Last night I attended Open Coffee Cyprus with my colleague Antreas. It was a fascinating night and we hope we will be able to attend many more in the future.

Lydia successfully spread the word over the Facebook and the theatre soon was out of chairs.

Vassilis  and Avraam made a short introduction and the night was about to begin…

Presenters of Open Coffee Cyprus 2012

The first presenter was Andreas Kamilaris.  He presented the social application Social Electricity which is very interesting and I encourage the people that pay our electricity authority a lot to use it!. This application shows how much electricity is consumed in houses and it compares it with other house in the same neighbourhood.

The next presenters were Andreas Vourkos and Vasileios Mitrousis that presented their application Braille messenger.   This application allows the visually impaired people to send messages through their iPhones. There are over 400 million visually impaired people in the world so I think they found a very good niche market there and of course they will do some good by helping people in need.

The next presenter was Alexandros Charalambides. I had the chance of listening to Alexandros in TEDxNicosia last year and his ideas are truly amazing. But Alexandros doesn’t just have ideas, he implements them. His idea of Interactive Mapping of Energy Houses is excellent and I hope it succeeds.

Following Alexandros was Alexis Piperidis. He talked about his experiences starting proto.io which is used for mobile app prototyping. Alexis mentioned that he got his first client after two months, so I asked him if he had an exit strategy in his mind. In other words, how long was he willing to wait before quitting his idea. His answer astonished me. He told me that people should never begin a startup having an exit strategy in mind. They should work hard and have patience and persistence. (υπομονή και επιμονή!).

The next ones were my friends Michael Strouthos   and Elena Georgiou. They designed a free iPhone application called Paphos Treasure Hunt that can be used for finding out the most interesting places in Paphos. As a Paphian I am very proud for this application and I hope lots of people, especially tourists will use it. If they ever develop an Android version, I will be the first to download it!

The last speaker (before the guru!) was Konstantinos Stergiopoulos. He shared with us his idea of a free wifi zone in the highways. He looks like he is really into his idea and he has the knowledge to implement this idea, so I hope he will make it.

And then the guru came on! Tolis Aivalis. My first thought was…WTF a Greek guy is doing in Silicon Valley? To be honest in the beginning I thought that the guy is just full of words, but after listening him for five minutes I realised that the guy knows what he is talking about! I already read many articles about startups but Tolis shared with us, something more important that just advices, his experiences. He founded many startups and participated in the beginning (and failure) of several others. His words were inspirational.

Networking is one of the most important aspects of startups. It is not so important of who you know, but who knows you as Michael Virardi says.  So after all those interesting presentations it was time of networking and meeting new interesting people. But before that, Stavriana Kofteros  shared with us tricks on how we can do that, the right way! To be honest, I didn’t get the pieces of papers game she proposed but her advices were very good. Listen! was one her main main ideas and I truly agree with that.

After all these presentations we surely needed some drinks! We moved to the next room and after some beers (and/or glasses of wine) we started meeting people. I met some very interesting people and I already connected with them through the social media websites.

Feedback Time

The event was very well organized. My only suggestions for the organizers are the following:

• Time issues: Maybe next time the event could start earlier and over a public holiday so we won’t face any time issues and have lots of time to discuss. For example one of the most interesting presentations was of Alexis Piperidis (IMHO). Unfortunately he had to shorten down his presentation because the other presentations took more time than expected.
• Some more breaks: I don’t know about the rest of the people that attended, but I needed to go to the toilet and I couldn’t because the presentations were very interesting!
• Place: Maybe the theatre wasn’t the best solution. I can understand that was the best they could get, but a more interactive place could work much better.

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1. Cyta Support through Twitter

This is an excellent idea by Cyta. Companies should use social media as channels for support. Although most people in Cyprus use Facebook,  Cyta is using Twitter for supporting their clients. Twitter does have the limitation for 140 characters per tweet (this is what I actually asked them) but it is best suited for giving instant answers. Furthermore users in Twitter tend to be…less anonymous.

I’ve send them a tweet last night and as you can see they replied to me.

And they replied me after a while.

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If you search for the keyword “Cyprus SEO” you will most probably find our website in the first place. It only took some months and some simple steps.

But how we did it? Well, it wasn’t that hard to be honest. We applied basic seo techniques that are discusses below.

1. On Page Optimization

First we had to take care our website. Our pages don’t have titles HOME or WELCOME. They have appropriate titles that search engines relate to our target keywords.

Furthermore the content is related to our keywords and is optimized for both visitors and search engines. Read more about on page optimization (in greek).

2. Off Page Optimization

Then we had to get out there. As we discussed before still the most important factor are backlinks. A website links to another website and search engines count this link as a vote. So we had to gather many votes. We applied several techniques with empashis on quality backlinks. Majesticseo counted 135 backlinks from 23 different domains, which is a good score!

Furthermore we used social media to reach more people. We are currently active in all major social media websites such as Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.

Read more about off page optimization (in greek).

Results

The image below (click to enlarge) shows how we achieve #1 position in Google for the keyword Cyprus SEO. 

Click to enlarge

If you want to see your website and the #1 position in Google contact us and we will tell you how exactly you can achieve that!

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There are a variety of different SEO techniques that you can employ in order to make your website a success, and one of the best ways by which you can optimize your website in a better manner is with the help of keyword analysis. For people who do not know, keyword analysis is a pretty simple and yet, very effective technique by which you can optimize your website. The keywords that you use in your written content can vary greatly, but it is important that you choose the ones that are most popular and used commonly by people when they type in the search terms in a search engine.

Analyzing keywords allows you to increase the number of conversions on to your website, optimize the amount that you spend on your keyword research, as it will help you in ditching those keywords which are no longer providing beneficial results and choosing new keywords that are more advantageous for your page. Nobody wants to keep looking at a large number of graphs and charts every day, which is why you can make use of a good quality keyword analyzing tool, as that helps you greatly in managing your website properly.

By making use of a keyword analyzing tool, you will be able to get a better idea about the keywords that you should use. There are some really convenient keyword analyzing tools that you can use, which will allow you to get a better idea about what keywords to include in to your articles. Keyword analysis will allow you to get the density of the keywords that should be used, including the number of times that it should be incorporated in to an article. Secondly, some of the best keyword analysis tools will also help you in selecting the right keywords by taking a look at the market trends.

The current trends of the market play a very important role in the importance of the keywords that you select. For example, you should know the search terms that people are using commonly in order to look for content on the internet, and once you have a clear idea, you should then incorporate them in to your articles. Properly analyzing keywords is very important, and can really turn out to be an amazingly helpful technique of search engine optimization. Once you have properly analyzed the keywords however, it is also very important that you include them in the articles carefully.

Over usage of keywords might cause search engines to pick up the elaborate optimization, and that could ruin your whole campaign. The advantages of keyword analysis are also quite prolific, as it will help you greatly in keeping an eye on the latest trends that are currently ruling the market, while they will also help you in prioritizing your time, as you will know which of the keywords are reaping the better results, allowing you to focus on them more than the ones that are not bringing about any benefits to your page.

Frederick is guest blogger and online marketing specialist, interested in seo, software, registry mechanic and new technologies.

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As you may noticed we have a new logo. The new logo was designed by the talented graphic designer Alasdair, of Dark Design Graphics, which specializes in Visual Identity graphics.

We wanted something to emphasize growth, as in growth of visitors, growth of customers and eventually growth of business. So we thought to put a sun in the place of O.

The small halo that is on top of the sun symbolizes our brand name, seotiras. The word sotiras in Greek means saviour, so we did a little word play there (sotiras - seotiras)!

This is basically our mission: To save websites. People spend lots of money to build good (or sometimes bad) websites, but they don’t think much about their online presence. They don’t understand that there are millions other websites out there and so they need a way to enhance their online presence. So we are here to help them stand out of the crowd.

So, after lots of versions, this is our final logo. We will also use the sun as our main icon.

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We conducted a small survey over the last week and examined the top Cypriot websites according to Alexa.

You can see the results and our conclusions in our guest post about the top ten websites in Cyprus in the global search engine marketing blog.

Guess which website is SEO friendly?

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