So I was reading TwiTip.com (one of Darren Rowse’s Blogs) and he was reviewing a site called TweetBeep.com. Which If I could explain it, I would say it’s like Google Alerts for Twitter.

I started a new blog to test adsense called ArrestedDevelopmentBlog.com which is a blog about the show Arrested Development and the movie updates. In order to start gaining traffic and readers to this site I decided to sign up for TweetBeep and get emails sent to me whenever someone mentions “Arrested Development” or “Bluth” in a tweet. About every other day I get about 20+ twitterers that post tweets about these subjects. So I follow every one of them and now I can give updates about Arrested Development and share quotes with those followers.

It seems to be working out well so far, the site has only been up for about 4 days now and I’m already getting retweets and some traffic from Twitter. So my advice is, if you have a niche and use twitter, use TweetBeep to find follwers faster!

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Here are a few bullet points on what you should do before you start building a website. Before I start building I like to draw the entire design on a piece of paper and build it from there. That way you can you can save time instead of editing in the computer. Here is a simple checklist I follow when building a website.

Layout

-Consistent navigation bar and main logo.

-Page footer that includes copyright information and a contact email address.

-Remember that most people use an 800 x 600 resolution so you should design your pages to be no less than 750 pixels wide.

-Make sure the text on the page is easy to read. If you use a black background it is best to use white text so that people can read it.

-Grab attention with the homepage. Put as much relevant information on the main page as you can

-Check Browser Compatibility

Navigation

-If you are using buttons as your text, add links to the bottom of your page. Some people use text browsers and search bots only look at text not pictures.

-Make sure the homepage is under 50 kb for fast loading

-Navigation should be big and simple and easy to find

-Check Links to ensure they are not broken

Search Engine Optimization

-Make sure your meta tags are defined (title, keywords, description)

-Make sure all your alt tags are filled in

-Make sure there are plenty of links and they are not broken

-Preview you pages in a text browsers

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I have been slowly compiling this list for 3 days. These are all tips that I used to build my websites and even this one.

1. Redirect 404 Page
2. Use Header Tags <h1>, <h2>, <h3>
3. Make your links the color blue, so that visitors know that it’s a link
4. Use CSS, for site wide customization and website speed
5. Use short meta data. Every page has to have a title, about 5 Keywords and a brief description
6. Use Google Analytics to track visitors on your website. It’s free.
7. Start a blog using wordpress (it’s the most SEO-Friendly)
8. Use a robot.txt to blog google from going into useless folders on your server.
9. Create an xml sitemap and submit it to Google’s Webmaster Tools.
10. Use large text.
11. Create great content. Content is King!
12. Twitter!!!!
13. Sign up for Stumble Upon
14. Sign Up for Delcious
15. Use flash animation sparingly. Google doesn’t read flash…yet.
16.Choose an easy to spell domain name
17. Get a .com screen name. All the others in my opiniion are worthless.
18. Be consistent in your design across all your pages.
19. Use alt tags on all your images.
20. Check your spelling
21. Create an about us page
22. make sure your webpage works on every browser.
23. Do not play music on your site. If you do make sure it’s the users choice to play it
24. Stay away from intro pages.
25. Add Search function to your website
26. Animated Gifs are tacky, don’t use them
27. Intralink within your website. If there is relevant content related to a page, link it
28. Less images = Faster load times
29. make sure every page has a different page title, keywords and description to match the content
30. Have someone else proofread your work
31. Do not submit to crappy directories that mean nothing
32. Review your website every week and make changes

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Twitterrific

by The Iconfactory
Twitterrific is a fun application that lets you both read and publish posts or “tweets” to the Twitter community website. Easy to use with a ton of features. It has a dark tone to it, where as Twitter itself is very bright. They also make desktop applications. Cool Feature: Send photos right from your phone

Twinkle

by Tapulous Inc.
Discover, connect, and send messages to people nearby. Upload photos and update your Twitter account. Contact old friends and make new ones, all with Twinkle, the location-aware network for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

TwitterFon

by Kazuho Okui
A simple, fast Twitter client for your iPhone.focused on 80% of your task of Twitter such as view friends/replies/messages timeline and send/reply a tweet.

Twittelator

by Big Stone Phone and Stone Design Corp.
Twittelator is yet another Twitter client for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The user interface of this application isn’t as pretty as say, Twitterrific. . .but it does have more functionality.

Twittervision

by PopVox LLC.
Twittervision, a Twitter visualization website built with the Twitter API, using location data from Twittermap (a Twitter/Google Maps Mashup).

Not Free

Tweetsville

by Ed Voas and Tapulous Inc.
$3.99
Timelines let you keep track of what’s going on. Shows up to 200 tweets, Rich text display. *bold* will display as bold, etc., Clickable inline links and @names, Two looks: Balloon and Simple, Displays border for tweets in which you are referenced in Balloon mode and Tap a tweet to view details, send replies, and mark as a favorite.

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Looking around for good quality content can be tough, especially fonts. I think that paying for fonts is stupid. All fonts should be free, I should start a movement. Like free health care for all and free fonts for all. Anyway, I have been to so many different sites but I would like to recommend and provide you a link to one in particular. DaFont.com. It’s 100% free and works for both Mac and PC. And the best part about this site is, the fonts are actually really good. See for yourself.

www.dafont.com

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