Browsing Category: "Website Promotion"
The methods employed to increase your search engine rankings may seem like rocket science to you, so you have probably avoided dealing with this issue. I am here to tell you – the time has come to face your website! A high search engine ranking for your website is so essential that if you have the slightest desire to actually succeed in your business, there is no way you can continue to avoid this issue.
At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the Internet find websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your pages for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted customers to your site who will be more than likely to make a purchase. The higher your page comes up in search engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your website. That’s what search engine optimization is about.
You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available online to figure out how to optimize your web pages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a few simple items on your pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should examine is the title bar on your homepage.
The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at the words that appear there when you access your home page. To increase search engine rankings, the words on your homepage’s title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which would include your company name.
Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on the pages you access. Each title bar on every single page of your site should contain the most important keywords and phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very long strings of keywords, keeping them to six words or less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the title bars, and make sure that identical words are not next to each other.
The next item to put under your microscope is your website content. Search engines generally list sites that contain quality content rather than scintillating graphics. The text on your site must contain the most important keywords – the words that potential customers will be typing into search engines to find your site.
Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen words. If you want to achieve a high ranking on search engines, this text is essential. However, the search engines must be able to read the text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format.
To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you are able to do this, the text is HTML. If the text will not highlight, it is probably in graphic form. In this case, ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML format in order to increase your search engine rankings.
Next we come to what is called meta tags. I know this sounds like something out of science fiction, but it is really just simple code. Many people believe that meta tags are the key to high search engine rankings, but in reality, they only have a limited effect. Still, it’s worth adding them in the event that a search engine will use meta tags in their ranking formula.
To find out if your page is set up with meta tags, you must access the code. To do this, click the “view” button on the browser menu bar, and select “source.” This will pull up a window revealing the underlying code that created the page. If there are meta tags, they usually appear near the top of the window. For example, a meta tag would read: meta name=”keywords” content=. If you do not find code that reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. This may not do much for your search engine rankings, but any little boost helps.
Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is a factor that is extremely important in terms of search engine rankings. Almost all search engines use link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your links page.
If you type in “free link popularity check” in a popular search engine, the search engine will then show you what sites are linked to your site. In the case that there aren’t many sites linked up to yours, or that the sites that are linked up have low search engine rankings, consider launching a link popularity campaign. Essentially, this entails contacting quality sites and requesting that they exchange links with your site. Of course, this requires checking out the rankings of the websites you want to link up with. Linking to popular, quality sites not only boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs more quality traffic to your website.
Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a search engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can’t boost your rankings yourself. Don’t ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing. Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the more quality customers will be directed your way.
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Copyright © Jeff Houdyschell
http://www.eSmartJob.com
All the products that you want to sell online are ready. You have already signed up with the Google Adsense program or with other affiliate marketing programs and you have already prepared the ad you want to post on your affiliate’s site. Your mind is now set to being the next most successful online businessman. But is there anything else that you might have forgotten to prepare? Maybe none. Beside website SEO , how about your landing pages? Are they all set for your business?
Landing pages are simply web pages where visitors are directed to whenever they click a result in a web search or whenever they click a web ad. For affiliate marketing, landing pages would refer to the web page where you, as a merchant, would want your potential customer to be directed after clicking your ad on your affiliate’s website. Landing pages are, at most times, nothing really different from other web pages in a particular website, especially if the said website is an e-commerce site. Some online businessmen would even use the homepage of their websites as the landing page for their ads. Are these businessmen making a big mistake? Or should you follow their method in creating landing pages for their ads?
Well, you can always follow what most online retailers do, directing their potential customers to the homepages of their websites. But if you want to achieve something more from your online business, and if you want to earn a lot of profits, you better create a special landing page for your web ads. Why? Here are a few reasons why you need to use landing pages for your web ads. And take note, it would do you a lot better if you create a great landing page than a so-so one.
Reason no. 1: It is the only way you earn conversions in an affiliate marketing program.
There are a variety of affiliate marketing programs today, but most of these programs let the merchant pay the affiliate in a pay per click basis. Basically, all you have to do is sign up with the program and submit your ad. The program owner would then distribute your ad to various affiliates who would then place your ad on their websites. Whenever your ad is clicked, a visitor would be directed to your landing page and you would have to pay the affiliate for his service.
As a merchant, you earn in an affiliate program through conversions—that is whenever a visitor that is directed to your site actually buys a product on your site. Without these conversions, you actually earn nothing from the program. Also, the more visitors that your affiliates have directed to your site, the larger would your expense be. And the only way that you can recover from these expenses is through conversions.
Now, you sure won’t get any conversion if you have posted an ad on your affiliate’s site without an actual landing page for the potential customer to be redirected into. It’s just like advertising a product without actually having a store to sell your product. Your advertisement may be enticing enough to encourage people to purchase a product, but without the landing page, how will they know how to purchase the product
It is therefore important to have landing pages for your ads because it is the only way for you to earn something in an affiliate program. Without landing pages, all you do is spend money paying your affiliates without actually getting anything in return.
Reason no. 2: Other web pages may just not be enough.
Many people make the mistake of making their website’s homepage as the landing page for their ads. The same is true for those who make use of other pages like a “contact us” page or a product page. Homepages are often designed to serve multiple users and contains a lot of links to other pages or to other websites. The same is with the other two pages mentioned. If you want to be successful in an affiliate program, we’re sure that you don’t want your landing page to cater to the needs of various people, most of which may not be really interested with your product.
When choosing a landing page, you must always have the customer directed into that page in mind. Therefore, your landing page must be relevant to the keywords and the contents you placed on your ad. It is also important that the landing page can induce your visitor to take action—that is to purchase your product or at least provide leads for potential customers.
Final Word
You probably entered into an affiliate marketing program with these things in mind: to save on advertising expenses and to gain more profit. But if you get into an affiliate marketing program without actually having a landing page, you’ll end up paying too much without getting anything in return. So if you still don’t have a landing page for your ads, you better start creating one now. And don’t get us wrong; it isn’t enough for you to have just a landing page—it should be a great landing page!
About the Author:
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Jeff Houdyschell provides proven income opportunities, ideas and information for the best work at home jobs, visit: http://www.eSmartJob.com
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Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, website SEO, landing page, Landing page, affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing, advertising, landing page
Copyright © Jeff Houdyschell
http://www.eSmartJob.com
An affiliate marketer may have all the things needed for him to be able to succeed in a business such as affiliate marketing. He may have the necessary drive, diligence and perseverance to be able to understand how the system works. He may have all the tools necessary in maintaining the business, including a really unique and interesting website which could earn him a fortune if only the whole world could see it. However, all these would prove useless if he does not know how to drive traffic to his website. His business would sink into oblivion together with all the sales, fortune and dreams that he might have realized if he only knew how to do this particular task.
Getting people who matter to see one’s website is a difficult undertaking if he tries to consider the fact that there are rivals everywhere waiting to pin him down. The immensity of the internet as well as the affiliate marketing world has given birth to the fierce competition between affiliate marketers, each of whom has his own great product to offer. With all the websites piling on top of each other, how would one be able to stand out? The seven best ways to drive laser-targeted traffic to one’s own website would help those who are bent on sticking it out with this business wherever it is bound to take them.
The first step in driving traffic to one’s website is by relying on search engines and what they can do for the affiliate marketer concerned. Because they are popular for driving free targeted traffic, they should not be ignored by all means. Having top search engine rankings is vital in building popularity links, and the use of the right keywords is important in attaining this goal. Once a website is on top of the list, it is easily accessible to anyone who wants to see it for himself.
The second way in driving traffic to one’s website is by contacting other webmasters for a possible link exchange partnership. Locating websites that are related to one’s own website is the primary task. Once there, he should be able to establish communication by personalizing everything as much as possible. It is then possible to make reciprocal link exchanges between webmasters whichever way the affiliate marketer prefers.
The third way is through writing one’s own articles. This is an effective way in promoting a website, because good content that are appreciated by readers will lead them to visit the writer’s very own website out of sheer interest.
The fourth way is through joint venture marketing. This is one of the most effective ways of promoting a product or a service. Having a partner through ad swap or link exchange is beneficial to both parties as it allows them to reach a wide customer base in a short amount of time.
The fifth is through joining affiliate programs. Having affiliates to do the work means allowing them to bring tons of traffic to a website. Skyrocketing sales would be realized as a result, and both the affiliate and the website owner will benefit from the situation.
The sixth is by having a list of subscribers that one can refer to every so often, because they are those which would prove to be valuable assets for the marketer concerned. The use of autoresponders and personalized newsletters is one way of keeping track of them all, and holding on to them by letting them know about new products and services is an essential task that should be done by the affiliate marketer concerned.
The seventh is by knowing one’s market through and through. It is important for traffic to be targeted to those who might have a special interest in the theme or topic of one’s website. This way, a solid customer base is going to be created. Once a potential customer shows an interest in a particular website by paying it a visit, one must not waste time in trying to show him that his effort is worth it.
Traffic generating strategies are important in trying to make one’s affiliate marketing career inch forward. It is always advantageous to plan one’s moves in any business that he might undertake. This is particularly so in affiliate marketing. If one knows how to get people to see what he has to offer, then he is on the right track.
About the Author:
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Jeff Houdyschell provides proven income opportunities, ideas and information for the best work at home jobs, visit: http://www.eSmartJob.com
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Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing
When developing a search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy there are two main factors to consider;
‘On page optimisation’ and ‘off page optimisation’.
We will focus on on page optimisation for this tutorial. The term on page optimisation covers the SEO strategies that are utilised within your specific web page, in your HTML code. Whilst your on page optimisation will not skyrocket your web page into the top of the Google search results, if you have comprehensively covered your off page and on page optimisation you shouldn’t have too much trouble getting a good Google ranking. However, it is actually possible to get yourself into the Google results with no off page optimisation if your on page optimisation is done correctly and the keywords you have optimised for are not extremely popular, ie; ‘pizza shop Newcastle’ instead of ‘pizza’. Ok here goes:
1. First and foremost, make sure you are going to optimise your web page for the most appropriate keywords, there is a very handy search term suggestion tool located at: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/.
It is important to choose your keywords wisely, especially keeping in mind how often those specific keywords are searched for, as it will be much easier and beneficial to get your site as a number one search result for a phrase that is searched for 5,000 times a week, and almost impossible to get your page in the first few search result pages for a term that is searched for 500,000 times a week. It is important to note that approximately 90% of web users do not navigate past the first page of Google’s search results.
2. Secondly, ensure your keywords appear once (more than once is not necessary) in your meta tags in your HTML code. For example, if the only keywords you are optimising for are ‘pizza shop Newcastle’ your meta tags should read as follows:
<meta name=’description’ content=’Harry’s Pizzas is a pizza shop located in Newcastle…’ />
<meta name=’keywords’ content=’Harry’s Pizzas pizza shop Newcastle take away food..’ />
3. Thirdly, ensure your keywords appear in your title tag of your web page, ie; <title>Harry’s Pizza’s – Pizza Shop Newcastle</title>
We will focus on on page optimisation for this tutorial. The term on page optimisation covers the SEO strategies that are utilised within your specific web page, in your HTML code. Whilst your on page optimisation will not skyrocket your web page into the top of the Google search results, if you have comprehensively covered your off page and on page optimisation you shouldn’t have too much trouble getting a good Google ranking. However, it is actually possible to get yourself into the Google results with no off page optimisation if your on page optimisation is done correctly and the keywords you have optimised for are not extremely popular, ie; ‘pizza shop Newcastle’ instead of ‘pizza’. Ok here goes:
4. Fourth, ensure your keywords appear in a heading <h1> tag in the specific page. ie; <h1>Pizza Shop Newcastle</h1>. It is more beneficial if this is your only <h1> tag on the page, and it occurs only once.
5. Another factor that affects your on page optimisation is if your keywords appear within bolded or italicized text. It is important not to go overboard with this by having your keywords bolded or italicized everywhere throughout your page because Google will consider this a ‘black hat’ method of on page optimisation and may result in banning your site from their index. But if it occurs once, or maybe twice, it will increase your on page optimisation and Google will not frown upon this. Example: Pizza Shop Newcastle
6. It is important to have your keywords occur at least once within the content text on your website, within paragraph < p > tags. And is more beneficial to ensure this occurs closest to the top of your web page, and at the bottom.
7. It also helps to put your keywords within the alt tags of the images that are embedded in your HTML file. A good example would be if you have a logo that occurs at the top of the document, put the keywords in the alt text. Ie; <img src=’imgs/logo.jpg’ alt=’Logo Harry’s Pizzas – Pizza Shop Newcastle’ />
8. If you have any links within your web site that link back to the page you are optimising, or any external links that link towards your web site it is very important to contain your keywords within the anchor text and the title text. Example: Harry’s Pizzas – Pizza Shop Newcastle. The anchor text is the text that occurs within the <a> tags. Hover over the link to view the title text that pops up, or click on view -> source in your web browser if you need to brush up on your HTML skills.
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9. Other factors that improve your on page optimisation include having your keywords contained within your domain name and file name of the specific page. For example the following fictional url would help: http://www.harryspizzashopnewcastle.com.au/pizzashopnewcastle.html. However this is not 100% necessary.
10. This point is probably the most important point you should consider when optimising your page- stay away from ‘black hat’ on page optimisation methods. They may increase your on page optimisation temporarily but Google frowns upon this and could ban you from their index. So if you go over board with keywords that do not relate to the content of the page, have your keywords occurring more than 3 or 4 times in <h1> tags and < b > tags all over your site and repeat your keywords unnecessarily throughout the content text of your web site, you risk having your site banned from the Google index. Google really does keep a close eye on this so be careful.
And that’s it for today. I hope you have found the Ten Terrific Tips For On Page Optimisation useful. If you have any suggestions, or queries, do not hesitate to email me at justin@nfxwebdesign.com.au.
About the Author: This article was written by Justin Daniel, who currently works at NFX Web Design, a small web design business located in Newcastle, Australia.
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Author: Daniel Alan
If you’re unfamiliar with exchanges, you will want to read this over carefully and consider printing it out.
One of the best ways in which you can promote affiliate programs is through various traffic exchanges. Almost all well-defined, robust niches on the Internet have some form of traffic exchange. For instance, casinos, gaming sites, niche forums, and Internet marketing sites all have some form of traffic exchange system. IM, in particular, has dozens of exchanges.
A traffic exchange can serve multiple functions; however, in most cases, it does two important things:
1) It allows you to surf sites, gain credits, and then cash in those credits; and
2) It allows you to put banners or dynamically-generated link boxes on your site that will generate credits, which you can then cash in. Cashing in credits, with most exchanges, results in a certain amount of traffic being drive to your site via the exchange site or via banners on other sites that are members of the exchange.
A good place to start when working with web traffic exchanges is to determine which ones are most reputable and which ones have reasonable point systems. For instance, some web traffic exchanges allow users to cheat and some have bad systems of exchange, which heavily favor paying members over non-members. You will want to find the best possible exchange given the amount of money you are willing to spend and the product you are marketing.
Once you have selected an optimal exchange, you will want to determine the best way in which you can use it to maximize the amount of high-quality traffic you extract from it.
You will want to answer the following questions to aid yourself in determining this: do I earn credits from impressions or clicks? And do I lose credits based on impressions or clicks?
This is important to ask, as different exchanges have different policies on this issue. If you lose credits based on impressions, you will want to make sure that you get the absolute largest amount of clicks per impressions. This will involve over-hyping your ads and creating flashy banners (if they allow them).
In contrast, if you are getting charged per click, you will want to make sure your ads ONLY appeal to the most interested buyers. Whichever route you take, make sure that it is matched up with a model for maximum revenue generation.
The last thing you will want to consider when using a traffic exchange is precisely what you should promote.
You already have a product in mind, probably an affiliate product, but how will you promote it?
Will you direct visitors to the affiliate page?
Will you direct them to a page on your site, which features the product?
Or will you direct them to an opt-in form, which will capture their information and then coax them into buying over a period of time?
I personally suggest doing the last or the second and avoiding the first whenever possible.
Daniel Alan is the creator of http://PerfectPathToWealth.com and an expert at making money online.
The Perfect Path To Wealth Affiliate Program is one of the best around, offerring 75% commission which is $33.90 per sale and is free to join.
http://PerfectPathToWealth.com/affiliates.html
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Technorati Tags: web traffic
Copyright © 2006-2007 Trey Pennewell
If you are an experienced webmaster then you probably know that creating back links to your website is one of the best things that you can do to improve your Search Engine Ranking Placement (SERP). Google openly discusses the importance that their algorithms place on back links and even recommend that webmasters who want to increase their traffic use back links. Both Yahoo! and MSN are starting to talk openly about the importance of back links in their search algorithms as well.
There are a number of strategies that you can use to create back links to your website. Some of these strategies include emailing webmasters and asking them to place a link to your website, submitting your site to directories, distributing free reprint articles, and paying for links. All of these have their pros and cons, and some have a better success ratio than others.
How Many Back Links Does Your Website Have?
Take a look at your website and see just how many back links you actually do have. Do this not do this for only one search engine, but for all search engines where you are trying to get good SERP results. To check your backlinks, simply type into the particular search engine’s box link:http://www.yourdomainurl.com/ . Of course you will replace the yourdomainurl with the name of your own domain.
The more back links that you have to your website, the better off you are. Not only do back links help your SERP, but also the visitors of pages where your back link is listed may just choose to visit your site.
A common mistake that new webmasters make is that they create back links, but they have all of these links pointing to their home page. It is great that you have 50 back links pointing to your home page, but take a look at other pages on your site. How many links are pointing to these pages? The answer is probably zero unless you have utilized deep linking in your link building campaigns.
What Are Deep Links?
Deep links are links that go to specific pages within your website. For example, let’s say that you have a home improvement website that has a large number of pages and articles on it telling people how to do projects. If all of your back links are pointing only to your home page and you have none pointing to specific article pages, then you are not getting the full benefit of your linking activities.
Think about it this way, if I go to your website and find a piece of information that I find particularly helpful or interesting and I want to tell other people about it, how will I do it? When I tell all my friends on my blog about this great page of yours, am I going to link to your home page? No, I am going to copy and paste the actual webpage address out of my browser, into my blog. That is deep linking and what is considered to be natural linking by the search engines.
What Are Natural Links?
Natural links are those links that are created by people other than the website’s marketing team. Suppose I posted a link in my own blog that said that the “most easily understood tutorial, I have read, for creating a php-xml parser” was: http://www.sitepoint.com/article/php-xml-parsing-rss-1-0 , and I put my quoted text into the link. That is a natural link, because I created the link with no prompting from the management at SitePoint.com.
Difficulties In Creating Deep Links
There are a few problems that you will run into when trying to create deep links to your site. One problem is that if you ask a Webmaster of another site to link to you, they will most likely just link to your home page. When you submit to directories, the vast majority of them will only allow you a link to your home page, not a deep link. Even if they do allow you to submit a deep link, they will not allow you to submit 10 deep links.
Success Tips For Creating Deep Links
Deep linking is quite a bit easier when utilizing free reprint articles as a part of your link building campaign. This is because you can put whatever link you want to put in the “About The Author” box. The About The Author box is required to stay intact in all websites that are using your article. If you intend on writing a large number of articles to promote your domain, then you will want to optimize your results by putting a different deep link into the About The Author box for each of the articles that you write.
Another method of doing this is free and easy, but requires a bit of time. Take keywords in each page of the text on your website and make a hyperlink on that word or phrase to another page on your site. This is very easily done if you know how to do basic HTML. The ultimate goal here is to have every page of your website linked to, at least once, by another page on your site. You will want to spread these out among your domain’s webpages, instead of having just a couple of pages linking to the other 50 pages.
Another reason to spread your links across all of the pages of your domain, is that users are likely to be turned off by a page that is almost all hyperlinks; those pages often appear spammy or cluttered. A good idea for any Webmaster is to create these internal deep links when you create a new page. It is much easier to spend a couple of minutes from the beginning, rather than trying to go back and do all of them at a later date.
Incorporate Deep Linking Into Your Linking Strategies
Deep linking is as important a consideration as back linking! It does not matter which page visitors use to enter our websites. If they like what they read on our internal pages, they are more likely to view other pages on our websites. If they view other pages on our website, they are likely to find our homepage, and we will get a chance to tell them why they should buy our products or services.
Deep links to our website help to ensure that the search engines will have good cause to show our internal webpages as well as our homepage. For every page in our website that gets great SERP, our chances of getting a sale are increased significantly.
We have 15 pages on our website, eight of which provide real content to our prospective clients. All eight of these pages have a significant number of back links pointing to them. 48% of our visitors land on our home page. 37% of our visitors land on our internal pages. As a result, 85% of our traffic lands on our website as a result of our back links, either directly or through our natural search placement in the search engines. The remaining 15% arrive on our website through bookmarks, personal referrals, and paid listings.
Deep linking works. Give it a shot.
About The Author:
Trey Pennewell is part of the Links and Traffic writing team. Though their program, the Links and Traffic team aims to develop links that are perceived as natural links by the search engines, and they try to develop deep links as well as links to their client’s domain homepage. Read more about the Links and Traffic link building philosophy here: http://linksandtraffic.com/x.pl/tutorials/content.html or visit their homepage here: http://linksandtraffic.com/ |
Article Source: thePhantomWriters Article Submission Service
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Many companies are constantly tweaking their web site with a view to capturing the attention of potential customers. Although not all web sites are commercial in nature, the majority of web site owners are targeting potential customers with the ultimate aim of securing online leads and sales.
Having a pretty web design is nice but it is no guarantee to converting visits into leads and sales. On what basis then should web designers set the look and feel of a web site and how are they monitoring the results of the web design look and feel on visitor’s behaviour?
Whilst the web offers massive sales opportunities, it takes specialist knowledge and constant research and web design intervention to actually secure orders online. Getting traffic to your web site is important. Search engine optimisation to improve your web site’s organic ranking on search engines and pay per click will get you traffic. But traffic alone will not fetch you sales. You could literally have hundreds of visits to your web site and end up with no leads at the end of the day. If you are paying for your clicks, it could be a big waste of money.
The average web surfer i.e. your potential web design customers spends about 10 seconds on your web site. That is a very short time but it is the only window of opportunity you might have to sell your web design services and products to that potential customer. Putting together the web design solution that will work and deliver this tall order is the key to a successful web design business or any business for that matter.
You cannot beat marketing research in planning any selling tools and you do not have to be a marketing guru to start thinking marketing. Start by deciding which segment of the web design market you want to target. Is it the discount low cost segment or are you more into the corporate web design sector? Selling discount web design through a corporate sophisticated web site might put the potential low budget customers off. Conversely, corporate customers looking for an expensive, high end and sophisticated web design would expect their supplier to have a corporate web site.
Once you have established which segment of the web design market you are serving and decided on the ‘discount’ or corporate look, start looking at the web design elements and where these fit on your homepage.
A good starting point to putting together an effective web page that works is research on the behaviour of web surfers. Try typing ‘heat map’ into Google and look for ‘Where should I place Google ads on my page?’ The web site offers some indication of the ‘hot spots’ on a web page i.e. the areas where web visitors are most likely to spend time looking. Use this as a first step in putting together your web design. Try placing your key product offers and contact details in the hottest spots of the heat map – showed as bright orange on the heat map.
Once our web site is online, no amount of reading can beat a good testing procedure for your web design. Get your web site online and start analysing what’s happening. Look at your basic stats like number of visits. Then start looking a bit deeper into your stats using some analytic tools to check the effectiveness of your web design.
Google offers some free analytics tools that allow you to easily find out which links visitors are or are not clicking on your web page. Look at important links that are key to generating leads, like your ‘request a quote button’. If these important links are being ignored, start tweaking the web design look and feel to make them more prominent and visible of on your web site. Use position (remember the heat map), bright colours and catchy words to draw the attention of your potential web design customers.
When it comes to the look and feel of your web design solution, remember that looking pretty is not enough. The web site must respond to key marketing issues like your market segment and web surfer behaviour.
The next time you visit a web page, try and see if the look and feel achieves the objectives of the web site.
About the Author: Ralph Ramah is CEO of Discount Web Design, a web design and search engine optimisation company offering affordable and effective web design solutions to business across the UK.
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Posted by Jeff Houdyschell providing proven income opportunities, ideas and information for the best work at home jobs, visit: http://www.eSmartJob.com
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I’ve looked at a lot of websites over the years and helped a lot of clients, and I’ve yet to meet anyone who is totally committed to making their site as successful as it could be.
This is particularly true when it comes to search engine optimization. Most online businesses make a half-hearted attempt to get better search engine rankings, but rarely implement anymore than one or two things that could really help make their site a success.
Which of the following does your website have?
1. Unique Page Titles.
Take a look at a selection of web pages that come up high in the search engine results for any search term and you’ll notice they all have one thing in common: unique page titles. Denoted by in HTML, page titles tell the search engines what your web page is about, and are thought to be a critical factor in how search engines determine the order in which pages are displayed in the search engine result pages (SERPS) for a specific search term.
2. Descriptive Keyword Links.
How do search engines find and index your site? They follow links from one page to another, indexing content as they go. If the links they follow contain keywords and phrases that are relevant to the page content, the search engines will boost the ranking of that page in their results. You should also use keywords and phrases in the site’s navigation (menu), as those terms are (or should be) highly relevant for the page they link to.
3. Keywords in Your On-page Copy.
If you want the search engines to know what your page is about, and rank it appropriately, you must scatter keywords throughout your on-page copy. Keywords in your copy establish your site’s relevance for words searchers use when they’re looking for your product or service.
4. Clean, Accessible Website Design.
Messy, bloated HTML code, 404 errors, re-directs, too many graphics, content hiding behind forms etc., all hinder the search engines’ ability to index your site. And if they can’t index it, they can’t rank it. Follow W3C’s accessibility guidelines when building your website. Better yet, ask your website designer what he knows about standards compliant website design. If he or she can’t answer, find someone who can.
5. Focused Site Topic.
It seems logical that the more focused your site is, the higher it will rank for related search terms. For example, a site that is focused on the sale of exercise mini-trampolines will probably do better for the search term “mini trampolines” than a site that tries to sell a number of unrelated or a selection of different exercise equipment. In addition, it makes sense to create specialty websites whenever possible. That way, you don’t fall into the trap of trying to do too many things and end up doing none of them well.
6. Relevant Incoming Links.
The number of other sites that link to your site’s pages is important but the quality of those sites, and the text used in the link, carries much more weight with the search engines. For example, one relevant link from an “authority” site such as a .org, .gov, or a site that’s proven itself as a reliable source, provides more value than several links from unrelated or “unproven” sites.
Of course, there are other several other factors that go into determining a site’s ranking (far too many to go into here) but these are some of the most important.
They’re all easy to implement, so there’s really no excuse for not taking advantage of them especially if you want to make sure your site is found and visited by as many people as possible. Then all you’ll need to worry about is getting those people to buy something from you on a frequent basis.
And that’s really what it’s all about.
To your success, Julia
About the Author: Julia Hyde is an advertising copywriter and consultant specializing in search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and traditional advertising. She currently runs Creative Search Media, a full-service advertising and search engine marketing agency. You can contact Julia via her website at http://www.juliahyde.com.
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Choosing a Web Designer
When you choose a web designer, there are many things that you need to be aware of and that need to be taken into consideration before you make a decision.
To some extent, the ability to work successfully with your web designer is sometime as important as their actual skill in being able to deliver the project.
A web designer that is skilled in what they do but is a pain to deal with can make the whole process frustrating and not worth the money being spent, especially if you have an emotional attachment to the project (which you should have being the one supplying the money and motivation)
That relationship can be worth a large proportion of the contract.
However, there are some key things you need to consider.
Be careful in what you get for your money. Some possible pitfalls you may want to check on:
Obviously what do you get for your money
What is included? Design, Content, Search Engine Submission, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Graphic Design, Updates? You need to get these details so you can compare your quotes against each other. You also need to quantify some of these things in terms of quantity, hours, numbers search engines submitted to etc.
What are the ongoing costs?
All websites have ongoing costs. Web Hosting, Domain Names and updates are the main three. Make sure you know the total cost of your investment. Some companies offer lower up front costs to lock you into higher ongoing costs that end up costing you more. Some other things are SSL certificate costs, more bandwidth and web space.
How easy is it to incorporate your branding
Some template sites are hard to blend a logo or colours into them, be wary of template driven website companies, some of these people are skilled enough only to change the text on a template. Some designers design their sites from the ground up incorporating all of you design elements in their design. These companies offer the most flexibility.
How reliable is the services provided
With hosting and email, too much down time can make the whole experience unworkable. You don’t want to have to change hosts after six months because your designer has provided you with a poor host. Some people rely heavily on email and these are the people that need to choose carefully so their business inst impacted.
What are the costs for making changes later on?
Updates and maintenance on your site is something that will eventually happen, even if you don’t change the content frequently (see the Making Your Site Super Sticky Article for the benefits of this) you will eventually change some content and so you need to know what it will cost over a year.
Hidden costs
Make sure common things (like search engine submissions) are either not included or are an extra cost. Some key things can be omitted to keep the price down. Make sure you don’t get sold short. An important one…is the web designer doing the job part time Are your web designers doing this as a full time job? Some designers are working during the day and then web designing at night. A lot of designers started out this way, but it can cause issues when you need something done and they don’t do the job from 9-5.
If all these things check out then you have found someone who you can work with and provide you with a service that will get you your desired result.
Remember; choose a designer with the right skills, but also one you believe you can work with on an ongoing basis. Build a working relationship that will benefit you both and your web project will benefit as well.
About the Author: Steven Gardner runs DeepWeb Web Design, a web design business that caters to all businesses looking to get an edge with their presence on the Web, providing web design, maintenance and consulting services. You can find him at www.deepweb.co.nz.
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The PageRank of a website is determined largely by the importance, or popularity, of the site based on the PageRank of the sites linking back to it. You must take advantage of quality backlinks to increase the PageRank of your site.
What are backlinks?
Plain and simple, backlinks are links that point back to your site. They are links you have exchanged with or received from other sites, as well as links placed strategically by you in forum posts, blog posts and comments, and the resource box of submitted articles. The submission of your site to website directories also provides backlinks that are highly favored by search engines.
Ideally these links, especially those placed in your forum signature and resource box of published articles (see my related article “Your Signature – An Internet Marketing Goldmine”), will contain keywords in the text of the link to create “anchor text.” For example, “Online source for anniversary gifts” instead of “Click here for online anniversary gifts”. Placing keywords in the text of the link anchors your keyword(s) to your url rather than anchoring “Click here” to your url. Not only do you have a backlink to your site, you have created a link of higher quality that includes the keywords you are targeting in your overall marketing campaign.
Why do I need backlinks?
The number of quality backlinks linking to a site is one of the main criteria used by Google and other search engines to rank and place websites. This statement, written by David Austin in a Feature Column of the Monthly Essays on Mathematical Topics, sums it up: “The fundamental idea put forth by PageRank’s creators, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, is this: the importance of a page is judged by the number of pages linking to it as well as their importance.”
With this all-powerful statement from the creators of Google, the importance should be clear: you need backlinks to attract the robots that determine the importance of your website. The value of your page, your website, in the eyes of Google’s robot lies in the number and quality of the links that it finds from other sites to yours. As the number of other popular, high-ranking sites find your site worth linking to grows, your popularity goes up along with your position in the search results.
In other words, quality backlinks are needed to entice search engines to stand up and take notice.
Backlinks are also helpful in leading visitors to your site. In this regard, backlinks are much like bread crumbs left by Hansel and Gretel to find their way back home. When your site is new, the robot will not place your site at the top of the results list immediately no matter how much time and effort went into the design and SEO of your site. Links from other sites that searchers are likely to find could lead them to your site if they look through the links page to find related products that might be available on your site.
In addition, links placed in posts to forums and blogs and the resource box of published articles have the potential of being seen and followed by thousands of visitors every day. If the forums, blogs, and article directories have high page ranks, you have more than just a link for visitors to follow, you have a quality link that will serve to increase your page rank as well as your traffic.
What are quality backlinks?
Quality backlinks are links from websites that have a higher page rank than your site, links from websites that have content or purpose related to your site (also known as relevance), links that include anchored text, and links that are built naturally over time, not a sudden increase in links just for the sake of having a high number of links.
Google has made it very clear that the importance of a site in the eyes of Googlebot is greatly influenced by the number and importance of the pages linking to it. In order to increase your PageRank, your website’s importance in the eyes of search engines, seek out links from higher-ranking sites that have related content, include anchored text in your signature for forum and blog posts as well as your resource box in articles, and let links build naturally over time. These practices will be a valuable part of your overall marketing strategy.
About the Author: Claudia Pate is the owner of The Anniversary Shop, traditional and modern anniversary gifts, and Common Sense Ebiz, guide to online business opportunities. Learn more about article writing to increase your PageRank with quality backlinks.
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Valentine’s Day is approaching fast, and Google has already given site publishers the equivalent of a basket full of Godiva chocolates with a Webmaster Central update featuring a much larger sample of backlinks than has been available.
It’s a good day to be a webmaster. The oft-used link: operator, long a resource of webmasters everywhere, has never been an accurate count of backlinks coming to a website. Google doesn’t trust people with the full details because they might do Bad Things with that knowledge.
They have opened the floodgates, at least partially, to the backlink information everyone suspected Google has. On the Webmaster Central blog, the team behind the changes noted how they have extended support for link queries:
Unlike the link: operator, this data is much more comprehensive and can be classified, filtered, and downloaded. All you need to do is verify site ownership to see this information.
To make this data even more useful, we have divided the world of links into two types: external and internal.
External links come from outside the domain, while internal ones start on pages the domain owner controls. The difference in the numbers between a link: query at Google search and one made in Webmaster Central is pretty dramatic. Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan posted about the difference he has seen:
For example, consider this query:
link:searchengineland.com
That’s showing about 3,000 links to the Search Engine Land web site (note, for some people, you might see no results, due to an apparent glitch). In contrast, the new system within Google Webmaster Central reports to me that I have 57,000 links pointing my way.
Danny als noted that links to pages in Google’s supplemental index won’t show up in the new counts.
Once in Webmaster Central, one can see links to a page on a website. A table shows the pages and a count of links to it; they caution that the count of external links may not be 100 percent of the links Google knows about in its index.
The webmaster can find a specific page in the summary view and click on that to see how many links come to that. For internal links, the webmaster can filter the data for links from any subdomains or just the specific subdomain being viewed.
Matt Cutts made an important point about the updated link information. He cautioned webmasters on it in his blog:
Do not assume just because you see a backlink that it’s carrying weight. I’m going to say that again: Do not assume just because you see a backlink that it’s carrying weight. Sometime in the next year, someone will say “But I saw an insert-link-fad-here backlink show up in Google’s backlink tool, so it must count. Right?” And then I’ll point them back here, where I say do not assume just because you see a backlink that it’s carrying weight.
Matt also said that limited link: results from queries on Google have been that way partially for historical reasons.
This update has historical significance for webmasters now. By assessing the data, webmasters should have a more complete view of how their websites are viewed by places around the Internet. That should be invaluable in determining marketing strategies and their effectiveness.
About the Author:
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.
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Internet marketing involves more than getting traffic to your site. Sometimes the smallest things can have the biggest impact. The following five actions you can take to improve your Internet marketing and Web site are simple and often over looked when creating or marketing a site.
1) Create a unique 404 error page.
What is a 404 error page? It’s the page you see when someone clicks on a broken link or a page that has been renamed. When that happens the site visitor will see a standard page that simply tells you the page is no longer available. It has no thrills, no other links, no branding and above all, very little helpful information.
The page cannot be found.
The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.
Your unique 404 error page should look like a regular page of your site. It should include your site’s header, footer and navigation bar so that the site visitor can easily click on another area of your site. The content of this unique 404 error page should contain text explaining that the page selected is no longer available along with contact information so the site visitor has the option of emailing or calling your company.
An example of our 404 error page can be found at: http://www.eplusm.com/404.html.
2) We value your privacy.
This simple four word sentence can have a tremendous effect on your email or form conversion ratios. Be sure to have the sentence, or at least the word “privacy” linked to your privacy statement.
Use this sentence next to any email form on your site or on your contact page. Clearly and simply stating your privacy policy assures the site visitor that you will not sell, give or trade their email or personal information to a third party.
While a privacy page is standard practice for most professional site builders, lawyers usually have their hand in writing a company’s privacy policy. That results in having the privacy policy looking like a long legal document.
Using the simple sentence with a link to the privacy policy gives the site visitor assurance that you care about their privacy without having a long explanation.
3) We vs You.
Re-read your home page copy and make sure it is customer focused text. Customer focused text is text that focuses on the customer and not YOU. When you re-read your home page content see how often you use the term “we, us, or our” rather than “You”. If your text reads something like: “We offer bla, bla, bla,” or “Our services includes, bla, bla, bla,” then it is focusing on you rather than the customer.
4) Email Signatures.
Create standard email signatures for ALL your employees. Anyone that uses the Internet in your company should have a company standard email signature.
What’s an email signature? Did you ever notice that at the end of some emails you will see not only the email creator’s name, but their phone number, fax, number, company name, logo, Web site address, etc. It’s amazing how easy this is to do and how many companies simply over look it. Or they let everyone do their own thing.
Having the company’s contact and Web site information makes it easy for the recipient to contact you or visit your site. Making it standard email signature improves your overall branding strategy.
5) Call to Action.
A call to action is a statement that asks the site visitor to do something. Two of the biggest mistakes made on a Website is not using call to actions or using the wrong call to actions.
You have probably been on sites that do not give you a clue as to what to do next. They have text and links but nothing that tells you to learn more, buy, compare, read, or call now. Look over your site and see what call to actions are on your site. Try to view it as a first time visitor and create a scenario or action you want your site visitor to take.
The most common and most boring call to action is “Click Here”. Sometimes it’s unavoidable or it’s the only phrase that makes sense, but consider using other statements. Instead of “Click here” use words like learn, save, read, compare, etc.
Call to actions are usually linked to another page on your site. This is a great opportunity to use a keyword in a link on your site, which helps with search engine optimization. Use the keyword in the link for your call to action.
These five suggestion are basically simple things to do that can help improve your site overall. They are often over looked but can prove to have a tremendous effect on your site.
For one of our client’s Web sites we suggested item number 2, adding “We value your privacy” just above their email form. The sentence was linked to their privacy policy. The link was hardly used, but having that simple statement was all that was needed. The added statement increased their form’s conversion ratio by over 250%.
About the Author: Patricia Hughes is founder of ePlus Marketing and has over 11 years experience in Internet marketing and over 20 years experience in marketing. To receive the ePlus Marketing monthly newsletters and BLOG – both packed with additional Internet marketing tips and suggestions – visit our site as http://www.eplusm.com.
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