Posterous Ends All Troubles – thats right.

You want to build a fast site? you do not know code or have the time/energy to put into a site? the perfect answer is Posterous. This might be the easiest and coolest blooging template ever, and this is no joke.

The idea is simple, post blog posts (text), photos, videos and anything you want through your email client (could be Yahoo! mail, Gmail and all the rest of them, including your own email client) just sign up and start emailing your account, each time updating it with a new post.

We couldnt resist, so we posted a few things right away, just to check if it was really that easy, well, its even easier… there is simply nothing simpler than Posterous. Try it now.

(Will post a video of how to use it soon)

Posterous

If you want you can visit Trophico Posterous page

Trophico Posterous page

Tumblr is one of the good sites out there, and it keeps getting better, once again this is a free, fast and really cool solution to anyone who is looking for a fast page set up (or full site even), without the hassle of learning code or design.

In the last post (of this category) I discussed Weebly, talking about how awesome it is I forgot to mention that Tumblr is definitely neck to neck with Weebly on most of these issues, and on some I think that many will find out that Tumblr is even better.

The list of the benefits of using Tumblr is pretty big, I can only mention Facebook apps, Twitter sync and a very importnat RSS feed out of your page as the main feautres, but there are many more, be sure to check those if you are looking for a quick set up for an online page, because Tumblr rocks (you can check up the fast page we set up in like 2 minutes at Trophico SEO Tumblr)

Trophico page on Tumblr.

Tumblr is another perfect solution for fast free pages

Weebly is awesome, its easy, its fast, its free and it is on line as soon as you press a button, you seriously can not ask for more. If you are an absolute beginner you should definitely give Weebly a try because it might solve your problems and save you hours of frustration and anger.

Weebly offers the user many different design options for all kinds of cool looks (yeah but today almost all the templates offer this), however the frag and drop of the page elements makes the whole thing easy and fast, so you can not really get stuck with Weebly, anything you have to say on the internet can be said within seconds using this free and smart template. Use it.

Weebly - easy and fast - perfect for first timers

A promotional site is a site that targets its own traffic, meaning it does not count on exterior and unexpected visits, it is there to make a statement about a company, a business or a person, without too much fluff or extras a promotional site is there to tell people who you are, what you do and will usually also add why people should choose you and your services.

So the main focus is on showing and demonstrating the company/business/person ability in its market and add to this a zing of creativity so that visitors will not forget this site and its message. This is why we choose to have the main site as a clean promotional site, the idea is that only people who know us or their contacts will visit the site, so the visitors will have some idea of what they are going to see (an SEO services site) however they will not expect the way it looks and feels and the underlying concepts it conveys.

Trophico SEO is set in a futuristic environment, the background is of a space like vehicle, some times clean and sterile and sometimes dirty and messy, it should give the visitor the feeling its walking into the back scene of a busy factory. More about the making of Trophico later.

Trophico SEO Site (local search page)

Getting back to an issue we addressed in the (not so far) past, getting your own website requires some thought and a lot of planning, you need to consider your webmaster’s strengths and weaknesses, and bare in mind the added value you can get out of your own SEO efforts.

The many templates out there offer anyone lots of options with cons and pros in each category, I am a strong believer in the Wordpress template. Lets keep thins honest, its not like a huge reseach told me that this is the best thing out there, but out of my experiance and information I found it to be the best thing out there, fast and easy to mold into your own look, WP covers most aspects of the internet you will need to address.

The real benefits roll out when you inspect the search engine optimization advantages in the Wordpress blog template, and this is what I will try and discuss in the next few posts.

(needless to say I have made my choice and went with Wordpress, you can see that this blog is set on WP with the clean look of the DIY themes)

Reading the headline you might think that I mean that the posting template on blogs failed completely, but that is not the idea. The idea is that the promise of a fast internet setup did not meet most peoples expectations of having real people read and look at their sites, there are many profound blogs and pages on the net, but no one reads them, no one knows about them.

Promoting any web page should have some ROI in mind, so lets be clear about it, I do not expect regular people writing down their thoughts to hire an SEO expert to have their name and their blog out fighting for ranking, but any one that uses the internet to express her or his mind should know how to promote the page and site its on, it is all part of the process and (to me) seems essential, like having your number appear on the listing, you want to be found? make some effort and help the ones looking for you.

Ping! not golf again, ping the post!

First tip – PING! (not the logo of the golf equipment maker Ping), once you finish a new post, ping it, and ping it fast. No point in waiting, let the bots know something new is here.

Second tip – look for people who talk about your stuff and let them know you are there, post comments, notes and PM’s, and add your link.

More tips soon.

Getting to the real deal now, getting your own site, its look and its purpose, and most important of all – how easy (or difficult) is it going to be to add, change, edit and get full control of your site.

The first of the options is also (what I consider to be) the best one, the CSS template, build your site on a blog template (but it looks like every other site, do not let the “blog” part get you wrong) with its backoffice you can log in easily (even via your cell phone) and add a page or post, edit and change your current pages, and even play a little with graphics without the headache of looking where to plug it in (if you ever saw code you know how suicidal one can get looking for something).

God Bless Wordpress - Really Great & Really Free

Best thing – its free, really free (not $9,99 a month free), the only thing is that you need to look for the template you like and you will have to spend some time learning how to upload to the server (by FTP) and some technical things, honestly this is something you should expect (learning) and will follow you wherever you go if your target it to set your own site yourself (all invoice knowledge of FTP upload). It can take 4-10 hours to understand, so you are basically looking at one day of work – if you like spreading your tasks and project, spend 20 minutes a day and you will be done in a fortnight.

Samples and ideas on the CSS template next time.

When you start to think about a website that would represent your business, you probably start by thinking of a name, and right after that how cool the site would look. The first thing I say to siteless clients is that building a site is much like building a house, if you’re going to do that by yourself its going to take a lot of time and energy (unless you are an expert builder).

As always the main issue is budget, and when there is no budget the client needs to understand that she is better off with a small and basic site right away, than a perfect flash multimedia site in 5 years, the logic is simple, build a simple house and you can have people come by for a coffee the next day, in no time you will have new friends, but if you are going to have a skycraper on paper for 5 years no one physically visits you, no friends

So get something up there and as fast as you can, work on it as time passes and make it better.

Better Small and Now then Big and Never

Another key factor in all of this is that once a domain is registered and a page pops up the search engines are introduced to your site, and a great clock in their server starts ticking, you will be wise to get this clock ticking as soon as possible, because many search engines (potentially even the mighty Google) like to rank domains they know for a while, and not someone how just showed up last week… think about it.

Next time – the actual tools, what you need to get going.

Website template - Do you really need one?

In the past few weeks I have mentioned local search and the ways you can profit from it, now and in the future. The many advantages of having your web sites rank locally and globally are clear to almost anyone who has surfed the net, even only for a few minutes, however it is one major thing that stands in the way of most simple business owners and their ranking, and it is, pretty crazy but true, a web site.

So when I say “simple business owner” I don’t mean to look down at you or your business, its more about the fact that you do no have a creative department, you dont have a development team and you dont have project mangers begging you to lay some big project on them, you only have yourself and the mission of getting a web site.

There are a few things you can do about this, and I will review a few of them in the next few days on this “Get Your Own Website” category (new one), and I hope you read it because from my own personal and expansive experience it is one thing that not many people share with each other and there are a bunch of companies out there that do no want you to know anything about it (imagine why).