If you want to do this right, you have to understand that this process takes time. It is also wise to develop a sound link building strategy.

According to link building expert Eric Ward, “link building is more public relations than SEO. To succeed, a site must provide a mix of intent and content that engage and enlighten.” He offers these link building basics:

* Be passionate about your business and write original, quality content.

* Play to your strengths by picking a set of keywords you want to rank highly for, and build content around them to add value to your site.

* Constantly be on the lookout for websites that might want to link to your content.

Other Linkbuilding Basics to Consider:

1. Search for good partnerships.
Try to augment your content by partnering with related organizations that may teach or provide instruction on your core business.

2. Always try to add value to your website through quality, original content.
Content that is unique and highly relevant to the target audience will always create interest. If you don’t or can’t write or develop the content yourself, this is an area you may consider out-sourcing to a professional content writer or videographer. Be honest with yourself. Writing for print is different than writing for the web. Don’t let your ego blind or deceive you into thinking you are better at this than you really are.

3. Think geographically when deciding who would be a good fit for your website.
If you are own a micro-brewery, you may want to partner with restaurants, bars or pubs that carry your brand in your city or town. You could also target online magazines that focus on your industry in addition to industry websites. Gourmet, fine dining or restaurant websites in your area may also be good choices. Could you get them to do a feature on your business or allow you to do a guest post?

The key to successful link building is to be persistent and creative in thinking of ways to create link-worthy, relevant content. Since links carry a considerable amount of weight when it comes to the SERPs, pay attention to link building basics. Your time invested in this area will never be wasted.

Tweet

But how do you know whether to go with a “free” vs. “premium” theme? Here is a list of “considerations to ponder when you’re trying to decide whether to purchase a WordPress template or use a free design:

Free Themes

• The Good:  If you are short on cash – this is a no brainer. There are thousands of beautiful, free, WordPress themes available for online download. You can find these themes on the WordPress.org website or sites like Smashing Magazine and The Design Mag. Many of the theme designers will have websites devoted to how to setup the them, and employ minor customizations. If you decide you don’t like the theme after you have installed it, changing it is a snap. Newer versions of WordPress comes with several pre-loaded themes that come with the core install.

• The Bad: You have to be careful to take note of version compatibility; especially if you plan on installing WordPress plugins. Also, free themes will not come with support. If you encounter problems with the coding you will have to hire a programmer to fix the issue.

Premium Themes

• The Good: When you purchase your WordPress theme, you can usually expect support from the designer, a unique & sophisticated design, and versatility to use the WordPress publishing platform for more than just blogging. Many of the newer designs can work for E-Commerce, Portfolio, Photo Galleries and Corporate websites.

Premium themes purchased “off the rack” are extremely affordable; ranging in price from about $27 to $100. Budget conscious WordPress premium theme shoppers can get high quality templates at Theme Forest. This is a sort of WordPress “mall” where you can shop for the theme of your choice. Support comes in the form of a downloadable PDF document. In many cases you can send the designer a question in the comments area or you can access answers on the website forum. These themes will usually require that you have a good understanding of how to install WordPress and are comfortable making coding adjustments. Otherwise you will have to hire someone to help you with customization.

If you are looking for more in terms of user-friendliness, quality and stability, you may want to take a long hard look at both DIY Thesis and PageLines themes. Both create high quality WordPress templates that come with a high level of  support, expert coding and design sophistication.

If you haven’t set up a Twitter account for your Houston area small business, you are missing out on multiple opportunities to increase sales and develop relationships with new and existing customers.

Assuming you are already on the Twitter bandwagon and have set up a professional looking Twitter profile, here are 5 ways you can use this micro-blogging platform to support your micro business:

1. Track what people are saying about you.

People are talking. They could be talking about you or your business. You can monitor those conversations in real time using a Twitter feed or the Twitter search tool. If the talk is negative, this provides you an opportunity to speak to the issue before the molehill blows up into a big ugly mountain of negative publicity. This can be accomplished through blog posts or press releases. No matter what strategy you decide to use, the important thing is being able to react in real-time.

2. Interact with your customers.

By communicating with you customers you build trust. Twitter allows you to send or broadcast information that can improve your customer’s quality of life or offer a tip that can save them money. This fosters trust and generates positive word of mouth for you and your business.

3.  Create excitement and buzz around promotions and events.

Twitter allows you to get the word out on upcoming events or special promotions. You can also drive traffic to an event in real-time. For example, if your church group or Girl Scout Troop is holding a car wash today, send out tweets with the address to drive traffic to the location.

4.  Promote new products or services.

But be careful – you don’t want your tweets sounding like a blatant sales pitch. Take a conversational tone and inform without the hard sell.

5.  Drive traffic to your website and get fresh leads.

If you have a blog that’s a part of your website, your tweets can direct traffic to your site every time you post fresh material.

Tools to Help You Monitor Twitter

Echofon (Formerly TwitterFox): This nifty tool notifies you of your friends’ tweets on Twitter. Syncs with iPhone. This is a Firefox web browser plugin that will allow you to view your tweets within your browser’s popup menu. This saves a lot of time because it eliminates the need to have to go to the Twitter website.

Twitter for Facebook: This application automatically forwards your Twitter updates directly to Facebook as status updates.

SocialOomph (Formerly TweetLater): The focus is now on productivity solutions for users of Twitter.com. SocialOomph has broadened its scope to the users of other social networking services. They offer tools that boost your social media productivity.

Bad Web Design Is No Joke

You finally launched your website. It’s perfect – or so you think. Now for the real test. How will your site visitors react to you shiny new site? Will they dive in or recoil in horror, never to return again?

What are some web design elements to steer clear of?  Here’s a short list of what constitutes bad web design:

1. Music. Music is potentially a major turn-off because not everyone will like your choice of music.

2. Midi music. Please people. It’s 2010 already.

3. Animated Gifs. If your website contains animated “under construction” signs, waving flags, animated email gifs or anything that blinks – re-read reason #2.

4. Centered Text Centered text is the tool of amateur designers. If you are designing the site yourself, visit the web design that sucks website. By looking at bad sites you’ll learn what not to do.

5. Times New Roman and most (not all) Serif fonts. Serif fonts are hard to read on a computer. So it’s best to err on the side of caution and stick with a serif font like Verdana, Arial or Lucida Sans Unicode font.

6. Cluttered layouts are not good. Less is more. More is never more. Plus,when you add more “stuff”, it obliterates the focal point.

7. No obvious Call to Action. I mean, what do you want visitors to do?

8. No Contact information. Or its well hidden. Don’t may people hunt for ways to get in touch with you.

9. No way to contact you beyond a web form. This is particularly frustrating for clients after the sale. Especially when there are support or billing issues that need follow up from you. Being able to speak with a real person is 100% better than talking to a form.

10. Disturbing color choices. Unless you are a gamer, white text on a black background isn’t exciting or sexy. It’ll give most people a headache. Black text on a white background may be boring, but it works. Try to use a color pallette that makes sense in terms of your site visitors and design theme.

11. Complicated and confusing navigation. If it is not simple, your visitors will bolt. Are your pages named in a way that don’t make sense? Is the page so lengthy that a person has to scroll forever or frames that force users to scroll sideways? That crack is wack.

12. Your site takes forever to load. This will not only drive away traffic but now Google is factoring page load time into its indexing algorithim.

13. Only looks good in Internet Explorer. Let me just say I wish Microsoft would get out of the browser business. In the meantime, you’ll have to do you due diligence and test your site in multiple browsers. IE7, IE8, Firefox, Chrome and Safari for sure.

14. Is your site a Flash circus? That’s bad web design. Just quit it already.