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Samir Balwani is an emerging technology strategist at Morpheus Media, a firm specializing in Social Marketing, SEM, and SEO. You can follow him on Twitter @leftthebox and get his newsletter.Social media marketing and the businesses that utilize it have become more sophisticated. More small businesses are beginning to understand how to best leverage online tools to build a community and recognize that engagement and interaction are the foundations of social marketing, but most don’t know what’s next.What follows are five advanced strategies for small businesses that may already have small online communities and understand how to create an online presence, but don’t know what to do next.What Is An Advanced Strategy?The definition of an advanced social strategy is a technique that goes beyond the normal social media presence. It introduces or reinforces a marketing message while pushing a user to another profile or business site. Before moving forward with an advanced strategy, it’s important that your business understands social marketing, has experience engaging consumers, and that you possess a basic understanding of online marketing.Strategy 1: Multimedia UsageThe term “A picture is worth a thousand words” has never been truer. Consumers are now using the web to look for product pictures and videos; they want more information and want to see what they’re considering buying. The good news is that it’s easy for a company to create and publish videos and pictures.In addition to taking photos of products, you can also take pictures at office events as a way to highlight company culture. This not only helps convince others to work with you or to buy from you (consumers see that you are down to earth and one of them, instead of a stuffy company), it also helps your HR department recruit new employees. Who doesn’t want to work for a company that celebrates birthdays and has a good time?Videos are useful for explaining complex how-tos or concepts. Showing step by step directions can have a greater impact than even the most well written article. Businesses don’t have to invest huge sums of money to create good videos, either. I highly recommend the relatively cheap Flip camcorder, which takes great videos and is easy for even a non-technical marketer to use.Multimedia can break down the faceless business-to-consumer sales flow and make your company appear friendlier. Use videos and images to show that your business is fun, you care about your employees, and most importantly, that you care about your customers. Example: WorldMusicSupply.comWorldMusicSupply.com, an online retailer of musical instruments and accessories, has used YouTube to build a strong online community. Their channel has built over 7,000 subscribers and has over 260,000 views.Strategy 2: Integrate Offline and Online AdvertisingMany small businesses do some sort of offline advertising, whether it be radio, print, or cable. Social marketing allows a business to extend their offline sales pitch.Including your Facebook Page or blog URL in offline ads act as social proof, inviting potential consumers to see your community and increase trust in your business. Not only can integrating online and offline advertising help the conversion process, but it can also help build your community. Introducing potential consumers to your social profiles means they may join your community now and buy later.Strategy 3: Message AdaptationAs businesses start to become more sophisticated with social media they are starting to leverage more online platforms. However, most deliver the same message over multiple platforms instead of tailoring communications for each individual site.Social platforms each have an ecosystem of their own. What might be acceptable on Tumblr might be considered spam on Facebook. A specific style of writing might spread on Twitter but fail on FriendFeed. Understanding that each site is different and then customizing your message ensures they do well on each respective site.Not only does customizing messages across sites help the message spread but it keeps users from receiving multiple identical communications. Be sure to maximize your potential by sending a user that follows the business on Twitter and Facebook two different messages, instead of the same thing.Strategy 4: Local Social Networks, Beyond YelpFor a small business, local search can be a big win. Being visible to consumers looking for a business in their area is extremely important. Make sure your site is included in local business directories in order to help ensure that consumers find you when they need you. Sometimes finding that many sites can be difficult, however. First, make sure you check your competitors. Where are they listed? Check their inbound links to check for business directories you can add yourself to. Also, make sure your business has been added to Google Maps, using the Local Business Center.Take the time to include all the information you can and update any old news. For many consumers, this will be their first interaction with the business.Example: Bella Napoli in New YorkBella Napoli is a small pizzeria in New York that has done a great job of making sure they appear in as many local searches as possible.Strategy 5: Contests and DiscountsBuilding a community is only the first part of social marketing. Using that community to drive sales, propagate marketing, or crowdsource operations is the true power of social media. One way to excite the community is to collectively do something to create a contest or offer an exclusive discount (i.e., the contest can create competition between users). Not only does a contest build buzz organically but if contestants need to, for example, publish an article that gets the most comments in order to win, the contest itself becomes viral.A good social media contest should include some sort of sharing or virality as a requirement for winning.Discounts are also a great way to connect with your community. By giving exclusive coupons to your social community, you’re rewarding and reminding them that you are not only a brand to engage with, but also to buy from.Example: NetFirms.comNetFirms.com decided to make it easier to register a domain by allowing people to do it via Twitter. Those who participated or spread the word by tweeting, were also entered into a prize drawing.ConclusionCreating a basic social media presence is easy enough, getting your community to actually do something is more difficult. Taking advantage of these strategies can help you build your community, make your marketing more effective, and incentivize buying.More business resources from Mashable:- Top 5 Business Blogging Mistakes and How to Avoid Them- 4 Ways Social Media is Changing Business- 6 Must-Follow Steps for Selling in Any Economy- 5 Easy Social Media Wins for Your Small Business- HOW TO: Use Twitter Hashtags for BusinessImage courtesy of iStockphoto, cmcderm1Reviews: Facebook, FriendFeed, Google Maps, Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube, iStockphotoTags: business, community, Lists, MARKETING, small business, social media, strategy

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In choosing a CMS, one thing you should consider is the theming or templating process. While some CMSs have very simple and easy-to-use theming systems, others can be a real bear to use.Below are tutorials for some of the more popular CMSs out there. Some have tons of tutorials available (WordPress, Drupal, Concrete5) while others have limited documentation outside of the official site (Magnolia, Umbraco, TYPOlight). Some CMSs we’d planned to feature had little readily-available theming documentation and were left off the list entirely. In any case, whatever CMS you choose should have reliable, easy-to-understand instructions for creating custom themes, either in the official documentation or easily available within the developer community.CMS Made SimpleCMS Made Simple is an open source CMS built in PHP.Getting Started: TemplatesThis page from CMSMS’s documentation covers all the basics for creating your own templates. It also includes information on customizing the default templates.

3 ways to plug a custom CSS stylesheet in CMSMSThis tutorial shows three different ways to use custom CSS with CMS Made Simple. Methods included are using metadata in global admin settings, directly in the website templates, and using the native stylesheet mechanism of CMSMS.

Concrete5Concrete5 is an open-source CMS released under the MIT software license.Tutorial: Making a template for concrete5This tutorial shows how to adapt a regular HTML template for use with Concrete5. The tutorial is illustrated and very simple to follow, with all the code you need included.

Concrete5—Create your own themeThis multi-part tutorial shows you exactly how to create your own template for Concrete5. It covers the elements of a theme, the HTML structure, and more.

Understanding and Building Themes in ConcreteThis is the official theming documentation for Concrete5 and includes both a basic introduction to themes and links to more advanced topics.

CushyCMSCushyCMS is a free, hosted CMS option.How to Build a Maintainable Site using CushyCMS and TwitterWhile this tutorial covers a lot more than just theming, that’s what it starts with. And it does a great job of showing how to create a theme for CushyCMS, with very easy-to-follow instructions.

CushyCMS Designer DocumentationThis is the official documentation for designers. It includes everything you’d want to know about designing or customizing themes for use with CushyCMS. Topics covered include overriding content types, using Cushy with dynamic languages, XML elements and more.

DotNetNukeDotNetNuke is an open-source CMS for ASP.NET.Creating your first DotNetNuke SkinThis is a very basic tutorial on how to create a skin for DotNetNuke. It’s a good starting point for learning to create skins, though it doesn’t really result in an end-product many people would want to use.

Creating a Skin TemplateThis is a thorough template on creating a skin that’s part of a series on creating websites in DotNetNuke. It includes tons of information on skin design and implementation. Additional tutorials after this one provide more in depth information on skinning and are linked at the bottom of this page.

How to Create a Pure CSS Skin in DotNetNukeThis is a 9-part video tutorial on how to create CSS-based skins for DotNetNuke. It’s very complete and based on the Simple Red Leaf layout available from DNN Creative Magazine.

DrupalDrupal is a free, open-source, PHP-based CMS.Theming GuideThis is the theming guide available in the Drupal documentation. It covers everything you’d want to know about building Drupal themes, including information for both Drupal 5 and 6. Best practices and information on how to contribute themes are also included.

Create a Killer Band Site With Drupal: A 6-part Tutorial Series
This tutorial is specific to band-sites, but the information it contains could easily be applied to other types of sites. It covers everything from designing the site in Illustrator to Drupal theming and admin. And it gives plenty of examples of similar sites running on Drupal.

How to Make a Drupal ThemeThis is a very simple but complete tutorial on how to create your own Drupal themes. It covers theme building based on the PHPtemplate theme engine and Drupal 6. It also covers the different files included in a Drupal theme and what each one does.

From PSD to Drupal Theme TutorialPart 1, Part 2, Part 3This multi-part tutorial covers everything you need to know to convert a PSD file into a Drupal theme. It’s another very complete tutorial that includes all the code you’ll need.

ExpressionEngineExpressionEngine is a PHP and MySQL-based CMS.Dissecting the Default TemplatesThis page gives a complete run-down of how templates in ExpressionEngine work. It covers everything from category headings and parameters to variables to RSS and mailing lists. It’s a good starting point for anyone interested in developing EE templates.

Introduction to Templates TutorialThis video tutorial covers the basics of ExpressionEngine templates. It’s another good place to start if you want to design EE templates.

Building a Small Business SiteThis series of tutorials covers the complete setup of a website in ExpressionEngine. It includes a few tutorials specifically on how to work with templates, though, all of which are worth a look.

Joomla!Joomla! is a PHP-based, free CMS.Creating a W3C Valid Joomla TemplateThis tutorial shows how to create a CSS-based Joomla theme that’s completely standards-compliant and accessible. The end result is a basic, 3-column theme that can be adapted to different needs.

5 Easy Steps Converting HTML Template to Joomla TemplateHere’s a five-step tutorial for turning just about any HTML template into a Joomla theme. The starting template should be (X)HTML and CSS-based and standards-compliant. This is really a very simple process and the tutorial outlines the steps very well.

How to Create Your First Joomla TemplateThis tutorial covers all the basics to creating a Joomla template, specifically geared to someone with no Joomla templating experience. It’s highly illustrated, making it really easy to follow. It’s also one of the most extensive Joomla theme tutorials out there.

How to make a Joomla themeThis is a very basic tutorial covering creating your own simple Joomla theme. It consists of only ten steps and provides sample code.

MagnoliaMagnolia is an enterprise-level CMS built on the Java platform. There is a free, open-source edition available.Templating GuideThis is the templating tutorial from Magnolia’s official documentation. It covers the basics of creating a simple template.

MODxMODx is an open-source “application framework” built on PHP.Beginner’s Guide to MODx: Creating the TemplateThis tutorial is from the MODx wiki and covers all the basics of theming with MODx. It includes all the sample code you’ll need and is broken down in easy-to-understand sections.

Theming MODxHere’s another wiki-based tutorial for creating MODx themes. Sample code is included, though this tutorial doesn’t seem to be quite as complete as the one in the official documentation.

Building a Website with MODx for Newbies—Part 3: Working with TemplatesThis tutorial gives thorough instructions for customizing an existing template to work with MODx. Additional tutorials in the series get into more detailed customizations and other aspects of working with MODx.

PlonePlone is a free, open-source CMS.Creating a new theme for Plone: a real-world exampleThis is a very complete tutorial that covers all aspects of building a Plone theme from a Photoshop mockup. It shows how to do everything from creating the basic foundation for the theme to styling the individual elements.

Creating a Custom Theme for PloneThis is another incredibly detailed tutorial for creating Plone themes. It covers everything from creating custom CSS to overriding visual elements.

Radiant CMSRadiant is a free Ruby On Rails CMS.Radiant CMSThis tutorial covers the basics of working with Radiant, including how the pages are set up and how to design around the basic page structure. It shows the basic divs used and how theme and template files are generally set up.

SilverStripeSilverStripe is built on the open source Sapphire development framework.Developing ThemesThis is the theme development guide right from the SilverStripe Documentation. It’s a great place to start, as it explains all the basics of how SilverStripe themes are structured and the core files required.

Tutorial for SilverStripeThis is a tutorial for creating a very basic SilverStripe theme. It includes three steps. In the end, you get a framework that allows for quick and easy theme development without compromising the capabilities of SilverStripe.

Building a Theme from a Static TemplateHere’s a tutorial that covers how to adapt just about any website template to work as a SilverStripe theme. It includes a sample template to work with (both the starting files and the completed ones). It also includes documentation for working with other templates in case you’d prefer to start with something different.

Tutorial: Building a Basic SiteThis is the tutorial in SilverStripe’s official documentation. It covers building templates in addition to other basic functionality of the CMS.

TextpatternTextpattern is an open source CMS built on PHP and MySQL.Your First Textpattern ThemeThis is an 8-part tutorial on creating a Textpattern theme, specifically geared at beginners. It covers forms, pages, excerpts, secondary pages and forms, and tags, among other things. It’s very complete and easy to understand.

Page (Template) Related TagsThis page gives a complete overview of the tags used in building page templates (as opposed to form templates) for Textpattern. It’s a must-have resource for anyone building Textpattern templates.

TYPO3TYPO3 is a GPL-licensed CMS built with PHP.Creating TYPO3 TemplatesThis is a very detailed tutorial from ThemesWiki that thoroughly explains how to create templates for TYPO3. It covers the elements of a template, objects and properties, using TypoScript, integrating design templates, using the auto parser template and more.

TYPO3 Template Design GuideThis is a rather short article on creating maintainable sites and templates in TYPO3. It includes hints for using TemplaVoila, too.

Futuristic Template Building TutorialHere’s a very in-depth tutorial on creating TYPO3 templates. It includes sections covering integration of an HTML page template with TemplaVoila, creating additional page templates, “flexible content elements,” and information on TypoScript.

TYPOlightTYPOlight is a free, PHP-based CMS that uses Ajax and other “Web 2.0″ technologies.Tutorials: Creating Custom TemplatesThis tutorial is from the TYPOlight documentation and covers all the basics of creating your own layouts. Topics included are creating basic modules, importing style sheets, creating page layouts and the site structure, adding content, and previewing and modifying your templates. You can also watch the tutorial as a narrated screencast.

UmbracoUmbraco is an open source CMS built on ASP.NET.Understanding Templates & StylesheetsThis article from the official documentation offers the basics of how Umbraco builds pages and using templates. It’s a perfect starting point for learning how to build templates for Umbraco.

WordPressWordPress is a free blogging platform that can be modified to be used as a CMS.So you want to create WordPress themes huh?This is one of the most complete WP theme-building tutorials out there. It consists of 25 separate lessons and covers how the WP templating system works, The Loop, post meta data, search forms, calendars, comment templates and pretty much everything else about themes in WP. If you want to build a theme completely from scratch, this is the tutorial to show you how.

How to create a simple WordPress themeThis tutorial gives instructions for creating a basic, simple WP theme that includes the header.php, index.php, sidebar.php and footer.php template files, in addition to the style sheet. It’s very simple and straight-forward, but a great place to start if you’re new to building WP themes. The basic steps can easily be adapted to building more complex themes.

How To Create a WordPress Theme: The Ultimate WordPress Theme TutorialHere’s another very complete tutorial, offering up 11 lessons on how to create a WP theme. It focuses on creating a theme with good SEO, valid and logical semantic markup, separated trackbacks and comments, two widget areas, and all the basics you’d expect from a WP theme. The lessons are ordered logically and include theme development tools and information about the WP template and directory structure.

How to convert any web template into a WordPress themeSometimes you don’t want to design a theme from scratch. Maybe you’ve found the perfect theme (or designed one), but it’s just a regular web template, not a WP theme. This tutorial will show you how to convert that web template into a WP theme without too much trouble. It also includes a link to a video tutorial showing how one template was converted.

How to Create a WordPress Theme from ScratchThis tutorial shows how to take a basic HTML/CSS template and convert it to a WP theme. It’s incredibly complete, covering every aspect of WP theming. It also explains how themes are structured and how to create the core theme files.

Author: Cameron ChapmanCameron Chapman is a writer, blogger, copyeditor, and social media addict. She’s been designing for more than six years and writing her whole life. If you*d like to connect with her, you can follow her on Twitter or at her Personal Website.Write for Us! We are looking for exciting and creative articles, if you want to contribute, just send us an email.

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Designing websites can be a long and complicated process. Dealing with clients, designing prototypes, coding, programming, and testing – there’s a lot to keep track of and a lot to make sure gets done.That’s where checklists can make your life a whole lot easier. With lists of points covering multiple areas from content to usability to accessibility to standards, you’re a lot less likely to overlook important parts of a site. Below are 45 checklists to make your design process easier and more organized. Consider using these checklists as a jumping off point for creating your own customized list, based on your own needs.Also consider our previous articles:15 Essential Checks Before Launching Your Website lists some important things to check before you make your sites public.10 Designer’s Checkpoints To Be Aware Of offers a list of things every designers should know about their sites.1. Client-Focused Checklists and QuestionnairesThese questionnaires and checklists are focused on making your relationships with your clients better. Use these to gather information from your clients or prospects at the beginning of each project so that everyone is on the same page.How to Extract the Facts with a Web Design Client Questionnaire
This questionnaire from Freelance Switch is meant to send out to prospective clients to get a good idea of what they’re looking for from a website. It can save you valuable time and allow you to create more accurate proposals.

Design checklist: What clients should provide their designer
A checklist of things that clients should provide their designer at the outset. To follow this list will ensure the client and designer are dealing professionally as well as creating an efficient workflow.Comprehensive Web Design Checklist
This is another client-focused questionnaire. It’s aimed at getting clients to really think about what they need and want from a website.How I Approach Logo Design – A Checklist
Learn how to figure out what the client wants to have in a new logo, what his objectives are and where the logo will be used. Also check 4 Critical Logo Design Details You May Be Forgetting About.

Client Questionnaire for Web Developers
This questionnaire is very short and basic but covers the important points: audience, content, and communication.Step-By-Step Website Development – Check List
To help you make your plan, here is a simplified checklist for the development and design of a website ($ indicates potential additional fees that may be incurred).Project Planning Website Checklist
This website check list is a high-level check list of activities to include in your project plan. A successful web development requires attention to several strands of activity, an in particular the organization of information and changes in origanization and business processes.2. Pre-Launch ChecklistsThis checklist deals less with the planning and initial stages of website design and focus on the things you need to make sure are complete prior to launching a new site. Every designer should have a pre-launch checklist to make sure they’ve completed everything on a site that they need to.The Ultimate Website Launch Checklist
This is a comprehensive checklist of things to check pre-launch that includes things like content, style, validation, seo, and security points. Created by Dan Zambonini. The pdf-version is available as well and so is the French translation. The checklist is a very useful reference that may help you in your daily projects and will help you to prevent errors and mistake once the site is released.

Blogger’s Checklist Before Hitting The Publish Button
How many times have we hit publish on a blog and then realized we forgot to do something crucial, whether it is changing post slugs or a crucial spell check. Here is a quick checklist of what you should do before you hit publish.3. General Web Design ChecklistsThe checklists in this category are general-purpose; they cover a wide variety of web design areas. This is a good place to start if you’re not sure what a checklist should include or what you need to remember when designing sites. But don’t mistake these for beginners’ resources; most of them are quite comprehensive.Web Standards Checklist
This checklists covers pretty much every aspect of building a standards-compliant website, from accessibility to basic usability to site management. It’s very complete and well-organized.

Typographic Rules Checklist (PDF)
Another useful typographic checklist that contains not only some general typographic rules, heuristics and guidelines, but also reminders for typography in your projects.Typography Checklist (PDF)
Compiled by Jason DewinetzIf, this list contains some useful typographic checks that you may want to consider for before launching your next project or printing your next brochure or book.

Essential Navigation Checklist for Web Design
These checklists pull together best practice in the disciplines of information design, usability and accessibility, into an easy to apply format. If you are already familiar with those topics, the checklists serve as a handy reminder that is easy to refer to and apply when planning navigation.Checklist for usable forms
This checklist is for HTML forms along with links to a few articles that are very helpful. Check also Brian Crescimanno’s article Sensible Forms: A Form Usability Checklist.GUI Screen Design Checklist
This checklist covers various common problems, issues and errors that appear frequently in graphical user interfaces. Also check the legendary GUI Testing Checklist.

Web Accessibility Checklist (also available as printable PDF and in German)
This checklist, compiled by Aaron Cannon, contains over 35 checks that will help you to improve the accessibility of your web-site. Another accessibility checklist.Checklist To Improve Your Site’s Speed and Performance
Users have short attention spans and are generally not willing to wait for a bloated Web site to load. Take advantage of these tips, tools and resources, and you’ll have a much better time capturing visitors’ attention. This article presents over 50 speed optimization tips to consider before launching your web-site.The Ultimate Testing Checklist
Testing plays a critical role in the development of your web site and its long-term maintenance. While smaller web sites—especially those with more limited budgets—may not need to follow the formal testing procedures that are required for large-scale, commercial web sites, every site needs to be thoroughly tested to ensure that it’s error-free, user-friendly, accessible, and standards compliant. This checklist will help you test your site both during development, and after. Download this checklist, along with others covering SEO and content management. Sitepoint also offers 101 Essential Checklists (printable .PDFs, for 29.95$+ per PDF).

50 Questions to Evaluate the Quality of Your Website
This 50 questions long questionnaire might trigger something here and there for some of you or maybe brings some forgotten item from the long to-do list back into your mind.Content Quality Checklist
In my experience, a common misperception of the evaluation of content quality is that its scope is limited to the correction of typos and grammatical errors. To truly consider content quality, we need to examine its quality along several dimensions. Consequently, the content quality checklists that follow cover everything from usefulness to voice to accuracy.CSS Crib Sheet
While not a traditional checklist, this article does offer a pretty complete list of things you need to double-check in your CSS.

Beginner*s Checklist Before Debugging CSS
This article shares common pattern of mistakes that designers tend to make in practice. Although the following examples may be stating the obvious, it seems most beginners make these mistakes quite frequently.Ruby On Rails Code Quality Checklist
Ruby and Ruby on Rails is often considered to be one of the most difficult language/framework combinations to truly master. You may want to give this checklist to your coding teams so they can sign off on for each of their projects. Also check Launching Ruby on Rails projects, a checklist.Checklist for Securing PHP Configuration
The Apache/PHP/MySQL stack is immensely popular for web application development. Its components are powerful, versatile and Free. Unfortunately however, PHP comes with a default configuration that is not suitable for production mode, and may cause developers to use insecure techniques during the development phase. Inside is a check list of settings that are intended to harden the default PHP installation.4. Usability ChecklistsUsability is the single most important part of web design. If the sites you design aren’t user-friendly, if they don’t work as expected, and if they confuse visitors, there’s really no point in even designing them—they won’t get used. The checklists below can help ensure your sites are usable by the vast majority of visitors.Web Design Best Practices Checklist
This Web Design Best Practices Checklist from terrymorris.net covers a wide variety of usability points, including page layout, browser compatibility, color and graphics use, and multimedia content. It’s very thorough, with more than 60 points to check.The Ultimate Webdesign Usability Checklist
This checklist from NotUsable offers up more than 85 points to check covering everything from images to navigation to content to forms. It’s one of the longer usability checklists out there and is incredibly complete.

Quick Usability Checklist
This 7-point checklist from Ux Booth covers some of the most important elements of site usability.

The Blog Usability Checklist
19 point checklist that should be useful to any blogger looking for a practical way to evaluate (and improve) the usability of their blog. Many of the principles here will apply to websites, as well.25-Point Website Usability Checklist
The 25-Point Website Usability Checklist offered by UserEffect covers all the basic areas in which to check your site, including accessibility, identity, navigation, and content. It’s shorter than many other checklists, but it still covers all the important items. A printable .pdf-version is available as well.

Everyday Usability—14-Point Checklist for Success
This checklist offers up fourteen points for making your website more usable and more effective. It covers everything from user testing ideas to link checking.Usability.Edu: 25 Incredibly Useful Usability Cheat Sheets & Checklists
A truly useful collection of usability cheat sheets and checklists for forms, blogs and more, all listed in alphabetical order. Useful!The Usability Toolkit
The Usability Toolkit is a collection of forms, checklists and other useful documents for conducting usability tests and user interviews.Key questions to ask your usability testing supplier (PDF)
This document gives you some of the key questions you should ask your usability supplier and explains what to listen for in their answers. You can use it as a checklist during invitations to tender, when interviewing usability providers or when reviewing proposal documents.Dr. Web: The Ultimate Usability Checklist (in German)
An extensive German usability-checklist writte by Stefan Nitzsche.5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ChecklistsCommon Sense SEO Checklist
Chris Coyier’s list of pretty straightforward things to consider when publishing SEO-optimized content on your website.

The Ultimate SEO Checklist
Optimizing your web site for search engines should be an integral part of your web site project, from the very beginning to the very end. Shirley Kaiser’s checklist that can be used as a guide to optimize your web site for search engines.The Beginner’s Checklist For Small Business SEO
Consider some essential SEO checks that are important for local small business sites. The following is a checklist of all the tasks that may be necessary for you to generate great results. See also The Beginner’s Checklist for Learning SEO and The Web Developer’s SEO Cheat Sheet.

SEO Checklist
There are “over 200 SEO factors” that Google uses to rank pages in the Google search results (SERPs). What are the search engine optimization rules? Here is the speculation – educated guesses by SEO webmasters on top webmaster forums. Should you wish to achieve a high ranking, the various confirmed and suspected Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Rules are listed below.6. Marketing ChecklistsViral Marketing Campaign Checklist
Once you*ve decided you*d like to create a viral marketing campaign, its easy to become too focused on the details, and miss the forest for the trees, but a good campaign is the integration of a lot of parts. Here*s a quick checklist to make sure you haven*t missed anything.

The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!
Here’s an extensive checklist for verifying you’re doing everything you can to market your website from Search Engine Guide. More information is linked from the headline of each category on the list.

Improving Conversion Rates Checklist
If your Web site gets great traffic but no sales or sign-ups to back it up, it’s time to take a good, hard look at it. Chances are, your site is scaring off customers. Follow these tips to make your Web site more friendly to customers and encourage better conversion rates.

Landing Page Checklist
The landing page checklist below is unique in its scope and detail. It is designed to help you assess what you have already done and what is left to do on any given landing page.Checklists for starting your first business
If you don’t have a business of your own, or are new to starting businesses, you’re probably at a loss for some of the details of what you need to do. So let’s work them out, keeping everything as simple as possible.7. WordPress ChecklistsWordPress: The Complete Post-Install Checklist
Depending on how you’ve installed WordPress (manually or by a “one-click-install” that many hosting providers offer) – one of the very last installation steps is to choose a blog name and provide an email address. That’s where this checklist begins. More checkpoints.

WordPress: Blog Maintenance Checklist
If you use WordPress to run your website, at the minimum, you need to regularly check updates on such things as your theme and the plugins you are using. This WordPress-powered blog maintenance checklist is a reminder of tasks that you may need to do as well as tracker of such things as version numbers of plugins and themes.

WordPress: Theme Development Checklist
A list of essential checks that you should consider before releasing a theme or launching your Wordpress-powered blog. Another checklist and yet another one (incl. a printable PDF-version).

Moving and Upgrading Your WordPress Weblog: A 20-Point Checklist
Now, there are many types of “moves” that can be performed for a weblog. This one not only involves changing hosts but also upgrading the blog platform version. And it all has to be done at the same time. It turns out that it’s not a problem-free switch. So what about a “brute force” process for moving and upgrading your weblog? On the off chance that it’ll help someone, here it is. Check also the WordPress Upgrade Preparation Checklist.8. Ultimate Web Design Checklists149 Mortal Sins That Will Send Your Site to Web Design Hell
This checklist from Web Pages That Suck is one of the most complete checklists out there. It primarily focuses on front-end design.

The Official ‘Successful Website Checklist Challenge’
This checklist breaks down important points over six different categories: Planning, Design/Layout, Usability/Accessibility, Content, Website Optimization/Standards, and Search Engine Optimization/Marketing.

PC Limited’s Web Design Check List
This is a very comprehensive checklist that includes ten steps for planning your site designs. Steps include sizing up your competition and choosing a domain name, among others.A Solid Web Design Checklist
This checklist includes both pre- and post-launch points to verify in a variety of categories, including typography and layout, accessibility, and consistency.A Website Design & Development Project Checklist
This checklist is aimed at both designers and their clients, and offers some great starting points for creating an effective working relationship.

Test Your Website: A 57-Point Checklist for Maximum Usability
In addition to offering 57 points to check your site’s usability, this article also offers more resources for each of those points. A very valuable resource for creating more usable websites.About the authorCameron Chapman is a professional Web and graphic designer with over 6 years of experience. She also writes for a number of blogs, including her own, Cameron Chapman On Writing.© Cameron Chapman for Smashing Magazine, 2009. |
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| Tags: business site, graphic design, Logo design, seo, tips, web design, Web development, wordpress | Category: Web design | Leave a comment