How do you create a website? There are three popular approaches.

The first is to hire it out. Whether you hire your teen aged nephew or an expensive SEO company to create your website, you want to direct the designer to consider the following:

1. Keyword optimization. You want people to be able to find your website with the kind of terms they type into Google or Yahoo. Optimization has both on-site and off-site components. You need to mention the keywords on your page and in your meta tags. You also want to have a linking strategy. If the site designer you are consulting isn\’t able to explain why these things are important, check out someone else.

2. Selling ability. Unless your website is purely personal, you want to make money off of it. You want to be able to sell your consulting services, your personalized baby bibs, or your affiliate program. This means that it has to have the purpose of selling at its core. Fancy graphics, frilly type, and other things graphic designers pride themselves on often distract from the selling process.

3. Ability to remain in contact with your clients. You want to be able to collect the names of the people who visit your site. This way, you can get in contact with them later. People don\’t usually make a buying decision on their first visit. And, when they\’re ready to buy, they probably won\’t remember your web address. So, you need a way to keep in contact. Usually this means developing a regular newsletter or other autoresponder. Make sure your website designer builds this in.

The second method to create a website is to do it yourself. If a 15 year old can do it, why can\’t you. Well, you can. But, creating a professional website for business purposes is complicated.

First, you\’ll have to register a domain name. Take care when choosing a name so that it is memorable for the people who come but also gives the search engine spiders (computer programs who index your site) an idea about what your site is all about. Then, you will need to find a hosting company. Usually, when you buy your website, you\’ll be offered web hosting for an additional fee with the same company. This is the most convenient method, but not always the cheapest or best one.

Next, you will have to develop the “look and feel” of your site. You can do this by downloading a template if you don\’t want to create a site from scratch. There are plenty of free templates on the web or you can pay for a unique template.

Then, you will need to go about creating content. You\’ll want articles on your site that cover the fundamentals of your business as well as rank for highly searched keywords. This can be a challenge, but, as you know your business better than anyone, you are the best person to write these articles.

Next, you will want to create a sitemap and submit it to the search engines. This will let Google and the other engines know that you are in existence and they should come visit your site. This is one way you get in the search engines.

You will also want to submit to directories. Additionally, you will want to generate back links through reciprocal link exchanges.

Finally, you will want to put a contact system in place so that you can be in touch with people for the reasons listed above.

If all this sounds overwhelming, that may be the reason that so many companies don\’t take full advantage of their website.

However, there are “do it yourself” packages that allow you to create your website yourself with all of the features included. Additionally, these packages provide extensive support in the form of tutorials and forums.

When people ask me “how do you create a website?” I tell them that the package approach is best because you are able to maintain control over the content, you don\’t have to pay someone to make additions or changes, and, most importantly, you begin to understand what works in internet marketing and why.

Stacy Fox has developed a successful local small business website for her husband, a divorce attorney. She\’d like to share with you how she did it on her Small Business Website Marketing blog

Here it is nearing the end of 2007 and I still come across a lot of women trying to avoid strength training. In my opinion, strength training has got to be the most important facet of fitness for women to master. That\’s right, the benefits of a good strength training program will outweigh diet, energy system work (cardio) and even flexibility training. Not to say that those all shouldn\’t be looked at; they should. However, a good strength-training program will at least touch on the benefits of all of those areas as well.

I\’m going to give you five solid reasons to look into adding strength training to your regimen. I can think of a bunch more than five, but here are some good starters.

1. You\’ll gain muscle and lose fat. Ok, don\’t give me any of that crap about getting “too bulky” or “manly”. You are not a man. You don\’t have the testosterone to gain that muscle. Those women that you see in magazines that are huge and muscular? They work very, very hard to reach that very specific goal. Sometimes they have more testosterone than your average man through chemical means. Regardless, unless that\’s your goal and you put some no joke effort into it, it\’s not going to happen.

With a good strength-training program you\’ll definitely gain some muscle, which is a good thing. Your clothes will fit better. You\’ll be firmer. You\’ll burn fat at an accelerated rate. What?

Yep, with elevated muscle mass comes an elevated resting metabolic rate. That muscle is an active tissue and requires energy to perform its functions. That energy has to come from somewhere, and it\’s pretty much either going to be your diet or your stored fat.

2. Tissue remodeling and nutrient partitioning are both promoted more through weight training than cardiovascular exercise. The body responds best to harder stimulus rather than weaker. Which do you think is going to cause more muscular damage (a good thing), a hard full-body weight training session or an hour walk? The weight session, without question. In addition to stimulating muscle growth, the other result of weight training we\’re looking for is the muscular micro tears resulting from it. These micro tears take a lot of energy to repair. That energy is going to come from your diet and stored body fat.

The nutrient partitioning is an important part of the equation as well. Once you eat food, the process is not done. The question is where does that food energy go? It can go towards bodily function (good), muscular energy and repair (good), muscle glycogen (good), and fat storage (probably not good). Quality strength training promotes the muscular repair as described above as well as depletes your muscles\’ energy stores (glycogen). This will help push your food energy to be directed to these areas, contributing to your health and fat loss.

3. Strength training will make you stronger, more flexible, and more confident. I hate to see a relatively healthy woman looking like she\’s struggling with a grocery bag or having a hard time getting a light weight box from a shelf. Is that how you want to live your life? I didn\’t think so. I\’m not asking you to be able to throw bags of concrete all day (although it\’s cool as heck if you can). What I\’m looking for is the strength to survive everyday life. Weight training will give you the strength and confidence to do just that.

Make him open that jar of pickles or take out the trash because you want him to, not because you can\’t do it yourself.

4. There have been more studies now than you can shake a broken chicken bone at indicating that strength training helps prevent and treat bone mineral loss. This may not seem like an issue when you\’re 20, but it\’s never too early for women to start preventing osteoporosis. The risk of brittle bones is a very real one and strength training will help prevent it by stressing the bone. This stress causes the body to promote bone growth and this stronger, thicker bone will be far more resistant to fracture.

One of the big risks associated with osteoporosis is falling. In addition to the bone being weaker as women age they tend to lose coordination, strength, and balance. This makes falling more likely and with weakened bone it\’s a real danger. Strength training helps keep osteoporosis at bay through stronger bones but also aids in coordination, strength, and balance. You\’ll not only have a longer life, but a fuller, more enjoyable life doing whatever you want with confidence.

5. Strength training can promote an overall better sense of well-being. A good strength-training program has been shown to show some similar anti-depressant qualities to current medications. This alone makes adding some weight training to your program worth thinking about.

Also, regular strength training has been shown to help regulate sleep patterns. Individuals who have a hard time sleeping generally adjust their sleeping patterns positively when adding quality weight training to their daily life.

I could go on and on about the benefits of strength training but that should be enough to get you thinking about it. I know a lot of women are intimidated by the grunting and flexing part of the gym, but all strength training isn\’t that way. Find an area where you feel comfortable to begin and get to it. As you progress you\’ll feel more and more confident and soon enough you\’ll wonder what all the fuss was about!

Looking for more information on a variety of cutting edge health and fitness topics with a slice of entertainment? Check out http://www.gotstrengthblog.com

Want inside info on developing elite fitness? Go to http://www.wilkinspower.com and subscribe to the newsletter!

Isaac Wilkins, M.Ed, CSCS, NSCA-CPT
Training athletes and driven individuals in Charleston, SC and beyond. Get strong, get fast, become the new you.

It\’s Suffolk\’s county town and steeped in old English history, but is there really much more to Ipswich than meets the eye?

WANDER along the high street of any UK town these days, and you\’re in danger of feeling like you\’re taking an uninterrupted de ja vu-style tour of a regurgitated retail existence.
You\’ll see the same shopfronts screaming back at you no matter how far you\’ve removed yourself from your normal stomping ground.

But, cast your eye a few feet upward, and that\’s where a town like Ipswich leaps into a class of its own.

Unlike many of its other modernised town centre siblings, Suffolk\’s county town still proudly boasts many ancient and attractive buildings.

She\’s enjoying a major regeneration at the moment, with the waterfront and the town itself bringing modern homes, eateries and the like, but she still holds on to her roots.
Perhaps her proud associations with the likes of Cardinal Wolsey - no less - are a huge part of that historic pride.

It was Thomas Wolsey, the son of an Ipswich butcher, who was born in the town in 1471, and went on to become the Cardinal and Lord Chancellor to Henry VIII.

Still in the town today as a symbol of his affection for his birthplace, lies the creation known commonly as Wolsey\’s Gateway.

Barely an hour\’s train journey from the heart of London, Ipswich is only now being viewed by city-dwellers as a very “acceptable” and accommodating bolthole.

Perhaps that fact alone explains an awful lot about the town\’s most recent development plans and long-term investment ideas.

Along with waterfront apartments and loft-style living in converted factories, more retail, entertainment and business opportunities have come to light in recent years.
Chain cafes now find their place among independent boutiques, salons and prestigious jewellers.

The town\’s port is still a major note of significance in British industry - and when combined with Harwich and Felixstowe, is second in Europe only to Rotterdam by scale.
She also boasts some 13 Medieval churches to her name - possibly more than any other town in Britain.

Her reputation is highly likely to be enhanced even more in the coming months and years, as a new university comes to the town and yet more people realise one of the jewels in the East Anglian crown.

10 things you might not know about Ipswich:

Ipswich was granted its first Charter in 1200.

Ipswich\’s Ancient House dates back to the 15th century and is rumoured to have been the hiding place of Charles II after his defeat in the Battle of Worcester in 1651.

The Cornhill has been the centre of town life since medieval times. It was here in about 1555 that the Ipswich Martyrs were burnt at the stake for their Protestant beliefs.

The Grandma statue on the corner of Princes Street and Queen Street commemorates the famous cartoonist Carl Giles, and is designed to be looking up at the office where Giles worked for many years.

George II, King Louis XVIII of France and Lord Nelson have all stayed at the Great White Horse Hotel - as has Charles Dickens.

The Town Hall was built in 1868. Above the entrance porch are statues representing Commerce, Justice, Law and Learning, and Agriculture.
Christchurch Mansion was the site of the Augustinian Priory of the Holy Trinity founded in the twelfth century. The Round Pond and Wilderness Pond are fed by natural springs and supplied the monks with carp, tench, roach and gudgeon.In 1536, during Henry VIII\’s reign, the Priory was suppressed and it\’s estates seized by the Crown. Paul Withypoll, a successful London merchant, bought the site in 1545 and in 1548 his son Edmund began to build a house on the ruins of the Priory.

Accommodation in and around Ipswich

Eating out in Ipswich

Suffolk Tourist Guide is the leading Guide to Suffolk\’s Attractions, Axccommodation, Restaurants and Shops.