Build your own website

Beginner's guide to webmaster tools

2011-11-21T05:04:00.000-08:00

If you are in the process of creating a website or have just discovered the Google Webmaster Tools then it would be best if you know to set it up and to be able to use it effectively

Webmaster tools are not only offered by Google but are also available from other major search engines, such as the Yahoo! 'Site Explorer' and Microsoft's 'Bing Webmaster Tools'. As commented by Google:

"Google's Webmaster Tools help webmasters better control how Google interacts with their websites and get useful information from Google about their site."

Allowing any webmaster to identify any current issues or problems that may exist with site performance, including how the site itself performs within Google's search engine results pages (SERPs). Not forgetting to help improve the crawling and indexing of your site by using the webmaster tools.

To begin it is required that you sign up for the webmaster tools and then add your website, if you already have an existing Google account you can access all of these tools already. It will then be required to verify that you own the site and the easiest way to achieve this can be to upload a html file to your server or to link your Google Analytic s account with your webmaster tools.

Once logged in you can add a website URL to the webmaster tools by clicking on the 'Add a Site' button from the Home page. Enter your website address and then click 'Continue'. Once selected you will be asked to choose a verification method. Using the previously mentioned methods you can upload a HTML file to the server by downloading the 'HTML Verification File' as instructed and place it into the root file of your server. Or to simply select the option to 'Link your Google Analytic s Account'.

If you already have a Google Analytic s account and already have imported the data through to the Google webmaster tools this can help create a much richer data pool. If not simply select the 'Manage' option that is along from the website previously uploaded and then choose 'Google Analytic Profile' this will then allow you to choose the correct Google Analytic account that you want to import the data from.

If you have managed all of the above and all the data fields have began to populate this will be an essential tool that will help any webmaster in the beginning to help master the search engine optimisation techniques that will now be important to focus on now that you are properly being indexed by Google.

The information at your disposal will be very valuable to any webmaster in trying to calculate how their website is currently performing within the SERP's. This can be further enhanced by submitting a site map. This will help Google determine what pages exist within your website so each page can be indexed, if this is not included then not all pages may be displayed therefore affecting your search traffic. This can be carried out by submitting a site-map that is in a XML format not exceeding 10megs.

The initial information at your disposal will be the top search queries that turned your site as one of it's results, while showing your Google search rank for each of those searches. Not forgetting that it also displays all links to your website, keywords, internal links, crawl errors, site performance and much more. It should be very straightforward once set up, with much of the information be familiar to Google Analytics.

Some popular ideas to make money online

2011-11-21T04:58:00.000-08:00

I am continually being asked about all the different possible ways to make money online. I do extensive training on the setting up of websites for small home businesses. This advice and training very often is also in demand with other bigger businesses to get their websites set up properly online.

There are so many website designers that are extremely skilled in the art of making a website look brilliant and even function very well, and then they fall down on the most basic of Search engine optimization, or on the simplest of keyword research terms that are so necessary to getting a website noticed online. It horrifies me to see a small business owner sitting with a website that he has paid massive amounts of money to have set up and the business is simply not happening as it should.

Really brilliant HTML coding and other details that are put onto big websites are often not the fault of the website designer. The client is king is so often heard and is generally true. As a service supplier it is not our place to tell the client that he is a fool and is not going to get the best result out of his website for whatever reason. Most of the time we just end up agreeing with the client and find it easier to just do what they say they want, and that is not always the best option, hence this report.

About me

My Name is Rob Anderson.

I am an internet marketer, a designer, a father and husband – not necessarily in that order. I have been self employed for 32 years and bring some of my experience to you here in this report. I do development of websites for myself, do websites for clients and I rent out websites to businesses.

While I am passionate about helping people - spending a lot of time explaining the basics to everybody every time seems to be a colossal waste of that time, so this report is one of a few that I am doing or have done to short cut the initial basic understanding or explanations.

What I am offering you

If I could give all prospective website owners a brief overview as to what all the basic options are in relation to the different ways that they could optimize their websites, then I would have done everyone a big favor.

The bigger the corporation - the more opportunities that that sized business has to portray their website and hence their image in a multitude of different ways. Big business has the chance to do brand building, run competition websites or just do pure information websites.

This freedom is not always the choice or even an option for a small business, and the smaller the business is the tighter the targeting has to become. This exact focusing is one of the first items that are thrown out of the discussion meetings when designing a website.

The most important factor in setting out the initial design parameters of your business website is to be very sure as to what you really need the website to do, and then to stick to that plan from every aspect. Be totally clinical with all the different facets of the websites layout allowing that all you need it to do is keep to that main structure.

You would still have a lot of flexibility in the style and look of the site with all the different pages, posts and things like color and style being very fluid.

Best of luck with the designing

If you plan to use paid for advertising to drive business to your website then most of what I am going to tell you here in this report will not be extremely important. Furthermore any detailed search engine optimization would also not really be necessary as you will be sending the visitor traffic directly to your website. Your website will still need to be compliant with Google’s view of how things should be laid out if you are planning to use paid for advertising to get your traffic.

However if you are planning to have your website bring targeted visitor traffic on a continual basis to your website then it is extremely important that you do all the initial planning correctly from the start.

The most important aspect to getting direct and targeted traffic to your website is to do the correct keyword research planning and work from that point.

What I offer you here is another important part of your website planning – that is the knowledge and understanding that you are structuring your website correctly from day one. Here below is a list of some of the more popular ways to set out the structure of your website to encourage your profits and visitors to be clear, targeted and all happy.

Pure Blogging - Website type One

Blogging has become a bit of a generalization recently as so many webmasters are using the standard website platform – wordpress as the basic structure for their normal website layouts. I am a big fan of using this system to build a variety of different website designs.

This report is not going to go into too much detail about that side of the website / blogging aspect

What I want to help you grasp here is the original idea of blogging and how you can turn a daily web log into a website business and earn a living from it. The original idea of hosting a personal diary of stories and daily posts or log entries is where the true form of blogging originated. I admit that I do love the idea of having the entire world seeing my point of view on a specific subject and then allowing open and frank debate on that topic of the day.

It would not matter much as to what the topic of discussion is as I am the sort of person that enjoys sitting around a fire or a table with coffee dissecting a subject and analyzing it with good friends.

Now the concept of this form of pure blogging is just that, and if you choose your style correctly from the beginning you could find yourself in a position where your personal style and daily input has turned into an international business.

What I definitely need to point out to you here is a very important fact about blogging, and that is that there are millions upon millions of blogs out there on the internet. You will find yourself in competition with literally a flood of similar styled bloggers as competitors that you might feel that the idea is not worth the effort.

In my personal opinion I feel that you not only stand a good chance of getting your head above the crowed and noticed, but could get your blog into a position of high visibility if you plan correctly and stick to that plan like a possessed person.

Here is a list of some of the things that you will need to do to be a super blogger.

· Choose your style of blogging carefully as you will need to stick to that format for a very long time. If you start to change your style on a regular basis you could lose a lot of your regular readers. What I mean here about style is the mood or “flavor’ of your blog. You need to set a tone like being funny, sarcastic, frivolous, serious, and friendly chatty or any other of a long list of styles that you have to choose from. All I ask is that you give it a lot of thought especially if you are going to target a specific niche like pregnancy. Funny stories about pregnancy are ok, but in a niche like health it might not be too advisable to be constantly cracking jokes about people’s health.

· Plan the look of your blog carefully as it needs to be open and easily legible. Nothing stops people from ever coming back as quickly as a confusing or cluttered blog. I suggest that you keep the look as simple as possible and do not even have a header. You could have pictures in your posts, as this is a good thing, but too many adverts and stuff is confusing, and you will lose readers.

· Your blogs title has to be planned from a keyword point of view so carefully that I do in fact suggest that you take a lot of time thinking about the name of your blog (and the domain name naturally as they are almost the same thing)

· Equally you need to give a lot of thought as to which specific niche you want your blog to be involved in. The most common types of blogs normally are about topics like celebrities or sports and this is not really a bad thing but you need to consider this carefully. It might pay you to consider a more stable niche or platform to set up your soap box in and you could be more successful there. Your choice. I do suggest that you go and look at the hot trends aspect for ideas, and perhaps start there.

· Make the RSS aspect of your blog very prominent on your blog, and equally the social bookmarking aspect is absolutely vital to the viral aspect of your blogging success. Be nice to all the bookmarking websites as they will be you make or break department.

· Post often and never put up a post without making sure that it is properly thought out. You could chase away 50% of your regular readers simply by posting a stupid post or one in bad taste. I suggest that you post twice a day as this will not only keep your content fresh, but will have the search engine spiders expecting your blog to be busy and always fresh.

· Do not give up as this form of internet business is built one word at a time, and eventually you will have a solid base of visitors and advertisers and a great business.

· You have to continually post your articles onto the great article directories, and then keep bookmarking those posts and articles. Your regular readers will do further bookmarking for you if your content is fresh and popular.

Go and start right now if you think that you are writing orientated.

Niche blogging – Website type two

Pure blogging was the subject of my previous website type and this time I am going to cover niche blogging. Niche blogging differs from an ordinary niche website as a normal niche website is really a mini site aimed at a particular niche, while niche blogging is constantly updated and kept fresh.

The biggest difference between pure blogging and niche blogging is the frequency of the posts and the addition of new pages. When you are working to keep a niche blog fresh it is more the fact that you always want the most current affiliate product or CPA offers to be the most prominent on your blog at any given time.

Generally any post or page written will be very heavily keyword orientated as to bring you targeted visitors for that exact product. Whenever you are promoting a new affiliate product you would know which way to market to that exact segment of your niche and do all your posts and promotions accordingly. You would have things like press releases working with carefully timed article releases to gain the maximum amount of exposure for a launch or new product.

Equally if you are producing your own reports for sale or writing e books for your niche you would still use the same tactics to get your visitors pouring onto your blog or website.

This form of blogging still needs a blog format like wordpress as you would be doing changes to your website or blog on a regular basis. These changes would differ slightly depending on your promoted product be it CPA, affiliate products or your own products. Either way you would have a structured plan in the exposure of the information to your visitors and be using a variety of different marketing tactics to drive your business.

Naturally this form of blogging is very orientated to a constant and active form of internet marketing and you would need to stay current in all the different tactics available to you in the internet world. You would be using all the resources of the system with things like forum marketing, social web 2.0 tactics and naturally using an email auto responder list system. This auto responder system is vital to a lot of the internet marketing methods out there but in some cases it becomes the lifeblood of your blogging system.

What I want to remind you about here is that this is not a mini site where you set up a carefully planned website to keep a flow of organically driven traffic to, this site is added to and worked on almost daily and generally becomes a large website and popular over time. The niche that you choose to operate in here makes a difference and I suggest that you choose one of the bigger or more popular niches to market to and if you are going to be an active player you would soon build up a large e mail list and find that you are earning very big numbers if you keep the blog pumping with new and exciting stock or content.

Local OFFLINE brick and mortar business – Website type Three

If you have an existing business – a brick and mortar one – offline and want to get the maximum amount of exposure that you can with a website then this article is aimed directly at you. Many existing businesses could have doubled their turnover long ago had they approached this internet business the right way.

Most businesses initially treat their websites as an online business card or some sort of place holder and because they have used this approach they are marketing online incorrectly from the beginning and it can be difficult to repair those initial mistakes.

If you have got a website already I suggest that you do this simple test

1. Write down a list of the ten keyword phrases that you think people would put into the search engines and then test them one by one. Does your business show up in the results? Secondly do the same search test but set the search results to “local search” and see if your website shows up on those results.

2. Then go to the Google keyword tool and enter those keywords into the search box and see which keywords are really being used to find your products. If you set the search results in the Google keyword tool to “exact” then you will see how many people put those exact terms into the Google search box every month.

3. The results of this test should be glaringly obvious to everyone, and if your searches and results do not show your website up in a good result then you need to start from scratch.

If you do not have a website yet then do the test this way

1. As above – you must write down the 10 possible keywords that you would expect people to be entering to find your products. Do the test both ways as shown above.

2. Now where you need to do more research here is on how big your market really is. If you were in the lawn mower repair business you will find that you only have one or two choices of keywords to use. People would be using the most obvious keywords.

3. However if you are in a field that is more broad for example you own a local hardware store you will need to do a lot more research. You will need to divide your keywords up into categories like power tools, building supplies, hand tools and diy as examples. Now each of those could be getting a lot of searches that if you are not active in those keywords will miss that business.

Local domination

If you really want to you could completely tie up the local search results in a market like the hardware shop shown above. Let us say that you have a store called “Andersons hardware and tools”. If you were serious about totally dominating the local internet business then this is what I suggest.

You get the keyword term that get the best searches for those categories in your country. So here locally in South Africa they would be these following terms or terms similar.

Diystore.co.za - powertoolsstore.co.za - building-supplies.co.za – and a few more…

Then you would get the domain name that matches your local store Andersonshardwareandtools.co.za and then take those 5 or 6 domain names and go and register them. You could keep adding a few domains with terms like johannesburghardwaresupplies.co.za and kensingtonhardwareshop.co.za as these would also be put in as a local search by people looking for your services or products.

Now I realize that many of you are saying here that you surely do not need to have 8 or 10 websites to be competitive online and normally I would agree with you, but in some markets like property sales, some stores, hosting, and a few other examples - the more of an online footprint that you have the bigger you catchment area will be especially if like the hardware example has a wide variety of keyword terms. A plastic surgeon would not need to have a lot of domains’ to dominate, two or three at the most would do it, and then naturally the way you maintain the sites will make a huge difference in the placing in the search results.

The way that you now design and market your websites is almost as critical as to having done the initial keyword research properly. I would suggest that you use a popular format like joomla or wordpress to structure you website so that it is easy to maintain by a normal person and won’t need a highly qualified webmaster. You will need to put up a lot of informative content onto your website and keep the content fresh. Keeping the look simple and easy to read and navigate will be another vital aspect and if you keep your facts and pricing honest you will do very well online.

YOUR OWN PRODUCTS – Website type four

It is said that the strongest position to have online is to be the author of your own products. It does not really matter if the products are eBooks and reports or software and other similar digital products; if they are of a high standard then you will have the customers queuing up to buy from you.

If you are planning to have a website based online business that is primarily run to promote your own products then the method of marketing your website is normally very easy. What you cannot do with this sort of website is have too big a variety of products for sale on one website. There is nothing wrong with having hundreds of different eBooks or reports for sale if they are all on the same general topic, in fact that would be the perfect website model to have in this field.

However if you have ten eBooks on dog training and then have ten more eBooks on exercising in water you will need to have two different websites. Even if the topics of your products start to get closer than my example you should still have two separate websites. The nature of the search engines are such that your keyword targeting needs to be so accurate and targeted that you should not be trying to cover a niche with a shotgun approach. Please believe me when I say that laser targeting is the only way to go, especially in the beginning.

If you are a large corporate business and you feel that your products or eBooks cannot be confined to a smaller keyword area then please realize that you are going to need to do a very large amount of articles, press releases, viral competitions and other forms of marketing to get the exposure and traffic that you need.

If you plan to market your own eBooks or reports here are some tips to keep you focused on how to keep your website busy.

· Keep your focus tight. I strongly suggest that you pick a very tightly focused topic to write about and only start to expand and deviate from that topic once you have started to get constant visitors and sales of your product.

· Try not to mix eBooks and software, and if you do give one of the two away for free as a bonus to keep the other selling well.

· Please – and I am begging you here – keep your website clean clear and uncluttered. The easier it is to see exactly what is happening on your website the bigger your success will be. I am personally still learning this fact daily as my natural tendency to behave like a designer tries to override logic daily on my personal websites. I will eventually fix my own entire website collection in this regard, but the point is clear – your website will fail or succeed on that split second image that you imprint upon your visitors as they hit your website.

· You must plan and run your email marketing campaign very carefully. The profits that your business will achieve will hinge very highly upon the size of your email list. Whenever you have a new product that you are about to launch and could send an email to a massive list of existing buyers you will have a huge spike in your income from one email launch.

· Use very high quality free products to grow your client base and your email list. People are not fools, and if you treat them as such you will never get any respect and subsequently have no sales. If you are offering new visitors to your site a valuable product for free to join your ezine or email list you will gain instant recognition as an expert in your field.

· Never ever put lousy or badly written products onto your website. Too many website owners start to outsource the production of their future products to the wrong people as soon as they become a success and then wonder why their customer base is shrinking. Set your standards very high from the very first day and then plan extensively on how you can improve all the time.

· Use all the social marketing tools that are available. Article directories, social media platforms, press releases, forums, clubs and peer groups are all going to be the sort of places that will be a large help to your website.

· Run an affiliate program as fast as you can. Run the same affiliate program with the very best affiliate tools and bonuses that you can think up. The power that you can gain from having a few hundred other websites doing the active marketing for your product is beyond the understanding of a new website owner. You should even offer your primary product as a 100% commission product to your strongest affiliates as they could bring in hundreds of new clients to your website daily.

No doubt I could keep giving you important pointers forever but what you need to keep your focus on here is the very basic parts of your plan. All the focus must be on the getting of visitors and then on the offering of a very high quality product.

Quite easily done right?

Training or Teaching Websites – Website Type five

If you have the skills to be a good teacher, trainer or lecturer you are already a very large step in front of almost everyone else. The need for high quality training online is insatiable. While this model of website that I am about to cover for you in this section is not really one that should stand on its own as a website type, I feel that it still needs to have a specific focus and be planned carefully from the beginning.

As I myself am still relatively new online I am part of a few websites and membership sites that are teaching me things every day. These website owners that I have learnt to trust have such a wealth of experience that they really do fit into that joking category where we comment that they have long forgotten stuff that we do not even know yet.

I digress; the training niche online is a very complex and at the same time is simply the very basics of all online development. The internet training websites can be divided into two very distinct types of training facilities, those that teach traditional things that have been around for years and now simply do it online, and those that teach internet based items.

Either way these types of websites are extremely popular as they can be followed in your own time and at your own speed. They are driven very largely by video which is a great medium for teaching and allows a student to rewind and repeat difficult sections that they were struggling with.

Equally the proportion of training products that are followed online and the ones that are downloaded and followed on your own computer offline are probably about the same proportions. If you are a teacher or a trainer then you need to realize that the need for quality products and training online is so great and necessary that you almost have a head start on all the other online products that are out there.

There are a few main ways that training is promoted online and your method of delivery would be best suited to your style of training or you product. The first way would be to divide your product up into 6 to 25 modules and sell or promote it as a continuity course or as a membership website.

The second way is to write up your product as a complete report or product and promote it or sell it as a downloadable product and then to gear your website to promoting and selling that product.

Another way to do training online is to offer the bulk of your training online for free and this will get you a large following and then promote products to those free trainees. Perhaps also by allowing the free trainees to download products but then would have to join an email list where you would then promote up sell products to them from that platform.

So just to recap here this type of online business or website could be delivered in a blog form a membership site form a static PPC website platform and perhaps even a few more methods, but ultimately still does training or teaching.

Err, just too really muddy the waters here but you could also use an online presence to do hard and heavy promotion of an offline school or seminar system, so the training side of online websites can be very varied.

Just Adsense – Website type six

Setting up a website business that is primarily aimed at earning its keep by putting Adsense income streams onto your site are in fact a fairly popular way to earn money online. What you need to know here is that the term Adsense is a term that describes Google’s advertising program. Other search engines do also have a system that allows webmasters to put targeted advertising onto their websites and is also aimed at a constant income stream from those placed articles.

Equally what I need to point out to you here is that the primary aim of a search engine is to deliver the very best quality facts and websites that they can in response to someone’s query. So having said that - you need to note this - if you planned to run a website that is going to rely heavily upon getting paid for running Adsense programs on your website, you need to have very good quality information.

There are a number of factors that are used by the search engines to judge the quality of your website and all of these factors combined are what will place your website highly in the search engine results. To earn a fair amount of money from these types of websites you will need to have a very large volume of visitors appearing at your website all the time.

Your position in the search results is based upon factors like keyword placement, visitor comments, backlinks, topical content, regular and fresh postings, a mix of pictures video and text and a few more very important factors. The bigger your website becomes and the constant additions of fresh content are vital factors in keeping your website visible to the big search engine spiders that crawl your website on a regular basis checking what you are up to all the time.

Sticky is a term that describes how long someone stays on your website when visiting and the longer they stay the better your score becomes in the eyes of the search engines, and then all of that combined will get you well placed in the search results and get your traffic.

Traffic or visitors that are fairly well targeted are a combination that will create the correct environment to get your advertising account fattened and earning you a living.

Finally before I leave I would like to point out a factor that is extremely important and sadly very confusing. The big search engines are constantly on the lookout for websites that are using automated tools that create websites repeatedly as they are aware that these websites are not of a reputable standard. They have very highly qualified people designing programs that look at your website very closely. What they are looking for is simply a breaking of their rules, and what is commonly referred to as black hat really means working around someone else’s rules.

It has been repeatedly implied that black hat has a criminal connotation to it, but it is a constant battle between one or two very large companies rules and thousands upon thousands of webmasters that have to constantly change the way they set up their websites to comply with those ever-changing rules.

Please do yourself a very big favor and go and read all the terms and conditions carefully before you attempt a website along these lines, and remember that you could be removed from their system at anytime and without warning.

C.P.A. or cost per action based website – Website Type Seven

The cost per action method of making money online is perhaps the most popular at the moment and for a very good reason. More and more webmasters and online businesses are using all the different ways to make an income online using CPA.

The big reason that this type of income system has become popular is that it is not covered with confusion as to the rules and regulations. A single advertiser has the ability to set very clear and exact rules per each campaign that they set up for promotion.

A big corporation – or even a few smaller companies have found that the very nature of the exact marketing that is attached to this form of internet marketing is perhaps the very best ever method of marketing their products. Their ad spend now becomes very targeted and is not like the old days where a large and very expensive advert placed in a newspaper or magazine is more of a shotgun approach.

What you do when using this form of marketing using your website is to go about it in three more common methods.

Paying for your traffic

If you design a page layout that is extremely targeted to a very tight prospect and then you do an advertising campaign using any of the big search engines Pay per Click systems you will possibly be very successful. Naturally this method has extremely high capital layouts and requires a very knowledgeable person to do the planning of this website, but the rewards can be the biggest online and perhaps the fastest way to earn your income.

Setting up very Targeted SEO websites

What is done here is the exact targeting of one tiny aspect of a subject or niche. By being so laser targeted you can send very directed visitors to your website that are looking for that exact item that you are promoting. Your sales are normally high per visitor in a situation like this one.

Adding a few per webpage

The idea with this option is that you find a few complimentary CPA offers and then design a website that is compatible with those offers. Sending traffic to a website that has a few more choices to choose from gives you a better chance of converting your visitors to one of those options shown on your webpage.

Affiliate Marketing – Website Type eight

Setting up a website to target just a single or a select niche within an area for affiliate products is in fact a very good idea. By finding a good affiliate product that you know sells very well, and then setting up an extremely targeted website is one of the best ways to make money with a website.

Firstly you need to know that very often only one website might not be enough to earn you a lot of money and creating a few that are either related to each other or are targeting a new topic will possibly be necessary. Having said that, this would depend upon the strength of the initial niche that you have decided to do with this affiliate website, and how you go about doing the marketing.

If the niche that your affiliate product is in is a strong niche then you might never need to have a second website – ever. An example here is the health niche or the dating niches are all strong, but if you choose to get involved in the toy train niche then you might need to be a little more patient about getting very rich from that website. However if you have done your homework correctly from the beginning you will be fully aware of the potential of the specific product that you have chosen to be an affiliate of.

The beauty of setting up a website that targets a single or compact affiliate product is that you can pick one that you have an interest in and possibly even a lot of knowledge about. Naturally the more facts you know about that topic the better off your articles and posts will be in relation to the promoting of that product.

I am a full time affiliate marketer and do different websites with a lot of different products but I admit to loving the just affiliate model that I am describing here, as I get to be immersed in a niche or product for awhile and before I get totally bored with that item I move on to a new website. I do admit to using blogs and other marketing tactics to promote my main affiliate website but that system is exactly what grows your traffic and eventually earns your living.

Before I run away, I thought that I needed to point out to you that you need to remember that being an affiliate or having a website to a specific affiliate product need not mean an e book item. While promoting a great eBook is one of the best ways to do this affiliate website thing, you could just as easily do a website promoting some software or a membership website. Naturally you need not restrict yourself in that way, but this website model is really about promoting a single affiliate product and remaining loyal to that individual product.

Advertising/Yellow Pages - Website Type Nine

Creating a website that attracts advertisers is one of the nicest types of website to own, as once the website has reached maturity you should be getting a constant income that keeps on filling your personal bank account. There are a number of different ways to do this type of website and I will list them below.

What you need to realize that these styles of websites are mostly template driven and therefore you might need to layout some funds getting the initial website set up. Very often you could pay the website developer some money to do the complete setup on your behalf, and this way you would be in business sooner.

Remember too that this website type takes time to grow to its maximum capacity and that you need to do careful research before you get started as to the exact nature of your directory or listing site. If you are only ever going to attract 12 advertisers in the niche that you have chosen to build your website around then you are not very likely to succeed, but if you listed all the plumbers in your city that would be a different situation.

Another thing that I should mention now before you get any further is that you are likely to be doing a lot of offline marketing as the bulk of your new business will be coming from the brick and mortar side of the world. So here again there could be some capital needed to be laid out in the building up of your website. Personally I am busy at this very moment starting up one of the models listed below and I foresee great potential in that market for myself.

Smalls

Small classified advertising websites are very popular and can be very lucrative. What I do suggest to you is to be very careful here in your research as in my personal opinion I feel that you could end up competing with some sites that are so powerful that you might never succeed.

I would suggest that you pick a niche section to run your classified site as this is more likely to generate the required traffic that your website does need. A topic like baby classifieds, health classifieds, new car classifieds, classic cars classifieds or even a sport classified might be the way to go.

Please remember that your URL address becomes very important and that you need to buy the domain in the country that you plan to promote (example .co.za for South Africa) as this is important as to where the search engines send your enquiries.

Bookmark

Bookmark listing websites are really a form of social website and will be covered again in a different section of this report. However it still falls under the umbrella of a listing or yellow pages type of website.

What the point of this style of website is all about is to get you tags or listings up onto the search pages of the biggest search engines thereby getting massive amounts of traffic to your website daily. Generally the income gained from these sorts of sites come from the banner adverts and affiliate products, and then naturally from the Adsense programs. Remember that you are attracting someone to your site that is still in search mode and when they are confronted with targeted lists of Adsense adverts they are very likely to click out and therefore earn you money.

Page per advertiser

This is the style that I am going to do with my new website. While it is still only listing the details of a service or company you allow a lot more detail.

Banners only

Whichever way you choose to feature a banner only website you could attract listings, but would need to keep your layout clear as you could lose focus and end up confusing a visitor. Too many colors and banners can be a bad thing and you would need to have a very basic design to pull this one off.

In all the cases listed above I do also recommend that you add more than just the basics to your website as things like free eBooks offered to get an e mail list, or big competitions would be an added attraction to the visitors to your website.

I have a number of great ways to promote this sort of website offline as this will be vital to the success of your business. Please contact me directly if you are planning to do one of these websites and we can talk.

I do though still encourage you to visit my website that I use to promote the building up of new websites…

Article Directory – Website Type Ten

Debate rages about the need for another article directory, and if you are not familiar with this model of website I suggest that you go and search for same and look at what they offer.

The basic concept behind having an article directory is to have a base where quality articles are kept online at a single website allowing access to this content by all. Both those writers that want their work read and publishers want to find good quality articles to publish will benefit from a good article directory.

The history of article directories has unfortunately had a bit of a muddy patch where thousands of article directories were launched to earn money easily from the advertising programs. The good news is that the great article websites survived this period and still are very popular today.

I am still a firm believer that there is still a massive hole currently in the internet where specialized article directories should be publishing for a specific niche. Naturally you would have to have a moderation policy and would therefore be very busy full time running your niche article website all day. If you chose a particular niche like the pet industry and only published articles that related to the pet industry I am convinced that you will become very popular very fast. The very nature of your targeted business will make you attractive to those niches marketers, publishers and all the guys in between.

There are already directories that cover the how-to industry but I am betting that if you gave it a bit of thought you could come up with a variation of a DIY theme or any similar sideways slide on the original concept of an article directory.

Let us look at an example.

If you did a DIY article directory as an example you could add features that other directories do not have at present that would create interest and give everybody value. Without giving too much thought to the categories that you could add to your article directory I thought to list some ideas below that just pop into my head and see if you think that any of them could be viable if added to your website.

Top hundred pages

If you ran a constant top 100 of dozens of different categories like top articles read, top article submitters, top subject and a whole lot more. The more you think up the more your less prolific writers will have a chance to feature on your top lists and this will encourage them to do more and to keep going.

Full personal page feature

Anyone who joins your directory would have a full page added to your website which would allow them to add products and all sorts of descriptive features to gain them more exposure. If I was able to tell the world that I have 93 websites and that I do x and y and z I would be very pleased with that article directory and would probably support them. Naturally ezine publishers would get a section on their own and you would allow them to add things like a subscribe button that would allow them to capture subscribers from your directory.

It goes almost without saying that you had better have an eagle eye to look out for any funny business, but if you were careful you could survive that side of your business.

A classified section

You could add a classified section to your directory which would give your members a second level of links and allow different ways to market their products.

I could keep going by telling you to add forums, sister niche directories and a bunch of other ways to give your members reasons to use your website and that would gain you massive numbers of members in a very short space of time which should make your site a success.

I believe that if you kept your branding clean and pure, did not allow widening away from your selected niche and used some viral marketing tactics you could be very successful with this website model. Good luck with it.

Social web 2.0 /bookmarking/ but niche driven - Website Type Eleven

The advent of these so called social web 2.0 websites is really a descriptive term for a more modern website where the involvement of the public is on a daily basis.

With this website model I propose that there is a great big hole in the niche side of it all. There are so many bookmarking sites but they all cover the whole internet and are not generally tied to a single niche. The are some in the internet marketing side of things, but I am talking about a smaller more focused website like one that only bookmarks articles or reports written by doctors, or one that does the same but is restricted to resort owners.

This site would NOT be a forum for resort owners but the members would have to own a website that promotes resorts or hotels and then they would be able to bookmark reports or events or even just a new price special on your website. Eventually your website would be very well placed on the SERPS (search engine results pages) and more and more hotel owners would use you to “announce” their new tariffs.

Can you see the benefit of starting up a socially active website that only caters to a specific portion or niche? You could add other features that would be a bonus to your members that would allow them to have a second feature whereby they can do one of those short 140 character type message blasts that would get their new bookmarking noticed even quicker. The big search engine spiders would be regular visitors to this type of website because it would be very active and your detail would be noticed quickly.

If you look through the different types of website models that I have written about you will notice that a lot of them could be intermingled, for example this type that I am writing about here could be changed into a membership type of website. What you would do is have different levels of participation that would be allowed firstly for free and then later for increasing levels of payment. So for example a free member could bookmark as often as they like, but a level one member would gain a personal page with linking allowed. This would keep stepping up to where a level three member would be allowed to have 10 profiles and all the other benefits that go with it, the message broadcasting and pages, forums and the whole package.

I do suggest though that you get the basics of the website planned out correctly from the very beginning as you will find it very difficult to change complete layouts later down the line. People are never happy with change and you could lose members fast if you keep changing the structure of your website. Pay a good website designer to do all the planned aspects into your site before you even think of launching.

I do believe that you could have a winning website here with this model. Have fun.

Webhosting - Website Type Twelve

A webhosting website is one that has proven to be extremely successful over time. The biggest advantage to have a webhosting business is the fact that the payments are residual. You keep you customers for years into the future.

With the bigger hosting companies offering what is referred to as reseller hosting package it has become popular for many thousands of people to startup their own hosting websites. I need to warn you all right now at this point that this is one of the most hotly contested sections of the internet, while everybody that wants to have a website does need hosting, it does not mean that they will ever find your website and sign up with you.

The competition is so fierce and as it becomes more and more contested the bigger established players are simply offering lower prices and even more bonuses to get their client base bigger and to cut you off at the roots. If you do not believe me please go and do a search for the top ten terms and look at the amount of competing pages, there are millions of them and your work load would be massive for years to come.

Now that I have warned you properly, I am going to say that you still could compete in this market if you put together a very complicated system or simply pay for traffic and build up your hosting company that way. I feel that to even make the slightest dent in this market you would need to have a network of websites all driving in new customers with huge freebies and bonuses and finally still have competitive pricing and good service. The entire package will need to be offered before a new website owner could be encouraged to join up with your service. There are many ways to skin a cat – I have heard and if you can think up an innovative way to draw in new customers then you might succeed.

If you have downloaded this report from me then you have become part of my efforts to suggest good hosting services to you that I have used and you can trust. Please do not forget to sign up for my recommended hosting at the bottom of this report.

Remember that very often you will need to do massive forms of offline marketing to make people aware that your products exist, and offline marketing can be very vague and more than a little expensive.

What I would suggest that you do from the very beginning is to adopt a business model and pare it down to one very tightly targeted aspect and then market the hell out of that single feature. Do not stop marketing that bonus or single item, and over time your name could become known as the guy that gives away a cell phone with every new hosting – or whatever. Call yourself cell hosting or something and offer free airtime, or a cell phone or do something that will make people think that they cannot live without your offer. The capital outlay could be very high with this sort of marketing idea, so I suggest that you sit down and plan carefully from the start.

Membership/Club – Website Type Thirteen

Membership websites are a very nice website model but would appear to be getting a little bit of bad publicity lately. What has happened is that the internet marketing world has been promotion the idea of owning a membership website as the best thing since sliced bread, and have caused such a huge influx of membership websites to appear and some are very badly done. These bad ones have caused a bit of a backlash from the general public.

Now I firmly believe that if you offer a great product that people would be very happy to become members and be even happier to remain members for years to come.

Before you even consider the idea of owning a membership website I ask you to consider the following aspects.

Popularity

You will need to know that there is a demand for your particular type of club or membership before you blunder forward and build a website. If you are fully aware of the potential of this niches membership potential then by all means go ahead.

Content

Members of a club or membership website are not going to be happy to pay a monthly fee to belong to a website that never adds new content to the website. Some membership websites are only meant to be a six week membership, and that is fine if your website is set up that way, but the long term websites need to have a lot of content, news and stuff like features and freebies added all the time or you will lose your members.

Originality

If your membership website is competing in a specific niche where there are already a lot of other membership websites then you had better have something that makes you stand a full head and shoulders above the crowd or your site will die.

Website size

Here again this would depend upon the original topic, and if your membership website is aimed at antique steam train enthusiasts then you are not likely to be getting a lot of fresh news daily in such a niche, and would therefore need to be certain that you still have new and fresh content to add weekly.

It would be easier with a more popular topic. What I am saying here is that you would be encouraged to be adding hundreds of quality items a month to make even the most jaded member happy and keep increasing your membership site. I am a member of one of the best membership websites online and the guy who runs it keeps us all astounded with the quality that he adds daily. Very few people bail out of that membership website. (Thank you Chris Farrell)

Focus

Do not lose focus as to what your original intentions where, and you need to remember that that reason is why most of your members joined up in the first place. The idea of adding a fun element like a daily competition might seem like a good idea, but sooner or later you diehard members are going to be asking questions. If the original intention of your membership website was to keep old car enthusiasts up to date with all the gathering dates and happenings, and you stop telling them those details they will run away.

Name

If you feel that the word membership has started to get a bit of a negative feel to it then I suggest that from the word go you call your membership website by a different name. You can play around with the options like club, team, group and a whole lot more and some will work and others not. Be careful that you still keep the integrity of the original idea intact.

Information (Consultation) – Website Type Fourteen

Setting up an information or content based website has the potential to be one of the most solid forms of website models out there. If you owned a website that had thousands of very high content pages you will be getting so much traffic to that website that it really would be like owning an ATM machine.

But before you rush out and start to develop such a website I suggest that you consider a few factors.

Ulterior motive

This is possibly the most important question that you should ask yourself. A website like this will be all consuming and will require daily work for years before it becomes solidly established as an authority website on your chosen topic. You need to check if you really are passionate about the subject and the idea, as you will be living and breathing that specific topic for a very long time.

Personally I am passionate about decorating – so in my case I could start to write up a website that covers all the thousands of different aspects of décor and home improvements, but could I do it every day forever? I wonder.

If your urge to teach and continually keep the world updated on a subject that you are passionate about is the reason you want to own an information website then by all means do it, but remember that it might not be as financially rewarding as starting up a dating website.

One thing that you must remember is that if you are a nuclear physics addict and wanted to have a business about this subject, you would probably never be able to do it offline, but there are possible enough similar addicts like you online to make such a website viable as your catchment area will obviously be international. So do not be afraid on that side of the idea.

How will you monetize it?

This side of the idea of owning such a website is vital as if you are in it for the money I suggest that you reconsider. If you are really passionate about the idea then you possibly will survive and thrive as long as you keep to your original game plan that you set out to achieve.

There are obviously a lot of ways to monetize a website and earn your living and I suggest that before you set off on a huge mission like this will probably become that you are very certain as to which ways that you will find and apply to the financial aspect of your website.

Generally speaking I would suggest that you write and sell your own products, but naturally there are many more and obviously you do not need to use only one form of monetization.

Do you have enough knowledge?

This question has already presumed that you are actually passionate enough about the topic of your website, and questions you ability to properly construct and control such a website. It goes without saying that you could outsource all the writing that you will be putting up onto this website of yours, but what if you do not have a clue as to how accurate the information is that is being written by your ghostwriters?

Is your theme or topic popular?

If your subject of choice is on such an obscure niche and nobody cares at all about your website you might want to reconsider your choice before you spend any more time on the idea. Thousands of pages on the mating habits of fish are not likely to get you a very big following online at all.

Do you have the staying power?

Personally this is where I suspect that I would not be able to go the distance, as to constantly be writing and talking about a single niche or topic for years would probably be the death of me. Even the subjects that I love like food, sex, books or music might become boring after awhile – and that would be very bad. You need to be very certain that you really do have the amount of motivation to tackle such a big project and go the full distance.

Properly planned to be popular?

If you are passionate enough to do this then why not put a system in place that makes your product or website popular enough to make you a lot of money? If you structure the layout of your website correctly from the very beginning then even when it has reached 25 000 pages it will still be easily navigated by the visitors and they will not become bogged down and lose interest.

May all sorts of forces be with you on this one!

Forum – Website Type Fifteen

Running a forum could possibly be a really brilliant idea, and to be honest I have absolutely no idea as to how much work this sort of website entails. Whenever I visit these websites I get the impression that they are run by the moderators. Now how brilliant is a concept where you start up a website wait until you have a lot of members and those that are the most regular you simply appoint them as moderators, or as I picture them – babysitters and then you can go fishing.

Ok – joking aside I suspect that this form of website has just as many hidden things that cause a lot of work every day and as always you will need to consider all the aspects of this sort of website before you spend a lot of time trying to develop it.

Forums that are well visited fast become very highly ranked websites and if your niche is popular your website could receive a lot of traffic daily. Where you need to be careful about this sort of website business idea is on these following aspects.

Layout or template

I have joined a lot of forums in my time online and I have to be honest I find most of them boring. From the very minute that I see the forums layout I have very seldom been impressed. Now I fully understand that the sizes of these forums are normally big and therefore the template needs to load fast, but still…

If I was to start up a forum website I would have a front page that has some handpicked threads that are featured on the front page with a cartoon or picture attached or similar attractive visual aspect to make the first impression have big impact. Remember you are competing with thousands of other forums and the one that leaves an impression will be the winner.

Level of competition

You are welcome to compete in any market online as nobody will tell you that you are not welcome, but I highly suggest that you do a lot of research into the different niches that you could start up your forum in before you just step off the edge.

Check all the different levels, do keyword research, use all the available tools to ascertain the exact level of competition that you are up against and then plan your attack accordingly.

Maintaining interest

In my opinion just owning a forum is definitely not enough to keep your members from returning to post and comment and become happy and active members. I suggest that you plan a lot of different facets into the initial design of your forum that will give it a unique feel and make it somewhere people will want to spend all their free time with their new online friends.

Initial grind

Initially you will be confronted with a massive amount of marketing to get you website growing fast, if the initial growth is too slow your first members will disappear as they will find no new posts and threads and lose interest very quickly. The best option would be to plan a very big marketing campaign and offer prizes and pay to get thousands of visitors to your website in the first few weeks. You could tone down your marketing after that slightly but never lose momentum as your regulars will feel the drop in comments and interest and your site could die.

I would highly recommend that you start up another 5 or 10 websites all in different sub niches of your niche and use those websites to drive organic traffic to your forum all the time. If you are careful on the domain name choice of those websites and are equally careful as to how well the sites are optimized you could be receiving a constant flow of new members all the time from those websites.

A lot of visitors will mean more visitors and this exponential growth will fill your pockets with money, or fame and adulation if that is your preferred method of payment.

Mini Sites – Website Type Sixteen

Setting up mini sites as your website model of choice has become extremely popular and is possible being pushed as an easy way to make money online. Do not be fooled as with any business setting up and running fifty or one hundred mini sites is perhaps one of the more difficult ways of getting an income from the internet. There are a lot of products that you can buy online that will teach you a bunch of similar ways to set up “cash-grabbing” micro or mini sites.

The concept is very simple – what you do is a bunch of keyword research and niche research to find that tightly targeted spot online that is not that competitive and you build and leave a small website for those specific keyword searchers. Now the guys that have in fact actually made a success from this very type of marketing will readily admit that only about 40% of their websites ever actually make them money, and very often these sites are chugging along at a very small income. The entire point to this form of web based business is to create hundreds of tightly targeted websites that all stand or fall independently and eventually you will have a consistent income.

I have a suspicion that my cynicism is creeping through and is visible in my tone here in this report. I should explain. I have built a few of these websites myself, and if you do them correctly they can make you consistent money. My real complaint goes to these guys that promote their products to us, and tend to make it all sound so much easier than it really is.

They will run promotion that tells you that you will be able to set up a mini site in two hours, and using this system would get to 100 new websites a month, and if they are to be believed you will be making an average of R2000 ($240) per website per month. Well perhaps they are capable of doing that but I have to tell you that I am experienced at setting up these types of websites and I personally have found that they need at least two days of work to give them enough “meat” to stand all alone out there online.

So finally if you read between all the lines that I have gone over here, I do agree that if you put in at least two days of solid work per mini site and you have done your keyword research properly then you might stand a chance of achieving a network of income generating mini sites. If you do not start to use underhand tools or tactics to punt your websites online you should be in a position to gain a decent footprint online.

One word of warning, the future of the internet is fast becoming one where real and high quality content will be the most highly ranked item and if you keep putting copy and paste stuff up you will eventually fail. Be careful, rather go slower and put original and good quality content onto your websites.

Shopping site – Website Type Seventeen

I love the idea of owning a website that is dedicated to shopping. If you have the products and the ability to set up a competent shopping website you will almost certainly always have a winner. To correctly put this type of website in its own category here I say that it must be a website that has a shopping cart system in place and where you actually pay for the product on that website.

While the hard parts of owning a shopping type website are tedious you gain one massive advantage and this is the fact that if your marketing is done correctly you are in a position to drive very targeted traffic to your website.

Here are a few pointers that you need to consider with the ownership of a shopping website

Choosing your niche

The different types of products that you could put onto a website that are sellable as a real deliverable product are many, but naturally your decisions on what that product is and how big the actual stockholding should be is your decision. You could arrange to have drop shipping done and this method is becoming more and more popular with the owners of shopping websites.

Setting up a good template

If the products that you sell are not many your flexibility in the choice of your website becomes much wider. But if you plan to have a range of thousands of products then you need to buy or design a custom template that is capable of handling all those products.

That all important initial impact is critical as most people judge your entire business within those first few seconds and your business will live or die on that judgment. However you need to pre decide on factors like are you selling specials or on price or do you want to create an image of luxury to get a higher price out of the buyer.

Checking on daily prices, links etc

Two factors are going to be vitally important to the daily running and therefore the profitability of your website and they both need to be carefully controlled.

The first is to be continually aware of factors like price changes, and inventory. Never let yourself be in a position where you end up having to deliver hundreds of an item at the “old” price. Constant vigilance on these daily fluctuations is so important to the health of your business. I suspect that you are fully aware of this.

Money flows

You are going to need to set up a very sophisticated shopping cart or payment system as you need the buyers to not have any obstacles in their path as you obviously want it to be very easy to make a purchase. You will also need to make it clear to your buyers as to what all the charges are and things like delivery charges so as to have to whole system run smoothly.

Marketing and traffic

Finally the most important factor is that you need to drive huge amounts of traffic to this sort of website as your profits will depend upon all this traffic. I would suggest that you build a few other websites that are very product keyword strong and use those websites to direct your traffic.

Naturally one of the best ways to get your traffic is to run a carefully controlled pay per click campaign and control the flow of your visitors in that way.

How to build a website

2011-11-21T04:55:00.000-08:00

Want to build your own website? Feeling confusion how to do it? You need not to have concerns now because this short article will give you complete information about the step by step procedure how to design your own website.

• First you have to get an attractive domain name. Domain name is the name such as blackblue.com, which you gave to your website so that by following the path linked to that name, people can visit your website. To get this name, you need to register to get the rights and pay annual fees for that. You can choose your own domain name and you can also have guidelines from different websites as well. This registration name is actually a business name which will appear in the world of internet.

• Second step which you need to take is to sign up for an account through a web hosting company. When your webpage is placed on that web host company database, the entire world becomes able to visit it. It is like the home of your website. There are some pre-cautions that should be taken before having the services of any particular web hosting company.

• In third step, you need to design you own website. There are two possibilities for in this regard. First you can pay to an experienced web designer for designing a website for you. Second is that, you can develop your own website using different software. Usually people use Dreamweaver for web development. You can use different designing templates for beautifying your website.

• Next step is testing the website. Often web developers skip this step but it is essential to check it now and then. Once you develop your website, do check it over the new versions of internet explorer along with Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera. This trick enables your website to work over new versions of these web browsers.

• In the case of a shopping website, you also need to research for credit card information and enable your website for that as well. Apart form this; you can also make money with affiliating programs and advertisements with your website. There are a lot of advertising companies who give you opportunity to attach their ads with your website and pay you for those advertisements.

How to develop webpages

2011-11-21T04:54:00.000-08:00

Every serious internet marketer should want to know how to develop a webpage. Trouble is many people view developing a website as a very difficult task. But creating a site does not have to be scary since it is a skill that anyone can learn if you have an open mind. You do not even need to have any prior web development experience.

The first thing you must know is that a webpage is part of a website.Three things are needed for your website to be on the net, a domain, hosting and at least one webpage.

The first thing to consider when asking how to develop a webpage is your purpose for creating the page. If you are into Internet Marketing, then the entire reason of creating your own website and pages is so that you can get your visitors to take whatever action you desire.

These actions could be buying something, signing-up to your email list, clicking on something, or visiting another page within your site. Whatever the case, the "landing page", or the page that the visitor arrives upon is critical to your success.

In this article I aim to give you tips on how to develop successful webpages.

How To Develop A Web Page - Components Of A Successful Landing Pages

A successful landing page has the following main components:

1. Headline - The headline is the first thing that you use to attract a visitor's attention when they visit your page. The key to attracting their attention is a catchy title and the key to keeping them there is relevant and interesting content that offers value.

2. Relevant For The Visitor - The information on the pages should be relevant to what the visitor is searching for.

3. Easy to Act Upon - A successful webpage should be easy to act upon so that the visitor can easily perform your desired action, whether it be buying something, clicking on something or giving you some information about themselves.

4. The Way Content Flows- A successful webpage should have great content that is easy to read and makes sense. It should be loaded with information that is helpful and interesting to the reader.

5. Navigation - Google loves sites with multi-pages better so add more relevant pages to your site. Also make your site easy to navigate so customers do not lose interest and don't forget to create links to internal pages on your site that have relevant content. Images and anchor texts should be clickable and should open in new windows so customers can easily come back to the main page without needing to click on the back button.

6. Content - Let your content be always relevant and informative. Remember content is most important so always take time to write original relevant content if you want Google to reward you.

So if you are asking how to develop a webpage? As you may have realized, it is not possible to learn all about web design in a few minutes or hours. Developing a webpage is a skill that will come as you practice more and is an art that internet marketers get to learn only by trial and error.

Learning how to develop a web page is an asset that you will be able to use for your entire life once you learn the main concepts so start today. Don't wait to be perfect, every attempt will only make you better at it. Spend some time learning how to develop a web page and you will be increasing your earning potential ten-fold online.

How to make a search engine friendly website

2011-11-20T04:10:00.000-08:00

When it comes to website SEO, there are a hundred and one things you can do to tweak your site to make it easy for search engines to find it and send traffic to it. For example, there’s pay per click marketing; there’s hand submitting it to directories (which is a waste of time in my opinion); there’s writing interesting, informative content; etc.

But, the following are SEO web design basics you should do – for every single page on your website blog. If you don’t learn anything else about website SEO, get in the habit of doing the following consistently and you will make it easy for search engines to find your site, deliver it high in search results and start increasing your sales and leads.

I) Write Your Meta Tags: If you still have pages in HTML, the three most important meta tags, according to accepted internet marketing wisdom are the Title, Description and Keyword tags.

Website SEO: The 3 Most Important Meta Tags Explained

The title tag is arguably the most important meta tag, for it tells search engine spiders what a specific page on a website is all about. It is the description that is displayed in your web browser’s window at the very top of the page (that white writing that appears across the top).

Many companies make the mistake of having the same title tag on every page of their site. This is not helpful to search engines. Each page on your site should be treated as its own separate entity; hence, it should have its own unique title. This is especially true if you carry many different products across many different categories.

Your title tag should contain some of your high-traffic keyword phrases and should explain exactly what the surfer can expect to find on that particular page (as opposed to your entire site).

Many site owners will begin their title tag with their company name. In terms of website SEO, this means diddly squat to search engines. Your title tag should start with a high-traffic keyword that describes what the web surfer will find on that page. Access any page of my SEO writing website to see what I mean.

The description tag is what surfers read when your site pops up in organic search results. It helps them decide whether or not to even click on your site, so you definitely want this tag to be present – and accurate.

The keyword tag is a thorough list of words and phrases that best describe your site. To satisfy website SEO guidelines for getting more traffic, your keyword tags should be directly relevant to the specific page at hand. They can also contain keywords that are relevant to your site as a whole.

While many don’t put a lot of stock in meta tags, they should be written for every page on your site – if for no other reason than they give search engine spiders more information about your site. This makes it easier for them to properly categorize it.

II) Fill It With Keyword Rich Text: In website SEO, a search engine friendly page on your blog/site should be filled with keyword-rich text. What are keywords?

Keywords are the words/phrases web surfers type in to find stuff on the internet. Having content on your site with relevant keywords sprinkled throughout will help search engine spiders discern what the site is all about – and return it in search results.

This is usually accomplished via SEO articles, which can be about anything you want. The more content (eg, SEO articles) you have on your site, the better. This is one of the foundational rules of website SEO by the way.

The key to success with keywords is to use actual words and phrases that real web surfers type into search engines.

This is what keyword discovery and keyword analysis are all about. Once you find out what these popular phrases are, then you can write (or hire an SEO copywriter to write) keyword-rich articles.

SEO copywriters know the intricacies of website SEO, eg, how to use the right keyword density, how to write attention-grabbing headlines; where to place keywords in text so that search engines rank a particular page high in search results; etc. These are just some of the reasons SEO copywriting is a highly valued skill.

III) Keep Things Like Flash & Images to a Minimum: Search engine spiders like text, for it gives them the information they need to do their job. Without getting too technical, a website with things like Flash and a lot of images makes it very hard for spiders to judge what a site is about.

If you happen to have a site like this, at the very least name the images using keyword-rich words and phrases. For example, instead of naming an image photo1.jpg, name it mustang-auto-parts1.jpg (if you have a site that sells mustang auto parts, for example). This way, when search engine spiders crawl your site, they’ll have some real, descriptive text to grab on to.

Also, block as much text together as you can. This way, search engines can at least get an idea of what your site is about.

A note about flash and other web imagery: Unless your site caters to an industry where this is important, leave it out. When most people surf the web, they want INFORMATION. And, they want it as quickly as possible. So while Flash may make your site look cutting edge, in terms of website SEO, it could be losing you business because many surfers will simply click away.

IV) Get Backlinks: Backlinks are probably the single most important thing you can do to make your site more search engine friendly, after writing search engine optimized content.

What are backlinks?

Backlinks are simply links back to your website. They are also known as inbound links. And, the reason they are so important is that search engines like them.

A very important note about backlinks: You want one-way backlinks, not reciprocal links. What’s the difference? One-way backlinks are sites that link back to yours. Reciprocal links are where you trade links with another site (eg, you link to my site and I’ll link to yours).

Search engines rank sites with lots of one-way backlinks higher than those with reciprocal links because they are seen as more of an authority site. Think about it this way, if a site has a lot of one-way backlinks, that means a lot of people find the information on that site relevant enough that they link to it (ie, share it), without any return favor.

A site with a lot of reciprocal links ranks lower because it’s kind of like a conspiracy, eg, you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Which site would you trust more – the one that everybody recommends even though they get nothing out of it, or one that has a lot of reciprocal links?

How to get backlinks?

Article marketing is a very effective strategy, for it spreads your content far and wide on the web. By allowing others to publish your content on their site, in their newsletter, on their blog, in forums, etc., you earn a backlink every time the link appears. This is gold in terms of website SEO, for it’s like gossip, it spreads far and wide (which makes search engines pick up and take notice).

Social media marketing is another way to get backlinks. This is interacting on sites like Twitter, MySpace and Facebook. One article on your site or post on your blog that goes viral can bring in thousands of visitors. And this is what website SEO is all about.

Making a search engine friendly website

2011-11-20T04:07:00.000-08:00

Web designers are finding ways on how to boost search engine ranking. With millions of searches done everyday in the US alone, search engines such as Google and Yahoo! are great instruments in bringing huge amounts of traffic to websites. But the problem is most users only check search results found in the few first pages. That is why it is crucial for websites to stay on top of search engine rankings with their targeted keywords. One way in order to help websites boost their search engine popularity is through using search engine friendly web design. The concept is that websites should be built in a way that they could easily be indexed by search engines. Let's discuss some of the elements in web design that may affect a website's search engine friendliness.

Search engines heavily rely on text content in its indexing, this is why if a web page has an image, it would be good web design practice to put alt tags on it. Alt tags are crawlable by search engines, therefore adding more chance for the webpage to be indexed on certain keywords. It is also important for a webpage to include targeted keywords in its content since search engines give more weight to content in terms of ranking website relevance. Meta tags help boost a webpage's ranking as well. Although search engines no longer rely heavily on meta tags in ranking their relevance to certain keywords, meta tags provide more information regarding the webpage making it easier for indexing.

Some of the other elements of a search engine friendly website include having a site map and searh engine friendly URLs. A site map best helps a website's ranking if targeted keywords or phrases are used to hyperlink pages of the website. Search engine friendly URLs on the other hand encourages the usage of targeted keywords on the URL of the website's pages. Not only does a search engine friendly URL help boost search engine ranking, it also results into a much easier to remember URLs unlike unformatted ones.

Search engine friendly web design falls under on-site Search Engine Optimization (SEO) where elements of the website are being tweaked in order to increase its popularity, as opposed to off site SEO which involves campaigns to increase a website's search engine popularity without altering the website itself but rather with the use of other websites. It is important to take note however that concepts in SEO are changing from time to time as search engines become wiser in crawling relative content. Therefore it is best for website designers and owners to to be updated with the latest trend in SEO.

Why sitemap is important

2011-11-17T03:54:00.000-08:00

Often you will see that there is a little link on the front page of a website that is labeled Sitemap. So, what is a Sitemap? Basically, it is a graphical representation of the structural and hierarchical linkage of a web sitee. A sitemap is often considered as unnecessary and a waste of time in the process of building a websitee. This is, however, far from the truth. In the following writing, we will see why a sitemap is a must for any decently competent website.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) purposes

By creating a sitemap, a single page which contains links to every single page on your site is created. This is extremely beneficial for the indexing of pages on the site. When a search engine robot found this page, it will follow the links on the sitemap and therefore every single page of your site will get crawled and indexed. A good place for the sitemap link is on the top right side of the page.

Also, more often than not, the homepage of the site has the highest page rank. By placing a sitemap link there, all the pages on website will be indexed much faster.

Easy Navigation for site visitors

The sitemap is a place where the visitor can browse all the links on the site. This is the one-stop place to navigate the website as it is linked to all pages on the site.

Conveys and describes the topic of the site

By reading the titles of the links on the sitemap, a reader can easily figure out the theme and specialty of the website. This is a very convenience feature as a visitor need not browse through many other pages in order to know what the website is all about.

The above-mentioned points are reasons why sitemaps are important for search engine optimization and enhancement of visitor experience. In addition to those reasons, a sitemap is also relevant from the webmaster's perspective too. This is because, a sitemap enables the webmaster to evaluate the entire website as a whole. From the overall evaluation, he/she can then improve the site by:

Adding new contents to fill up gaps within certain regions of the site
Modifying existing contents for a better design-flow
Removing duplicated pages and contents as they are bad for search engine optimization

From the essay thus far, we can clearly see that benefits of having a sitemap far exceed the inconvenience of creating it. You can create the sitemap yourself. However this can be quite tedious. Luckily, there are software programs that can do the task for us. As a matter of fact, there are many free tools that can ease the creation of sitemaps. Simply do a search for "free sitemap generator" on the major search engines and these free tools can be found.

Auditmypc.com has an online tool that can create sitemaps from their website. If you are creating a website using Wordpress blogging application, you can install a very useful plugin known as Google Sitemap Generator . This plugin automatically updates and creates a sitemap whenever you update your blog with a new page or blog post.

Search Engine Optimization Guidelines for beginners

2011-11-17T03:52:00.000-08:00

Tips for Search Engine Optimization discussed here are things any novice webmaster can apply to their site.

Search engine optimization can be so confusing. Most beginners know about keywords but don’t know how to use them. The relevance of using titles, anchor text and alt. tags is often overlooked when we first start out. These are some of the Tips for Search Engine Optimization we will discuss. We hope we have made it even easier than simple to follow.

Also Search Engine Optimization has been evolving over the years and the rules keep changing. An algorithm used by a search engines is changed regularly in an effort to improve the results for people using them.

For a beginner it is much easier to just start slowly and incorporate a few of the basics first. When you initially begin to research search engine optimization you will find each step leads to another step and you find yourself being drawn into more and more involved learning.

Organic - Algorithmic Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the exposure of a web site or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid search results. It can also be called organic or algorithmic. It’s a very efficient and effective way of optimizing the pages of sites to make them search engine friendly.

Organic ways of achieving natural search engine results will generally result in longer lasting results than technological approaches.

By using SEO (search engine optimization) correctly this will ensure that your website will appear higher in search engine rankings.

On page optimization is one of the very first steps of SEO which every webmaster should look into. If you can do proper on-page optimization (as opposed to off-page) for your website you can not only rank well in a search engine but also can increase the overall readability of your website for your visitors.

At least 85% of people looking for services on the Internet find websites through Search Engines belonging to Google, Yahoo, and MSN (originally the Microsoft Network but is now a collection of Internet sites and services provided by Microsoft).

Search engines are not paid for the traffic they send to a site from natural organic searches.

Search Engine Optimization is also a marketing strategy. A website that's optimized for search engines can reap benefits on to your website and your business. The idea of optimizing your pages for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted customers. The higher your page comes up in Search Engine results then there will be more traffic directed to your website.

There are SEO consultants and companies you may pay to give you a greater online presence. However for most of us this is an added expense that we cannot afford especially in the beginning.

If you are looking to improve the search engine position of your site and you want quick and easy results, then SEO isn’t the way to go.

For SEO to do its job it will take time and you will need to do some work, especially in relation to the actual content of your site.

Title Tags for Search Engine Optimization Relevance

The title tag is one of the most important factors in achieving high search engine rankings. Title tags should contain specific keyword phrases and this will please the bots (robots in search engines).

In fact, just fixing the title tags of your pages can often make noticeable differences to your rankings. The words in the title tag are what appear in the clickable link on the search engine results page (SERP). By placing the keywords in the title tags this may result in more click throughs.

A site’s title tag is by far the most important on-page optimization element. A title tag should be short but descriptive enough for your visitors to identify you and your business. So make sure your title tag has your main keyword in it.

It’s useless to use titles like welcome to my site etc. for SEO purposes unless you make sure your title tag has the keywords present.

Where to Put Keywords

It would be more accurate to say that good content is king with regard to SEO rather than just “content is king”. Also, search engines are very keen on a site which is constantly providing new information and content materials. Build up your site over time. Do not make the mistake of building your site and then forgetting it.

Studies show that people use search engines, primarily for information. Think about the words that users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those keywords words within it. Achieving natural search engine results include finding the best keywords for your website.

Create text on a page without worrying too much about keywords. Write whatever you would normally do if you weren’t worried about keywords, but make sure you create at least 250 words. Using synonyms instead of having a high keyword density will make your content sound natural but still helps in SEO. The number of keywords per page is known in the industry as the keyword density of a page. It represents the percentage of times the keyword phrase appears compared to all the text on the page.

The importance of keywords is where you use them and how. You need to place your keyword phrase at least once and not more than twice in your first paragraph. Incorporate it a few times in your text, but only where it flows naturally. Also place the keywords at least once in your final paragraph since Yahoo seems to place some importance on it.

Keyword density becomes an issue if you use the keywords too often. "Keyword stuffing" will result in a negative user experience and may result in your site being considered spam. Definitely don’t try and cheat Google!

We would suggest playing it safe and keeping the keyword density between 3-5% -that is 3-5 words per 100.

It’s often good to target some long tail keywords as they are comparatively easier to rank. Long Tailed Keywords means phrases with at least 2 or 3 words in them. During your keyword research you should be able to gather some good long tail keywords that you can optimize your site for. You can also create your own long tail keywords by adding some common words like best, easy, cheap, free etc. along with your actual keyword and you can get some good long tail keywords.

Proximity of keywords should be considered in relation to each other with long tailed keywords. For example “search engine rankings” will receive more hits than “rankings in the search engines” so try to be more specific.

Keywords in the domain are not the definitive answer to all your problems. People buy up domains and think they have made it but this is not so - they need content and links. Keywords in the domain may give you a slight edge.

Using your major keywords in your url is very important in Google. The Google robots crawl first your url before the meta tags and the contents of your pages. It will give your site a greater advantage.

Include keywords within the Meta description wherever possible. The Meta description that you use should be interesting to those who are intending visiting your site. The Meta description is displayed in their search results by many search engines.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is particularly important in search engine optimization. Anchor text is the visible text in a hyperlink. A hyperlink is a graphic or a piece of text in an Internet document that can connect readers to another webpage, or another portion of a document. Web users will usually find at least one hyperlink on every webpage.

With anchor text you can have internal links (which is one of your pages linking to another). In this instance, a hyperlink will show up as a single word or group of words that will usually be marked as underlined, and are frequently blue in color. Clicking on the hyperlink may take one to another part of the page, or it may open another Internet page

Anchor text is important because it allows you to rank for a specific keyword. Using "click here" in lieu of a descriptive name is a poor search engine optimization practice.

Alt. Tags for Images

If your site has lot of images, you need to optimize them too as they can’t be read by the search engines. Search engines often miss what you might think are some of your web's most attractive features such as enticing images and animations. It’s very easy for a human reader to interpret the image into its meaning. However for a Web crawler the whole interpreting process is completely different. The world's most important web 'spiders' might crawl right past them as search engine spiders can only read text, not images. Search engines are not very good at recognizing images and then describing them. So you need to use some special tags for your images in order to give them some meaning for the search engines.

Within the image source there is the alt. tag - alt stands for alternative text. Use a handful of descriptive words to describe what the image is. There is no need to stuff the phrase with keywords. This needs to be done on all of your images so the search engines detect the content.

Conclusion

What we have shared with you is by no means intended as a complete guide. However, what we have presented to you will make your site a lot friendlier for the search engines. If you apply the information here you will find them to be very worthwhile Tips for Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization

2011-11-17T03:49:00.000-08:00

Search engine optimization is the technique of improving the visibility of one’s website or a webpage in the search engines through natural or artificial methods. It corresponds to marketing online in order to improve the exposure of your website to a wide range of target audience in order to increase sales and profits eventually.

SEO is a technique to promote a newly launched website on the internet. The internet marketing is the latest trend in the marketing industry and the most beneficial one. Internet marketing allows for selling and promoting your products and service online on the World Wide Web with the help of various tools.

SEO is an important aspect of every website present today as everybody wants to get the best rankings in search engine results and top the list of results. There is a constant need to increase the number of visitors to a website and this can easily be done by search engine optimization services. A basic technique for search engine optimization is to use keywords in your website which are highly desired by the search engines and other users. This improves the chances of your website coming up in the results and might increase the traffic to your website. However, this is a trial and error technique and thus not very fruitful for every company.One of these is Search Engine Optimization or SEO as it is casually called. SEO requires looking into the algorithms used by the search engines and fusing ways to improve your website rating under them. For example, Google uses Page Rank methodology to rank its result pages and decide their order of appearance. The Page Rank algorithm needs to be cracked in order to have successful SEO for your website.

Today, a lot many firms have sprouted which work for companies to help improve their rankings on the search engines and these utilize search engine optimization services to do so. These sites create links from high ranked websites which help in voting for your site on various search engines. Search engines send out crawlers to sites for links and backlinks and rank the websites on that basis. Creating links is a major search engine optimization service used to improve ranking, and driving traffic to one’s website.

SEO is not an easy task to take up and companies usually end up hiring SEO experts and professionals to do their job for them. Professional search engine optimizers work on websites after complete analysis, planning and monitoring their present exposure and traffic. They go for various types of search engine optimization services which may be suitable for their client to improve his site’s visibility and traffic.

SEO techniques can be of two types – white hat and black hat. White hat techniques are those which are approved by search engines and if it conforms to the guidelines of search engines. It should not involve any sort of spamming by automated software. The search engine guidelines are not explicitly mentioned anywhere but need to be taken into consideration while opting for search engine optimization services. White hat techniques do not just avoid spamming but also focus on the content of websites which is directed at the users and not the search engines. Having a large number of keywords in a site with a lot of repetitions is to create content for search engines. Also, the content needs to be accessible to the crawlers that the search engines send across the web to look for sites and rank them according to relevance and information content. White hat SEO techniques are followed in order to market the products effectively online.

Search engine optimization involves spending a large amount of time and money in promoting your business and even if you do yourself, you may not be assured of guaranteed returns on the website. Hence, it becomes more beneficial to use companies which deal in optimizing your website for various search engines by submissions online or by improving content of your website. This usually involves a small fee against which you are provided with guarantees of high ranks by search engines. These companies employ professionals in the field which take into account, each and every aspect of your website and design a program based on your needs and requirements. SEO needs to handle by professionals with sound knowledge in the field and these days; it is very easy to outsource your SEO needs to such companiesSEO has various benefits to your website which you may not be able to get through any other technique. These include increasing the number of new visitors to your website apart from increasing the traffic on your website of both old and new users. It also improves the exposure of your website to wide audience and helps target a larger audience. It helps improve the ranking of your website on various search engines such as Google, yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves etc. in the long run and is one the most effective and efficient technique of improving the return of investment on your website. It not only improves the visibility but also makes the website search engine friendly and more informative if you do not go for black hat techniques.

On the other hand, black hat SEO techniques are those which are not approved by search engine based on their guidelines or involve deception. These involve hidden texts or text that is colored same as the background. Another technique that is used under black hat is that of page cloaking wherein a search engine crawler is not able to visit the same page as a user would be able to visit by clicking on the same URL. Websites may also use automated submissions to directories which may be classified as spam. Black hat techniques may lead to search engines penalizing or banning the websites from their results. For example Google banned BMW Germany from their search engine results because of deceptive use of SEO techniques in February 2006. The company had to apologize for the same and it was later restored on Google.

A nice way to increase adsense revenue

2011-11-17T00:47:00.000-08:00

The AdWords prices are not, what the publishers get from the AdSense clicks, but they give a strong idea about the income chances from different keywords. So if an AdWords ad is expensive, it must also be a high paying AdSense keyword, i.e. it gives a higher income per click.

1. Google Puts The Ads According To Your Instructions.

Now when you have picked one high paying AdSense keyword, you have to optimize your page or blog posts using that particular keyword only. In this way, you let Google to know, which is the keyword or topic your story is about. And remember, that you can use a long tail search term, which will give you 1 cent or 1 dollar per click or even a higher sum if you have chosen the search term right.

It is also important to check whether your keyword has enough advertisers, because if there is only one, it means that the advertiser gets the ad with a very low price and you will be left without AdSense income. Another bad thing can be that the ads on your page will not be about the topic you want but about whatever category, which has the same target group.

2. Google Free Keyword Tool Includes Ad Costs.

I strongly prefer so called long tail keywords, because they are more accurate and include more independent keywords. When you do the keyword research, do it with Google Keyword Tool, which is free and which includes also the estimated ad costs.

With Google Keyword Tool you can also check, how many visitors will land on the particular page. This is useful, because you do not need a high paying AdSense keyword, which has nil or a very modest amount of traffic. The idea is to optimize the choice between the traffic figure, the strength of the competition and the ad price.

3. You Have To Choose AdSense Only or AdSense And Links.

If you market some affiliate programs through product links on your page or post plus want a decent AdSense income or to increase AdSense revenue, you have to think, whether it is wise to split the visitor interest between AdSense ads and the product links.

If I have understood right, the ideal situation would be either AdSense or product links, but not both. I think this idea is based on the thought that an average visitor will click only once during the site visit. When the AdSense ads are very good attention grabbers, they will get the clicks. Another reason is, that it is free to click AdSense.

Actually I use AdSense and product links together. It is very difficult to judge, whether another group will suffer but I think that the product links will suffer. However the idea of every commercial site is to earn money and because my AdSense income is good, I will keep the situation as such.

The idea of every action we do, is to maximize the profits. A high paying AdSense keyword is a good way to do this. What it takes is some keyword research, but the reward is a long term one. If every keyword pay per click will be five or ten times higher, it will increase AdSense revenue to a new level.

How to maximize your click through rate

2011-11-17T00:45:00.000-08:00

Maximizing the CTR means a lot to a publisher who wants to make money with AdSense.

Making maximum possible money with AdSense depends on three factors:

- Maximizing your CTR (Click through rate)
- Maximizing the targeted traffic
- Maximizing the pay per each click.

The techniques you follow to maximize your CTR can not only increase the user responsiveness but also increases the targeted traffic.

Let's see what Google AdSense Engineers has to say about AdSense CTR:

"Due to the dynamic nature of Google AdSense, fluctuations in your revenue will occur. Your earnings will depend on a number of factors, including the types of ads being served to your pages, the cost per click or cost per impression of these ads, and your users' click through selections. Regarding ad placement - the best ad format varies from page to page. We've observed that, in general, wider ads perform better because of their reader-friendly format. We strongly recommend putting your users first when deciding on ad placement. Think about their behavior on different pages, and what will be most useful and visible to them. You'll find that the most optimal ad position isn't always what you expect on certain pages."

What should you do to increase AdSense CTR?

Webmasters have very diverse views on how to increase CTR. It largely depends upon the the quality of its content, keywords you are targeting, design and layout of your website, placement of AdSense ads, page optimization and various other factors. Generally, AdSense blocks wrapped between the quality content works the best. For the websites having poor quality content, placing the Ads before the start of the content works best.

*Quality Comtent: If you develop a poor quality content website, even if you have high CTR and clicks, you will be getting low priced ads and also nobody will like to add your url to their favorites. But if you have quality content, that keeps the visitors glued, even if you get a little low CTR (not that you will), but you will be getting high priced ads and regular visitors, too. So the bottom is concentrate on providing quality content that provides value to your visitors. For AdSense, quality content is the king.

*Proper Ad Positioning: Proper positioning of ads on your website has direct impact on your CTR. Change the location of the ads and watch changes in your CTR regularly. Try to locate the area of the page where the focus of the visitor can be. Generally, AdSense ads near the quality content or other crucial areas like navigation bar tend to perform better. But it really depends upon the keywords you are targeting, and the traffic you have.

* Right Ad Formats: As the Google engineers say, more user friendly ads, more widespread tend to do better than towers and others. But you have to decide what work best for you based on your site layout, design etc.

* Right Ad Colors: The colors you use for your AdSense Ad Units also affects the CTR. As a rule you have to use those color that will make the Ads look like an integral part of your content. Blend in colors are often recommended. For more information see our article "How to Optimize AdSense Ad Colors"

Tweak and Experiment

Experiment and experiment a lot, till you are satisfied with the tweaks you have done to achieve highest CTR. Track your page performance by making channels of ads in your AdSense Control Panel and experiment till you are satisfied with your CTR. Though, each such experiment will make you loose money for a day or two, as Google may take time to adjust with new changes, but it will be beneficial in long run.

KeywordCountry helps AdSense webmasters in increasing their AdSense revenue. KeywordCountry is a library of 2.83 million Top paying keywords containing thousands of niche keywords.

Some popular affiliate marketing programs

2011-11-16T21:51:00.000-08:00

How Many Types Of Affiliate Marketing Programs Do You Know?

Affiliate marketing programs have never been as popular before as they are today. Why? There can be a number of reasons. The most probable reason, however, could be the fact that the benefits of affiliate marketing have become clearer to a lot of people now than they were before.

Today, both the merchants and the affiliates can see clearly that affiliate marketing can work for both of them. The merchant sees affiliate marketing today as the chance to advertise their products at a lower cost. The affiliates, on the other hand, sees affiliate marketing as an easy way of earning profits online by doing what they like most, and that is by creating websites.

Just as the popularity of affiliate marketing has shifted into greater heights, so has the people's outlook about it changed. No longer is affiliate marketing considered today as an alternative method for the merchant to advertise his products, or as a source of additional income for the affiliates. For merchants and affiliates alike, affiliate marketing is now considered as a main source of profits and revenues.

So the question now is what type of affiliate marketing will work best for you? Are all affiliate marketing programs the same? Are the benefits the same? Or are there affiliate marketing programs that work better than the others?

There are actually different types or classes of affiliate marketing, and the number of types will depend on how one will classify them. The most basic affiliate marketing programs, however, falls under two categories: pay-per-click (PPC), and pay-per-performance (PPP).

* Pay Per Click (PPC)

PPC is the most popular type of affiliate marketing for affiliates with small websites, and probably the easiest way for them to earn money. In this affiliate marketing type, the merchant pays his affiliate whenever a visitor is referred to his site, that is whenever someone clicks through the merchant's banner or text ads. The affiliate gets paid a certain amount even if the visitor he referred does not purchase anything from the merchant's site. However, typical fees for PPC affiliate programs are small, usually not exceeding a dollar for every click.

* Pay Per Performance (PPP)

PPP affiliate marketing is the most popular among merchant and is also the most lucrative type for the affiliates. In this type of affiliate program, the merchant only pays the affiliate whenever his referral translates into an action--that is whenever the visitor he has referred actually buys something from the merchant's site or when the visitor becomes a lead. This means a lot of savings for the merchant. On the other hand, it becomes the most lucrative type for the dedicated affiliate, for commissions in PPP affiliate marketing usually comes in the range of 15% to 20% of the actual product sales.

Pay-per-performance affiliate marketing can be further classified into two popular types: pay-per-sales (PPS) and pay-per-lead (PPL).

* Pay Per Sale (PPS)

In a pay-per-sale type of affiliate marketing, the merchants pay the affiliate a certain fee whenever the visitor he has referred to the merchant's site actually buys something from the merchant's site. Affiliates are often paid on commission basis, although other merchants would opt to pay a fixed fee. But no matter what the basis of the fee is, it is generally higher than the fee paid to affiliates in a pay-per-click affiliate program.

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Affiliate, Article and Internet Marketing in general isn't as easy as many would have us believe. I fully understand (through my own experiences) that it is a lot easier said than done. However, you are here, right now, because you have a desire to improve your business, grow your business, and be more successful. These articles are here with the sole intention of helping you to make the whole process a lot easier.

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* Pay Per Lead (PPL)

The pay-per-lead type of affiliate marketing is a slight variation of the PPS type and is often used by insurance and finance companies and other companies who rely on leads for their company to grow. In this type of affiliate marketing, the affiliate is paid whenever the visitor he referred to the merchant's site fills up an application form or any similar form related to the business of the company. Compensation for this type of affiliate marketing is based on a fixed fee whose rates approximate that of the fixed fee in the PPS type.

Apart from these three specific types of affiliate marketing, a lot of other affiliate marketing types exist. If the classification is based on the depth of the affiliate network, it can be classified as single-tier, two-tier, and multi-tier affiliate marketing. There is also another type of affiliate marketing that pays the affiliate each time the customer he has referred purchases something from the merchant's site.

* Single-Tier, Two-Tier, and Multi-Tier Affiliate Marketing

These types of affiliate marketing are based on the different levels or tiers in the affiliate network by which payments are made. In a single-tier affiliate marketing program, the affiliates are only paid based on the direct sales or traffic he has referred to the merchant. All the previously mentioned affiliate marketing types (i.e. PPS, PPL, and PPC) fall under the single-tier classification.

* In two-tier affiliate marketing programs, the affiliate is not only paid for the direct traffic or sales that he refers to the merchant's site, but also on every traffic or sales referred by various other affiliates who joined the affiliate program through his recommendation. Multi-tier affiliate marketing works the same way, although the affiliate gets additional commission for a wider number of affiliates in different tiers in the affiliate network.

* Residual Income Affiliate Marketing

In residual income affiliate marketing, the affiliate gets paid not only once for every customer he has referred to the merchant's site. Rather, the affiliate is also paid whenever the customer he has referred returns to the site and purchase another product. Compensation for such type of affiliate marketing is based on either sales percentage commission or fixed fee basis.

The different affiliate marketing types would virtually work differently for merchants and affiliates alike, and each would generally have their own list of benefits. Which type of affiliate marketing will work best for you? It is not really for me to tell. Rather, it is for you to choose which type of affiliate marketing program will suit your needs and characteristics best.

NOW is the time!

O.K. you have read the article. Now is the time for action. Without action, this article adds no value whatsoever to your affiliate success. But remember, without action, you cannot blame this affiliate marketing article or any article for that matter. So, take action NOW.

Even if only one piece of advice, one piece of information, one tip makes a difference, then the whole article has been worth it for all of us.

NOW is the time!

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Metatag is important for search engine optimization

2011-11-16T21:05:00.000-08:00

Defining Meta Tags is much easier than explaining how they are used, and by which engines. The reason is very few engines clearly lay out what they do and do not look at, and how much emphasis they put on any one factor. So, we'll start with the easy part

Meta Tags are lines of HTML code embedded into web pages that are used by search engines to store information about your site. These "tags" contain keywords, descriptions, copyright information, site titles and more. They are among the numerous things that the search engines look for, when trying to evaluate a web site.

Meta Tags are not "required" when you're creating web pages. Unfortunately, many web site operators who don't use them are left wondering why the saying "If I build it they will come" didn't apply to their site.

There's also a few naysayers in the search engine optimization industry who claim that Meta Tags are useless. You can believe them if you like, but you would be wise not to. While not technically "required", Meta Tags are essential.

If you simply create a web site and register the URL with the search engines, their spiders will visit your site, and attempt to index it. Each search engine operates slightly differently, and each one weighs different elements of a web site according to their own proprietary algorithms. For example, Altavista places an emphasis on the description tag and Inktomi states on their web site that;

Inktomi "(...) indexes both the full text of the Web page you submit as well as the meta-tags within the site's HTML."

Other search engines like Exactseek are true meta tag search engines which clearly state their policy:

"Your site will not be added if it does not have Title and Meta Description tags."

They also use the keywords tag.

Of course, not all search engines work this way. Some place their emphasis on content. The search engines have over 100 individual factors they look at when reviewing a web site. Some of these factors deal with page structure. They check to see that all the 't's are crossed, and the 'i's dotted. They note sites that have omitted basic steps, like missing tags.

One reason so many engines de-emphasized the meta-keyword tag had to do with spam. There was a time when 'search engine promotion specialists' would cram keywords tags full of irrelevant information. The web site would be selling garbage cans, but the keywords tags were chock full of irrelevant terms like "mp3" or "Britney Spears". They figured that if enough people visited their site, some would buy.

So today, to avoid and penalize this kind of abuse, some search engines don't specifically use the keywords tag as part of the scoring of a site, but they monitor the keywords to ensure they match the content in the site. The reasoning being that, if the tags are irrelevant, they must have an alternate purpose. Is it a spam site? When keywords tags are completely irrelevant to the content, some search engines, that don't specifically use keywords tags, will penalize that web site.

Even for those engines that have downplayed the value of Meta Tags, there are situations where Meta Tags gain considerably in importance, e.g. sites with rich graphics, but poor textual content. Unfortunately, a picture is worth 1000 words to you and me, but zero to a search engine. If a site has poor textual content, the engines will be more dependent than ever on the Meta Tags to properly categorize it.

Even if you ensure you have completely relevant Meta Tags, some search engines will still ignore them. But better they ignore them, than they ignore your whole site because they suspect something is less than above board. Never hope that having Meta Tags will make the difference in all the search engines; nothing is a substitute for good content. But in cases where the engine depends on that content, it may be the only thing that does work for your site.

So How To Use The Meta Tags?

Meta tags should always be placed in the area of an HTML document. This starts just after the tag, and ends immediately before the tag. Here's how the most basic set should look:

Search Engine Optimization Software - Metamend

Always make sure that your meta tags do not have any line breaks, otherwise the search engines will just see bad code and ignore them. You should also avoid use of capitals in your code (html5 standard) as well as repetition of terms within the keywords tag.

What Goes Into a Meta Tag?

For the Description tag: ; Many search engines will display this summary along with the title of your page in their search results. Keep this reasonably short, concise and to the point, but make sure that it's an appropriate reflection of your site content.

For the keyword tag;

Keywords represent the key terms that someone might enter into a search engine. Choose only relevant keywords. If the terms are going to appear in your keywords tag, they must appear in the content of your site, or be a synonym to a term on your site. Most search engines compare your meta content with what is actually on your page, and if it doesn't match, your web site can get penalized, and suffer in search results.

for the Robots tag ;Many web pages have this tag wrong. An example of the wrong usage is content="index, follow, all" - wrong because some spiders can't handle spaces between the words in the tag or the word "all". Most engines by default assume that you want a web page to be indexed and links followed, so using the wrong syntax can actually result in the spider coming to the wrong conclusion and penalizing, or worse, ignoring the page outright. If by chance you do not want your links followed, or the page not indexed, then you would substitute "noindex" and or "nofollow" into the tag.

With the Internet growing at a rate of over 8,000,000 new pages per day, and the search engines adding a fraction of that number, Meta Tags are a common standard which can reasonably ensure a measure of proper categorization for a web site. So, always ensure that you cover all the bases, and use completely relevant terms in properly structured Meta Tags. Using tags properly will pay dividends in the short and long term. After all, using them properly only helps the search engines, which means they will send you more qualified traffic - customers.

Importance of metatag for your website

2011-11-16T21:00:00.000-08:00

If you're looking for the best rankings for your website and looking for a quick way to get a boost, then metatags are not for you. Their role in search engine optimization is often times misunderstood by members of the webmaster community. They think SEO is all about picking and stuffing keywords. Well, I'm here to tell you it isn't and try to explain what they actually are good for.

Meta tags never have been a surefire way to gain that top ranking on the search engine results pages. Instead, their most valuable feature is the ability to influence to some degree how their web pages are described by the search engines. They also give you the ability to prevent certain pages from being indexed at all.

Here are some of the main metatags you need to pay attention to with a brief description of what each does:

Title Tag - Your website's title tag is the single most important "on page" element for search engine optimization. It essentially tells the search engines what your page is all about. During the initial design of your website, make a decision on the best keywords for each of the pages. On each page, Use the most important keywords as your title tag. There are some search engine optimization services which recommend keeping your title tag to 70 characters or less but most will agree that longer title tags are probably not harmful. The extra characters are usually ignored by the search engine spiders.
Keywords Metatag - You really should apply a keywords metatag. Don't put much time into thinking about one or stressing over it. Use the top three or four keywords you targeted your page for, and place them in the keywords tag. There are a dozen or so of other factors of your website which are more important. Focus more on its design and implementation of your page that these tags.
Robots Metatag - The use of robot metatags is a relatively new technique. Originally started by Google, now they are used by all the search engines. These tags are designed to tell the search engine spiders when you do or do not want them to index a webpage. It also allows you to tell the spiders when you do not want the search engine to look at or evaluate any links on your page. You have the ability to specify what you want the search engines to see in other words. Keep in mind that not every search engine will obey these at this point of the search engine optimization game.
Description Metatags - These tags are usually only see limited use from search engines. Very similar to a keywords tag, description tags are not generally user visible. They are somewhat useless for search engine marketing purposes since the search engines normally do not consider the content of these for their page ranking purposes. However, they do use description metatags as the description of your page for their search results pages. That's why you always need to make sure that you have a good description tags for all of your pages. The description should be written well enough that it will attract a potential user to click on the link to your site instead someone else's. Don't bother stuffing it with keywords since they are not used for ranking purposes. Instead, write something convincing telling the user why your pages are better than another website and the benefit from doing so.
NoODP Metatag - This somewhat new Metatag allows you to tell search engines like MSN and Google that you don't want them use their Open Directory Project description for as the search engine results pages. You need to use this because many site descriptions in ODP are normally out of date. The ODP is an all volunteer organization, and sometimes the editors are inactive for a period of time.

Other than the important title tag, information in the head area of your web pages can't be seen by users reading in browsers. Instead, this meta-information should only be used to communicate vital information how the search engines see your site and not anything a human visitor be concerned with.

Find the best niche for your website

2011-11-16T03:40:00.000-08:00

Today, everyone is talking about niche marketing niche businesses and niche websites, but not many people know how or even why to find a niche for themselves. Specifically, you don't know how or why to find a niche for your business. Many people aren't even sure what a niche is.

Before you start a business of any kind, you need to find your niche. For your business to be successful, you need to find a niche that works for you; but why?

First, if you aren't sure, let's discuss what a niche is. After all, how can you find a niche if you aren't sure what it is?

For our purposes, a niche is a market segment, or a small part of a large market. Look at the world as a large marketplace, kind of like a huge shopping mall. A niche is like one kind of store, like a shoe store. If you look closer, you'll see one or two stores that specialize only in casual women's shoes. That would be a niche. When you want to see casual women's shoes, you would go there. If you are looking to buy fresh coffee beans or bananas, you wouldn't go there.

Now if you are starting an internet business, you might think that you want to try to sell to everyone on the whole internet. Why would I want to find a niche and limit myself to a smaller number of people? Wouldn't I make more money selling to everyone? Not really. Here's why.

When people come to the mall, they aren't looking to spend time or money on everything in the world. They want to buy a pair of shoes or a suit or a birthday gift for a friend. They are not going to go into every store looking to buy something. They are going to look at the mall directory for stores that offer what they want.

If you want to start a home business, you want to start as simply as possible. You might want to have a lot of customers, but you only want those who want what you are offering. If you buy advertising, you only want to pay to reach those people who need or want your service or product, not for everyone in the world.

The internet is just like the mall. People come for information; information about nutrition for their child, or first aid for their dog. They might want to know how to fix a leaky pipe or how to pick the best digital camera for under $50. They want specific information or products. On the internet, there is a "mall directory" - it's called a search engine. There are a number of search engines on the internet. Three of the biggest are Google, Yahoo and Bing, but there are many more.

In order for enough people to find you, you need for the search engines to show them where to find you. People go the search engines to find one thing at a time; they are trying to find a niche that has what they are looking for. That's why you need to find a niche for yourself. After all, if you are selling cigars, it won't help you to have little Tommy Teenager come to your site looking for pimple cream.

Here are a few benefits of choosing a small niche when you are about to start your small business, especially to start a home business:

Advertising efforts are easier because you have a target market.
You don't have to spend your valuable time explaining your service or product to people who are not true prospects.
Because your own mind is clear about your target market, you can learn that market better and serve that market better.
Because your efforts are concentrated in one niche, you can easily become the "expert" in your market.

That, my friend, is why you want to find a niche that works for you.

Before you start a business, find your own niche. You can't be everything to all people and you can't please all the people all the time. The smart entrepreneur knows how to concentrate his efforts.

5 steps to find best niche for your website

2011-11-16T03:39:00.000-08:00

Picking a profitable niche is crucial in driving traffic to your website. Although there are no guaranteed techniques to select a lucrative niche, I will show in this article 8 simple steps which will help you to choose the best niche for your website.

1. Create a list of your interest and hobbies

Make a note of everything you are enthusiastic and interested about. This is extremely important as writing about a subject that you like will help to keep you motivated about your website. This could really be about anything, sports, vintage cars, upholstery, etc.

2. Create another list that concentrates on the things you excel at

Learn from your friends and family what they believe you are great at! Some people may bring up subjects you would never have considered! In my particular case, the fact that I was good at drawing was a recurring theme amongst my friends and family! However, it could be that you are good with children or the elderly, or excel at baking!

3. Combine the 2 Lists

If you can find any similarities between the 2 lists this will give you a good head start on the subject you can write about on your website. Having said that, you don't need to be an expert to write about a specific subject. You can still select a topic as long as you are passionate about and willing to learn about it.

4. Select your preferred top 3 niches

From the combined list you put together in step 3, extract the top 3 subjects you are most passionate about. Next, use Google keyword tool to find out the numbers of monthly visitors to your potential niche. Ideally you should be aiming for a niche showing a figure in excess of 20,000 searches per month.

5. Find out the profitability of your niche

The easiest way to establish whether your niche is profitable or not is by typing your subject keywords in Google and looking at the number of sponsored ads listed on the top and right handset of the results pages. If people are prepared to pay for these keywords, this confirms that they are indeed profitable!

On the other hand if when typed into Google your keyword brings no sponsored ads, this is an obvious sign that there is very little or no money to be made in that particular niche.

Importance of html sitemap

2011-11-16T02:59:00.000-08:00

For many years now, SEO professionals have been emphasizing the importance of HTML sitemaps for website optimization. This is not surprising because an HTML sitemap is one of the key elements that can help search engine bots to find and index all the pages on your website.

More importantly, sitemaps provide a good experience for your site visitors. This is particularly true if you have a very large website with hundreds of pages of content. Through the sitemap, users can easily find what they are looking for on your site. As everyone knows, Google and other major search engines are really fond of websites that provide good user experience for visitors.

HTML Sitemaps: A Quick Look

Basically, HTML sitemaps are web pages. They are no different from your home page, about pages, and other sub-pages on your website. So it is really not difficult to create an HTML sitemap; as long you know how to create a page, you will surely have the competence to build a sitemap.

The difference between a sitemap and other pages on your site is content. Sitemaps consist purely of links that point directly to individual pages of your site. And whatever updates you make on your website, you have to ensure that your sitemap will be updated also.

The Importance of HTML Sitemaps for Bots and Humans

There is no doubt that HTML sitemaps are very important for your website. It makes your website very friendly for bots and humans.

Search engine spiders or bots really do not have any idea what's on your website. Without links, these bots will index your main page and nothing more. If you have a sitemap, the bots can crawl and index even your deeply nested pages. So if you want a page that you want to rank high on search results, you can make it more likely to happen by guiding the bots through the sitemap.

The same benefits can be enjoyed by your human users. It is a known fact that site visitors do not have the patience to explore all the pages of a website. They want to find the information they need in just one to two clicks.

If you do not have a sitemap, there is a greater chance that your visitors will leave your website without finding the information they need. So you lose big time. But if you have a ready sitemap that serves like a street-finder, you are practically handing the information to your visitors on a silver platter. And they will love you for this great service and thus earning their loyalty.

Why Not XML Sitemaps?

Technically, HTML and XML sitemaps are both juicy for the search engines. They like the fact that their bots can work efficiently in indexing your web pages. Unfortunately, XML sitemaps are only useful for search engines. Human visitors will not be able to find value with XML sitemaps because they will just see a bunch of code there.

Because they please both bots and people, it makes them more advantageous over XML sitemaps.

Ensure page indexing by a xml sitemap

2011-11-16T02:56:00.000-08:00

Is an XML Sitemap effective in getting your website Page Indexed on Google? Or indexed on any other Search Engines?

Creating and XML-based Sitemap and FTP'ing this XML Sitemap to the lowest directory on your website does alert the Google spider robot to review your website. It is an effective way to get more of your web pages indexed for your website. It is also effective, when you add new pages/content to your website, to:

1) regenerate a new XML Sitemap file, FTP it to your website

2) alert Google Site Maps to look at your site AGAIN NOW.

And now XML Sitemaps have just become even more important!

Google, Yahoo and MSN have all announced that by January 2007, they will all standardize on the use of one common XML Sitemap file to index your website! All three mega search engines will now use the same XML Sitemap file to index your website. Great news!

So what are the steps in creating and getting the Google XML Sitemap file to your website directory?

These 4 Steps will get your XML sitemap file created and registered with Google:

(1) use a software tool to create the sitemap in Google's designated XML format. You can create a Google Sitemap for FREE (maximum 750 pages per website) at Sitemap Generator. Be patient with this FREE XML Sitemap file generator. It sometimes reports URL breaks (likely timeouts) when there are none. I found using it off peak hours (late at nite) generates cleaner files.

ADDED BENEFIT: The Sitemap Generator also creates HTML, ROR and Text Sitemap Files, which are used by thousands of other search engines and web crawlers to index your website.

(2) upload the XML file (and HTML, ROR and text files) to your website. You want to FTP the XML sitemap File created in step (1) to the lowest level directory on your website. There are many FREE FTP programs our there. Download the latest version of Filezilla. It is one of the easier FTP programs to use.

(3) Verification - notify Google of the existence of the XML sitemap file. This is done by registering at the Google Webmaster Tools. Follow the steps at Google Sitemap to Verify your website by FTP'ing the Google Verification file to your website and then requesting Site Verification. You need only do this verification step once. Under the Webmaster Tools Dashboardyou will see a check mark for each of your sites that have been verified.

(4) Submit XML file - once Verification is confirmed by Google Webmaster Tools click on the appropriate listing under the Sitemap heading. Highlight the box next to sitemap.xml and then click on Resubmit Selected button. Your sitemap.xml file will now be submitted to Google for indexing.

From this point forward, whenever you change/add/delete links or add/delete pages on your website you repeat steps 1, 2 and 4 so that the Google, Yahoo and MSN web bots can re-index your website.

While you're at it, create a specific HTML Sitemap Page on your website to be used by other search engines and directories. This will help their BOTS and Web Crawlers migrate through your website. This Sitemap Page also acts as an index for your customers helping them migrate your website. Here is a sample Sitemap Page [http://www.myleatherexpressions.com/page/13078].

Bottom line: XML Sitemap files are an important ingredient in getting your webpages indexed in Google as well as Yahoo and MSN. It is equally important as the top two SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategies, Keywords and Inbound Links. No excuse now. Just Do it.

Why you need a xml sitemap for your website

2011-11-16T02:53:00.000-08:00

So you've built your website and put it up online for the world to see. You have put your sales information, made an exciting offer, you have nice graphics and are just waiting now for people to find your site and buy your products.

The problem is that they can't find you. They may be looking for exactly what you have to offer them but how do they know you are even there?

Well, part of the puzzle is a small file you put on your website called a "sitemap". Now before we go much further, let's define what a sitemap actually is. First off, there are 2 different kinds of "sitemap". One is an html page on your website that has links to all the other pages in your site. Visitors to your site might use this page to find various areas of information on your website. You might have links in there to your information page, your questions and answers page, your contact page and so on. Many people are familiar with this and may even have used a sitemap on another website before.

There is also another form of this sitemap that you need to have on your page. Simply put it serves the same function as the html sitemap but is directed specifically to the search engines. The file is in the xml format and lists all the pages on your site along with other information relevant to the search engines such as the relative importance of various pages on your site and how often your pages are updated.

So how do you create one of these files? Well there are a number of different tools you can use and they are easily found online. Simply search for "sitemap generator" or "create sitemap". Some programs will run over the web and some are easily downloaded to your computer - this allows you to save and edit your sitemaps easily. In either case, the output of these programs should give you a file that has an .xml extension. You would typically name it sitemap.xml and then simply upload it to the root directory of your website.

After that, it is simply a matter of letting the search engines know that the file is there and they can start looking through it. Each of the search engines handles the sitemap submission a bit differently but they will all find the sitemap if you link to it in your robots.txt file.

In any case, be aware that you should have a sitemap.xml file on your website for the search engines. Now, this will not directly affect your rankings in the search engines but it will enable the search engines to index your entire site - without missing any pages. And, it will encourage them to do it sooner than later. That could affect your rankings.

How sitemap can help your website

2011-11-16T02:52:00.000-08:00

A SiteMap is a document that lists all of the pages of a website. There are two kinds of site maps, one built for human website visitors and one built especially for search engines - the XML (eXtensible Markup Language) Sitemap.

The site map designed for humans lists and links to every page and area of a website, much like an index or "Table of Contents". Most will display the pages hierarchically, listing them by category and location within the site. This type of sitemap helps users find the content they want quickly, and also helps search engine bots crawl the site more thoroughly.

The XML Sitemap is not meant for website visitors, and is not a viewable page of the site - as it is nothing but strings of code. It is written specifically for search engines as a way of communicating directly with them about what areas of the site are currently online, functioning, and ready to be crawled and indexed. An XML Sitemap is especially useful if your site has some areas which cannot be navigated to through the site itself, or if your site contains content which search engines have trouble crawling, like Flash or Ajax.

If you have a large website, or a website with content that changes frequently, manually creating and maintaining your own sitemap may be more than you have time to deal with. There are many online automated XML sitemap creators, both free and paid versions, which will create a Sitemap for you to upload - though you will need to re-create it or make updates to it yourself when pages are added or removed from your website. There are also many automated XML sitemap generators available that are installed on your website's server. When in place, they will create, maintain and update your XML Sitemap automatically.

Each web page referenced on the Sitemap must be set up like this:

< urlset >

< url >

< loc > "http://yourwebsite.com/ "< /loc >

< lastmod >2010-06-28< /lastmod >

< changefreq >weekly< /changefreq >

< priority >0.5< /priority >

< /url >

< /urlset >

... though not all of those fields are necessary. The "lastmod", "changefreq", and "priority" elements are optional.

The "lastmod" element simply states when the particular page was last updated, and has no effect on when the search engines will re-crawl it.

The "changefreq" element is used to tell the search engines how often you anticipate the page changing. The options are "always", "hourly", "daily", "weekly", "monthly", "yearly", or "never". Using it has no effect at all on how often a page is crawled.

The "priority" element is used to tell the search engines how important each individual page is within the site, on a scale of 0.1 to 1.0, with 1.0 being the most important. Once again, these numbers have no effect at all on which pages will or won't appear in search results.

However, including these elements but using them incorrectly will have an effect on the search engines. For example, setting all pages of your site at priority 1.0 will probably cause Google to reject your sitemap entirely.

Uploading an XML site map for search engines has essentially replaced the older method of communicating with them - which was to submit URLs through an online form. As a site owner you can either submit your XML sitemap directly or upload it your server and wait for them to find it on their own. All of the major search engines have a method in place for formally submitting your site map to them, though you'll usually need to set up Webmaster's accounts to do so. It's also possible to add the following line of text to your websites robots.txt document to direct all search engine crawlers to the location of your XML sitemap:

Sitemap: "http://www.yourwebsitehere.com/sitemap.xml"

While a robots.txt page usually tells the search engines what NOT to crawl and add to their database, an XML Sitemap tells them what they are welcome to include. Submitting a Sitemap will not guarantee the inclusion or regular crawling of any pages of a website, and will not improve rankings for the pages included. As a website owner you want to make it as easy as possible for the search engines to visit your site and index its pages. If your website isn't huge and uses clear and simple text-based navigation you probably don't NEED an XML sitemap. But, since the opportunity to directly relay information about your website exists in this document, it simply makes sense to have one whether it's needed or not.

Ten ways to build quality baklinks

2011-11-16T00:12:00.000-08:00

The Top 10 Ways to Build Backlinks

Backlinks are incoming links to a website or a webpage. They are also commonly referred to as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks and inward links.

Why are backlinks so important?

Backlinks are the most important factor for determining a website's search engine ranking. The number of backlinks is an indication of popularity - the links themselves are synonymous to votes. The website with the most votes is the most important, and these websites rank higher on organic search queries in Google, Yahoo!, Bing and other search engines.

The backlinks themselves must meet several criteria. The links must be placed on relevant pages that hold a good search engine rank. Also, search engines do not just care about the number of backlinks, but how these links were achieved. If a website builds too many backlinks within a month, for example because they used a backlink purchasing service, then the search engine may discredit these links and the importance of the website because the backlinks were not created organically.

For these reasons, the quality of backlinks is more important than the quantity of links.

One of the best strategies to achieve more backlinks is a geometric link building strategy that requires a website to gradually build backlinks over time. Listed below are the top ten ways to attain more backlinks in order to improve the website's overall page rank and SEO.

1. Website Directories

Submit company information and website URL to online directories. These sites typically offer two options: users can submit basic information for free, or create an enhanced listing for a low monthly or annual cost.

2. RSS Directories

Submit feeds to company blogs and websites to RSS (Really Simple Syndication) directories for free or at a cost. Directory visitors can explore blogs and articles in specific industries and niches.

3. Press Release Distribution Sites

Submit news articles and press releases to free and/or paid news distribution websites. Depending on the website, services can include distributing articles to every major news site and search engine on the web, and giving detailed analytics of the press release.

4. Article Marketing/Article Directory Sites

Post articles and other content to these sites for more exposure, credibility and targeted traffic. A membership is typically required (for free or at a price).

5. Build Company Blog

Create a company blog (if it does not exist already) and create more content and posts. This will increase the probability of the articles being reiterated. Also, notable individuals could be interviewed in order to build readership.

6. Blog/Forum Commenting

Comment on blogs and forums that are relevant to a niche and have good page rank. Add a backlink in the signature line. Make sure that the website allows URL posting in the comments.

7. Guest Blogging

Offer to write free content for a website that is relevant to industry. In exchange, add a backlink in the byline of the article.

8. Social Bookmarking Sites

Utilize bookmarks that reference and share online resources on social media and other bookmarking sites. These communities allow people to discover and share content relevant to their interests.

9. Testimonials

Write testimonials for clients, suppliers and other collaborators and ask them to post it to their websites.

10. Joint Ventures/Partnerships

Ask friends, acquaintances, partners and the like to post the backlink URL to their webpage. Be sure to offer to reciprocate the favor.

Collectively, these ten recommendations will create an efficient and effective backlink building strategy. It is important to differentiate the links; use deep links that navigate to other pages on the website apart from the homepage. The most important takeaway concept is that quality beats quantity. Create backlinks that are relevant to an industry or niche. In the long-term this will boost search engine page rank.

How to get quality backlinks

2011-11-16T00:11:00.000-08:00

What are backlinks? Backlinks are links going to your site, blog, or article from another who thinks enough of your site to put a link back to it from theirs. Backlinks in my opinion are the single most important factor in Google's page ranking qualifications. There of course are other very important aspects of SEO and they all need to work in concert, but I feel the money bag comes with good quality backlinks.

Let's take a look at the components that make up a good backlink. First off it links to your site, the link has your targeted keywords, with good anchor text and the link is from a well ranked like minded website. You want the link to be from the same genre site as yours but one that has more link juice or a solid Google page rank. This is the "Link Juice" that everybody talks about from a good quality backlink. Also the proper anchor text pointing to a specific page on your site relevant to the specifically targeted keywords is extremely important.

Dofollow or Nofollow, that is the question. Dofollow links are when you include in the html code instructions for the webcrawlers or spiders to follow the links on your site. Obviously a NoFollow would tell the crawlers not to spider your links. Funny part is there is no real DoFollow html code just code that tells the crawler do not follow otherwise it is considered a Dofollow link. The pros and cons of a DoFollow link are simple the big upside is the search engines will search your links from other pages and get back to your site. This can be a big part of your link building efforts, not the only part but a very important one. Bad side of Dofollow is you may be link to a bunch of spamming low quality sites that can hurt your page rank. As for the NoFollow, some people use the Nofollow links to protect their sites integrity. I do not feel this will be a huge problem as long as you use quality sites to link with, so in my opinion Dofollow is the way to go. A great tool to have for checking whether or not a particular blog or site uses Dofollow links is Nodofollow 1.1, a Firefox add-on.

Question is how do you get 'em and valuable ones too, not just fluff that is considered crap by the Google bot. You will need to put together a plan, a step by step list of what you will need to do and make sure all of the ingredients for a good backlink are present. Target web 2.0 sites to start but do not over do it and make sure your articles and posts are human no auto generation. Also use doc storage sites as these rank very high as well. Then use an article directory that is well known and has a good page rank. Do five of each and then test the results. Rinse then repeat because the web property you are building will start to payoff and they will be valuable backlinks you can use in your linking strategy. You will also want to post to various blogs and video sites as well as profile only to several more. Once you build this quality real estate then you start working on improving you position and content.

It is hard work getting premium backlinks these days there are no more freebies on the web anymore you have to work for good backlinks. Like I said before put a plan together that goes step by step like instructions for putting together a gas grill. If this is a little too much or you don't have enough time to come up with an elaborate backlinking scheme then consider buying a product that can do all the work for you. There are many backlinking strategies out there and some real good ones for a small price. I use a little product called Page Posture, because it is a step by step point and click backlinking strategy and it really helped me develop my web property. Think about getting a decent backlinking plan that works and won't break your bank and then you are already halfway there.

Promote your website on facebook

2011-11-16T00:07:00.000-08:00

Facebook is an interactive stage with millions of potential customers, targetable by common interests or home country or even date of birth. The average user mentality is receptive to new ideas and online content, and is willing to share a wealth of personal information.

Through the genius of social networking, your website or business can quickly develop a presence on the net without a large advertising budget. Here I've identified five easy ways to take advantage of Facebook's incredible reach and supercharge your online business operations.

Create a Facebook Page
Claim a Unique Username
Add a Widget to Your Website
Create a Landing Page

1. Create a Facebook Page

A Facebook Page is a public profile that enables you to share your business and products with thousands of other Facebook users. Anyone can create a page in a few minutes and invite other users to join.

The advantage of having a page to promote your business on Facebook is you can build up a dedicated following. While it depends on your niche (a page for an accountancy firm might be as boring as it gets), giving fans the opportunity to join and share opinions is not to be missed.

What's more, all your Facebook followers will be alerted to your latest stories and comments. This is just as powerful as a mailing list - if not more, because you can stay in daily contact with fans. (I don't know about you but I regard daily emails as intrusive and spammy. Yet I'll willingly listen to daily ramblings of every man and his dog on Facebook.)

With such a powerful communication channel geared to reach thousands of targeted users, I strongly recommend creating a Facebook Page for most types of business, online or offline. It is a fantastic way to create an online community and make your marketing go viral when users amplify your voice to their friends... and their friends of friends... and so on.

How to Create a Facebook Page

Make sure you populate your page with enough information about your business or website, including your name (so friends will always recognize you) and your website address and logo. I also post my Facebook Page link on my personal profile, which encourages my existing friends to join up if they're interested. A lively community will begin to snowball once you have about 500 followers, and the page will maintain itself. All you need do is check up a few times per week and post your latest thoughts and content to encourage repeat traffic.

Facebook Page vs Facebook Group

Facebook Groups are another kind of public profile often confused with Facebook Pages. There are a few key differences:

Facebook Pages are visible to everyone and indexed by Google. But you can only invite new people to join manually - no bulk invites. You can create a custom URL for your Page, host discussions, add extra applications, message all members via their news feed, gain visitor statistics, share videos and photos, create related events, and promote them with Facebook ads. In short, Pages are generally better for creating long term relationships with your followers.
Facebook Groups are only visible to fans and not indexed by Google. However you can send out bulk invites to friends, who can also bulk invite their friends. You have to use a long tail URL but can host discussions, message all members via private messages, and share videos and photos. So Groups are better for viral marketing, but not necessarily gaining repeat or long term followers.

Finally, when you promote your business on Facebook, keep a reasonable segregation from your personal Facebook activities. In particular, don't use your personal profile page to create a fan base as this limits you to 5,000 followers - plus you will never be able to draw the line between work and play. All your followers will be able to see your personal photos of family and friends and anyone other photos you are tagged in.

2. Claim a Unique Username

Once you have 25 followers of your Facebook Page, you can claim a Facebook username. This is a custom URL that changes your Facebook Page address from a long tail string to something a bit catchier, such as facebook.com/careerevolution

This is a much easier way for people to look up and remember your Facebook Page. It also creates a personalized home on the web for your business (although I strongly recommend this is not your first port of call - a custom website should come first). You can also refer to this URL anywhere on the internet as a way of directing new fans to your Facebook Page. That includes your own website, in blog comments, on other social network sites, in You Tube videos, and anywhere else you can gain new followers.

3. Add a Widget to Your Website

Aside from Facebook referrals, the next biggest source of new followers will be your website. Facebook offers a number of social widgets to promote your Facebook Page. I recommend creating a Like Box which can include thumbnails of people who already follow you. (As social creatures, we love to conform and seeing that other people already like something reinforces our urge to follow too.) Depending on how much space you have, your widget can also include a news stream.

4. Create a Landing Page

When you send a new follower to your Facebook Page, they will automatically land on your Wall. They will be confronted with the latest user comments or photos, and it may be difficult to understand what your Facebook Page is actually about. You risk losing them altogether.

Instead of dumping them straight on your Wall and hoping that will compel them to "Like" your page, send them to a landing page which gives them some solid reasons to join. It looks much more professional and can dramatically increase your conversion rate.

I suggest you use PhotoShop or another high quality design program to create an image 520 x 500 pixels, featuring your business logo, your tag line, several benefits of joining, and maybe a picture of you to add credibility (if your personality is part of the package).

A good landing page is clean and easy to understand, creates instant brand recognition with our logo and credibility with your photo. It also explains exactly what you offer and conveys your Unique Selling Proposition (a USP is something you offer that no-one else does quite the same way).

There is also a direct instruction explaining what you want the visitor to do. It's like an advert, but you are not actually selling anything. All you want them to do is hit the "Like" button which appears above the image. Using a landing page like this has been proven to increase conversion rates of new visitors to a Facebook Page.

Promote your website for free

2011-11-16T00:05:00.000-08:00

So you've built a beautiful website but want to drive traffic to it. Without any web traffic it will join the 1000s of abandoned ones on the Net where the site owners gave up. Most beginners can't invest much money to promote their website so they use free methods instead of paid advertising. Instead of providing 100s of methods I'll just outline the most effective free methods beginners can use to promote a website.

Steps to promote your website

1. Create a marketing plan

Without a clear marketing plan you'll probably give up. Write down your marketing strategies, how to do them and when will they be done. Create a schedule (e.g. write and publish an article three times a week) then stick to it until you begin to see results (e.g. increased traffic, subscribers, sales).

2. Optimize your website for the search engines

Search engines use keywords to find your web pages therefore include them throughout your website e.g. title and description meta tags, headings, subheadings, main content, navigation links, internal links, image descriptions (alt tag) and file names.

Research the keywords people use to find your website by entering your main keyword in the free keyword research tool... Wordtracker. It will provide a list of related keywords and display the number of searches per month for each one. Include one or two of these keywords in the content for every page you optimize.

3. Build incoming links

Search engines rank a website according to the quality and quantity of links pointing to it. Once you've optimized your website create a link building plan that builds links to your web pages.

Here is one very effective link building strategy:

3. Article marketing on steroids

Content is King on the Web so either learn how to write articles or get someone to write them for you. Add the content to your blog, website, article directories, social media properties (e.g. Twitter, Facebook) and/or repurpose it into podcasts (MP3 file), videos, short reports, eBooks, email courses and teleseminars. As a result you'll generate lots of links, traffic and sales from your website.

Each article you write should target a keyword from the list you created from your research. Weave this keyword into your headline, paragraphs and resource box. Remember to link back to your website in the resource box at the end of each article. Submit the article to the top article directors (e.g. EzineArticles.com). Convert the article to a video then submit it to video sharing sites (e.g. YouTube).

Ways to promote your website

2011-11-16T00:04:00.000-08:00

The ever-advancing information technology as well as globalization have made the world far smaller than we have ever thought of. People who have ventured out in different projects, no matter the nature of the business, have opted to take advantage of the now very essential Internet as a medium to channel their products and services to the thousands of communities around the world.

Small scale, mid-size and large business owners build websites in the hopes of getting known by the people they want to sell their products and services to. They send out information about their business and how helpful what they have to offer is to their would-be consumers. Building and maintaining websites can be a very challenging task. It requires one to learn the proper ways on how to promote a website. That ensures the business or website owner that the contents of his or her site, whether they are products, services or other valuable information, reach the computers of their target market and audience.

You might be overwhelmed by the process of learning the things you need to do to promote a website. Coming across seemingly big words such as "Search Engine Optimization" (SEO) or "Pay Per Click" may sting you. They might send an impression of something so complicated that you do not have time to learn for, but once you get the hang of it, you will realize they are not as overwhelming as you have initially thought. Learning about these terms is all worth it. Sooner or later, the learning will give you amazing results on your website. The idea is to get your website (or websites) up on the search engines' query results. The main objective, of course, is to get them on the first page of all the major search engines.

One might wonder how in the world would a website get into the search engines' results page. Choosing the right and appropriate keywords to promote your website is the key. Carefully and smartly picking keywords that people generally use to look something up is a major factor that you should thoroughly consider. You will be amazed by the significant and radical changes keyword selection can bring to your website's traffic. And hopefully, not long after, you will find yourself on top of the search engines' list, which is very essential in the success of your business.

Earning high-ranking pages from search engines is very crucial. However, these page ranks are not enough. What is even more important is that the targeted traffic eventually leads you to earn income, which is the main reason why you put up a website in the first place. Taking the time to analyze the progress of your website is necessary. This will give you the chance to be able to see the things you can improve in your website and make it all the more user-friendly. Making your website easy and convenient for your target viewers to navigate through will make them want to browse your website all the more, giving you qualified leads or, better yet, online sales.

Constantly coming up with strategies is always great. Find one that will work out the best for your website and your business. The pay per click strategy, for one, is a great way to get started. Compared to the usual SEO, pay per click generally generates immediate results that can bring positive changes to your website. As a businessman or businesswoman, you are as busy as you can be with all the things that need to get done for your business. The pay per click strategy saves you a lot of precious time as it allows you to target various keywords at once that will quickly be assessed, resulting to you finding out which keywords are the most cost effective for your website. Gathering knowledge on the procedures of this strategy before planning out a pay per click campaign on your website is very helpful. There are various things you need to ask yourself to define your strategy such as the nature of your business, your short and long term goals, the way your goals will be tracked and measured and so on. Again, they may sound complicated, but learning them will do you and your business a world of good.

The developments in our generation have made it very easy for business owners to have their businesses known all over the world. Whatever the kind and size of the business you have, it is but right to make use of these developments to get to your target market no matter how long the distance is and make your business a household name. Get on top!

How to promote a website

2011-11-16T00:03:00.000-08:00

The one thing your website needs and definitely cannot get enough of is visitors (traffic) or better put targeted traffic; these are visitors to your site who have an interest in what you do or are promoting. One thing that stumps many a website owner is how to promote a website for little or no money in other words gaining traffic to their site. Gaining targeted traffic to your site can be done a number of ways both online and offline and it can be done for free or you can pay for it. Read on to find out more.

One of the best ways in which to advertise your website online and this is a paid method is by using what we call Pay Per Click. This is basically where you create an advert that appears next to a search result in a search engine and every time someone clicks on that advert they are taken through to your site, that click has also cost you money, how much depends on the key word and the search term you are bidding on. Many people know about the paid advertising with the search engines but a new form of pay per click is killing it online right now. This new form of pay per click is Facebook paid advertising. Facebook advertising is so targeted because it lets you leverage the information from a person's profile. Let's say you want to target young mothers from the south of England who are into tennis, absolutely no problem at all. That is just one example.

Use your business cards to major effect as well, this is in effect a paid method but once you have the cards made it's free to hand them out. Make sure your web address is on there and displayed prominently, hand out the cards every opportunity you get as well.

Displaying your web address on your vehicle and clothing is a great way to get traffic and exposure for your website, as it is visual and can be seen by people. Most people overlook this method of web promotion and it can easily work out for you as many people will see your web address on a day to day basis as you are going about your business.

Another great way of how to promote a website for little or no money is to attach your web address to the signature of your emails. When you are sending your emails people will see the address below your name, try and make the link live so they can just click on it and be taken straight through to your site. This also has the opportunity to be distributed on a mass scale (go viral) as your email may get forwarded on and so on, you will have no idea how many people will see the link.

If you are a writer and you have something of value that you can offer to your target market, i.e. how to do something and you don't mind sharing that information you can start to write articles that can be published to the main article directories online. This is a free method of website promotion and will only cost you your time. You will be allowed to create a live link at the bottom of your article to allow visitors to click on it and be taken to your site. Why stop there? You could always contact the local newspaper and ask to have your article published. Local papers are always hungry for fresh content and will often accept your article. A great method of exposing yourself and your brand to your local market.

One of my very favourite methods of how to promote a website for little or no money is forum marketing. This is where you sign up to a forum related to your product or service, let's take real estate, just type in "real estate forum" into Google and sign up to the forum. When you are creating your forum profile you will be allowed to add a link to your website in your forum signature. Go into the forum and look to answer any questions that you can genuinely answer that will help people to achieve. These people will see read you answer, see your link and then click on it, being taken through to your site. A very powerful free method of promotion.

Plan for effective website design

2011-11-15T07:55:00.000-08:00

If you are thinking about creating a website, there are a number of key principles you should consider before setting out. If you follow this simple ten-step plan, you will be well on your way to sharing your creation with the World Wide Web community.

1. Choose a HTML Editor

Before you can begin designing your new website, you will need a piece of software called a HTML Editor or sometimes called Web Editor. Basically, this converts your visual design into a language called Hypertext Markup Language (or HTML for short). In turn, this is then interpreted by web browsers - such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer - and delivers your website contents over the Internet. Virtually all Web Editors provide you with WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) functionality for ease of use and simplicity and there are many to choose from. You can consider freeware, shareware or moving up into the commercial applications there is the Microsoft FrontPage offering or the more complicated, but much loved, Dreamweaver product. Initially, it is probably worth trying out the free or try-before-you-buy applications that are freely downloadable from the Internet.

2. Simple design and structure

It is always best to keep the basic website design as simple as possible, not only because you are just starting out, but crucially because people dislike ‘busy’ content. Try to achieve a consistent layout across all the pages, making sure you keep logos, menus and content areas in the same place as much as possible. Think carefully about your directory structure, as websites can begin to ‘grow legs’ and it can be quite frustrating trying to make simple changes if you have web pages and images all in the same directory. For instance, separate out images etc within their own subdirectory. As your skills begin to develop you'll also want to think about keeping the page formatting in one .css file extension.

3. Keep the design easy on the eye

Have you ever visited a website and immediately clicked away from it because of crazy, flashing images, ticker-tape text or just downright garish colours? This is something to keep in mind as you develop your skills. Remember, what appeals to you may offend someone else's senses, so try to keep colour schemes as neutral as possible, almost to the point of being bland. Why do you think Google’s website is so popular? Clearly, it may be verging on the visually boring, but it does the job without fuss.

4. Simple navigation

Think about creating a simple navigation structure so the user remains in control and doesn't get confused and frustrated. As you begin to create third and even fourth level pages, always make sure there are quick routes back to the key pages. As a general rule, ensure there is a link to the home page and people can contact you from more or less every page.

5. Content is key

Try to make sure your content is relevant to what your website is all about. It sounds obvious, but don't just add content for the sake of padding it out and if you can keep the material original it will pay dividends in the long run. Essentially, this is because you want your visitors to return and the search engines will also give your website a higher ranking if it is full of original content

6. Webpage naming conventions

Have you ever visited a website where the individual web page URLs are so long you could never write them down? This is not good practice and it is helpful to both the search engines and visitors if the page names actually describe the contents wherever possible. For instance, if your website is all about garden ponds and you have a specific page about Koi carp, why not call it just that. Something like [http://www.mydomain.com/koi_carp] is better than ../page21.htm.

7. Titles and Meta tags

Make sure that each and every web page across your entire website carries a unique Title and Meta names that are relevant to each page. It is vital that you try to give each page a title that reflects the actual contents, as the search engines use this information when deciding the relative position of key word results. If you forget this important aspect, you will consign your web pages to the back of the search engine results queue. This is a basic schoolboy mistake that many accomplished website designers make from time to time, including me!

8. Domain Name

Unless you plan to use free web space provided by your Internet service provider for instance, you will need to think about purchasing a Domain Name. They are so cheap that they are accessible to virtually everyone and for most people it is a worthwhile investment. When choosing the name of your website domain, you might want to try and register a name that actually reflects what your website is about. Admittedly, it is becoming increasingly difficult to register unique domain name combinations, but it is possible if you use a certain amount of creative thinking. Again, using the pond fish example, something like [http://www.yourtownpond] fish.com is better than something nondescript like http://www.abcabc.com, as it contains relevant words about your chosen subject and even your location.

9. Hosting Package

Most people will want to buy a cheap hosting package to share their creative work with the public. With the massive competition that exists in this arena, you will only have to pay a few dollars a month for a basic offering. Try not to lock yourself into lengthy contracts, as you may want to shop around later on when you become concerned about the number of e-mail addresses, web space and bandwidth. For most people who are just starting out these are not important considerations, but they are likely to become issues for you after a while.

10. Links

The principal way in which the Search Engines determine the level of a website’s popularity is to take into consideration the number and quality of links from other websites. There are lots of other factors, such as the quality of the content, but you must remember that you need other websites to link to your website to achieve a reasonable search engine ranking. There are companies that will offer a service to achieve this for you, but it is not difficult to do. It will take you time, effort and patience, but it is worth it in the end. Essentially, you will need to contact the web administrator of those websites you want to share a link with, offering to exchange links. You might only get responses from 1 in 15 attempts, so be prepared to ‘waste’ a lot of effort.

Hire or not to hire web designers

2011-11-15T07:53:00.001-08:00

In the early years of the internet the actual design of a website was either very basic or had to be done using a software package that needed a specialist to use it. Not surprisingly, website designers were in short supply and could command huge fees for their services. All that has changed dramatically and website design is not such a complicated procedure as you might think.

The actual look and feel of a website is more down to personal preferences than current design trends. Internet users want websites that are nice to look at, sure, but they are much more concerned with the ease of use of a website. If a visitor to your professionally designed website cannot find the information that they are looking for quickly and easily they will go elsewhere.

Website designers [http://www.saywebsite.com/websitedesigners_2] are similar to fashion designers. Quite often the designs that they come up with are totally impractical or outrageously expensive. Unless you have absolutely no idea of what theme you want applied to your website such as colours and styles you do not need to hire the services of a website designer but can produce the basic outline yourself. Obviously the technical aspects of your website requires an expert but it is becoming more common for website builders to be concerned more with how the site works rather than the aesthetic side of it.

There are a number of free website building
sites [http://www.saywebsite.com/freewebsitebuilder] around these days and these can be a great way for you to play with your design ideas without the expense of hiring a professional. You can also buy relatively cheap software that can produce fairly complex website designs quickly and simply. Drag and drop website design software has become extremely popular. There are also many programs that you can produce your website design with and have it converted to html for uploading to your website.

Personally I have had experience of both sides of the coin. The worst experience was when I was working as a website copywriter for a guy, who shall remain nameless! I first became involved in his website project after he had paid a large sum to a website design team. To be honest, I hated the design that they had produced for the website and it seemed to have taken them an extortionate length of time to produce static pages. The design of a website is very much a personal preference but I was not the only one that hated this particular design. So, the guy decided to hire another person, just for the design while the technical side of his website was being sorted out. He thought it would be easy to apply a different style to the website but he was wrong! The second design seemed to cause problems for the tech guy and eventually had to be dropped. Now on his THIRD website design the website owner decided to find a company who could perform both the design and build aspects of his website. Finally he found a website professional who could deal with both. Unfortunately he had invested so much money in the failed designs that he ended up being unable to fund the final website and the whole project was shelved.

The best advice I can give is that you should be extremely careful if you are hiring two different companies to produce the design and the technical aspects of your site. The two must be able to interact with each other and use the file formats that each other produce. Don’t be deceived into thinking that you have to employ a design professional when you may well be able to do it yourself, cheaper and to your complete satisfaction.

Choosing a perfect web designer

2011-11-15T07:53:00.000-08:00

Now that you have decided that it is time to create a website for your business there are many questions you must answer. One of the most important questions is "Who should create my website?"

I like to use the analogy of playing music; in as little as a few hours, some people can strum a few chords on the guitar and play a song. But to really play the instrument and make your instrument sing requires experience and understanding. Likewise, although there are tools which are readily available to assist in the process, effective website design requires experience and understanding of many diverse areas including: marketing, Internet graphics options and limitations, effectively creating a site from the perspective of search engines, the differences and limitations of different browsers and computer platforms as well as knowledge of the software and coding required to move beyond simple static html pages.

It is also vitally important that your designer understand you and your business and know how to most effectively communicate you and your uniqueness to your Internet audience. To answer our question, we'll look at some important pieces of information that you'll need to find out before you choose your website designer.

What do you want in a website? What are your needs and intentions for having a website? Does the prospective designer listen to and understand your needs and intentions? Have you checked other similar businesses to see what they are doing on the Internet? Can a prospective designer offer any suggestions for improving upon what others have already accomplished? The more clarity you have about your intended results for having a website, the more accurately you can communicate your needs to your designer and the more likely it is that you will achieve these results.

Is the designer experienced in website design? How long has the designer been creating websites? What is their background? How long have they been using the Internet? Three years is a long time in Internet terms. More than four or five years is a seasoned veteran. Ideally, your site designer has a variety of experience.

What are the designer's strengths and weaknesses? The range of skills required for creating any type of website is more diverse than you can imagine. If a designer tells you they have done or can do any project, I'd suggest you take that statement with a grain of salt.

Is the designer easy to work with and talk to? Is she/he able to communicate technical information so that you can understand it? The process of creating a website can often be an overwhelming process for some people. Consider hiring a designer with whom you have a good rapport and find communicating with easy.

Look at some of their previous clients sites. Do they all look the same? Do they load quickly? Are they easy to navigate through? Do you like their previous work? Do they accurately reflect their clients' business? Does the designer custom create each site or would they have you select from a list of prepackaged sites?

What is your budget and what is the typical cost for the designer's projects? As a generalization, the larger the company, the more they charge for their services (and often the more elaborate the sites they create.) Companies which create sites from a prepackaged template often cost less but don't provide you with custom solutions which may more closely meet your needs. Site designers who are getting started will often create your site for a lower fee, essentially using your project to develop their skills.

Your decision should be based on many of these important questions. Also use any other questions you find useful when hiring any other service business for a project. Comparing website designers is sometimes like comparing bananas to bicycles instead of apples to apples. Don't be afraid to ask questions. You might consider writing pros and cons for each designer on a sheet of paper to develop a more objective point of view.

The selection of your website designer is an important step in the creation of a successful website. With time and patience, you too can join the thousands of businesses with successful websites.

Make money with blog

2011-11-15T06:42:00.000-08:00

A blog is like a personal journal, people update there blogs usually daily with new information, and it is considered a fun hobby to part take in. If you didn't know already, you can also make money with blogs. Making money with blogs are easy as well, and I will teach you how to do it!

(Note: I do not give you complete reasons why you should choose every option, I just list every option you should do. If you follow the steps, your blog should make some money. Perhaps $1 a day. As it grows it will make more money, and from there you can create multiple blogs and make even more money! Just remember post frequently or your blog will die out and you will make nothing)

1) Build a Blog

To build your free blog, go to http://www.blogger.com and register. Blogger.com is now owned by google, and that is why google allows it's users to display ads easy with it, because there making more money, by having you sign up with their free blogs. It's a win-win situation!

Once you create your blog, you need to think of a niche. For example, lets saying were making a blog about losing weight, first of, you need to make the domain name something similar to losing weight something such as "lose-weight-nowblog.blogger.com" this way your domain name is relevant to your content.

2) Getting Started

Now that you have passed the registration process, choose a template that fits your blog well. One that is simple but top the point. Now you have to twinkle to the settings to maximize your traffic. Do the following.

Basic Settings: Choose the keywords you want your blog to be noticed for. This will help you with google ranking your page and generating your blog traffic. Give a description about your blog in the description field, make sure that you include some keywords your blog uses in the description field. Where it says "Add Blog to Listing" hit yes.

Publishing Settings: Set the option to yes, this allows crawlers to find your site much faster and also shows your blog on weblogs every time you make a new post.

Formatting Settings: You can edit how many posts you want on a page and other stuff. I make 5-7 posts on a page, however this doesn't effect your traffic much. Twinkle with the settings to the way you like it. Smaller pages get indexed faster by the way, so keep that into consideration

Comments Settings: This is another optional option, I allow users to post comments. Don't show comments in a popup window, because the popup window is in javascript and does not get indexed.

Archiving Settings: If you post everyday, set your archiving to daily, if you post every few days or weeks, set it to weekly. Also enable post pages.

Site Feed Settings: Enable site feed. If you have short posts, enable short feed, if you have very long posts enable the other option

3) Adding AdSense

If you haven`t already chosen template do it. Now you need to find layout(at template section). You will see such thing like "Add a page Element". There will be command named AdSense, simply click on it choose your type, size.

4) Getting Traffic to your blog

Now that you have your blog up and running, you need to get traffic. You can get free easy traffic in many ways.

The first thing you want to do is make good posts every single day for a while so google indexes your page. This is the first step to getting quality traffic. Make your post contains keywords of your blog, and bold the keywords as well. Another easy way to get traffic is post your blog into blog directories. Most blog directories are free and give you some easy traffic. To get blog directories just do a simple google search on it, I'm sure you'll find hundreds of free directories. Do about 10 a day.

Note: For blog directories a lot of times you need to add your RSS Feed. Your RSS Feed is thing that tells people who submit to your feed when you update your blog. Your RSS feed will be [http://www.yourblog.blogger.com/atom.xml]. Another way to get more traffic is to get link partners. With link Partners you improve your PR which increases your general traffic income, and also you receive hits from your link partners. A good site to get link partners is http://www.linkmarket.net

Also, put your site in forum signatures, in email signatures, tell your friends, etc. This also gives you some targeted traffic, its mostly quality, not quantity for this though.

Other useful information:

Earn through various ways with AdSense:

1. Pay per click - this is the common way to earn which is you earn every time a visitor clicks on your ads

2. Pay per impression - an advertiser can specifically target your site and show ads where you earn via cost per 1,000 impression (e.g. you earn every time someone sees your ad, even though they don't click on it)

3. Referral - you can also earn if you refer a visitor to use AdSense or AdWords, download the Google toolbar, etc.

AdSense also have a Search for AdSense program where you can put the Google search box in your site -- but you don't get paid when someone uses the box to search, but only when someone clicks on the ads in the search results

AdSense also has the Video Units, where you can show preselected YouTube videos on your site, and you earn only when someone clicks on the ads shown at the top of the videos (not when the videos are played or watched)

AdSense also has a Mobile AdSense program if you have a mobile website.

Make money with your blogpot/blogger

2011-11-15T06:38:00.000-08:00

Make money with blogger, this is what I can see people are looking for. They tend to search for information on how Blogspot users can make money from their blogger/Blogspot blogs.

Indeed, blogger platform is one of the best choices for folks who want to start blogging and thinking of monetizing it later or as soon as possible. But how you are going to do this?

Today, I will share to you one of the techniques that will really work as long as you follow it correctly. As a niche marketer for a long time, I found this technique very helpful to because you won't spend money on starting it.

I encourage you to read the whole article so you don't miss any single word of information. Another thing is that, I will share to you the sequence of doing it correctly, please be patient. Now, let's get started!

1. Think of a topic that you know.

Go to a place where you can clear your mind and think well. Bring a piece of paper and ballpen with you to list down your. Now, think of a topic or a piece of information that will be useful to your readers. Make sure that you know the topic for you to talk about it over a period of time. List down at least five ideas as you can.

Hint.

To start with, start thinking on the things that you are passionate that you love doing it. If you find that you like engaging with your friends on Facebook, why not share information on how to gather more friends using your technique?

If you love jogging in the morning, why not share a jogging technique that people will increase their jogging stamina?

If you love basketball, why not share information about basketball, how to play it, share the demonstration of various movements and other related thing about basketball. You can also share new updates about basketball events and news.

2. Market Research.

Now that you already have your potential topic, what you need to do is to find the profitability and commerciality of the topic or market that you want to tap. Through this, you will find how you are going to monetize your blog.

To do this, you need to search on Google those topics that you already have in your list. Let's assume that you want to test about "jogging tips". To know the commerciality on this topic, find some advertisers within the Google search engine page results. You can find it above the search results that were colored in light pink or in the right side of the search result pages.

If you found out that there are some advertisements in your topic, it is a good sign that this topic is a good market for you to tap in that you can monetize it using affiliate marketing technique. But if you found out that there is no advertisement, you can only monetize that topic using Google AdSense or text link ads.

3. Keyword Research.

Keyword research is the most critical part because if you choose the wrong keyword term to promote, you can't get targeted organic traffic from various search engines like Google, yahoo or bing.

To do this, you must pick those keywords that has acceptable amount of monthly searches with low page competition. This way, you can climb up to the first page or even on the first spot of search engine results over a short period of time.

To start with, use the free Google keyword tool for you to find out the competitiveness and search volume of the keyword you want to promote. You can find this tool here; https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

When you are inside the page, paste in your topic. In our case, we assume to test how to jog. Use the keyword "jogging tips", enter the captcha below it and hit search. Wait for a moment 'till you see the results below.

On the result, you can see lots of keyword suggestions and details about the local and global monthly search volume. Pick that keyword that has more than at least 1000 global monthly searches and list down those keywords.

To know the page competition, go to Google.com and paste in the keyword that you pick one at a time then hit search. After a second, you will find the search engine results below. And right beneath the keyword box, you will see the amount of pages that are promoting the keyword.

After that, list down those keywords that have at least 50,000 page competitions so that you can climb up on the first page or even on the top spot of Google or other search engines in a short period of time. Maybe it will take 3-6 weeks or maybe you see good results earlier as long as you follow the steps that will be stated further.

Tips.

Make sure that you paste-in your keyword terms with "quotes" enclose, so that you will know who your real competitors are. Also pick at least 10 final keywords you want to use.

Another thing is that, know the page rank of the top ten search results and list down their page rank figures. Add those page rank numbers and divide it by 10 to get the average. To be able to get a good race, base their average page rankings through this ratio:

Average 1 = Very easy to rank.
Average 2 = Medium difficulty
Average 3 = Not too hard but needs patience like I said above.
Average 4 = Very hard to rank. You should not pick this and so on...

4. Content Creation.

Your content would be your medium to engage with your readers or your future prospective customers, its quality makes a huge impact with your whole readership and credibility. Because of this, you must create a great content that will truly benefit your readers.

This way, they will trust you and they will get hungry for your future information that you will go to share in your blog. This is a WOW factor!

You must also share the information in an easy to digest manner. To do this, you can create a subtitle on each topic you discuss inside your article. You can also share videos or any other medium for them to make it easy for them to understand.

5. Search Engine Optimization.

SEO is one of the great factors for the make money with blogger a success. Because this technique will help you boost your search engine rankings in no time. SEO comes in various methods and techniques with specific functions. One of these are on-page optimization, out-page optimization, link building, image optimization and keyword research.

On- page optimization - helps your page or article content search engine friendly. Through this, search engine bots will categorize your article base on its meta keyword, meta description and your content.

To make a search engine friendly optimized article, mention your keyword term in the first paragraph of your article or in the first sentence. You can repeat mentioning it in the last paragraph of your article or don't mention it again.

Off-page optimization - this process is the same on what you did in the on-page optimization. The difference is that you will not publish it in your blog but in other high page ranked websites like article directories and web 2.0 sites.

Link Building - this technique is also very critical because if you do it wrong, you might get banned on search engine results or you might get ranked slower than you expected. So, make sure that you build links organically.

Search engine ranks pages and they rank it higher base on the quality of the backlinks/in-bound links pointing your site's page. There are various ways to build links to your site namely; commenting, article submission, guest posting and website directory submission.

Image Optimization.

Internet users love to see images. And your only way to get your images appear on search engine result is to optimized it. To do this, use an alt tag enclose in your image HTML tag. This way, you help search engine robots what your image is all about and categorize it where it belongs.

Keyword Research - is still on the SEO category because without the help of keyword research, you might end up of promoting a keyword without or few monthly search volumes with high quantity of page competition that will makes difficult to rank.

6. Blog Design.

Blog design is one of the wow factors because it reflects your whole site's content. If you have a tech blog, make sure that your template will also have a tech images like computers, smart phones or other technology.

There are many free blogger templates out there for you to use. Pick a template wisely and do some optimization on it according to your likes or your reader's likes.

How to make a blog with wordpress

2011-11-15T06:36:00.000-08:00

OK, great, you have now decided to set up a WordPress Blog. Now you need to know how to create a blog.

I will assume for the purposes of this article that you have chosen to download your WordPress platform from WordPress.org, that you have a hosting account so as you can self host your blog, that you are going to host your blog on its own domain .i.e. mydomainblog.com and that you know the 'basics' of using an FTP client like FileZilla.

Step #1

Go to WordPress.org and download the latest version of WordPress. This will be a Zip file. Extract the contents. You will end up with a sub folder i.e.'WordPress v2.7'

Step #2

Open up your FTP client and go to public_html or httpdocs. Open up these public folders - this is where you want to place the WordPress files/folders.

Step #3

Open up the unzipped folder and you will see over 25 (at present 27) files and folders. Upload the in the public directory. This will take at least 5 minutes so take a tea or coffee break.

Step #4

OK, glad you've had a nice break - lets get on to preparing the 'mechanics' of the database.

You will need to set up a MySQL database and then change a file -Ok here goes.

Step #5

Go into your control panel for your domain.

Select the MySql icon. You will see 3 main areas. Here you will set up a database name, User Name, Link the database to user (as well as set privileges) and you should have the last box say 'localhost' - leave that alone as 99% of setups don't require you to change this.

Now create your database name this will look like xxxx_database name. After you press the create tab you then press go back which takes you back to the database creation page.

Now create the database user name it will look like xxxx_database user name and set a password. Press create and the Go back tabs

Now you need to 'marry' the database name and user. Match the database name and user and by clicking add user to the database - for the moment make sure that the 'all privileges box is checked.

Where it says 'access hosts' if this has localhost beneath just leave the box blank.

Press the 'go back' tab now and you will have created your database.

Step #6

Open up a text editor or Dreamweaver or NVU (free HTML editor)

Access the wp-congig-sample.php file and upload it into your editor. In particular you will see the following information.

define('DB_NAME', 'WordPress'); // The name of the database
define('DB_USER', 'username'); // Your MySQL username
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password'); // ...and password
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost'); // 99% chance you won't need to change this value

You need to change the default information in the wp-config to include your database information.

Make sure you do not remove the single quotes.

define('DB_NAME', 'WordPress'); // The name of the database
You will need to change the "WordPress" to the actual name of your database that created when you set up the database i.e. define('DB_NAME', 'nicheblog');

define('DB_USER', 'username'); // Your MySQL username
again change the 'username' to the username you created when you set up the database.

define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password'); // ...and password
This is the 'password' you created when you set up the database.

define('DB_HOST', 'localhost'); // chance you won't need to change.

Leave everything else alone and save this file as wp-config.php

You now go to your FTP client and upload the amended wp-config.php file

Step #7

You then go to and type in your domain on your browser.

When you first go to install you should be presented with an 'auto install feature' which will ask you for the title of the blog and your email address.

Once you have followed the instructions, your blog will be created automatically for you. Make sure to save the user name and password provided.

That's it for the basic WordPress installation!!!

You are ready to log in! You will see the default WordPress theme in the front end of your website. You can change the look and feel of the website by changing the default theme to custom WordPress theme.

This should work 99% of the time providing you have followed the steps. Should the self install not complete successfully it is often because the blog creator has either not properly set up the databse and/or not changed the wp-config-sample.php files properly.

At the end of a successful installation for 'security' purposes you should finally go back and delete the 'redundant' wp-config-sample.php file. Now you know how to create a blog. It wasn't that hard was it?

That's it - job finished!!

Why you should know how to make a blog

2011-11-15T06:34:00.000-08:00

If you know how to create a bog then you have a fabulous promotional technique at your fingertips. A blog provides the ever-changing type of web content that search engine spiders die for, and if your website is new, then you will have no need to submit to any search engine for inclusion in its indices.

Spiders seek out blogs like they hunt flies, and when they find yours it will be reported back to headquarters immediately and your website will be scanned and immediately listed. Assuming, that is, that the content warrants it and that your blog is considered good enough for the website link on it to be given a visit.

If you don't continually change the content on your website, then it will quickly drop down the Google listings, and also those on the other search engines. However, it's not just the website: it's every individual webpage on your site that has to continually change, because the search engines list each page individually, not whole domains. Search engines just love change, because they exist to provide a good continuous information service to their users, and if the content of the web pages in their indices remained the same all the time, they would fail in that objective.

Therefore, they insist on change, and if you don't provide it, your page will slip off the listings. A blog lets you change the content of your website with ease. Not just the home page but every page. So, if you want your website to remain in the top listings then you will need to have a blog, the contents of which you can keep refreshing manually whenever you have a few minutes.

You can use a blog to interact with visitors to your site, and I fact you can use it virtually as a forum. You can use it to advertise your new products, disseminate information and gain information. A blog is a means of communication, and if you can create a blog then you have the ability to cerate traffic right there at your fingertips. You can update information and pass it your customers and friends faster than with an email.

In fact many people use blogs instead of websites. They don't have websites and just park their blog right there on the blog provider. There are several blog providers, but it is important to choose the right one if you are to create a blog that does exactly what you want it to do. You also have to learn how to use your blog to you best advantage. Once you learn how, it is not difficult to create a blog just for providing information, but how do you make it pay? And make it big time?

The best way is to have it on your website, rather than on the provider's site, because then you can use a lot more customized plug-ins. Most cPanel websites can easily interface with Wordpress without much trouble.

That's the secret of blogging, and that's what makes the difference between a Blogger and somebody that just operates a blog. It's a big difference in both ability and cash! Don't just learn how to create a blog, but learn how to make your blog earn the kind of money for you that your website probably can't even approach.

Steps to build a website

2011-11-15T06:26:00.000-08:00

In the present economy which every individual is struggling with, having additional sources of income beyond a job can only help your personal finances. It seems like practically everyone has a money making website going these days. If you are the only one you know who does not have such a site, it can be very frustrating. Read on to learn the means for creating and getting your own such money making website or blog up and running.

The first thing to keep in mind is that any person, whoever you might be, is capable of starting up a money making website or blog. There are more or less eight steps to follow in order to actually achieve this. By working through the steps effectively, then you too can begin counting how much money your website or blog is making.

Step Number One - Building the Website

It could not be any easier nowadays to create a website from the ground up. A variety of web builders are available to enable you to get this website up and running in practically no time at all. Some of them which you can choose from are Webstarts and Wix, both of which are available for free. Others can be had for a nominal cost.

Step Number Two - Naming Your Website

Perhaps the most important thing in starting your money making website is the naming of it. Coming up with a creative name is so critical. Your website's name has to include your particular keyword that you will use to get this site ranked. For example, if you choose to start a website related to fitness, then your name could be something like FitnessForLife.com. If you are looking for additional information on good keyword research, simply type in the keywords Free Website Keywords for Beginners on Google or Yahoo!

Step Number Three - Selecting a Web Hosting Site

For anyone who is serious about starting a website to make money, you will have to get a web hosting service provider. It is so inexpensive to get web hosting anymore. At $6.95 a month, Bluhost is a phenomenal deal. In order to see other good web hosting outfits, input the keywords Top Five Web Hosting Sites to your search engine box. There are some web hosting services now that are available for free. Often times though, you will achieve more reliable results from a service for which you pay.

Step Number Four - Designing the New Website

To design your new website, you will have to utilize a website builder. Some of them which are available for free

Alternatively, you could pay around $300 to a professional web designing firm to have your website professionally created and designed.

Step Number Five - Creating Content For Your New Website

Hopefully you have chosen a website topic about which you are not only interested, but passionate. You should come up with specific keywords to write your website or blog's content around. The major search engines greatly prefer websites and blogs which have been built around particular keywords.

Step Number Six - Optimizing Your Website Using SEO

Search Engine Optimization is all about the use of good titles, keywords, the placement of such keywords, and descriptions which are located on your website or blog. You can attempt to do this yourself, or you can get some professional help with it. Although you can pay SEO firms several hundred dollars to do this for you, a less expensive means is available by entering Free Website Search Engine Optimization for Beginners into your search engine search field. Getting ranked with Google, Yahoo!, or Alexa can take from one to three months, depending on how effectively your SEO work is performed.

Step Number Seven - Creating Links to Your Website

The highly coveted search engine results page, whose acronym is SERP, is based on the content which you designed for your page, as well as the links to your website. The truth is that having many links to your website is most critically important to the search engine majors than is amazing content when they consider website rankings. Many sites will allow you to do website link exchanges, where you put up a link to their site in exchange for a link back to your site. Other places to go looking for website links are through the social networking sites of Facebook and Twitter. In networking with the fans and followers of these communities, you can potentially gain many people who are willing to put up a link to your website.

Step Number Eight - Monetizing Your New Website

There are a variety of means for making your website earn money for you. The two least costly means involve utilizing Affiliate Programs and Google AdSense. To research either of these ideas, type in Affiliate Programs in to your search engine search box, or log on to Google.com and go to their AdSense link.

Get the way to rank higher in google searsh results

2011-11-15T03:42:00.000-08:00

Your website has to be measured by "500 million variables and 2 billion terms" of Google's equation, as stated on Google's Corporate Information Technology Overview page. Google's ranking system is based on a democracy, and the citizens are the links on the worldwide web that vote for each other. Not unlike our government today, many of these "links" are paid for, and some are of greater value. Ranking high on Google is playing politics. Links and Keywords are the key players in the ranking game. Google also takes into consideration the full content of the page including HTML codes, fonts, subdivisions and the "precise location of each word."

Links are votes. You must develop a link strategy. Google likes linking things together. Create a rich network of links with distinct quality content. Your website must have quality links going out and coming in. Quality is the key word. Links from reputable pages (which ironically includes .gov pages) are given more weight than links on "link farm" pages. Linking to a "link farm" is one of the worst things you can do and can potentially get your deported off the web. The better the links, the better your ranking. Google will factor in your page content and the content of the pages you link to. Do your research. Google has a free page rank tool on their toolbar. Use it to find out the page ranking and visit the site.

Google also gives more weight to one-way links that lead to your site, and less weight to reciprocal links. How do you get these? Buy them. List yourself in a reputable directory listing. Make sure you are listed in the Open Directory Project. If you can't buy links, write good content. Give someone a reason to link to your site. Again, the keyword is Quality. Submitting articles and press releases are also strategies in the linking game.

Keywords are your platform. They are what you stand for. Words count. Graphics don't. Make sure your words are not in graphic form and make sure you have relevant titles under your graphics. Start with your title tag. Put everything you stand for in ten words or less. Make your URLs short and keyword specific. Brand yourself. If you type in soda, Mountain Dew will not show up on the first page. If you type in Mountain Dew, it will be on the first page. Brand yourself so users know what they are searching for. Do not put the same words in every heading and every tag. Be descriptive. Sell yourself. There are multitudes of free keyword rank and suggestion tools. Use them as a supplement to your knowledge of your company.

Think of every element in your website as words and pages in a presentation that is going to be up for a vote. Does everything fit? Is it all related? Are you a reputable company with a quality product? Does it sell? Now sell it. Google is waiting for you.

How to rank higher in search results

2011-11-15T03:34:00.000-08:00

Ranking #1 in Google for your keywords takes weeks to months depending on the competition of your keywords, how effectively you optimize your site and also how well your competitor is optimizing his site.

Search engines consider 100's of factors while ranking a page. If you take 3 of your competitor's sites, one of them may have good number of backlinks to their site but with poor content. Another competitor's page may have good titles, content but very less number of backlinks. Hence, while optimizing a site it is very important to analyze your competitor site as well. We need to observe the factors that are helping your competitor's site to stand ahead of your site.

Let us now find out 3 important factors you need to observe in your competitor site, which may help you optimize your site effectively and rank better in Google.

Titles: Observe the titles of your competitor's site. Titles play a major role in search engine optimization. Observe how and where your competitor placed the keywords in titles. A perfect title will help you rank better.

TIP: Make sure that you write attractive titles, at the same time using keywords in titles.

Try changing the tiles and observe if it brings any change in your rank. But do not change the titles too often. Do it once a month, if Google crawls your site for every 2-3 days.

Content: Search engines love fresh and unique content. Observe the content of your competitor's site and find out how unique the content is, how and where keywords are used in the content.

TIP: Write unique content for your page. At the same time use 3 -4 keywords for every 100 words in the content. Make sure that you write content of minimum 500 words. Try to use keywords in headings wherever necessary.

Backlinks: There are free tools that provide list of backlinks of a site. For example, using Yahoo site explorer you can find all the backlinks of your competitor page. Analyze how many high quality links the page has. Try to get backlinks from these sites too. You can find few links which are easy to get a backlink from. For example, if your competitor has backlinks from article directories, write an article and submit the article to these article directories.

Note down all the points you observed in your competitor's sites. Re-optimize your site accordingly. This can help you beat your competitor's rank and stand ahead of your competitors. Repeat the same procedure until you reach #1 in Google.