Sunday, October 28, 2007

Adsense, Adwords Pay Per Click Services, The Difference

AdSense How To

Can you make money with Google AdSense? AdSense is for people who own a website or BLOG and put those ads you see on their own web site to make money. The ads you see all over the Internet on web sites, are people who put those ads on their web sites in hopes to make a lot of money from Google, Yahoo, MSN and others when people click on them.


Some BLOG services do not allow you to post AdSense. Some will let you put one set of articles on your web site. Google allows three (3) per page. For example, you will see some sites with a tall skyscraper ad, then a horizontal ad, or just some text ads, placed in different areas on the page. That doesn't mean you should put three on each page if it will hinder from your content or look and feel of your page for the user.

It is also very important to customize each ad to make sure it blends in with your page. It should look natural. Statistics have shown the blue link, black text, and light grey URL (www.google.com) link convert the best. The horizontal ad toward the top, center of the page, looking like it is part of your page also converts to people viewing it and clicking on it most.

Critical point - you must spend time placing new, fresh, unique articles on your web site or BLOG at a minimum of two times per week. Do not use articles more than once.

AdWords Strategy

Google AdWords are the ads you see at the very top (light blue portion) of the search engines on Google and their partners search engines; i.e., Ask.com, iWon.com. This includes the right-hand side text ads you see when you type in a search query like, "used cars san diego." Whenever you see Sponsored Links and you click on those ads, companies are paying for it. Sometimes the cost is outrageous, but depends on many factors.

There are also banner ads, image ads, and video ads, but we are going to focus our discussion on the text ads which is most widely used.

Google AdWords accounts are set up for web site owners who want a lot more traffic because 1) their own site is not search engine optimized well for free (organic) traffic, or 2) they are smart and want to use a different avenue of media (form of advertising) on the Internet to capture more business. Every web site cannot attain organic (free) traffic rankings for every single keyword. So using AdWords for the other targeted words people use to search for will grab the rest of the market.

Be forewarned, there are many new companies popping up on the Internet who say they "specialize" in setting you up with a "highly optimized" account, and all you get is a list of many keywords that give you a lot of clicks at high prices, but no conversions (sales).

Friday, October 26, 2007

Dating Website Template 012

dating website template

I have just uploaded new Dating Website Template for visitors of my blog to download for free.
Template has two columns, heder and horizontal navigation bar. There is a search box in the left column.
Template is XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS Valid.
This free dating website template is SEO friendly and very easy to customize.

This is an open source template and is released and distributed under Creative Commons 2.5 licence. You are free to use this template in any way you like. All I ask for is that you leave the web site design credit links in the footer of this template intact. Thank you for downloading.

Click here to download dating website template.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Search Engine Optimization: The Source To Online Success

The revolution in the field of information technology has brought about a huge change in our day-to-day life. Today instead of going out for shopping, you will find people staring from the busy professionals to the hassled homemaker to the impossible teenager checking out things they want to buy online. Things have become so easy that today all one needs to do is click a few buttons and all that they want will be delivered to them without any worries. One just needs to have an access to a computer that is internet enabled and everything can be taken care of without any issues. Though the internet revolution is the major factor for making this possible, search engine optimization is the major component in making this possible for everyone. Search engine optimization has in fact come up with many innovative methods which have made things easy for online business owners.

Search engine optimization is nothing complicated, but some methods through which an online site can become popular on the web. See there are so many sites on the web today and that is why you need to make sure that customers come across your site with ease. Searching for anything on the web takes a lot of time and that is why we have different search engine to assist us in this tiresome work. So if your site is visible at the top of the search results in all the major search engine customers will easily find your site and but goods form there. Now search engines have certain criteria based on which they assign rankings to online sites. Through search engine optimization you can make your site rank at the top of these search engines.

Search engine optimization work requires a professional touch and it will be better on your part if you get a professional to handle the work for your site. Professionals who work in the field of search engine optimization are perfectly trained in making a site just as search engines want to see them. You must remember that search engine do not view and receive a site like we do and so it is important to make certain changes in the site so that search engines receive them perfectly. Search engine optimization specialists know what latest innovations are happening in the world of search engine optimization and that is why they know exactly what changes needs to be made in a site so that they attain a higher rank in search engines.

The first thing that any search engine optimization specialist will do with an online site is that he will make changes in the design so that search engine spiders find it easy to crawl the entire site. In addition, the site will need to have keyword rich content to attract the search engine spiders and for this, you need to ensure that you have writers who can do this tricky work for you. Just make sure that your site contains all the information that prospective clients may look out for. Remember if they do not get what they are looking for, they will immediately go to the next suite without wasting their time. So you must make sure that they get instantly what they are looking for.


Steve Waganer has specialization in Web Marketing. He is expert in Search engine optimization,Search engine marketing,Social media optimization.To get the SEO tips from SEO firm for your website to get high rank and top position in major search engines visit http://www.cometsearchenginemarketing.com

Monday, October 22, 2007

Adsense Ready Template 011

adsense ready template
This morning I have created one more Adsense ready website template for you to download for free.
Template has two columns. One horizontal navigation bar is in the header section. Another vertical navigation bar is in the left column. There are four "placeholders" for your adsens code so you just have to insert it.
Template is 100% XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS Valid.
This Adsense ready website template is SEO friendly and very easy to customize - just add your text, images and insert your adsense code.

This is an open source template and is released and distributed under Creative Commons 2.5 licence. You are free to use this template in any way you like. All I ask for is that you leave the web site design credit links in the footer of this template intact. Thank you for downloading.

Click here to download Adsense Ready CSS template.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

A Few Easy Tips to Enhance your Online Business

Many people do not have their affiliate programs set up the right way and the traffic they receive is poor resulting in poor sales.

Here we provide you with some easy to follow tips that will help you to enhance your online business and make a profit from it:-

You must Encourage the internet users who visit you to sign up for your program: This is main area where most people fail. They do not push their product adequately and they usually don't understand exactly what they need to do. What they should not be doing when they set up an affiliate program is that should not simply provide a link that says "click here to sign up".

You must understand that that is not enough to entice the user.

You need to hard sell your affiliate program. In order to hard sell your program you need to try to have a sales letter that explains to the users the benefits of signing up. You also need to tell them about their commissions and also how they can earn a living without having to create a product or service and by just having a web site and just by promoting your products.

You also need to give your affiliates marketing materials and resources to help them.

You need to provide your affiliates with marketing materials: Another important tip that you should follow. Site owners usually get users to sign up for their affiliate program and then just leave them to fight it out on their own. If you want to start earning big bucks, you need to do all the hard work or at least a good bit of it for your affiliates.

You need to provide your affiliate with email promotions, press releases, pay per click ads, banner ads and anything else that you can create which will enable people to promote your site to the masses with as little work as possible.

You also need to encourage them to become positive, the more work you do for them the more commission they will earn. Ultimately they work harder for you as it's now easy for them.

You should have an Affiliate Only Newsletter: Have an email list of only your affiliate and each week you should send out a mini blueprint on how they can market your products in order to earn a commission.

Keep them informed about new products that you've just launched or the new marketing materials that you've just added to your affiliate's area. Remember that doing so will not only make them feel like they are a part of the program but it will also be beneficial you in the long run because once they sell a few of your products; they will be enthusiastic about the idea of promoting all your products.

You can also start having a weekly completion. Each week the affiliate who earns the most gets some extra cash as prize money or whatever you want to give. Mention the winner in each week's news letter. Doing so will provide the much needed mental motivational push to your affiliates.

Psychologically you are motivating your affiliates and at the same time you promote your products like crazy to get recognition as being your "top gun". Ego trips are as motivating as money.

To sum up you need to :-

1. Encourage users to Sign Up
2. Provide your affiliates with marketing materials
3. Have an Affiliate Only Newsletter


Try this and you'll ultimately be able to create a hugely successful affiliate program and sell a truckload of your products without any real hard work or any costs.


Allen Thomason is an accomplished online marketer. To find more marketing tips to improve your business, ideas, tactics and other proven methods of successful internet marketing visit TheProfitCombination.com.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Earn Cash With Adsense and Articles

This is one of the articles that everybody who want to earn money posting articles on there blogs should read. I think this article is very informative and useful.

The question regarding making cash using articles and Adsense has been asked numerous times. The unbelievers will tell you that it's not possible. If that were true, there would not be so many people earning a living writing articles for their Adsense sites.


In order to earn money with Adsense, you need to search for a profitable niche. When you are just beginning, you should pick a niche that you have some interest in. By doing this you will be more interested and it will not be quite as difficult for you to write your articles.


If you are interested in fishing, you could write articles about different kinds of fish, types of bait, type of lures, rods, reels, and the best locations for certain species.


When you become more comfortable writing articles you might then try a niche that is new to you. Use the search engines and do a search for whatever niche you want to try and research that topic. You might find that you have more of an interest in that topic than you thought.


When writing your articles, be precise, be informative, and by all means, don't tell people the same thing that everyone else is telling them. Make your articles new and captivating. Give people unique content. Don't write several articles and think that will be enough. You need to keep writing articles. You must keep your site full of fresh content. Don't forget to put your name and website address at the end of your article in the resource box. As you write informative articles, other websites may grab your article and publish it on their site or in their newsletter, thereby driving additional traffic to your site.



By keeping your content fresh and informative, the search engines will spider your site more often. Search engines look for new and unique content and will make numerous trips to your site if you keep adding new articles to it. The more often they visit, the higher in the ratings your website will go.


You also need to submit your articles to online article directories. Each directory has its own submission guidelines so be sure to check them out first. Make sure your resource box is included with the article when you submit it. Without this resource box, readers will not know who wrote the article or how to get more information from your website. More visitors will also help increase your search engine ratings.


When you join Google's Adsense program, Google will place Adsense ads on your site that are directly related to the topic that you are writing about. When a visitor clicks on one of the ads, you are paid for that click. The amount you are paid will depend on what the advertiser is paying for that ad and only Google knows that. The more traffic you get to your site, and the higher your click through rate (CTR), the more money you can earn.


It's not as hard as it may appear. The most difficult part is getting started and keeping the momentum going. It may take awhile for your site to get traffic. The most important thing is to keep submitted articles to your website.


If you wish, you can also post articles written by others as long as you include their resource box. Doing so can cause some visitors to transfer away from your site by clicking on the link in the authors resource box. But the good part of this practice is that the article still adds fresh content to your website which is always a good thing for your search rankings.


Author of this article is Rick Churchill. Rick has his own successful online work at home business. For online work at home resources, please visit his site at Online-Work-At-Home.biz.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Some Things To Consider When Developing SEO Strategies

When you begin the process of building your website there are many things you must consider. One of these is your SEO strategy. Hiring this service out to an SEO expert or company is certainly an option but is not the only option. There are many do-it-yourself SEO guides available on the internet. You can help your web page rank higher on search engines without going broke trying to pay for the service.

Some well documented and proven traffic generating SEO strategies include link building, article marketing, and other on and off site techniques as well. These strategies are really quite simple however may require a bit of research and tweaking before you begin to see your website showing up on the first few pages at the major search engines. Which is of course the goal of your entire SEO strategy.

One of the best SEO strategies that people who are in the know use is link building. You should keep in mind when using this technique that while it is important for a person to create links with other websites to make them visible, too many links can drop your website's score or rating with certain search engines. This will eventually lead to a website being relegated to pages further down in number rather than on the first 2 to 3 pages of these search engines. When targeting sites to try and get links from you want to choose sites that are related to your website. The prospective website should also have high enough rank with major search engines to help give your site a boost for being linked to them.

Another top traffic generating technique is the proper use of keywords in your content. These are word or phrases that online users enter when utilizing search engines to find information on the web. Make sure you use the keywords that are most appropriate to your content and site so online users find your web site easily.

How To Start and Internet Business With No Money

A couple of days ago I have found this article. I think there is a couple of useful information in it so I want to share it with readers of my blog.

If you have been wanting to work from home, the internet offers wonderful opportunities. You don't have to have a college degree, and you don't have to take out a loan and prepare a business plan to get started, and you DON'T NEED MONEY. I am a single Mom. I went into debt trying to start up several home based businesses that just flopped. I don't want that to happen to anyone else. I am developing a “follow-me” plan that anyone can do. If you follow me, I will succeed and you will succeed, we will be internet entrepreneurs.

Its really important that you see the BIG picture. The Search Engines are creating a huge market for businesses and little people to exchange information. The more information we exchange, the more powerful the Search Engine becomes and the more money is poured into the marketplace...its an amazing machine...simply, simply amazing. So, take your piece, play your part and make some money. Now...here is where I might lose you. The internet works with WORDS, the search engines look for WORDS, and people go to the search engines looking for these WORDS...so writing is a big part of your success. Writing, placing your writing, and using your writing as a billboard for someone else's writing. Sound confusing? Well, I can iron it out for you, and I won't even sell you an e-book.

1. The first thing you need to decide on is your expertise. What do you know a lot about? What do you have strong opinions about? If you could teach something, what would it be? Make a list, its okay if it eclectic...just write down some ideas.

Kick start your word program and start writing a few things. Are you good at sewing? Karate? Video games? Can you give dating advice? Are you a nutrition expert? Exercise? Building birdhouses? It doesn't have to be super-intelligent writing, but it should be genuine...just be yourself. Humor is good, and honesty is good.

2. Design a FREE website. There are tons of website hosts out there. I have mine at Freewebs. The cool thing is, you don't pay for a domain name, you can choose from hundreds of templates so you get the look you want and its EASY. Here are some other free website hosts: Zoomshare, Geocities and Bravenet Set up an account, follow the website tutorial, pick a template and start designing. Make it fun, pick a cool name for your website and take those articles you wrote and post them to your website as blogs. Now you are in business! These hosts often give you ideas and links to promote yourself in the administration area, be sure and take advantage of anything they have listed.

3. Open an Adsense, AdBrite or Bidvertiser account. This is FOUND money. These companies pay YOU to use your website as a billboard and it doesn't cost you a dime.

4. Now, you want to start directing traffic to your website. This is where the real work comes in. The idea of directing traffic to your website is to join the internet community. Experimenting with different websites, particularly websites that will help promote YOU. YOU ARE YOUR BRAND. You want to keep writing. Everything you write, post to your blog. Put away your credit card. DON'T PAY FOR ADVERTISING or SEO RANKING SERVICES. Don't do it! Period. I told you to put your credit card away and I meant it.

5. Linkreferral.com is a great way to get free traffic. When you open an account your website is listed in their referral program. They will give you a ranking in your category. For example, say in the “entertainment, general” section your website is ranked 20 of 1097. You can boost your rank to #1 or #2 just by visiting 30 websites, reviewing 5 of them and posting a forum question/answer. If you didn't understand what I just wrote...join Linkreferral, they explain it very well. The idea is to get a ranking of #10 or lower so more people will visit your site and review it. When YOU are reviewing sites, give a fabulous glowing review...this will encourage the website owner to take a look at your site and review you positively! I can't tell you how many people I have met through this service who have helped me out. I never would have gotten to this point without this service. You can update your ranking every 24 hours, I highly recommend you to do this!
Www.linkreferral.com

6. Add a blogroll to your blog site. What is a blogroll? It is a way to link your site to other blogsites and get FREE traffic! Also since you have your website linked with other sites, your ranking improves on the Search Engines!
Www.Blogrolling.com

7. Join Yuwie! This is a social blogging website similar to MySpace, but you can earn MONEY by reading other peoples webspace and referring friends to do the same! http://r.yuwie.com/lifeonthemoon

8. Create a lens with Squidoo.com. What is a lens? Well, a lens is like an article that shows your expertise in a subject. An article, but more complex...it tells the reader all the information you know about a certain subject. I have seen some BEAUTIFUL lenses on Squidoo, there are some really talented, knowledgeable people here. Be prepared to spend some time creating your lenses. They should be carefully thought out and have tons of information. Be impressive. You can create as many as you want...all for FREE. Remember, the idea is to bring the reader to your WEBSITE, so add your URL information!

Also, Squidoo will direct you to join Digg, StumbleUpon and De.lici.ous. Do it!

9. Write an e-zine. Once a month or so...send out a simple newsletter to your friends and family via e-mail. Tell them about your articles, your websites, tell jokes, send out a recipe...just say “hello” but let them know you are in business on the internet. Keep them updated, ask them to visit your sites and read your published work...they will be impressed and you will get free traffic.

10. Create a signature for your e-mails. All this means is to add a tag to every e-mail you send with your website information. Often times e-mails are “forwarded” to more people, and if your website information is there, it will automatically be sent to others. (FREEEEEEE!)

11. Find a free mentor. HA! Easy, right? Well, you are right, not many people are giving services away these days. There is a program called Mentoring for Free, and it is actually a tremendous service, you learn a lot about personal development through that program. However, (here is my personal tag)...I am here to help you. I have been around the internet block and I am a real person helping real people. I want to see families succeed, I want to see Mothers and Fathers at home with their children (if they want to be). I want to stop the hype, and the financial “bleeding” when it comes to starting a business. It is not necessary to go into debt, but it is necessary to work at your business no matter what it is. Go ahead and Google my name. Lisa Di Clemente. See what 6 weeks of writing has done for my search engine ranking. I did not pay ANYONE for this ranking. I did it all myself. I didn't work hard, but I worked diligently. I have time to homeschool my kids and pursue a singing career. I will mentor you...I will help.
If you have been wanting to work from home, the internet offers wonderful opportunities. You don't have to have a college degree, and you don't have to take out a loan and prepare a business plan to get started, and you DON'T NEED MONEY. I am a single Mom. I went into debt trying to start up several home based businesses that just flopped. I don't want that to happen to anyone else. I am developing a “follow-me” plan that anyone can do. If you follow me, I will succeed and you will succeed, we will be internet entrepreneurs.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Picking Great Keywords

To all those using Google AdWords to promote their products the concept of keywords is a sacred one. The effectiveness of their keywords in attracting business is often the deciding factor between success and failure.

An unsuccessful AdWords campaign can lead to hundreds of dollars in wasted advertising as their ads fail to draw in productive leads but still generate plenty of idle interest among the portion of internet browsers with little else to do but browse through the "Sponsored Ads" to see what there is to see.

What they don't know is that luck really has nothing to do with it and neither does careful research, in finding profitable keywords.

Yes, a quick glance at a search engine's database will show the keywords which generated the most business over an established period of time; however, these keywords are going to generate hundreds of pages of results due to their popularity and internet browsers are not going to look beyond the first five to ten. That means that anything on the remaining ninety pages is going to go unviewed.

It is evident that an ad must be among the first pages to be assured of some kind of success. What does that have to do with keywords? To be assured of their ads showing up on the first 5 or 10 pages, those very prime spots, a marketer will have to have one of the higher bids on that keyword.

That means that they are going to need to pay more for each time their advertisement is clicked than the people on the other ninety-nine pages if they wish for their ad to appear on the first page.

This may not seem like much, but when one takes the time to consider the fact that the advertiser is going to have to pay that sum each and every time that the ad is clicked, whether it generates a sale or not, the potential for lost advertising dollars is tremendous. Therefore, each ad is going to have to be as effective as possible in order to justify the amount of money being spent on it.

For each ad to be successful it is important that the keyword be as successful as possible.

An optimal keyword should be narrow enough so that it can narrow the field down (like "little league football" rather than "football") but you also want it to be broad enough that someone would actually search for it.

Anyone having difficulty selecting keywords for their advertisements can use any one of the vast array of tools available through Google's AdWords site, www.adwords.google.com.

By: Kirt Christensen


Kirt Christensen's dynamic flair in AdWords Management as he managed over $612,000 of annual ppc advertising for clients, has them raving about him! managemypayperclick.com

Search Engine Optimization Google Style

While search engine giant Google has only been a player as one of the major search engines for less than a decade, it has become a goal of most webmasters to make sure that their pages are search engine optimization Google friendly so that they can achieve the best Google ranking possible.

Now, not only is Google a household name around the world, it has also moved into first place among major search engines and it wields considerable power in the lives of those who seek to make their living online.

Playing by the rules of Google SEO has become a real speciality for some marketers, and those who have gone against the rules have ended up losing significant business.

One of the reasons for Google's success, and their power in the search engine world, is that the founders set out to take on the major ones by focusing and refining the technology behind the Google search engine in order to better understand what the surfer was looking for and deliver better search results than their competitors.

There is no doubt that their master plan worked out and at this point Google searches account for more than 60% of all the searches done online, which means that the other major search engines share the other 40% of searches.

These numbers have certainly given Google the power to influence the search engine industry and given webmasters motivation to be sure to make search engine optimization Google style a top priority.

The primary way that Google compiles the results that they show when a search is done is by the use of "spiders" that go out and crawl the web. Two of the things that gets positive attention from the Google spiders are quality inbound linking and quality content.

For a good Google search engine optimization of your site, it will be helpful to have good quality links that point to your site from other relevant websites.

The weight of these links varies depending on the quality of the sites that link to you, if you have text links, as opposed to links off banner ads for instance, and also the quality of the text that surrounds your link, as well as the page rank of those sites.

Google also has a complex algorithm it uses to check the text of your pages to see if it is good, readable, quality content, or if is a mass of gibberish that is nothing more than a page full of keywords that don't even comprise full and complete sentences. Having good quality content that delivers value to the visitor is a primary key to search engine optimization Google style.

Some people will say that your meta description, title and keywords are of utmost importance to rank well with Google, and they might have been true in the past, but these things do not carry as much weight as they used to. Of course having appropriate keywords defined and a good meta description can't hurt, but more time should be spent on quality links and content.

Google also uses something they call Page Rank technology that measures the relative importance of a website based on an extremely complex equation that takes into consideration more than 500 million different variables.

Part of the analysis evaluates the quality of both inbound and outbound links and assigning a value, further complicating the search engine optimization Google uses to rank your site.

All is revealed about making your search engine optimization google friendly at Mike Selvon portal.

6 Steps to Start your Web Site Project

Regardless of size, building a Web site is similar to building a house. There are many decisions to make along the way, most vendors will try to sell the owners on more than they need, and if one is not careful, the project can end up costing more than anticipated. However, when executed properly, a marketer with little technical knowledge can step away with an effective and appropriate Web site for his/her industry by following a few simple guidelines.

Whether you’ve hired an external marketing firm to assist you with these steps or you’re working directly with a Web design firm, at a minimum the following guidelines should be observed when approaching a Web site project.

Identify Your Target Market

The Internet is so exciting we all want to jump on this gravy train and make things happen, but the cutting edge isn’t for every market, and some technologies may look cool but are useless to your mission. Taking some time to think about who you are targeting with your Web site, and how you would like to steer them towards doing business with you will assist you in identifying your goals and become a reference point for all subsequent decisions.

Examine your target market’s approach to the Web and your content.
The Internet provides a uniquely intimate experience in which the site visitor chooses the direction of the information in a non-linear fashion. The site visitor is not bound by pages in a book. S/he can only make decisions based upon the following:

1. What do I need?
2. What are the choices?
3. What is my past experience?

This means that regardless of how you usually consider your product or service offerings, it’s more important than ever to consider those items from the client perspective. Take time to think about how your various targets will approach your Web site – what information will they seek? Is this an existing client? A prospective client? What keywords will this person look for? What keywords are meaningful to that target group? What is their experience with the Web thus far?

Determine Goals and Strategies

After completing the above steps, then decide on some reasonable goals for your Web site. What tactics and strategies will you implement to meet those goals? For example, a goal might be to provide current departmental information on the Web site to keep prospective students up to date on the latest course offerings and department changes. A college may wish to encourage more teacher participation in updating the Web site, but other than providing them with the technology to do so, how will you inspire them and market to this group to make their involvement in the college feel interesting and not just another task? Some of these questions may get complex, and your project may slow down here because it’s not fun. However, more time in this area will enable you to save money in the long run and increase your satisfaction with the final Web site.

Get Buy-In

Bring all your decision makers together and let them know what you’re planning. Let them give you their input. If they disagree with some of your choices, you can back up your choices with something they don’t have – research. Your ideas are not based on feelings, they’re based on fact, and that’s powerful. However, the other stakeholders in the Web site might have some good ideas. Maybe they want to get increased benefit from the Web site, too, like an intranet, or automated email notification. Listen to these ideas and consider them carefully.

Evaluate Needs

Now that you know what you want your Web site to do, you can figure out what technology is out there to do it with. This will inevitably cause some revisions to the previous step, as creative vendors will inform you of applications and opportunities you may not have thought of before. That’s okay - you will not be led astray by the temptation of the super highway when all you needed was a 2 lane road. But you will be able to appreciate the input and take time to consider if this option fits your target market’s approach to your Web site.

Identify Vendors

If you’ve been diligent about the above process, it’s time to consider your vendors – which will be really easy to do now that you know what you need. Then it becomes a matter of comparing facts in a matrix – does company X provide this feature or not? At what cost? Then the choice is less about having lots of features and more about having the right ones that fit your goals.

Heather Jewell is the Manager of Planning and Administration of NuRelm. NuRelm is a Web software and services firm that focuses on helping non-technical professionals utilize on the Web to build business. For more information, please visit www.NuRelm.com.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Need Traffic For Your Website? Here Are Some Inexpensive Traffic Secrets

You have built a great website. Everything is set up and you are excited about your online presence. A day goes by, a week, then two,and your traffic is just trickling in one or two visitors at a time. Your excitement turns to woe. What went wrong? Having a great website with good products/service and having virtually no traffic is like throwing a big party and having no one show up. Use the following inexpensive traffic tips and you will see the results you want.

Before you do anything else, use a keyword tool to research the right keywords for your site. What keywords are your competition using? Make sure your site is content uses the keywords your niche market uses to search. This will do two things. It will help improve your ranking in the search engines for these phrases, and it will get you visible to those you want to visit your site.

Once you have done your keyword homework and have your site optimized, the next inexpensive traffic secret is to make sure to add fresh content to your site every 3 to 4 days. Again, this keeps you in the engines and in front of your prospects. This point is the most inexpensive and one of the most important aspects of improving and maintaining your search engine rankings. Remember, if people don't know your site is available they won't visit.

Start a blog about your niche market. Make sure to write fresh content at least once a week. Let your visitors comment on your content, or even add their own. This will keep visitors coming back to your site to see what is been added.

Another inexpensive traffic secret is to write and submit articles to articles directories. These article directories allow others to use your content as long as you are given credit for the article. Your signature file is always attached to the articles. In your signature file, youll place links with strong call to action to your site.

Regularly submitting articles to the ezine directories will increase links to your site and help you establish yourself as an authority in your industry. Just as with a brick and mortar business, you must make your presence known on the Internet.

Many think that banner ads no longer work generating traffic to websites. Just look at some of the more prestigious sites on the web...and you will see banner ads galore. Several directories list websites selling ad space. The fees will vary depending mainly on how many visitors the site attracts.

Getting your site listed in directories relating to your industry is another inexpensive way to bring traffic to your site. If you are targeting a local market, also make sure to get listed in local directories.

These few inexpensive traffic secrets consistently generate website visitors. Some of these strategies may take a few months to increase your traffic. Others such as banner ads will generate traffic almost immediately.

About the Author:

Srini Saripalli is a Technologist, Marketer & Entrepreneur turned Business Optimization Expert. Visit Success Engineer and get your FREE CD on how to plan your own business Success.

Friday, October 5, 2007

How To Build A Search Engine Friendly Web Site

There are many aspects in regards to search engine optimisation. There are on-page procedures such as optimising meta tags, titles, page copy, urls, alt tags and the like. We also know that another important aspect is off-page seo whereby a lot of time and effort is put in in order to obtain quality inbound links to your site. This normally takes the shape of directory submission, article writing and submission, competition analysis, social media marketing and blogging to name a few.

These are all crucial elements of search engine optimisation and are a major part of any seo specialists daily chors.

One element of SEO that can be easily overlooked is the building of a web site that is not only "user friendly" but also "search friendly". By "search friendly" we mean that the search engines can crawl and spider your site unimpeded which will enable it to extract all of your content and in turn index it within the search engines database. After all, what use is getting thousands of inbound one way links to your site, if your site is not user or search friendly?

There are a number of things worth considering when building a user and search engine friendly web site. They are:-

1. Use as much text as possible in the form of HTML - Search engines love plain text. They are not able to read images, video files, audio files or flash, so try to not use too much of these in your site design.

Another thing to consider is that some sites make users log in in order to view certain content or use a form to find content. Both of these are bad. Spiders/crawlers do not know how to log in to your site or fill out a form in order to find your content. So if you want your content to be indexed by the search engines, stay away from this. If you MUST do this, try to produce a snippet of the content to entice users to log in. That way the spider at least has something to chew on.

2. Make your urls understandable - This means creating urls such as mysite/how-to-bring-up-your-children and NOT mysite/children/article-09876R-YTUR-4tr. As you can see the first url is not only "user friendly" but is also "search engine friendly" meaning that the search engines read more meaning and relevance into this url than the second one. Dont forget also that if you were to copy the second url into an email, your signature or post on a blog etc it wouldnt be totally clear where the link was going. This cannot be said for the first url.

3. Structure your site well - This means making your site as flat as possible. Instead of structuring your site in way that means a user has to click 10 times before reaching their target make the content a maximum of 4 clicks away or less.

4. Design your site for users NOT search engines - As much as possible treat the search engines as if they were human beings manually scouring your site for content to index. If it is easy for humans to find what they are looking for on your site, logic says that the spiders will also find what they are looking for and index it. The more "speadbumps" you put in the way of spiders, the slower your site will be crawled and indexed(if at all).

5. Content is king - One of my favorite expressions which is so true. Great content has many benefits, after all, its what we are all after, even the search engines. The search engines job is to find "relevant" search data. When the search engine starts dishing out "irrelevant" results, thats the time when it is going to become out of favour with web users who will move onto another engine.

Having great site content has many benefits such as if your content is good and original, people will want to link to it and your site, so its a good way of building natural links which is something that google likes. If you write good genuine creative content on your topic you will start to become an authority in your chosen field meaning more links and brand/site awareness.

The more content you have the more opportunity you will have of inserting your keywords making it look as natural as possible to the search engines. Although keyword density is no longer a major factor with search engines, it is something that needs to be done.

Well, thats the end of this article with some tips on making your site not only "user friendly" but just as importantly "search friendly". It is something that can be easily overlooked especially as gaining backlinks is viewed as THE most important SEO practice at the moment.

Author of this article is Shawn Hickman. Get more information at http://www.seoservicesspain.com/seo-web-design-expert-spain.php Read more articles like this one at http://getlistedinternetmarketing.com

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Build Websites Easier With Premade Templates

To most people the process of building a web site remains somewhat of a mystery. This confusion probably stems from the fact that there is a cornucopia of web sites on the Internet. Even with wide variety of sites, every single one can be divided into two sections: front-end and back-end.

The front-end is the first thing that it is designed. It encompasses the look and feel of a web site. This is probably the most established part of the web site production process. Design has been around since Gutenberg printed his first bible. Much of what has been used in print media (especially art magazines) has transferred to the web.

Most well thought out web sites start off with sketches on paper. We like using the big huge box of crayons, the one with the crayon sharpener built in. Most of the colors in the "big box" are pleasing to the eye and are web friendly. If you use begin paying attention to sites you'll notice that only a few colors are actually used, 256 to be exact. Only about 100 of those won't give you a headache when you look at them. On request we will give these early designs to a client that wants to control the look and feel of their site. The site, of course, never ends up looking like the early designs. The same idea and concept is there but because of restrictions colors and whole images are lost.

This brings us to the next part of the front-end, the actual site creation. This is what many people view as the most important, which is what separates a professional looking site from an amateur one.

The images are created using products from across the board. Mainly, designers stick to industry standards like Photoshop and Illustrator. After getting the basic image in terms of proportions and size the designer should create the static HTML page.

This is the basic page you would see if you viewed the page source. This is one of the most rewarding, most hated and most tedious part of the web design process. Each browser displays a page differently. Sometimes we build a different site for each, trying to maintain the same layout.

That concludes the front-end section. Personal sites and some small business sites stop here. While this maybe acceptable today, tomorrow any web site hoping to attract and keep visitors is going to have a strong back-end.

There are many sites and website designers that offer premade templates, these have the entire graphical layout that a page needs.

For those with little or no experience with website design software, templates have quickly become a practical solution to professional website design. Most of the top end sites offer a huge selection of very impressive, easy-to-edit website templates. All you have to do is check your email containing the link to download the .zip file. The html in these templates is compatible with Adobe GoLive, Macromedia Dreamweaver and Microsoft Frontpage. The major advantage is the price, they run anywhere from $20 to $70. Another great advantage is you don't have to hire a web designer, who usually takes 1 to 2 weeks to produce a page of such high quality. Webmasters, either novice or expert, can easily save thousands of dollars on design fees by using website templates.

Author of this article is Alex Marias.

There are also some exception sites, such as http://www.web-site-templates.org that provide packages of templates at one price, instead of providing a different price for each template.

Web 2.0 Templates