• Review and testing portal for digital photography development in Switzerland. We review the most popular online development services as well as variety of derivative products that can be produced from personal photos. Find more information here
• Similar to the Swiss review site we are also developing a portal of the same kind for the Austrian market. Find more details on that project here
• In order to educate the Swiss audience about hosting services in Switzerland we have launched a smaller sized project comparing the most popular web hosting providers on this site
• A larger sized project in the niche of limousine rental services in Switzerland was recently launched here. We are in the process of finalizing a more advanced back-end for our limousine rental portal.
• Our site in the dating niche is a review/directory type of site for the most popular online dating services in Switzerland. It can be found here.
• Still in the process of being developed is also the domain stockfoto.at that is a review/directory website that can be found here. Here you will find a collection of the most important royalty free stockphoto portals.
• Another project that we are working on right now are is a tshirt online shop review site that can be found here. This site helps Swiss users to decide where they can design their own Tshirt online.
• We are also trying to break into the online backup review niche that we are developing on the domain onlinebackups.ch. On this site we are comparing the biggest online backup services for private users.

Traffic first, then you can start thinking about making money. However, once you begin getting some traction on your site you will probably want to start thinking of making some money with it. You have several option to go about it, depending on the type of website you are running.

Google Adsense
One of the most popular methods of making money with a website is Googles contextual advertising platform Adsense. Due to its liquidity and coverage Adsense has become a very popular method of monetizing all types of websites. The advantage is that it is easy to integrate and that the ads are matched to the type of content you are publishing. The disadvantage is that certain types of websites can look spammy when there are too many Adsense ads on it. There also some cases where Adsense ads do not have a very high CPC or cost-per-click and therefore generate only little revenue.

Affiliate Programs
In many cases you may be interested in running affiliate ads on your site. Affiliate programs are very popular today and you can either sign up with an affiliate network or use one of the proprietary affiliate programs of online shops and services. You can basically generate leads for others and when a sales is made you earn a commission on this sale. Should you be able to find an affiliate program that matches your content and has a high commission rate, this could be a viable option for your site. Again, the affiliate marketing space is a universe on its own and there are plenty of information resources on the subject.

In addition to onsite optimization you also need to worry about *offsite optimization*. There is plenty of information out there on the subject where you can stay up to date on the newest SEO developments.

Here are the basics you NEED to know:

1. Use an XML Sitemap Plugin for your WordPress installation
2. Submit your XML Sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools
3. If you are using a .com, .net, .org, biz or .info and if you are targeting a specific country rather than the whole world, make sure you set this up in Google Webmaster Tools. This will help you a LOT in local Google search engines like Google.de etc.
4. Steadily create backlinks from relevant websites to your site. Comment on other peoples blog and link back to your site, participate in industry forum and link back in your forum signature and profile. Try to ask for backlinks via email.

Social Media Integration

Since the hype of social media, there are rumors that search engines care about how you perform on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn. Should your project allow it, you may want to create business profiles on this networks and link back to your site. You also have the option to use the RSS feed of your WordPress Blog to automatically spread your content updates on some of these networks. A service you may want to look at is Twitterfeed.com. Once again Social Media Marekting is a whole industry on its own, and you will find plenty of resources to go deeper into to the subject.

Recommended Swiss directory for quality Websites: http://www.bitzli.com

If you are reading other blogs you may have heard the expression all over again. Content is King. Well, how could it be otherwise if the basis for today’s search engine algorithms to deliver the best search results are the actual keywords in your text, as well as the context in which the keywords are presented. Now depending on the type of website you are building you really have two options. You either write every article yourself. Or you have someone else write the content for you. I think the advantages and disadvantage are quite obvious. Unless you can find the absolute expert in a specific niche who happens to write content for others you will probably have to write the articles yourself, as only you will be motivated enough to get the most out of an article with the right keywords in the proper context. However, there is an option to outsource some of your content to other people via services like Textbroker.com. I am sure there are also a few services like that focusing at other languages.
Outsoucing Content via Textbroker

Textbroker is a service that allows you to have professional and less professional writers compile articles for you. You will have to provide them with precise instructions and the amount of words you want to have writing. You will then pay them per word of text at a rate depending on their level of expertise. As the market for experts (level 4) is not very liquid you will probably have to settle for average writers of level 3.

In order to find some qualified people you will have to first place some open orders to filter out the bad writers. Thereafter, once you like someone’s writing style and research capabilities you may start placing direct orders at a premium rate. Those texts can then be used for content creation. However, self-written articles in your area of expertise will be still the better way to go, if you can put up the time. Especially at the beginning of a project, you need some help from outside as you could not possibly manage everything yourself. Give it a shot and see if it works for you.
SEO Content Formatting Basics

SEO is a subject that is being covered in hundreds of blogs, so I will only go into the most important and basic details you need to know to get started.

The way you format your content on your site WILL have an impact on how you rank in search engines and on how many visitors will find your articles.

Therefore, make sure you use:

1. Unique Content
2. H1, H2 and even H3 Tags for titles in our WordPress articles
3. Make sure you include your keywords at least in some of the titles
4. Include your keywords and variations of your keywords within the content
5. Interlink some of your articles to other relevant articles on your site using relevant anchor text
6. Use meta descriptions for each article

These techniques are also called *onsite optimization*

Most reputable hosting services such as Bluehost, will be using the cPanel admin backend which allows you register dozens of popular software packages and CMS systems for free. The installation process takes less than a few minutes and is fully automated. You will only have to choose under which domain name you want to register your WordPress installation and note the login details into your excel sheet. Done. You can then immediately login. This process takes less than 4 Minutes from start to first blog entry.
Setting up WordPress

There are hundreds if not thousands of blogs dealing with WordPress tips and tricks, guides and tutorials so I will not further elaborate on this.
Themes: Free vs Premium

One important part of your website is of course its design, and this is where you can fully utilize the power of WordPress. Its modular system allow you to switch design like changing shirts. There are hundreds of free themes out there however, I usually like to spend somewhere between USD 30 – 60 for premium themes simply because the offer a premium design and because they offer many option in the admin backend that allow me to same lots of time. Such premium themes also tend to have much less bugs and some sort of support whereas with free themes you are on your own.

Theme Market Places

If you are looking into some premium themes a few places you want to look at are the following:

Elegant Themes

Templatic Themes

Kingdom Themes

Themeforest

WordPress Plugins

WordPress Plugins is the second most important advantage besides using themes. A plugin will allow you add functionalities to your WordPress installation. However, there are a few basic plugins you need to take a look at that do not necessarily expand the functionalities but do a great job at improving your site in terms of SEO or usability.

Here are a few plugins I use to improve my WordPress Site.
SEO Plugin, XML Sitemap, Keyword to URL
Other Plugins
Premium Plugins

There are plenty of premium plugins worth looking at. Even though they come at a price and are recommended for intermediate to advanced users you may want to have advanced functionality to help market your website content and really expand its use.

To select a good domain name you need to keep a couple of things in mind.

Are you building a smaller type of website that is an SEO project and which is supposed to generate Adsense income or are you building a Blog that you want to take to the next level at some point in the future? Are you building a portal of some sort that should become an authority?

Why these questions? Well. For an SEO project, that is supposed to drive traffic to your website by ranking well in Google, the selection of a domain could be different than if you want to build out your brand. For a city portal your ideal name would be the actual city name which is hard to get these days. For a blog you may want to go for a brandable name that does not necessary include important keywords but is easy to remember. It depends.

Exact Match Generic Domain
Let’s assume that you have selected a niche where you want to target a specific *search phrase* that gets thousands of searches every month. Now ideally you would want to get a domain name that exactly reflects this search phrase, so that you domain name is considered the most relevant result as soon as you gain some traction. Here are some options you want to try:

1. www.searchphrase.com (best choice)
2. www.search-phrase.com
3. www.searchphrase.net
4. www.search-phrase.net
5. www.searchphrase.org
6. www.search-phrase.org
7. www.searchphrase.info
8. www.search-phrase.info
9. www.searchphrase.us
10. www.search-phrase.us

As you see, you have several options you may look at. If you are building out some sort of authority website, you may also be concerned with the future value of the domain you are using.

Things to remember:
1. The most valuable domain does NOT contain any dashes
2. Com is currently better than any other extension. Second best is a local extension such as .us, .de etc.
3. For SEO projects the other TLDs or extensions should be just as good as you are not planning on building out brand value but simple want to rank well
4. COM, Net, Org, Biz can be target to a specific country acting like a .us or a .de etc

Having a generic exact match domain will be give you an edge when trying to rank for a keyword. Always try to find the NO DASH, Exact Match, .COM Domain for your niche. Chances are that most of such domains are taken already and if you really want it you may have to go and buy it on the secondary market.

Brandable Domains

If you have done your research, you have probably realized that most of the exact match .coms are registered and the asking price is probably way over your budget. So whats next? You may want to look out for a brandable domain that contains your keywords.

Even though you may not get the maximum benefits in search engines you could have a really easy to remember domain name that is relevant to your niche. For some projects you are probably much better off with a cool sounding name than with two keywords attached to each other. Examples of 100% brandable domains are Google.com, Yahoo.com and Amazon.com. The efforts you may spend in marketing such names will be significantly higher and you will not get easy search traffic coming to your site.

Domain name basics

If you are looking to get your domain name there are few things you need to know. You have the following options:
Handregistration vs. Buying Domain

Handregistration is the Domainers’ slang for actually going to a registrar such as namesilo.com, search for a domain name, and register it for the basic fee of around USD 10. This is usually a domain that no one has ever used or a domain name that has been used before, but for some reason has been *dropped* and is now available to the general public.

Most of the good domains however, are in possession of domain investors who register the best domains and provide them for sale on secondary markets such as Sedo.com or GoDaddy Auctions. The price tag here can be somewhere between USD 100 to USD 8000000.

If you are very serious about a project then you may want to actually buy such a premium domain name. Remember the domain name is the foundation you are building your website on. A good domain name can give you an edge over competitors.
Domain Tools
In order to start looking for domains, you need to have your list of relevant keywords with you. You may also want to have the Google Keywords Tool open in order to check for popular search terms while looking for what is available. One tool that you may use for your initial search is Domize.com. It is a handy tool to quickly checks if the major extensions have been taken already. You can make such searches also with many other tools provided by your hosting service such as Bluehost or GoDaddy.

If you are considering buying a domain name you may want to use the Sedo.com search function to see for how much current domains of your liking are currently selling for. There are many tools out there that can help you searching for available names, even bulk searches.

Should you be interested in a brandable domain you may want to take a look at the tool Wordoid.com that allows you to creatively create domains based on your keyword. It is definitely cool to try.

Domain Registration
Let’s assume you have found a domain name and you wonder what the next steps would be in terms of hosting.

First Domain with Hosting
Is your domain of choice available for hand registration you may want to simply register it via a shared hosting service like Bluehost.com and use this domain to open an account. All hosting companies make it possible for you to make a registration through them.

Domain Registrars

Should you already have a hosting account with a service like Bluehost, then you have two options: You either register the domain through Bluehost and pay a high fee or you use a discount registrar such as namesilo.com. Whereas most hosting companies charge you for WHOIS secrecy for example and where a domain registration will cost you US 12, a service like namesilo.com will do a registration for you at a cost of USD 8 and will provide you with WHOIS secrecy for free. Should you be buying lots of domain names, this might save you hundreds of dollars. If you decide to register your domain via a registrar like namesilo.com you can then simply point two bits of information to your hosting service and use the domain in the same fashion without any disadvantages.

Target Niche for your Website
Selecting narrow niches is important if you are active in very competitive geographic markets such as the USA or Germany. This is so, because there are already so many website out there that have been around for some time, have lots of backlinks and have established audiences. The last thing you want to do is to select a very broad and competitive niche where you will be discouraged after a couple of weeks into the project. I have tried this on various occasions and I have always failed. Focusing on a specific angle of a subject will not only let you stand out from the crowd but it will also reduce the keywords you want to target which in turn increases your chances of ranking high in search engines and generate traffic to your content.

Target Keywords
Once you have selected a particular niche for yourself you will need to make sure you understand what keywords are driving traffic and how competitive these keywords are. A good selection of keywords will help you with the selection of a domain name and with the creation of relevant content for the site.

Competitive Analysis
The most basic approach to analyzing competition is to simply googgle the subject and see what kind of websites are in the top 20. Are there any smaller sites ranking well or are there only large websites with single pages ranking, then you may have a good chance of success. If you find lots of authority websites with targeted content you may want to rethink. There are tools out there such as Market Samurai, that can help you to analyze how many backlinks and how many pages such competitive sites have in the top 10 ranks.