The Smart Pounder

There are so many rules that search engines follow to determine which site gets ranked number one for certain search words and so on and so forth. However, one of these criteria includes links so that is something you should focus on if you are interested in increasing your traffic and rankings with the search engines.

You may not know how to go about getting one way links to your website, but it really is pretty easy. All you need to do is start listing your website in different web directories and before long you will have plenty of links pointing back to your website. This is really important and something you want to focus on because if you do not have links to your site then getting ranked high in the search engines will be difficult.

Why Do you Need Links for the Search Engines?

Nobody knows for sure exactly what formula the many search engines use to rank websites, but it is known that links to your website make up a big percentage of where your website is ranked. Obviously, the higher your website is ranked in the search engines the more visitors will click on your site and the more traffic you will have. Because of this the success of your website just might depend on how many links you have pointing back to your site on the Internet. Think of it as a popularity contest and the website with the most links is the most popular and wins a high ranking in the search engines as a result. So, the higher your site ranks in the search engines the more visitors your site will receive and the more money you will make! One way links and search engines rankings have a great cause and effect relationship so you should get started today.

Web directories are one of the best way to get the needed one way links to your website and they offer many benefits to your site other than helping your site get a high ranking with the search engines. Also, web directories all you to submit your site to a category and then a human edits your site information in order to approve it for the directory. Many people use directories to find information and websites as opposed to search engines, so when you use a web directory or web directories for linking purposes you will also be able to attract traffic due to the individuals who visit the directory looking for website.

When you use website directories to list your website or even websites you will quickly realize an increase in your sites rankings with the search engines as well as increased traffic due to this as well as traffic from the directory. GO ahead and increase your business and website traffic and start listing your site with the many web directories today!

If youre new to online marketing and online business, you probably got in under the idea that this is a get rich quick scheme. Well it may be, it may be not, however, online business is not that simple. It requires hard work and a lot of thinking. You may be sitting down in front of a computer, but your mind should be in hyperdrive.

To achieve success in online Business, there are certain steps youll have to take, certain techniques that youll have to learn, but those are long winded and cannot be covered in an article such as this.

Here are a few of the basics, those that you should know, if you dont already, before you start your own online marketing business.

Find a user Friendly, and Business Friendly Software

The software market is filled with different sets of programs with different sets of features catered for a certain purpose. Be sure to choose software that is efficient and tailored for the kind of business you do. Find similar software and do a comparison, which one works best, which one is faster, which one is more reliable.

Most importantly, look for the most secure software you could find. Security is what consumers are most concerned about; after all they will be providing you with personal information. Build trust with your clients through safe business transactions.

Plan your Business Carefully

You should know about the basic technicalities of the Business world, break-even duration, revenue source, strategic locations, and other details. Decide on your long term and short term goals and estimate right from the beginning when youd want to expand your business or your set of products.

The internet is a big place; businesses get eaten up by the sheer quantity everyday. The fact remains that there is just too much going on to be noticed, and you should enter this factor into your business equation before you even start, in order for you to stay stable and be successful.

Find Unique Targets

Find customers that are unique and untargeted. This way you wont have much competition. There is an untapped pool of consumers out there waiting for you to satisfy them and give them their needs, all it takes is a little research and patience.

Its ok if you start with something small; small things tend to get bigger overtime.

Make a Difference

Your site should be something that stays in your clients mind, something that can easily be stored in photographic memory. Logos, banners, brand names, all of these should have a certain commonality with your site, so that when they see your site, and the brand names, they associate it with each other.

Study your target market, if youre store is for Goth enthusiasts then black is the way to go, if its for toddlers, a more childish and colorful site should be your target.

Be memorable

Well you cant be sentimental, but you can embed yourself in your customers memory through good and efficient service, as well as quality products. Always be in touch with your customers, give them regular timely updates, but not to the point of spamming.

Another way to do this is to spoil your customers, yes spoil them, to ensure permanent sales.

Make your specialty more visible Your specialty should be associated with your company or brand. Kind of like how Xerox became associated with photocopying. This should be what you aim for, or something of that sort. Make your banner product visible, it should be the first thing they see in your estore.

Surprise your customers

Yes, at this point, your customers would love something new, this adds to the excitement of your website. Make the experience more thrilling with sponsored events, online promos, incentives etc.

The prospect of having something different everyday should be enough to keep your customers coming back.

Be a Fast Learner

Mistakes are a common sight in internet marketing. You shouldnt beat yourself up for them; however, learn to stand up fast whenever you fall, so as not to give your competitors time to step on you. Act on glitches as fast as you can to prevent your competitors from exploiting them. Make Sure Everybody Knows You

Your Web presence is about as essential as your products and services. Link, link, link. Associate yourself with other related sites, search engine optimization should help too.

So, you think you’re off to a good start because you finally got your new Web site up and running. You even have one of those counters at the bottom of your homepage so you know exactly how many people visit your site. Done patting yourself on the back yet? When you are, it’s time to move your site to the next level. It’s time for Web Analytics.

Web Analytics may sound like some sort of complex configuration for your web site, but for amateur Web page developer and internet retailers, Web Analytics is actually an incredibly useful, and easy, tool. In one fell swoop, Web analytics can help you figure out all the important information about people who visit your site. Put simply, it’s a way to study who visits your site, what they do while they are there, and why they leave. We’re talking about, all the Whos, Whats, Wheres, Whens, and Whys.

If you’re looking to sell something on your site, Web analytics can tell you what product pages are attracting the most viewers, which ones the least. The tool can even tell you what parts of your site are confusing to your visitors. And it can tell you where your biggest customers are coming from.

If you’re looking to market yourself on search engines, there’s no better way than Web Analytics. The tool allows you to figure out which keywords work best to drive traffic to your site. It can help you figure out how many hits you’re receiving from your advertising campaigns. That way, you can build your Web content to focus on those keywords and campaigns, and to drive even more traffic to your site.

The benefits of Web analytics are many, so here is just a short list of the main ones. Web Analytics can:

* provide a traffic count. But unlike those basic counters on the bottom of a homepage, Web Analytics can breakdown your visitors by how many are new, or “unique,” visitors, and how many are repeat visitors, along with what pages, and how many pages, they viewed.

* track down the IP address of your visitors, which is like their numerical address on the Web where the visitors are coming from. Not only that, you can track them down to their geographical, real-world location, too, as well as the time of day that they came.

* breakdown individual visits by the entry page, where the person first landed at your site, and the exit page, the last page they visited before they left. Entry pages generally show that the visitor may have bookmarked your site on that page, probably because of its valuable content. Exit pages, on the other hand, could be your site’s most boring content.

* count the total time that visitors spent on your site, and exactly what path they took through the site. This can give you the better idea about how well-designed your Web page is, so you can learn how to better design your site’s navigation to direct visitors where you want them to go, and get them to stick around your site longer.

* trace your visitors back to the links that brought them to your site. The more links other Web sites have to your pages, the better. On the other hand, visitors may have come straight to your site, which is also not too shabby. It could mean that word-of-mouth on your site is working.

* weigh the value of search engine keywords in your Web content. You could find out what search terms visitors are using at your site. And you could also analyze which terms people are using at search engines to find your site. Either way, it’s a great way to optimize your content to what your visitors are looking for.

The ultimate benefit of Web Analytics is to make your site more worthwhile to its visitors. But of course, you want to make it more worthwhile to you too.

When you want to buy something new and exciting you might want to check out the new Vera Bradley lineup on the Internet for you handbags and travel luggage. Or you can use the Internet to look for women’s clothing for all styles and types, including maternity clothes and the latest ponchos.

Vera Bradley continues to lead the way with fashion in the handbag category that is both functional yet fun, making every woman feel as though the bag was designed just for her.

Shopping online for your clothes can be a great way to not only save money but to also find the latest fashions and styles that you can’t find in any of your local stores. This is a great way to get that special outfit that no one else has for your sister’s wedding. The Internet is filled with a multitude of shopping arenas that you can spend hours browsing through. And if you know exactly what you’re looking for your task is even easier as you simple go searching for that one item.

Shopping for women’s clothes on the Internet is a great way to travel to Paris from your armchair and shop for your maternity clothes or for cute ponchos. Or stop at the Vera Bradley website for information on their latest styles.

The Internet has changed the shopping experience forever since everything is now at your disposal with a simple click of the mouse. You’ll be able to find women’s clothing that is as wild as you can imagine or as classic as ever. The choices are all yours when it comes to online shopping.

If you find yourself making a lot of purchase from one certain website see if you can sign up for their newsletter so that you can get even more great deals for the women’s clothing that you buy. You’ll soon find yourself saving hundreds of dollars on your fashion wardrobe.

How to get hosting and Domains for free.

Are you paying too much for your Domain names and Hosting?

I was before I started checking out things.

I was paying 30$ a year for a single .com Domain, and I didn’t even get good service, a free email account or any possibilities of controlling anything regarding my Domains my self.

Then I started checking out things and now I am actually paying nothing for my hosting!

How is that possible?

Well let me tell you how things work. You can get a .com Domain for as low 1.99$ if you for instance go to www.ShopA.name or many other places. But you will have to by something else to get it at that prize, because nobody is making any money at that prize, and they only sell it to you at that prize because you then hopefully will by your hosting there and stick around for several years. So in the long run they will make money on you. Remember THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH, so if you save money on your Domain you will have to give money for something else or every domain seller would be out of business very quickly.

Where you can save money and even make money is if you become a reseller of Domains. If you become a reseller of Domains you will by them at a wholesale prize that is lower than ay prize you can get anywhere else, plus you will be able to make money from selling to other people. That’s what I do. Whenever I need a Domain name I by it from my self. A .com Domain cost me 7$, so you see selling it for 1.99$ means loosing money, so nobody is doing that unless they make money on something else. The best thing you can do is therefore to make money on your self, that way you get your Domains and Hosting as cheap as you can and you can with a little effort even make money by selling to other people.

Godaddy is the #1 registrar and they sell finished web shops for selling Domains. They use their sister company Wild West Domains to sell reseller plans. They provide 24/7 support for your costumers, so you don’t have to worry of anything. There are two different reseller plans the small cost 99$ and the big 199$, but here’s another scoop. Some people have chosen to become master resellers, selling reseller shops, and they are usually giving a discount, to win market shares. If you go to www.masterdomaine.com you can get the same Wild West products for 90$ and 179$.

So for only 90$ you can get all your hosting and Domains as cheap as possible and you will even make money at the same time selling to others!

That’s how Domains and Hosting became absolutely free for me.

In this day and age most businesses consider having their own website; from informational based to the most advanced and complex e-commerce site. For the large enterprise, this become a vital part of their day to day operation, their web site embeds complex applications that exchanges critical information between their partners and clients. Web services are sometime employed in order to simplify their transactions and easily exchange critical information across their suppliers, clients and partners.

Small businesses however face a different situation, majority of them don’t really utilize their web site’s full potential, and they become satisfied with just having a dot-com after their business name, important factor are then ignored and become enslaved by their own contentment.

Time constraints and financial consideration are among the reasons

Major small business owners find it difficult to upgrade or enhance their website and place useful tools and simple applications that would help visitors or guess feel more comfortable using it. Study shows that 80% of them don’t want to do it because of financial issue, 20% however, didn’t want to spend time to revisit and look at what’s lacking on their site. The cost of hostings, domain registrations and setup-fees has probably just gone to waste because many of them looked at it as totally marketing cost, when in fact it is also an investment that needed a return.

A website if managed properly would bring additional revenue for the business. How is this so? If you know how to unlock the obvious money maker capability of your website then its not only going to help you get more clients and make them happy, but would also give you extra revenue on the side.

It’s all about the hits

Can you imagine if your site is doing 100,000 hits per month or more because you exerted enough effort to enhance and polish your website? Yes, its all about the hits, opportunities arise when you have this kind of visitors or guests every month. Why? – Simple, marketing, advertising and revenue. That’s right, this is where it comes down to, by having hundred thousand hits a month, it’s a piece of cake to approach certain advertisers and make extra revenue on the side and increase potential leads for your business.

Increasing the Hits will allow you to minimize the cost of advertising expense by doing them online as well as all your promotions thereby increasing your revenue. Happy customers and impressed prospects can bring leads to your business and increase sales.

So how can you really increase the number of visitors? Or hits? By applying some of the strategies below that you may feel mostly fit for your business.

When you’re done polishing your site, don’t fail to take note of the changes by using website traffic analyzers or counters. You can sign up and download them for FREE or pay for it as part of your hosting service.

Results can vary depending on how well you implement the above, but there are plenty of books and articles out there that discuss this subject, I recommend you check them out to increase your knowledge in this area because its important that you use your website as a tool not only to interact with your clients and prospects but increase your business as well.

Guil Tabasa is a consultant for Altertek Solutions; he has been in the consulting business for more than 7 years now. He has helped small and medium businesses add value to their business that directly contributes to their revenue.

Are you thinking that it is about time your small business had an internet presence, however are not too sure how or who to go to build and promote the website.

This article will hopefully be of benefit to you as it will give you free tips on website promotion and on how to obtain a website on the cheap.

Many people believe that it will cost them thousands to have a website designed and this fact alone puts many people off. Due to the large number of people who now offer website design services, this should not be the case. The websites at the bottom of this article were designed for under £50 and there is no reason why you should pay over a £100 for a similar website. It is not just about the price of course, if you pay £50 and the website is not search engine friendly or looks rubbish then its a waste of £50.

If you are willing to be patient and to make a few calls and write a few emails you should be able to find a great deal.

Once you have the website built you then need to think about website promotion. A favourite of mine is google adwords, this is where you pay a fee to appear on their sponsored websites section which appears on the right hand side of the search results. This enables you to obtain a first page entry on the search engine for a particular phrase or keyword.

Another idea is to write articles like the one you are reading. You are able to submit the articles to article websites such as:

http://www.ezinearticles.com

http://www.goarticles.com

http://www.searchwarp.com

Other webmasters and ezines are able to use your article on their websites and newsletters thus giving you an additional backward link. The number of backward links a website has will affect its page rank, the higher the number of backward links, the higher the page rank. Generally the higher the page rank, the more visitors your website is likely to get.

Stephen Hill has a number of websites including:

http://www.lasik-laser-surgery.co.uk

http://www.stress-management-game.co.uk

http://www.cancer-therapy.co.uk

Your best topic is always a subject you have passion, for knowledge about and experience with. Your personal life experiences have taught you a unique set of lessons. Determine what you know that others might find valuable.

Of course, you can make a 3 Page Site that focuses on almost any subject you want but you will have a better chance of success, especially if this is your first site, if you choose a subject you have some experience with. Plus it makes the process much more fun.

Start by brainstorming a list of topics. Get a pad and pen.

What are you passionate about? Write it down. What do you love to talk about? What do you read about? What specialized knowledge do you have from your job? Any hobbies? Start writing. Get everything down…don’t censure anything, just write it down.

List the 10 biggest problems you can think of in your home, workplace or community. What do you enjoy doing with your spare time?

Ask your friends and family what they think you’re good at and knowledgeable about. You might be surprised at the things they see that you’ve missed.

Spend a solid thirty minutes on this brainstorming session. At first the ideas will come quickly. But then, after you’ve already written down the obvious ones, you’ll start to have to really think about it. This is when the real power of this exercise happens.

You see, the subconscious mind is a funny thing. It takes a constant demand from your conscious mind to get its attention. But once you do, your subconscious will take up the effort for you and begin to supply answers to your question as it comes up with them.

By spending a full thirty minutes intensely focused on brainstorming topics for your 3 Page Site you communicate this demand to your subconscious mind. For the next week your subconscious mind will provide very creative topics for you in a sporadic and seemingly random way. You’ll be driving to work, taking a shower or eating dinner and suddenly you’ll get a great idea for a 3 Page Site topic.

This technique can be used for almost any question or dilemma. Just remember the power is in the results your subconscious mind produces in the days after doing the exercise. And that won’t happen if you don’t focus intensely on brainstorming topics for a full 30 minutes. It takes this long to be sure your subconscious mind gets your message.

How to Use Simple Sales Sites to Create a Huge Passive Income
Disarmingly simple internet marketing strategy that will show you in 10 easy steps how to create a series of internet income streams. Each is independent of the others and each will bring in a few hundred dollars every month on auto-pilot. Make as many as you like. http://www.3PageSite.com

Let’s start with an example so you see where we’re going to with this article. Consider a listings type site; in this case, let’s think of a real estate website which lists properties. Each property has a picture. You have a page where you list all properties in a given neighborhood, about 20 properties per page. For each property, you display a smaller version of its picture (this is called a thumbnail), and a brief description of the property, so site visitors can click on the property they like to learn more about it. The problem is: this page takes really long to display in the browser.

There is a high probability that this problem is related to the images. You need to analyze how your site generates the thumbnails. In many scripts, the thumbnails are just the original pictures, but displayed in smaller width and height. If this is the case, then each picture takes too long to load. You should change this approach and generate real thumbnails of each picture. You also need to change your script to work with the images thumbnails, and not just the original big images.

There are different ways to generate the thumbnails:

1) Using a graphics program. You load the original image, and resize it to the thumbnail size. Then you save it with a different file name. For this approach to work, your script must let you upload the big image for each property, and also the thumbnail.

2) Your script can generate the thumbnails automatically when pictures are loaded, and save them on the server. You only need to upload the big picture. If your script is written in Php, for example, this can be accomplished by using Php image functions, which make use of the gd graphics library. These functions let you generate thumbnails in different image formats like gif, jpg and png.

3) Your script can generate the thumbnails on the fly and serve them directly to the browser. This will save storage space in the server, but requires a lot of server processing time. It is not recommended if you have many images, or if your site has many daily visits.

The important aspect to remember here is that you should not resize original images to show them as thumbnails, especially if you’re showing several of these images on the same page. It will not only slow the page load in the browser, but it will also use a lot of extra bandwidth you can save.

Designing a good looking web-site is not enough – one must ensure that quality customers visit it regularly. Search Engine
being one of the most important sources of traffic to any
web-site – web designers should pay enough attention to
make their creation search engine friendly.

To understand search engine friendly features of any web-site,
it is important to examine how a search engine works. There are
essentially two kinds of search engines – directory and spider
based search engines.

Directory Type Search Engine

This type of search engines list websites under categories
(sometimes called category database). They have large number
of categories to fit all kinds of web-pages. Largely managed
by human beings, the two outstanding features of any directory
are accuracy and selectivity.

Directories are extremely selective about web-pages to be accepted. A directory will not list your URL and will never become aware of your site unless you register with them. They do not make use of spiders or robots that crawl the web looking for new sites.

Examples of Directories are Yahoo, DMoz Open Directory. Look Smart etc.

Listing of a web-site in a directory type search engine
depends a great deal on editorial policy of concerned directory.
For example, Yahoo charges USD 300 to examine a business web-site within a specified time. The web-site is indexed if Yahoo editor finds it list-worthy. On the other hand, DMoz open directory works with voluntary editors and does not charge any money for inspection or indexing. However, the listing process may take long time.

Designer should check requirement of individual directories to
decide on categories, title, meta tags etc. Submission for such
directories should always be manual – one should not try automated
submission for directory type search engines.

Listing in a quality directory is usually difficult and time
consuming. However, the respect and page rank it provides is
worth the effort.

Spider Based Search Engines

Unlike directory-type search engines, spider-based search engines (also called crawlers, robots, worms) seek out web-pages by crawling through the WWW and automatically index sites using its own indexing rules or algorithm. It will not wait for you to submit, but try to seek out as many web-sites as it can find and index them.

By simply telling the search engine what your URL is, its
software robot will go there automatically and index everything
they need. How much it will index and to what degree depends
upon its algorithm – usually a closely guarded secret.

Overwhelming number of search-engines in the WWW are spider-based. Examples are – Google, AltaVista, Lycos, InfoSeek etc.

Getting listed in a spider based web-site is not difficult – all
it takes is to submit your web-site URL – manually or through an
automated process. However, position of your web-site in search
result (popularly called ranking) will depend upon many
factors – some within your control, others beyond. We shall discuss these factors in detail in a future article series

How to make a Web-Site Spider-Friendly

While listing in a directory or high ranking in spider based
search engine require special effort – certain design features
can help you considerably. Besides, there are certain negative
design features that can create difficulties for search engine
spiders, keeping your web-site outside the reach of search
engines.

Frames

Frames is a technique of splitting browser’s screen into number
of windows for displaying various kinds of information. It used
to be a popular technique of web-designing in the 90’s. However,
frames can confuse a search engine spider so much that it may
abandon the web-page or index it wrongly.

It is better not to use frames. Even search engines capable of
indexing a site through frames don’t recommend it. Whatever you
are trying to accomplish by using frames can usually be done with
the help of Cascading Style Sheet (CSS). Some browsers are not
frames-compatible, so there is additional danger of visitors not
being able to see your site at all. Bookmarking of individual
pages within a frame becomes difficult without lengthy scripts
being written.

Flash/Graphics Based Web Sites

While web sites that offer visitor more esthetically-pleasing
experience may seem like the best choice for someone searching
for your product, they are the most difficult to optimize. Since
search engine robots cannot read text within graphics or animation, what they see may be just a small amount of text – and small amounts of content may not result in top rankings. If you really must offer the visitor a graphics-heavy or Flash web site, consider creating an html-based side of your site that is also available to visitors. This site will be much easier to promote on the search engines and your new found visitors will also have the option to jump over to the nicer looking part of your site.

Dynamic Web Pages

Content in a dynamic web-site resides within a database – outside
the reach of most spiders. URL of dynamic pages from such databases are usually long and have characters such as ?, #, &, %, or = along with seemingly random numbers or letters – enough to confuse any spider. As a result, search engines may leave a dynamic web-site or at best index it partially.

Improper Use of HTML

Inefficiently designed web-pages that use large amount of html codes for fonts, colors, lines etc. – specially in the beginning of the page can cause negative impact. What search engine robots see in such poorly designed pages are clutters of font and formatting tags, very little text.

If possible, designers should avoid too much html tags, javascripts etc. in the beginning of a web-page. Efficient designers write codes in such a way that such elements do not form part of web-pages (e.g. using CSS). Hand coded HTML to design sites is also a good method for proficient designers

Meta Tags

Meta tags is a way of storing information about a web-page. Information stored in meta tags is usually not visible by browsers but easily accessible by search engine spiders. It is a way of informing spiders about content of the web-page, relevant keywords, how to index etc.

In the absence of meta tags, spiders may index web-pages in its own way – which could be quite un-predictive. It is far more prudent to guide the spider with desirable information so that the web-page gets indexed under right keywords.

Conclusion

A few simple steps in the beginning of design process may go a
long way in making sure your web-site attracts customers. Success of a business web-site is gauged not by its look – but how much it helps in business.

Dr. Amit K. Chatterjee

Amit worked in blue-chip Indian and MNCs for 15 years in various capacities like Research and Information Analysis, Market Development, MIS, R&D Information Systems etc. before starting his e-commerce venture in 1997.
He writes regularly for http://www.infobanc.com