Email Marketing
When you own a website, you can do a lot more with it besides being up and running on the Internet. One powerful website “add-on” is the ability to collect the email addresses of visitors to your site, and “stay in touch” with current and prospective customers by means of an email marketing system. Email addresses collected at your site can be combined with email addresses collected by offline means, and through an email marketing system you can communicate in one easy step with everyone on your list. The system is easy to set up, very affordable, and often yields profitable results far in excess of your investment.
Email marketing has come a long way in recent years, and now, through a managed system, you can send messages out to your list in an attractive, graphics-enhanced, email format. An email marketing system is useful for just about every business. Some uses that come to mind include newsletters, new product or services announcements, special offers and promotions, changes in your business, advice columns, and so on. It is a rare business that cannot benefit from improved communication with clients, and professional email marketing is one of the easiest communication methods available.
On your website, you need to set up a short form that collects visitors’ email addresses, and each new email address is automatically added to your email marketing list. Email addresses gathered offline can be added manually to your email marketing list. You then prepare your newsletter, or other communication, input it into your chosen template, and you’re ready to email everyone on your list, with a professional looking html-enhanced email. Each communication that goes out through the system is formatted into whatever graphic “look” has been designed for your system. Typically, it will echo the look of your website. One of the best features of the email maketing system is that it recognizes the settings of the recipient’s computer, and if they are not set up for graphic emails, it will simply arrive at their desktop as a plain text email. No longer does the sender have to worry if the recipient can “see” their email correctly.
Not only does this system let you send as many messages as you want in one step, it lets you do some tracking, also. You can track how many recipients actually opened the email, and how often. This can be of help in measuring the interest level in a particular communication. Finally, it is very easy for a recipient who does not want to be on the list to “unsubscribe.” Email marketing has gotten a bad rap in recent years, as the lines have been blurred between valid marketing and spam. But when properly used, it is a powerful marketing tool, that allows a website owner to “keep in touch” with many clients and prospects with no more effort than it takes to compose a single email.
Author Name: Neil Street
Author Bio:
Neil Street is co-founder of Small Business Online, LLC, based in Wilton, CT., a website design, management, and promotion company dedicated to the Internet needs of the small business. His website is at http://www.smallbusinessonline.net. Send email to neil@smallbusinessonline.net He can also be reached at(203)761-7992
How to See What Pages of Your Site Google Has In Its Index
There is a lag time between the indexing or updating of your site, and the time it takes to show new results in the database. Depending on your site, where it was linked from, who it was linked from, and who knows what other factors, the amount of time varies.
With the method I teach in my book it seems to take two to four days on average for the Googlebot to stop by initially, and then another two days to one week to appear in search listings for the first listing.
(You can read more about the book here: http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/book )
But even if it takes more than four to seven days for the Googlebot spider to show up at your site, or to return, if ever, there are several ways you can track the results.
First, you can use Google itself.
Go to www.google.com and type in site: then your domain name. So for yahoo.com, you’d type in ‘site:yahoo.com’. The results will show you which pages of your site are showing up in Google.
If you know you won’t have time to check on a daily basis, you can use a site called Google Alert, which you can find at http://www.googlealert.com.
The great thing about this site is that it will track up to five terms per email address and have them sent to you via email on a daily basis. Using this you can track your ranking for your most important terms, or see how often your competitor’s site comes up versus yours.
To use this to see when pages of your site come up, create an account, then in the search terms section, type in, as one word, whatever is between ‘www’ and your site’s suffix (.com, .net, .org, .biz, .uk, etc.) and you will start getting emailed results.
The only problem is that the resulting page is sometimes a day behind Google’s actual indexing. But for a free automated resource, you really couldn’t beat it. Until now.
Google’s new Web Alerts just came out on the 29th of March. You can access it here:
http://www.google.com/webalerts
You can use Google’s new Web Alerts service in much the same way. It’s currently in Beta development, so make sure you save the information sent to you. Since it’s so new, you’ll probably want to sign up to both services and compare the results.
My favorite use for this is finding out when people mention my name or re-print my article at their sites, so that I can link back, or email to thank them. A big advantage Google.com’s in-house version of the web alerts system is that they have a news version that you can subscribe to, which will help you stay on top of your niche in whatever industry you’re in.
Currently I use the Google Alert’s site for several on-going searches, and Google’s Beta Web Alert’s for my most mission-critical, time-sensitive news.
There’s yet another way to use Google to track how your site is doing in Google. It will tell you the cached version of your page, which Google stores. Sometimes the date posted next to the listing of the cached page can help give you a good estimate of when Google will be back at your site.
For example, at the moment, I seem to see the spider most predictably every day between midnight and 6 am EST since my home page began to score a PR of 5, then periodically at other points in my site during the day. I figured this out by looking at Google’s cache of my home page over a period of one week.
This search will tell you pages that Google considers similar to yours. It will also show sites that it considered linked to you, and show sites that carry your full url, hyperlinked or not. It’s not 100% accurate, but it will give you a much better idea than you’d get from guessing – and it’s free.
Go to Google’s home page – www.google.com – and type in info:yoursitenameandsuffix. So if your site was ExactSeek.com you’d type info:www.exactseek.com. You can also use site:yoursitenameandsuffix to find out which pages have been indexed by Google’s search engine spider.
Curiously, Google used to show different results for info:www.exactseek.com and info:exactseek.com ‘ instead of including results for exactseek.com in the www evaluation. I haven’t seen this much anymore, but if you see one permutation showing up in results for the other, you may want to do both.
You’re going to want to bookmark this page and visit it on a weekly basis. The best day to look would be the one week anniversary of what day Google last cached a page at your site. The date will often be shown next to the word ‘cached’ on one of your page results. If the cached page date is the same, that means Google hasn’t been back to your site.
Marry this information with your study of your web stats to get more ideas on getting the most out of your weekly or daily exercises involving search engines and links from other sites, not just Google.
Author Bio:
Subscribe to Free Traffic Secrets to find out how to get the Googlebot spider sooner at ftdsecrets-subscribe@topica.com or visit http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com to get more time-tested information on getting Free Quality Traffic to Your Site.
Why are keywords so important?
Open Wordtracker [ http://www.wordtracker.com/ ] and you’ll see following proclamation by Brent Winters, President, FirstPlace Software, Inc., the makers of award-winning web promotion software, WebPosition Gold [ http://www.webposition.com/ ]:
“Target the wrong keywords and all your efforts will be in vain.”
Why are keywords so important? And what indeed is a keyword? To an occasional web visitor, *keyword* wouldn’t mean much. But for a practicing webmaster, the term *keyword* is perhaps more dear than anything.
The way we search
The term *search* implicitly suggests that search engines will return the most relevant results corresponding to the search-term used. A search-term or keyword is basically a word or a combination of words – usually latter – surfers like you and me use to get results we’re looking for. People, hailing as they do, from diverse backgrounds, have typically individualistic ways to express search-terms, that differ from one another, yet aimed for identical search-result. Evidently therefore, a website wanting to occupy top positions in search-results, needs to *optimize* for varying combinations of keywords. For an idea on how searches are made using keywords, Philip Morris’ this page [ http://www.philipmorrisusa.com/search/search_help.asp ] provides a handy reference, albeit for their site.
In a press release Feb 2, 2004 [ http://www.onestat.com/html/aboutus_pressbox27.html ], OneStat reports that of all keyword searches on the web, 32.58% uses 2-word phrases, 25.61% 3-word phrases and only 19.02% uses 1-word phrase. According to OneStat [ http://www.onestat.com/html/aboutus_pressbox27.html ], global usage of both 2-word and 3-word phrases has increased over the last year, and that of 1-word phrase has actually declined during the same period.
To give another example, WebSearchWorkshop [ http://www.websearchworkshop.co.uk/stats.htm ] quotes an earlier NPD survey to show that out of an online sample of 30000 respondents, *45% search by using multiple keywords or key phrases, 28% use one keyword, 18% search by a pre-defined option (such as browsing through a directory category) and 9% search by typing in a question*.
Since achieving top rank is culmination of many efforts working in tandem, it is all the more necessary that keyword targeting is done in planned manner to remain in reckoning.
Importance of search engines
Notwithstanding growing complaint that search results are steadily loosing relevance, statistics tell us web surfers are increasingly opting for search engines as a main web activity. WebSideStory in a March 12, 2003 press release [ http://www.websidestory.com/pressroom/pressreleases.html?id=181 ] reports that search engines’ share in global internet usage has nearly doubled in the past 1 year from 7.1% to 13.4%. If a survey is done today, that figure will undoubtedly be much more impressive.
A birds-eye-view of importance of search engines can be had in this narration at iProspect [ http://www.iprospect.com/web_site_promotion/optimization_analysts.htm ]. Some pertinent points are given below:
1. A Georgia Institute of Technology study finds 85% of likely web customers prefer search engines to find their choices, and a study by RealNames reveal as much as 75% web surfers use search engines while journeying through the web.
2. 57% of net surfers are recurrent users of search engines — a popular web activity, next only to emailing.
3. Convenience is a major factor for many to locate the ideal information resource through search engines.
When seen with Global Reach [ http://glreach.com/globstats/ ] estimate of *online population* reaching 940 million in 2004, it’s fairly obvious there’ll be continuing surge of internet marketing efforts in order to attain search visibility. Innovative starategies coupled with intelligent marketing will be the hallmark of efforts to achieve prominent search rankings. In this connection, do have a look at Global Reach’s invaluable data on “Evolution of Online Linguistic Populations” [ http://global-reach.biz/globstats/evol.html ].
Keywords matter most
Though not the only weapon in webmasters’ arsenal, using relevant keywords is a must to increase possibility of prominent search rankings. The reason is rather simple. Search engines gather and collate texts in webpages and store them in databases. As a web user searches for a website like yours, it is important that the keyphrase or the keyword he uses to do so appears in your webpages. Otherwise your webpage will not show up in search results.
This underlines the need to know various keyword combinations relevant to your website, and at the same time popular. Which is to say that these are keywords mostly used by web users cutting across geographic locations.
Web searchers’ fickleness
Dr. Jim Jansen, an Assistant Professor in Pennsylvania State University�s Information Sciences and Technology (IST) in the article *Impatient web searchers measure web sites’ appeal in seconds* [ http://live.psu.edu/story/3364p ] observes “A page has to be well-designed, easy to load and relevant to a searcher’s needs.” Else, within 3-minute interval, 40% searchers will abandon the website and move over to another. 7Search (link provided under the heading ‘Keyword Tools’) provides an interesting estimate about percentage of searchers visiting your site vis-a-vis its ranking. It says a first rank is likely to fetch about 7% of search traffic, and a 10th rank just 0.35%.
The estimate above drives home another oft-repeated opinion that mere top ranking won’t translate into better sales. For that to happen, a website should be able to invoke sufficient interest among its viewers to make them stay longer.
Nevertheless, as search engine marketing gains popularity compared to other forms of advertisements, it is easy to see why good ranking in major search engines is so vital. But then, search engines bring results based on keywords or keyphrases. Without doubt therefore, the first step for success on the web is the ability to select the most relevant keywords and use them properly to derive maximum advantage.
What emerges
To summarize from the foregoing, we find that:
1. While internet population is growing tremendously, a majority of web surfers use search engines as starting platform to meet their online needs.
2. Web searchers do not want to waste time for a website if it fails to meet his expectations, even though it would have ranked high in search results.
3. A majority of web searchers prefer using multiple keywords to find their choice of websites.
Piecing facts together, what emerges is search engines’ popularity is on the rise (if not usefulness; but that’s a different story). And so too searchers’ preference to use multiple keywords to find their choice of websites.
The way forward
If convinced that keywords are lifeline of your web venture, next comes planning your keyword targeting strategy. The web is now a global phenomenon, and the potential market is no longer confined to a single location or country. That being so, a prudent approach would be to know what would people of other regions/countries look for in search engines if they want to view your site. Fortunately, there are ways to find that out.
To begin with, start querying yourself, your colleagues, friends, relatives and others as to what search-terms would aptly describe your website. Collect thereby a hundred or so keyphrases. Next, arrange at least two brainstorming sessions, spaced over a few days, in which to participate all who suggested those keyphrases. The aim will be to closely watch relative importance of keyphrases chosen and then trim the list by half, leaving out those that appear less important.
Scott Buresh in the article *Search Engine Keyphrases And The Power Of The Modifier* [ http://www.webpronews.com/ebusiness/seo/wpn-4-20040206SearchEngineKeyphrasesandthePoweroftheModifier.html ] suggests using descriptive adjectives, nouns and other suitable modifiers to appeal to wide cross-section of search traffic. And Jayde’s *Keyword Selection* [ http://www.jayde.com/set/keyword.html ] process lays down certain ground rules in order to bring in more relevancy in your keyword selection exercise.
Work out your keywords
Once your initial keyphrases are ready, comes the most important step. Take help of one or more keyword tools. With a good keyword tool, you can ‘weigh’ relevance of each of your keyphrases with actual search-terms used. In fact the keyword tool will itself suggest many other popular keyphrases, relevant to your keyphrases, some of which you wouldn’t probably have thought of. Since the keyword tools keep track of virtually all searches made on major search engines worldwide, feel assured that you’ll get the most relevant search-terms used by aggregate viewers.
Finally, armed with keyword tools’ suggestions, you’ll be ready to further prune the big list to something you feel comfortable using. Perhaps another group discussion might help to thrash out a shorter list. Remember, it is better not to use more than 4 to 5 keyphrases in one webpage, lest the *weight* per keyword (keyword density) becomes thin and not sufficient to attract search engines’ preferred attention.
At this stage, if necessary, take assistance of qualified SEO specialist or content writer to appropriately configure your webpages with selected keyphrases. Be aware that like keyword selection, keyword placement too is equally important, if not more. According to Robin Nobles [ http://www.seo-news.com/archives/2004/jan/29.html ], search engines like Google is known to pull *snippets* from any one or combination of 9 different areas of webpages in response to search queries.
Keyword tools
Keywords tools come in different hues for different applications. The most important of course are keyword selection tools. My first choice is Wordtracker [ http://www.wordtracker.com/ ], which offers free trial to get a feel of how it operates. Their paid service opens up exciting ways of *discovering* your keywords. While Wordtrackers’ is a do-it-yourself service, SEO Research Labs’ [ http://www.seoresearchlabs.com/ ] is a package offer for what they say *Keyword Research for Bottom Line Results*. Another fine tool is Web CEO’s ‘Keyword Popularity Research’, which is offered as a part of Web CEO Suite [ http://www.webceo.com/pricing.htm ].
Among other keyword selection tools, Good Keywords’ [ http://www.goodkeywords.com/products/gkw/ ] is a free software from Softnik Technologies that queries several search engines to enable you find your best choices. Yet other popular sources are:
Overture Inventory [ http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ ]
Google AdWord Keyword Suggestions [ https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox ]
7Search [ http://conversion.7search.com/scripts/advertisertools/keywordsuggestion.aspx ], etc.
GlobalPromoter [ http://www.globalpromoter.com/keyword_suggestion_tool.cfm ] too, among many others, provides free searching of Overture network for your keywords.
Some other useful keyword-related tools and resources are given below:
1. Marketleap’s keyword verification in search results [ http://www.marketleap.com/verify/ ]
2. KeywordStats toolbar [ http://www.keywordstats.com/ ]
3. Webjectives’ Keyword Density Analyzer [ http://www.webjectives.com/keyword.htm ]
For more resources concerning keyword research and many other web promotion topics, consider owning writer’s ebook, *Sure Web Success with 1001+ Top Web Promote Links*.
Summing up
As with any set-up where there’s a close and constant interaction with visitors, it is necessary to keep your website in top-shape, relevant, interesting and inviting. Keyword research is a vital part of website management and a continuous process. It’s worth staying glued to happenings around, and keeping track of keyword-usage pattern from your web-logs. For, who knows where you stand tomorrow in search results for your chosen keywords!
Author Bio:
For more information on keyword planning and also other web promotion resources, consider owning Partha Bhattacharya’s highly informative ebook, Sure Web Success with 1001+ Top Web Promote Links, that bridges gap between possibility and certainty of your web success. Partha’s website, EzyPost, also offers nicely-designed ready templates for websites.
Understanding the value of inbound links to your website
Besides search engines, the next most common way people move from one website to another is through links on other sites.
The reason that the Internet is often refered to a the *Web* is because it exists so much as a web of links running from one site to another in a maze more complex than the spider web from which it is named.
Getting your links on other sites
If you submit your site to search engines, provided you get good results on the keywords being searched for, you will get good results.
If you write articles that will be published by ezine publishers and webmasters, then the externally placed links to your website through your resource box can be very profitable. The resource box is an *about the author* paragraph, that you will attach at the end of your article.
If you are willing to share a certain amount of your profits with others, you can set up an affiliate program for your offerings, and then you can rely upon your affiliates to provide your inbound links for you.
If you participate in online forums dedicated to a certain topic, then your links placed with your post can be very effective.
If you leave reviews for others to read on sites like Amazon or Cnet, then you will find a certain number of click-through’s (CTR’s) to your website.
If you sign guestbooks with your own link in place, you might be a little disappointed by your results.
If you use Free For All (FFA) pages, you will certainly be disappointed. The reason for the failure with FFA pages is two-fold. First, your link will be placed on an external site that rotates links. Your link may only be in place for ten minutes or two hours. Secondly, your link is often placed on a page that will likely never be seen by human eyes.
The Yin & The Yang of the Internet
The Internet is a prime example of the benefits of the Yin and the Yang. What goes around, comes around.
The truth is that if you help others, others will help you.
If you provide outbound links on your site to resources that are not on your site, people will flock to your site to find the resources they are looking for.
What is more, if you provide a good resource to others, then webmasters, reviewers and publishers will be lining up to tell their people about your website. Thus, giving you more inbound links.
Beware of the dead end
If on the other hand, you construct your website as a dead end, you are bound to fail.
People who do website reviews and publish ezines do not tell their followers about dead end sites. The value of a single website is drastically reduced by a lack of outbound links.
After all, no one person is so brilliant that they can deliver everything their visitors want.
By the very nature of dead end sites, they will not be linked to by others, so their success or failure is entirely reliant upon search engine and email success.
If the owner of the dead end site does not send out tons of email advertising and it does not have good placement in the search engines, then the site will not turn big profits.
Google PageRank
Besides traffic earned by inbound and outbound links to a website, one should also consider ranking schemes like the Google.com PageRank scheme.
Because Google wants to provide their users the very best in information from their search results, Google employs a program called the Google PageRank. The basic premise is to provide a rating for a given website, based in part on the value of the content on the website, and more so, based on how many external sites with a PageRank of four or higher actually link to the given website.
To review the Google PR for any one domain, one must use the Google Toolbar ( http://toolbar.google.com ) in their Internet Explorer browser.
Inbound links are crucial
In order for a site to get a good Google PageRank, the site must have inbound links from other rated sites.
Let us return for a moment to the dead end site. We have already shown that the dead end site that has no outbound links, will very likely have few inbound links, if any.
When a site can boast of no inbound links, then the webmaster can rest assured that their likelihood of getting a good Google PageRank is almost nil.
In order to build one’s inbound links, they should strongly consider employing outbound links also.
Protecting your internet assest
Most people who build dead end sites do so from a fear of sending their hard earned traffic to another domain.
Given the short attention span of many surfers, we always have to be concerned that redirected traffic may never return to our websites.
In order to protect your hard work by losing the distracted surfer, you should always place a *target=_blank* inside of the href tag for all outbound links on your websites.
This ensures that a person who clicks on an outbound link will see the new page in a new browser window. So, once the surfer has reviewed the new site, they will have to actively shut down the browser window that your website still resides in.
This is extra special good news for people who have provided a great resource for web surfers. The more valuable a website is considered to be as a resource, the more likely that the web surfer will bookmark the website for future use.
Broken links are no good
Some people have ventured to provide reviews of external sites or to publish articles that are targeted to their marketplace, but they have provided the information with broken links to the external sites.
This method serves no real protection for the webmaster, since the search engine spiders and publishers know that all of the outbound links return a *404 error, page not found.*
A phony resource is not really a resource at all.
Building your inbound links
To ensure the success of your website, you need to get to work building both your inbound and outbound links for your website.
Remember. What goes around comes around. Honor will bring you many rewards.
Author Bio:
Bill Platt owns The Phantom Writers, a company committed to helping people to establish an Internet presence & promote their businesses through the use of Free-Reprint Articles and Press Releases. Articles are distributed to 6,000+ publishers & webmasters as part of the package. http://thePhantomWriters.com Do you write your own articles? Let us distribute them for you.
SEO’s Relationship With Website Architecture
Search engine optimization for today’s search engine robots requires that sites be well-designed and easy-to-navigate. To a great degree, organic search engine optimization is simply an extension of best practices in web page design. SEO’s relationship with web design is a natural one. By making sites simple and easily accessible, you are providing the easiest path for the search engine robots to index your site, at the same time that you are creating the optimum experience for your human visitors.
This approach ties well into the notion of long-term search engine marketing success. Rather than trying to “psych out” the ever-changing search engine algorithms, build pages that have good text and good links. No matter what the search engines are looking for this month or next, they will always reward good content and simple navigation.
Search Engine Robots
Search engine robots are automated programs that go out on the World Wide Web and visit web pages. They read the text on a page and click through links in order to travel from page to page. What this really means is that they “read” or collect information from the source code of each page. Depending on the search engine, the robots typically pick up the title and meta description. The robots then go on to the body text of the page in the source code. They also pay attention to certain tags such as headings and alt text. Search engine robots have capabilities like first-generation browsers at best: no scripting, no frames, no Flash. When designing, think simple.
Search Engine Friendly Design
Creating search engine friendly design is relatively easy. Cut out all the bells and whistles and stick to simple architecture. Search engine robots “understand” text on the page and hyperlinks, especially text links. The relationship of SEO and web design makes sense when you start with good design techniques for your visitor. The easier the navigation and the more text on the page, the better it is not only for the visitor but also for the search engine robots.
Obstacles For Indexing Web Pages
Search engine robots cannot “choose” from drop down lists, click a submit button, or follow JavaScript links like a human visitor. In addition, the extra code necessary to script your pages or create those lists can trip-up the search engine robots while they index your web page. The long JavaScript in your source code means the search engine robots must go through all this code to finally reach the text that will appear on your page.
Offload your JavaScript and CSS code for quicker access to your source code by the search engine robots, and faster loading time for your online visitors. Some search engine robots have difficulty with dynamically-generated pages, especially those with URLs that contain long querystrings. Some search engines, such as Google, index a portion of dynamically generated pages, but not all search engines do. Frames cause problems with indexing and are generally best left out of design for optimum indexing. Web pages built entirely in Flash can present another set of problems for indexing.
Depth Of Directories
Search engine robots may have difficulty reaching deeper pages in a website. Aim to keep your most important pages no more than one or two “clicks” away from your home page. Keep your pages closer to the root instead of in deeply-nested subdirectories. In this way you will be assured the optimum indexing of your web pages. Just as your website visitor may become lost and frustrated in too many clicks away from your homepage, the robots may also give up after multiple clicks away from the root of your site.
Solutions And Helpful Techniques
If there are so many problems with indexing, how will you ever make it work?
The use of static pages is the easiest way to ensure you will be indexed by the search engine robots. If you must use dynamically-generated pages, there are techniques you can use to improve the chances of their being indexed. Use your web server’s rewrite capabilities to create simple URLs from complex ones. Use fixed landing pages including real content, which in turn will list the links to your dynamic pages. If you must use querystrings in your page addresses, make them as short as possible, and avoid the use of “session id” values.
When using Flash to dress up your pages, use a portion of Flash for an important message, but avoid building entire pages using that technology. Make sure that the search engine robots can look at all of the important text content on your pages. You want your message to get across to your human visitor as well. Give them enough information about your product to interest them in going the next step and purchasing your product.
If you must use frames, be sure to optimize the “no frames” section of your pages. Robots can’t index framed pages, so they rely on the no frames text to understand what your site is about. Include JavaScript code to reload the pages as needed in the search engine results page.
Got imagemaps and mouseover links? Make sure your pages include text links that duplicate those images, and always include a link back to your homepage.
Use a sitemap to present all your web pages to the search engine robots, especially your deeper pages. Make sure you have hyperlink text links on your page, and a sentence or two describing each page listed, using a few of your keyword phrases in the text.
Remember that the search engine robots “read” the text on your web page. The more that your content is on-topic and includes a reasonable amount of keyword-rich text, the more the search engine robot will “understand” what the page is about. This information is then taken back to the search engine database to eventually become part of the data you see in the search engine results.
Last of all, it is very important to test your pages for validation. Errors from programming code and malformed html can keep the search engine robots from indexing your web pages. Keep your coding clean.
Check List For Success
Include plenty of good content in text on your web pages Incorporate easy to follow text navigation Serve up dynamically generated pages as simply as possible Offload JavaScript and other non-text code (style sheets, etc.) to external files Add a sitemap for optimum indexing of pages Validate your pages using the World Wide Web Consortium’s validation tool, or other html validator On Your Way To Indexed Pages The best way to assure that your pages will be indexed is to keep them simple.
This type of architecture not only helps the search engine robots, but makes it easier for your website visitors to move throughout your site. Don’t forget to provide plenty of good content on your pages. The search engine robots and your visitors will reward you with return visits.
Resources
To learn more about how to work around optimization problems with JavaScript, dynamically-generated pages, Frames and Flash, read the following articles:
Optimizing Pages with JavaScript and Style Sheets for Search Engines
http://www.searchinnovation.com/optimizing-pages-with-javascript.asp
Optimizing Dynamic Pages (Part I)
http://www.searchinnovation.com/optimize-dynamic-pages-1.asp
Optimizing Dynamic Pages (Part II)
http://www.searchinnovation.com/optimize-dynamic-pages-2.asp
Optimizing Frames for Search Engines
http://www.searchinnovation.com/optimizing-frames-for-search-engines.asp
Html validation tool
http://validator.w3.org/
Stylesheet validation tool
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
Author Bio:
Daria Goetsch is the founder and Search Engine Marketing Consultant for Search Innovation Marketing, a Search Engine Promotion company serving small businesses. Besides running her own company, Daria is an associate of WebMama.com, an Internet web marketing strategies company. She has specialized in search engine optimization since 1998, including three years as the Search Engine Specialist for O’Reilly & Associates, a technical book publishing company.
Increase Web Site Visitors For Relevant Terms Using Your Less Relevant Listings
Completely by accident and through no effort of my own, besides the effort to get my site spidered by Yahoo’s Slurp Search Engine Spider and Google’s Googlebot Search Engine spider, I’ve seen an accidental increase in the visitors to my web site.
Suddenly, I was ranking first page for Google, Yahoo and AOL for the phrases like “picture of William Hung”, and “william hung she bangs”.
The Good news is, this means that when the Yahoo Slurp spider came to the site and indexed my front page last Saturday, (and no, I didn’t submit my site OR pay for inclusion), my results were in the search engine by Sunday apparently, which is when I started getting clicks from Yahoo for this unusual term.
The Bad News is, William Hung, except for being an example of the power of Free Marketing, has NOTHING to do with my site!
So how does one fix this situation? How do you turn an accidental good ranking into several good rankings for other terms? Or say you’ve got great rankings for a relevant, but fairly insignificant term? The solution is the same.
Just give the spider more of what it wants.
Google, Yahoo – and apparently their search partners – love that page. So, first thing I did was improve the page in question. At the time there was no picture of William Hung on the page that was ranking so well. It’s important that you satisfy web site visitors who accidentally happen up on your site.
It only happens once in a while, but sometimes the person who come by is also interested in your regular content.
The next thing I did, was create other pages I believed the two sites would like. Since the articles here primarily offer resources to webmasters who want to learn how to increase the number of visitors to their sites, all I had to do was tweak some of the wording to the liking of both those visitors and the search engine spiders, and write one more article.
How did I know what the search engines would like, and how that would increase the number of people who would come to the site? Well, I found out that some guarded information about the latest optimization tips for Yahoo and Google was available on the Web FREE. (If you want to know what that resource is, just download the updated Free Google Optimization Guide.)
Once I had the pages optimized to my satisfaction, all I had to do was link some of those pages to the front of my site (where the article was then located) and wait for the increase in traffic to my site. Google spiders me every day like clockwork ever since I made this tiny change to my website that increased my site rank from zero to five in January.
Of course, I then had to figure out if my secret technique to baiting the Google spider was going to work with Yahoo’s new search engine spider.
Not only did it work, but it worked faster than leading the Google spider to specific page of my site! Yahoo’s spider is not back at my site on a daily basis yet, but it does come regularly, finding new pages, and reindexing the area with the most content.
So there you have it. If your site has been indexed well for a term you didn’t really want, first, make the page as relevant as possible to the visitors who end up at your site.
Next, give the search engine spider “food” to eat that is more relevant to your site. It doesn’t hurt to optimize this page. You can now download the new optimization guide for FREE. IF you’re one of the next 100 subscribers. Only 1000 copies will be available for download so get yours now.
Third and last, get the spider to come on back to your site. If you know how to bait a search engine spider, great! You’ll get your results faster, and since the spider finds the link on its’ own, you may get better placement. Or, you can submit your site to one of Inktomi’s partners, and/or Google and wait the 6-8 weeks it takes to be included.
Author Bio:
Subscribe to Free Traffic Secrets to find out how to get the Googlebot spider sooner at ftdsecrets-subscribe@topica.com or visit http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com to get more time-tested information on getting Free Quality Traffic to Your Site.
Wording Up Your Website
Are you losing business because of your website? More and more customers are logging on to the Web to decide where to spend their money because it is quick and convenient, and they can jump from site to site instead of walking from store to store.
Web savvy customers don’t need to be patient, studies have shown that you need to engage a potential customer very quickly by giving them easy, fast access to the information they need. Otherwise they will simply move on to the next site.
Appealing design and speedy functionality are important but they don’t ensure that your site is well structured (intuitive) or well written (clear).
Write First
The real message on most websites is in the writing, and so it makes sense that the writing should determine the structure. Unfortunately, this is not the usual case. Most businesses choose the structure and design of their site first and then try and fit the writing around that structure. This flies in the face of commonsense. When you speak to someone, you structure your speech around your message, you don’t decide on a structure then change the message to suit. So you need to plan what you want to say before you create the site. Maybe even write the whole thing first and then use the message to determine the structure.
When deciding what to write, think about what your customer wants to know rather than what you want to say. It’s a subtle difference, but it is the key to engaging a potential customer.
Most customers will want to know the basics:
– What do you do?
– What benefit can you offer them?
– Why should they choose your service or product?
– What does it cost?
– How can they contact you?
– Where are you located?
– Brevity & Clarity
Your website has to communicate a lot of information and to make matters worse, you are going to have limited space.
Ideally, your customer won’t have to scroll on any page (all your information will fit in a single window) and that single view will need to contain more than just words. The design and navigation elements take up about a third of a window, and you should leave a bit of room for white space (you don’t want to overwhelm the customer). As a rule of thumb you should expect to have about half the window free for text.
How you are going to fit all your information in such a confined space? This is where writing skills come in – choose your words very carefully.
Websites can be an extremely powerful piece of marketing collateral. You can reach millions of potential customers for as little as a few hundred dollars. Unfortunately, your competitors are all doing the same thing – it’s a level playing field but there are a lot of players.
It is important that your message is structured and well thought out, otherwise your site will be a mess and no-one will bother to read about your business. If your message is clear, your site will be simple and easy to use. It’s all in the words.
Author Bio:
Glenn Murray heads copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit www.divinewrite.com for further details.
5 Free Ways to Increase Traffic to your Online Store
So you’ve finally created a website for your small online store! Now you think, “How do I get people to visit my site?”. If you’re like most new website owners, you wonder how to bring potential customers to your site without spending lots of money on expensive advertising. In order to help you, I’ve compiled a small list of five methods that I have used to drastically increase traffic to my own site. I’ve also listed two websites under each tip that will help you get started implementing these suggestions.
1. Offer a freebie or a contest for your items:
One of main reasons that people use the Internet is to find free (or cheaper) stuff. If you offer a freebie or contest for one of your items, then you are likely to attract potential customers. To get maximum exposure for your freebie or contest, you should register with as many “free stuff sites” as possible. Here are a couple of sites which would be a good starting point: http://www.thefreesite.com and http://www.realfreesite.com.
2. Link to similar websites:
A popular method used by webmasters to increase web traffic is to swap links with comparable websites. However, the trick to maximizing the effectiveness of linking is to find sites with a minimum Google PageRank, which is a system which Google uses to judge the importance of each webpage, of 3 or 4. To find out more information about PageRank, click here: http://toolbar.google.com/. To find good linking partners, check out these two link partner directories: http://www.links-pal.com/ and http://www.gotop.com/.
3. Join an internet discussion group:
People also frequently use the Internet to find places where they share common interests with other individuals, which has led to the creation of Internet discussion groups. You can use discussion groups to introduce yourself and your product. Find a group that is related to your store or personal interest, and make sure any topic that you post is tied into a current discussion. Don’t SPAM any discussion group with an obvious sales pitch. Simply write comments applicable to both the group and your product; people will naturally want to know more about you! Two great listings of potential starting points for discussion groups are: http://groups.yahoo.com/ and http://topica.com/.
4. Post your product or service on a free classified ad page:
Although many websites only have paid inclusion into their classified ads, many offer a free place where you are allowed to advertise your merchandise. If you spend time developing an interesting headline or ad, you can bring in a steady amount of traffic from these sites. To get started on free classifieds, you can use my own free service http://www.mizambar.com/classified.html. In addition, the following link has a directory of tons of free classified services: http://www.ecki.com/links/.
5. Write an article related to your website and submit it to ezines:
By writing an article about your service or a topic related to your website, you instantly become an authority on your issue. Although you might have some apprehension about writing, if you have a website, then you probably have something to talk about. Two great directories on ezines are: http://freezineweb.com/ and http://www.ezinelocater.com .
By following these steps, you should see a dramatic increase in your web traffic. The key is to always think about website promotion–if you spend a little time each day following one of these steps, you will be rewarded with more visitors and hopefully more customers.
Good luck, and happy advertising!
P.S. Stay tuned for more free ways to increase traffic to your website!
Author Bio:
Scott Patterson is the owner and webmaster of http://www.mizambar.com, a retail site of Evil Eye Jewelry, and http://www.onlinestoreexchange.com, a directory of tips and advice to help you with website design and website promotion for your online store. To receive free webmaster ebooks & free promotion/design tips, join his email list – onlinestoreexchange- subscribe@yahoogroups.com. For more information, email him at scott@mizambar.com
How to Gain Credibility and Sales By Writing Online Articles
Writing is one of the most powerful secrets you will find for bringing in new business and gaining credibility among your peers and potential clients.
Writing articles in online publications that cater to your ideal client will put you heads and tails above your competitors. Most competitors feel they are incapable of writing or feel they are too busy focusing on other parts of their businesses to write articles. So they don’t do it.
This is a huge advantage for you.
Likely your clients enjoy and even pay for information that is of interest to them. So if you have the ability to write, do so.
What Do You Write About?
How about a problem-solving how to' article? Or maybe a list of ideas or tips that help your readers? Since you know your business well, writing such articles should be relatively simple.
If your typing speed is not up to snuff and is holding you back then you can dictate’ your writing into your computer using a microphone and a voice recognition software program such as Dragon Naturally Speaking or IBM’s ViaVoice. Both work fairly well and are available online and at most major office supply retailers.
Where Can You Submit Your Articles Online?
Here is a BIG list of locations for publishing articles online. I too had questions of where to publish articles online. So through research I collected these links, added them to my favorites, and began submitting articles of my own.
No online marketing has to date presented as high a response from qualified potential clients as those who found my site through articles I’ve published online. I suspect the results will be the same for you too.
Sites Where You Can Post Your Articles For Redistribution
1. http://addme.com/nlsubmit.htm
2. http://allnetarticles.com/submitarticle.asp
3. http://articlecity.com/article_submission.shtml
4. http://boconline.com/sub-art.htm 5. http://bpubs.com/
6. http://businesstoolchest.com/articles/submit.shtml
8. http://cerebuswebmaster.com/onsite/articles/submit_artic
7. http://buzzle.com/ le.html
9. http://certificate.net/wwio/ideas.shtml
10. http://connectionteam.com/submit.html
11. http://digital-women.com/submitarticle.htm
12. http://ebooksnbytes.com/
13. http://ezinearticles.com/add_url.html
14. http://freesticky.com/stickyweb/submitarticle.asp
15. http://goarticles.com/ulogin.html
16. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aabusiness/
17. http://hugeaffiliates.com/modules.php?name=Submit_News
18. http://ideamarketers.com/writers.cfm
19. http://marketing-of-training.com
20. http://marketing-seek.com/articles/index.shtml
21. http://netterweb.com/articles/articlesubmit.htm
22. http://scamfreesuccess.com/article.htm
23. http://searchwarp.com/
24. http://small-business-forum.com/
25. http://thewhir.com/find/articlecentral/suggest.asp
26. http://top7business.com/submit/
27. http://upromote.com/newsletter/submit.html
28. http://vectorcentral.com/articles-form.html
29. http://web-source.net/articlesub.htm
30. http://webpronews.com/submit.html
31. http://womans-net.com/modules.php?name=Submit_News
32. http://work911.com/cgi-bin/links/add.cgi
Article Announcement Mailing Groups
1. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/publisher_network/
2. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/reprintarticles-paradise/
3. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/reprintedarticles/
4. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aainet/
5. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/article_announce_list/
6. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/articles_archives/
7. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/articlesubmission/
8. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aageneral/
9. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PromoteYourArticle/
10. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Free-Reprint-Articles/
11. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Free_eContent/
12. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freezinecontent/
14. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/netwrite-publish-announce
13. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marketing_articleblaster/
15. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ReadMyArticles/
16. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheWriteArticles/
A Useful Article Submission Tool
This online tool will automatically reformat your text for
you: http://www.web-source.net/format_text.htm
Many sites have guidelines concerning the layout of your article. One of the common guidelines is that your article must not exceed 60-65 characters across.
By using the format text tool you can be certain your article will be properly formatted, so that it does not get rejected for something that is so simple to fix.
Now’s The Time To Take Action
Writing articles that appeal to your “dream” clients should be one of your first steps to bringing in new business.
However writing alone is worthless if no one ever reads your articles. So the next step is to actually distribute your articles.
Hopefully you find as much success through submitting articles to these sites as I have.
Author Bio:
Andre Bell is principal marketing consultant with Andre Bell Consulting Group. A free copy of his new book “101 Marketing Secrets Revealed” is available through his site at http://www.economicbooster.com.
How much should you be expected to pay?
This is obviously a tricky question. All I can say is a PR with a value of 4 is worth less than a site with a value of PR 5, and even less then a site with a value of 6.
That said, the asking ‘monthly leasing’ quotes I received from some of these companies range between a low of about $ 15 a month to a high of about $ 70 (too high I think) for a PR 4. In the PR 5 category, costs ranged between $ 40 at the low end to about $ 110 at the highest. In the PR 6 and 7 categories, they were ‘all over the map’, with ranges between $ 150 to $ 250 for a PR 6, all the way up to $ 450 for a PR 7.
Note that these figures are in US currency and that prices can vary widely. I’ve even heard (but I don’t believe it) that some sites with PR of 4 are almost giving them away. Again, it is buyer beware. You should obviously do your due diligence on any of this before you decide to go with one company or another.
Is it better to stay in the same field?
I have been saying this for a long time and I will repeat it: Links are not all equal. A link from a site dealing in real estate pointing to another site in real estate will be given higher ranking privileges, not just by Google but also by some of the other search engines.
If your business is involved in home renovations and improvements, try leasing links from sites that will help your users, such as home decorators, lumber yards and building contractors. Some may not agree with me on this, but staying in the same field you are in will go a long way in substantially improving your rankings.
Conclusion
Leasing monthly links should be viewed as any other business function. You do it to increase traffic at your site and to help your users, not just to increase your rankings with the search engines. Having targeted traffic is not all. You also need a site that converts well.
Converting well means that visitors become buyers and eventually repeat customers that come back to your website time and time again. If leasing links from high-ranking sites in your industry does it for you, you have accomplished one of your goals: to increase the size of your business, at the same time making it become more successful, independently of how search engines will rank your site.
Since we know that the number and the quality of inbound links to a site helps it in its rankings, leasing links thus accomplishes two main functions for businesses that engage in it.
Buying Links
The subject of buying one-way links is a controversial subject at best. A lot has been said about it in the past, especially now after Google’s Florida and Austin updates. Depending to whom you talk to, you are likely to get opinions that range from ‘don’t do it’ to ‘it’s now OK to do it’. So what’s the average site owner or small business to do?
Look at it from a business perspective point of view. If some search engines look at it from an advertiser’s point of view, then maybe that’s how you should look at it too. In the last two months, we have had (and continue to have) an increasingly higher number of clients and people that contact us to buy one-way links from other sites.
So the question is: Should you do it? Is it ‘safe’ to do it in this conjecture?
Back to the basics of linking
Before I answer that question, let’s go back to basics. Why do we need links in the first place? Can’t we just have a site with no outside links that will still rank high?
Here’s how Google ranks Web pages:
Google ranks websites on their value of merit. One of Google’s algorithms that does just that is the Page Rank’ algorithm, named after one of Google co-founders, Larry Page. In its most basic form, Page Rank’ calculates the number and quality of incoming links to any given website.
As far as Google is concerned, a link from site A to site B is viewed as a ‘vote’, which means that if 300 sites link to site B, that site must be more important than if it only had 5 or 10 inbound links.
As a result, the more links you would have pointing to a given website, usually the better that site would be perceived in terms of quality of content. Since the past 3 or 4 years, a great number of webmasters and site owners have participated in what is called “reciprocal link exchanges”, which, as the name implies, does just that: “I will put a link from my site to your site, if you do the same”.
In essence, there is nothing wrong with that. However, since Google’s two major last updates, in November and January, reciprocal links don’t seem to have the same impact as they once had, at least not from a ranking point of view.
Since then, it would appear that one-way links (from A to B and not B to A also) are receiving better rankings.
Which reopens the debate on “are buying links ethical?” Look at this analogy: if a website or portal carries a number of advertisers with links on its homepage, all pointing directly to those sites, isn’t this link buying? It sure looks like it to me.
Viewed in this manner, then I think its safe to say that buying links is now an acceptable practice in the Internet age.
So how do we go about doing it?
You should approach the subject of buying links the same way you would approach any other business proposal or transaction: with careful planning and attention to the small details. You should sit down and plan carefully the way you will do this. You probably have some sites in mind you would like to contact in an effort to see if they will ‘lease’ you some links.
I prefer the term leasing instead of buying since, in these uncertain economic times, nothing lasts forever. A few years ago, what would have happened if you purchased a ‘lifetime link’ from a site like Enron? It’s pretty clear today that this would have been a bad idea.
In the last few weeks, I have been approached by a number of companies with websites that said they might be interested in leasing some links. Some of them have a PR (Page Rank’) value of between 4 to 6, with a few of PR 7. I personally believe that this trend will most likely increase.
Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales
