First of all, for beginners, I’ll give a brief definition of a domain name.
Your domain name is the same as “www.yoursitename.com”. It’s also known as your URL or Website Address.
For example, www.webmastercourse.com is my site’s domain name or my web address.
The domain name must be registered and approved before you can call it your own. The reason it works this way is because two websites having the same domain name cannot reside online at the same time. If someone types in www.webmastercourse.com, he/she will go to my website and no one else’s.
Registering your domain name and awaiting approval gives the registration company opportunity to check with every other company around the world to be sure no one else has already applied for your domain name “first.” (more…)
Not too long ago the search engines depended heavily on meta tags and keyword density to determine the positions or rankings of web sites. Google is the first search engine to shift its primary focus to link popularity when ranking web sites. Some other major search engines are doing the same. It is therefore very important to focus on link < popularity (in addition to meta tags and keywords) if you want to get a better placement on the search engines and drive more traffic to your site.
The search engines regard a web site as very valuable if there are several links pointing to it. The rationale is that an informative and useful site will attract the interests of several web site owners. These owners will link to this site as a benefit to their viewers and to increase the “content” value of their sites. (more…)
Researching Your Keywords
Once you’ve opened your account, start researching your keywords. You will probably already have several relevant words and phrases in mind. Write them all down and head over to the GoTo Keyword Suggestion Tool with your list.
The Keyword Suggestion Tool tells you how many times in the previous month people have searched for the keyword you input, or any phrase containing it. Results are listed in order, with the most popular searches at the top.
Type your first keyword into the tool’s search box. When the results come up, select “Save As” on your browser, and choose to save as “Text.” This will save your results in a small plain text file that can be opened by any text editor (like NotePad). Use the keyword as the file name. (more…)
You have a web site ready for action. Your product catalog, order tracking, credit card payment system, and fulfillment process are all in place. Now all you need is traffic! Many web entrepreneurs have learned that the magic nut to crack is attraction: get a steady flow of customers who explore your site and eventually purchase goods. The overhead costs of most web businesses are minimal relative to brick and mortar stores. However, the variable marketing costs can over shadow sales revenues by orders of magnitudes. Unfortunately, unlike the saying in the movie Field of Dreams, ?If you build it, they will not come!? Luckily, the industry has learned this lesson; some the hard way, and others in spite of the losers. Dot-coms are clearly not the darlings of the capital markets any longer; however, there is still money to be made! If you plan to start a web business or already have one but are not sure how to increase traffic and make money at the same time, you should consider a science-driven approach.
How to Lose $500 in 12 Hours
One weekend, my business partner and I created an affiliate commerce site. The site comprised a list of links to other online retailers. People go to our site, pick a link to a jewelry store for example, buy something, and in turn we receive a commission from the sale. The process of creating the site, signing up the affiliate agreements, and turning it on was a cinch. The cost was virtually nothing. We, being new to this whole web business concept, thought we had an incredibly smart marketing idea: pay to have our site come up in an ad box on a major search engine (Google) every time someone searched on the word ?gifts?. The word gifts is searched for 49,000 times per day! We figured we would have a good flow of visitors and the money would start rolling in. For certain, we would at least break even. We sunk $500 in one day and let it rip. Here’s what happened: (more…)
1. Build a solid business foundation. Design a business plan, marketing plan, ideal client profile, and a site map for your web site.
2. Be consistent. Brand your company.
3. Make your website trustable. This article will show you 10 ways. www.coachmaria.com/trustableweb.html
4. Create policies the build trust: customer service, code of ethics and newsletter privacy policy.
5. If you have pages on your site that you update monthly (like an articles page or recommended links page) say so on the page. (more…)
Yahoo!
With the new Yahoo! “Pay-For-Review” model it might be relatively easier for sites to get into the directory but getting traffic from your listing is altogether a different story. And now with it’s new annual recurring payment policy you have to be extra careful while submitting your site for a review.
Here are 8 things to keep in mind while submitting your site to Yahoo!
1) Selecting your domain name is the most vital step in getting a top ranking in Yahoo! and also other directories like Dmoz and Looksmart. Make sure your domain name is “Keyword Rich”. You can make your domain keyword rich by simply inserting hyphens to separate words in your domain name. Yahoo! gives more relevance to sites with keywords in their domain name. (more…)
Many do-it-yourself webmasters and online entrepreneurs have been led to believe that search engine positionining is a black art, and that no mere amateur can hope to compete with the “experts.” If you are among them, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to drive free, targeted traffic to your website.
There are only three steps you need to take, if you want to quickly increase your site’s visibility in the search engines. The three steps are: positioning, optimization, and link building. In this short tutorial, I’ll explain what’s involved in each one, and show you just how easy it can be. If you can give me even 10 minutes of your time today, you’ll be well on your way to top rankings.
If there is one message I’d like to get across to you, it’s “don’t fear the search engines.” Not everything that you have been told about them is true! If you would like to increase the amount of traffic flowing to your website, without spending a dime, I urge you to read this article with an open mind. (more…)
How to Get Search Engine Traffic
Of all the traffic my websites have generated the past few years (literally millions of visitors) ONE traffic source stands head and shoulders above the rest…
Search Engine Traffic.
Specifically, traffic from google.com and yahoo.com – the leaders in finding things on the web.
The traffic is top quality. These people are finding my sites on their own, so they are my best potential customers. And the traffic flows continually regardless of my advertising budget.
Considering the highly targeted nature of this traffic and the fact that it flows to me virtually without cost, search engine traffic simply cannot be beat. (more…)
When We Really Worked For The Money
I remember when a website wanted to be found it had to adhere to the rules and algorithms for Alta Vista, Excite, Hotbot, Webcrawler, OpenText, Infoseek, Lycos, Yahoo! and Northern Light. An entire industry was born from the need to satisfy the demand to get into those search engines because each had its own algorithms, indexing and ranking criteria.
Someone needed to know how each engine worked, how each directory worked, how to make pages that would be indexed by each of them, where to put them so they were separate from the versions that needed to meet the requirements of another engine, keyword density, how often to submit, how to read search engine logs, how to track indexed pages, how to track visitors, how to build meta tags, how to construct a page so that crawlers could navigate JavaScript, what dynamic links couldn’t be crawled, FLASH workarounds, frames workarounds, MSFrontPage code workarounds and then the killer skill of all, how to get a page to rank well and beat the competition. (more…)
Search engines are still one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your web site. This is because it is highly targeted traffic. A person searching for a particular phrase on a search engine, gets taken to your web site.
It makes sense then, to make your site as attractive as possible to the search engines, so your rankings will improve, giving you more visitors which leads to more sales – your ultimate goal.
Here are 17 powerful strategies you should implement, to substantially increase search engine traffic:
1. Keyword Density – the ratio of keywords to on your visible page to non-keywords is called Keyword Density. i.e. if you have 100 words on your page and 3 of those words are “boat” or “boats”, then you will get a keyword density of 3% of your text for the word “boat”. (more…)
