I know, I know. I can hear some of you groaning now! Many of you already have a blog and understand its importance in gaining visibility for your business. But I know many others are still resistant to the idea. You believe it takes too much time and effort, you don’t think you are a great writer, you don’t know how to set one up, you don’t know what to write about….I understand all of the reasons that may be holding you back.

If you already have a traditional, “brochure” style website for your business that’s great. You should keep that as a place for prospective clients and customers to visit to find out more about you and what you offer. I use my blog as my main site, meaning I don’t have a separate, static website. That’s a personal choice. Many people choose to have both, with the blog being linked to from the main site.

If you don’t currently have a blog, there are several important reasons why you should consider it:

Visibility: If you are doing even just some of your business using the web then you obviously need to have an online presence. Having a blog that you post to regularly is a wonderful way to capture and keep the attention of your prospects. When they see that you are posting consistently updated content, they are more likely to return to your site.

Search Engine Optimization: This doesn’t mean you need to study up and implement a ton of SEO techniques yourself. But blogs by their very nature are dynamic, meaning the content is updated often. In Google’s eyes, this is a very good thing-it shows that their users are getting fresh information. A blog is a great way to get your business to rank well in the search engines.

Community Building: By allowing comments on your posts you are promoting conversation and encouraging feedback. It can even help you to perform “market research” and find out what it is your target market needs from you. This feedback can also be helpful for coming up with ideas for future posts.

Positions you as the Expert: Something interesting happens once you begin posting useful content regularly and attracting subscribers. You become seen as a thought leader in your niche. This leads to more opportunities, more relationships and more business. It’s a terrific way to communicate the value of what you have to offer to prospective clients and customers.

Personality Sharing: Blogging gives you a chance to be seen as a real person and not just a business. Be willing to express opinions and let your true self shine through. This will go a long way towards humanizing you in the eyes of your readers.

In my opinion, the best thing about blogging is how simple and quick it is to publish a post at the push of a button. It’s also wonderful to be able to track exactly how many people are coming to your blog and where they are coming from. Just install Google’s free Analytics tool and you can see detailed statistics on your visitors and traffic.

Just begin and get it going. Aim to post once a week. They don’t have to be long posts and they don’t have to be earth-shatteringly brilliant. As with anything, you’ll get better at writing the more you do it. Jot down any ideas that come to you for posts as you go about your day. I keep a file of topic ideas that I think of and I find this helpful to look at if I get stuck for what to write about.
Blogging should be something you carve out time for just as you would any other marketing activity. If you really feel you would have nothing to say to people who may want to hire or buy from you, then perhaps it is just not for you. But I encourage all small business owners who are doing business online to at least give it a try. You never know, there may be people out there just waiting to hear your voice.

Mistake: Not using a real picture of yourself for your avatar.

When I first joined Twitter over a year ago I was guilty of using a cartoon-type picture of me for mine. I thought it was cute and it happened to be part of the design I had on my previous blog. However, I switched to an actual photo of myself a few months later, and more than a few people commented that they were glad to see the real me.

I feel the same about others now. A picture of you is a lot more personable than a picture of your dog or a company logo. People like to see your smile!

Mistake: Automating pushy direct messages for new followers.

Many Twitter users use a service such as TweetLater to set up automatic messages to go to anyone who begins following them. This is a bit controversial among people on Twitter. If you are automating a friendly message to just say thanks for following me, that’s one thing, but a message with a link to one of your products when we haven’t even connected yet is generally frowned upon.

Mistake: Starting to follow people without posting a couple of your updates.

It may feel like you are talking to yourself to do this, especially if you don’t have any followers yourself. But when someone comes upon your page and is deciding whether or not to follow you, they need something to go on. People are looking for some sign of life or personality.

Mistake: Not spending a good amount of time interacting.

There is nothing wrong with letting others know what you did last night or what your plans are for the day. Just be sure to intersperse your tweets with some two-way conversation. Ask questions, re-tweet others, reply to questions, comment on others tweets, etc. This builds community and keeps things balanced and interesting.

Mistake: Mass following right out of the gate.

My ratio of followers to those I am following is pretty even, mainly because I like to follow back most of the people who follow me as long as they don’t look like spammers.

However, I find it hard to follow others who, in addition to having only a couple of updates, are following thousands of people and have only a few people following them. It feels spammy, like they don’t have much interest in having a relationship or conversation with anyone.

Mistake: Doing everything from the web instead of using a Twitter client.

Installing a client such as Tweetdeck gives you more functionality than what you can do from the Twitter website alone. For example, Tweetdeck allows you to place people in groups which make it easier to keep track of them, especially once you are following lots of people. Plus, you don’t have to be connected to the web to use these types of clients. I find they make tweeting a lot easier and more convenient for keeping track of your replies, direct messages and followers.

Mistake: All promotion, all the time.

As I have mentioned in previous articles, no one likes to follow someone who is constantly selling and promoting without giving anything back. Keep things balanced and respect that others do not want to be pitched all of the time. That being said…

Mistake: Not leveraging Twitter as part of your business marketing strategy.

If you are in business and using social media, you are looking at Twitter as a tool to get results in that business, not to just socialize all day. Remember that it is a great way to reinforce your brand, form strategic alliances and build credibility and trust.

by Christine Gallagher

by Brad Callen

So a concern of many webmasters out there is the idea of duplicate content. With all you read out there today I am sure this has crossed your mind from time to time as it has mine.

The idea of Google being the 800-lb gorilla is a long standing one and thinking that maybe some how and some way they have the ability to screen the internet for duplicate content on the fly sounds CRAZY but we always perpetuate the idea as paranoia is much easier to believe than fact in many cases.

I mean think about this for a second just in terms of computing power:

1. Google shows a cached version of your website and not the actual site listing in its results. This means that Google ACTUALLY STORES information about your sites pages and updates them on the fly.

2. Google’s index likely contains BILLIONS of webpages.

So what this means is that for Google to determine if your site is an exact copy of another persons website than it has to store your pages content and screen that content against its ENTIRE active index…sounds nearly impossible as far as I am concerned. To boot you have to consider this is happening simultaneous to the active crawling and indexing and re-indexing of new pages in Google.

I hope this is putting a little bit of perspective to the situation for you. Let’s further the concept. I will take an article from Ezinearticles.com:

http://ezinearticles.com/?Cocoa-Beans-and-the-Fierce-Competition-in-the-Chocolate-Industry&id=1674880

Now let’s make the assumption that there is a duplicate content filter. If that is the case Google will eliminate all duplications of this article from its index and a phrase match for this article title will only return 1 result, the one it considers to be the best right?

http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS291US304&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=”Cocoa+Beans+and+the+Fierce+Competition+in+the+Chocolate+Industry”

Yet somehow there are 162 results for that title. You can do this for every article title you test. Try it for yourself…it works and it is still the basis for article marketing and why article marketing still works.

Now this comes on the heels of an interesting article from Google which should further dispel any remaining myths you may have:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/demystifying-duplicate-content-penalty.html

As SEO experts have been telling us for years there is NO DUPLICATE CONTENT PENALTY!

Ok….that is a little bit of a lie.

There are 2 types of duplicate content: external and internal duplicate content. Let’s take the first of the two.

1. External duplicate content.

External duplicate content is very similar to the example I just posted above where you see multiple copies of the same content on DIFFERENT WEBSITES. That last part is very important there as it seperates what could be considered as a penalty but in reality it is just competition.

So how is it that 162 sites can list the exact same article in Google and they allow it?

The quick answer is that they really don’t care. Yeah it may be mudding up the index but if a site or page is still showing in the index it is because they have enough authority or link clout to be there. Pages will be removed from the index if they get stale or have no links pointing to them for example but not for duplicating content.

The real issue becomes how can you soar to the top with a site that has repurposed content? I am inclined to say its not easy and more importantly its just not a good idea. If you are using content to build your website AND to promote it be sure to do this:

1. Your sites content is unique to your website

2. Your promotional content (PR’s, articles, etc…) belong outside of your website

This makes your life a lot easier. IT IS NOT FOR DUPLICATE CONTENT THOUGH. It’s to avoid competition with those with the same content. If you must republish content from another website make sure you add some commentary or additional content around it. This can include images or other variations of media and your doing this for your visitors sake. You need to stand out, not repeat what others are doing.

Bottom line, with external content the site with the most links and authority in Google will always win. Same as with keyword competition.

2. Internal Duplicate Content.

Ok this is as real as it gets but for the same reason. Its a web filter to keep you from competing for yourself but its a lot simpler to handle than you think.

This is important for the following individuals:

a. If your running a CMS out of the box

b. If you are running an eCommerce platform

c. If you are pulling pages and having them autogenerated

These are just a few examples of people who have had issues with internal duplication.

When Google does index your pages it will look at your title tags and meta descriptions and one of the evaluating factors it uses to determine to actually list your pages are the uniqueness of those tags. If my shopping cart system has 10 products which are all “shoes” and that is what I use as my page title for all of them and the meta description for all of them is “tennis shoes” Google will look at all 10 and simply choose the best 1 to list.

This is a big and easy fix and something I would advise for both usability and for regular old good SEO.

Every page NEEDS a unique title tag

Every page SHOULD HAVE a unique description
(or at the vesy least enough unique content to differentiate it from the others pages on your site)

So rest easy. There is NOT a duplicate content penalty from Google. If you site is not ranking I can assure you its because of the lack of links targeting your core keywords so go out and start link building!

Article Submission

You don’t need to be an award winníng expert on the topic you are writing about – just pick an area that is related to the theme of your website, do a bit of research using a search engine and before you know it you will have more knowledge on that subject than most. Write in a relaxed, straightforward way. And, of course, when you add your details at the end of your article, make certain that you include your web address as well.

URL Submission

This sounds so obvious, yet so many people overlook it. Website URL submission is about getting more links to your website to help your website get ranked high on major search engines, thus getting more visitor traffic by, well, submittíng your website URL to the major search engines. You can buy or subscribe to software that will do this, but it is quite possible to get a good return by submitting manually.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a way for internet users to store, classify, share, search and discover Internet resources that they find useful. Since social bookmarks are saved online, users are able to access them from anywhere – at home, at work or while travelling.

These lists can be accessible to the public by users of a specific network or website. What you need to do first is register with a social bookmarking site which allows you to store and tag bookmarks. Most social bookmarking services allow users to search for bookmarks which are associated with given “tags”, and rank the resources by the number of users which have bookmarked them. This means that other visitors and members of social bookmarking sites can search for resources by topic, category, keyword, tags, or popularity to see what others have saved. As a user, social bookmarking sites let you find useful, informative resources through pages that have been tagged because others have found them to be valuable sources. Voila – more web traffíc. Free.

Forum Posting

Forum posting is a hands down alternative to paid advertising methods. For just a few hours of work every week, you can capture batches of interested leads everyday. The more forums you contribute to, the more you will gain traffic. If you are an active forum poster, you will also get a good feel about the kind of products that are hot on the market.

Please don’t overlook the forum signature or commonly called resource box – it’s a powerful free advertising tool for you. What you must do is edit your forum signature. Basically, a curiosity inducing one-liner and a link to your website is great. Once you have edited and saved your signature, it will appear at the bottom of all your comments in the forum discussions. That means, the more you participate in the discussions in the forums, the more people see your semi-ad written on your signature. I promise, this will encourage people to visit your website, and hopefully buy from you.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is one of the best ways to get the word out about your website and can be done with very little technical expertise and therefore is easy to start up. If you have a product or service you believe in, visit a site such as Clickbank and open an account. Follow the simple instructions to gain affiliates – and traffic.

Press Releases

It’s a fact that a well-written Press Release can dramatically improve your sales, expose your company to the masses, and greatly enhance the image of your business or products. Publicity is the most cost-effective web traffic building marketing tool there is, and, surprisingly, web traffíc can be generated by ink and paper!

Classified Ads

Again, it’s easy to associate Classified Ads with yesterday’s technology, but they are extremely cheap and a one line product or service description, together with your website, will pay dividends.

Blog Comments

If you are an avid blog follower, you have to include Blog Commenting in your web traffíc arsenal. You will almost always find a “comments” link at the end of each post. Good blog commenters add to the discussion and are known as knowledgeable, informative, friendly and engaged. Join them!

FaceBook

Don’t forget that you can use Facebook to its full potential to attract more visitors to your website. You can get away from just interacting with your school or college friends and start interacting with people within your industry or other industries that you want to get into.

An easy way to do this is to join groups that interest you as well as make friends with people that you want to get to know. Fill out your profile (fully) – the best profile on Facebook is a complete one.

Videos

Finally, why not make a video and post to video sites too! This is not a Warner Bros. effort! Your PC or Mac may well have a webcam, or you can borrow a camcorder or Flip. Write a brief script – lights- camera – action – and upload to YouTube. (Just remember to be sure to link it back to you.)

Well – there you are. Not all of the ten suggestions I’ve outlined may appeal, but if you select three or four, stick with them, and implement them on a regular basis, you will see your web traffíc grow significantly. My best to you.

Artocle by: UltraSimpleWebTraffic.com to find out more and claim your free visitor traffic mini course by James Gladwin.

Who is your target audience? This isn’t just the generic term like “my target audience is people with money to spend”, but who is your target audience really? What are their likes and dislikes? What kind of words and phrases are their “hot buttons”? What are their fears, and what kinds of problems do they have? What services to they require in addition to yours? If you don’t have an answer to any one of these questions, then you don’t really know your target audience enough to target your website specifically to them.

What makes you different than anyone else in your field? You are a unique individual and have your own special way of serving your clients. Why would someone want to do business with you instead of your competition? Remember, people buy experiences along with the product or service. What is unique about your customer’s experiences with you? Can you articulate that? If not, you need to be able to do this because you will need to put this on your website.

How do you want people to find you? This can be a 2-part question. If you want people to find you through the Internet, and via search engines, then you need to know what search terms your audience is using. Not what you THINK they are using, but what they are ACTUALLY using. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve received a list of search terms from clients that they want to optimize their website only to later discover that their target market doesn’t even search for the terms they optimized their site for. Sure, the terms may sound reasonable off the top you your head, but that may not be where their target market is coming from. Investing in a decent keyword research tool will pay for itself within the first year.

What do you want people to do once they get on your website? This is the biggest and most important thing that you will want to have clarity about. It doesn’t matter how many people come to your website. If they don’t take the action you want them to take, then all of your efforts are lost. You will need to be clear about what action you want them to take and when. Make it as easy as possible for them to take that action and don’t make them work for it, or you will lose them. You should limit the number of things people can do on your website if you are using your website as a lead-generator, or to sell something from. The more choices you give them, the higher the chance that they will do nothing. People can’t be inundated with choices or they will just leave your site.

How do you want to lead people through your website? There is a flow that you may want to take people through when they get to your website. What is the flow? You will want to understand and know what that flow is, and what to do when people come to your website in the middle of the flow. How will you guide the through in that case? Once you have your flow, you will know how to set up your website and where to place your navigation links, and call to action.

Understanding and getting clear on the things you need to know before you begin designing your first web page will save you time and money in the long run. Time from having to redo things and money in losing out on sales you could have made if you had set your website up to maximize returns in the first place. If you haven’t done these things yet, it is never too late to start.

Article by: By B Hopkins

Go to Google’s keyword tool — just search Google for the phrase “keyword tool” and you’ll find it. You want to find a good keyword for something that you are offering, so start off with some phrases that describe it. Type them in.

Google’s keyword tool will ask you whether it should “use synonyms.” Allow it to. Click the “Get keyword ideas” button and Google will give you a list of keywords with their search frequencies. Download them in “.csv” form so you can load them into a spreadsheet (”.csv” means “comma separated values”). Repeatedly try other phrases and download and merge the spreadsheets.

Suppose you decide to set up a free print-on-demand T-shirt store on the web. It wouldn’t cost you a thing to put a NASA image on a T-shirt. How to make money is less obvious. For that you need to find keywords for the products. What products will you be offering? T-shirts, of course, but how many ways are there to say T-shirt? At least these: T-shirt (which Google translates into “t shirt”), T-shirts, Tshirt, Tshirts, tee shirt, tee shirts, tees (but “tee” often means golf tee). There are other varieties of apparel: tank, spaghetti strap, camisole, baseball jersey, sweatshirt… For that matter, you could generalize: shirt, shirts, apparel, clothing. And there are non-apparel items: BBQ apron, coaster, tote bag, cutting board, mouse pad, or generally, gifts.
Since you are interested in using NASA photos, you need to consider keywords related to space and astronomy. Here are some words people may be using: astronomy, universe, galaxy, cosmos, space, nebula, star (although this is more likely used for movie stars), stellar, solar system, planet, moon, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, comet, asteroid, … and people may combine those with telescope, Hubble, photo, photograph, image, …

There are a lot of combinations to explore — a lot of work and a lot of opportunity.
When you’re ready to find the high-quality keywords, add another column to your spreadsheet. Label it “Results.” Fill in that column with some huge number, 999,999,999 say. Sort the spreadsheet in decreasing order by the average number of searches. Cut off the rows at the bottom of the spreadsheet which have too few searches to be worth your consideration. If you want at least 50 searches per day, throw away rows with fewer than 1500 average monthly searches.

Go down the spreadsheet looking up each of the keywords in Google. Put quotes around the keyword phrase in the Google search field. If you don’t put in the quotes, you’ll get too huge a number of results to be of interest — potentially every page mentioning any one of the words in the keyword phrase.

Google will tell you “Results 1 – 10 of about NUMBER for KEYWORD” where NUMBER is the estimate of the number of results and KEYWORD is the phrase you typed in. For each of the keywords you look up, you can copy the estimated NUMBER of results back into your spreadsheet into the results column. When Google says “about NUMBER”, it is a crude estimate. When I looked up ‘”galaxy t shirts”‘ the original estimate was 6,480 pages with the keyword phrase. By repeatedly clicking on the highest result page number at the bottom, I came to the end of the list of results and found that there were only 106. If however you get to more than 600 and you get a message, “In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 601 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included,” you should suspect Google is trying to discourage you. Maybe you’d better just go with the estimate on page one.
While you are looking at the number of results, you can glance at the first results page and see if the keyword has a special meaning it would make it unsuitable for you. For example, thinking of selling astronomy-related T-shirts, you find “la galaxy t shirts” are related to a sports team, utterly irrelevant to your purpose.

After you have gone far enough down the list, looking up the keywords with sufficient numbers of searches, sort your spreadsheet by increasing numbers in your results column. Among the top keywords in your spreadsheet should be up to three good primary keywords to optimize your page for. (It’s hard to optimize a page for more than three keywords.) They have enough searches to be interesting, and they have the fewest competing pages among the interesting keywords.

Your primary keywords won’t necessarily be the first three. A keyword a little further down the list may have significantly more searches and only a few more competing pages. Or maybe only one or two have few enough competing pages. It should be utterly trivial to get onto page one of Google if there are only five pages competing for the same keyword, it might take a little bit longer if there are 500, longer still if there are 5000, and if there are 5 million, forget about it.
When you get to NASA images of the planet earth, you find something like this; “Planet earth shirt” looks promising: maybe 880 searches a month and 112 competing pages (estimated). In itself, that’s not large. “The planet shirt” has 880 searches/month for 388 competing pages. Together they may be worth some effort.

“Planet shirts” has 1900 searches for 1810 competing pages; “the planet t shirt” has 720 searches for 1900 competing pages; “planet shirt” has 5400 searches for 4320 competing pages. “Planet shirt” and “planet shirts” have an attractive number of searches, but the numbers of competitors make it look difficult to get to page one quickly. “The planet t shirt” may not be worth the effort.

“Planet t shirt” has 2900 searches for 27500 competing pages; “planet t shirts” has 1300 searches for 35300 competing pages. “Planet t shirt” and “planet t shirts” have way too many competitors. It’s nice to know you shouldn’t devote any time to them.

There you have it: a cheap and easy — well, cheap and tedious way to find quality keywords that can bring your page a lot of hits.

This article was adapted from a book by Thomas Christopher on opening online T-shirt stores. Visit his How-To-Shirts web site for information about the book. Dr. Christopher, a former CS Professor, loves to find out how to do something and explain it to others.

But the conflict begins when as a business owner there is confusion regarding what you expected out of a search engine optimization campaign and what is actually being delivered by the SEO pro. When expectations get unreasonable, it is difficult to manage the SEO campaign and it’s doomed to fail.

On the other side of the fence, SEO pro might be desperate to close more number of deals and thus misses to explain their clients the “results” that should be expected out of the campaign. This could lead disillusionment and a false notion that SEO is not working for their business. Do remember that “SEO is effective and beneficial for any business searching to promote their presence online” but there is no way to guarantee sales lead. SEO targets to drive highly targeted web traffic that are on a look out for your services or products, but again a lot of things need to be taken care of, before a visitor gets converted into a final lead, namely, the site itself which should not be a turn-off for visitors, display of proper information, easy navigation to contact information or inquiry form, service/product pricing, your company credibility in market, industry competition, etc.

What can you expect from your SEO pro?
Well to answer this in simple terms, you need to closely look into your SEO contract. Study, analyze and understand what the dotted lines tell you. Does the contract merely list down the services that will be provided by the SEO pro during fixed time frame or does it also includes what results will be delivered by the SEO campaign.
SEO provides the following 4 deliverables which can be numerically measured:

Search Engine Rankings
Web Traffic
Conversions
Return on Investment (ROI)

You can expect any one or combination of any of the above results, depending on your ultimate business requirements and what you are trying to promote online.
Let’s take each of the above deliverables in more detail to clear doubts:

Search Engine Rankings:
This tops the list of results expected by clients undertaking SEO campaign. Please understand that rankings on search engine crawlers like Google, Yahoo, Ask, AOL etc can never be guaranteed or controlled. This is dependent on the particular search engines own search algorithm and calculations for crawling. But generally clients still demand top rankings. But do they know what particular rankings in particular?

What’s the use if you do get top rankings in certain keywords, but they do not generate traffic? At the same time you should not expect instant top rankings for highly competitive phrases and keywords. The truth is even moderate competitive keywords can be a real challenge, if your site is brand new. Always remember rankings take time and constant efforts to build up. The only way to measure results is to constantly check the progress. A gradual positive pattern on chosen keywords shows that the SEO campaign is working.

As a client you can NEVER expect a specific keyword to always rank well. Rankings fluctuate unexpectedly and even dip to extreme extent. An experienced SEO pro will keep a constant eye over those movements and try to find the cause and immediately undertake damage control to rectify the situation. It is important to place your trust and give the SEO pro time to do their job.

Web Traffic:
Web Traffic is the number of visitors that are driven either to your website, an e-commerce portal, blog or a reference site.

Once the SEO campaign kicks off, one of the desirable results clients expects is an increase in traffic which is reasonable, but should not be heavily relied upon since it is possible to manipulate traffic to a site with unethical short cuts. The question is not whether the traffic is increasing but whether SEO manages to bring the right kind of traffic to your site. Planned SEO can only begin only after you define who the target audience is to your SEO vendor, so that the SEO pro does not wastes time shooting in the dark aiming anyone and everyone.

The role of traffic should be downplayed, if you belong to a niche industry where the keyword search volume is naturally low. You should expect some improvement but make sure your expectation of traffic coincides with search volume of your main keywords.

Also if you already enjoy significantly heavy traffic, then the focus should shift from traffic to conversion rates and that means driving the right traffic that are ready to buy what you are selling.

Conversions:
People have a tendency to get mesmerized with number crunching and web analytic statistics regarding what exactly is conversion rate. A generally accepted formula to calculate your conversion rate is as follows:

Conversion Rate = [(Total Web Sales / Unique Web Traffic) / Average Sales Price] x 100

It simply means you need to understand the trick is not where you appear on a search engine or even how many unique visitors you attract to your site, but rather how many of these visitors you convert into customers. Visitors turning into customers are conversion rate. But an SEO pro can only do so much; the actual closing of deal depends entirely on you.
An SEO pro can help by making recommendations, suggesting specific improvements to the site’s architectural structure, etc, but when it comes right down to it, they are not the ones running the business. They can help put everything into alignment, but the client is still responsible for their side of things. This is the reason why no legitimate SEO company can guarantee conversion rate and will not include conversion rate in their SEO contract, since the control to convert traffic to customer depends on you.

ROI:
Last but not the least, every SEO campaign begins with the objective to improve your bottom line. It not just about getting the top 5 or 10 ranks or if you can get ‘X’ amount of visitors to your site. What ultimately matters is whether the amount you invest in SEO campaign is giving you more than you spend. It needs to be profitable. Just like when you make financial investments with hope of earning better returns, the same is the case with SEO. The key here is to remember that instant return on investment is not possible. As a client you need to wait for the fruits to ripe. If you get too impatient and pull out; you might drain all the benefits that might have been in the pipeline. This is the reason that SEO is not a one day job or one week or even one month activity. At the very minimum it is advisable to wait for at least 90 days before expecting improvements. Sometimes it can take 6 months or even a year depending on keywords, competition and industry etc.
The above 4 are the main deliverables expected from search engine optimization program. Focus on which deliverables are important for your marketing goals based on your budget and time availability. Ensure to always keep your feet firmly rooted to ground and your expectations realistic. Hire a SEO pro and actively participate in drafting a formal SEO contract which clearly outlines and defines expectations and services to avoid misunderstandings later on. Build a positive rapport with your SEO pro and ensure you do not ignore the recommendations provided by vendor to improve your site. Remember it’s your site and SEO pro is dependent on your complete support to succeed with the SEO campaign.

This does not mean SEO pro can shirk their responsibilities. If the work that goes into the campaign isn’t performing as per your expectations then move on and find another SEO pro who can produce reasonable results you expect (contract permitting and right amount of time frame being given to produce results).

But there is another “world’s best” that is not listed on Guinness Book of World Records.

And that is the world’s best Internet marketing tools.

Just like other existing industries, Internet marketing has its own set of the best marketing tools. If you are not new to the world of Internet marketing, many of these marketing tools are quite familiar to you—search engine optimization special software, content management services, affiliate marketing programs, auto responders, and others.
And the list continues to expand as the industry grows over the years.

However, Internet marketing possesses other non-traditional and effective marketing tools that you should know to maximize your potentials as Internet marketers. Some of these marketing tools are said to be “cleverly disguised”, yet these are the world’s best online marketing tools that you can integrate to your online business system.
Here is the quick rundown of the world’s best Internet marketing tools and some pointers in using it with your preferred system.

DOMAIN NAME- you will not easily notice it, but domain name is the first best Internet marketing tool that you must remember. Picking the right domain name will gear your way towards success yet getting it wrong will tell you that your game is over.

What are the things that you should consider when picking up your own domain name? First, you should pick a short, memorable, and keyword-relevant domain name. Picking a domain name that is relevant to your main keyword/s will help you in getting high search engine page ranking of your website. Moreover, it can be an ideal promotional tool, giving a hint to your potential clients what your website is exactly all about.
Internet marketing experts suggests that you set up a particular server for your domain. One server will only carry one domain. Web hosting companies typically have your domain name co-hosting hundreds of domains on a single server. Since all domains are under the same server, this may result to adverse consequences especially if one of the domains is allegedly spamming or behaving unscrupulously. Thus, it is wise that you have a separate IP address for each domain name.

KEYWORDS- it is what Internet researchers type into search engines to locate the information or things that they are looking for. These are one of the most important elements on any online-based marketing venture. Thus, you need to pick the right keywords and you are on your way towards success.

How you will find useful keywords for your Internet marketing business? You must have special keyword research tool or online keyword generator that will help you pick the right keywords. Such tools will supply useful information such as number of searches made monthly, the degree of competition, and the websites that targeting such keywords. Make this as your guide to get targeted traffic to your site that will patronize your products and/or services.

ARTICLES- marketing your website largely depends on organic SEO strategies. One simple strategy is to write and submit keyword-relevant articles to article directories and Internet publishers. As articles directories and Internet publishers displays your articles, you will be able to gain valuable links back to your website. Search engines follow these links and rank your website according to the keywords incorporated on these articles. Maximize the potential of your articles and bring the targeted traffic to your website.

LIST- any Internet marketing system is supported by list. This is a huge database of contacts or individuals who have given you permission to communicate with them through email or newsletter. Most Internet marketers are keeping various databases for each product that they are targeting. Aside from emails and newsletters, you must also set up a list of affiliates that can help you promote and sell your products to your clients. Once you have acquired a huge list of loyal subscribers and affiliates, the door of opportunities will now follow.
Utilize the world’s best Internet marketing tools and see a bright future ahead of your online business career.

By Daniele Donfack

1. Find a Good Research Tool
There are numerous free keyword research tools out there and many people will argue that the free tools are all you need. Some examples of free tools include Google’s Adwords tool and the free search term suggestion tool by Keyword Discovery. However, these tools are limited in nature. If you’re willing to shell out around $40 per month, you can get your hands on a keyword tool that provides you with more information such as how many competing sites are targeting certain keywords in your niche.

2. Set Realistic Goals
If you are in a competitive niche, don’t aim for the keywords that have both high search volume and high competition. Those keywords will be incredibly difficult to rank for in the beginning. Instead, focus on ranking for keywords with lower search volume and less competition. When combined, these so-called long tail keywords can bring you decent traffic. The best keywords however are the keywords that have high traffic and little competition but they are obviously harder to find. Don’t ignore misspelled keywords either. There are some popular keywords that people commonly misspell when conducting searches. Incorporate those misspelled keywords into your content to give your site an edge over the competition.

3. Be Specific
If you are an accountant in Tucson, Arizona, don’t aim to rank for the keyword, “accountant.” Get specific so people who need exactly what you offer can find you with ease. For example, if you are an accountant who provides litigation support in Tucson, make sure the keyword phrases you use include those terms so you reach your target market.

4. Test Your Keywords with a PPC Campaign
Once you do your initial keyword research, create a landing page with those keywords and set up a PPC campaign. Use an analytic tool to find out how many people land on your page and with what search terms. You can also determine how much time they spent on your landing page and if you achieved any conversions. Using a PPC campaign prior to launching your complete SEO campaign will help you narrow down your keyword list to only the most effective ones.

5. Use LSI Keywords
Instead of just targeting the obvious keywords in your niche, it’s important to find keyword phrases that are associated with your topic. LSI stands for “latent semantic indexing.” It might sound like confusing jargon but it’s quite simple. All you have to do is use an LSI keyword tool, which will help you generate relevant keywords. Sprinkling LSI keywords in your content allows you to enhance your opportunities to receive search engine traffic. Search engines value websites that provide informational content and the more related keywords your content focuses on, the more value and depth it is perceived to have.

Utilize these keyword research strategies and you’ll be well on your way to increasing traffic to your site. When you’re starting out, it’s a good idea to target long tail keywords and very specific keywords. This will help you establish your website in the beginning. From there you can move on to the more competitive keywords in your niche to ultimately build a SEO online presence.

Article by: Luca Mosca – Search Engine Marketing Consultant

The fact is, the importance of tracking your site traffic is not stressed nearly enough. At most, people say, “Sure, I track my site traffic. We had 5,000 hits last month!” But that, quite frankly, isn’t “tracking your site traffic.” That is a simple datum, and it doesn’t tell you anything about your site or your site traffic.

The importance of tracking your site traffic lies in the fact that proper web traffic analytics will help you answer these key questions:

Am I reaching my target market?

If you went about developing your web site systematically, you probably spent time researching and defining your target market. You then designed your site to reach those specific people.

But all your research was still – at its base – a hypothesis. You made assumptions about how to reach your customer base. Tracking your site traffic will verify what is actually happening on your site (who is coming and what they are doing), compared to what you expected to happen.

How are people interacting with my site?

Sure, people are coming to your web site. But what are they doing there? Do they hit the home page and leave? Do they go immediately to your free section and never browse your sale items? Do 90% of the people who click on your online payment form subsequently abandon it?

Tracking your site traffic will allow you to see how people proceed through your site, where they spend their time, what they do, and any problems they may be encountering. And that information can help you significantly improve their user experience – and your sales.

Where is my site traffic coming from?

To drive traffic to your site, you are likely engaged in multiple marketing efforts. You may have search engine optimized your content, engaged in article marketing, and developed reciprocal links from key partners. You may be involved in a pay-per-click campaign. Perhaps you also explored email marketing or print advertising.

Web traffic analytics will tell you exactly how successful each and every one of those marketing efforts is. You will then be able to cut the fat from your marketing plan and focus on the most strategic and productive campaigns.

What trends do I see?

The web is a constantly changing place. What worked last year may not work this year. You can’t rely on the mantra “we’ve always done it this way” and expect to see consistently positive results for years on end.

By tracking your site traffic, you will be able to see trends as they unfold: trends in who is coming to your site, how they are interacting with it, what they want, how they buy, etc. You will be able to respond proactively to changing patterns, rather than reactively scrambling to fix a situation after it has become a major problem.

If you are serious about using your web site as a tool for business, tracking your site traffic is an absolute essential. The questions above just scratch the surface of what web traffic analytics can do for you. But the bottom line is this: tracking your site traffic provides you with quantifiable data to allow you to make wise decisions for your business.

So, let’s jump right in with the secrets to SEO success….

Search Engine Secret # 1: There are no secrets! The search engines make it all very public and clear what you need to do to get top rankings. The success lies in the details and proper implementation. But there is no top secret, proprietary technique for getting top rankings.

OK, so now we all know there are no secrets, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t information you need to know, such as:

If you don’t optimize your site, you won’t get top rankings. It really is that plain and simple. If the engines can’t spider your site and you don’t have links and strong content, you don’t stand a chance against the sites that do have all that in place. So many people don’t want to spend money on SEO, or are afraid to take the plunge but then they can’t understand why they don’t have rankings. So maybe there is a secret – maybe the secret is take action and get your site optimized!

Your site structure matters! I can’t tell you how often people have said to me “I know my site is a mess, but I don’t want to spend the money fixing it, so can’t you just throw up some keywords and Meta tags and get me some rankings?” Ummmm, no, I can’t. Your site structure is your foundation. You would never build a house without a solid foundation, why would you build an SEO campaign without a solid foundation?

Don’t just focus on small keyword list that is made up of the most popular and competitive keywords. You will be missing out on opportunities for great keyword phrases that convert really well. Expand your list. Include long tail phrases. They may have less traffic but they will convert at a higher rate and if you get enough of these phrases they will likely add up to be better than your original list.

SEO is changing and evolving so staying current on what the engines are looking for is important. Either hire a firm to get you top rankings or find a way to make sure you stay current with information you can trust.
Social media and SEO go hand in hand, so get out there and be social. You can optimize your site without doing social media, and you can do social media without an optimized site. But why would you? The two enhance and compliment each other. The truth is there is a lot of competition out there for website traffic so why not use all the tools at your disposal?

Focusing on SEO without focusing on conversions is a mistake. You are going to work so hard, or pay someone your hard earned money to get you top rankings. You can’t afford to ignore marketing issues. Make sure your site is going to convert all that great new traffic you are going to send to your site.

Google Webmaster Tools and your web stats are a goldmine of information. Make sure you take time to see what words people are actually using to find your site and see what people do once they get to your site. See how many people link to you and which of those sources are driving traffic. Find out if there are errors on your site. There is so much information to be analyzed; you just need to make the time to check it out.

Successful SEO requires time, patience, skill, knowledge, persistence, attention to detail, knowledge of HTML, current information and an understanding of marketing helps too – then you can write the best possible text while using the keywords well, and it will also help you write compelling Title and Description tags….OR – the willingness to invest in a professional firm to get those top rankings for you.

By Jennifer Horowitz

Well in this article I’m going to give you some great links to what I think are the best free keyword research tools on the web to help you with your keyword analysis. They’ll give you some great stats to work with and hopefully do the job you were hoping for.

There’s just one thing I want to mention about these free keyword research tools below and that is they only give you the amount of searches for that given keyword phrase. What they don’t give you is your competition for those given keyword phrases.

But what we’re really trying to do here is find out if there’s a market for your interests and passions before you start building and marketing your website.

So with that said here are the free keyword research tools I think are the best for you to get started with and are very easy to use.
Lets start with the first one.

1) Wordtracker
With this free keyword research tool all you need to do is enter a starting keyword to generate up to 100 related keywords and an estimate of their daily search volume.
Go to: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com

2) Google Adwords
This keyword research tool I think is by far the best because it allows you to enter keywords for analysis or a website URL(Hint: Great for analysising your competitors sites).
Go to: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

3) SEO Book
SEO Books keyword research tool is powered by Wordtracker’s API, plus it cross references Google and Yahoo search results to give you a detailed view of your keyword analysis.
Go to: http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/

4) NicheBot Classic
With NicheBot Classic which also uses Wordtracker’s API allows you to insert your keyword and will give you the TOP 50 keywords and there daily search count and competing pages in Google, MSN and Yahoo.
Go to: http://www.nichebotclassic.com

5) Good Keywords
Good Keywords is a free Windows software for finding the perfect set of keywords for your web pages. Good Keywords is completely free. No registration, no payments and no nag screens.
Go to: http://www.goodkeywords.com

So there you have it, 5 of the TOP free keyword research tools available to you on the web for free to get you started with your keyword research.

There are of course paid services and software that give you more detailed keyword analysis but if you don’t have the money to spend these are a great starting point for you.
It all starts here with your keyword research because what’s the point of starting a website or paid advertising campaign without this valuable information in your hands.

I hope this list of free keyword research tools helps you and the best of luck with your websites and advertising campaigns.

By Cory Threlfall in SE Optimization

There are two fundamental ways of expanding your keyword lists:

* Long tail keywords that give you depth and allow you to dominate a particular market – so, moving from ‘chocolate’ to ‘chocolate gifts’ to ‘corporate chocolate gifts’. These long tailed keywords tend to have a smaller advertiser competition, therefore you get a better PPC price, also, you dominate that specific niche market.
* Related keywords that allow you to broaden the range of market sectors that you can target. So, if you’re selling gourmet chocolate, you may find opportunities in related keywords such as ‘truffles’, ‘fudge’ or ‘luxury foods’. Related keywords can make you aware of markets that you might now have considered. So in building your online business, you need to make sure you have an effective sales process in place. Do that and you will have real benefit from expanding your keyword lists.

You need to convert people who arrive at your website into paying customers. If you don’t do that, then it doesn’t matter how extensive you keyword research is, or how effective your optimization efforts are in drawing new visitors to your website. If you can’t convert a visitor into a customer then your efforts will be doomed to failure.

Only when you have got an effective sales process can you get the real benefit from expanding your keyword lists. And when you have that sales process in place, like any business you will want to expand. You could add new product lines, associated products and other ways to expand your potential income from each of the customers you attract.

However, before you embark on the path of product development you need to be sure that you are getting maximum return from what you have already. Let’s suppose you’ve got a website that performs well – you get 100,000 unique visitors per month and you have a conversion rate of 3%. That equates to 3,000 paying customers per month. Not a bad business situation to be in.

Now look at your log files. From these you see that 30% of your traffic comes from search engines. Dig a little deeper and you find that 80% of this comes from around 20 good keywords. Here’s a quick calculation of what this means:

* 30% of your traffic comes from search engines so that’s 30,000 unique visitors per month. 80% of these come from your top 20 keywords – that’s 24,000 per month.

* With a conversion rate of 3%, those 20 keywords bring you 720 paying customers every month. Now, if you could find another 20 keywords that perform just as well, then you could add another 720 customers, giving you a total of 3,720 customers per month – an increase of 24%.

And if you could achieve this growth once, could you do it again? Of course, the answer to that depends on the potential in your marketplace but the underlying principle is that good keywords will bring additional revenue to your website and you really can’t get too many of them.

Social media sites such as StumbleUpon and Digg, give users a voice on the internet by providing tools to connect, exchange views, share content, information, and recommend products and services using the “thumbs up or down” approach. This has caused a huge shift in the way people search for information online. More and more, Internet users rely on the opinions of others before they buy into the validity of a product or service. “Word of mouth” is no longer only from mouth to ear, but is more frequently spread on social media sites and it has never been so powerful. Any product or service deemed worthy is promoted, shared, or discouraged against in these online social communities.

Social Media Marketing (SMM) targets users by promoting content through bookmarking, blogging, online video sharing, and social networking to potentially expand audience and drive traffic. Businesses are beginning to understand the power of these influences when it comes to establishing a reputation and growing their online business. Social media marketing strategies such as a business’ engagement in various social media websites can help to generate branding and a personal connection with its users.

Business Profiles
One of the most important social media marketing methods includes posting business profiles on social media websites such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Instead of waiting around for consumers to come to you, you have to reach out to your target audience. Solidifying your presence in the social media community creates a direct interaction between business and consumer that may not dramatically improve conversion rates but is definitely capable of establishing branding power and credibility. The valuable feedback consumers provide promotes insight in determining what business strategies are working and what could be re-evaluated to make a website more user-friendly.

Search Results
The influence of social media sites has changed the way search engines define placement. Images, videos and news content featured on social media sites such as Youtube, Digg, and Flickr are equally capable of sitting comfortably at the top of the search results leaving others, who have not yet jumped on the social media bandwagon, a little confused.

Effective Social Media Marketing Strategies
Take a hint from the popular social media websites by adding some type of interactive quality to your website. Engage the viewer and create an atmosphere of inclusion and direct contact that encourages a user to come back and visit again. Forums and social applications can help you compete for traffic in an evolving market.

Become an expert in your niche. Yahoo Answers is a great place to start. You can create a business or company profile and begin answering direct questions and supplying information to those in your target audience.

Join Social Networks. Social networking provides a means to promote association and the exchange of knowledge while also establishing business contacts and connections. Post your business profile in the popular social and business networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn, but also make sure to concentrate your attention on your niche audience by joining social media networks that represent and support your business or company’s ideas.

For example if you are selling organic produce and you set up a profile in a social media network such as Care2.com, an environmental portal, you are then communicating directly with those individuals who will support your product or service because of a shared interest. These types of social media communities will extend their approval by sharing in discussions about your products or services with other users and even in some cases “become a fan” of your featured webpage.

Some examples of popular niche social networks include:
TravBuddy.com for the traveller
Tipd.com for those seeking financial advice
AutoSpies.com providing money saving and insider information on cars
Publish articles to popular social media news sites such as Mixx.com, Digg.com, and Propeller.com. These sites allow you to post articles and vote on news stories.

Share videos and images by setting up accounts with Youtube.com and Flickr.com, leaders in online video and imaging to reach a broad or targeted audience.

Social bookmarking on sites such as Del.ici.ous and Ma.gnolia.com provide an opportuníty to store and share links.

Blogging enables you to provide information and updates about your business to customers.

Businesses that incorporate social media marketing into their conventional marketing plan have the advantage of reaching audiences using a whole new approach. The benefits of branding and traffic are just the tip of the iceberg. Establishing your business as a leading authority in your industry promotes good quality links and better search engine placement, which in turn increases sales.

The question is – How do you get this highly targeted web site traffic.

I will list some of the most popular methods.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Of all the pay per click search engines, Google Adwords is the largest and most popular.

This method, when done correctly, will increase your exposure, and give fast results. You must keep up to date with Google’s rules, so be sure to read them. You pay a one off fee when you register and set up your campaign. You can have your campaign up and running in minutes. There is a minimum bid, but of course you will have to pay more than this. But the beauty of Adwords is you can set a daily budget of how much you are willing to spend.

You can create as many campaigns as you want, and then test your ads (changing the headline for example).

Google provide tools to help you with your campaigns, and have exellent tutorials that walk you through everything from signing up to creating your Adwords campaigns.

Link popularity

This is achieved when other sites have links to your site. If a high traffic site has links, the search engines perceive both sites must be popular. The important thing is to have quality web sites linking back to your site.

Why should anyone want to link to your site? If you have quality content, this adds perceived value and makes your site popular, so others will want to link to you.The type of content could be:

Free downloads
Free reports, articles, ezine or newsletter
Video
Links to other good sites

Reciprocal Links

This is where you exchange links with other quality sites. You can create a links page on your site. This create a resource that visitors will want to return to. Find quality (there’s that word again) web sites related to your subject and contact the webmaster about exchanging links.

Ezine advertising

Most ezines accept advertising. Ezines are online or email newsletters. They are used to build a relationship between a webmaster and a web site visitor, with news, updates, special offers etc. But as always they should have quality content. You place an ad in ezines that are highly targeted towards your niche. Prices depend on the ezine, and also the position of the ad. The most expensive is the solo ad, where yours is the only ad.

Article Submissions

Submitting articles is a great way to build back links and web site visitors. Your articles can become ‘viral’ when others want to re-publish them on their sites, or use them in their newsletters and ezines. You include links to your site in the author resource box offering more free information. The resource box is your chance to convince the reader to visit your web site.

Two of the most popular places to post your articles are http://www.goarticles.com/ and http://www.EzineArticles.com.

Forum Posting

In order to be successful using forums there are some things that are required. Do Your Homework: Prior to joining any forum, you must do some research. Join relevant forums that are in some way related to the promotion’s primary sales market. Choose popular forums. There is no point in wasting your time and energy on forums that few members and few posts. Page raking and the amount of active members are two good ways to check for this. Choose forums that allow sig tags. Read the rules before joining and pay attention to them.

You’ve Joined: now what?

Keep your sig tag short and update it regularly. The ideal thing is to limit yourself to one link, preferably to your main website. Never create posts that are nothing more than an advertisement. This is a universal rule. At best this kind of post will be deleted by the monitors, at worst, you will be banned. Be an active member on the forum. Plan to spend at least an hour each day there. Get to know the users. Iintroduce yourself with intelligent questions depending upon the forum’s topic.

Use Your Sig file to the best advantage and within the rules. Some Forums have places where you can advertise and give special deals to members.

Social Bookmarking

In a social bookmarking system, users store lists of Internet resources that they find useful. These lists are both accessible to the public or a specific network, and other people with similar interests can view the links by category, tags, or even randomly. Some allow for privacy on a per-bookmark basis.

Social Bookmarking can bring immediate traffic to your website, as web 2.0 community websites such as Technorati, Digg, Reddit and Tailrank provide almost immediate information on various topics. These type of Bookmarking sites index and categorize content usually faster than the major search engines. People looking for the latest information on certain topics usually refer to these types of services.

Bookmarking Accounts to check out:

http://digg.com/
http://technorati.com/

You can increase your Bookmarking using the free submission site http://www.OnlyWire.com to bookmark many accounts at once. When you signup to OnlyWire.com you can use many bookmark accounts and with one simple procedure bookmark your blog post to all your accounts at once.

OnlyWire.com interfaces with:

Backflip
Bibsonomy
Blinklist
Blogmemes
Blue Dot
de.lirio.us
del.icio.us
Diigo
Furl
Jots
Linkroll
Looklater
ma.gnolia
Markaboo
Rawsugar
Shadows
Simpy
Spurl
Wink

If you don’t have a Bookmark Account for the ones listed go and sign up.

Viral Traffic using free reports – ebooks etc.

Directory Submissions

Submit your website url’s to the search engines Google, Yahoo, MSN.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization, (SEO), is making web pages attractive to the search engines. The better optimized your web page is, the higher a ranking it will achieve in the search engines. Most people searching the internet only look at the first couple of search results.

So optimizing for the search engines focuses on techniques such as making sure that each web page is using the appropriate title tags and meta tags, and that the keyword or key phrases for the particular pages are distributed throughout the content. Search engines find and catalog web pages using spidering software.

These are just a few ways to get more web site traffic.

And yet it seems that so many budding Internet marketers are finding it hard to break through VNB – the “Visitor Numbers Barrier.”

When I started, I thought there was some magic elixir or secret technique that would transform my visitor numbers! If only I could find THE ONE successful method!

Well, this article is to let you know that while there may be hundreds of ways to get visitors to your website – I’ve selected some of the techniques that work best for me.

And they can work for you, as well.

Because, if there IS a secret of success, it is this: “Don’t rely on ONE way to generate traffic. Become familiar with MANY.” Better to have many visitor doors to your website, rather than just one, don’t you think?

I’m still surprised how many serious Internet marketers neglect the basics. And one of the most basic ways to improve your visitor traffic is to be absolutely certain that your website is listed by the search engines.

Don’t trust the search engine spiders to do your work for you. All the major search engines have detailed and easy-to-follow instructions on site submission, as well as how to create and submit site-maps.

I don’t think Facebook needs a great deal of introduction, does it? But you can mine value for Facebook if you look for opportunities to include your website on information that you provide.

Then, there is what I call the secret power of blogging: search engines LOVE blogs. The search engine spiders thrive on novelty and change, and if you write or post a new entry to your blog every day – or every other day – the search engines will recognize what is going on and begin to rank your website blog higher than a website that doesn’t change its content from month to month. And a high ranking means visitors to your site.

Don’t forget that you can leverage your signature in online communities or discussion groups. If your product is specifically niched, then you know that there are loyal and relevant online communities or discussion groups who want to hear from you.

And, your forum signature could be a goldmine once you have thought through the best way of expressing your product’s unique feature so that readers find your website irresistible.

Would you like your web address to be seen by ten million people in ten minutes? Well, it’s possible – if you’re careful! Because there are three kinds of people: those who love Google Adwords, often known as Pay Per Click, those who hate it – and those who haven’t tried it.

Many people just go nuts trying to get their advertisement absolutely perfect. And, if you don’t read the small print, you could find that your budget is exhausted quickly. But if you follow the guidelines and budget sensibly you could attract many, many hundreds of paying visitors on a daily basis.

Do you remember those kid’s stories where the fairy Godmother tells the child to repeat a word three times for magic to happen? Well, here’s that word: “eBay”, “eBay”, “eBay”.

There – I’ve said it. eBay is perhaps THE most underestimated visitor generating resource. Ignore eBay at your peril. There are many, many resources available on the web where you can discover how to sell products on eBay. Until recently you could sell digital products (i.e. eBooks, which you can download) but the rules have changed and currently you can only sell physical goods, so your eBook will have to be on a CD. Personally, I think it’s a good move, and opens up many possibilities.

Don’t forget that Ezines and Newsletters are the Grand Daddy and Grand Mommy of all website visitor attraction and list building activity. The thing is this – Ezines and Newsletters work!

If you love your niche product, you’ll have LOTS to say about it, and there will be people who want to hear what you have to say. I built a subscriber of almost 3,000 with a business coaching Newsletter.

Another way to get visitors to your websites is to write an ebook. I’m not embarrassed to say that we’re not talking great literature here. We aren’t talking about the Pulitzer Prize. We’re not even talking more than, maybe, 30 pages, double spaced, and size 12 font.

But the fact is this: your eBook will attract visitors to your website single-handedly.

Later, you can provide your eBook to affiliates so that they send visitors to your site as well! If you’re more of an audio expert than a novelist, why not create a podcast? Uh? Well, a podcast is a series of audio files that is distributed over the Internet to iPods and other music players and personal computers. This is the future – and it’s fun!

The fact is, everyone loves information but don’t always find printed pages the best way to get it. If you can provide the same information that can be played on an iPod or similar media player, or a mobile phone, you’re offering a higher value product.

You needn’t start from scratch – you can plug your product or service almost immediately by converting your existing articles or eBooks into .mp3 recordings. (.mp3 is the industry standard audio format that is widely accepted for iPods, mobile phones etc.) Remember, you have, on your hard drive, stuff that you have written, or will write, that you can add value to by converting it into an .mp3 recording.

Again, it’s the basics that are often the key to increasing your visitor traffic, so you might need to shine your light on your meta tags. (To put it briefly, a “meta tag” is used by search engines to allow them to more accurately list your site in their indexes.

To be honest, it works most of the time, but not always! Search engines are always changing their methods, and some use Meta tags a lot, while others don’t, but I would not want to neglect this technique. It is a small piece of the mosaic that completes the whole visitor traffic picture.

How many times have you wanted to speak your mind? Well, now you can – and it’ll help drive visitors to your website. How? Leave testimonials on other people’s sites. This won’t take you a second, but your web address will be around for years. Go for it. It is so simple, and so little done.

Another technique I used to attract visitors was to write a priority email to customers with an attention-grabbing subject such as “The Top Ten Myths In Your Industry.” Or, provide something like this as a freebie. Make certain that there are clear links to your website, and a compelling reason for the reader to visit.

Finally, I don’t think YouTube needs much introduction! It’s simply one of the largest websites devoted to online videos covering every single subject you can think of – and more! So how can you use the power of YouTube to get more visitors? Simply this: upload a video of you talking about your niche.

Many cheap digital cameras have a video option – and you do not need a high-end movie camera. You could get a friend to film you. Or, you could use a built in camera on your PC or Mac, if your model has one. Aim to talk for not much longer than 10 minutes maximum, and sign off with your website address. Again, this is much easier than you would think.

Remember, so many people focus on one traffic building technique, and one only. I hope I’ve shown you that there are many ways – and you should have fun with all of them. My best to you.

If, in the mind of the visitor, the success factors of outweigh the failure factors, she will convert. If they don’t, she won’t. This “weighing” happens on a conscious and/or subconscious level every moment she’s on the site. The more obvious the imbalance, the easier the decision.

The goal of web optimization: increase conversion rates It seems simple enough: increase the success factors and decrease the failure factors. Whatever the nature of your site, whatever you consider a conversion, the factors are pretty much the same.

Failure factors

Anything that causes frustration, a negative thought, or a concern in the mind of the visitor tips the balance against conversion. These failure factors include:

* Poor copy (doesn’t focus on benefits to visitors)
* Confusing navigation
* Lack of hierarchy
* Information in the wrong sequence
* Unnecessary steps
* Difficult to scan
* Too many choices
* Inconsistent
* Unusual terminology
* Broken links
* Outdated content
* Unprofessional design
* Inaccessible contact information
* Forms that are too complex

Failure factors generate anxiety. They create barriers. They undermine the motivation of your visitors and interfere with your ability to build a relationship. By slowing them down and forcing them to think too much, you’re tipping the conversion balance that leads prospects to click away from your site.

Next we’ll look at Success Factors.

Success factors

Anything that makes your site self-explanatory, easy-to-use, and meets visitors’ needs based on their different motivations is a success factor. These include:

* Strong value proposition (why should I buy from you instead of your competitor?)
* Understanding visitors’ needs based on their motivation
* Benefits-oriented copy
* Easy navigation
* Obvious hierarchy
* Succinct copy
* Clear instructions
* Short, simple forms
* Scannable pages
* Incentives and credibility indicators
* Web conventions (i.e. make links look like links)
* Meaningful page titles and sub-headers
* Professional design

Success factors generate confidence and provide positive reinforcement. When visitors feel like they’re in the right place you’ve earned their trust and the opportunity to build a relationship. That’s the only way you can encourage them to read on, click to the next step, fill out a form or pick up the phone.

There’s one more success factor that doesn’t fit neatly into a bullet-point. Consider the mindset of your visitors and where they are in their buying or decision-making process.

It is important to provide content for different kinds of people; those who just want the facts please, those who respond to an emotional pitch, people who are visually oriented, etc.

Equally important, you want to provide information for browsers or people just doing preliminary research, as well as detailed info for visitors who may be returning to your site and are ready to convert.

Conversion is a process

Remember, while a conversion technically happens in a single step, it is not an isolated one. Conversion is the result of a series of small decisions and tiny steps. By minimizing the failure factors and maximizing the success factors you can tip the balance.

Let me know if you have other ideas about failure and success factors that affect conversion rates.

In order to keep Google fed, webmasters have to jump through more than one set of hoops. When it comes to getting top rankings in Google’s Index or SERPs, there are 200 of these hoops or ranking factors. And if you want to play in Google’s ballpark, you have to try and master the majority of them.

For years, frustrated webmasters have been guessing and searching for these ranking factors. Asking what does Google want? How does Google rank pages and keywords? How does Google want you to build your site?

Ten years ago it wouldn’t have mattered what Google thought of your site for it wasn’t even in the picture, but now when it comes to online search, Google is king of the hill. And as we all know, kings get whatever they want.

Besides, any webmaster worth his salt, knows Google is what counts when it comes to organic traffic – you can achieve #1 spots for a keyword in all three top search engines (Yahoo and MSN being the other two light-weight contenders) but Google will simply deliver the most traffic to your site.

Google doesn’t as yet have a monopoly on web search, but it’s getting close to 70% of U.S. traffic and in some countries it’s up over 90%. But it’s not only the search numbers which makes Google king – it is the prestige and power of the Google brand name. Google has truly permeated into popular culture and the public psyche like no other brand name in history.

Google brings respect and trust into the equation. Web users respect and trust Google to give them a quality answer to their question. That’s why it was rather ironic, that for years webmasters have been asking Google about their ranking system, their algorithm, their practices… for years Google remained for the most part silent. This was mainly to keep at bay, those who would like to “game” the system in order to get high rankings within Google.

Until now that is, maybe it’s just me but doesn’t it appear that Google is suddenly opening up about its whole ranking procedures and what they expect from webmasters. Maybe the answers have always been there, we just couldn’t find them. However, a more likely scenario is that someone high up within Google made the decision to be more transparent when it comes to webmasters and how much they would tell them.

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In recent Webmaster live chats, Googlers Matt Cutts, Maile Ohye, among others… have been honestly answering questions about what Google requires webmasters to do regarding their sites. These are Q&A sessions dealing with the “burning questions” webmasters have had for years concerning Google and what Google wants. Do a search in Google for “Google Webmaster Help | Google Groups” if you want to find these sessions.

Since I run several modest sites on webmaster tools and Internet marketing I am approached by more than a few people who want me to help them build their online site or business. One of the major issues that always comes up somewhere in the process (usually phrased in different ways) is this question:

What does Google want? What does Google expect of my site? How do I get ranked high in Google?

Mainly because my chief goal is to help these webmasters understand Google better in order to build a profitable site; I have struggled and puzzled over this question for years.

What is Google’s Golden Rule?

Many experts believe it is related to relevancy – the key to getting high rankings is how relevant your content is to the question being asked? Maybe so, but in order to explain it to a would-be webmaster, I had to find the words that would most appropriately sum up Google’s prime directive?

After you go through all the SEO checkmarks, take into account the quality and uniqueness of your content, factor in the credibility and authority of your site and backlinks, and factor in the relevancy issue… this was the simple Google Golden Rule I came up with:

“Always think of your visitor first when creating any content for your site.”

This may or may not be what Google is expecting but all indications are pointing in the direction of the “visitor’s experience” and how good you or your content make that experience? Google is serving up a product, it wants the user of their product to be happy with the results. If they’re happy, Google is happy. And if everyone’s happy then the kingdom grows.

Still anything as simple and as complicated as getting top rankings in Google can’t be boiled down to a single catch phrase. You must do your homework and a good starting point would be to thoroughly read Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Studying and listening to the latest Google webmaster chats may also prove beneficial and helpful.

However, there are still those 200 hoops you have to jump through and you must be extremely careful of how you build your site if you’re trying to please Google. Listen when the king speaks. Observe his rules. Be on your guard, and it helps to become just a little paranoid. And always, always remember, an elephant never forgets.

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There are lots of things you can do to freshen up your site and bring new life and new customers to your online business.

1. Add a new section filled with resources, information and maybe even some special deals for your customers. Use relevant keywords to improve your ranking. For example: if you own a home decor business, offer decorating tips and advice. Show people how to decorate on a budget or how to redecorate with things they already own. By providing information and resources along with your products, you are giving people a reason to keep coming back. This is how you build trust with your visitors and get more sales.

finding links that don’t work or information and/or products that are no longer useable or helpful. Go through all the links on your site and freshen up the content to offer up to date information!

3. Give your homepage a facelift by adding new graphics, text, etc. Redo your banner and give it some new life. Take out the old graphics and add some fresh new images. Research your keywords and revamp your text with some effective keywords. Write a new introduction to your site detailing all your new additions.

4. If you haven’t yet tried blogging, read up on blogging and zap some life into your site. Some free blogging sites are Blogger and WordPress. Blogging is a great way to improve your search engine ranking while expanding your network.

5. Update your product line. Add some fresh new products and offer the old products at clearance prices. Have a Spring Sale and liven up your sales! Keep those customers coming back for more!

6. Add a What’s New page so you can let everyone know about all your updates now and in the future. This feature could get more people to return to your site to see What’s New?

7. Research the colors used on your site. You may find changing the colors of your site can bring a whole new life to your business.

8. Put a small survey on your site. Ask your visitors what they would like to see and what type of products they are looking for. Getting the information straight from the horse’s mouth could do your business a lot of good. Offer your visitors a small gift for answering the questions on the survey.

9. Renew your goals! Make new goals and write out a new business plan. Learn from your experiences, good and bad, and improve your plan for success.

Spring is a time of renewal, revitalization and reenergizing! Our online businesses are no exception!

Why is this?

Well, experience shows that returning visitors are much easier to convert into paying customers because the more often they return to a site, the more trust they have in that site. The whole issue of credibility disappears.

So what do you need to do to keep your visitors coming back and visiting your site?

How about checking out some of the solutions below:

1) You could consider starting a forum, chat room or shout box.

Providing a forum, chat room or shout box, allows your visitors to have a voice where they can share their opinions and interact with their peers — all of them visitors of your site.

Over time this develops into a sense of community and conversions will follow and your visitors will look forward to coming back to your site each and every day.

2) This probably goes without saying, but starting a blog can be a fantastic source for both new and recurring traffic.

Having your own blog is like keeping an online journal, and human beings are curious and thirsty for information. You need to keep your blog frequently updated with your latest news, both business and personal.

You will find that over time more and more people will come back to read your posts and with it you will develop credibility as an authority figure in your niche.

3) How about carrying out polls or surveys?

You will note that so far all the suggestions made have had some form of visitor interaction and conducting polls and surveys is no different. This is one that you should definitely consider adding to your site.

They are a quick way for visitors to voice their opinions and to get involved in your website. It is important that you publish the results of any polls or surveys so that you keep the interest of your visitors to come back and see the results.

4) This is a little bit more innovative, but have you considered the use of puzzles, games and quizzes.

This will provide a yardstick as to how many people are willing to return to your site if you are maintaining their interest through entertainment.

You can also hold competitions to award the high score winner to keep people trying continuously to earn the prize.

5) This may appear just plain common sense, but you need to update your site frequently with fresh content if you wish to attract multiple visits.

Although this may appear to be the most likely of strategies it is also the most overlooked with some sites seemingly looking the same for years.

If you want returning visitors to the same message over time that message needs a refresh, a different approach or angle!

Maintaining the same approach continually will have the effect of changing nothing, so don’t be lazy and add new fresh bites of information from time to time to increase your visitor’s interest.

Article by: Christopher Raine

These well-crafted advertisements promised ten dollars back for every $100 spent on subway fares. It gave the current economic crisis and recession as the explanation for their incredible generosity and compassion.

Everybody around me seemed thoroughly impressed by this overwhelming gesture of selfless charity; many discussed in earnest how they were planning to sign up for this card to enjoy these charitable savings. It seemed I was the only one, the Christmas Grinch of the crowd, who perceived this advertisement strategy as more cunning and brilliant than selfless and generous. What an ideal time to hook people on yet another credit card, especially with the holiday season already upon us. Obviously the long-term interest this credit card company was anticipating far overshadowed their likely short-term promotional costs.

Indeed it was a cunning and brilliant strategy, much the same, I thought to myself, as Google’s page rank system.

At first glance it seems a very wise, fair and indeed brilliant system for determining positioning within the search ranks. On closer inspection, however, it is even more brilliant and cunning than most are giving it credit.

In the past, creating good, unique and newsworthy content, coupled with intelligent onsite optimization strategies, was at least enough to get your website found. These days are now gone, regardless of what some naïve or misleading SEO experts might still tell you.

Page Rank has now become the single most important factor in having your site found in the organic search results of the leading search engines. Page Rank is determined by the quantity and quality of websites that are linking to yours. Each website link acts as a kind of vote for the site it links to, and passes some of its own page rank to this site. The higher the page rank, and the more relevant the content of the site, the more significant the affect will be.

Since search engine bots cannot view your site in the same way a human views it, this strategy allows user popularity to have a significant affect on the algorithm these search engines are using. The belief is, of course, that the more quality and relevant sites that are voting for yours, the higher the probability that your site is a good one, and therefore deserving of a higher position.

Of course, this system is not perfect, and for obvious reasons, but it is certainly superior to deciding the importance of a site purely on onsite content. The reality is, there are thousands if not million of webmasters who can write unique, quality content. There are even more who know how to optimize this content for the search engines. However, millions of sites cannot be number one for a single keyword or phrase. Page rank must decide the difference.

The problem, however, is that the top search engines have now leaned so far away from onsite optimization, in preference of offsite optimization (i.e. page rank), that you are likely to find all kinds of lousy content and add riddled sites at the top of your searches. Putting a greater importance on links, however, plays significantly in Google’s favour. This is especially true today, as reciprocal and 3-way link exchanges have now been significantly devalued, along with paid links and link directories.

Google’s intent is that links should be entirely organic, occurring naturally when other webmasters like your site enough to add a link to it. This way of achieving links however, can take a very, very long time, as most Internet users do not know that they are supposed to do this. Most Internet users add the sites they like to their favourites, they don’t create a keyword rich link to it from their own highly relevant site. Nevertheless, this is just one of the many ways Google favours older more time-proven sites over newer, get rich quick sites. The fact is, unless the content of your website has just revealed something of tremendous news importance, it could take years before your quality site acquires enough natural, keyword rich links from relevant sites to significantly boost you to the top of the search engines.

The conundrum, however, is that nobody will find your great content, and thereby link to it, unless you are on page one or two for at least one keyword or phrase (one that gets searched for that is). So if you do want to acquire natural one-way links, you pretty much have only one choice. You will have to advertise.

Google now provides the best online advertising available. Not only is it inexpensive, it is targeted towards your keywords.

This means a much higher conversion rate. People will find your product or service when they are looking for it, not when they are looking for something else. And with around 80% of North American searches done on Google, it just wouldn’t make sense to concentrate your efforts anywhere else (unless your loyalty lies elsewhere).

Knowing this, guess who will reap the largest rewards of this new lean towards offsite optimization? The reality is, if you want your internet site to one day make it to the top of Google (and Yahoo and MSN) for an important keyword or phrase, you will have to acquire a substantial number of natural links. Since this could take years, as most webmasters are selfish and don’t link for nothing, and most Internet users don’t know to do this, you are bound to spend a small fortune with Google before your site is able to stand on its own. Of course Google won’t make as much of a profit from you once your site is on the top, but there will be millions of others who will still be vying for this position.

The bottom line is, you will need to spend money if you one day want to make money.

The only question is how much money can you afford to invest? Or should I say gamble, because no matter how much money you spend, there are no guarantees.

The results, of course, are purely organic, and Google’s algorithm can change at any time. Besides, by the time you’re actually on the top, your content and unique features will likely be outdated and not that impressive anymore.

Google insists that you cannot purchase or pay for the organic results located on the left side of the screen. If you are caught purchasing links that are intended to indirectly improve your search engine ranking position, you will either be significantly penalized, or removed from Google entirely. However, the only significant way to increase naturally is to pay for advertising on the right side, so people can actually find your great content and unique features, and provide you with these natural links.

Of course, there are some other ways to promote your site, such as blogging, posting on forums, and creating videos on Youtube, etc. The catch is, however, that if you’re not careful, you will be penalized for spamming (excessively promoting your site where you are not supposed to). This is why most forums these days have the no follow meta tags added to their code. Otherwise, you will just have to get creative in achieving and maintaining high PR links that are relevant and keyword rich.

Unfortunately, if you do find a way to attain these links in any way that Google considers unnatural, it will eventually update its algorithm and ensure you are penalized for your imaginative endeavours.

Personally, I’ve never seen so many people work so hard at what is considered cheating. Couldn’t we at least give them part marks for creativity? After all, you won’t even let them see the marking rubric.

Article by: Jack Strawman

Many would add that branding is not that important for small businesses and see it as an additional expense on the P&L. So they head off to the local printer or graphic designer who designs a logo (sometimes even for free) that gets used on stationary, vehicles and other marketing materials.

From our experience in this field, we find that most logos designed for small businesses are simply graphic devices and not actually brands in the true sense of the word, and portray little about the value proposition of the company, its personality and service promise.

In actual fact, development of a meaningful, representative and outstanding brand identity is just as critical for small businesses and if properly executed, can actually be a powerful competitive advantage.

For corporates, an effective and powerful brand is a ‘must-have’, simply in order to be in the game.

t may not necessarily differentiate them but it does at least give them parity with their competitors.

Unfortunately, some corporates still don’t understand the value of a great brand and have cruddy logos that are, in short, embarrassing and doing nothing for their businesses.

But there is significant value to the small business that has the vision and commitment to invest in having a professional marketing agency develop a meaningful and appropriate brand identity.

A brand identity is more than just a visual symbol or logo design – it defines your company’s unique service promise, builds lasting brand recognition and invokes positive recall.

A strong brand enhances your company’s credibility by integrating your brand strategy with consistent graphic application across all market and customer contact points.

Think about this – if most small businesses have weak branding, then by developing a compelling and effective branding package you can position your company ahead of your competitors in the mind of your target market.

A strong and effective brand can definitely be a competitive advantage in the cut throat world of small business.

To develop a strong brand identity, your marketing agency needs to work closely with you to understand the needs of your customers and prospects.

They need to explore suitable graphic elements and branding metaphors for the logo device, develop appropriate colour palettes and provide guidance on how to effectively apply your branding and logo design in specific applications.

Your goal should be to ensure complete brand integrity. If the brand development process is executed correctly then your company will stand out from the mass of small businesses that simply couldn’t be bothered, or more likely, don’t know any better.

Professionally designed brands, usually most visibly represented by the logo device, tell the market a visual story about your company.

It speaks of attention to detail, professionalism, pride and investment in your company, presents your unique value proposition and helps you to stand out above your mediocre competitors.

Article by: Wayne Attwell

The actual text you use in the title tag is one of the most important factors in how a search engine may decide to rank your web page. In addition, all major web crawlers will use the text of your title tag as the text they use for the title of your page in your listings.

If you have designed your website as a series of websites or linked pages and not just a single Home Page, you must bear in mind that each page of your website must be search engine optimized. The title of each page i.e. the keywords you use on that page and the phrases you use in the content will draw traffic to your site.

The unique combination of these words and phrases and content will draw customers using different search engine terms and techniques, so be sure you capture all the keywords and phrases you need for each product, service or information page.

The most common mistake made by small business owners when they first design their website is to place their business name or firm name in every title of every page. Actually most of your prospective customers do not bother to know the name of your firm until after they have looked at your site and decided it is worth book marking.

So, while you want your business name in the title of the home page, it is probably a waste of valuable keywords and space to put it in the title line of every page on your site. Why not consider putting keywords in the title so that your page will display closer to the top of the search engine listing.

Dedicating first three positions for keywords in title avoiding the stop words like ‘and’, ‘at’ and the like is crucial in search engine optimization.

1. Rickjerk  - I liked Rich Jerk so much I put his ads on my website!

2. Google Shadow  -  This is very powerful, and if you follow the instruction exactly, you can make some serious $$.

3. DayJobKiller  - Once again easy to use, and powerful.

All of these work, and yes anyone that can drive a computer can do it, I should know, I have.

The two most important things to get you started with blogging are your niche and your blog content. Your niche is your area of interest. There are probably hundreds of things you’re interested in but not all of them enough to write a blog on continually and make money. You’ll be blogging on a regular basis so choose a topic that is going to hold your interest. You may want to do some research on Google on your topic.

Try to avoid a topic that millions of others are not writing on or trying to sell. Or if you can’t, try to narrow your topic down to specifics. Write a few articles and blogs to post at once when you open your blog so it’s interesting to the first group of readers.

Once you have your blog going, you need to have content and lots of it. In the beginning it may seem like you’re writing to yourself, and you may be until you can generate traffic your way. Go to other blogs that are in your niche and leave comments. This is a great way to generate traffic to your blog. If you happen to mention other blogs in your blog post, use trackbacks so they’ll be notified that you mentioned them. Learn about pinging your articles and it’s importance.

Above all, keep your content fresh. Keep adding every day and don’t give up, even when it seems you’re the only one posting. It will get busy.

Are you really interested in driving massive traffic to your website?

To find out more, you can go http://www.massivecashgenerator2.com

After the registration of domain name selection of web host is another rational step a user need to consider. Though, finding an ideal host is a daunting task. One can find several companies offering web-hosting services to the clients. While locating keyword web hosting in the search engines one will find more than 100 million outputs!

One cannot deny the fact, for a successful online presence a dependable web hosting is must. Online presence and accessibility of a web site is must. If not, one should remain ready to loose clients and prospects. For an instance, if one compare this with a traditional business.

CATEGORIES OF WEB HOSTING:

One should select a web hosting deal according to his/her site. One cannot fulfill his/her requirements from same hosting deal for a personal web site, web site meant for email newsletter subscription and archives, e-commerce site or web forum. Web hosting can be divided into four prime categories: 

1. Virtual (shared) hosting,

2. Dedicated server, 

3. Collocation server and 

4. Reseller hosting. 

Two most applicable hosting are virtual (shared) hosting and dedicated server.

What is Virtual (shared) hosting? It is a condition in which several web sites share one server. It is a low cost hosting because price is divided between several users. One can locate a standard virtual hosting at a rate of $100 a year.

In a Dedicated server hosting company lease the whole web server from a particular web hosting company. The site of web server is the web hosting company. One can opt dedicated server as a suitable option who does not wish to share a server with other web masters. One can find a dedicated server in two forms managed and un-managed. If one talk about managed server, company will take care of all the setups of user’s server. However, in unmanaged server user needs to take care of all these by him/her self. The benefit of this sort of hosting is that one can fully lodge web hosting as per his/her requirements. Moreover, for a site with ample amount of visitors a dedicated server is the only rational choice. Due to higher cost, starting from $100 per month, those companies that know the worth of Internet business generally use it.

One can say that Collocation server is quite identical to dedicated server. Disparity lies in the fact that company doesn’t take the web server on lease. Their own web server is placed in the web hosting company. In addition to it, company has material access to their web server, which is not available while talking about a dedicated server.

If one mention about Reseller hosting it is aimed to those companies only wishes to begin their own web hosting business.

ASPECTS, WHICH ONE NEEDS TO CONSIDER:

There are many factors which a user needs to consider to prevent any future miss happens:

Web space:

Requirement of Web space vary from site to site. Off course, if user requirement is only a web site containing basic information about him/her and his/her work excluding the use of web applications, then space of 50 MB is quite sufficient. However, a complex e-commerce site along with numerous products in one’s database demands a capacity of 1 GB.

Bandwidth:

The term Bandwidth refers to data transferred from user’s web site and that comprise of graphic details, images, banners and files for download. One should have accurate knowledge of Content before going for an amount of bandwidth. When one talks about the majority of sites, bandwidth of 10 GB a month is quite sufficient, though for few other sites like sites related to desktop wallpapers can frequently consumes even hundreds of GB a month.

Up time or visibility:

It symbolizes time articulated in percents displaying the period a site remained online. One should not be cheerful because someone assured him/her to provide say for 98% up time because it is not going to fulfill his/her requirement. One should get at least 99.7% uptime. Believe it or not, it definitely matters. 

Email accounts:

Email accounts are an integrated and crucial part of web hosting package. It is quite interesting to know for how much will one get only a so called catch –all forwarding which means that all emails sent to somewhere@mydomain.com will arrive to one’s email address or one can set-up email accounts for several users? Also the thing is for how much? Is it intended for 5, 10, 100 or limitless email accounts? In addition to it, there is no harm to verify whether user get a so-called POP3 email address (“real” email address), web mail or rather both? If one has a POP3 email address then he/she can check his/her emails via favorite email client and web mail facilitate the user to inquire his/her emails at any place demanding just a computer and Internet connection.

Form of Server, tools and control panel:

When one mention the two generally utilized hosting then the name of Unix-based or Windows platform comes first. It matters for the result program languages, databases and scripts that one can apply. When one talks about Unix-based platform, general selection is relayed to PHP language along with MySQL, however, when it comes to Windows platform ASP or ASP.NET language will be along with SQL Server. One should enquire that is database is available with package or not, if yes, then how many? Nowadays, contemporary web site must be database-driven.

Too, one should have full knowledge related to tools coming along with web hosting package, if there is only applications for web statistics, file manager and things it is not an concern issue. 

Technical support:

A crucial aspect while selecting a web hosting particularly for a user without having adequate technical skills is technical support. A proper technical support does not take a responsive time more then a day. This is not liable only to selection of web hosting company, but, crucial to any of the company selling products and services, Software Company can be one of the examples.

The coordination of few of the companies is so well thought-out that it takes only 1 hour to give response to user’s queries! Through their source of contact one can predict about the future response. Do the concern company has only email support or also have phone support? Does they provide a toll-free number? Do they offer the facility of trouble-ticket system? Working time is another crucial aspect. What is their strategy of providing technical support is it during working hours only i.e. 9 to 17 or does they provide the facility of 24×7 technical support? An ideal way to detect their professionalism one can create a list of fake queries, drop a line to them and hang around to know their reply time. 

Testimonials:

Several web hosting and software companies have this smart way to increase their customer strength. Testimonials section contains the approval of satisfied customers, attracting more people to their service. This section is not completely reliable. Several hosting companies offer their clients to analyze their portfolio, instead of doing that one should contact webmasters who are taking the service of concern host and register their opinions. One can take help of several sites for further information regarding best web hosting deals and suggestions.

To begin with, you have to ask yourself one thing: what is the purpose of your future website? Is it a personal site? Do you want to share pictures of you and your family? Do you plan on selling something?

Once you know exactly what you plan to do with your website, and you find out what your visitors would like to see, you can easily choose the hosting offer to suit your needs. You can decide over your domain name, you can decide if you need a host that provides a site builder or you can make your own website.

There are a couple of important questions you have to answer before starting your website. If your site’s requirements are intense, you will probably like a web design company to work on it, or maybe a website consultant will help you understand exactly how the website will function and what you will need to start it off. On the other hand, if you want to develop a personal site or a blog, you can easily maneuver it following a few installing instruction provided by the host itself.

Some people are attracted by free web hosting services. There are lots of places over the internet where you can build your own free website. For example, you will find free hosts that provide you even with 10 databases strictly crucial in order to develop a dynamic website. But usually no one will provide you with free web hosting space with MySQL database available for it. Websites installed on LINUX operating systems are by far the most common over the Internet.

The key criteria you have to consider when choosing a hosting provider are three: pricing, uptime and customers support. Every web hosting company is basically selling the same thing, the differences come from the web space you will have available and the bandwidth. You will also have to make sure that if at any moment something wrong happens to your website there will be someone there to assist you in correcting the mistake. Such a web hosting company would be ideal, especially the ones that have a free phone line for customers, so they can receive support at any moment.

With nowadays technology, you can easily start up your web hosting account via its control panel in less than 2 minutes and you can even install a blog very fast with the help of various free programs or build up a website in merely a half hour through the assisted steps most web hosts provide. It’s up to you to decide if website time has come!

The myths and obsolete techniques fall into a few broad categories:

- Keyword density: There are many number of magic formulas touted on the internet, claiming that if you reach the perfect number of keyword instances per page, your rankings will go up. While you do need to have the keyword somewhere in your text in order to have your stated keywords considered relevant, artificially inflating the number of instances is a bad plan. First, it simply decreases the quality of your content. Second, the search engines may begin classifying your site as too spammy, and actually downgrade your rating.

- Tags and META: Loading keywords into your page headers and the meta data of your site is also an old trick that’s now likely to get you classified as spammy. Only keywords that are relevant to your content and specific to what your users are searching for should be included.

- Links: Some fraudulent SEO services, and some outdated pieces of advice, will associate your website with link exchange systems and link farms. Since the search engines keep track of these farms and exchanges, and using them is considered trickery, being part of them can actually significantly downgrade your rating.

- Submission to search engines: Once upon a time, submitting your site to search engines was a long and arduous process, which was nonetheless necessary to get a good place in the rankings. These days, search engine submission is generally not needed at all, since the engines automatically search for new sites. If they don’t find yours quickly, manual submission is quite easy and there are a few top search engines that have most of the market share.

Conversely, there are a few relevant and current strategies for climbing the ranks of search results. (It should come as no surprise that these are broader and more difficult or time-consuming to implement than the myths would suggest.)

- Unique content: Consistently offering high quality content that is valuable to your users, unique on the web, and from original sources is by far the best way to attract users – and search engines – to your site. If your site consists of copy, providing a unique value in information filtering, commentary and analysis, or other user-friendly services.

- Voice of authority: Along with unique content, offering an authoritative voice is a good way to increase your links and therefore your page ranking. Either become an authority yourself or offer interviews, quotes, or guest content by noted authorities in your field. If well-respected people and organizations recommend or reference your site, your popularity will rise.

- Professional networking for link sharing: As a web master, blogger, marketer, or business owner, professional contacts matter for a wide range of activities. Additionally, you may ask these people to link their sites with yours, or to provide expert and authoritative content for your site.

- Crawler files: Having a robots.txt file that is updated, accurate, and properly configured can make your site easier to catalogue correctly. Building the site’s architecture in a crawler-friendly manner can give your site a slight edge that may be worth pursuing. Do remember that search engine developers are concerned with their users and serving them appropriate content. They’re smart enough to outwit most technical tricks.

Here are some of the mistakes that are usually ignored while carrying on the SEO process.

Don’t do it yourself or don’t let any SEO Company to submit your url in thousands of search engines and directories. That is rather a waste of time and money altogether. These sites are usually link farms and do get penalized by google.

People waste time submitting site url’s to search engines. The crawler will index your site sooner then you might think. The only effort to be made is gathering some quality links that crawler can follow to reach your site. If your site is capable enough, it will be indexed in no time.

Good back links are the key players in getting your site up in the SERPs. Avoid back links from link farms. It takes a good amount of time and effort to gather good links but that is the only way to see your site rising in SERPs.Its optimal in any search engine optimization process to get not more than 500 back links for a site as tons of links can look suspicious to search engines and could result in penalty.

As far as visitors are concerned, if you want good traffic on your site make it an interactive tool. Give your visitors a regular feedback to their enquiries and keep them updated with the new offers and products that have been launched.

The best option is to get your site listed in volunteer-edited sites like Wikipedia.Such sites can place your site as a reference for visitors in their articles. If your sites are potential enough they can be suggested to the visitors for more information in such sites.

Google admires fair SEO and PPC practices. Optimize your site in a way that can lead crawlers to keep your site indexed and highly ranked in search engines.

These Meta tags are not visible when someone browses your web page but the search engines read these Meta tags alone and decide the place of a web page on its search result pages. It does so by finding the relevance of the Meta tags within them and with its contents. The most important Meta tags are the title, description and keywords. The first thing a search engine looks for is to find a relevance in these meta tags by looking at the keywords used in them and secondly it looks the relevance of the keywords used in these meta tags with the contents of the page.

The Title Tag

The title is the most important Meta tag of your website. This is the first thing shown on a web page and this is visible to both your visitor and most importantly to the search engine. That’s why it has to be given the utmost importance while search engine optimization is the consideration.

It is always depicted on the left top bar of in the browser window. This tag should include the most relevant keyword about your business. If the most relevant keywords are used in here, your web site will sure get a boost in a search.

Most websites use their company name in the title which in fact, is not something desirable. Because, nobody usually searches for a company name unless it is very well known or some giant multinational.

The perfect title tags should be something between 10-70 characters. It is not so that one can not put a longer title but the search engine would ignore the longer part of the title.

The Title tag should be written for the visitors (people searching for your business or services) first and the search engines second. This should be such as to motivate a click and obviously to favor the search engine indexing too.

Different title tags should be assigned to each page of your website containing its own keywords that relate to that specific page.

Description tag

The description tag should be written in such way that it speaks about the website contents in just one or two sentences.

It should be short and clear that your visitors get a close idea about your site by reading this in a short time.

The description tag should be 100 to 200 characters long. The Meta description tag also has a great role in the SEO of your page. This tag displays the information at a search engine result page (SERP) after a search is performed by a user. So, this should be such as this puts the concise summary of your page. Most search engines truncate longer Description. Remember this while writing this tag.

Same as above every page should have a different description tag in accordance with the contents it holds. This tag has quite some effect on the ranking of your site in Search Engine results. The Search Engine will read your description tag and will check if the keywords or search terms match your title tag and content of your web site. My suggestion is to take the first sentence or two of the contents from your web page and use that for the Meta description content.

Include the most relevant sentences matching with the page contents in description tag instead of stuffing the tag with more keywords. Remember that the Meta Description Tag of a web page must not look just a bunch of keywords, but should contain an informative and concise summary of your web page.

Keywords Tag

The most heavily sought technique in Search Engine Optimization process is Keyword optimization. But at the same time if keywords are too often repeated, chances are that the site gets marked out as “”spam”". However, if your target keyword are not included enough, its ranking will not be optimized. So, with present algorithms which are really smart and intelligent include only those relevant keywords you want to target and make sure that these are included in the contents too.

Use variations of a keyword like watch, watches, wrist watch etc. They are slightly changed keywords and yet don’t render any feeling to the search engine for their being repeated in the tag.

Geographical information (name of the country, city or place) may be used in the keywords. Sometimes it plays a great role when a search is made for a location based business. Or, even brand names, model name of a product can be used in this tag. That also helps when a search is made for a specific product model or brand.

Search engines give different weights to the keywords according to their positions in HTML tags used in the content. For example if a keyword is used in this tag which is present in Heading Tag also has more weight particularly when the same is in H1 tag.

Write your Alt tags of the images and the text links being used in the page such that it includes at least one keyword from the keyword tag. But, remember the same should look just relevant with the image or the hyper link for which it has been written.

The content should have included all of your keywords. The aggregate keyword density (all the keywords used in keyword tag) should be between 20% to 30% but not less than 5% to the best optimized results. However, Density for a single keyword should not be less than 2% and higher than 6%. The best is about 5% with the major keywords and 2% with subsequent keywords.

The Meta tags should be fine tuned with the contents and a good relevance is brought about between themselves with a perfect balance between the target audience and the search engines.

These Meta tags have been used really very un-carefully by the spammers, if we commit to use them methodically with the due respect, I hope, we should be able to create ever increasing web traffic on our sites.