In my opinion it is vital, maybe even necessary, for a successful website to have a content management system. Without it the website will be left outdated or costly to keep updated. There are also other reasons that content management should be considered a requirement.

It should not cost more for a web developer to provide a content manager compared to a static website. In fact, it should even cost less due to the nature of design being separated from content if the developer is familiar with their CMS of choice. Only a few files need to be created to provide the design for every page.

Traditional Static Websites

Before the advent of server side scripting (e.g. ASPX/PHP) websites were built in plain HTML. A separate file for each website page is required. This file will contain the entire website code including design, images, content, navigation etc. If you have 100 pages you will have 100 files. This is extremely disadvantageous:-

• Changing design or adding a menu items will take longer than using a CMS due to updating many files

• The website owner cannot update content without HTML and/or HTML software knowledge, including FTP

• Requesting the designer update content can turn out to be costly in the long run

• No functionality like shopping carts, database systems, member registration and login etc.

So what happens is the website is not updated, and could remain a static website with the same content for years. This is bad for users visiting the site (is the business still active? what has the business been up to? what’s their latest work and clients? etc.) and bad for search engines (search engines like to see fresh and updated content).

Another disadvantage is the website does not usually do anything. It wont offer any user interaction such as a being able to sell products, collect potential customer information into a database etc.

The above disadvantages are eliminated with a website content manager.

Website Content Management Systems

Design and Content Separated

A content manager basically works as follows:-

• Uses a template engine with the design encapsulated as a separate layer.  The design is generally made up of only a few files for the entire website.

• The content is traditionally stored in a database than in file system.

• Based on the page name in website URL, the server side scripting (e.g. ASPX/PHP) will feed the database content for that page into the design. Using Modrewrite or static catalog generation you can make it the pages appear static to search engines though you have a content management to update them.

What this means is the design files are separate from the content. Therefore updating the design, or adding new menu items, can be done in one file and not every single page. This ensures updating design is quick and easy. In fact the entire website can have a new, fresh design without having to rebuild the entire website, i.e. all content and menu pages stay the same and the design is change, thus saving more money and quick to publish.
You or your employees can Update Content

The content manager then provides an administration interface for the website owner to login and use the easy to use editor to edit and add content into each page, and add new pages into the menu. All you need is an internet connection and any PC with a browser like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc.

I always recommend a website is designed with a dynamic page listing for new content, i.e. a Latest News listing, a Testimonial listing, a Case Study or Portfolio listing. Using the editor the website owner can add a new page to the Latest News for example, and it will automatically be added to the Latest News listing and to the site. This not only shows a visitor that the business still there, changing, growing, dynamic etc. and keeps them up to date with the business news, but because search engines love new and changing content on websites, the website owner should see an improvement in rankings.
Added Functionality

In addition to the above many CMS’s allow for additional functionality to be added on easily thus turning the website into something far more business orientated and actually interacting with users rather than be a static magazine. Here are some examples of common functionality that can be added:-

* New User Registration and Sign In to Member Only Pages
* Forums/Discussion Boards
* Document Managers
* Dynamic Content for Latest News/Portfolio/Products/Case Studies/Testimonials
* Visitor Analytics and a lot more things.

Search Engine Optimisation

Using the editor important aspects of the website such as the browser title can be edited to ensure important keywords for your business and services are added. So many sites are just called something like “Home” which is extremely bad for search engines. So having the ability to update this and the Site Description is important.

Adding new content as stated above will also help improve rankings in search engines.
What Next For You?

If you have not got a website content manager or are looking for a new website then make sure you request your web designer or developer provide you one! If they do not know how then I would question their web development ability and should they really be developing a website for you? If thy quote a lot higher than making a static HTML site then I would also question their experience and knowledge of the CMS they would provide because it show not take any longer to develop a site using one than without.

Case : A – Paid Advertisements / Sponsorship Oppurtunities / Link Buying Queries

Normally the phrases would be :

• “become an advertiser”
• “advertising options”
• “advertise with us”
• “become a sponsor”
• “sponsor our site’
• “sponsor site”
• “sponsor us”

Using phrases like this, you can find tons of sites and pages with great Advertising / Link Buying  opportunities.

Example – http://www.google.com/search?q=css+design+%22sponsor+our+site%22 – shows a lot of great places for someone who wanted to rank for a term like “css design” to source links.

Case B -  Reciprocal Link Partners

• keyword + “your link here” -reciprocal (example) web design “your link here” -reciprocal
• keyword + “post your link” -reciprocal (example)
• keyword + “post a link” -reciprocal (example)
• keyword + “post your link” -reciprocal (example)
• keyword + “list your site” – reciprocal (example)

Case C – Finding Competitor Links (Yahoo Site explorer)

• inkdomain:domain-to-check.com site:.edu “directory”
• inkdomain:domain-to-check.com site:.gov “resource”
• linkdomain:domain-to-check.com site:.org“links”
• linkdomain:domain-to-check.com site:.edu “favorite”

Example : linkdomain:seomoz.org site:.edu “resource”

Example :  http://www.google.com/search?q=inurl%3Awww+site%3Adassnagar.com%2Fblogge&filter=0

In Google Search Box :  inurl:www site:dassnagar.com/blogge

You can use this not only for finding valuable pages on your own site, but for identifying where to request links from other sites, partners, articles and blogs.

Cheers! Enjoy.

• Supporters inurl:org (http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=supporters+inurl%3Aorg)
• Our Sponsors inurl:org (http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=our+sponsors+inurl%3Aorg)
• Special Thanks to inurl:org (http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=special+thanks+to+inurl%3Aorg)
• Our Donors inurl:org (http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=our+donors+inurl%3Aorg)
• Foundation Members inurl:org (http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=foundation+members+inurl%3Aorg)
• Support Provided By inurl:org (http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=support+provided+by+inurl%3Aorg)

a> On page Optimization
b> Off page Optimisation

The most important criteria of achieving high rankings is to have a scientifically designed and programmed website with rich content. Content is gold in SEO industry.

Following are some of the factors that influence search engine rankings :
ON PAGE FACTORS :

Keyword Use in Title Tag
Keyword Use in Body Text
Relationship of Body Text Content to Keywords (Topic Analysis)
Effective Use of header tags – h1,h2,h3
Keyword Use in Domain Name
Keyword Use in Page URL
Keyword Use in Alt Tags and Image Titles
Keyword Use in Bold/Strong Tags
Keyword Use in Meta Description Tag
Keyword Use in Meta Keywords Tag

OFF PAGE FACTORS

Global Link Popularity of Site
Global Link Popularity of All Linking Sites
Age of Site
Anchor Text of Inbound Link
Topical Relationship of Linking Page
Age of Link
Domain Extension of Linking Site (edu, gov, com, ca, co.uk, etc)
Topical Relationship of Linking Site
Text Surrounding the Link
Internal Link Popularity of Linking Page within Host Site/Domain
Temporal Link Attributes (when in time the link was created/updated)
PageRank (as measured by the GG Toolbar) of Linking Page

Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community
Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site
Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community
Rate of New Inbound Links to Site
Relevance of Site’s Primary Subject Matter to Query
Historical Performance of Site as Measured by Time Spent on Page, Clickthroughs from SERPs, Direct Visits, Bookmarks, etc.
Manual Authority/Weight Given to Site by Google
TLD Extension of Site (edu, gov, us, ca, com, etc)
Rate of New Pages Added to Site
Number of Queries for Site/Domain over Time

Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure
Quality/Relevance of Links to External Sites/Pages
Age of Document
Amount of Indexable Text Content
Quality of the Document Content (as measured algorithmically)
Organization/Hierarchy of Document Flow (i.e. broad > narrow)
Frequency of Updates to Page
Number of Trailing Slashes (/) in URL
Accuracy of Spelling & Grammar
HTML Validation of Document (to W3C Standards)

It’s time to start comparing the big global social networks on something other than unique visitors and page views. I believe an effective way to value a particular user is based on the average Internet advertising spend per person in the country they live in. The higher the spend, the more value the social network can get out of the user by serving them advertising and other products. That means that, for now, users in a handful of key countries are worth far more in terms of revenue potential than those in the rest of the world.

We’ve begun to build out a model that looks at social network usage by country/region and compares that to available data on total Internet advertising spend in each of those countries. The model is then able to turn an apples-to-oranges comparison into an apples-to-apples comparison. The early results are surprising.

The ultimate financial value of any asset is, ultimately, what the market will pay for it. We have only a few data points to help us: Facebook, Bebo and LinkedIn are worth $15 billion, $850 million and $1 billion, respectively, based on relatively recent valuations (although only Bebo was actually sold completely; Facebook and LinkedIn raised investments at those valuations). The last valuation of MySpace was just $580 million, back in 2005 when it was acquired by News Corp.

Which valuation is most “correct?” It’s hard to say based on the data that’s been available to date, which is mostly just aggregate page view and unique visitor numbers from Comscore and other services. Based on worldwide unique visitors, for example, Facebook recently overtook MySpace to become the “largest” social network.

According to raw worldwide user number, the biggest social networks are Facebook, Myspace, Hi5, Friendster, Orkut and Bebo, in that order. But when you apply the model that we’ve created below, which takes into account where users live, the rankings change substantially. MySpace is by far the most valuable social network based on available data. A competitor like Orkut is worth only 1/20th of MySpace, even though it has nearly 1/4 the number of users.

Properly Ranking Social Networks

Our model takes Comscore data for available countries and regions. We’ve graphed each of 26 well known social networks with the data we have been able to collect. We’ve then calculated the average advertising spend (estimated by PriceWaterhouseCoopers in a recent report) for each person online in each of those countries. For example, in the U.S., the total 2008 estimated Internet advertising spend is $25.2 billion. We’ve divided that by the number of people online in the U.S. according to Comscore (191 million), to get an average Internet spend per person of $132. View the raw data and calculations here.

The U.S., by the way, is only the 4th most valuable market per Internet user, trailing The UK ($213), Australia ($148) and Denmark ($144).

We’ve then multiplied the average Internet spend per user in each market with the number of unique users each social network has in that market, essentially creating a “weighted average” based on the advertising dollars chasing users. If a social network has more users in the U.S., Japan, the UK, Germany, Australia, and other bigger advertising networks, they will have a higher weighted average valuation.

We believe this model is an effective way to rank various competing social networks. It bumps down networks like Orkut and Friendster who have tens of millions of users in markets with very little advertising spend, and bumps up networks with lots of users in higher value markets.

Based on this model, MySpace is by far the most valuable social network. Second place Facebook has just 75% of the value of MySpace (even though it now has more users), followed by Bebo (26% of MySpace value), Hi5 and Amebio. LinkedIn comes in at no. 11, at 6% of MySpace’s value.

Valuation Ranges

The real-world revenue numbers being reported for the big networks supports this approach to valuation and shows a direct tie between monetization efforts and where a network’s users are. MySpace is estimated to have generated $755 million in revenue over the last year. The (now) larger Facebook, with a far higher percentage of users in less lucrative markets, will generate just $255 million this year:

EMarketer estimates that MySpace will post $755 million in revenue in the fiscal year ending June 30. MySpace would not comment on the estimate. About a third of the revenue is expected to come from the Google ad pact. For the year, Facebook is estimated to earn $265 million in ad revenue.

Since we have three recent data points valuing social networks (Facebook at $15 billion, Bebo at $850 million, LinkedIn at $1 billion), we can start to apply valuation ranges based on the model. Facebook’s 10.2 million value points and $15 billion valuation puts a $1,467 value on each value point. LinkedIn is valued very similarly, at $1,325 per value point. Bebo, with lots of users in the rich UK market, appears to have been undervalued at only $241 per value point.

Based on these three publicly available data points we’ve created value ranges for each of the top 25 worldwide social networks. There is a very wide disparity (MySpace, for example, is worth between $3.3 billion and $20 billion, based on which comparable you look at). But it does yield very interesting data. For example, If Facebook and LinkedIn were valued similarly to Bebo, they would be worth just $2.5 billion and $182 million, respectively, far less than what their investors recently paid for a piece of them.

Interestingly, the recent sale of Polish social network Nasza-klasa for $92 million appears to be right in sync with Bebo’s price. The model estimates its value at $91 million based on Bebo’s valuation metrics.

There are some big flaws with the model and analysis in its current state. First, LinkedIn may be in a different class of network, given that all of its users are business focused (no super-poking going on there). As a result, it may be able to monetize users far better than its competitors, no matter what geographic market is being looked at. Still, we’ve decided to leave it in as a data point, with that caveat.

The model itself needs more data. The user numbers are based on April Comscore. We will shortly revise it with the May numbers, although the absolute rankings probably won’t change. More importantly, some big markets are not included yet. The Chinese Internet advertising market, for example, is estimated to be $2 billion in 2008, yet they are not included (mostly because I can’t find data on user numbers for the networks). Also, the Philippines isn’t broken out separately, again due to data availability issues (although the total Internet advertising market in the Philippines is just $3 million this year, so it won’t affect the rankings materially even though Friendster is so strong there). Finally, Russia is currently grouped with “the rest of Europe,” and needs to be separately broken out – it has a large and growing online advertising market and lots of users, so that update may affect the mid-level network rankings.

The advertising spend model is just an estimate and from a single source. I’m less concerned with this data since it doesn’t matter to the model if the estimates are absolutely correct. If the estimates are wrong by different rates in different countries, however, the model will break. If we find better relative data between countries, we’ll update the model with that data. But for now, the PriceWaterhouseCoopers data seems to be pretty good.

Finally, this model doesn’t take into account execution at the company level. Two very similar networks may monetize vastly differently based on methods of advertising and even the brute effort and passion of the employees. This model obviously doesn’t take that into account.

CSS only defines the structure and content presentation of a website it has nothing to do with the design of a website. A single CSS sheet can control the font, positioning, colour and style information of an entire website.

Advantages of using CSS

1. Web pages are easier to load and uses less bandwidth

CSS style sheets are preferred by web developers for website development because they are lighter than table layouts, which consumes lots of bandwidth. The style sheet is downloaded only once and stored in the cache memory, so subsequent pages load faster.

2. CSS style sheet compliments well with HTML

HTML is insufficient when used independently in website development, but when combined with CSS they can result in technically stronger web pages.

3. CSS allows you to position your element anywhere in the webpage

Web developers love to use CSS because it allows them to position their element where ever they want in the web page. If during any phase of web development the developer feels that particular links or columns are not going well with the situation then it becomes easier for them to position them easily using CSS. CSS reduces the risks associated with maintenance of the website.

4. CSS is compatible with all web browsers

CSS is combined with HTML or XHTML by web developers for web application development because it is compatible with all web browsers. The sites that use CSS appear similar in all the web browsers.

5. CSS can be used to create print friendly web pages

Most of the web developers love to use CSS for building their HTML based web applications because they allow them to create print friendly web pages. These web pages can be easily printed. The colours, images and other things which are difficult to be printed can be eliminated and printed easily.

6. CSS style sheets allows the user to customize the web page

Now days many websites allow the user to change the layout of the website without affecting the content. The CSS style sheets which are stored externally allow the user to make requisite changes by themselves. Most of the modern browsers give user the liberty to define their own style sheets like changing some font properties etc.

7. CSS style sheets makes it easier for your website to feature in search engines

The CSS style sheets are favoured by web developers because they allow them to position their elements as per their wish anywhere in web application. Positioning helps to project the main contents first, so that it is easily captured by web spiders. CSS also gives cleaner HTML codes thus cutting down the job of web spider to search the real content from junk code.

8. CSS allows the web pages to have absolute consistency

One of the reasons for using CSS during web development is that they allow consistency to all web pages. All the expressions and texts will get their characteristics from external style sheet. Web developers need not to worry about the change in characteristics of the elements because they can be easily altered at any stage of web development by using CSS.

9. CSS lends portability to content

By using CSS you can make separate style sheets for different media. This provides you the great flexibility in presenting your content. CSS allows you to redefine the characteristics of elements in a website to suit the need of the situation. For e.g.: A separate style sheet will allow you to redefine the characteristics of certain elements so that they are easier to be printed. Also the user will never come to know that you had restructured the characteristics for their benefit.

CSS is created to make the things easier for your website and also to give you control over different elements in your website. Utilising benefits of CSS will give you popular user friendly web pages.

Adotube’s innovative video monetization technology enables advertisers to pay for individual customer’s attention, not just per thousand people who happen to be watching at the time – because Adotube makes ads optional for viewers, with advertisers only paying when someone chooses to watch an ad because it interests them, not because they’re forced to.

Anybody with video content to publish online can upload their videos to Adotube.com, which then serves them back on to the publisher’s own website, along with a series of highly targeted, relevant ad previews underneath it. At any point in the video, viewers can choose to watch an ad if they see one that interests them. When they do, their video is paused, and the ad plays. Once finished the ad closes, and their main content picks up where it left off instantly.

To make sure this opt-in advertising model works, Adotube’s closely-guarded algorithm dynamically selects which ads to offer each viewer based on a variety of carefully balanced factors; including the ad’s popularity, relevance and reputation. So viewers can be sure that if they click a Adotube ad, they’ll see something relevant, interesting and fun. Importantly, this ad-selection and prioritisation process ensures that advertisers with ads that prove popular with their audience will find that they receive extra exposure, even if they’re paying less per-view than their competitors.

Constantine, CEO of Adotube says “The Internet has changed the way people watch videos… The time has come for video-advertising to catch up. The days of advertisers buying ad-views by the thousands, and just hoping that people actually pay attention is over, now we can serve targeted, relevant advertising just to viewers who actually want it. This model is better for advertisers and for viewers, because it means that video advertising is now open to any company with the creativity to create something cool, not just giant corporations. Targeting and paying on a view-by-view basis is more measurable, more effective and more manageable. For viewers we believe this revolutionary approach will mean that they get better, more innovative paid-content about products and services that genuinely interest them. For video publishers we offer a way to monetize their content effectively, without compromising the viewing experience with obtrusive advertising”

Invitations have been sent to an undisclosed number of internet and advertising industry insiders to gain preview access to the system as plans are finalized for the formal public launch of the service to the general public in the near future. During this beta-test period, advertisers will be given a daily budget of $1000 per day to play around and familiarize themselves with the system. Publishers signing up during the period will not receive a share of revenue, but will instead be given a 65% revenue share (versus the normal 50%) once the site opens to the public.