Work At Home Business Blog

From the Entireweb Newsletter – May 10, 2007 – ISSUE #334

You have either put a lot of effort into your website or you have paid someone else a lot of money to put the effort in for you. Either way, whatever the purpose of the website, you want to get the most out of it. The question now becomes, how you can tell if your website is likely to succeed.

Why?

The first thing to do is to ask yourself why you have set up the website. Are you trying to sell a product or provide information or something else? What do you want to happen when a visitor lands on your pages? “For a man without a destination no wind is favourable” (An old saying attributed to many). If you do not know exactly what you want to happen, how can you expect the visitors to your website to know and do it? You are the one who ought to have the site set up to direct people to their destination. If you don’t know what that is, then all is lost.

Your visitors probably know why they visited your site. You too must know why they came and help them do what they came to do. If your website does not provide what they need they will move on to another one. Just because you are getting all the traffic you could hope for does not mean that your site will succeed.

Your Website’s Conversion Rate

You will need to measure your success rate. There are a number of ways to do this. One is the Conversion rate. Simply put, the conversion rate is the rate at which you convert visitors into buyers. Or if you are not selling it is the rate at which you convince people to do whatever it is you need them to do. It could be to sign up for your newsletter of subscribe to something else, etc. If you have one hundred visitors to your website per day and you convert two, your conversion rate is two percent.

It is a reasonably good measure of the quality of your website. If your site is not converting, you will know that you need to make changes to the site. However, it could also mean that you marketing or advertising campaign is sending untargeted web traffic to your site. In other words sending visitors who are not in the least bit interested in what you have to offer.

SEO & Traffic Generation

The whole point of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is traffic generation. The idea is that you optimise or fine tune your website so that it gets to the top of the search results when people enter a search term that is contained in your website. You do this to get traffic. If your site is not properly optimised people are unlikely to find it. Unless of course you have found some narrow niche that nobody else has heard of, which will not bring a lot of visitors. SEO involves using the correct keywords in the correct way and arranging the contents and menus in the right way and most important of all is link building.

To rank highly, at the time of writing, the single most important thing to do to rank highly in the search engines is to increase the number of links to your site from quality websites which have content related to the subject of your site.

Content

It may sound obvious to most people but, the content of your website should be based on the subject of your product. For example if your website is set up to sell computers then it should contain articles about computers and computing etc. not gardening articles. If you have articles on unrelated subjects they will only serve to confuse your visitors and undermine your website’s and your own credibility as a sourct of products and information about computers or whatever your website is promoting.

The content should be keyword rich but not saturated or you may show up on spam radar. The content should be broken up into manageable paragraphs and properly laid out with headers for each section, making it easier to read and navigate.

Navigation

Getting the visitors to your website is only half og th battle. You then must give them what they want. What do they want? Well, the first thing they want is to find their way around your website without pulling their hair out in frustration. These days there is far too much competition on the internet for that to happen. They will move to another website at the first sign of difficulty.

Arrange all the links and buttons in a way that is easy to read and understand. Do not over fill each page. If there is too much choice people do not make a choice they just get confused and… you guessed it. They move to another website.

The first page they land on, usually the index page should be interesting. It should be obvious to them that they have landed on a page with the content they came for and the way to navigate to that content should be very clear. Do not try to give them everything on the front page.

Ease of Use

How easy is it for your visitors to accomplish what they came to do? Do they need to fill out pages of information or can the do their business in a few clicks? If people have to figure out the puzzle that your website is they will move on unless you have something so attractive and necessary that they will stay at all costs. If you have a product like that then you can not charge enough for it.

It is always a good idea to have a professional web designer look over the site and point out any obvious flaws. I say obvious flaws because not all corrections are obvious and are often discovered through trial and error. You should keep tweaking the website in a continuous attempt to improve it. There is always room for improvement. Though it is also said that you should not fix something that works. I think that the best thing is to make gradual changes and if they are not a major improvement, at least they will not be a major disaster.

If you are not confident enough to do the coding and graphics etc. for your own site, there are many professional web designers out there who live for it. So don’t let it stop you from getting you name, product or information out there.

About the Author:

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Steven Collins is a web designer at Desktop Web Design.

Technorati Tags: web traffic

From the entireweb newsletter a great article about website SEO – promotion, generating backlinks and reciprocal linking.

Thinking of outsourcing your reciprocal linking? Think again. There are more benefits to linking than just getting links. Consider doing at least some work yourself.

First let’s make a master list, all the usual ways we can think of to get quality, relevant backlinks to a website.

1. Fill out a form or email a webmaster, asking for a reciprocal link.
We’ll assume for the purpose of clarity that we mean exchanging links to post to a traditional directory page.

2. Deep linking.
You embed your partner’s link into relevant text on a page other than your directory page, and your partner does the same with your link.

3. Links from signatures.
This can be a signature you place at the end of every email you send out, or in forum posts.

4. Comments left on other websites.
This can be a blog or a comment form on any website. These will usually have your website url attached to the comment.

5. Submit your website to niche or general website directories.
These can be paid or free; I choose depending on what I need to do to get a link without having to put a link on my website. I prefer free, but it’s a personal choice.

6. Write and syndicate articles and include your url link in the resource box.
Write exclusive articles for high-traffic sites that rank highly in search engine results.

Thinking Outside the Box

7. Mix up the above 5 ways.
For example, if you’d like a link from a site with a higher page rank than your own, ask for a link on their directory page in exchange for a link on your homepage as well as in your directory. Save this idea for one or two HIGHLY relevant but non-competitive sites, and only if their search engine results are on, say, page 1 of Google.

As a webmaster, I’d love to receive an email like that. I’d write right back and ask if I could use it on my website.

9. Write reviews where they’re asked for.
Search around. Don’t look too far The big names are the places you want to go. Take Amazon.com for example. People click over to Amazon with their credit cards ready. They are discerning shoppers and they are often repeat customers; they read reviews, they follow links to “what else purchasers of [a particular product] bought”. So write reviews of products that relate to your website topic. Book reviews are the easiest; follow your nose to the bestsellers or new books in your category at the library.

10. Communicate with whoever you represent as an affiliate.
Create a product such as a user manual or report (”10 Tips for Succeeding as an XYZ Affiliate” or “How to Increase Your Productivity Using [XYZ's Product] in your Home Office”)and imbed your url link(s) in it. Let the affiliate program manager distribute your report or manual to his affiliates. Or again, write a glowing testimonial to the program, product or owner’s customer service, etc.

By thinking about how you can offer a benefit to your link partner, you’ll not only be building relevancy and credibility in the eyes of the search engines, but you’ll be building valuable relationships with your link partners and a reputation as an innovative, creative expert in your field.

About the Author: Kathryn Beach shows you step by step how to build an easy, profitable affiliate website with no technical skills necessary. Need more help? – try SEO services that attract free search engine traffic like a magnet.

Technorati Tags: website SEO – promotion, backlinks, reciprocal linking, reciprocal linking, backlinks

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.

More Online Business Marketing Guides

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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:
—————————————————————–
Jeff Houdyschell provides proven income opportunities, ideas and information for the best work at home jobs, visit: http://www.eSmartJob.com

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:
—————————————————————–
Jeff Houdyschell provides proven income opportunities, ideas and information for the best work at home jobs, visit: http://www.eSmartJob.com

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.

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

Technorati Tags: web traffic